Page 47 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Then, Grace took the bottle and tipped it to Miriam’s mouth. The baby latched on and sucked with that desperate urgency she always brought to morning feeds, like she’d spent the whole night convinced nobody would ever feed her again.
“There you go, little bird. Easy now.”
She wanted to believe him. That was the terrifying part. Every sensible bone in her body told her to keep her guard up, and every other part of her was already halfway to forgiven.
“Come home.”
Logan said it quietly. Almost too quietly, with the creek running and the birds going, and Miriam gulping at the bottle. Grace might’ve missed it if she hadn’t already known it was approaching, the way you knew rain approached by the smell of the air before a single drop fell.
“Come home, Grace. You, Miriam, and your brother. All three of you.”
“My brother.”
“Your brother.”
“The stranger you tackled in the dirt yesterday mornin’.”
“That’d be the one, yes.”
She looked at him over the top of Miriam’s head. She didn’t know what her face was doing, and she didn’t trust it. Something about him made her want to hand him the baby and the fight and every wall she’d built in the last two days and just be done with it. She didn’t.
But she wanted to.
“You said you didn’t want him on your land.”
“I said a lot of things yesterday that I’d like to take back and burn in that fire right there.”
“Why?” She frowned. “What changed your mind?”
Logan rubbed the back of his neck. The gesture pulled his collar sideways, and she caught the edge of a bruise along his jaw where Jonah had connected, already turning that yellowish green of a day-old mark.
“I read your letter last night. The one you wrote answerin’ the ad.”
Oh. That letter.The one she’d agonized over at the kitchen table in New York, writing and crossing out and rewriting until the paper nearly wore through. Jonah sitting across from herwith his chin on his fists, suggesting words she’d rejected and ones she’d kept, both of them huddled over that single page like it held their entire future.
Which, it turned out, it had.
“Mason gave it to me after supper. And I read it, and I...” He shook his head. “You wrote that you know what it means to hold a family together. That—”
“I remember what I wrote.”
“Well, I didn’t treatyourpeople as my own. Your brother came to my door, and, instead of welcomin’ him in like I would’ve wanted anybody to welcome Mason or Thomas, I put him in a headlock and told him to get lost.”
“Yeah.”
He squared his shoulders. “So, I’m fixin’ that. I’m offerin’ him work. Real work, steady pay, and a spot in the bunkhouse. If he’s important to you, then he’s important to me, and that’s the end of it.”
Miriam pulled off the bottle and burped.
Timing. This child hadtiming.
“I missed it.” She said it before she could talk herself out of saying it. “The house. The clock. Your father’s chair creakin’ at supper. Mason’s terrible jokes and Thomas pretendin’ he ain’t writin’ poetry when we allknowhe’s writin’ poetry.”
Logan’s mouth tugged sideways.
“I missed the chaos.” She shifted Miriam higher on her chest. “All that noise and arguin’ and people bumpin’ into each other in the kitchen, and last night it just...”
“Grace?”
