Hot Westmoreland Nights

by Brenda Jackson

  “No.”

  He lifted a brow. “No?”

  She nodded. “No. I don’t work for CDS.”

  He frowned. “Well, who do you work for then? I didn’t contact any other employment agency for a cook.”

  “I work for myself.”

  She could tell her answer surprised him. “Yourself?”

  “Yes, and while I’m at it, I might as well tell you that I’m not really a cook. I enjoy cooking but normally do so for pleasure.”

  Ramsey didn’t say anything for a long time, he just stared at her with an intense look in his eyes. He was angry to a degree that she had never seen before in him. Even when they’d been at odds with each other during that first week, he hadn’t been this angry.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” he said through gritted teeth. “Who are you? If the employment agency didn’t send you and you’re not a bona fide ranch cook, then who are you and why did you pretend to be Nellie’s replacement?”

  Her hands nervously clenched into fists at her side. Now she wished that she had been more insistent when she’d wanted to tell him the truth a week ago. There was no doubt in her mind that now he would think the worst of her.

  She stared at him, saw the hard, cold look in his eyes and knew it was too late. She cleared her throat. “I saw you last month in downtown Denver, going into a feed store. I thought then that you would be perfect.”

  “Perfect for what?” he almost asked in a snarl.

  She swallowed deeply. “To be on the cover of Simply Irresistible magazine.”

  She watched the expression on his face as the implications of what she’d said became clear. “Do you mean to tell me that you work for that magazine?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Then what exactly?”

  She nibbled on her bottom lip. “I don’t work there exactly. I own the magazine.”

  The next thing Chloe thought was that if looks could kill, she would definitely be dead…but not before getting sheared first. She watched Ramsey’s lips tighten, his jaw clench and the eyes that glared at her appeared to be dark orbs. “And just what were you doing here that morning?”

  “I had come to talk to you about being featured in my magazine,” she answered.

  “Why?” he said in a tone so sharp it almost made her flinch. “I’d told the person who called I wasn’t interested.”

  “I know, but I wanted to meet with you personally. Try to persuade you to change your mind.”

  He shook his head. “So instead you decided to pretend to be my cook and sleep with me?”

  She did flinch at that. “No. That’s not true. I tried to tell you the reason I was here, but you were in a hurry to leave that morning and you left me here with your front door wide open.”

  “Because I assumed you were the cook,” he snapped.

  “I never told you I was the cook, Ramsey. And you assumed wrong. Once I walked inside your house, the phone rang. It was the lady from the employment agency who said that the cook you were expecting wouldn’t be coming. I could have left you in a hot mess, especially after you indicated you would have twenty hungry men to feed come lunchtime. But I decided to help you out.”

  “Why? So I could feel I owed you something and do that damn cover?”

  “Initially, yes. I’d even planned to squeeze an interview out of you as well.”

  She could tell her answer, as honest as it could get, only made him angrier. She saw it in his features to such a point where she actually felt her heart in her throat. “But like I said, that was at first, Ramsey. Once I got to know you—”

  “Spare me. Lady, you have some nerve. Pretending to be someone else and—”

  “And what? Helped you out for two weeks? I tried to tell you the truth a few days ago, but you wouldn’t listen. You said we would put off any serious talk until today. So you can’t hold that against me.”

  Ramsey snorted at that and the scowl on his face deepened. “I can hold it against you and I do. You should never have been here under false pretenses in the first place. As far as having a cook, I would have worked something out. You didn’t need to do me any favors. And regardless of what you did for me, I still would not have posed on the cover of that magazine, so your plan wouldn’t work.”

  “Once I got to know you, Ramsey, the cover didn’t matter anymore,” she implored, thinking she had never met a more bull-headed man.

  “And you expect me to believe that?” he asked in an angry tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything else you’ve failed to tell me?”

  She shrugged. “My father is a senator from Florida. Senator Jamison Burton. My mother died when I was two and my father raised me by himself. My home is in Florida.”

  Ramsey stared at her, not believing what little he’d known about her.

  “And the reason I could not deceive you any longer, the reason I wanted to tell you the truth that day after we’d made love was because I knew I was falling in love with you.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “If being dishonest is your idea of falling in love, Chloe, then you need to keep your love to yourself because I don’t want any part of it.”

  He breathed in deeply and grabbed his Stetson off the rack. “I’m leaving and I want you packed up and out of here by the time I get back.”

  And then he walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

  Ramsey’s hands tightened on the steering wheel of his truck as he drew in a deep breath, not believing what had just taken place. What he had just walked away from. And just to think he’d intended to pour his heart out to Chloe, tell her how much he loved her, and all it had been for her was nothing more than a sinister plan to get him to pose on the cover of that damn magazine.

  A part of him felt torn up inside, absolutely wrecked. Anger, the likes he’d never known before, was consuming him. He was driving with no particular destination in mind. It was Sunday, and most of his family had gone to church. Dillon and Pamela had left for the airport that morning to return to Gamble, and Callum and Zane had driven to see a rodeo in Oklahoma. Maybe it was for the best because he sure as hell didn’t feel like socializing with anyone right now.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and hit his fist against the steering wheel. How could he have been so stupid to let his guard down? Why was he always the last to know anything about a woman’s trickery? It hadn’t been any different with Danielle. Although he’d been relieved she’d ended the wedding, the fact still remained that she had made a fool of him.

  He pulled back into the road. He’d meant what he said. Chloe had better be gone by the time he got back. And he hoped like hell that he never saw her again.

  “Here, drink this,” Lucia said, handing Chloe a cup of herbal tea. “It will help your headache.”

  Chloe glanced up at her friend, not wanting to tell her it wasn’t her head that was hurting as much as her heart. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the cup of hot tea.

  “And now you need to go take a shower and get into bed.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “Lou, it’s the middle of the day.”

  “Yes, but a nap might make you feel better.”

  Chloe shrugged. “I doubt it.” She knew nothing would make her feel better unless Ramsey was to walk through that door and tell her that he believed her, that he knew she truly did love him, and that even though she had planned on making him indebted to her initially, she had discarded that plan once she’d fallen in love with him.

  An hour later Chloe still sat curled up on Lucia’s sofa. Lucia had finally left to go have Sunday dinner with her parents. Chloe felt she needed this time alone to go back over and over in her mind what happened earlier that day at Ramsey’s house, and everything else that had transpired from the moment she’d driven onto his property over two weeks ago.

  She thought of the angry words he had spoken to her before he’d left his home, ordering her to pack up and leav
e before he got back. A part of her had wanted to rebel and be there when he returned to have it out with him. But then there was nothing she could say that she hadn’t already said.

  And he hadn’t believed her.

  It had been a teary ride from Ramsey’s ranch all the way to Lucia’s home, and now she knew she couldn’t remain in Denver. It was clear as the nose on her face that there was nothing here for her anymore. But a part of her refused to run.

  Chances were her and Ramsey’s paths would not cross anytime soon, so that would give her the time she needed to recover from a broken heart.

  His men were watching him and Ramsey was well aware that they’d been watching him off and on for the past couple of weeks. Today he would do something he usually didn’t do. Ignore them.

  And for good reason. They wanted something he could not deliver. They wanted Chloe back. Nellie had returned and although he’d had a talk with her before allowing her back in his kitchen, after one good week she was sliding back into her old ways. The men, like him, were comparing what they had now with what they’d had for two weeks.

  A part of Ramsey wanted to shout at them, to tell them that although Chloe’s cooking skills were superb, she was not a cook. She had done it for fun. It had been all a part of her deliberate scheme to get him indebted to her.

  His cell phone rang and he welcomed the excuse to leave the table and answer it in private. He had stepped into the living room when he spoke into his cell after checking the Caller ID. “Yes, Dillon?”

  “I was asked to call and talk to you. To try and convince you to get that chip off your shoulder you’ve been carrying around for almost ten years but has gotten most noticeable the last two weeks.”

  Ramsey rubbed his hands down his face. He could imagine which one of his relatives had called Dillon. It could have been any one of them. He hadn’t been in the best of moods and they all knew it. And they had no idea as to why.

  “I don’t need this, Dillon.”

  “Okay, but can I ask you one thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love her?”

  The question, to Ramsey’s way of thinking, came out of the blue. It was one he definitely hadn’t expected. But with Dillon he would be honest because even now, his very heart, every part of his body, knew the true answer.

  “Yes, I love her.”

  Dillon was silent for a moment and then he said, “She might have set out to deceive you. However, you did admit that she wanted to confess all, but you talked her out of saying anything.”

  “Yes, but only because I assumed she wanted to talk about something else.”

  “Does it matter? I can’t help but remember the woman who for two solid weeks got up before five o’clock every morning and cooked two meals a day for your men. She befriended them. And when you think about it, she really could have left you in a bind. Even you admitted the guys worked harder while she was there and that they broke all kinds of shearing records.”

  Ramsey threw his head back. “Is there a point you’re trying to make, Dillon?”

  “Just a suggestion.”

  “Which is?” Ramsey said in a hard tone.

  “Basically the same one you gave me a few months back. You were the one who told me that in some things you need to know when and how to adjust your thinking, to be flexible. Especially if it’s a woman you want.”

  “I don’t want, Chloe. At least not in my life.”

  “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

  Ramsey knew that, but now, he wasn’t sure. When it came to Chloe, the woman still had him tied in knots. And he wasn’t sure about anything, other than the fact that he still loved her.

  He pulled in a deep breath. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t been able to adjust his thinking when it came to Chloe. It had been a while since he’d had a woman in his life and over the years he’d gotten pretty set in his ways. But what Dillon said was right. She hadn’t had to hang around preparing those meals for his men for two weeks. She could have bailed after the first day. But she hadn’t.

  She had told him that she loved him, but he’d never told her that he loved her as well. Instead he had asked her to leave. What if she’d left town? Suddenly he didn’t want to think about that possibility.

  But he did. He thought about it a lot. He was still thinking about it later that evening when he and Callum got together to shoot a game of pool over at one of the local pool halls they frequented. The thought that if she were to leave Denver he would not be able to find her grated on his mind. As well as the thought that he needed to let her know that he had appreciated what she’d done for two weeks, feeding his men good food, letting them know they were appreciated. She had gone out of her way to put a little sunshine in their days.

  All right, he would be the first to admit he probably did still carry around that chip on his shoulder that might have caused him to overreact. After all, she had tried telling him something that day, but he hadn’t wanted to hear anything she’d had to say, fearing the worst and not wanting to deal with it. And although her original intentions might not have been honorable, she had stayed around, hung in and made a difference.

  His thoughts shifted back to the possibility that she had not remained in Denver. Not being able to take not knowing any longer, he turned and handed his pool cue to Callum. “I’m going after her.”

  Callum accepted the cue stick and merely rolled his eyes. “About time.”

  Ramsey raised a brow. “And you think you can talk?”

  Callum gave him a sly smile. “Yes, now that I’ve made up my mind about something.”

  Ramsey would have taken the time to inquire just what that something was had he not been so eager to head out the door.

  Chloe pushed away from her desk and glanced out the window. It was hard to believe it had been three weeks since she had left Ramsey’s ranch. Three solid weeks and this morning her suspicions had been confirmed. She was pregnant.

  If she thought hard enough she figured there were a number of times they had gotten careless, like one of those times in the shower. But it really didn’t matter when it happened, the fact remained that it had happened. Now she had to decide whether she would tell him before returning to Florida. He had a right to know, but whether she would tell him now or later, she just wasn’t sure.

  She had had lunch with Ramsey’s sisters last week. Evidently, he was in rare form and they figured his less-than-desirable attitude lately had had something to do with her. Chloe was surprised he hadn’t told them the entire story and fighting back tears she’d ended up telling them everything. How she had initially deceived him and then fell in love with him. Instead of taking their brother’s side as she had figured they would do, they ended up crying right along with her. They were convinced she loved Ramsey and that it was a shame he couldn’t see it for himself. They were convinced once he thought things through he would see the truth for himself. If only she could believe that.

  Chloe stood and walked over to the window to continue to look out. Her work here in Denver was finished and Lucia would be handling things from here on out. Her east coast staff was presently looking for a new prospect for the October issue of Simply Irresistible, and that was fine with her. She was ready to move on.

  Going back to her desk, she picked up her cell phone to call Lucia who had left that morning for Atlanta to sit in on a leadership workshop with a few of Chloe’s other employees. She got Lucia’s answering machine. “Lou, I’m not feeling well, so I’m going to leave early for your place. That’s where I’ll be if you need me for anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow when you return.”

  Feeling tired and sleepy, Chloe took a long nap as soon as she got home. When she awoke, she saw it had gotten dark outside and she felt hungry. Reminding herself that although her pregnancy was in the very early stages, that whenever she ate she was eating for two, she went into the kitchen and prepared a meal.

  Hours later she had showered, changed into her favori
te yellow sundress and had grabbed a book to read when the doorbell sounded. Chloe went to the door and glanced through the peephole. Her breath caught in her chest and she pressed a hand to her throat. Standing on Lucia’s front porch was the man who’d captured her heart, the father of the baby she carried in her womb. Ramsey Westmoreland.

  When Chloe opened the door, Ramsey could only stand there and stare at her. At that moment he thought the same thing he had that first morning he’d seen her: She was beautiful.

  He did recall that morning. He remembered how he’d tried getting away from her once he saw how attracted he’d been to her. That was something that had not been her fault. And he had done something that morning so unlike him. He had raced off in his truck, leaving his front door open to a stranger. He had assumed she was the cook and he hadn’t given her time to state otherwise.

  Once he’d knocked the chip off his shoulder and had taken the time to analyze the situation, sort out the mess, he saw he had contributed to the misunderstanding. She was right in saying that although her original plans may not have been honorable, she had hung around and helped him out. He could just imagine how things would have turned out if she hadn’t.

  “Ramsey, what are you doing here?”

  Her question brought his attention back to the present. “I’d like to talk to you, if at all possible.”

  He saw the wary look in her eyes before she nodded, opened the door wider and then moved aside.

  When he passed her the first thing Chloe thought was that Ramsey certainly smelled good. And he looked good, too. He was wearing a pair of jeans, a western shirt and boots. He had removed the Stetson from his head once he’d entered the house.

  Not asking him to sit, she turned to him. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I owe you an apology. You did try to level with me that day and I stopped you from doing so. Actually, I was afraid to let you.”

  Chloe lifted a brow. “Why?”

  “If you recall, it was the same day my three sisters came to visit and I, of all people, know how overwhelming they can be. I thought that perhaps they may have tried boxing you into a corner about a relationship with me. I haven’t been involved with a woman in a while and was afraid you might have begun feeling forced into a situation you weren’t quite ready for, and I didn’t want to hear you say it. Especially after I’d made plans to ask you to continue a relationship with me once your time was up at the ranch.”