Page 27 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Then we’re square.” She looked between the two of them and bounced the baby on her hip. “Now, is there any of that stew left, or did y’all eat it all without me?”
Chapter Eight
Mason threw the oat bucket wrong.
Not wrong in any way that’d matter to a normal person, sure. The oats still landed in the trough. The horse still ate them. But the throw came from the side instead of straight on, which meant half the grain scattered across the stable floor, where it’d get stomped into the dirt and wasted, and Logan had explained this particular point maybe sixhundredtimes since Mason turned old enough to hold a bucket.
“From the front, Mason. How many times we gotta go over this?”
“It’soats, Logan. The horse don’t care which direction they come from.”
“The horse don’t care, butIcare, because that’s good grain sittin’ in the dirt now, and grain costs money, and money don’t grow on the cottonwood down by the creek, no matter how hard you wish on it.”
Thomas, over in the next stall, snorted into the mane of the bay mare he’d been brushing. Or supposedly brushing. From what Logan could tell, Thomas had spent more time leaning against the mare’s flank, staring at the ceiling, than actually running the brush over anything.
“Thomas, you gonna groom that horse or you gonna take a nap on her?”
“I’mgroomin’. A man can’t take a breath between strokes?”
“A breath, sure. You’ve taken about forty.”
“Well, maybe ifsomebodywasn’t barkin’ orders every ten seconds, a fella could settle into a rhythm.”
Logan grabbed the pitchfork and drove it into the hay bale harder than strictly necessary.
Fine.
Let them do it sloppily. Let the oats rot in the dirt, and the mare go half-brushed, and the whole job slide into the kind of half-done shambles that’d make Pa shake his head if he could still get out to the stable regular.
Except Logancouldn’tlet it slide.
That went againsteveryworking principle he’d built this ranch on, and so he pulled the pitchfork free and went back to spreading hay in the box stall with the exact coverage pattern he’d worked out three years ago when he took over stable duties from Pa.
But the hay landed crooked because his hands kept doing one thing while his mind circled back to something else entirely.
To last night, specifically. To Grace coming down those stairs with the baby on her hip and lamp-glow on her face, sitting at the kitchen table while he cut her a slice of bread, and that look she’d tossed him right before she sat down. Quick as a bird turning its head. Gone before he could read it.
What hadthatbeen?
Because women didn’t justlookat a man like that without it meaningsomething. Or maybe they did. What didheknow about women? His entire experience with the prettier gender boiled down to Ma, who’d been a saint, and old Mrs. Hackett at the general store, who overcharged for salt pork and smelled like camphor. So, not exactly a broad sample.
He jabbed the pitchfork into the bale again and pulled out a wedge of hay that crumbled apart before it reached the stall floor.
“Hey, Logan.” Mason appeared at the stall gate, leaning over it with both elbows hooked on the top rail. “You alright? You just put hay in the water trough.”
Logan looked down. Sure enough, a clump of timothy grass floated in the trough, already waterlogging.
He fished it out and flung it into the stall.
“You’re all over the place today.” Mason tilted his head in that puppyish way of his, which, at nineteen, he really ought to have grown out of by now. “What’s eatin’ you?”
“Nothin’s eatin’ me.”
“Somethin’ is. You ain’t corrected my bucket technique in a full five minutes. That’s gotta be a record.”
From the next stall, Thomas laughed.
But the question had opened a door, and once a door like that cracked, the whole thing tended to swing wide whether you pushed it or not. So, instead of shutting it, which he should’ve done, which anysensibleman would’ve done, he planted the pitchfork in the dirt and turned toward Mason.
