A Cowboy In The Kitchen. Meg Maxwell

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СКАЧАТЬ potato fries. When Annabel had peered through the little round window on the kitchen door to see how busy the dining room was, she saw the Dunkins lingering over cappuccino, deep in quiet conversation.

      “The restaurant sign could use some fresh paint,” West suddenly said, gesturing out the window where the Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen sign, hanging from a post by the white picket fence, clearly needed some sprucing up. Hmm. Guess West wasn’t interested in chatting about the Dunkins. Just bored by the small talk? She wasn’t sure. “And the walkway needs work. There are a couple of loose stones. It’s okay now, but in a few weeks they’ll come loose enough that someone could trip and sue you for everything.”

      Annabel closed her eyes, a swirl of panic shooting up her spine. There was no money. Gram admitted yesterday that the restaurant was losing money every day. There was little in the account for repairs. With everyone knowing Essie was out of commission, Hurley’s just wasn’t the same. Clementine had suggested holding a fundraiser; after all, didn’t everyone love Hurley’s? The place was a community treasure. But Gram had shot down that idea and had called it charity. You’re just as good a cook as I am, better probably, Gram had said this afternoon as she finished her potato chowder. There’s something special in your cooking. Folks just have to have the chance to know that. Give it time.

      “I’ll take care of it,” Annabel said to West, then instructed him to turn the heat off the vegetables. “We have some paint in the basement, I think. And I can probably watch a YouTube video on re-whatevering the stones on the path.” She made a mental note to check on the paint and look up “whatevering” stones.

      West eyed her, took a sip of his coffee and said, “It’ll take me ten minutes to do both myself. I’ll take care of it.” She watched him transfer the vegetables onto the cheese she’d had him sprinkle on the eggs, then showed him to carefully flip half the omelet over.

      She wanted to tell him to forget about it, but she wasn’t above accepting help when she really needed it. “I’d appreciate that, West. Thanks.”

      “Least I can do,” he said, plating the omelet. He cut it in two, then slid half onto another plate, added another handful of cherries and brought both plates to the table. He was getting pretty good at this. “Really. You have no idea.”

      So tell me, she wanted to shout.

      They sat down at the table and he took a couple of bites of the omelet. “This is delicious,” he said. “I really hope I can do this myself when you’re not standing beside me. You’re a good teacher, Annabel.” He took a long slug of his coffee, finishing it, then got up. “How’s tomorrow after the restaurant closes for the lunch lesson? Could you come to the ranch? My daughter will be spending the night at her grandparents’ house, so I’ll have extra time and I like the idea of learning to cook on-site. But if it’s too late, I can come here in the morning.”

      Alone with him at his house. At night. She cleared her throat. “Tomorrow after closing will be fine,” she said. “I’ll be over by nine-thirty. We close at nine, but I’ll need to help clean up.”

      He nodded, took his Stetson off the coat hook by the door and left, twenty different thoughts scrambling around Annabel’s head. But the one that stood out was about how she’d feel being over at the Montgomery Ranch. For the second time.

      * * *

      Tuesday afternoon, just an hour after Lucy had come racing off the school bus, waving her “sight words” quiz with 100% and a smiley face at the top, West rushed Lucy to Doc McTuft’s office, cursing himself with what was left of his breath. They’d been in the backyard, Lucy on the low sturdy branch of her favorite climbing tree, calling out words and spelling them, West nailing on the piece of wood for the roof of the new dollhouse he promised to make for her. One minute Lucy had been saying, “Daddy, look how high I am—am, A M!”—and she’d been so high that he called himself an idiot for not watching more closely—and the next, she let out a high-pitched yelp and was on the ground.

      Doc McTufts had assured him that Lucy was fine, no broken bones, and that the doc herself had fallen out of plenty of trees as a kid and lived to tell the tale to worried parents all over town. But of course, as they were settling up at the reception desk, who was giving him the stink eye but the Dunkins’ next-door neighbor, sitting with pursed lips next to her daughter and grandbaby. As West drove home, Lucy in her car seat in the back with her superhero coloring book, he figured the woman had already called Raina to let her know her poor granddaughter had almost been injured and had left the doc’s office with a big bandage over a nasty scrape.

      Lucy was all right. That was what mattered. But he would keep a better eye on her when she was climbing.

      “Daddy, can we have ice cream for dinner?” Lucy asked.

      “How about your second favorite for dinner and ice cream for dessert?” he asked, smiling at her in the rearview mirror.

      “French toast with strawberries for the mouth and blueberries for the eyes?”

      “Sounds good to me,” he said, feeling pretty confident about his French toast after yesterday’s cooking lesson. Plus, hadn’t Annabel said that she’d often eaten breakfast for dinner in Dallas when she was feeling low or missed her family? Comfort food. The very reason he ate at Hurley’s so often.

      He’d lain awake for hours last night, thinking about the cooking lesson. Annabel was so beautiful with that silky dark red hair caught in the ponytail, her pale, porcelainlike skin free of makeup, her long, lush body in low-slung jeans rolled up at the ankles and a loose white button down shirt tucked in. Her uniform, she’d called it. He called it sexy. She was like summertime, like sunshine, and her nearness, the scent of her, the sight of the swell of her breasts against the cotton shirt, the curve of her hip...it had been all he could do not to grab her against the wall and kiss her, memories of their time in the barn hitting him hard, as he’d shaken confectioners’ sugar on French toast, slid peppers around in the pan.

      And then she’d touched him, her soft hand, her skin electrifying his with the most casual of gestures, moving his hand over on the knife. Her touch had sent a shock through him and brought him back to the barn to forty-five minutes when he thought he’d found his future, when he thought everything made sense.

      Until it didn’t.

      Back then West had been going nowhere fast. Annabel would have joined him there if he’d let something happen between them. After he and Annabel had almost gone too far in the barn, he forced himself to stop for her sake and said he’d better get back to the house. She’d gotten a funny look on her face, and he’d wanted to ask her if she was okay, to get a handle on why she seemed upset, but she seemed in a hurry to get away. From him. Maybe she’d just meant to pay her condolences, nice enough to bring him his favorite chili con carne that he always ordered to go after school, and he’d practically ripped her clothes off. Jerk. Maybe she was just being nice and he’d taken things too far, like always.

      So then they’d gone back to the house so she could say goodbye to his parents, but his parents were standing outside, his mother crying, his father’s arm over her shoulder, and they’d seen West and Annabel come out of the barn. He held back a bit and it was too late to tell Annabel she had a bit of hay in her hair. He saw his mother stare at the hay, then glance at him, disapproval turning her grief-stricken eyes cold. West doing the wrong thing again—fooling around with a girl in the barn while friends and neighbors came to pay their respects. That wasn’t how it was, but it was how it had looked to his parents. West was sure of it.

      Annabel had told his parents how sorry she was for their loss, glanced at West with such sorrow, then СКАЧАТЬ