by Lissa- Sugar
They’d done it out of kindness, to divert her from the reality of the death of her mother. Well, their mother, too; Jake, Caleb and Travis had loved their stepmom as much as Lissa and her sisters had, and her death had been a terrible blow.
Lissa shut one cupboard door, yanked open another, slammed it shut, spun around and glared what she’d found of the kitchen’s bounty.
Four dusty cans of Spam.
Two cans of white beans.
Ketchup.
Six loaves of stale bread.
A bin of heading-for-eternity potatoes and another of mostly overgrown onions.
And a bottle of sweet chili sauce. She refused to waste time trying to figure out what in hell a staple of Thai cuisine was doing here, metaphorically rubbing elbows with Spam.
Which brought her to riddle time. The Triple G version.
Take six hungry men. Seven, if you counted Gentry and she supposed she had to. Add this stuff, stir well and what did you have?
Not much.
Certainly not the makings of a decent meal.
She’d come down the stairs minutes ago, wearing the same clothes she’d spent the day in, her damp hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d been running because it was so late and who knew what the Master of the Triple G would do if she didn’t get into the kitchen quickly enough to suit him, but when she saw him standing outside what was obviously the dining room, leaning against the wall, arms folded, face expressionless, she’d slowed to a deliberate walk.
He’d looked at her. Then he’d made a show of looking at his watch.
“You finally got here,” he’d said in the kind of supposedly pleasant tone that meant there was nothing pleasant happening. “Congratulations.”
Brutus had trotted toward her, wagging his tail and wearing a doggy smile.
“Turncoat,” Lissa had said, but her voice had been soft and she’d touched his head lightly with her fingertips.
As for Nick Gentry… She’d completely ignored him as she strolled through the huge dining room, past the equally huge men seated around a huge table. They were all bearded and dressed almost identically in flannel shirts and jeans, and they’d stared at her as if she were an alien creature whose rocket ship had crashed on the planet Earth.
“Good evening,” she’d said briskly.
Six heads had nodded. Six voices had mumbled “Ma’am” as she’d breezed past them toward an arched doorway that led into the kitchen.
Forget huge.
The kitchen was the size of a barn.
An enormous brick fireplace. A brick hearth. Soot-smudged walls. Cobwebbed ceiling. All the requisite appliances: stove, sink, fridge, freezer, dishwasher, worktable. An open pantry and endless cupboards.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that everything was old. Really old. Decades old. And even before she’d opened the fridge, the freezer, the cupboards and the pantry, a sinking feeling told her what she’d find.
Nothing.
Zero.
Nada, niente, and however else you wanted to say it.
Old Mother Hubbard had nothing on the Triple G.
The cupboards were bare of food except for the Spam, the beans and the sweet chili sauce. The fridge had yielded what she thought might be a chunk of hard white cheese hiding under a layer of green fuzz as well as what looked like a bowl of butter. A mysterious something wrapped in butcher paper, unlabeled, frozen solid and easily the size of a half a steer was in the cavernous freezer. Cupboards under the sink held a motley assortment of mismatched plates, bowls and mugs and a battery of dented pots, skillets and pans.
The pantry had been Lissa’s last hope.
Men lived here. Worked here. Worked long, hard days. There hadn’t been a professional cook in residence lately, but surely there was food…
And there was. Potatoes, onions, bread, ketchup, sugar.
She looked at the worktable again, where she’d laid out what she’d found, as if in hopes that a miracle might have occurred.
None had. Add to that stuff a sad-looking heap of wizened apples she’d just unearthed from darkest corner of the pantry along with small tins of garlic powder and cinnamon plus canisters of coffee, flour and—seriously?—lard, and she had the makings for a delectable feast.
Lissa closed her eyes.
All she needed was a magic wand, a fairy godmother, and she’d be home free.
There was a rising hum of whispers and grumbles coming from beyond the arched doorway. From the dining room, she thought, biting back a groan, where Napoleon’s starving army waited to be fed.
Now, added to that came the hard click of boot heels. No. Not Napoleon’s army. This was the Mongol horde and its general was Genghis Khan.
And Genghis was standing right in back of her.
She’d heard him coming, but she’d have known it was him without that. She could sense his presence. Big. Powerful. Masculine. He’d brought with him the scent of soap, water, and man. He must have gone upstairs and showered while she was doing a desperate search through the kitchen.
A little frisson of something she refused to identify swept through her.
She took a breath, let it out, took another, then turned to face him.
Yes. He had showered. And shaved.
What a great face he had. That jaw. Those cheekbones. Those eyes…
“I see you’ve found the supplies.”
His voice was cool and calm.
“Yes,” she said, just as coolly and calmly.
“The men are hungry.”
She nodded. His razor had missed one tiny spot on his jaw. The stubble looked—interesting. Idly, she wondered how it would feel against her skin.
For goodness’ sakes, Melissa!
“I said—”
The edge in his voice jolted her back to reality.
“The men are hungry,” she said. “Right. I’ll bet they are. What happened here?”
Gentry’s eyebrows rose. “Meaning what?”
“What do you mean, meaning what?”
“I mean, what do you mean by asking me what happened here?”
So much for him smelling and looking good. He was still the same idiot. Her cool and her calm were fast fading.
“Meaning, did somebody raid the kitchen and toss out all the food?”
He shrugged. “Had a grizzly do that up in a line shack, once, but not—”
“Perhaps whoever made breakfast and lunch today decided to try an experiment that involved using up everything edible.”
Everything edible? Nick looked at the table. Shit. Was that really all that the kitchen held? He’d hadn’t kept track of the foodstuffs, but—”
“One minute,” he snapped, and headed for the dining room.
Whispers. Raised voices. More whispers. Then he was back.
“Gus tells me that Hank—my pilot—was supposed to drop off some supplies, but with the weather coming in so fast…” There it was, that high-and-mighty look on her face again. He’d had about enough of that to last a lifetime, Nick decided, and offered a brittle smile. “You say you’re a chef.” He jerked his chin toward the worktable. “Improvise.”
Calm, Lissa told herself. Say nothing confrontational. Either he really is a dumb cowboy or he’s playing dumb. Either way, why get into a battle you can’t win?
“Ms. Wilde? You can improvise, can’t you?”
Stay calm, remember? Lissa flashed a glittery smile. She could hear whispers in the dining room.
“Certainly.”
“So, you’re going to get started on supper?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Tell your men it’ll just be a few minutes.”
“I’ll tell them. Just keep in mind that they’re mighty hungry.”
Enough!
Lissa swung toward him.
“I know they’re hungry,” Lissa shouted. “In fact, I’m sure they’re hungry, so why don’t you tell them that if there’s nothing to eat in this effing house, it’s because their effing boss didn’t buy a
ny effing food!”
Brutus whined. The whispers in the dining room had stopped.
“And do not, do not try to lay this off on Gus, whoever he is, or Hank, or the weather gods. If this is your ranch, keeping the kitchen stocked is part of your responsibility!”
She was right. He knew it. But such fury! Such righteous indignation!
He wanted to laugh.
It was a feeling he hadn’t had very often as of late. Hell, he could probably count the number of times he’d just wanted to smile on the fingers of one hand.
“Do you hear me, Gentry? I am not a miracle worker. I cannot turn pearls into swine.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to go the other way round,” Nick said evenly.
“Hell, no! Not if you want to eat the result!”
There was an instant or two of silence. Then Nick gave up the struggle.
He laughed. And while he was still laughing, he leaned in, grabbed Lissa by the shoulders and took her mouth with his.
Lissa heard herself say mmf, or something close to it.
Nick held her tighter, parted her lips with his…
And she was lost.
The kiss changed.
No laughter now. Just heat. Just flame. The kiss became something wild. Out of control. It involved teeth and tongues and instead of pulling away, she leaned into him so that her body was plastered against the long, hard, wonderfully hard length of his, and now his hands were on her hips and hers were gripping his shirt, and the room was spinning, spinning, spinning…
“Woof!”
Brutus nudged his way between them.
They jerked apart. One long, endless, eternal minute of silence. Then Nick cleared his throat.
“I’ll give them your message,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Do that,” Lissa said, just as hoarsely.
Then she swung toward the table, he limped toward the door, and seconds later, the whispers from the dining room started up again.
* * *
It was amazing what you could do with Spam, onions, potatoes and—shudder, shudder—lard.
Lissa found a knife rack. She had her own knives, of course, upstairs in her suitcase, but all she’d unpacked was her toothbrush, shampoo, hairbrush, PJs, and a change of underwear.
There was no need to unpack anything else, and certainly not her beloved knives.
Still, the one thing in the Triple G kitchen that she couldn’t complain about was the knives. Well, the knife. The rack held six useless pieces of worn stainless steel and, to her surprise, one real knife. Someone had taken excellent care of the blade, and the knife itself balanced well in her hand.
And that was all she wanted to think about right now.
The feel of the knife in her hand and how well it did, dicing the Spam, slicing the onions and the potatoes.
Dice and slice.
Do not think.
Take out a skillet the size of a tabletop. Light one of the enormous burners on the old stove. Dump in some lard. Lard made for tender pasty, but it wasn’t made for healthful living.
Forget healthful living.
Think about feeding those hungry cowboys.
Think about that kiss. Nick’s lips on hers. So soft. So warm. So masterful…
Stop it, Lissa told herself sternly.
She sautéed the onions. Did the same with the thinly sliced potatoes. Got everything browned. Added the Spam. Let it brown, too. Added the drained cans of white beans. Beans and potatoes. Carbs and, for good measure, more carbs, really heart-healthy food, she thought wryly, but she couldn’t worry about that right now.
What she needed was a platter of food that would fill empty bellies.
And would taste…well, if not good, at least acceptable.
She added a generous sprinkle of garlic powder, even though only barbarians used powder instead of the real thing. A healthy belt of ketchup and, what the hell, a belt of the sweet chili sauce. Then she lowered the heat, slapped a cover on the pan, and reached for the loaves of stale bread.
The toaster would do only two slices at a time.
Useless for what she intended, so she lit the oven—fingers crossed as she did because it was a long time, a very long time since she’d used a pilotless gas oven that you had to light with a match—and turned to the worktable.
She sliced the loaves into thick pieces, spread them on the oven racks, toasted one side, turned and toasted the other. Then she dumped all the slices onto the table, buttered them, sprinkled them with garlic, used the really, really, really excellent knife to shave away the green yuck from what she’d hoped would turn out to be cheese, discovered that, hooray, it was cheese, put thin slices of it on the toast, gave the toast a quick run in the oven, took it out, sliced each piece in thirds.
Ready.
She uncovered the skillet of whatever it was she’d made, dumped the contents into an enormous bowl, lined a basket that could have held half a dozen footballs with a bunch of paper napkins she’d found on a shelf over the sink, dumped in the toast, took a deep breath…
Lissa carried the Spam du jour into the dining room and put it in the center of the table.
Nick wasn’t there.
Well, why would he be? The Lord and Master probably ate by himself—
She bumped into him as she hurried back into the kitchen. He had his crutch under his left arm; he was holding a stack of bowls, paper napkins and spoons in his right hand.
“I can do that,” she said, or started to say, but the look he gave her turned her mute.
Those eyes. So blue. So hot. So hot!
She tore her gaze from his, moved past him, grabbed the basket of toast sticks.
By the time she returned to the dining room, he was seated with his men.
He was eating, as were they.
They looked up when she entered the room and eyed the toast warily—she figured it probably looked like delicate fare—but he reached out, snared a piece and bit into it.
“Good,” he said, and six pairs of hands descended on the basket.
Lissa looked at Nick.
His eyes were still hot. Slowly, he touched the tip of his tongue to his bottom lip and licked away an errant crumb.
Her knees threatened to buckle.
Jesus!
What was she, fifteen? He was a good-looking guy. So what? A very good- looking guy…
Not fifteen. Thirteen, maybe, and all hormones.
Reality waited in the kitchen. At the stove and the worktable.
Cooking. That was why she was here; that was what this was all about. She drained everything but that from her thoughts.
Big men, hungry men needed a dessert. She still had flour. Lard. Apples. Sugar and even cinnamon.
An apple pie would take too long. Or maybe not, if she made a lattice crust.
Peel. Slice. Sauté. Roll out the dough. Pop the pan in the oven.
Time to go back into the dining room and see how things were going.
The men looked up. They nodded, smiled, and went back to eating.
Nick looked up, too.
“Won’t you join us?”
Such a simple question. So polite. But that look in his eyes…
Her heart thumped. She shook her head, made motions toward the kitchen.
“No. Thank you. I’m not hungry and I have—I have dessert in the oven…”
She caught her lip between her teeth. Nick’s eyes turned midnight blue. Oh God, she thought, and she all but rushed from the room.
Would he come after her? Would he?
No.
He didn’t, and why on earth would she have thought he would? Whatever had occurred before had been an aberration. Just a hot sexual flare. Those things happened. You didn’t have to understand the reasons, not all the time. Things just happened even when you didn’t particularly like somebody, and she certainly didn’t like Nick Gentry and he sure as hell didn’t like her.
Her sisters didn’t understand that. The hot-sexual-flare thing.
She was sure Emily and Jaimie just didn’t get it. Well, they did, now, with the men they’d fallen for, but surely the sex thing had only happened after they’d felt some kind of emotional bond.
They’d always been the hearts-and-flowers type.
She’d taken a more logical approach. You didn’t always need moonlight and roses.
Sometimes, all you needed was a man’s touch. His body. His possession. And be honest, here, Melissa, that’s the gold standard and when, if ever, was the last time you really, really had that?
She bit back a moan. Was she nuts? What was with all this soul-searching?
Nick Gentry had come on to her. She’d reacted. End of story.
She liked sex. She liked men. At least, she had, in the past, in the days before she’d realized what out-and-out bastards men were. Besides, she wasn’t into one-night stands, and that, obviously, was what an encounter like this would be.
Her head was spinning. What she needed was something in her belly. She hadn’t eaten since—since when? Had she even had anything this morning?
Why had she turned down Nick’s suggestion that she eat with him and his men?
The pie was ready, though it had turned into more of a cobbler than a pie. She took it out of the oven, got down a bunch of bowls, put some of the cobbler in one of them, picked up a spoon and scooped up a mouthful.
She blew on it. Blew on it again. Still, when she put it in her mouth, it burned.
Like Nick’s kiss.
That amazing kiss.
There was no harm in admitting it was the best kiss she’d ever experienced.
What would he be like in bed? Tender? Demanding? Exciting. She was certain of that. He would be exciting and maybe a little dangerous and—
“Ms. Wilde?”
Definitely a little dangerous. There was a hint of wildness to him. And—
“’Scuse me, ma’am. Ms. Wilde?”
The spoon fell from Lissa’s fingers and clattered to the tabletop.
“Yes?” she said, forcing a smile for the cowboy with the empty Spam bowl in his hands.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He cleared his throat. “The boys and I jes’ wanted to tell you that this here’s the best meal we’ve had in a long time.”
Lissa blinked.
“Why—why, that’s very kind of you, but I just, you know, I just threw together whatever I found and….” She swallowed hard. She’d have accepted the compliment had it been given for a dish she’d concocted from caviar and blini; why not accept it for something she’d made out of everyday things? “Thank you. Thank you, uh…”