you asking me for? You been married yourself, boss.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Once you’ve been in love, you never forget how it was,” Tex said.
“Then I couldn’t have been in love, because I have forgotten,” Zach said, drumming his knuckles on the table. “All I remember is the shock when she told me she was leaving.”
Mallory looked up and met his gaze. There was sympathy in her dark eyes. And he knew he’d said too much. He didn’t want sympathy from anybody, especially from a woman he didn’t even know.
“Well,” he said, “it’s been a long day. You’re probably tired.” If she didn’t take the hint that it was time for her to leave, he’d be surprised.
But she didn’t, and he was surprised to hear her say to Tex, “I think I will have another cup of tea.”
The cook smiled and took her cup to refill it.
“How long have you had the ranch?” Mallory asked.
He paused. He didn’t really want to talk about himself. But he could hardly ignore a direct question, either. “My uncle died seven or eight years ago. But I’ve lived here since I can remember. I was about ten when my mother dumped me here and took off.”
“Dumped you?” she asked.
“Call it what you want. I don’t blame her for taking off. As a single mother she was at the end of her rope. It hurt at the time, but leaving me here with my uncle was the best thing she could have done. For her and for me. I know everybody doesn’t feel this way, or they wouldn’t keep quitting, but I love this place. Better than anything.”
“Better than anybody?” she asked.
“Yeah, why? There’s nothing wrong with that. The only thing that’s wrong is that I can’t run it alone. I depend on others. I need good help. Yesterday I lost two of the best.”
“Today you replaced one of ’em,” Tex said from the doorway, nodding at Mallory. How long had he been standing there? Not that it mattered, he knew more about Zach than anybody.
“Did I do the right thing?” Zach asked with a wry glance at Mallory.
“She looks good to me,” the cook said.
“She looks tired to me,” Zach said, noting her drooping eyelids.
“You’re right,” Mallory said with a yawn. “She’s going to bed. Good night.” She rose from the table, leaving her tea untouched, and walked out the dining room door.
“Pretty little thing,” Tex noted, crossing his arms across his ample waist.
Little? He hadn’t picked her up off the floor and carried her across the room. “Doesn’t have any experience,” Zach said, pouring Tex a cup of coffee.
“Then why...”
“I don’t know,” Zach said. But he knew why he’d hired her. It was because he couldn’t send her away. Because there was something in those limpid brown eyes that told him she needed help, a place to go. It was the tears that she fought to hold in check that called forth his grudging admiration, and the way she handled the shock of hearing Joe was gone. By fainting, yes. But when she recovered, with fortitude and grim determination. Those things showed her mettle.
“I’m running a business, you know,” Zach reminded himself as well as Tex. “Not a home for the lovelorn or an observatory for astronomers.”
“Who?” Tex asked, sitting in a chair halfway down the table.
Zach took a swallow of hot coffee. “She’s an astronomer,” he said.
“She gonna read our horoscope?” Tex asked.
“Afraid not,” Zach said, not wanting to go into the difference between astronomy and astrology. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody she’s not a housekeeper, but you’re not just anybody. You’ve been with me for the last nine years. Making food that keeps a lot of guys around when they might have had reason to leave.”
“Thank you, boss,” Tex said.
“You’re welcome.”
“They can look into the future, you know,” Tex said.
“Who can?”
“Astrologers. They can tell if money or romance is in your future,” Tex said.
“I don’t need an astrologer to tell me that romance is not in my future. I tried it once. It didn’t work.”
“Maybe it’s time you tried again,” Tex suggested.
Zach did a double take. He looked into the cook’s friendly dark eyes. “Me, try again? Have you been into the cooking sherry?” Zach asked. “As if I didn’t have enough problems. As if I didn’t have goals which don’t include anything but raising the best beef cattle in the state. Now you want me to go out looking for romance?”
“Not go out looking. Just, you know, don’t fight it.”
Zach stared at the man. In all-these years he’d never had a personal talk like this with him. Now all of a sudden Tex was talking to him like a Dutch uncle. Though Zach’s real uncle had never talked like this, either. He was a cool, tough rancher who hadn’t known what to say to the boy he’d raised.
“If she’s not a housekeeper, why’d you hire her?” Tex asked.
“I don’t know.” Zach raked his hand through his hair. “I was desperate. I thought she’d been sent.”
“Maybe she was,” Tex suggested. “By the angels.”
“I meant by the agency.” He didn’t say that he’d had a strange, irrational urge to protect her. Because when he heard she’d fallen for the likes of Joe, he somehow knew he had to keep her from falling for the next randy cowboy who came along.
“Maybe it was a mistake hiring her,” Zach said. “I’m probably gonna have to let her go.”
Tex frowned and stood up. “Don’t do anything till you read your horoscope tomorrow,” he warned. “Or you’ll be sorry.”
The next morning Mallory stood at the entrance of the walk-in closet and realized she had nothing in her wardrobe that vaguely resembled what a housekeeper would wear. Couldn’t the super-wonderful Diane have left behind one housekeeper outfit? One powder-blue polyester shirt and pants would have done it, preferably with an elastic waist. Along with a set of instructions as to how to be a housekeeper. But the closet had been cleaned out. And Mallory’s clothes were either trim skirts she’d worn while teaching that didn’t seem to fit anymore or warm pants for stargazing. So she dug out a pair of baggy cotton shorts from the bottom of her duffel bag and a T-shirt to wear to the ten o’clock meeting.
Not that it mattered. He wasn’t there.
“He’s
