by Elise Faber
Regret at Roosevelt Ranch
Roosevelt Ranch Book Four
Elise Faber
REGRET AT ROOSEVELT RANCH
BY ELISE FABER
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.
REGRET AT ROOSEVELT RANCH
Copyright © 2019 Elise Faber
ISBN-10: 1-946140-28-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-28-9
Cover Art by Jena Brignola
Roosevelt Ranch Series
Disaster at Roosevelt Ranch
Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch
Collision at Roosevelt Ranch
Regret at Roosevelt Ranch
Desire at Roosevelt Ranch
Owen,
You’re awesome, kind, and beyond wonderful.
Never stop being you.
I love you.
Contents
Roosevelt Ranch Series
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Roosevelt Ranch Series
Also by Elise Faber
Prologue
Henry
Henry wiped down the final table. He was beyond ready to go home and crash after a busy Sunday evening cooking at the diner.
He’d already flicked off the neon “Open” sign and dimmed the lights. The kitchen had been scrubbed and reset for the next morning’s breakfast rush, and he’d sent Tilly off about an hour earlier—she’d had a date, and Henry didn’t mind sweeping up or stocking the tables with all the necessities for the next day.
Paper napkins, ketchup, salt and pepper, sugar. They weren’t what had been on the tables in the Michelin-starred restaurant he’d cooked at while living in New York five years before, but they were his childhood.
His way of feeling close to his dad.
God, he missed his dad.
The bell hanging on the front door rang, and he mentally cursed at having forgotten to lock it.
Beginner mistake.
He’d worked half his childhood in the diner, had closed it down more times than he could count.
And somehow, he’d forgotten to lock the front door.
Hopeless.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed,” he said, deliberately not looking as he reached to straighten a salt shaker that was slightly askew.
“So, this is your place, is it?” The softly accented voice made him freeze.
Italy. Warm Tuscan sunlight, softly rolling hills through wine country. Cheese and pasta and pizza and . . . her.
He accidentally knocked the shaker to the floor. It didn’t break because this was a family place and they’d learned long ago that plastic was safer with the kiddos, but Henry watched in slow horror as the lid popped off and salt spread out on the tile floor.
Though his horror didn’t come from the spilled salt.
No. It came from the fact that she was there.
He turned. Saw for sure he hadn’t been mistaken.
She was there.
Isabella Mariano was in Darlington, Utah. Inside his restaurant.
“Buona notte, Henry.”
He’d last seen her as she’d gotten on a plane heading the opposite direction of where he’d needed her, flying away when he’d asked her to stay, bolting while his heart had been left to shatter.
“Isabella,” he said coldly.
If she noticed his tone, she didn’t comment on it.
Then again, she was good at that.
“What are you doing here?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything further.
She swept over to him, heels clicking on the tile floor, more beautiful than ever. Her brown hair fell in perfect waves, her killer body was clad in sleek designer clothes, and a diamond ring on her left ring finger sparkled in the dim light.
Diamond ring.
On her left hand.
He processed that, but her words still hit him like a two-by-four to the temple.
“I want you to cater my wedding.”
One
Henry
Henry was making a motherfucking Cobb salad.
Fuck it.
He was already in Hell. He might as well embrace it.
He slammed the metal bowl onto the counter, grabbed a head of romaine lettuce from the walk-in—and only romaine, because fuck the tasteless, useless iceberg variety—then walked back over to the stainless steel table that had served as the prep area for the last three decades Henry’s had been open.
His dad’s favorite meal.
The first quaintly American—Isabella’s wording, not his, because Henry would have called it old-fashioned and boring—thing that he’d cooked for the woman who he’d once hoped to marry.
The woman who’d abandoned him before he could ask, who’d left him when he’d had to go home and take care of his dying father.
The woman who’d supposedly loved him.
His eggs had five more minutes on the stove—because if he was replicating his dad’s favorite recipe, Henry figured he might as well also use the tricks his father had taught him as well. Thus, he’d boiled the eggs for three minutes then turned off the heat and covered them for another eighteen. He’d get perfectly yellow yokes without any unseemly green outer layer.
Worked. Every time.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
The only difference between his version and his dad’s was the quality of the produce. Fresh tomatoes from his garden, organic eggs and chicken from a local farmer, ridiculously expensive but delicious bacon.
Sighing, he washed the lettuce and shredded the chicken breast then chopped and fried up the bacon so it was in mouthwateringly, some might say heavenly, crispy bites. After setting it aside to drain, he spun and grabbed the eggs from the burner, peeling them with a practiced efficiency that only came from working close to twenty years in this very kitchen.
The white tore, exposing the perfect yellow yoke inside.
Rookie move.
“Dammit.” Henry dropped his chin to his chest and sighed. He wanted to throw the egg in the trash, but he had too much damned respect for the food that came into his kitchen to do such a thing. Instead, he set it aside to turn into egg salad later. Then he peeled the next egg.
No torn white on this one.
He grabbed his favorite knife and a heartbeat later perfectly even portions of egg lay on his cutting board. Next came the avocado.
“What are you doing?”
The voice made him jump and his knife slipped, slicing through his fingertip as easily as it had the egg earlier. He held back his f-bomb only because the voice that had startled him hadn’t belonged to an adult.
He gritted his teeth, wrapped his hand in a towel, and turned to face Allie.
Her m
om, and his long-time friend Melissa, stood behind her daughter, eyes trailing from his hand to the ingredients on his board.
Kelly would have been better.
Melissa’s sister and his best friend was hopeless when it came to food. She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between some lettuce and fixings in a bowl and the component parts of a Cobb salad.
Melissa, on the other hand?
She was a celebrity chef, complete with her own cooking show and cookbooks and an absolutely huge social media following. She definitely knew the ingredients of a Cobb salad.
“Who ordered the Cobb?” she asked, walking over to the metal strip that held any outstanding tickets. “The town knows that you don’t like making it. Someone have it in for you?”
He snorted.
Someone had it in for him, all right.
Her gaze trailed over the open tickets, no doubt seeing that no one had actually ordered the salad. He opened his mouth to come up with an excuse for why he was making it—aside from punishing himself that was.
Melissa raised her brows.
Henry just shrugged.
What could he say?
Bella had swept back into his life and driven him insane again?
Accurate, but more information than he was willing to share.
Luckily, Melissa didn’t know why the thought of making this particular dish always struck a chord with him.
She didn’t understand that it was the combination of past and present, of Isabella and his father, of pain and heartbreak and a really, really dark time. She also didn’t know that he had finally been moving on with his life, finally dating again and thinking about the future when who had waltzed into the restaurant less than twelve hours before?
The source of that pain and heartbreak and really dark time.
Or, one of the sources anyway. Because he couldn’t put his father’s death all on Isabella. She didn’t cause his dad’s heart attack or the triple bypass surgery or the subsequent complications after the surgery.
But she hadn’t been there.
Henry had asked, and Isabella hadn’t come.
And now she wanted him to cater her fucking wedding?
Yeah, that would happen as soon as Hell got its first snowy day.
Allie grabbed his wrist and gently peeled back the towel. Normally, Henry would have reacted faster, stopped her from seeing. But Isabella had rotted his brain, and he definitely was not operating on all cylinders. Allie’s eyes filled with tears. “Uncle Henry, I’m sorry. I—”
He finally got his shit together.
Squatting down in front of her, he brought his hand behind his back. “Not your fault,” he said and wiped away one of the glistening drops that slid free from her eyes to drip down her cheeks. “All this for a little scratch?”
“Th-that’s more than a scratch—”
It was.
But he wasn’t going to tell a first-grader that.
“Nope,” he said. “I’ve had way worse. This is nothing. Your mommy will slap a Band-Aid on for me, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Band-Aids make everything better.” She nodded sagely.
He chucked her under her chin and walked over to the kit that he kept on hand for just this reason. Not that he usually needed to use it. Typically, it was his part-time chef who’d been wounded. Not Henry.
Cuts. Catering weddings. So many new things.
Lucky him.
Stifling a sigh, Henry pulled out the kit then began washing the cut. “What are we learning how to cook today?”
He and Allie had been having weekly cooking lessons every Monday afternoon after she got out of school. It had started when Melissa had needed a spare set of adult eyes to keep track of Allie while she’d been filming and all other available adults had been busy working.
Desperate, she’d called him, and Henry . . . well, the kitchen had seen plenty of kiddos over the years. It wasn’t a big deal. He’d pulled out his old metal stool, positioned it next to him at the counter, and put Allie to work tearing basil leaves.
He’d taught Allie what a Caprese salad was that day.
She’d surprised him by being all-in to make homemade mozzarella cheese.
And he’d started living again.
So, Allie came by on Mondays.
Henry knew that. Which meant he shouldn’t have been surprised by her appearance, shouldn’t have allowed himself to be so caught up in the tangled fucking bullshit from his past that he hadn’t heard her coming.
First-graders weren’t quiet.
Case in point, Allie, tears now forgotten, pounding over to the hook that held her hot pink apron, yanking it off, and tying it on before walking quickly—because one of the first rules he’d had to be strict with her about was absolutely no running in the kitchen—over to where her stool stood along one wall and dragging it in place.
He and Melissa winced at a particularly loud screech.
“You don’t have to keep doing this, you know,” Melissa murmured, grabbing his hand from beneath the water and putting her Mom Skills to work.
“I like doing this,” he said. “Plus, give that babysitter of yours a break every once in a while.”
“You mean me? Or Rob? Because you certainly can’t mean Kelly.” Her lips twitched. “She’s got her hands more than full with the twins and Abby.”
Henry nudged her shoulder. “Why do you seem gleeful about that?”
“Only because she gave me the biggest runaround in middle and high school.”
“Good of you to admit it.” He flexed his fingers when Melissa finished with the bandage, testing his grip, and then slipped on a rubber glove so he could finish his shift and still be sanitary.
“I want to make a Brad Recipe!” Allie said, or rather yelled.
Because first-graders—or at least this one—were not quiet.
And though Henry wished he could say his flinch was volume-related, it wasn’t.
Because Brad was his dad. And a Brad Recipe was one that came straight from his father’s box of handwritten index cards. Allie had stumbled onto them a few months back, and it had been fine. The five years that had passed since he’d lost his dad hadn’t made the pain go away, but they did make the memories more palatable.
Henry could actually remember the good things.
Not succumb to regret and that huge yawning cavern that was in the place where his dad should be.
He swallowed hard, but forced out an “Okay.”
Which was all the encouragement Allie needed. She sprinted over to the shelf and pulled down the little plastic box then proceeded to search through it with all the relish of a girl after his own heart.
Food. Learning new techniques and recipes.
He dug chicks who were into food.
Like Isabella.
Fuck, he’d fallen for her hook, line, and sinker.
Melissa touched his shoulder. “You sure you’re”—her eyes trailed to the ingredient-laden board from his ill-advised Cobb salad—“up for this today?”
“Go.” He pushed her in the direction of the door. “Do fancy TV things. I’ve got this.”
She paused, turned back. “It’s just dubs, and I’ll reimburse you for the ingred—”
“Shh.” Another nudge since this was the same argument they had week after week. He didn’t need to be reimbursed for hanging with Allie. He loved the kid, just as much as he loved Kelly and Melissa and all their respective kiddos. They were family, and you didn’t charge family. Nope. No way. No how. “Go on now with you. Enjoy being a big-time chef.”
Her lips twitched, but she nodded and left, pressing a kiss to the top of Allie’s head as she did so.
Henry crossed over to his partner in crime. “So, what are we making?”
“This one!”
He glanced at the card she held up. “Black Forest Icebox Cake,” he read. “One of my favorites.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “We can also swap out the cherries and dark chocolate and make a cookies a
nd cream version.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Really really.”
She jumped up from the stool. “I’ll grab the cookies!”
“No samples on the way,” he called.
Allie’s shoulders dropped slightly in disappointment—Henry knew all her tricks by now—but she didn’t stop moving until she’d returned with the cookies and the rest of the ingredients he called out to her.
Once everything was set out and measured, she pushed up her sleeves and clapped her hands once. “Let’s get to work.”
Henry grinned as he handed her the cream to whip up in the mixer.
“Yes, let’s.”
Work was exactly what he should be focusing on.
Two
Isabella
Sunlight streamed through the window of Darlington’s only bed and breakfast, hitting her straight in her jet-lagged, emotionally exhausted brain.
Wincing, she rolled over and jammed a pillow over her head, desperate for a few more hours of sleep. She’d gone to bed too early then had been up most of the night before falling back asleep just as the first rays of sunshine had begun peeking over the hills in the distance.
The sun was well into the sky now, illuminating the tiny town that Henry called home.
In some ways, it reminded her of her small town, barely a blip on the surrounding geography, only a few streets to its name, and only a couple of thousand residents.
But where her home had been cold, this place was warm.
And she didn’t mean temperature either.