A Cowboy in the Kitchen Read Online Free Page A

give up on family.
    And she’d never give up on Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen either. Since the restaurant wasn’t doing well, it was up to Annabel to keep the kitchen going. Folks counted on Hurley’s to be open Tuesday through Sundays for lunch and dinner, and Annabel didn’t want to let her Gram down.
    West Montgomery wants to learn how to cook, does he? Gram had said that afternoon, taking a nibble of the potato chowder Annabel had made her. Teach him everything I taught you, Essie had added. The tips and secrets. The things you can’t learn by a recipe alone. I know he hurt you, Annabel. But I’ve seen him around town with that little girl of his and it would melt the heart of Constance Brichard. Constance Brichard was the grumpiest person in town, an elderly widow who was always threatening to sic her mean little Chihuahua on kids for making too much noise at the bus stop across the street from her house.
    Which made things worse for Annabel. If West could get Constance Brichard to crack a smile, what would he do to her ?
    Annabel put on her favorite yellow apron and glanced at the clock—ten minutes till West walked through the door, daughter-sized handprint apron on.
    She pulled the list she’d made from her jeans pocket. Breakfasts: cheese omelet, scrambled eggs, quiche Lorraine, French toast. Bacon. Biscuits with apple butter. Tonight’s cooking lesson would be about breakfast. Annabel was about to open the walk-in refrigerator for the eggs and milk and butter, then realized if West was paying her a thousand dollars to learn how to make an omelet and biscuits, he could probably use a tutorial about the ingredients themselves, what to buy, how to store them.
    A rap sounded at the back door and Annabel glanced out the window. There he was, right on time. She held up a hand and went to the door, taking a deep breath before she opened it.
    â€œGot my apron,” he said, clutching it in one hand.
    She smiled and held the door open for him, willing herself not to stare at him, not to look too closely at his handsome face or the way his broad shoulders filled the doorway. He wore a navy blue T-shirt and low-slung jeans, a brown belt with a bronc buckle. He’d filled out from the nineteen-year-old boy she’d known. He was tall then, but now he was muscular from years of ranch work. “Come on in.”
    He hung his hat on a peg by the door, then stood at the huge center island.
    Speak, Annabel . She cleared her throat. “Since you said you want to learn the basics, I thought we’d start with breakfast—scrambled eggs, omelets, French toast, bacon.”
    â€œLucy loves scrambled eggs and French toast, and I love bacon, so all that sounds great.”
    â€œSo Lucy is six?” she asked. Six. It just occurred to her that in all this time, all these years, of course he hadn’t given Annabel two thoughts. She’d been so focused on how he’d dropped her like a hot biscuit for sexy Lorna when she should have realized it had been fatherhood that wiped his memory of all that had come before. One hour in the hayloft in his parents’ barn where they’d groped and kissed? How could that even register amid the birth of a baby, the first cold, the first steps, the first day of school? How could it register against daily life with sweet miracles in the form of a toothless smile or a child’s pride at learning to read?
    She’d been a dope to wonder these past seven years if he’d thought about her. Of course he hadn’t.
    But that hadn’t stopped her from tossing and turning for hours last night, remembering how it had felt to be in his arms, to be kissed so passionately by him. At around three in the morning, she’d made herself promise she wouldn’t be sucked back in by his face, by his incredible body, by his...story. He had a story seven years ago. She’d responded and had her heart broken and her life set on a path