Page 51 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“I know Penny. She’d sooner lie down and die than dump a rider. Gentlest horse in the county.”
Twenty minutes later, he had Penny saddled and led her into the yard. Grace stood by the mounting block, looking at the stirrup the way Jonah had looked at the pitchfork.
“Okay.” Logan patted the saddle. “Hop on up.”
“That’s... real high.”
“It’s a horse, Grace, not a church steeple.”
“From down here, it looks about the same.”
So, he changed the plan. Instead of putting her up alone, which would’ve ended with Grace in the dirt and Penny standing over her looking embarrassed for both of them, he swung up into the saddle first and held out his hand.
“Come on. You’ll ride up front. I’ll steer.”
She grabbed his hand, he pulled her up, and she landed sideways across the saddle in front of him, which, no, that wouldn’t work. He shifted her around until she sat forward with her back against his chest and her hands on the pommel.
“Hold here. Firm. And just... lean with the horse. She turns, you turn. Don’t fight it.”
“What if she goes fast?”
“She won’t go fast.”
“But what if she does?”
“She’s fifteen years old, Grace. She ain’t gone fast since the Grant administration.”
He nudged Penny forward, and the mare stepped out of the yard at a walk so smooth it could’ve rocked a cradle. Grace stiffened against his chest for the first few strides, all lockedjoints and white knuckles on the pommel. Then, somewhere between the barn and the first gate, the rhythm caught her.
Her grip loosened.
Her spine unclenched, one vertebra at a time. She settled against him, her shoulder blades pressed into his chest through the flannel, and the top of her head came up to about his chin. Her hair smelled like the soap she used, the lavender kind she made from flowers she’d dried on the kitchen windowsill.
They rode the property line past the south pasture, where the new creek stones caught the sun. At the creek crossing, Penny stopped to drink, and Grace leaned forward to watch the water run over the stones Logan had laid last week. A trout flashed silver under the surface, there and gone, and Grace made a small noise in her throat.
Logan had crossed this creek about ten thousand times.
The trout had always lived there. But, seeing it register on somebody else’s face—someone who’d grown up next to the Hudson and probably thought a fish meant something gray and dead on a dock—made him appreciate the creek all the more.
Grace asked about everything.
What grew where. Why the creek ran shallow on one side and deep on the other. What the gray bird perched on thefencepost ate. Whether the mountains had names. How long it took to ride to town. Whether he’d ever seen a bear up close. Whether the bear had been friendly.
“Bears ain’t friendly, Grace.”
“Notever?”
“Not unless your definition of friendly includes bitin’ your arm off.”
“I bet some of ’em are nice. Like big dogs.”
“They arenothin’like big dogs.”
“You don’t know every bear.”
He laughed.
Penny’s ears swiveled back at the sound like she’d forgotten what it meant. Honestly? He’d forgotten too. He’d been running this ranch for two years with his jaw clenched and his fists tight and his whole body braced against the next bad thing. Somewhere in all that bracing, he’d misplaced the part of himself that could just... ride a trail and laugh about bears.
