Page 94 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“It didn’toccurto you.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Grace, somebody broke into this house two weeks ago. Somebody dug holes in my pasture. I got a dead heifer and a picked lock and no idea who’s out there, and you just... You hitched a cart and rode off with the baby and didn’t tell a livin’ soul where you were goin’?”
“I was gone three hours!”
“I didn’t know that! I came back to the house, and your room was empty, and the baby’s things were gone, and the cart was gone, and I thought—”
He stopped. Just… stopped and looked away. Like a man who’d run into a wall.
“Logan—”
“I thought somethin’ happened to you.” He shoved the words through his teeth. “Both of you.”
“Logan.” She stepped closer. “I’mhere. I’m fine. She’s fine. We’re both fine.”
“This time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can’t just ride off alone anymore. Not anymore. Not with everything that’s—”
“Can’t?”
Logan flinched a half flinch, like he knew he’d stepped wrong, but his boots had already committed. “Grace, don’t make this into somethin’ it—”
“Then don’t stand there and tell me what Ican’tdo. I ain’t a horse you get to fence in.”
“Nobody’s corrallin’ you! I’m askin’ you to use common sense!”
“I survived years in a city that’d eat this whole town for breakfast.” She pushed his chest. “I dodged drunks and thieves and rats the size of your boot since before I could read. You wanna talk to me aboutcommon sense?”
“New York didn’t have somebody diggin’ holes in your yard and breakin’ into your house in the dead of—”
“New York hadplentyof people breakin’ into my house! Every Tuesday, near enough! The difference is I handled it, Logan. I handled it because nobody stood in my way and told me I neededpermissionto walk out my own front door.”
“I ain’t talkin’ about permission!”
“Then what are you talkin’ about?”
“I’m talkin’ about you bein’safe!”
Miriam startled in the sling and scrunched into that pre-cry squint that meant they had about four seconds before the world ended. Grace bounced her. Shushed against her hair. Miriam settled. Barely.
Logan dropped his voice. “I’m talkin’ about you and the baby bein’ safe.”
“And I hear you. I do. But Logan, I can’t live locked up. I can’t sit inside these fences day after day waitin’ for you to tell me when it’s all right to breathe. That ain’t livin’. That’s prison with better food.”
“Nobody’s lockin’ you—”
“You just told me I can’t ride to town.”
“Youcan’t. Not alone. Not right now.”
She frowned. “And when’s that gonna change, Logan?”
“Grace—”
“When? Because it’s been two weeks and you ain’t found a single boot print. Could be months. Could benever. You gonna keep me penned up here ‘til never comes and goes?”
That muscle in his jaw jumped—the one that fired when he clenched his teeth hard enough to crack them. She glanced at that muscle. The calluses on his palms. The scar on his left knuckle. He made the exact sound as before he kissed her, that low half-breath, like he needed to steady himself first.
