Page 6 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
The kitchen shrank around the song, or maybe it grew. Hard to tell which, because, for the span of those few minutes, thecracked plaster and the warped floor and the stain spreading across the ceiling all retreated to the edges of the room, and what filled up the center had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with who stood inside it.
Jonah caught her by the wrist and spun her.
She barked out a startled yelp and stumbled into him, and he laughed and pulled her into a clumsy waltz between the counter and the basin. He hummed with her now, steering her around the bucket she’d placed beneath the leak and past the stack of firewood piled against the far wall.
Neither one of them carried a tune worth a damn anymore because the singing had dissolved into hiccupping laughter that made her ribs ache.
She exhaled. “You’re aterribledancer.”
“I am amag-nificentdancer, thank you kindly. You ain’t got the refinement to appreciate a man of my caliber.”
She shoved his chest, and he let go, and she staggered back against the counter and pressed a hand to the stitch in her side, breathing hard, as the laughter still bubbled up in little aftershocks.
Through the window, the last of the evening faded to deep purple over the rooftops. Somewhere on the docks, a ship’s horn sounded.
Twelve days, and then she’d never hear that horn again.
***
They packed her things the night before she left, which took less time than Grace would’ve liked.
Everything she owned in the world fit into one carpetbag and a canvas satchel Jonah had picked up off a stoop somewhere.
Two dresses, one for every day, and one for occasions that never came. A wool shawl, so many times mended, it resembled a patchwork quilt more than a garment. Underthings. A hairbrush with three missing bristles. A bar of soap wrapped in cheesecloth. Her mother’s sewing kit, and, at the bottom of the carpetbag, a small wooden brooch in the shape of a rose.
Mormor’s.
The only thing they had from the old country that the years hadn’t stolen, broken, or burned.
Grace ran her thumb over the petals.
Jonah leaned against the doorframe. “You oughta take the quilt, too.”
“It’s yours.”
“Shoot, it’s got more holes than a quilt at this point. Go on and take it. That Mason boy said to bring a warm coat. A holey quilt beats no quilt, and that’s a fact.”
She folded it up tight and wedged it into the satchel. It barely fit, bulging out at the sides, and made the whole bag look like a stuffed sausage. It wasn’t the most elegant way to arrive at one’s new life—lugging a sausage-shaped bag and a carpetbag held together by stubbornness and old leather.
Though it ain’t like elegance has ever been on offer.
“Gracie.”
She glanced up.
“You’re gonna do just fine out there, you hear me? Better’n fine.”
Something thick and hot climbed her throat. She swallowed it down and cinched the buckle tight. “Course I will.”
“I ain’t just jawin’, neither. You are hands down the toughest soul I ever come across, and I’ve run with some mighty rough characters in my time.”
“That don’t inspire the confidence you think it does.”
He snorted. “What I’m gettin’ at is, some cattleman out in Colorado ain’t got a snowball’s chance against the likes of you. You’ll have that whole outfit runnin’ tighter’n a new fiddle string inside a week.”
“I don’t even know what the man looks like.”
“Don’t make a lick of difference what he looks like. What matters is the cut of the man, and a fella who puts out an honest ad like that, askin’ for help plain and simple… well, that ain’t a bad place to hang your hat.”
