Page 42 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“South fence is fine. I checked it yesterday.”
“Then check it again.”
Thomas came down the steps and crossed the yard with that loose stride of his, the one that meant he planned to say something Logan wouldn’t like and had already decided he didn’t care about the consequences.
“She didn’t betray you, Logan.”
The axe stopped mid-swing. Not because of Thomas’s ill-timed words, but because the muscle in Logan’s shoulder seized from swinging for two hours straight without rest, and the pain shot from his neck down to his elbow.
He lowered the axe and pressed his thumb into the knot above his collarbone.
“She took the baby.”
“She took the baby because you told her toleave. What’d you expect her to do, set Miriam on the porch like a jug of milk?”
“I expected her to act like areasonableperson and understand that I can’t just let strangers waltz onto my land without so much as a how-do-you-do.”
“Her brother, Logan. Her only kin.”
“A brother I never met, never vetted, who showed up in the dark like a thief.”
Thomas rubbed the back of his neck. “You tackled him before he could open his mouth.”
“He stood on my porch at five in the mornin’.”
“So does therooster, and you ain’t wrestled him into the dirt yet.”
Logan drove the axe into the stump and left it there. The handle vibrated once and went still, and he stared at it rather than look at his brother, because looking at his brother meant seeing that expression Thomas got when he’d figured out something Logan hadn’t.
“She chosehim.” Logan wiped his palms on his trousers. “I gave her a home. And the second her brother showed up, she picked his side without blinkin’.”
“You asked her to choose.”
“I did not.”
“You told her brother to get off your property and then told her she could leave if she didn’t like it. What do you call that if it ain’t a choice?”
From inside the house, Mason’s voice carried through the open window as he talked to Pa about something Logan couldn’t make out. The mantel clock ticked between their words, and every tick drilled a small hole in Logan’s skull.
“She used us, Thomas. Came out here playin’ the sweet caretaker, gettin’ us all attached to that baby, makin’ Pa smile again, and the whole time she had one foot out the door.”
Thomas stared at him. “You don’t believe a word of that.”
Logan picked up a split log and tossed it onto the pile. Then another. Stacking them tight the way he always did, bark side out, ends flush.
“You’re stackin’ angry.” Thomas crossed his arms. “The logs are crooked.”
“The logs arefine.”
“They ain’t. And neither are you. And Grace didn’t use nobody, and you know it, because a woman who sews a bonnet out of a flour sack for a baby that ain’t even hers don’t got onefoot out the door. She’s got both feet planted, and you yanked the floor out from under her.”
Alright.
Put that way, with the flour-sack detail thrown in like salt on a cut, the anger he’d been nursing all day lost its footing. What replaced it was worse. He thought of Grace’s face when he’d said those words to her, the way she hadn’t crumbled the way he expected, the way she’d just gone quiet anddone it. Packed up the baby and walked out like she’d been waiting for him to prove her right about something she’d been afraid of all along.
He grabbed the axe and wrenched it free from the stump.
“I’m gonna finish this woodpile. Then I’m gonna check the feed stores. Then I’m gonna ride the far fenceline. And I’d appreciate it if everybody in this house stopped tryin’ to tell me how to run my own ranch.”
