Chapter Twenty
Logan kissed the way he built things. Methodically at first, like he needed to check the fit before committing, and then all that precision gave way, and the rest of him showed up.
He tasted like coffee, smelled like cedar soap, and held her face in both hands as if he’d just figured out what hands were actually for.
Grace’s fingers stayed curled in his shirt. Not because she needed the grip for balance—though the balance had gotten unreliable somewhere around the third second—but because letting go meant the moment would end, and some moments deserved to go on for a while longer.
She pulled back first. Had to. Because her lungs had run out of air about ten seconds ago, and dying in a nursery, while poetic, lacked the dignity she preferred.
“We should...” She breathed. “Miriam.”
“Right.” His hands dropped from her face. “She’s uh, still—”
“In my room, yeah.”
“We should…”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them moved. Because moving meant walking down the hall, picking up a sleeping baby, carrying her back, and placing her in the crib. A simple and ordinary thing after the most extraordinary event in her life. And she was just supposed to do it? Like any other parents on any other night?
Parents.
The word dropped into her mind like a stone into still water, and the ripples spread outward in every direction. With her and Logan already married and now kissing, little Miriam would actually have a proper set of parents.
“Come on.” She turned before she could blush even harder. “Let’s go get her.”
They walked the hallway side by side. Close enough that his arm brushed hers twice, and she rubbed her fingertips against his.
Miriam slept in her usual way. Sprawled with her mouth open just enough that each exhale came out in a soft whistle.
Grace slid both hands under her and lifted her slowly.
The baby shifted against her chest with that particular weight that only a sleeping infant had. Somehow denser than their actual size.
Logan stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. The lamplight caught one side of his face and left the other in shadow, and the side she could see had that expression again. The open one. The unguarded thing underneath all his fences.
She shifted Miriam higher. “What?”
“Nothin’.”
“You’re starin’.”
“I ain’t starin’.”
“Logan, you are starin’ at me like I’m a fence post that needs bracin’.”
The corner of his mouth tugged. “That ain’t even close to what I’m thinkin’.”
She chuckled. “Logan, I know we’re already married, but it’s a bit too fast to—”
“Can I carry her?”
Grace blinked. “Huh?”
“To the nursery. I want to carry her.”
“Oh… uh…” She transferred Miriam into his arms. “Sure.”
The baby shifted during the handover in that dangerous moment where a sleeping infant surfaced just enough to decide whether to accept the change or scream about it. Her face scrunched. One fist opened, searched, found Logan’s collar, and grabbed hold.
She sighed. Settled. Burrowed into his chest as if she’d always been there, like his heartbeat ran at whatever frequency babies needed to hear to believe the world held steady.
His hand spread across Miriam’s back, and Grace watched the tension leave his shoulders the way water left a tipped bucket. All at once.
In the nursery, he lowered Miriam into the crib with both hands steady, knees bent so the angle stayed even, supporting her head until the last possible second. This man split logs, mended barbed wire, and wrestled steers, but he held babies like they might dissolve if he breathed too hard.
He pulled the blanket up and tucked it under her arms the way Grace always did.
Then he looked at Grace.
“Walk with me?”
***
The night air hit her face like a palm dipped in cold water. Sharp and full of that pine-and-mineral bite that Colorado nights packed.
Logan saddled Penny and Dutch in the dark, finding buckles and straps the way Grace’s hands found spice jars in the kitchen.
“Where are we goin’?”
She swung up into the saddle. She’d gotten better at it. Not graceful by any means—she still landed with a thud that made Penny’s ears swivel—but functional.
“Somewhere quiet.”
“It’s quiet here.”
“Quieter.”
They rode west past the south pasture, through the aspen grove where the white trunks glowed like bones in the dark. Penny matched Dutch’s pace without guidance, and the rhythm rocked Grace in the saddle like a slow dance.
He kissed me back.
No, he hadn’t just kissed her back. Kissed her back like he was ready to—
Grace Marie Linton. Do not finish that thought on a horse in the dark.
Logan rode close enough that his knee almost touched hers when the trail narrowed. The moonlight caught his profile, his jaw, cheekbone, and the way his hat sat low enough to shadow his eyes. Not his mouth, though.
Stop looking for his mouth.
She looked for his mouth.
He glanced at her. “You’re bein’ quiet.”
“I’m thinkin’.”
“‘Bout what?”
Your mouth. The callus on your thumb, how it caught on my cheekbone, and the sound you made when I kissed you. That low sound in the back of your throat, and how I want to hear it every day for the rest of my—
“Soil composition.”
He laughed. “That’s my line.”
“You were a liar when you said it.”
“And you ain’t?”
She grinned. “I never said I was honest.”
The pond appeared through a gap in the pines.
Thirty yards across, fed by a seep from the hillside that trickled over mossy rocks into water so still it held the sky on its surface like glass.
Every star reflected a perfect double, so the dark between the trees and the dark in the water merged into a single enormous night scattered with light.
“Oh.” She reined Penny to a stop. “You’ve been holdin’ out on me. You got this a mile from the house, and you never said?”
“I’m sayin’ now.”
They tied the horses and sat side by side on a wool blanket he’d grabbed from the porch, her shoulder against his arm. The cold found the gaps in her sleeves and the hem of her skirt, but the warm side—Logan’s side—held steady.
She looked down. “Can I tell you somethin’?”
“You can tell me anythin’.”
“I don’t know how to do this. Whatever this is.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “When my ma died, she left a shawl. Blue wool, moth-eaten, smelled like lavender soap. Same soap I use now. Started usin’ it because of her. Figured if I smelled like her, she’d feel closer.”
Logan turned his head toward her.
“Jonah wanted to sell it. Fifteen cents. Which don’t sound like much, but we hadn’t eaten in two days, and fifteen cents bought bread and a tin of sardines.”
A ripple from the seep broke a constellation in half.
“I screamed at him. Told him that if he sold that shawl, I’d never speak to him again. He went out that night and came back with a dollar. Wouldn’t tell me where he got it. Just said, Keep the shawl, Gracie.”
Logan’s hand found hers. Palm to palm. His fingers laced through hers, pressing against the backs of her knuckles.
“After that, I stopped expectin’ things to be good. Every time somethin’ nice happened, I’d just wait for it to fall apart. That’s the one thing bein’ poor teaches you better than anythin’ else.”
He tightened his grip. “And then?”
“Then I came here. And you gave me a kitchen with a stove that works and a baby to hold and a family that argues about knots.”
He chuckled. “They are passionate about them.”
“And every single mornin’ I wake up and wait for it to end. For somebody to tell me there’s been a mistake and I gotta go back to the rats and the flour I’d fry on a stove lid because the actual stove had broken.”
“Grace—”
“And tonight you kissed me. And I’m sittin’ next to this pond with your hand in my hand, and I’m terrified, Logan.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” She gulped. “Because this is the best thing I’ve ever had. And I don’t know how to have it without waitin’ for it to break.”
Logan’s hand let go of hers.
Her stomach lurched, and—
His arm came around her shoulders. Pulled her sideways into his chest and tucked her head under his chin. His other hand pressed hers flat against his ribs, right over his heartbeat.
“I was on the cattle drive when my ma died.” He said it into her hair. “Thomas and me and Pa. Three days out. Got word from a rider. Just your ranch and your wife. That’s all it took. We rode two days without sleep.”
His arm tightened.
“She made it to the porch. She’d been in the garden, with her roses, and she saw somethin’. Ran for the house. Almost made it.”
Grace pressed closer.
“I found her boots by the back door. She always kicked ’em off before the garden. Said she liked feelin’ the dirt. So her boots just sat there. Lined up neat, the way she kept everything.”
His jaw worked against the top of her head.
“They sat by that door for six months before Thomas finally put ’em away. And I wanted to hit him for it. Because movin’ the boots meant she wasn’t comin’ back, and as long as they sat there I could still—”
He breathed into her hair.
“I closed the ranch after. Told everybody it served as protection. But the real reason... if I controlled everything, the fences, the gates, who came and went, then I wouldn’t have to stand in a doorway lookin’ at a pair of boots and knowin’ the person who wore ’em was never comin’ home.”
Grace sniffed. “Then I came and—”
“Blew every gate open. Yeah. And I fought you on it ‘cause lettin’ someone in meant—”
“They could leave.”
“Yeah.”
Grace pressed her ear against his chest. His heartbeat filled her head. This was the rhythm she’d been reaching for every night since the first week on the ranch. Not the mantel clock. This.
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere.” She said it against his ribs. “I know you got no reason to believe that.”
“People do leave.”
“My ma left, and your ma left, and the world’s full of empty boots and shawls that smell like the wrong soap.” She crunched her eyes closed. “But I’m not leavin’ this ranch, and I ain’t leavin’ that baby or you.”
He pursed his lips. “Oughtn’t I be higher on the list than the baby?”
“Hush, you.” She shook her head. “If it makes me a fool for sayin’ it the first night you kissed me, fine. I’ve been worse things.”
Logan’s forehead dropped to hers. His hand cupped the back of her neck, threading into her hair.
“You ain’t no fool. You’re the bravest person I ever met.”
“I screamed at my brother over a shawl.”
“You fought for what mattered.” He pulled back enough to look at her. “Grace, I build cribs when I can’t say what I mean. I carved roses into a headboard because I couldn’t figure out how to tell you…”
“Tell me what?”
He kissed her. “That I’m done bein’ scared.”
Grace kissed him back.
Softer this time. Slower. The kind of kiss that didn’t rush because it didn’t need to. No baby down the hall. No family in the next room. Just his mouth and hers. They had all the time in the world to learn the shape of this… whatever they were now.
Then they pulled apart, and she tucked herself against his side, nesting her head in the hollow below his collarbone. Logan pulled the blanket edges up over both of them and settled his chin on her hair.
“You know, back in New York, the hut by the docks had walls so thin I heard the neighbors arguing in three languages.”
“Three?”
“Italian, Yiddish, and whatever Mr. Kowalski spoke when he got into the vodka. Could’ve been… Polish? Hard to say at that volume.”
“And you just... listened?”
“Didn’t have a choice.” She laughed. “I knew more about Mrs. Benedetto’s opinions on her son-in-law than I knew about my own family.”
He laughed.
“What about you?” She tilted her chin up. “What’s the worst thing about growin’ up out here?”
“The silence.”
“You’re jokin’.”
“I ain’t. You grow up with nothin’ but wind and cattle for miles, you start talkin’ to the horses just to hear a voice.”
“You talked to the horses.”
“Every mornin’.”
“What’d you say to ’em?”
“Mostly complaints about my brothers.”
She snorted. “I used to talk to my basil plants.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.” She raised her chin. “Ma said plants grew better if you talked to ’em. So, every mornin’, I’d sit on the fire escape with a coffee tin full of dirt and tell the basil about my day.”
“What’d you tell it?”
“Gossip, mostly. The basil knew everything about the neighborhood. It was a very well-informed herb.”
“Did it grow?”
“Died every November. Every single year. I’d cry over it, plant new seeds in March, and start the whole conversation over.”
“You cried over basil?”
“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.