Page 52 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Grace shifted the reins in her hands. He’d given them to her about a mile back, keeping his own hands over hers at first, thenpulling back as she found the feel of it. Penny responded to her like she’d been waiting, turning easy on the lightest touch.
“She’s wonderful.” Grace ran one hand down the mare’s mane. “She’s just... wonderful.”
“Yeah.” Logan looked at the back of Grace’s head, at the way the late sun turned her dark hair coppery at the edges. “She sure is.”
And he meant the horse. Mostly. Mostly, he meant the horse.
They turned for home, and somewhere on that ride the word rearranged itself in his head. Home had been the ranch and the land and the work for so long, he’d stopped questioning it. But Grace was warm against his chest, and her hair smelled like wind and the soap she used, and he thought if she ever left this place again, she’d take the word with her.
He reined Penny up to the porch rail and swung down first.
Then he reached up for Grace.
She braced both hands on his shoulders and slid off the saddle. The motion brought her close, real close—closer than the horse or the help required—and he caught her at the waist. As her boots touched ground, neither of them stepped back.
Her hands stayed on his shoulders. His hands stayed at her waist. The evening air ran cool between the mountains and carried the smell of pine smoke from the chimney.
She tipped her chin up and looked at him, close enough that the freckles across her nose separated into individual constellations. That her breath landed warm on his jaw. If he leaned forward, just a fraction, just the smallest distance a man could cover and still call it a choice—
“Hey!You two are gonna stand out there moonin’ at each other all night, or is somebody gonna come cook? ‘cause Rafe’s got his hand on a skillet and I’m pretty sure he’s fixin’ to make that stew again. Mason isnota happy camper about it!”
Jonah. In the doorway. Grinning like a man who’d just caught something and planned to hold it over everybody’s heads for the foreseeable future.
Grace dropped her hands and stepped back. Color flooded up her neck, visible even in the failing light.
“I better...” She jerked her thumb toward the house. “Before your father poisons everybody.”
“Yeah. Go. Go on.”
She turned and crossed the porch in three quick strides, ducking past Jonah, who winked at Logan before following her inside. The screen door banged shut.
Logan stood by the horse.
Penny bumped her nose against his shoulder and huffed.
“Yeah.” He rubbed the mare’s ear. “I know.”
Because the truth had gotten too big for that locked room in his chest. The furniture he’d been rearranging in there for weeks had settled into a shape he recognized, a shape with a name he hadn’t said out loud yet and couldn’t quite bring himself to think all the way through.
But it started with the way she’d pressed her back against his chest on that trail and asked about bears.
Chapter Fifteen
Four hours. Fourhoursof screaming.
Not crying. Crying, Grace could handle. Crying had a shape to it, a beginning, a peak, and a slope down the other side, where the baby ran out of steam and hiccupped into sleep.
Grace had mappedeveryvariety of Miriam’s cries over the past month. Hunger made them sharp, rhythmic, and building in volume like somebody turning a dial. When she wet herself, they came out whiny and low, more complaint than distress. Tired ones sounded wobbly, like a drunk kind of fussing that petered out in under ten minutes if you rocked her right.
This?
This came from the gut. From someplace deep and furious inside that tiny body, a sound so raw and sustained it scraped the inside of Grace’s skull like a spoon against the bottom of a tin pot. Miriam had gone red from the jaw to the hairline, her gums had swollen to twice their normal size, and, every few minutes, she’d shove both fists into her mouth and gnaw on them and then screamharder.
Teething.
Grace had tried everything. A cold rag from the well water. Miriam spat it out. A piece of soft leather rolled into a tube for her to chew. Miriam threw it across the kitchen. The bottle, rocking, singing, walking, bouncing, that thing where you pat their back in a rhythm and shush close to their ear. All of it. Every trick she’d picked up, every instinct she’d cobbled together from a month of on-the-job mothering.
Nothing!
