A Cowboy In The Kitchen. Meg Maxwell

been much of a cook and West had to leave meals for her to heat up for Lucy.

      My disappointment of a daughter couldn’t even beat an egg, Raina had continued, but at least she had Lucy looking presentable in public. Get your act together, Weston Montgomery, or I will see you in court. She’d turned and stalked to the front door.

      So much for his temper. Don’t you ever refer to Lucy’s mother as a disappointment again, he’d said through gritted teeth at Raina’s back, his anger reaching the boiling point.

      His and Lorna’s marriage hadn’t been good, and Lorna had told him she was leaving permanently—and leaving Lucy behind—just a day before the car accident that had taken her life. But preserving a good memory of Lorna for his daughter was important to West, and no one, especially not Raina’s mother, who had a history of slinging cruelty, would disparage his child’s mother.

      Raina had rolled her eyes and stormed out and West had needed to do something physical to get his anger out, so he’d taken Lucy over to Miss Letty’s for an hour and then ridden fence along his vast property, mending and hammering his frustration out.

      West vs. Parents. Story of his life. Lorna’s wealthy, powerful parents had never liked him. Not only had his family been from the wrong side of the tracks in Blue Gulch, but he was the Montgomery family’s black sheep. He and his own parents had never gotten along well; they’d lost their golden boy and had been left with the troublemaker when West was nineteen. Back then, West could imagine his father wishing it had been West who’d been killed overseas in Afghanistan, and his mother responding: As if West had it in him to fight for his country in the first place.

      They’d never said that, but they might as well have. And before he could even try to show them who he was, they’d hightailed it out of Blue Gulch to start fresh in Austin, where Garrett had always wanted to live; a way to honor him, West figured. And to get away from West and his pregnant girlfriend and the gossip in town. But just a few months in, a fire had broken out from faulty wiring, and West had buried his parents, everything in him numb. Lorna and the Dunkins hadn’t had much patience for him and his grief, which had turned him even more inward.

      His relationship with the Dunkins hadn’t improved much over the years either; he’d gotten their “little girl” pregnant and stolen her dreams, they’d said, then trapped her on a ranch in a life she never wanted ten miles from town, where they lived in a huge Colonial.

      He couldn’t lose Lucy—and not to the Dunkins. He’d do whatever he had to keep her. Which meant learning to cook. He’d tried hiring a housekeeper after Lorna’s death, but one woman had harshly scolded Lucy for leaving her toys out in the playroom and made elaborate meals that West had told her neither he nor Lucy wanted to eat, such as beef bourguignon. The next housekeeper forgot Lucy was allergic to soy and made her some inedible vegetable-fruit smoothie with soy milk, which landed Lucy in the emergency room with severe stomach pains and a strained visit from the Dunkins about his carelessness.

      He would learn to cook.

      Taking a class from a Hurley would kill two birds too. Everyone in town, including the Dunkins, liked Gram Hurley, respected her, which was saying something. Essie Hurley had never been wealthy, but she was wise and had been something of a grandmother to most everyone in Blue Gulch in some way or another. Essie had once saved Raina Dunkin from public embarrassment; Lorna had told West all about it when they first got married. Raina would likely back off from threatening to sue for custody once they found out Essie’s granddaughter, with her fancy Dallas culinary school background, was giving him cooking lessons. If they didn’t, well, West had taken over his parents’ small cattle ranch and had turned it into a very prosperous operation; he had the money to hire a good lawyer, but the toll it would take on West, the distraction from work and from Lucy, would just about kill him.

      He’d learn to cook. He’d figure out how to get the knots out of Lucy’s hair, even if the detangler the clerk in Walgreens told him about was no match for the thick curls.

      What he wouldn’t do was let himself fall for Annabel—again. He was done with romance, done with relationships, done with disappointing people. And besides, things with Annabel just cut too deep in too many ways. Where she was concerned, there was too much he wanted to forget.

      Anyway, after the way he’d treated Annabel seven years ago, he was surprised she hadn’t hit him over the head with that wooden spoon she’d been gripping yesterday.

      West heard Miss Letty’s car arrive and took Lucy out to meet her, the fresh April air a relief from the smell of rubbery chicken.

      Lucy bounded over to her sitter, a tall woman in her early fifties with a long gray braid, jeans and sneakers for Lucy’s outdoor play, and a warm smile. “Miss Letty, come play house with Daisy. I’m the mother and Daisy is the daughter and you’ll be the grandmother.” Lucy turned to Daisy, who eyed her skeptically. “Okay, Daisy, I said only one treat after lunch.”

      Miss Letty smiled and followed after Lucy, who pulled her by the hand. “You go ahead,” Letty said to West.

      He hugged and kissed Lucy goodbye, told Letty he’d pay her extra if she’d clean up the dinner dishes, which got him a wink and a sure thing, and then got in his pickup. Time to learn how not to screw up fried eggs.

       Chapter Two

      Yesterday, when Gram was reminding Annabel of how the restaurant worked, Essie Hurley had made clear that Mondays were a real day off—no prep, no cleaning, no ordering supplies. In fact, family who lived in the Victorian were only allowed in the kitchen on Mondays to cook simple meals for themselves. So at five-thirty, Annabel was surprised to come down the back stairs into the kitchen and find her younger sister, Clementine, kneeling in front of the sink and meticulously cleaning the little red rooster cabinet knobs. Twenty-four-year-old Clementine wore gray yoga pants and a long pale pink T-shirt, her feet in orange flip-flops and her long dark hair in a high ponytail.

      “Clem?” Annabel said, watching her sister dip a rag into a small bucket of cleaning solution and go over the rooster’s tiny tail.

      Clementine turned around and shot Annabel a tight smile. “I forgot to clean these last night,” she said, moving on to the next cabinet knob. “Aren’t they cute? Georgia sent them from Houston a few months ago.” She smiled again and returned to work, scrubbing at the rooster’s crown.

      Something was wrong. Annabel had been gone for seven years, and she and Clementine had never been as close as Annabel had hoped, even when they’d lived under one roof, but she knew when Clementine was holding back. Maybe Clem was angry at her for staying away so long. For leaving the restaurant and Gram on her shoulders all these years. It was hard to tell with Clem. Clem was a “fine, everything’s fine” kind of person, the sort who’d tell you “no worries!” with a bright smile and then go off alone to cry over something dreadful that had just happened to her, like when her birth mother had stood her up for their twice-a-year reunions, only to text an hour later to say something had come up. Annabel’s parents had adopted Clementine when she was eight from a bad foster-care situation, and though Clem’s birth mother was cagey and distant, Clementine had worked hard, often fruitlessly, to keep up some kind of relationship with the woman.

      If Clem was cleaning cabinet pulls—and on a Monday—something had happened.

      “Is everything okay with you?” Annabel asked.

      “I’m fine. Just worried about Gram.” She glanced back at Annabel. “I’m fine, really.”

      Annabel wished her sister would open to her. But Annabel knew she couldn’t rush things. This morning she and Clementine had taken Gram to an appointment at the county hospital; three hours later, after testing and poking, they were sent home, Gram told to rest as much as possible until the test results came in. Clementine had been quiet on the ride to the hospital, quiet there, quiet on the way back.

      Now she glanced at the big yellow clock on the wall above the stove. “I promised Mae Tucker I’d babysit the triplets tonight. See you around midnight.”