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“Such as?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even know how old you are.”
“Does it matter?”
“No. But Iamcurious.”
“Fair enough. I’m forty-one. I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s not somethin’ I generally keep track of and anyone who cared enough about me to keep track for me died off a long time ago. But I’m pretty sure.”
The ache in her heart at the thought that he had no one who cared to celebrate his birth grew even worse at the offhand way he said it. Like it was a throwaway detail that meant nothing. She bit her lip, though. He wouldn’t appreciate her pity.
“And you?”
She hated to admit her age andhatedthat she hated it. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, though her age certainly put her in the “old maid” category. Even that bothered her less than the fact that everyone else seemed so bothered by it. As if not accomplishing the apparently one thing a woman should do by the time she was twenty was a horrible tragedy. She’d married Gray to keep Josiah at bay. But she wasn’t ashamed to admit that she was thrilled it would end all the pitying looks and muttered reassurances from every other woman in town. Except Mrs. DuVere, of course. She could always be counted on to congratulate Mercy on escaping matrimony for so long.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Gray said, and she realized she’d been quiet for far too long.
“No, I don’t mind,” she said with a quick smile. “I just turned thirty last month.”
He nodded, his brow creased a little, and her heart skipped a beat or two. “Does that disappoint you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been a bad thing had you been a little older.”
Her eyes widened. “Most men seem to prefer a younger woman.”
Gray snorted. “Age doesn’t generally bother me one way or the other. You could be fifty years old and act like a child or be a child and act more mature than most adults. But if we were closer in age, maybe I wouldn’t seem so ancient to you. I just don’t want you to ever feel like you’re married to an old man.”
Her stomach did another flip. His concern about what she felt about his age was something that surprised her. Well, surprised her that he’d admit it, at least.
“As you said, age is just a number. If I was going to guess your age based on the way you’ve acted, for instance, I would’ve had to guess, oh…maybe eighty, eighty-five.”
He laughed. A full-bellied, open-throated laugh that had her staring at him in shock. She liked the sound. A lot. It had just never occurred to her he was capable of that kind of mirth.
He laid back, his head cradled on a bent arm. “I suppose I do like my naps.”
“That’s the understatement of the year.”
He chuckled again. “If there’s anything else you’d like to know about me, you can ask,” he said. “Although I think you know pretty much everything.”
“Do I?”
He shrugged. “The important stuff, anyway. You know who I am, you know my background—”
“Not really.”
Gray cocked an eyebrow. “No?”
She shook her head, and he told her what was probably the bare bones version of how he’d gotten into his first gunfight because of a hand of cards.
She sat up and looked down at him. “Wait. So, you basically became a notorious gunfighter by accident?”
He considered that for a second and then nodded with a wry grin. “I guess so.”
She shook her head. “Only you could start out playing poker and end up on a wanted poster.”
