Page 39 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Don’t compare the baby to meat, Jonah.”
“I’m just sayin’. She fits in one arm. One arm, Gracie. You could tuck her in a saddlebag.” He lifted Miriam’s fist to his face and bumped it against his chin. “Hey there, little bit. I’m your Uncle Jonah. I’m the handsome one in the family, in case you’re wonderin’.”
“Jonah.”
“What? I’m introducin’ myself. Man’s gotta make a first impression.” He tickled Miriam under the chin, and the baby scrunched her toes inside the blanket. “See that? She likes me already. We’re gonna be fast friends, me and this one.”
“Sure.”
He cocked his head. “She’s got your nose.”
“She ain’t mine by blood.”
“Don’t look that way from where I’m sittin’. You two got the same frown.”
Right on cue, Miriam scrunched up her face and wrinkled her nose into a pucker that matched the expression Grace caught in the mirror on bad mornings. Across from her, Jonah grinned widely enough to flash the gap where he’d lost a tooth two years back.
“She’s a keeper, this one.” He rocked her slowly. “I imagine you done good by her.”
Grace clenched her jaw and swallowed hard.
Because shehad. She had done good by this baby. By the whole household. By the man who’d stood in his own yard that morning and reminded her, with every word fitted and joined like a fencepost,exactlywhere she ranked.
You fit where we agreed you’d fit.
A cook and a baby-minder, interchangeable with any other dependable woman who answered a newspaper advertisement. After the roses, lullabies, mornings on the porch, and the look he’d given her when she’d named the baby.
After all of it. She was still just the hired help.
“Tell you what,” Jonah settled Miriam against his chest. “First thing tomorrow, I’m gonna march right back up to thatranch and give your husband a piece of my mind. A real barn-burner of a speech. Got it half-wrote already.”
“Please don’t.”
“Too late. I’m openin’ with a joke, loosenin’ him up, then hittin’ him with the emotional gut-punch. Maybe I’ll throw in a Bible verse. Really lay it on thick.”
“Jonah.”
“I’mserious, Gracie. The man don’t know what he’s got. Somebody oughta tell him ‘fore he loses it for good.”
She turned her face toward the tent flap.
“He’s an idiot, you know.”
Grace glanced back at him.
Over in his corner, Jonah rocked the baby, casual as you please, like he’d just remarked on the weather.
“Your husband. The big fella with the iron jaw who rearranged my face this mornin’. Dumber’n a box of rocks.”
“He ain’t dumb.”
“Oh, I know he ain’t dumb in the regular sense. Man runs a tight outfit, I could tell that much before he got me in a headlock. But he’s dumb in the way men get dumb when they’re too stiff-necked to know what they got ‘til it’s walkin’ down the road away from ’em.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start makin’ this into what it ain’t.” She shoved the cup further into the dirt. “It’s a business arrangement. That’s what it’s been from the first night.”
