Page 79 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“I can’t—” He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. “If somethin’ happens to them, Pa. If somethin’ happens to Grace or the baby because I—”
“Stop.”
“I already lost—”
“Stop.” Pa’s hand landed on his shoulder. “You listen to me. What happened to your ma happened because a bad man did a bad thing. Not because you failed her. Not because you shouldabeen here. Not because the fence ran wrong or the lock gave out.”
“But if I’d been home—”
“If you’d been home, you might’ve stopped it. Or you might’vediedalongside her. Either way, the blame sits on the man who pulled the trigger, and it don’t move from that spot no matter how many fences you build or how many locks you check.”
Logan’s throat closed up.
“Now.” Pa squeezed his shoulder once and let go. “You got a family up at that house that needs you thinkin’ clear and actin’ smart. You understand me?”
Logan pulled his hands off the wire. The barb marks dented white across both palms, fading as the blood came back.
“Yeah.” He flexed his fingers. “Yeah, I understand.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The morning after somebody broke into your house while your baby slept twenty feet away, you still had to do laundry.
That struck Grace as deeply and profoundly unfair. The world ought to stop for something like that. Oughta just hold still for a day or two while a person got her bearings back and figured out how to walk through her own kitchen without checking every shadow twice. But laundry piled up regardless, and if she let it go another day, Mason’s shirts alone would qualify as a public menace.
She hauled the washtub off its hook on the back porch and set it in the yard. The iron scraped the dirt, and Miriam—propped in her usual spot on a blanket in the grass—startled at the sound, then went right back to gumming the wooden rattle Logan had carved for her.
Logan crossed the yard from the barn with Thomas. Both of them carried locks, latches, and iron brackets from yesterday’s supply run.
Logan stopped when he reached the porch steps. “Mornin’.”
“Mornin’.” She wrung out a dishrag. “You eat?”
“Biscuit.”
“One biscuit ain’t breakfast, Logan.”
“It’s a biscuit. That’s breakfast by definition.”
“It’s a biscuit by definition. Breakfast requires at least two food groups.”
“Bread’s a food group.”
“Bread ain’t a group, it’s a member of a group, and one member don’t make a—” She caught herself. “We’re arguin’ about bread.”
“You started it.”
“I asked if you’d eaten!”
The corner of his mouth pulled.
“I’ll eat proper at lunch.” He shifted the hardware to his other arm. “Thomas and I are gonna fit the new locks. Should take most of the mornin’.”
“Good.”
“You need anythin’ before we start?”
You, standing here another thirty seconds, so I can pretend the world makes sense.
