Page 100 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“But Grace—” He hitched her higher. “I can’t lose you. I know I say it wrong and I know I make it sound like orders, and I know that drives you up the wall, but that’s the whole of it. I—”
“I know.” Her arms tightened. “I know, Logan.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to pen you in.”
“Yeah, you are. But you’re tryin’ for the right reasons, and that counts for somethin’.” She pressed her forehead against the back of his neck. “And I shouldn’t have chased him. That was fool-headed, and I know it.”
“Little bit.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
He laughed. “When we get home, I’m gonna bind that ankle, and you’re gonna sit in the chair and not move for the rest of the day.”
“Fine.”
“And I’m gonna bring you supper. And you’re gonna let me.”
“Fine. Lord, you are the bossiest man alive.”
“That a yes?”
Her lips pressed against the back of his neck. Quick and soft, like she had a thousand of them, like kissing Logan Foster on the back of his sunburned neck while he carried her across a field ranked as about as remarkable as breathing.
“That’s a yes,” she said.
Mason met them at the gate, already talking too fast, something about Penny turning up at the barn lathered and wild-eyed. Logan carried Grace up the porch steps and through the front door and set her down in Pa’s chair.
Grace opened her mouth.
“No.”
“You ain’t even let me—”
He pressed his finger against her lips. “Hush.”
“Don’t you hush—”
“Already hushed you. Too late.”
He knelt down and wrapped her ankle with a strip of clean cotton from the mending basket the way Ma had taught him after he’d twisted his own ankle jumping out of the hayloft when he was twelve.
Grace watched him with those honey-brown eyes. Her hair stuck out in six directions, and dirt streaked her dress. She’d bitten her lip, and she reached down and cupped his jaw in one dirty hand.
“You’re a real pain in my backside, Logan Foster.”
He chuckled and kissed her palm.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jonah ducked through the half-frame of what used to be a doorway and scraped his shoulder on a nail that had no business still holding on after however many years this place had sat rotting. His shirt tore. Logan’s old shirt, actually—the one Grace had mended at the collar with stitches so small that they even put Logan’s to shame; Logan’s stitches already made most tailors look drunk.
Great. One more thing to explain.
Ace crouched by the far wall on an overturned crate, picking his teeth with a splinter of pine. He’d tipped his hat—that goddamn bowler hat, all greasy and dented like somebody sat on it once, and Ace just mashed it back into shape. The lantern between his boots threw shadows up through the gaps in his teeth, and the light turned his face into something carved wrong and left on the shelf.
“You’re late.”
“I’m here.” Jonah dropped onto the only other surface that could hold weight, a plank someone had wedged across two rocks. It wobbled. Everything about this place wobbled. “And I got something to say to you.”
