Page 64 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Thomas covered his face with one hand. Even Logan, who smiled about as often as it snowed in July, had that sideways tug at the corner of his mouth, the one Grace had learned to watch for because it meant the joke had landed somewhere past his defenses.
And Grace just…
Stood there. Holding her coffee. Watching her brother make these men laugh.
Back in New York, Jonah’s friends had been... different. Harder around the edges, louder, with a sharpness underneath the jokes that never quite went away. The kind of men who laughed with their mouths but kept their eyes on the door. Grace had never liked them, never trusted the way they clapped Jonah on the back with one hand and kept the other in a pocket.
These boys clapped with both hands and didn’t have anything to hide in their pockets except maybe a stray biscuit Mason had stuffed in there for later.
Jonah caught her looking. Tipped his chin.You okay?
She nodded.Yeah. I’m good.
“So.” Mason brushed crumbs off his shirt. “Grace, you oughta come with us today.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“To the high pasture. We’re just movin’ the herd up for grazin’. Easy work with four hands. Even easier with five.”
“I don’t know the first thing about drivin’ cattle.”
“You don’t need to know nothin’. Just ride on the flank and holler if one of ’em wanders off. Penny’s a cow horse, she’ll do the thinkin’ for you.”
Grace looked at Logan.
She’d leave it up to him. Not like before, where his word ran final, and everybody else just swallowed their opinions, but more like… she respected that the ranch belonged to him. The cattle did too. A day trip with the herd involved his livelihood in a way that a garden or a kitchen didn’t.
Logan checked Penny’s bridle. Adjusted a buckle that probably didn’t need adjusting. Then looked up.
“Four hands on a herd this size, we’d make good time. Five makes it easy.” He shrugged, but the shrug came with that thing, that look, the one where his eyes stayed on hers a beat too long, and the pale blue of them deepened the way creek water deepened over stone. “You should come.”
You should come.Notyou can come,orI suppose,orif you want. Just. You should.
So. Alright then.
***
Three hours into the drive, and ‘easy’ ranked as the most generous lie Mason Foster had ever told.
The herd numbered about forty head, which didn’t sound like much until forty cows spread across a trail, and each one developed an independent opinion about direction, speed, and whether that particular patch of grass on the side of the track deserved a twenty-minute investigation.
Grace rode Penny on the left flank, following Logan’s instructions to keep the strays from drifting downhill toward the creek.
And Pennydiddo the thinking. Thank God. The mare anticipated every stray before Grace even spotted it, cutting left when a heifer broke for the tree line, blocking a young steer that tried to double back toward the ranch. All Grace had to do was hold on and trust the horse, which, after two weeks of riding lessons, had gone from terrifying to only mildly alarming.
Logan rode point. Mason and Jonah worked the right flank together. Thomas brought up the rear, riding drag, which meant he ate more dust than anybody and complained about it. A lot.
They reached the high pasture just after noon.
The cattle fanned out into the meadow.
Logan dismounted near the tree line and loosened Dutch’s girth. “We’ll let ’em graze for a couple hours, check the fence at the north end, then head back.”
“Water break?” Mason slid off his horse. “I got about a pound of dust in my throat.”
They tied the horses in the shade and gathered near the stream bank, passing a canteen while the afternoon sun poured warm across the meadow. Grace sat on a flat rock and pulled off her boots. Jonah sprawled in the grass next to Mason, and both of them lay flat with their hats over their faces. Thomas sat against a pine trunk, already scribbling in that little notebook he carried everywhere.
Logan crouched at the stream and splashed water on his face and the back of his neck. Droplets ran down his jaw and caught the light.
