A Cowboy In The Kitchen. Meg Maxwell

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СКАЧАТЬ worked as a waitress at the restaurant. Annabel could use the money to keep inventory up, at least. For a few days anyway. Again she wondered if her older sister, Georgia, would come home. A businesswoman in Houston, Georgia was sorely needed at the restaurant to run the office, manage the financials. But she hadn’t responded to Clementine’s or Annabel’s calls for two days now.

      “Hattie, Gram’s assistant cook, could probably teach you,” Annabel said, realizing that despite needing his three hundred dollars for the six-week course, she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with him in close quarters, reminded of the night they’d shared, how she’d almost given all of herself to him and how he’d taken up with Lorna Dunkin the next day.

      The next day. All over each other on the flat-topped boulder near where she went to pick herbs every afternoon. Their rock. She’d seen them with her own eyes.

      Annabel turned away for a moment, chastising herself for how much it still stung, still hurt.

      “Please, Annabel. I’m desperate.”

      “Desperate to learn to make biscuits?” she snapped before she could catch herself. Seven years ago was seven years ago. You’re not eighteen and he’s not nineteen. He’s a widower, for Pete’s sake. A single father. And for some reason, he is desperate to learn to make biscuits.

      He frowned as he stared at her. “Will you teach me to cook or not?” The hat went back on. “You can condense the class if you want, an hour a few times a week for two weeks, early in the morning before opening or after closing—whenever’s convenient.” He took a pen from his back pocket, filled out another check, and held it out to her. “A thousand dollars. Please, Annabel.”

      A thousand dollars? Oh, heck. That she couldn’t turn down. You’ll get through it, she told herself. You’ll show him how to roast a chicken and cut up potatoes and that’ll be that. No big whoop. She glanced at him, then began stirring the biscuit batter even though it had thickened too much and was a lost cause. “The restaurant is closed on Mondays, so we might as well take advantage of using the kitchen. Be here at six sharp tomorrow. I’ll assume you don’t have your own apron.”

      His shoulders relaxed and he handed her the check. “Actually I do. My daughter made it for me during craft time at her camp last summer. Her colorful handprints are all over it.”

      She felt for the little girl who’d lost her mother. Annabel knew what that was like.

      “Normally I wouldn’t take this,” she said, tucking the check in the back pocket of her jeans. “But things have been slow around here for the past few months since Gram got sick and didn’t tell anyone. We could use the money.”

      He nodded and turned to leave.

      “You don’t mind that you’re not getting Gram as your cooking teacher?” she asked. Have you thought about me once in all these years? Why did you call a halt to...things that night?

      She knew why—thought she did anyway. Because it had dawned on him that he was getting hot and heavy with Geekabel. She’d just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He’d been grief-stricken over his brother’s death and out of his mind; she’d been there with whatever comfort he’d needed. Then he must have opened his eyes and seen a too-skinny, frizzy-haired girl he’d never even noticed before, realized he’d been about to make love to Geekabel, sent her home and taken up with sexy, stacked Lorna Dunkin, with her platinum blond hair and 32-D chest and high heels. Annabel doubted that West even remembered her at all.

      He turned back and held her gaze so intensely she had to look away. “I still think about that chili con carne you made me the day my brother died. I’ve never forgotten how good it was or how it actually managed to distract me for a minute from my grief. And you were how old, barely eighteen?”

      So he did remember. An image pushed into her mind, of finding him sitting atop that big rock near the field where her gram had always sent her to collect chickweed and henbit, his arms wrapped around his knees, his head down, his back shaking. West Montgomery, sobbing, his older brother, an army soldier, killed in Afghanistan.

      He shifted, straightening his Stetson and digging his hands in pocket. “Anyway.”

      “Anyway,” she said, unable to stop the memory of the way he’d held her seven years ago in the barn where he’d hidden out during most of the sympathy visits to his parents’ house. He’d eaten the chili and they’d talked some, and she’d known he wanted to say thank you but couldn’t speak, wanted comfort but couldn’t ask for it, so he’d just hugged her tightly and held on for a full minute, Annabel gripping his shoulders. He’d kissed her then, her knees actually buckling from the surprise, the sensation, the dream, and he’d picked her up and laid her down on the blanket in the straw.

      She shook herself out of the memory and thought back to what he said, about her chili distracting him from his grief. Was that why he wanted to learn to cook? To help with his loss of his late wife? He didn’t look sad. If anything, he looked...worried. He hadn’t said he wanted to learn to cook. He said he needed to. There was a story there, she’d bet on it.

      He pulled a tissue from the pocket of his leather jacket and leaned over, dabbing it at her cheek. “Batter,” he said. “See you tomorrow at six.”

      Annabel watched him head back up the path and get into his silver pickup. What the heck had she just agreed to?

      * * *

      At five-thirty on Monday, West took a bite of the homemade chicken tenders he’d cooked for his daughter and shook his head. What the blast was he doing wrong? He’d followed the recipe he found online. Put chicken in beaten egg, coat with flour, then fry in oil in a pan. What was so hard? Why didn’t it taste like the chicken he had last week at Hurley’s? It didn’t even come close to the chicken dinners Lorna had served, which, granted, were nuggets from a big bag in the freezer. He’d relied on frozen, takeout and hot dogs too often. No more. But proof that he needed a cooking teacher was on the plate in front of him. And his daughter.

      He looked over at six-year-old Lucy sitting across from him at the dining room table in their ranch house, his heart clenching as always at how much he loved her, how beautiful she was, her dark ringlets bouncing on her narrow shoulders with every poke of her fork at the green beans she wasn’t eating. She’d had four bites. According to Lucy’s pediatrician at her last checkup, that was perfectly normal for a six-year-old. She’d eaten two bites of the baked potato, which wasn’t quite soft enough, even though he’d followed an online recipe to the letter—wrap in foil and bake for fifty minutes at 425 degrees—and then added some extra butter to make up for it. She’d eaten two bites of chicken. And she’d taken one sniff of a green bean and snuck it under the table to an always-hungry Daisy, their beagle.

      “One more bite of chicken?” he said to Lucy.

      She smiled, the dimple that matched his popping out in her left cheek, her big, round hazel-green eyes, just like her mother’s, darting to her lap. “Okay, Daddy.”

      He watched her pick up a piece of the chicken with her fingers and surreptitiously slide her hand under the table where he knew Daisy was waiting. “Lucy Montgomery,” he chastised, but couldn’t help the smile.

      Hell, he didn’t want to eat his tough, bland dinner either. He scooped up Lucy from the table and held her tight, her arms around his neck the best feeling in the world. “You be a good girl for Miss Letty. She’s going to watch you while I’m at a cooking class.”

      Annabel Hurley СКАЧАТЬ