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Shortly after breakfast the next morning, Tiny Yates stopped by The Homestead with the news that one of the mares had foaled. To Quint, this was monumental news, infinitely more pressing than making his bed. The instant Cat gave her permission, he bolted from the house and headed straight for the broodmare barn. Cat was almost grateful for his absence. All through breakfast it had been a strain to act as though everything was normal, that nothing out of the ordinary was about to occur.
A hundred times Cat wondered whether she ought to prepare Quint for the news. But she didn’t know what to say, just as she didn’t know how she was going to tell him that Logan was his father. It was almost a relief that all Quint wanted to talk about was the foal.
“He already stood up.” Quint sat atop the manger, gazing with rapt attention at the reddish brown foal lying in the straw, its slim sides rising and falling in sleep. “His legs were real wobbly, but they’ll get stronger. You can’t see his face now, but he’s got a white stripe just like Sierra’s,” he said, referring to the mare nosing at the fresh hay in the manger.
“He’s a beautiful foal.”
“Tiny says he’s gonna be the best-lookin’ one of this year’s batch.”
“He might be,” Cat agreed, nerves churning in her stomach. “I think it’s time for us to go. He needs his rest and you need to get cleaned up before dinner.”
“But it isn’t time for dinner yet.”
“Not yet,” she admitted. “But I bet by the time you get cleaned up and help set the table, it will be a lot closer than you think.”
“I’m not really dirty. All I gotta do is wash my hands and—”
“Wrong.” Forcing a laugh, she scooped him off the stall and set him down in the alleyway, accidentally knocking his cowboy hat askew.
Issuing a heavy sigh of resignation, Quint pushed his hat squarely on his head and started for the door at a plodding walk. Two seconds later, a new thought struck him. “I’ll have time to tell Grandpa about the new foal before I clean up, won’t I?”
“I think that can be arranged,” Cat agreed, smiling as he broke into a run.
At a slower pace, she followed him outside into the bright sunlight of late morning. The ranch yard was without its usual bustle of activity with so many hands off on roundup. The sleeping quiet of it was like a still picture of a ranch scene with its grouping of buildings, fences, the spring-green of the prairie grass beyond them and the tall blue sky arching into infinity. Quint was the little boy running through it, bound for the big white house on the knoll.
Intent on her gangly son, Cat didn’t notice the moving dust cloud along the east road, but the wind brought the thrum of an engine to her. Her heart skittered against her ribs when she recognized Logan’s pickup truck bearing down on the house. Quint saw it, too, and stopped to wait for her.
“It’s the sheriff.” His questioning look asked what he was doing here.
“Grandpa invited him to have dinner with us today.” The tension that had lived in the background since last night now leaped to the front.
Quint frowned in his quietly serious way. “But it isn’t dinnertime yet.”
“It’s okay.” But it felt far from okay as the pickup rolled to a stop near the house and Logan stepped out, dressed in jeans and a camel tan jacket. “Let’s go meet him, shall we?”
Cat didn’t wait for his agreement, striding toward Logan with a false eagerness, conscious of the power she had over this meeting and determined to be fair about it. She saw the sudden sharpening of Logan’s gaze. Guessing at the question, she gave a quick, small shake of her head, signaling that she hadn’t said anything to Quint about him.
“Hello, Logan.” She tried to sound breezy and friendly.
“Cat.” He touched his hat to her, then shifted his focus to Quint, flashing him a smile. The potency of it momentarily stunned her. It was something she had forgotten about him. “Hello, Quint. How’ve you been?”
“Fine.” Quint’s single-word answer seemed to hang there, leaving nothing to follow it.
Cat leaped into the void. “We were just on our way to the house to clean up for dinner. We’ve been down at the barn looking at a new foal.”
“It just got borned today,” Quint was quick to add.
“Boy or girl?” Logan directed, his question at Quint.
“A boy. Do you want to see him?”
“I sure would,” Logan replied, then glanced at Cat, the remnants of that smile creasing the corners of his eyes, “but maybe we should wait until after dinner.”
“Okay. I gotta go tell Grandpa about the colt,” Quint said and took off for the house.
As easily as that, Cat found herself alone in Logan’s company. Edgy and too proud to show it, she slipped the ends of her fingers into the pockets of her jeans and started toward the house. Logan joined her.
“You’re early,” she commented, for a moment irritated by that.
