Page 57 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“When’s the fair?”
“End of September.” Jonah stole a piece of cornbread off Thomas’s plate quickly enough that Thomas only caught the tail end of the theft and smacked the table a full second too late. “That gives you, what, four months? Five? Plenty of time to get a patch goin’.”
“You kept a garden back in New York, right?” Mason leaned forward on both elbows. “You told me about it. Herbs and such.”
“Herbs. In a window box.” Grace set down her spoon. “On a windowsill in a hut by the docks. That’s a whole different thing than growin’ competition vegetables in Colorado dirt at five thousand feet.”
“Dirt’s dirt, Gracie.” Jonah shrugged.
“Dirt is absolutelynotjust dirt, and the fact that you think so explains why every plant you’ve ever touched has died.”
“Name—”
“The cactus.”
“That wasonetime!”
“It’s acactus, Jonah. You killed a plant whose entire purpose in life is not dyin’.”
Across the table, Logan set his coffee cup down. He’d stayed quiet through the whole exchange, eating in that methodical way of his, where every bite got chewed the same number of times, his napkin sat folded on his knee, and his elbows never once touched the table.
“Where would you put the patch?”
Grace blinked. “What?”
“The vegetable garden. Where would you want it?”
“I... well, I wouldn’t. I mean, I’d love to, but I can’t tear up the flower beds. Your mother’s roses just started bloomin’ again, and I’m not gonna rip them out for a bunch of squash.”
“I ain’t talkin’ about the flower beds.” Logan swiped a crumb off the table and put it on the edge of his plate, becauseeven crumbs had a designated place in Logan Foster’s universe. “There’s a stretch of open ground behind the chicken coop. South-facin’, gets full sun most of the day. Creek runs about fifty yards downhill, so you’d have water close. Soil’s decent if we turn it proper.”
“You’d till up new land? Just for a garden?”
“It ain’tjusta garden.” He met her eyes across the table. “It’s yours. Whatever you wanna grow, however you wanna use it. Your patch.”
Something in the way he saidyour patchcaught like a fishhook.
The word ‘your’ had caused plenty of damage the last time he’d used it, in that fight about the ranch, the property, and the places she did and didn’t fit. But the meaning behind it had flipped. That day in the yard,yourshad drawn a line between them. Today, at this table, it opened a door. Her own piece of this place.
It wasn’t borrowed, conditional, or dependent on any arrangement or agreement. Just hers. Dirt and seeds and whatever she could coax out of the ground with her own two hands.
And the look on his face when he’d said it. Steady. Level. The same expression he wore when he mended a fence rail or fitted a hinge, like something had gone out of true and he aimed to set itright. Except, this time, the thing out of true lived betweenthem, in the place whereyoursandminehad drawn all those lines, and he’d just picked up the eraser.
Miriam banged her spoon twice and shrieked at the cornbread basket. Grace spooned another bite of potato into the baby’s mouth without looking because six weeks of practice had given her the ability to feed an infant while having an emotional crisis at a kitchen table, which she had never before expected to be one of her life skills.
“I’d need manure.” She frowned. “Good manure, aged at least a season. And compost. And somebody to help me haul rocks for a border, because you can’t just till open ground without a border or the chickens’ll scratch it all to hell before the first sprout breaks soil.”
“Language.” Rafe pointed his whittling knife at her from the head of the table.
“Sorry. Scratch it all toheck.”
“Better.”
“I can haul rocks.” Jonah raised his hand like a schoolboy volunteer. “I’m terrible at pitchforks and worse at horses, but I can carry a rock from one place to another without injurin’ myself or anyone nearby.”
“That’s a low bar, brother.” Mason grinned.
“It’s the only bar I got. I’m workin’ with what the Lord gave me.”
