Page 98 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
The shape had reached the fence. A man. Dark coat, hat pulled low, moving fast.
“Hey!Hey!” Grace spurred Penny on. “Stop right there!”
He ducked through the fence rails and ran. Grace leaned forward, pushed Penny harder, and aimed for the gap where the rails sagged. Penny took it clean.
The man spun. Reached into his coat.
The shot split the air like a whip crack. He’d aimed straight up, and the sound rattled her teeth. Penny screamed. Front legscame up, and the sky tilted sideways, and Grace grabbed for the mane and missed.
The ground hit her hip first. Then her shoulder. Then her ankle twisted under her as the rest of her body rolled over it, and a white-hot bolt fired up from her foot to her knee. She bit down so hard on her own tongue that she tasted copper.
Penny bolted.
The man ran.
***
The gunshot punched straight through the north pasture. Logan pulled the bay mare up short. Mason’s horse spooked sideways.
South. Came from the south field, near the—
He dug his heels in.
The mare tore across the pasture at a dead gallop, as Mason, somewhere behind him, hollered something he didn’t catch and didn’t care about. The south fence came up fast. He had the mare jump it and cut along the tree line toward the spot where the heifer had broken her leg.
Nothing. Empty field, trampled grass, the hole still half-filled from where Thomas had shoveled dirt back in last week. Then—fifty yards east, moving slowly along the fenceline—ashape. Too small. Walking wrong, hitching sideways with each step, bracing one arm against the rail posts.
Grace.
His chest caved in, like somebody had reached between his ribs and squeezed.
He rode up to her and swung down. Grace leaned on a fence post with her right foot lifted off the ground, dirt smeared up one side of her dress, and her hair half-loose and full of grass. She looked up at him with her jaw set in that way she did when she’d already decided how this conversation would go and had picked the outcome she liked best.
“Before you start—”
“What the hell happened?”
“I saidbeforeyou start—”
“Grace, I heard a goddamn gunshot from the north pasture.” He grabbed her arms. Ran his hands down them. Checked her ribs and her shoulders and turned her halfway around. No blood. No holes. His hands shook, and he couldn’t make them stop. “Who shot at you?”
“He shot up into the air. Wasn’t aimin’ at me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who! Some fella in a dark coat was moving along the south fence, headed for the aspens. I saw him from the barn and I—” She flinched when she shifted her weight. “I went after him.”
“You went after him?”
“On Penny, yeah. He spooked her, and I came off and twisted my ankle, and the man ran, and—Logan, you’re hurtin’ my arms.”
He let go and stepped back.
“You chased a stranger. Alone. On horseback. After everything I—afterwetalked about this.” He clenched his fist. “It’s been two days!”
“I know!”
“Then what in God’s name possessed you to—”
