Page 18 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
He blinked. “Come again?”
“Rats. In our house. One of ’em sat on my pillow while I slept and ate my hair like it was Sunday supper. And I just...” She traced the wood grain with her nail. “That morning, sittin’ on my cot cryin’ over a rat, I reckoned I’d hit the bottom. My brother showed me the ad, and I figured living with a stranger in Colorado couldn’t be worse than what I already had.”
The way she said it, stripped down to the bones with no lace on it, made it worse than if she’d done a whole speech.
Here stood a woman who’d traveled four days by rail to marry a man she’d never met because her life had gotten to the point where rodents chewed on her hair. Then she’d arrived to find no wagon, no welcome, and a rifle in her face, and—instead of falling apart—she’d walked three miles uphill and bullied four grown men out of their own kitchen.
Logan rubbed the back of his neck. “I ain’t gonna pretend I wanted this. Any of it. I figured I’d be the one choosin’ when it came time to marry. On my terms. In my time.”
“And instead, your brothers chose for you.”
“They did. And I aim to have words with both of ’em about that for a good long while.” He paused. Out past the corral, one of the horses snorted and stamped. “But you’re here now. And that baby in there needs tendin’ by someone who knows what they’re doin’, which, today, I have proved beyond any reasonable doubt ain’t me.”
She chuckled.
“On top of that, the house needs a woman’s hand, whether I like admittin’ it or not, and you need a roof and a steady situation.” He glanced at her. “So, the way I see it, we got ourselves a practical arrangement starin’ us right in the face.”
She turned to look at him straight on. Those brown eyes of hers caught the starlight.
“Is this your idea of a proposal?”
“For a business arrangement. Yeah.”
“Nothin’ more’n what the ad laid out?”
“No, ma’am. You keep the house, help with the baby, cook, mend, and tend. In return, you get room and board and a proper roof over your head, and nobody eatin’ your hair in the middle of the night.”
She leaned forward across the rail. “You’ll want to get hitched proper, I assume?”
“It oughta be decent and proper in the eyes of the town. Beyond that, we keep things... simple.”
“Simple.”
“Straightforward. Clear. No complications.”
She hummed for a beat that stretched long enough to make the back of his neck prickle. Then she held out her hand.
“All right, Mr. Foster. You got yourself a deal.”
He took it.
She squeezed firm for someone with hands that small, and her palm had calluses in spots that spoke of garden work, scrubbing, and years of wringing out laundry by hand. Then he let go and turned back towards his yard, while his ribs shifted. A long day and the lack of supper did that to a man.
“Logan,” he nodded. “If we’re gettin’ hitched, you might as well call me Logan.”
She smiled. “Grace.”
“Tomorrow, then. Pastor Aldridge at the church in town. We’ll keep it small. Just the family.”
“Tomorrow.”
She nodded once, pulled the shawl up around her ears, and went inside.
The door clicked shut. Logan stood on the porch, listened to the coyotes, and tried to remember the last time a handshake left his palm tingling like that. He couldn’t recall one.
He went to bed.
***
