Page 109 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
He clicked his tongue, and the wagon lurched forward, and Rafe hollered something from the back bench about young people and their lack of patience that Grace pretended not to hear.
***
The whole of Pitkin County had crammed itself into one dirt lot and a half-acre of trampled grass behind the church.
Grace had pictured something small. A few tables, maybe a tent. What spread in front of her instead knocked the breath clean out of her chest.
A fiddler and a banjo player sawed away on a makeshift stage built from shipping pallets, cranking out something fast and loose that half the crowd clapped along to. Kids tore between the stalls, shrieking at a pitch that made Miriam’s teething screams sound like a lullaby. Somebody had set up a high striker near the livestock pens—one of those big wooden contraptions with the mallet and the bell at the top—and a line of men waited in front of it.
Stalls ran in two uneven rows down the center of the lot. A leather goods man hawked belts and holsters from a table that sagged in the middle. Next to him, a woman sold jars of honey with handwritten labels, and next toher, a man with a beard down to his belt buckle displayed what looked like fourteen different kinds of jerky. A tinker had laid out knives, pots, anda hand-cranked coffee grinder that caught the sun and flashed white. Two girls in matching calico dresses sold ribbon candy from a basket.
And thesmell. Roasting corn and hot grease, sugar, and something smoky and sweet from a pit somewhere behind the church where someone had a whole pig turning on a spit.
Back in New York, the closest thing to a fair had been the Fourth-of-July crowds along the river, where you kept your hands in your pockets and your eyes on the ground and hoped nobody stuck a knife in you for your shoes. This—
This hadbunting.
Red, white, and blue bunting strung between the stalls, snapping in the breeze like it had opinions about freedom.
Logan lifted Miriam from the wagon and settled her into the sling on Grace’s chest. His hand lingered on the small of her back.
“You okay?”
“I’m perfect.” She grinned up at him. “You gonna win me somethin’ at the games, Cowboy?”
“Depends on what they got.”
“I want the biggest, ugliest prize they offer.”
“That narrows it down.”
She elbowed him.
Thomas had already vanished. Just… gone, like smoke, the second the wagon stopped, off toward a cluster of girls near the lemonade stand with that walk he did when he thought someone might be watching. Mason dragged Rafe to the livestock competition, having entered one of their heifers.
Which left Grace, Logan, and Miriam standing at the edge of a county fair in the Colorado sun with nowhere to be and nobody to answer to for the first time in—
Miriam grabbed a fistful of bunting from a passing stall and shoved it halfway into her mouth.
“Miriam, no.” Logan chuckled and took the bunting from her. “That’s patriotism, not food.”
Miriam screamed. Grace bounced her. Miriam screamedlouder.
Logan dragged his hand down his face. “Give her the horse.”
“The horse is at home.”
“Then give her somethin’ else to chew.”
“Like what, Logan? My finger? She’s got teeth now. Real ones. That bite.”
He dug in his coat pocket and produced a strip of leather, the kind he kept for mending tack. Miriam grabbed it and jammed it into her gums and went quiet.
“You just carry spare leather around?”
“Always.”
“Of course you do.” She shook her head. “You’re the most prepared man alive and the least fun at parties.”
