Page 101 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“That so?”
“Grace nearly broke her neck.”
Ace looked up. “Come again?”
“Your man.” Jonah’s hands balled against his thighs. “Whoever you sent skulking along the south fence, Grace spotted him. She could’ve cracked her skull open on a rock, could’ve—”
“She didn’t.”
“She could’vedied!”
“Your sister’s got a talent for stickin’ her nose where it don’t belong.” Ace pulled the splinter from his teeth and flicked it into the dark. “That ain’t my problem.”
“Not your—”
“I told you to keep her inside and occupied, and instead she’s runnin’ down my boys on horseback like some kinda—”
“She ain’t a dog you can pen up!”
Jonah’s chest tightened under the ribs like someone had their fist in there. Logan had carried Grace home on his back, and Jonah had stood there watching from the bunkhouse window like the useless sack of dung he’d always been,pretending he didn’t know exactly why that man had been on the fenceline.
Ace stood up off the crate slowly, the way he always did when he wanted you to remember he could reach the knife on his belt before you could blink. Short as a fence post and twice as mean.
“Let me lay this out for you real clear, Jonah, since you seem to be gettin’confusedabout our arrangement.” He stepped closer, and the cheap whiskey and sour tobacco stink rolled off his coat like heat off a stove. “She works for me. You—”
“She doesnot—”
“Youwork for me. The whole lot of you work for me, whether you know it or not. And if your sister gets hurt because she can’t mind her own business, that’s her own foolish fault for bein’ a nosy busybody.”
The fist in Jonah’s chest squeezed harder.
He ought to stand up. Plant a knuckle right between those three missing teeth and add a fourth. But his legs stayed where they sat because Ace skipped threats and went straight to appointments. He told you what he’d do, and then he did it. Afterward, he picked his teeth just like this and asked if you had any more questions.
Jonah would get one punch in before he got himself killed, and that wouldn’t help anybody.
“You said nobody’d get hurt.”
Jonah’s voice came out smaller than he wanted. Like a kid’s voice. Like the fourteen-year-old who’d stood outside Ace’s flophouse on Mulberry Street with an empty stomach and hands that shook and saidyes, sir,to a man who smiled with gaps in his teeth and called it opportunity.
“That’s what you said. You said—”
“I said I’d try. And I am tryin’. Am I not kindly?”
“Grace—”
“I said…” Ace leaned in. “Am I notkindly, Jonah?”
“Yeah…” Jonah looked down. “You are.”
“Not my fault your rancher boy’s too smart by half.” Ace sat back down on the crate. “Ridin’ every fence, checkin’ every gate, got that whole property locked tighter than a Pinkerton’s safe. I might as well take him out of the picture.”
Everything in Jonah’s gut dropped straight to the floor. “No.”
“I ain’t askin’ your permission.”
“You can’t — look, Ace, listen to me.” Jonah leaned forward on the wobbling plank. “You touch Logan, and it’s over.”
“What do you mean?”
