A Cowboy In The Kitchen. Meg Maxwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ his mother crying again and his father comforting her. The sound of his mother crying was like a slam in his gut, and West had stood there, frozen, his head hung, wishing he could go in and say the right thing, but he’d known, he’d always known, that he wasn’t “living up to their expectations” and he’d be no comfort, that the wrong Montgomery brother was gone. Then he’d heard his mother say Annabel’s name and he strained to hear.

      Did you see West and Annabel come out of the barn together? his mother was saying. She had hay in her hair. Hopefully her grandmother will have the sense to tell Annabel to stay away from West. I hear she has a scholarship to culinary school in Dallas. I’d hate for her to give up her future.

      West had gone rigid. He’d waited for his father’s response, for some kind of defense, but his dad had said, She won’t give that up to stay in Blue Gulch.

      Plenty of girls give up their dreams for handsome boys they’re in love with, his mother had said. Annabel has her whole life ahead of her, and West will be here, doing what? Odd jobs. New girlfriend every weekend. I love West, but he’s...who he is.

      Who he is... His heart in his throat, he’d crept back upstairs, lying awake for a long, long time, tears streaming down his face. He’d lost his brother. His parents thought he was nothing. And now he had to lose Annabel—to save her...from himself. His mother was right. Annabel was a good girl, straight A’s, helped out her grandmother by working in the family restaurant every day after school as a cook’s assistant and sometimes as a waitress when someone called in sick. And West was the troublemaker in the black leather jacket, calls to his parents from the principal about fights he got into with jerk jocks who thought they could say anything they wanted about anyone. And yeah, since barely graduating, he worked for room and board at a big spread on the outskirts of town, thinking he might want to be a rancher, breed cattle, raise horses. His dad was a mechanic who’d tried his hand at starting a small ranch on their property and hadn’t done well, so his father had figured West would fail at that life too. But West wasn’t like Garrett, who’d joined the military and planned to become a police officer, a trajectory his parents could be proud of.

      Back then he’d lain awake for hours, vowing to avoid Annabel Hurley so that he wouldn’t screw up her life. In the barn, she’d taken off her sweater, let him touch her breasts in the lacy white bra, and kissed him deeper and deeper, driving him wild until he’d stopped things, afraid to go too far and take advantage of the situation.

      So yeah, she liked him. That had been clear. Liked him enough to give up her scholarship and Dallas? Maybe. So he’d made the decision to avoid her from that moment on, let her go have her great life with a better guy than him.

      And when Lorna Dunkin had told him the next day that she knew exactly how to make him forget his grief for a little while, looking him up and down and whispering in his ear, he took her to the flat-topped boulder where he often saw Annabel picking herbs for her grandmother, and he let Lorna help him forget everything—losing his brother, his parents’ disappointment in him, his disappointment in himself and giving up Annabel for her own damned good. At some point, he’d heard the crack of a twig and he knew it was her, knew that she saw, and the footsteps running away let him know he’d achieved his goal.

      Some damned victory.

      Except about six weeks later, Lorna had shown him a white stick that looked like a thermometer with a pink plus sign in a tiny window and said she wanted a big wedding.

      Lucy had made everything he’d given up worth it. But those times when he’d be stacking hay or training a horse, he’d think of Annabel’s beautiful face, those round dark brown eyes, full of trust, of feeling, and he’d feel like the scum of the earth. He’d hurt her, no doubt. But hadn’t she gone off to Dallas to the fancy cooking school? Hadn’t he stepped out of her way? He’d heard she had a condo in a swanky apartment building near Reunion Tower. That she was a chef at a Michelin-starred American fusion restaurant, whatever that meant. She probably had a serious boyfriend in a fancy suit.

      With Lucy lying on her stomach on the living room rug with her coloring book, Daisy half snoozing nearby, West opened the folder of recipes Annabel had given him. Breakfast was written in red marker on the tab in her neat script. He found the one for French toast, and set to work, cracking eggs, melting butter in the pan, getting out the bread. Soon enough he had four slices of French toast cooking, eyeholes cut out for blueberries and a mouth cut out for strawberry slices for Lucy’s portion. Smelled pretty darned good too.

      He thought about all those women coming by, in the first couple of months after Lorna died, with casseroles and offers to cook for him. There’d been innuendo and flat-out invitations. More than a few times he’d taken up those invitations, needing to forget, to be taken out of himself. And more than a few times he’d failed Lucy. One time he’d been in a woman’s bed when he was supposed to pick up Lucy early from school for a dentist appointment, but the woman had made him forget himself so well he forgot his own daughter. Another time Lucy had been calling him over and over on the phone from Lorna’s parents’ house, where she was sleeping over, to tell him she lost a tooth, her first, but he’d shut the ringer so no one could interrupt him while a stranger with big breasts was naked beside him.

      The next morning, the look of absolute disdain and disappointment on Raina Dunkin’s face had said it all. A father, especially a widowed father, needs to be reachable at all times, West, she’d practically spit at him. But it was the look on Lucy’s face, with one of her bottom front teeth gone, the where were you, Daddy? I tried to call you like one million times that had made him vow that was it. No more women. No more whiskey. No more hiding from his life. He’d focus on his daughter.

      So beautiful women with long red hair and dark brown eyes, who made him want to rip off their loose jeans and white button-down shirts, women like Annabel Hurley, just couldn’t go around casually touching his hand while slicing mushrooms.

      “Daddy, I think Daisy ate my silver crayon,” Lucy called from the living room. “She’s choking!”

      West rushed into the living room, where Daisy was sputtering a bit, trying to get something out of her mouth and pushing on her teeth with her paw.

      “Daddy, is Daisy okay?” Lucy asked, hazel eyes worried.

      “Well, let’s see if we can help her,” he said, kneeling beside Daisy and opening the beagle’s mouth, where half a crayon was wedged in her back teeth. “Daisy, that couldn’t possibly have tasted good,” he said, shaking his head and trying to pop up the flattened, bitten crayon. Finally out it came. As the smell of something burning wafted into the living room, Daisy stood up and spit out the other half of the crayon.

      Damn it, the French toast! It would be burned to a crisp by now.

      The doorbell rang just as West was rushing back into the kitchen, so he quickly shut off the burner, then noticed he’d left the bag of bread too close to the burner; part of it started to cinder. He threw that in the sink and stood there for a moment, hands braced on the counter, wishing his headache away.

      “Daddy, the doorbell rang again,” Lucy called out just as the smoke alarm started blaring.

      “Lucy, it’s Nana and Pop-Pop,” he heard Raina’s shrill voice call out. “Come open the door, sweetheart.”

      Oh, hell.

      He quickly tried to fan the smoke from the alarm with a magazine, then hurried into the living room, where Raina and Landon glared at him.

      “What is that burning smell?” Raina said, barreling in and heading for the kitchen. West could hear her shoving up the kitchen window, and in a few moments, СКАЧАТЬ