The last was said with a plaintive note that Janet found worrisome. “Why would you think he wanted to talk about you? Have you been making trouble out there?” When Jenny remained silent, Janet’s heart sank. “Okay, what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Jenny?”

“Okay, okay. Don’t bust a gut. I did make sort of a mess of his toolshed yesterday,” she finally admitted.

“I see.”

“But I cleaned it up,” her daughter said in a rush. “I even painted it. Bright yellow, in fact. It’s awesome.”

Janet couldn’t work up much enthusiasm over the color scheme of the toolshed, especially since Jenny herself seemed to be the reason it had needed painting.

“Why did you wreck it in the first place?” she asked, even though she thought she already knew from what Harlan had mentioned about Jenny’s questions to him. “Did it have something to do with your being worried that Mr. Adams and I might be sleeping together?”

Jenny groaned and turned beet red. “He told you, didn’t he? Jeez, Mom, he swore he wasn’t going to blab.”

“He didn’t blab, at least not the way you mean. It just sort of came out in a conversation we were having.”

“About the two of you?”

Janet nodded.

“So, are you?”

“Are we what?”

“Sleeping together,” Jenny said impatiently. “He wouldn’t say exactly.”

“And neither will I,” Janet said. “That’s not a subject that’s any of your business.”

“How can you say that? He’s the enemy.”

Janet grinned at Jenny’s determination to cling to that label. Her daughter was even more stubborn than she was. She’d conceded days ago that Harlan was no more the enemy than some descendant of Custer’s might be.

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” she chided.

“You’re giving up?” Jenny said, staring at her incredulously. “You’re not going to fight him for Lone Wolf’s land?”

“I’m still researching whether there’s any legal way to get the land. Besides, I told you before that I don’t have evidence that Lone Wolf’s father was ever on Mr. Adams’s land. We may never know for sure. And the way things worked back then, it wasn’t like the Comanches had deeds on file.”

“But I told him—” Jenny turned pale. “Whoops.”

Janet felt as if she’d been whacked over the head by a two-by-four. Of course! That explained those odd undercurrents she’d felt with Harlan. With her thoughts in turmoil, the odor of meat burning barely even registered. At the moment the fate of the hamburgers was the last thing on her mind.

“You told him what?” she asked carefully.

“Nothing,” Jenny muttered, backing away from the stove and clearly trying to put some distance between herself and her mother at the same time.

“Jennifer!”