Meg Maxwell - A Cowboy In The Kitchen

Annabel’s experience with marriage proposals at that table was limited to old daydreams and nightly fantasies about West Montgomery on one knee—ha. As if West would propose the traditional way. He’d buy a plane and skywrite a proposal. He’d spell it out in rocks down by the clearing in front of the woods. He’d grab her hand, look her deeply in the eye, see everything she felt and whisk her away to Vegas for a quickie ceremony in the Elvis Presley wedding chapel, not that she’d ever get married without her gram or sisters in attendance.

And not that West Montgomery would ever propose to her.

Would anyone? Sometimes she thought her cooking skills were all she had going for her in the romance department. Way to a man’s heart and all that. As if her ability to make a barbecue sauce to rival her gram’s had gotten her anywhere but right where she was, standing in a kitchen.

West shielded his eyes from the bright April morning sunshine and squinted in the window. As he spotted her, surprise crossed his features; then he held up his hand with something of a nod.

Annabel gripped the wooden spoon, took a deep breath, ran her hands down the front of her apron, a mistake, since it was speckled with flour, and headed to the kitchen’s back door. The restaurant was in the Hurley family home, an old apricot-colored Victorian that had seen better days.

He knocked again. What could he want?

Annabel Hurley, you are twenty-five years old. Open the door and find out!

So she did. The sight of him, six foot three, leanly muscular in worn jeans and a green chambray shirt, those intense brown eyes the color of driftwood, his thick, wavy hair so dark it was almost black, had her knees slightly buckling. He wore a black Stetson, which he tipped at her.

“Annabel,” he said, unease clear. “I didn’t know you were back in town.” His gaze went to her sneaker, with the glob of batter, then to the spoon she held so tightly her knuckles were white.

She loosened her hold. And wondered if he even remembered their night—just a precious hour, if that—in the loft of the barn on his family’s ranch. Given what he’d done the next day, she’d bet her meager savings he’d forgotten the minute she left that night. “Just got here yesterday.”

He seemed distracted, as though there was something weighing on his mind. She knew that look of his well. She wanted to reach out and smooth the worry lines on his forehead the way she once had done, but she couldn’t, of course. He took a deep breath, clearly bracing himself to make the expected conversation, to ask how long she was staying, if she was having a nice visit; West Montgomery wasn’t one for small talk.

He glanced at his watch and said, “Is your grandmother here? I need to sign up for her cooking class that starts tomorrow.” So much for pleasantries. For anything resembling regret for how he’d treated her.

Annabel couldn’t help staring at him, her gaze going to the one dimple. The man was impossibly good-looking, so good-looking she almost missed what he said.

“You want to sign up for the cooking class?” she asked. West in a kitchen. She couldn’t even imagine it. Her grandmother had been offering cooking classes every season in their big country kitchen for as long as Annabel could remember. When Annabel was in middle school, her older sister had pointed out that Gram had to start the cooking classes to make extra money because she’d taken in her three orphaned granddaughters. Annabel had started helping out in the kitchen from that day forward.

He glanced past her at the counter, where ingredients for Gram’s Famed Country Biscuits and homemade apple butter were spread out. “Is there room in the class?” He held up the checkbook. “I’ll pay double if it’ll get me in.”

Double? What was that about? “Actually we had to cancel the spring session. My gram’s not well and is getting lots of tests done.” At the thought of her beloved grandmother, Essie, collapsing in the kitchen, the weight of a pan of grits suddenly too heavy for the fit seventy-five year old, Annabel closed her eyes for a moment, worry and fear snaking their way inside. She should have been here. Instead she’d been hours away in Dallas, trying to make her life work—for seven years. She could feel the guilt flaming her cheeks and turned away.

He took off his hat and held it against his chest. “That’s why you’re back,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry about your grandmother. A few months ago, I ran into her in the supermarket when I was buying a birthday cake for my daughter. I told her my attempt caved in on itself, and she told me to put the store cake back, that she’d bake one for me. I tried to tell her that wasn’t necessary, but she insisted and asked what my daughter’s favorite things were. The next morning she brought over a cake in the shape of a tree, decorated with green leaves, branches, crab apples and a climbing girl all set in icing. Lucy flipped. She still talks about her birthday cake.”

That was Gram. Always helping, always going the extra mile. Annabel smiled at her grandmother’s kindness, but at his little girl’s name, her chest tightened. Though she’d only been back to Blue Gulch for holidays and birthdays, she’d once run into West’s heavily pregnant wife at the grocery store and another time she’d seen West with a toddler on his shoulders at a parade, a little girl with huge hazel eyes and wisps of dark hair like her daddy’s. Lucy must be six now.

She headed back to the counter and gave the biscuit batter a stir. “Why do you want to take a cooking class?” she asked to change the subject.

He stepped in and closed the door behind him, looking everywhere but at her. “I need to learn some basics. Omelets, fried chicken, maybe chicken salad with the leftovers for sandwiches. That kind of thing. And biscuits like your grandmother makes.”

She noticed he didn’t answer the question. “Your wife could teach you that, I’m sure,” she said like an idiot, the face of Lorna Dunkin Montgomery pushing into her mind. Of all the beautiful young women in town, the guy of Annabel’s dreams had fallen for the meanest, the ringleader of the group back in high school that had dubbed Annabel “Geekabel” and made her feel ashamed of her scrawny figure, frizzy reddish-brown hair and home-sewn clothes, and how foolish she’d been to even dare have a secret crush on a boy like West. Back then, Annabel had had exactly two conversations with West, both making clear that the maverick in the black leather jacket and combat boots, his hair slightly too long, was as complicated and kindhearted as he was absolutely gorgeous. But falling for Lorna? Marrying her? She’d never gotten that. And she’d never gotten over it either.

A few months after her...moment with West in his barn, she’d happened on the bride and groom coming out of the church, their families throwing rice. He must have gotten her pregnant, she remembered meanly thinking, to marry her after just a few months of dating. Gram had brought her tissues and homemade fudge brownie ice cream, and by the end of their conversation Essie Hurley had convinced Annabel to accept the scholarship she’d been offered to a culinary school in Dallas—her dream—rather than stay in town to help Gram with the restaurant. Maybe Annabel would come back to Blue Gulch; maybe she wouldn’t, Gram had said. Follow your heart, wherever it leads. She’d wanted to come back home, cook for Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen, maybe add a bit of city to the menu here and there to bring in business from the fancy steak house that had opened a few doors down. But then she’d seen pregnant Lorna. Seen West with his little girl and couldn’t imagine watching the man she loved with another woman, a child. And so she’d stayed in Dallas, where she didn’t belong.