Free Should've Said No by Tracy March Page B

the information hasn’t been donated?” she dared to ask. “Or no one comes forward. Or I don’t figure out who knows and convince them to tell?”
    Tansy clutched Lindsey’s forearm with frightening strength. “Then, as a relative of us Karlssons, you need to make sure it’s officially documented in the museum that the Crenshaws stole our land deal, and those thieves have been living on the spoils ever since.”

Chapter 10
    “Cover your eyes,” Carden said to Lindsey as they stood beneath a starry Colorado sky, Blue not far behind them. Carden unlocked the door to his workshop—one of his favorite places on his ranch, set on a rise about fifty yards behind his house. Rustic yet open and airy, the workshop had banks of windows on every side that let in plenty of natural light. Tonight, they’d have to make do with artificial, plus whatever seeped in from the nearly full moon.
    He opened the door, made sure Lindsey had her hand over her eyes, and flipped the overhead lights on. He put his arm around her and guided her inside. “I got you.” His pulse picked up as he skimmed his fingers over the gauzy fabric of her sundress, clutched the teasing curve of her hip, and caught the seductive scent of her perfume.
    She tipped up her nose and inhaled. “Smells like sawdust. And paint. Or maybe glue.”
    “All of the above.” Carden situated her at the best angle, and rested his fingers at the small of her back. “Ready?”
    “Yep.”
    He gently grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away from her eyes. “Welcome to Thistle Bend, circa nineteen-twenty-something.” He gestured toward the expansive model town that his grandfather had started building years ago, and that Carden continued to work on.
    Lindsey’s eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open and she covered it quickly. “Oh. My. God,” she said, her words muffled by her hand. “This is…” She took her hand away from her mouth and clutched his biceps. “A masterpiece.” She tugged him along as she stepped closer, gazing at the diorama.

    Carden’s heart swelled with pride as he flipped a nearby switch and the model train began chugging along the tracks, complete with sound effects. “All the engines and freight and passenger cars are scale replicas of actual Denver & Rio Grande Western trains from the twenties.” The train passed in front of them, headed toward the depot, and he ran his finger along a stretch of the track. “Narrow gauge tracks made it easier for the trains to maneuver up and down the mountains.”
    “You built this?” Lindsey asked, still looking awestruck.
    Every second he’d spent working on the model was now worth it. “My grandfather did a lot of it before he died nine years ago, I’ve been working on it since.”
    Lindsey winced. “I’m sorry about your grandfather. Was he Stella’s husband?”
    “Yep. Quincy Crenshaw, but we called him Pops.” Carden smiled ruefully, missing the quiet time they’d spent together building miniature houses, painting tiny figures, sharing the present and the past. Pops would’ve loved seeing Lindsey’s reaction to the model. He would’ve loved seeing Lindsey, period.
    “You’re seriously going to donate this to the museum?” she asked.
    “I thought that would be an ideal place for it. Not many folks get to see it while it’s sitting in here, and Pops put so much work into it. He lived back in those days, and he wanted to show people what life was like in Thistle Bend during the coal mining era. Lots of people would rather tell their stories, but he wasn’t a man of many words.” Carden shrugged. “So we built this instead.”

    “Wow,” Lindsey said. “What an incredible legacy.” Her gaze swept across the miniature town, settling on one spot then another. “How long does it take to build something like this?”
    “That train depot took about 250 hours to build from scratch.”
    “No way.”
    “Believe it or not, it’s historically accurate.”
    She pointed to a