Page 28 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“You two’ve been talkin’ with Grace. More than I have.”
Mason’s eyebrows climbed. “Well, yeah. On account of you avoidin’ her like she’s got the pox.”
“I ain’tavoidin’her. I’m workin’.”
“You’re always workin’.” Thomas shook his head. “That’s the whole problem.”
Then he drifted over from the next stall with the brush still in one hand because, apparently, the prospect of Logan asking about Grace ranked above grooming duties, which proved Logan’s point about his work ethic, but he let it go.
“What d’you wanna know?”
Everything.
Where she grew up, exactly, not just the general vicinity. What kind of songs she hummed to the baby when she put her down at night, because the melody drifted through the floorboards into his room below. Whether she liked coffee or tea in the mornings. What made her laugh, really laugh, the kind that came from the belly and made a person’s whole face change.
“She say anything about... I dunno. How she’s settlin’ in?”
Mason and Thomas exchanged a glance.
“She likes it here.” Mason picked a piece of hay off the gate rail. “Told me the air makes her dizzy sometimes, but she don’t mind it. Said she’s never seen so many stars. Oh, and she thinks Thomas is lazy.”
“She didnotsay that,” Thomas said.
“She implied it. Heavily.”
“That ain’t the same as—”
“What about the baby?” Logan stroked his chin. “Does she talk about the baby much?”
“All the time.” Mason softened his voice. “Yesterday, she spent an hour sewin’ a bonnet out of an old flour sack because she said the baby needed somethin’ to keep the sun off her face while they sit outside.”
A flour sack bonnet. For a baby who still fit inside a dresser drawer.
Logan picked up the pitchfork, set it against the wall, and picked it up again. Put it back. His hands needed something to do, but nothing in this stable needed doing badly enough to justify staying.
“Go on, then.” Thomas waved him off. “Git.”
“I ain’t finished here.”
“Yeah, you are. You been standin’ in that stall pilin’ hay on top of hay for ten minutes. The horse can barely see over it.”
Logan looked at the stall. He’d overfilled it by at least double. The hay mounded up against the back wall in a ridge tall enough to hide a calf behind.
“Mason and I’ll finish up. Go home. Talk to your wife.”
The wordwifestill snagged on him every time someone used it.
“You sure you can handle the rest without turnin’ the whole stable into a barn fire?”
“Logan.” Thomas pointed toward the door. “Go.”
He went. The walk back from the stable to the house took about four minutes at a normal pace, but he covered it in two because the downhill slope worked in his favor and also because his legs had apparently decided to move faster than his pride would’ve preferred.
Halfway down the path, he caught the sound of something that stopped him in the middle of a stride.
Grace. Singing. Not the lullaby she used at night, the soft one that drifted through the floorboards. This one bounced, pitchedhigh and silly, with words he couldn’t quite make out until he rounded the corner of the woodshed, and the porch came into view.
“—and the little frog saidribbit, ribbit, ribbit,and he jumped right in the muuuuud!”
