Chapter Twenty-Eight
The knock hit the door before the sun hit the mountains.
Three hard raps that punched through whatever dream Logan had been having about fence posts and nails and jerked him upright in bed with his pulse already hammering between his ears.
His hand found the Winchester against the wall just as his feet found the floor, and that bitter four-in-the-morning cold found its way up his spine.
Three more raps.
“Logan!”
Grace’s voice. Pitched high and sharp in that way that meant something had gone sideways, and his gut dropped because the last time a knock came before dawn on this ranch—
He yanked the door open with the rifle in one hand and his other hand still working the top button of his trousers, and Grace stood in the hallway in her nightdress with her hair loose around her shoulders.
She’d pulled Mormor’s shawl tight across her chest, and her eyes had gone wide enough to catch what little moonlight came through the hall window.
“What happened?” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her closer, already scanning the dark hallway past her. “Who’s hurt? Is it Miriam? Is it—”
“Gophers.”
His hand stopped on the rifle stock. “Come again?”
“Gophers, Logan. A whole blessed family of ’em. In my garden. Right now, this very minute.” She grabbed his wrist and squeezed. “I’ve been losin’ squash all week, and I reckoned—”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“—it for rabbits, but I looked out the back window just now, and there’s at least five of the little demons runnin’ in and out of holes all over the plot—”
“Honestly, is this any way to wake me up for—”
“—and they got tunnels, Logan, tunnels, and they’re eatin’ my pole beans, and I swear to God if one more critter on this ranch takes somethin’ from me I’m gonna lose my everlovin’ mind!”
He leaned the Winchester against the doorframe.
Gophers. She’d pounded his door down at Lord-knows-what-hour, scared ten years off his life, and made him grab a loaded rifle in his own hallway… for gophers.
“Grace.”
“Don’t you ‘Grace’ me in that voice.”
“What voice?”
“That voice! The one you use when you think I’m bein’ ridiculous and you’re decidin’ whether to say so.”
Well. She had him pinned on that one.
“I ain’t sayin’ you’re ridiculous.”
“You’re thinkin’ it loud enough for the whole county to hear.”
“I’m thinkin’ it’s four in the mornin’, and you about gave me a heart attack over rodents.”
“Over rodents that are destroyin’ my garden. The garden you tilled. The garden you gave me. So, unless you want all that work to go to—”
“All right, all right.” He held up both hands. “Lemme get dressed.”
“Well, hurry up! They ain’t exactly waitin’ on your schedule!”
She spun on her heel and padded back down the hall, flapping that shawl behind her like a flag of war, and Logan stood in his doorway in half-buttoned trousers, watching her go.
Three months ago, his mornings started with coffee and silence and a clean list of chores scratched on the back of an envelope.
Now they started with a woman in a nightdress hollering about gophers.
He pulled on his boots. Tucked in his shirt. Rolled his sleeves to the elbow and creased them evenly because a man had standards, even at four in the goddamn morning.
***
Grace had thrown a coat over her nightdress and shoved her feet into her boots without lacing them, which made her shuffle across the yard like a duck with a grudge.
She pointed at the garden plot. “Look.”
The plot Logan had spent two solid days tilling and raking into rows so clean you could’ve laid a ruler along them—that plot—looked like a battlefield.
Little mounds of kicked-up dirt dotted the surface.
Half the squash seedlings tilted sideways with their roots chewed to nothing.
The pole bean trellises still stood, but the vines at the base had gone ragged and nibbled down to stubs.
And, right there, dead center of the second row, a fat brown gopher sat up on its haunches and stared at them with beady black eyes and absolutely zero remorse. Just sat there chewing on a bean leaf like it owned the deed to the property and paid taxes.
“You see that?” Grace jabbed her finger. “You see that little thief right there?”
“I see him.”
“He looked at me, Logan. Looked at me. Like I’m the one trespassin’.”
The gopher stuffed the rest of the leaf into its cheek and disappeared into a hole.
Logan pinched the bridge of his nose.
He should’ve brought the rifle. Not for the gophers—a rifle and gophers made about as much sense as a hammer and a mosquito—but because the look on Grace’s face said she might try to strangle one with her bare hands if the opportunity presented itself, and somebody needed to maintain order.
Then again, with Grace, maybe he should’ve brought two rifles.
“All right.”
He crouched at the edge of the plot and studied the holes. Five—no, six entrances, spaced out every few feet along the rows, with little fans of loose dirt kicked up around each one. Classic pocket gopher setup. Mama, Papa, and the whole litter making themselves at home.
“We ain’t gonna kill ’em.”
She pushed him. “Why the hell not?”
“Because gopher blood makes the soil bitter, and it’ll ruin your planting beds for a season.”
He’d made that up. Entirely. Right there on the spot. The real reason lay in the fact that Grace would cry if she watched something die, and she’d deny it afterward, and he’d have to pretend he hadn’t noticed, and the whole thing would turn into a production.
“So what do we do?”
“Chase ’em out. Collapse the tunnels. Pack the dirt hard enough they can’t dig back in.” He straightened up. “Grab that bucket by the pump and fill it. We’re gonna flood ’em.”
“Flood ’em?”
“Pour water down the holes, they come runnin’ out, we chase ’em past the fence. Then we stomp the tunnels flat.”
Grace grinned.
***
The first gopher came out like a furry brown cannonball.
Grace had poured half the bucket down the main tunnel entrance, and for about three seconds, nothing had happened. Just the glug of water swallowing into dirt. Then the ground heaved, and a gopher shot out of a hole six feet to the left, spraying mud, and bolted straight between Logan’s boots.
He grabbed for it. Missed. The thing moved fast for an animal built like a hairy potato.
“It’s gettin’ away!”
“I can see that, Grace!”
He chased it across the plot. The gopher juked left.
Logan juked left. The gopher reversed. Logan’s boot caught a mound of loose soil, and he stumbled forward three steps with his arms pinwheeling before he caught his balance on the bean trellis, which promptly leaned sideways at a forty-five-degree angle.
Grace doubled over laughing.
“Real helpful!”
“Oh, I’m helpin’,” she said, holding her side as she wheezed. “I’m helpin’ by not dyin’ of laughter so I can tell this story at supper.”
The gopher vanished under the chicken coop. Fine. Let it live under Gerald’s jurisdiction. That rooster terrorized everything within a ten-foot radius; one fat gopher would just make its day better.
Grace dumped more water down a second hole. Two gophers this time, a smaller pair that burst out together and split in opposite directions as if they’d rehearsed it. Logan got one moving toward the fence with his boot. Grace chased the other with the empty bucket held over her head like a weapon.
“Get—back—here—you—little—” She swung the bucket at the gopher, missed by a solid two feet, and the momentum spun her halfway around. “Did you see that? He dodged!”
“They got good reflexes.”
“He’s got good reflexes and a death wish!”
“Grace, just herd him toward the—”
“I’m herdin’! He won’t herd!”
The gopher shot past her ankle, circled back toward the garden, and dove into a fresh hole that definitely hadn’t existed five minutes ago.
Grace threw the bucket onto the ground. “Oh, you’ve got to be kiddin’ me.”
Logan picked the bucket up, refilled it, and poured it down the new hole while Grace stood guard with a stick she’d pulled off the woodpile.
She planted her feet wide and held the stick raised over one shoulder, and her hair came loose from the braid she’d thrown together in the dark. She looked like a Viking. A short, freckled, extremely angry Viking defending a vegetable patch in Colorado at four-thirty in the morning.
The gopher rocketed out. Grace shrieked and swung. The stick connected with a fence post instead, and she dropped the thing a second later.
“Ow! Son of a—”
“You okay?”
“I just—my hands—that stung—did you get him?”
“He went under the fence. He’s gone.”
“Swear?”
“Cross my heart.”
She blew a strand of hair off her face. “How many’s that?”
“Four, I think. Maybe one more in there.”
“Four.” She planted her hands on her hips. “There’s more. I can feel it.”
“You can feel gophers?”
“I grew up with rats, Logan.” She squinted at the holes. “I know when rodents are watchin’ me.”
“No way.”
“Yes way!”
“No. Way.”
“It’s a sixth sense.” She sniffed. “Like how you know when a fence post needs replacin’ by lookin’ at it sideways.”
“That ain’t a sixth sense. That’s called experience.”
“Same difference. Pour more water.”
He poured. Nothing came out for a long stretch, just the gurgle of water finding the tunnels and filling them up.
Grace prodded the dirt with her stick. Logan crouched by the far end of the plot where a mound of soil pulsed—actually pulsed, like a heartbeat—and then erupted into a gopher the size of his fist that launched itself directly at his chest.
He swatted it sideways on pure reflex, and the gopher tumbled through the air, landed on its feet, and streaked toward the tree line like the devil himself had kicked it.
Grace howled. She bent at the waist with her hands on her knees, laughing so hard her shoulders shook.
“You—you slapped it—”
“I did not slap a gopher.”
“You did! You backhanded a gopher as if it owed you money!”
“I redirected it.”
“You slapped it, Logan! Right outta the air! Like a—” She wheezed. “Like a grumpy old cat!”
“I’m twenty-five.”
“Grumpy young cat, then.”
The last gopher—or the one he hoped to God and all the saints turned out to be the last—poked its head out of the original tunnel entrance, sniffed the air, and retreated. Grace poured more water. It emerged from a hole near the fence, shook itself off, and sat there grooming its face.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Grace crept toward it with the bucket. “No, sir. You do not get to sit there and wash your face on my property after what you done to my squash.”
The gopher looked at her.
Grace looked at the gopher.
“Git.”
It didn’t git.
“I said git, you round little—”
She lunged. The gopher bolted. Grace’s unlaced left boot caught the edge of one of the gopher holes, the lip crumbled under her weight, and her ankle rolled sideways, and the rest of her tipped forward with her arms reaching for something to grab onto.
Logan caught her.
His hands found her waist first, then her ribs, pulling her upright before her knees hit the dirt. The momentum carried her straight into his chest, and he braced his back foot and held on. Grace’s palms flattened against his shirt, and her face came up close.
Real close.
Her breath hit his chin. Her eyes caught the first pale edge of dawn breaking over the ridge and went full honey the way they had at the pond that night.
The same way they had right before she’d grabbed his collar in the nursery and kissed him hard enough to rearrange every plan he’d ever made for his life.
“Nice catch, Cowboy.”
“You gotta lace your boots, Grace.”
“Make me.”
“That a dare?”
“Depends on what you’re plannin’ to do about it.”
Her mouth curved.
He leaned down. Her hand slid from his chest to his collar. His thumb brushed the curve of her waist through the coat, and the warmth of her skin bled right through the fabric into his palm. Her lips parted, and—
The front door banged open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
“WOULD SOMEBODY—” Rafe stood on the porch in his long johns with Miriam screaming at full volume in the crook of his arm. His white hair stuck straight up as if lightning had struck him. “—FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, COME TAKE THIS BABY BEFORE SHE BUSTS MY LAST GOOD EARDRUM.”
Grace’s forehead dropped against Logan’s chest.
“GRACE!”
“Comin’, Rafe!”
“WHAT?”
“I SAID I’M COMIN’!”
She pulled back. Her hand stayed on Logan’s collar for one extra beat, and her fingers pressed warm against his neck. Then she let go and stepped away, bending down to tie her boots—both of them, tight double knots—before looking up at him with that grin.
“Don’t think I’m lettin’ you off the hook, Foster.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She turned and marched toward the porch, where Rafe held Miriam out at arm’s length like a ticking bomb. Grace took the baby, tucked her into the crook of her neck, bounced twice, and Miriam’s screaming cut to a whimper and then to nothing. Rafe’s shoulders sagged about six inches.
“How?” Rafe stared. “How in the Sam Hill do you do that every single time?”
“Trade secret.” Grace kissed Miriam’s head. “Mornin’, baby girl. You givin’ Paw-Paw trouble again?”
Logan stood in the garden with dirt on his knees and mud on his boots, and the first real light of the day spilling over the ridge and painting the yard gold.
Grace swayed on the porch with the baby, humming something tuneless, and Rafe grumbled his way back toward the kitchen, muttering about coffee and ungodly hours and babies with no respect for an old man’s sleep schedule.
Grace glanced back at him over her shoulder.
“You comin’ in, or you gonna stand out there communin’ with the gophers all mornin’?”