Page 24 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Three tries?”
“She don’t give up easy… Didn’t.” The tense snagged on his tongue like a fishhook. “Didn’tgive up easy.”
Grace nodded and went back to weeding.
He appreciated that more than she probably knew. The next words in that story led to places he couldn’t go right now, not on his knees, in the dirt, at ten in the morning, with the sun warm on the back of his neck and the baby making those little grunting noises against Grace’s collarbone.
“I’ll take care of ’em.” Grace sat back on her heels and brushed her palms together. “Every day. I’ll weed and water and make sure they get what they need to come back proper.”
He grabbed and pulled the next clump of crabgrass way harder than he needed to.
“Grace, you don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
The way she said it, plain and sure and without a lick of sentiment dressed up around it, made him believe her. Because Grace didn’t say things she didn’t mean. He’d figuredthatout within the first forty-eight hours of her being here.
He opened his mouth to say something back, something about what it meant to hear that, except, right then, the baby decided she’d tolerated enough peace and quiet for one morning. The baby scrunched up her face, pulled a breath so deep herwhole body puffed out against the sling, and let loose with a wail that scattered the brown birds right off the porch eave.
“Oh, here we go.” Grace stood and bounced on her heels, rubbing circles on the baby’s back through the cotton. “Shh, shh, little bird. What’s the fuss about, hm?”
But the baby had committed. She’d bypassed the whimper stage entirely and gone straight to the full-throatedhowl, the one that hit a pitch somewhere between a barn cat at midnight and a saw blade catching a knot. Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato.
Grace shifted the sling and tried the side-to-side rock, which had usually worked the past few days, but the baby arched her back and screamedlouder, and Grace winced.
“My arms are shakin’ from all the pullin’. Here.” She held the baby out to him. “Take her a minute while I stretch.”
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“Logan. Take the baby.”
He took the baby.
The baby’s skull fit in his palm in a way that made every nerve in his body stand at attention because one wrong move, one slip, one moment of not paying close enough attention, andsomething awful could happen to this small thing. He tucked her against his chest the way he’d watched Grace do it, cradling her head in the crook of his neck, and tried the bounce.
The baby screamed harder.
“You’re as stiff as a fencepost.” Grace rolled her shoulders and flexed her fingers. “She can tell. Babies know when you’re nervous.”
“I ain’t nervous.”
“Then why’re you holdin’ her like she’s a stick of dynamite?”
Because she might as well have been.
Every time he held this child, his whole body locked up with the understanding that she depended on him entirely, and he had no idea, not one single clue, what he ought to do when she cried like this.
Now, cows, he understood. Horses, fences, timber, ledgers, and the price of feed grain in Gunnison. All that made sense. But this tiny creature, with her balled-up fists and her screaming, operated on some language he’d never learned.
“Bounce softer.” Grace wiped her hands on her skirt and reached over to adjust his elbow. “There. And hum somethin’.”
“Hum?”
“A song. Any song. Just somethin’ low and steady.”
Easy for you to say…
For the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single song. His mind blanked the way a creek freezes over in January. So, instead, he just made a noise. A low tuneless rumble in his chest that vibrated against the baby’s cheek.
