"He told me the arrangement." She said the word plainly, without judgment or punctuation around it. "I want you to know I don't think less of you for it. Times are what they are, and my son needed help I couldn't give him, and you needed something I understand wanting." She picked up a biscuit and split it with her thumbs. "And I want you to know I'm grateful."
I hadn't expected that. "Oh?—"
"Let me finish." Not unkind. Just clear. "This ranch has been in our family for four generations. Gage's grandfather built the main house with his own hands. His father—" She paused. Set the biscuit down. "His father would have run it into the ground if Gage hadn't stepped in at nineteen years old and held it together with sheer stubbornness. I love that man, I do…but Gage’s daddy has always had more of an artist’s soul than a rancher’s.”
I kept quiet. Waited for her to finish.
She went on.
"Arlo is not going to take it." Her voice was even but her hands weren't—she pressed them flat to the table for just a moment, like she was steadying something. "I don't care what that judge ruled, I don't care what paperwork he thinks entitleshim to anything. This land stays with my son and his children." She looked at me steadily. "So yes. I'm grateful."
"I'm glad I could—I mean." I stopped. Started again. "I wanted this too. I want you to know that. It wasn't just—I genuinely want a baby. This wasn't just a transaction for me."
Peggy looked at me for a long moment.
"I know," she said simply. "I can tell."
I nodded, wrapping both hands around my mug.
"Gage mentioned his uncle—that’s Arlo, right?" I said carefully. "He didn't tell me very much."
"No." Her mouth pressed briefly thin. "He wouldn't. He doesn't like to worry people." She said it like it was a flaw she'd long since made her peace with. “He’s like his dad in that way—one of theonlyways.”
I smiled. “I guess…I don’t know Gage well enough to know if he has an artist’s soul or not.”
She gave me a genuine smile, wrinkling her nose slightly. “Oh…you’ll get to know him well.”
That felt…personal.Verypersonal.
“I don’t mean like that, honey,” she snorted. “He likes you. He wouldn’t have done all this if he didn’t.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “But—I mean, this is just a business thing for the land inheritance?—”
“It’s not,” she said. “My son…he’s never wanted anything for himself, and he could have afforded a surrogate if he really wanted that. But he wantedyou.” She met my eyes, and I noticed she had those same crinkles at the corners that Gage did. “It’s remarkable that you’re here—and really…I think he would have asked you out, if he wasn’t always so focused on his work.”
I bit my lip. Took a big sip of my coffee and tried to still my racing heart.
"He's had girls," Peggy continued, reading something in my expression that I hadn't meant to show. "Here and there.Nothing that stuck. The ranch always came first and the women who came through figured that out eventually and moved on, and I don't think any of them were wrong to." She said it without apology, just honesty. "That's who he is. The land is in him the same way breathing is. You can't ask a man like that to put it down."
She picked up her biscuit again.
"But he called me after he met you," she said, "and he didn't sound like a man who was solving a problem. He sounded like a man who'd been surprised." A small pause. "Gage does not get surprised. He accounts for things. Plans around them. The fact that you caught him off guard—" She shook her head, something fond in it. "That's not nothing."
I looked down at my coffee.
“I get that,” I said. “I mean…I plan around everything. You should see my pregnancy planner.”
She laughed. I laughed. It feltgood.
Then…I paused.
“This Arlo guy,” I said. “Is he dangerous?”
Peggy was quiet for a moment. Not the kind of quiet that meant she was deciding whether to tell me—more the kind that meant she was deciding how.
"He's not a good man," she said finally. "He's never been a good man. But dangerous—" She turned her mug slowly. "Dangerous implies he'd do something direct, and Arlo has never been direct a day in his life. He's a picker. A nudger. He finds the weak place in a thing and he works at it until it gives." She paused. "The legal challenge is very Arlo. It costs him almost nothing and it costs us time and money and sleep, and that's exactly what he wants."
"But you're not sure that's all he wants."
