Page 16 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“You—”
“The boy ain’t wrong, Logan.” The old man shook his head. “I didn’t know about this ad business, and I ain’t pleased about the sneakin’. But I got eyes, son. And now we got a baby to think about on top of everything else.”
Logan clenched his fists.
The old man nodded at Grace. “The Lord works in peculiar ways, and sometimes them ways show up dusty and put out on your front porch.”
Now, Grace would’ve had something to say about being called dusty and put out, except, just then, the baby coughed, hitched, and deposited a generous mouthful of half-digested milk down the front of Logan’s shirt. The curdled stuff spread in a lumpy streak from his collar to the second button, and she could pinpoint theexactmoment it soaked through to his skin because he stiffened from his boots to his hairline, and sucked a breath through his nose like a man counting to ten.
“Confound it—every single time—that is the fourth shirt today—”
Grace held out both arms. “Give me the baby.”
“You ain’t touchin’ this child. I don’t know you from Adam.”
“And that child don’t know you from Adam, neither, but somebody’s gotta hold it right, and it sure ain’t gonna be a man who’s bouncin’ it around like a sack of feed corn.”
She closed the distance between them in two strides and planted herself within arm’s reach.
“I’ve been mindin’ babies since I could walk. Tenement livin’ back east, every woman on the floor takes her turn with every child in the building. I’ve burped, fed, changed, and rocked more infants than you’ve branded cattle, I promise you that. Now hand that baby over before you shake the poor thing to pieces.”
“I ain’t shakin’ it, I’m—”
“You aremost certainlyshakin’ it.”
“I ambouncin’it. There is a difference!”
“Not from where I’m standin’ there ain’t.”
And, right on cue, as if casting a vote, the baby let out a wail so piercing that Mason winced and Thomas covered one ear. Even the old man’s mustache twitched. After that, Logan glanced at the child, then at Grace, then down at the stain on his shirt.
He thrust the baby to her.
Grace scooped the child up and tucked it against her chest, cradling its head in the hollow of her neck and pressing one palm flat against its back. At first, the baby squirmed, stiffened, opened its mouth for another scream, and then... stopped. Just like that, the little thing melted into her, turning its blotchy face against her collar with a hiccup and then nothing but breathing.
All four men gaped at her as if she’d just pulled a rabbit out of a flour sack.
“All of you.” Grace rocked on her heels the way she’d rocked a hundred colicky babies in the tenements, keeping her voice pitched just above a whisper. “Out. Every last one.”
Mason blinked. “Where—”
“Go sit on the porch, go tend your horses, I don’tcarewhere you go, but this baby needs quiet and it ain’t gonna get any with four grown men stompin’ around arguin’ like a pack of barn cats fightin’ over a fish head.”
Nobody moved.
“I saidgit.”
Mason went first, grabbing Thomas by the sleeve and hauling him toward the door. The old man followed at his own pace, pausing to retrieve his rifle. On his way out, he gave Grace a look she couldn’t quite read, and then the door frame swallowed him up.
Logan, of course, stood last. “This ain’t settled.”
“I expect not.”
With that, he turned and walked out. The door clicked shut behind him.
Grace stood alone in a stranger’s kitchen, swaying on sore feet, with a stranger’s baby breathing softly against her neck and four days of grime itching along her collar.
“Well,” she murmured into the downy hair at the top of the baby’s head. “Ain’t this somethin’?”
