Page 91 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“And if you think for one second that you’re gonna back out on me…” Ace leaned in. “Then I want you to think about your sister.”
Jonah seized up like a gear jamming. “What about her?”
“Pretty girl. Black hair, brown eyes, freckles. Works hard. Loves that baby like it’s her own. Sleeps in a room on the second floor, east side of the house, window with the blue curtain.”
The bile reached the top.
“You know which window I mean, Jonah?”
“Don’t.”
“The one the rancher’s boy put in for the nursery. Nice room. Nice crib. Little flowers carved in the headboard.”
“Ace, I swear to God—”
“You swear to God, what?” Ace spread his hands. “You’ll fight me? You’ll run to the rancher and tell him everything? ‘Oh, Logan, I been robbin’ you blind, but don’t worry, I feel real bad about it.’ You think he keeps you around after that? You think he keepsher?”
Jonah’s fists balled against the floor. His knuckles pressed white into the rotten wood.
“Here’s what happens, Jonah. You go back to that ranch. You keep smilin’. You keep eatin’ their biscuits and playing with the baby and doin’ whatever it is cowboys do all day. And you start diggin’ again.”
“And if I don’t find it?”
“You will.”
“But if I don’t?”
“Then we have a different conversation. One your sister sits in on.” Ace picked up the knife again. Flicked it open. Went back to his nails as if they’d just been discussing the weather. “Now get out of here.”
Jonah stood up.
“Oh, and Jonah?”
Jonah looked at him.
“Fill your damn holes.”
***
The walk back took longer than the walk out.
Same distance. Same trail. Same aspens glowing white in the dark, same creek running its quiet line through the cottonwoods. But every step dragged, heavy, as if his boots had filled with something thicker than mud.
He stopped at the creek. Crouched at the bank. Splashed water on his face, and the cold bit hard enough to make his eyes sting, and for about three seconds, he let himself think the stinging came from the water.
Grace.
In a room with a blue curtain and a crib with flowers on it and a baby who grabbed fingers and smiled at everyone, even the people who deserved it least.
He’d put her there. That part sat right at the center of this whole mess, the part he kept stepping around like a hole in the floor.
Ace hadn’t dragged Grace to Colorado. Ace hadn’t written the response to the mail-order ad. Ace had handed Jonah the newspaper and said, ‘Get your sister on that ranch,’ and Jonah had done it. Granted, he’d lucked out with Mason and Thomas choosing her. He had no idea what he would’ve done if they hadn’t. But he’d believed in Grace. Because he’d had to do this. Because Jonah always did what Ace said.
He’d been doing what Ace said since he’d been fourteen years old on a street corner in the Fourth Ward with empty pockets and a hungry sister at home.
But somewhere between the newspaper and now, the plan had…
It had changed. It had grown legs, and a heartbeat, and brown eyes, and a laugh that echoed off the barn walls, and a family that argued about knots and told jokes on porches and carved roses into—
