*****
“What’ll happen to him?”
Honor leaned on the jug wall and watched as Logan bottle-fed the bull calf. The boy was enormous and seemed too heavy for his own legs. Three hours after his birth, he was barely standing. Every time he pulled on the nipple, he nearly lost his feet. Still, if they could get him stable, he was going to be magnificent. He was absolutely beautiful and perfectly formed, despite his remarkable size.
“Mac’s bringing in a cow whose calf didn’t make it. We’ll try to graft him onto her. If that doesn’t take, then we’ll be doing this for a long while. But this is her milk we’re giving him, so she might like him okay.”
“He’s so pretty. Can I try?”
“You want to feed him?”
She nodded. “Is that okay?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
When she closed herself in the jug with him and the calf, Logan ushered her close. She held the bottle the calf had not yet given up, and Logan stood behind her, his hands at her hips. “My city princess is turning into a country queen.”
Her chuckle moved against his chest. “You know, I think I should be offended at that.”
“But you’re not.” He kissed the tender skin behind her ear and felt her quiver.
“No, I’m not. In fact, I’m a little proud. This is amazing. You are amazing.” She looked back and up at him. “I love you so much.”
“I love you right back.”
“Boss! Got her!” Mac called.
“Take the bottle from him,” Logan told Honor. “We got something better.”
The calf wailed at the loss of the nipple, but Logan pulled Honor out of the jug so Mac could lead a none-too-happy cow in. The calf was alert enough now to know a good thing when he saw it, and he tottered right up to nurse. When the cow turned to threaten him—they knew their own calves, and her baby wasn’t long gone, so it was natural she’d be hostile to one taking its food—Mac got in her way and stood there, glowering, staring the cow down until the calf latched. Then Mac backed off, and they all waited to see what the cow would do. Sometimes, it took days for a cow to accept a calf not hers. Sometimes, it never happened.
This cow watched the baby suspiciously, and cast an occasional glance toward Mac. It was clear that if she thought she could get away with it, she’d give this little parasite a good kick. Eventually, as the calf suckled enthusiastically—and that was a very good sign for him—she nosed his rump and then complained, but she didn’t get physical. Also a pretty good sign.
“Mac.” Logan spoke quietly.
“Yeah, boss?” So did Mac.
He handed Mac the half-empty bottle. “He’s been taking her milk. pour some on his rump, see what she thinks about that.”
“Her scent,” Honor whispered.
“Yep. Might help.”
Mac opened the bottle and sloshed a bit of milk, then backed off again. When the cow next looked back to complain at the baby, she caught her own scent and hesitated. Then her long, sinewy tongue came out, and she licked the milk from the calf’s rump. And kept licking, after the milk was gone.
“I think that’s gonna work,” Mac said.
Honor leaned on Logan’s shoulder. “You’re amazing.”
Feeling like a god, Logan hooked his arm over her shoulders and held her close.
*****
“I put in a call to Job, and he had a truck over here while I was still in the shed with the calf.” Logan took the basket of rolls from Kendall. “Three rolls, kiddo? But you skipped the peas.”
Kendall wrinkled his nose as Wes laughed and spooned peas onto his son’s plate.
Logan’s father finished chewing his meat. “I hate to lose one, but at least she didn’t go to waste.”
Honor took the rolls from Logan. “I don’t understand. Who took the cow? Who’s Job?”
“Job Black Eagle is the tribe’s chief,” Heath answered while Logan’s mouth was full of roll. “When there’s a death in the herd like today, one that’s clean, we call the tribe, and they pick up the carcass. They butcher it to give meat to people who need it. There’s a lot of hunger on the reservation.” Heath nodded at Honor. “You’ve seen what it’s like.”
“It’s not all like that,” Emma said. “Some places are really nice. And do we have to talk about dead cows and butchering here at the table?”
Their father laughed and stabbed at another piece of his sirloin. “Sweetheart, there’s butchered beef on this table.”
“I know. But there are nicer things to talk about while we’re all together, eating. Tomorrow’s Easter Sunday.”
Logan couldn’t help himself. He’d been trying to be a better human being all around, but he had to tease his baby sister a little. “You want to talk about Jesus rising from the dead instead?”
“Zombie Jesus!” Kendall blurted and then brayed laughter. Logan, in a similar frame of mind, laughed, too—and he saw he wasn’t the only one. They all had at least a smile. All but one.
Emma’s complexion was turning vivid pink. The Cahills were only casually religious, if that, but Emma, who wore their mother’s cross around her neck, wanted her kids to be respectful and appropriate always.
“Kendall Morgan Taylor! You leave this table at once. Go sit in the kitchen until we’re done.”
“Aw, Mama.”
“Em, it was just a joke,” Wes said.
“A joke about Jesus. On the day before Easter! What would Mama say?”
She had a point. Their mother had not been merely casually religious. When she’d been alive, church had been a regular thing. And she, too, had been particular about what happened at her table.
“Emma’s right,” their father said. “Kendall, this is your grandmother’s table. I know you didn’t know her, but you’ll respect her nonetheless.”
Wes was obviously irritated that his father-in-law had stepped to parent his son, but he bit his tongue. Emma and Wes had been married for years, but their father had only decided to accept him as real family within the last year or so. They got along much better, but they’d never be close.
“Apologize to your mother, son,” Wes said now, “and do what she said.”
Well chastened, Kendall dropped his head. “Sorry, Mama.” As he got up, he turned to his grandfather and added, “Sorry, Poppy.”
They all watched him leave the dining room. Anya, two years younger and much less inclined to mischief, sat quiet as a mouse. Gabe took the moment to lift Matthew from his high chair. “He needs to nurse. Excuse us.” She left, and Logan figured she’d head straight for the kitchen and keep Kendall company.
Pregnant with their second, Gabe was still nursing her fourteen-month-old boy. It might be that she was even more maternal than Emma, and Logan wouldn’t have thought that possible.
He and Honor were still working out when, and maybe whether, they’d have children of their own. Until recently, fatherhood hadn’t been on his road. Now, though, he wanted it—but he didn’t need it. Honor was still working through the change that would mean for her, and he could be happy wherever she landed.
“You’re a terrible influence sometimes, Logan,” Emma said and picked up her silverware to attack her steak. “Kendall’s got your smart mouth now.”
He hardly thought he deserved that attack, but Logan could read a room, so he said simply, “Sorry, Ems. What do you want to talk about?”
“We could talk about the wedding?” Honor suggested, and Logan could have grabbed her and kissed her right there. The wedding plans were just about finished. They were getting married in two months, here on the ranch, and they both wanted something fairly simple, but every time the subject came up, Emma had a new idea or something that complicated the works. Honor opening the door to the conversation was a major sacrifice.
Emma’s mood shifted abruptly and that pink fury on her cheeks turned like magic to rosy enthusiasm.
“Yes!” his sister cheered. “Yes! The wedding! Have you thought about my idea about the hay bales? It wou
ld be so cute!”
She wanted their guests to sit on hay bales—during the service and at dinner. Actual bales of hay. Weddings were not Logan’s thing, but even he thought that was a terrible idea.
But ever the consummate negotiator, his woman smiled and said, “I really like that idea, but I’m worried the older guests might be uncomfortable. What if we did hay bales around the dance floor and regular seats for the ceremony and dinner?”
“Oh, that would be so pretty! Like a frame! We could weave flowers around the sides. Are you sure you want to do sunflowers? They’re done to death for summer weddings. They’re really a cliché anymore.”
The rest of the men went back to their plates and bowed out of the wedding talk, but Logan paid attention. He knew how tired Honor was of his sister’s meddling, and her mother’s complaining that they weren’t getting married in Wisconsin, and all the other extraneous demands on something that should be just theirs. A few times, she’d fantasized about running off to Reno. Once, that fantasy had almost become a plan.
But Logan wanted a wedding. Here. He didn’t much care about the details, but he wanted a party, and he wanted the whole goddamn town here to see it.
With his hand on her thigh, he felt her growing tension, but she answered Emma with sweet patience. “It doesn’t bother me if they’re a cliché. They’re my favorite flower. But we could do another flower as an accent, maybe. What do you think, Anya? What’s your favorite flower?”
Anya beamed. “Lilacs. They’re purple and pretty and you can pick the little flowers and suck honey out.”
Honor smiled. “Lilacs and sunflowers. That could be pretty.”
Logan gave her leg a squeeze. His woman was amazing.
*****
That night, after Heath and his family, and Emma and hers, had returned to their homes, and Honor was upstairs on the phone with her family, Logan grabbed a bottle of bourbon and two glasses and went out back to find his father. His old man had been quiet all day, and with the house full of family, that wasn’t like him.
He was sitting on one of the big outdoor sofas. They’d set up the veranda early this year, when the spring looked like it really would catch hold. It was still fairly early in the year, though, and without the sun, the air took on a brisk chill. His father was hunched down in his heavy canvas barn coat, with his arms wrapped around his chest. Logan snagged an afghan from the basket by the door and dropped it on his father’s lap as he came around and sat at his side. “Company okay?”
“Yes, it is. That bottle’s okay, too.”
Logan grinned and poured them each a drink.
His father spread the blanket over his legs and took a glass. “I guess it finally happened, didn’t it?”
“What?”
“I’m an old man.”
“Dad, pardon my directness, but you’re eighty-five. You’ve been old awhile.”
He chuckled and took a drink. “Careful boy. You’re not exactly a newborn calf yourself. Someday you’re gonna feel what this is like. And anyway, what I’m talkin’ about, it’s new.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I feel old, for the first time. I haven’t been in the saddle since last summer, and I don’t think I could manage it if I tried now. I’ve been sitting here, looking out over the ranch, and feeling it slip away. I love this place in my bones. In my soul. I know the taste of it. The thought of not having more of it than I can see right here, that hurts.”
Working side by side for his whole life, Logan had seen his father slowing over the past few years. More than once, he’d thought about how it would go, once he couldn’t get out on the range himself. “We can ride you out. Take a truck out on the lanes, or pull out the old cart and hitch it up. Ranger and Maggie will pull as a team.”
His father nodded and took another long drink, staring out over the mingling blues of the ranch in dark. “I’m coming up on the end, son.”
“Dad …” Logan wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’m not ready to keel over yet, don’t worry. I want to see you settled and raising a family. And I don’t think I mind the end comin’. Your mama’s waiting for me, and I know I’ll leave this place in the right hands.” He held out his glass for a refill, and Logan obliged. “You make me proud, Logan. Your mama always said it was Heath who was most like me, and maybe that’s true. I fought my father like your brother fought me. I had to go my way, just like Heath. But you understand. You know what this place is. For your brother and sister, the Twisted C is home. But for you, you know the real truth. It’s more than home. It’s life.”
Logan’s eyes had begun to itch. He turned and rubbed his hands over each one.
“I think Honor understands, too,” his father said.
That made Logan laugh. His city girl, understanding what the ranch was? “I don’t know about that. But she does love it here.”
“It’s more than that, I think. I see it when she doesn’t know anybody’s looking. I don’t mean she’s hiding anything, just—you know, when you’re alone, and you don’t have to be anything for anybody, you can relax. She gets a look in her eye like she’s finding something out.”
He finished his glass again waved off Logan’s silent offer of another. But he wasn’t done with his musing. “You don’t have to be born to this place to know what it is. Matthew and Annabelle knew when they first saw it. There’s just something here that’s nowhere else. I think that’s why you didn’t want to settle down for so long. I think it’s why I didn’t want to settle down for just as long. We got late starts because we didn’t want anybody who’d try to pull us off this place. We had to wait until we found a woman who’d understand. We knew we’d find her someday, so we waited until we did.”
Logan sat back and studied the view before him. Was that it? The draw he’d felt to Honor? The reason she’d made him think more deeply about who he was and what he wanted, and why he wanted it? It couldn’t be—of all the loves who’d been brought to their family, Honor was the one who’d posed the greatest threat to pulling a Cahill off the ranch. She’d had a life that had drawn her elsewhere, and not until the holidays had she been sure she could be happy here.
Right?
Maybe not.
He thought about all those locks between her in her apartment and the world beyond it. He thought about her room in Madison, that had been turned into a guest room. A room she’d been erased from. He hadn’t felt her in that house at all. He thought of that crappy office she’d tried to make hers on the Bench. He thought of the soulless gleam of the Bellamy White offices.
He thought about how she’d been here at the ranch, how comfortable, and how quickly she’d been so. She’d always seemed to him more at ease here than anywhere else, but he’d chalked that up to wishful thinking. He thought about her second attempt at a private practice, her little office above Wild West Impressions. Three months in, she didn’t have many clients, and the work she was doing could hardly be called exciting, but she was billing enough that she could foresee paying the bills someday. And there was none of that bitter panic she’d had in Boise. She went to work happy and came home happy. She’d even gotten involved in the town’s Business Council.
He thought about the way she liked to watch him work when she could, just sitting there, smiling, and then asking a hundred questions when they went back to the house together. He thought about how she’d been today, with the bull calf, how she’d jumped right in and wanted to be as close to it all as she could be.
Maybe his city princess wasn’t turning into a country queen. Maybe she’d always been and just hadn’t known it.
Maybe she understood what this place really was.
Life.
He turned and smiled at his father. “I think maybe you’re right.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Will you quit grinnin’ at me like that? You’re creepin’ me out.” Logan glared at his brother and snatched the suit jacket out of Heath’s hand.
“Sorry,” He
ath said, making no attempt to wipe the shit-eating smirk off his mug. “I’m just thinking how the gossip mill’s gonna grind to a halt without you in it.”
“I haven’t been grist for that mill in a year.” A year, he’d had Honor. A year since he’d shown up uninvited and unwelcome at the St. Luke’s emergency room and stood firm until she’d leaned on him. And today, she would be his officially.
He shoved his arm into a sleeve. “As long as her brother’s in town, the tongues will get their exercise.”
Heath laughed. “Yeah, true. That guy’s got everybody in knots. They don’t know what to make of him.”
Logan wasn’t really sure what to make of him, either. Justice wasn’t a bad guy, but he had a way about him that people—including Logan—couldn’t lock down. It wasn’t his sexuality, though, sure, that was grinding in the mill, too, no doubt. He was just different. Tall and skinny, dressed always in dark, ratty clothes, with paint on his shoes and hands all the time, he looked like he’d been sleeping rough in the back alley of a paint factory.
And he simply could not, or would not, let an opportunity for a snarky comment pass. He could ferret out the exact thing to say that was almost offensive but not quite enough for the offended person to know if they’d been attacked or were being hypersensitive. It was unsettling as hell.
So yes, in the week the Babinots had been in town for the wedding, the Jasper Ridge Gossip Mill had been grinding at full capacity.
Her parents had been curiosities as well, because they’d spawned the woman who’d locked Logan down, but no more than that. Curtis Babinot and Samantha Hinmann were pretty normal, and obviously appreciated Jasper Ridge and Idaho, so they were easier to like. For Logan and everybody else. Curtis had hit it off with Logan’s father, and they’d spent several mornings fly fishing in Cahill Creek, taking the truck up at sunrise. Samantha had fallen in rapturous love with the land, and had gone out exploring on foot almost every day, dragging anyone who’d be her guide. It was only Justice who’d decided that his best fun was stirring up the locals.
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 31