Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

How had it happened? she wondered. When had it changed from physical attraction to love? Why hadn’t she recognized it before that night? Abruptly she threw away all the questions. The how, when, and why of it didn’t matter. This was love, deeply rooted and in full flower.

Finished with his side, Logan moved to her end. She shifted position to make room for him and held the board until he had the first nail hammered in place. She stepped back to watch when he took a second nail from Quint.

After he was done, Logan gave the board a hard shake to test its solidness, then nodded in satisfaction. “That should do it.” He tipped his head toward Quint. “Take a look at that. I think we did a good job, don’t you?”

“We sure did,” Quint agreed. “Do we got another board to fix?”

“Nope. They all look sturdy enough to hold a tall boy or a stout horse,” he replied, then glanced at Cat. “Which reminds me—a rancher over by Lewiston has a pair of draft horses for sale—Clydesdales. I was planning on taking a look at them on Saturday. Would you and Quint like to ride along? We could make a day of it.”

“It sounds great, but—what do you want with a draft horse team?” Cat asked, a little puzzled.

“What’s a draft horse?” Quint wanted to know.

“It’s like the kind you see pulling the wagon in the beer commercials,” Logan answered his question first, then hers. “I don’t have enough acres in hay to warrant the cost of a tractor—even a used one. Horses will be practical and economical. It may take a little more time to mow and windrow and load it, but I kinda like the idea of doing it the old way.”

She pretended to give his argument careful thought. “The upkeep on them would be cheaper. They certainly won’t be as noisy as a tractor, either.”

“My thinking exactly.” He smiled, then turned a little serious. “You may as well know now that you married a man without any great ambition to build the next ranching empire. I don’t want the Circle Six to get so large that I can’t work it myself. I want to pull my own calves and mend my own fences. I don’t want to pay somebody to do the work for me. I’m not saying the other way is wrong; it just isn’t right for me. This keeps me sane, gives me the balance I need to—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Cat told him, touched that he seemed concerned about her reaction to this, as if it might somehow affect her opinion of him. If anything, it reinforced the feeling that Logan was a man who didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone, not even himself. At the same time, she was certain she had never met anyone more capable of stepping in and taking charge of a ranch the size of the Triple C.

“I’m not explaining exactly,” he said with a trace of impatience at the interruption. “I’m not saying we’ll be poor, either. We’ll make a good living here. It’s just that I don’t want you thinking that someday we’ll be building us a great big house to live in.”

Hiding a smile, Cat turned to look at their home. “No, but I do think it might need to be larger.”

“Why? We have plenty of room.”

Shrugging, she said, “You’re the one who said you wanted more children.”

He stared at her for a stunned second, then threw back his head and laughed.

The two draft horses, Jake and Angel, were all Quint wanted to talk about when they went to The Homestead for dinner on Sunday. “You should see them, Grandpa. They’re really big,” Quint declared with emphasis. “And they’re tall, too. About as tall as this room.”

Chase glanced at the dining room’s ten-foot ceiling and contained his skepticism. “That’s really tall.”

“Yeah, and Dad’s got harnesses for ’em to hitch ’em to things,” he stumbled a bit over the new terms, but it was his use of the word “dad” that had Chase glancing at his son-in-law, only to have his eye drawn to Cat, noting the glow in her eyes when she looked at Logan.

“What’s that thing you put over their heads, Dad?”

“A collar,” Logan supplied.

“You should see how big it is, Grandpa. If you try to put it on me, it falls to the ground—without even touching me.”

“You are pretty skinny,” Ty observed.

“Yeah, but it’s gigantic.” Quint made a big circle of his arms to show him.

“I think it’s time you did less talking and more eating,” Cat suggested.

Obligingly Quint picked up his fork and scooped it into his mashed potatoes. Chase filled the silence he left. “What do you have in the way of horse-drawn implements, Logan?”

“Right now, just a hayrack. I’ve got a line on a mower. I thought I’d check it out this next week.”

“We still have a sledge and an old buck rake stored in shed three,” Jessy recalled.

“Now that you mention it, we do.” Chase nodded. “I remember dragging all that stuff in there. I couldn’t have been much more than fourteen or fifteen.”

“Any idea about what kind of shape they’re in?” Logan asked. “I might be interested in buying them from you.”