Page 128 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Yeah, Gracie. I do.”
Briggs pulled a second set of cuffs from the desk drawer. Jonah held out his wrists without being asked, and the iron clicked shut. Grace’s face crumpled.
“I’ll do my time honestly.” Jonah looked at her over the cuffs. “And I’ll come home as soon as they let me.”
“This ain’t—you can’t—” Grace pressed her hand over her mouth. “Please.”
“I can, and I will.” Jonah leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. “You tell Miriam her Uncle Jonah’s comin’ back. Don’t let her forget my face. I’m the handsome one.”
Briggs led him to the cell. The door shut. The lock turned. Logan put his hand on the small of her back because he didn’t have any words that would make this better, and his hand could at least tell her he stood right here.
“Let’s go home, Grace.”
***
He found Grace in the nursery.
She’d pulled the rocker next to the crib and sat with Miriam asleep in her arms, staring at the carved roses on the headboard. The bruise on her cheek had gone puffy at the edges, and the rope burns on her wrists showed red and raw above the cuffs of her sleeves.
“Grace.”
She looked up.
He crouched in front of the rocker.
“I owe you an apology.”
“Logan, you don’t—”
“I do. So just... let me get through it, all right?”
He rubbed his thumb along the armrest. Somebody had scratched a mark into the wood—Mason, probably. The boy had carved his initials into half the furniture in this house by the age of six.
“When Jonah told me about the ad, about Ace puttin’ him up to it, I looked at you and I—” His jaw tightened. “I lumped you in. I took everything you’d given me—the letter, the garden, the way you named the baby, all of it—and I made it dirty in my head. Told myself it’d all been part of some scheme.”
“I should’ve told you about the gang.”
“Maybe. Yeah. But keepin’ your brother’s secret because you loved him and you trusted him to do right... that ain’t betrayal,Grace. That’s family.” He took her hand. “And when you tried to tell me the truth, I shut the door. Literally. Sat upstairs with my ledger like the numbers could fix it.”
“You do love your numbers.”
“I loveyou.”
Grace’s eyes filled. “Say that again.”
“I love you. I’ve loved you since you took that baby outta my arms on day one and made her stop screamin’ in three seconds flat. I loved you since I read your letter the first time and—” He looked down. “It’s here and it ain’t goin’ nowhere, and I should’ve told you before I told the damn ledger.”
“You told… the ledger? What?”
“I wrote it in the margin. Last Tuesday. Right next to the oat inventory.”
Grace laughed. She grabbed his collar with her free hand and pulled him up to her mouth to kiss him.
He kissed her back, being careful around the bruise, careful with her split lip, and careful with all the places Ace Pike had left marks on her. Logan planned to spend a long time making up for that. Her hand slid from his collar to the back of his neck, and her fingers pressed warm against his skin. The rocker creakedunder the shifting weight, and Miriam slept through the whole thing like the champion sleeper she’d always been, as and when it suited her.
Grace pulled back. Her eyes had gone red and wet again.
“My brother’s in jail, Logan.”
