Page 32 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Mason’s mouth hung open wide enough to catch flies. Thomas had frozen mid-lean in his chair. Rafe looked down at his harness leather and worked his jaw under that mustache of his in a way that could’ve been a smile or could’ve been him working a piece of gristle loose from supper.
“Well?” Logan took a sip and looked at them over the rim. “That what y’all were fixin’ to discuss, or did I walk into the wrong conversation?”
“You...” Grace blinked. “How did you—”
“Y’all’re bein’ way too secretive for it to be anythin’ else.” He sipped again. “Unless Tweedledum or Tweedledee over there are getting’ hitched too?”
Mason and Thomas frowned.
“And you…” Grace shook her head. “You’re just… agreein’?”
Logan set the cup down. “She smiled at me yesterday.”
Then he pulled out his chair and sat. The chair scraped on the floor, and the scraping woke the baby, who let out one sharp complaint before settling back into her quilt with a snuffle.
Under the table, Grace pressed both palms flat against her thighs to keep them steady.
Because the way he’d said it,she smiled at me, with no decoration on it and no defense around it, carried more weight than any speech he could’ve given.
This man, who’d spent two weeks insisting the baby belonged somewhere else, who’d held her like a stick of dynamite and told Grace their arrangement required no complications, had just surrendered to a gummy smile from a baby who couldn’t even sit up yet.
“Well, all right, then.” Rafe set the harness aside. “If she’s stayin’, she’s gonna need a proper name. Can’t keep callin’ her ‘the baby’ till she’s old enough to object.”
“I been sayin’ that for aweek.” Mason leaned forward on both elbows. “How about Charlotte? That’s a fine, sturdy name.”
“Charlotte.” Thomas pulled a face. “Sounds like a schoolmarm.”
“What’s wrong with schoolmarms?”
“Nothin’, if you want the girl growin’ up correctin’ everybody’s grammar.”
“That ain’t how nameswork, Thomas.”
“How ‘bout Josephine?” Thomas leaned back again.
“Too fancy.” Logan shook his head. “This is a ranch, not a ballroom.”
“Oh, so nowyougot opinions on names?”
“I got opinions oneverything.”
Grace bit the inside of her cheek to keep the grin off her face, because this right here, the four of them bickering over baby names at a kitchen table after supper, came closer to family than anything she’d known since her parents died.
Jonah would’ve loved this.
He’d have thrown in some ridiculous suggestion just to watch them all argue about it, something like Petunia or Gertrude, and then he’d have laughed until his ribs hurt.
“Abigail.”
“Too biblical.”
“We’reina church-goin’ household,Thomas.”
“Don’t mean we gotta name her like we’re readin’ roll call at Sunday School.”
Rafechuckled.
Grace blinked because she hadn’t heard the old man laugh since she’d arrived. Not once. The closest he’d come amounted to that mustache twitch he did, the one that suggested amusement lived somewhere behind it but couldn’t quite find its way out.
