Page 59 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Both earned.
From inside, Rafe’s voice carried through the open front door. “Grace! Feed them horses!”
Chapter Seventeen
The till fork hit a rock about six inches down and sent a jolt up both arms that rattled Logan’s teeth.
Colorado ground. Full of surprises, every last inch of it, and not the good kind. The good kind involved gold nuggets or arrowheads or, at minimum, soil that didn’t fight back like it held a personal grudge against agriculture.
He worked the fork around the stone, levered it up, and chucked it to the growing pile near the chicken coop. The rock landed with a thud that startled two hens into a flurry of squawking.
“That one had roots.” Grace crouched about four feet to his left, dragging a hand rake through the turned earth, breaking up clods into something that might, with enough optimism and manure, pass for planting soil. “Look at that. Took half the dirt with it.”
“Rocks don’t got roots, Grace.”
“This one did. I saw ’em. Little rock roots, holdin’ on for dear life.”
“That ain’t how geology works.”
“How doyouknow? You a geologist?”
“I know rocks don’t grow roots on account of rocks not bein’alive.”
“Everything in this ground’s alive, Logan. The worms, the bugs, the little white things that look like tiny potatoes but ain’t potatoes—”
“Grubs.”
“—the grubs, thank you, and if allthemcan make a home in this dirt, I don’t see why a rock can’t put down roots too.”
She said it with that sideways look, the one where her mouth stayed serious but her eyes gave up the joke. Brown eyes. Honey, when the light came through them right, and the afternoon sun did that thing where it dropped low enough to catch her face straight on.
He drove the fork in again. Hit clean soil this time, which cooperated by turning over in a dark, loamy wave that smelled like rain and earthworms and something green underneath, the way good dirt smelled when it’d rested long enough to remember what it could do.
Behind them, on the porch, Pa sat in the rocker with Miriam propped on his knee. The baby had hold of his mustache in onefist, yanking it sideways every few seconds, while Pa pretended not to notice.
To be fair, maybe he reallydidn’tnotice. The man had survived a cattle stampede in ‘71, a bar fight in Leadville that’d left him with a scar from ear to jaw, and thirty years of Colorado winters. A baby pulling his mustache would barely rank.
From the far pasture, the faint sound of Mason hollering something at Jonah carried over the ridge. Thomas’s voice cut in, probably correcting whatever Mason had hollered, because Thomas corrected everything on principle, even when he had no idea what the original thing meant.
Three hands on the ranch now. Three, counting Jonah, and the difference showed in places Logan hadn’t expected. The south fence got mended two days ago without Logan having to ride out there himself. The feed stores stayed stocked without him checking every morning. The horses got brushed on schedule.
Which meant this. Right here. A whole Tuesday afternoon spent turning dirt with Grace instead of riding fencelines alone.
He’d have eaten his hat before admitting it out loud, but having Jonah around—the man he’d tackled on the front porch like a stray dog but six days ago—had turned into one of the better decisions he’d stumbled into. Or, more accurately, one of the better decisions Grace hadforcedhim into by walkingout and leaving him to choke on his own pride until his family shamed him into riding after her.
However you sliced that particular pie, it ended with more hands doing work and Logan standing in a garden with his wife.
Wife.
Such a strange word. Stranger still that, at some point, it’d just become... the word. The one that fit her. The one his brain reached for first.
“You’re quiet.” Grace sat back on her heels and brushed a strand of hair off her face with the back of her wrist, leaving a smear of dirt across one cheekbone. “That’s either real good or real bad with you. Ain’t figured out which yet.”
“Just thinkin’.”
“About?”
You. Standing there with dirt on your face and your sleeves rolled up, and that thing you do where you squint at the ground like you can see the vegetables already.
