Page 111 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
The dancing had started near the stage. The fiddler played something slower now, and couples turned in the beaten-down grass with the kind of loose, easy movement that came from knowing each other’s weight. Logan looked at the dancers.
Then at Grace. “Can you dance with a baby strapped to your chest?”
“Only one way to find out.”
He took her hand and pulled her in, careful around Miriam, one palm flat between her shoulder blades. They turned in a slow circle that didn’t match the music at all and didn’t need to. Miriam grabbed Logan’s collar with one fist and Grace’s with the other. The three of them turned together in the dust while the fiddle played and the sun dropped low enough to turn the mountains copper.
Logan’s chin brushed her temple. “Havin’ a good time?”
“The best time.” She pressed closer. “You?”
“Top five.”
“Only five?”
“I got high standards.”
“Liar. You married a girl from the slums who broke your well pump.”
“And I’d do it again.” His voice dropped. “Every damn time.”
She tipped her chin up. He leaned down. Miriam shoved the calico horse into both their faces.
“This kid,” Grace muttered against soggy calico fur, “has the worst timin’ in the history of timin’.”
Logan laughed into the horse’s head.
***
The produce competition ran out of a long table behind the church, judged by three women Grace had never met and one old man who looked like he’d been tasting vegetables since before Colorado got a name.
Grace carried her crate to the entry table and unloaded the summer squash, the pole beans, and the three best tomatoesshe’d coaxed out of that rocky soil through sheer stubbornness and a willingness to talk to plants like they had feelings.
The woman next to her had zucchini the size of a man’s forearm. Another entry included a pumpkin so orange it hurt to look at.
The judges moved down the line. Squeezed things. Sniffed things. The old man bit directly into somebody’s cucumber without asking, which struck her as either a power move or a man who’d stopped caring about manners around the same time he’d stopped caring about his haircut.
Grace stood behind her entry with Miriam on her hip and her heart going hard against her collarbone.
The old man picked up one of her tomatoes. Turned it. Sniffed it. Bit into it like the cucumber.
Juice ran down his chin.
“Who grew this?”
“I did.” Her voice came out higher than she wanted.
“Where?”
“At the Foster ranch.”
“At altitude?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at her over the tomato. Took another bite. Set it down.
The judges huddled. Grace bounced Miriam, counted her heartbeats, and tried to remember the last time she’d wanted something this badly that didn’t involve Logan or the baby or—
