Page 68 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Alright. Open.”
She opened her eyes.
And Logan… Logan just watched.
Because the thing about building something for nineteen days, sanding it, oiling it, starting over and over again, riding to Gunnison for fabric, and carving flowers into the headboard one petal at a time with a knife so small his fingers cramped after ten minutes—the thing about all that labor landed in the moment someone else saw it. Right now. The exact second their eyes took in what your hands had done, and either the work meant what you’d intended, or it didn’t.
Grace’s lips parted.
Her gaze moved across the room. She found the crib immediately. The flowers along the headboard. The rounded rails. The mattress he’d stuffed with clean cotton batting and covered in muslin soft enough for a baby’s skin.
Then the shelves, which held folded blankets and the few baby clothes Grace had sewn from flour sacks, and the soft leather shoes Thomas had bought in town last week.
The window seat with the blue calico cushion. The pegs along the wall. The floorboards, which he’d sanded and sealed with beeswax until they caught the light.
She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Logan.”
“It ain’t—I mean, the trim along the baseboard still needs another coat, and I couldn’t find a rug in Gunnison that matched right, so the floor’s bare for now, but I figured I could—”
“Logan.”
She stepped into the room. Crossed to the crib and ran her hand along the top rail. Stopped at the headboard. Touched one of the blooms with her fingertip.
“These are the roses.”
“Yeah.”
“From the porch.”
“Yeah.”
“You carved the porch roses into acrib.”
“I just—they’re—the pattern wasn’t hard, it’s a simple five-petal—”
She turned to face him. “When did you do this?”
“I started it a while back…” He rubbed the back of his head. “One day, I just—I got up, and I walked into the barn, and I needed todosomething, and the only thing that made any kind of sense in my head... the baby needed a crib. A real one. A proper crib, in a proper room, because…”
“Yeah?”
“Because I’d spent the whole night thinkin’ about how I told you this wasn’t your home. And, yes, this is for Miriam, but I… uh…”
“Logan?”
“I wanted to build somethin’ that said the opposite.”
Grace pressed her fingers harder against the carved roses. “So, you’ve been workin’ on it—”
“Nineteen days.” He cleared his throat. “I know that’s a long time for a crib. Mason said I could’ve built a whole barn in nineteen days, and he ain’t wrong, but I kept… the headboard wasn’t right the first time. Or the second. The grain went wrong, and then there was a knot that looked like… uh…”
“A knot that looked like what?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Logan.”
“Honestly, I just… It’s disturbin’, you don’t wanna—”
