Page 75 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Died every November. Every single year. I’d cry over it, plant new seeds in March, and start the whole conversation over.”
“You cried overbasil?”
“Don’t you dare judge me. You talked to horses about your brothers.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Horses are alive.”
“Basil is alive!”
“Not the way you grew it, apparently.”
She smacked his chest.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bacon.
That was what pulled Logan out of sleep. The smell of bacon curling up the stairs and under his door like a hand grabbing him by the collar. He lay there for a second. Just a second. Staring at the ceiling.
Last night, at the pond, Grace had fallen asleep against his chest, and he’d stayed awake listening to her breathing. He’d carried her to Penny half-asleep, rode back with her leaning into him the whole way—he’d have to ride out again later to get poor Dutch—and walked her to her bedroom door, where she’d looked up at him with those honey-brown eyes, saidgoodnight, Ten-Bucks,and shut the door.
Ten-Bucks.On account of the joke. She’d given him anicknameon account of his stupid joke, and the fact that it stuck made him want to—
Anyway.
Bacon.
He swung his legs off the bed, pulled on trousers and a clean shirt, and ran a hand through his hair, which needed cutting. But haircuts required a trip to town, and trips to town requiredleaving Grace and the baby, and lately that math kept coming out in favor of staying.
He headed for the stairs, but the office door caught his eye on the way past.
It was open. About two inches. He’d closed that door last night before supper, same as every night, because Logan Foster closed doors. All of them. Every time. The front, the back, the kitchen window latch, and the office. Especially the office, which held the deeds, the cash reserves, the accounting ledgers, and—
The silver.
He pushed the door open.
Every drawer in the desk hung open. The big one on the left, where he kept the ledgers, had been pulled clean out of the housing and sat upside down on the floor, and the papers fanned across the rug like somebody had dumped them and sorted through them fast.
The strongbox sat on the desk with its lid up. The lock hung loose. It had been picked rather than broken, and the keyhole was scratched around the edges with the marks of a tool.
Logan’s hands balled into fists at his sides.
The deed. He checked. Still there, folded in its oilcloth at the bottom of the box. The cash reserves—forty-two dollars in mixed bills—were still stacked under the deed. But the top compartment, the shallow one where he’d placed Grace’s silver nugget in a square of cloth and set it right where he could see it every time he opened the lid…
Empty.
“Mason! Thomas!” He shook. “Pa! Jonah! Get in here! Now!”
Boots on the stairs. Multiple sets, moving fast.
Mason appeared first, shirtless, hair standing in six directions, one boot on and one boot clutched in his hand like a weapon. Thomas came behind him, fully dressed because Thomas slept in his clothes half the time on account of being too lazy to change. Jonah stumbled in next, belt unbuckled, squinting against the hall light.
Pa came last. Slow on the stairs, working those knees, but his eyes had that flinty look, the one that meant the old man had read the tone of the yell and already shifted into the harder version of himself.
