Page 69 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Logan Foster.”
“It looked like Mr. Henley.”
She covered her mouth again and snorted. “Mr. Henley?”
“From the general store. And I couldn’t… I couldn’t let her sleep under Mr. Henley’s face every night. The man’s got a lazy eye and a mustache that goes in two different directions. Miriam deserves better than that.”
“That she does.” Grace’s voice cracked on the third word. “She deserves so much better than that.”
“So I started over. And then I couldn’t stop fixin’ things. The trim, the shelves, the window seat… I went to Gunnison for the fabric because the store here didn’t have anything that… look, the point is—”
He inhaled.
Because all the things he’d rehearsed in the barn, the neat, organized sentences he’d lined up like fence posts in a row, had scattered. Gone. Every one of them. What remained was the raw material underneath, the stuff before language got to it and tidied it up.
He exhaled.
“You changed everything.”
Grace went still.
“I don’t mean the house. I mean—yeah, the house too, the cookin’ and the cleanin’ and the flowers and all of it, but that ain’t—” He dragged a hand down his face. “Before you came, I had a plan. I had the ranch. The fence lines. The feed schedule. Every day laid out the same as the one before and the one after, and I told myself that’s what I wanted.”
“And then?”
“And thenyoushowed up on my doorstep mad enough to spit nails, and this baby showed up cryin’ loud enough to wake the dead, and every single plan I had fell apart in about three days.”
Grace’s chin trembled.
“And I fought it. Lord, I fought it hard. Asked myself every mornin’ for the first two weeks what I’d gotten myself into and how to get back to the way things ran before.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“Because you named the baby after my ma. You got on your hands and knees in the dirt and brought those roses back. You made my pa smile for the first time in two years.”
She looked down and blushed.
“You taught me how to hold a baby without actin’ like she’d shatter, and you looked at this ranch and this family and all our mess and you just...” He gulped. “You stayed. Even when I gave you every reason not to. When I told you to…”
“You came andgotme.” Grace’s eyes spilled over. Two tracks, one down each cheek. “You rode out before dawn and built me a fire I didn’t ask for.”
“I’d do it again.”
“I know.”
“Every mornin’. I’d ride out every mornin’ if that’s what it took.”
“Logan—”
“And Miriam… I spent the first week tryin’ to give her away. And now I can’t—I hear her laugh from across the yard and I stop whatever I’m doin’. Just stop. Because that sound—”
His throat closed.
“That sound is the best thing in my life, Grace. Her and you.”
“Logan—”
“No, I need to say it. Please.”
