Donna Alward - The Cowboy's Valentine

Twenty-eight, with a career job behind her, married, divorced. Quinn was thirty-three, and he knew exactly how life could age a person so that numbers were insignificant. He tried to remember that Lacey had faced her share of troubles. Duke had made it plain that the family wasn’t too impressed that her ex had walked out on her.

He went back and put his lunch bag on the island, unzipped it and took out the plastic container holding his lunch. “Do you mind if I use the microwave?”

She rolled her eyes. “What did I just say?”

Saucy. At least she was consistent.

He popped the container in the microwave and started it up, then stood awkwardly waiting for it to beep. Meanwhile, Lacey finished removing the cookies from the pan and began dropping batter by the spoonful on the parchment.

His stomach growled again.

When his meal was hot, he took it to the kitchen table—no laptop in sight now—and got out his knife and fork. The pasta didn’t look as appetizing as it might have. He was an adequate cook only, but he was getting better. Trying new things now and again. The trouble was that by the time he got Amber from day care, he had to cook stuff that was relatively fast if they hoped to eat before her bath time.

He was nearly through when Lacey put a small plate beside him and a glass of milk.

“Uh, thanks,” he said, looking up. She was smiling down at him, and for the first time there was no attitude in her expression.

“I’d be pretty heartless if I didn’t offer you fresh cookies,” she said. “Besides, I don’t dare eat them all myself. I’m counting on you and Duke to eat the lion’s share.”

She went back to the sink and ran soapy water to wash the dishes.

Quinn bit into a cookie and sighed in appreciation. God, the woman knew how to cook. He’d realized that at Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas when she’d bustled in with all her bossiness. He and Amber had both enjoyed the home-cooked meals they’d shared here at the ranch. It had actually stung his pride a little when Amber asked if they could go back to “Uncle Duke’s” because Lacey was there and doing a lot of the family cooking along with their mother, Helen.

“They turn out okay?” Lacey called from the sink, her hands immersed in the water. “I didn’t have my recipe with me and went from memory.”

He bit back a sarcastic comment. Why did she push his buttons so? Instead he reminded himself that she’d gone out of her way to be nice. To be accommodating. “They’re delicious,” he replied honestly. “Maybe the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had.”

She dried her hands on a dish towel, then grabbed a cookie and her coffee cup and joined him at the table. “Can I tell you a secret, Quinn?”

They were sharing confidences now?

“Um, sure. I guess.”

She bit into the cookie, chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “I bake when I’m stressed. I think it’s a combination of things, from focusing on something other than what’s going on, to the process of making something and maybe even the aromas. They’re comforting smells, you know?”

He did know. He missed them around his place, and the absence of them sometimes made his chest ache.

“You’re stressed?”

She broke off another piece of cookie. “Of course I am. Know what they said when I packed up my desk at the office? ‘Oh, no, who’s going to bring us treats all the time?’ I mean, it’s been better up until a few months ago, but when Carter first left...”

Right. Carter. That was the bastard’s name.

“When Carter left it was weird, being all alone. We’d planned to be together forever, you know?”

His last bite of cookie swelled in his throat as a heavy silence fell over the table.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, and to his surprise she put her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. That was so thoughtless of me. Of course you know.”

He forced the cookie down and looked up at her. Her eyes were soft with sympathy and understanding and her hand was still on his wrist. Something passed between them, something that, for a flash, felt like shared grief. It was gone in the blink of an eye, but it had been there. He got the feeling that she understood more than he realized. Still, could divorce be as bad as a spouse dying? As bad as a child without a mother?

Lacey pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It’s been so quiet here that I’ve talked your ear off. I should let you get back to work.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Thanks for the cookies.”

“Anytime. They’ll be in Grandma Duggan’s cookie jar if you find yourself snackish.” She gestured towards a stone crock that she must have unearthed from somewhere, now sitting on the counter next to the toaster.

“Will do.”

Quinn put the lid on his dish and shoved everything back in his lunch bag, then put it in the fridge, empty, where he’d collect it at the end of the day.

Back in the office he pulled up a spreadsheet and tried to wrap his mind around the numbers in the columns, but nothing was fitting together right. His focus was shot. He kept getting stuck on the look on Lacey’s face when she admitted she using baking as a coping mechanism. She’d looked lonely. Vulnerable. Feelings he could relate to so easily that when she’d put her fingers on his sleeve, he’d been tempted to turn his hand over and link his fingers with hers.

Ludicrous. Crazy. Duke Duggan’s sister, for Pete’s sake. His boss’s pain-in-the-butt sister who hated anything to do with ranching.

With a frown he tweaked the column again, fixing the formula at the end. It wouldn’t do to start thinking of Lacey Duggan in a friendly way. Certainly not in a kindred spirits kind of way.

A few hours later he heard her go out the door, heard her start her car and drive away. He let out a breath. Working here while Lacey was living at the house was going to be tougher than he thought—and not for the reasons he expected.

She wasn’t back yet when he got his lunch bag from the fridge and left to pick up Amber. But when he got home, and as supper was cooking, he opened the bag to take out his dirty dishes. To his surprise, the container that had held his lunch was perfectly clean, and a little bag was beside it, full of cookies. A sticky note was stuck to the front. “For you and Amber,” it said.

Quinn swallowed. Lacey had to stop being so nice, trying so hard. She was going to make it difficult for him to keep disliking her if she kept it up.

Chapter Three

Lacey had only been at Crooked Valley three days when she got her first phone call, asking her for an interview. A company in Great Falls was looking for someone to do their payroll. When Quinn came in for lunch on the day of the interview, she was running a lint brush over the dark material of a straight skirt. For some reason little bits of fluff kept sticking to the fabric, and she wanted to look perfect.

Her head told her it was just an interview at a manufacturing company, not a high-powered lawyer’s office or anything. Neat and tidy business wear would have sufficed, but she was determined to put her absolute best foot forward. She’d brought out the big guns: black pencil skirt, cream silk blouse, patent heels.

She was turning into the kitchen from the downstairs bath at the same time as Quinn entered from the hall. Both of them stopped short, but Quinn just stared at her. “Oh. Hi.” He sort of recovered from the surprise but his expression plumped up her confidence just a little. It was definitely approval that glowed in his eyes for the few seconds before he shuttered it away.

“I have an interview this afternoon,” she said, grabbing some hand lotion from the windowsill above the sink. She rubbed it into her hands as Quinn opened the fridge. “In Great Falls.”