Page 33 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“What about Rose?” Logan glanced at the window, toward the porch where the flower beds held their three stubborn survivors. “On account of the roses.”
Mason hummed. “That’s sweet.”
“It’stoosweet.” Thomas shook his head. “Like namin’ a dog Spot because it’s got spots.”
“Who askedyou?”
“Everybody, on account of I’m the only one in this family with any taste.”
“You wore the same shirt three days runnin’ last week.”
“That’sfashion, Mason.Youwouldn’t understand.”
Grace looked at the dresser drawer. At the tiny fist poking out from under the quilt. The baby’s fine pale hair catching the lamplight.
“Miriam.”
Everybody stopped talking.
Rafe’s hands went still on the table. Mason lowered his whittling knife. Thomas brought his chair legs down flat on the floor. Logan’s coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth.
“I never got to meet your Ma, but… From what y’all have told me, and the roses she planted, and the way this family loves her...” She swallowed. “Seems like the kind of name worth carryin’ forward.”
For a long stretch, the only sound in the kitchen came from the stove ticking as it cooled and the baby breathing in her dresser drawer. Then Rafe lifted one hand and pressed it across his mouth. His shoulders hitched once, and he blinked at the ceiling.
“Pa?” Logan crouched in front of the old man. “You good?”
Rafe pulled his hand away from his face and set it flat on the table. His eyes had gone glassy in the lamplight, but his jaw held firm.
“I think...” He cleared his throat. “I think my Miriam would’ve loved nothin’ more than to know her name kept on in this house.”
Mason made a noise that he covered by coughing into his fist. Thomas looked at the floor and stayed quiet, which said more about how the name had landed than any words could have.
Logan set his coffee down and looked at Grace.
Those pale blue eyes held on her across the table, and his throat moved once. Then the muscle along his jaw loosened the way it only did late at night on the porch, when the work stopped, and the man underneath all that fencing and fence-mending surfaced for air. She’d seen that version of him maybe three times total since arriving.
Four, now.
“Miriam.” He nodded once. “That’s her name.”
From the dresser drawer, almost as if on cue, the baby gurgled.
Mason laughed first. Then Thomas. Then Rafe’s mustache gave way to a full, honest-to-God smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes and took ten years off his face.
“Well, Miss Miriam Foster.” Mason pushed back from the table and peered into the dresser drawer. “Welcome to thefamily. I’m your Uncle Mason, and I’m everybody’s favorite, so don’t let Thomas tell you otherwise.”
“I’mright here.”
“That’s why I said it.”
Grace leaned back in her chair and let the laughter fill the kitchen, let it soak into the walls and the floorboards and the beams of the house.
Across the table, Logan caught her eye again.
One corner of his mouth tugged upward.
She smiled back.
