your unmarried status would remain perfectly safe.”
“Good.” He looked satisfied, her insults seeming to go right over his head. “Then we can finish the interview.”
She stood up. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr Garrison.” That she was using his rudeness as an excuse to get away from a man she was far too attracted to was not a thought she wanted to contemplate at the moment. “Thank you for your time, but I think it’s best if I leave.”
There had to be another job she could get that would get her out of the Dry Gulch and maybe make her application to teach in the Sunshine Springs school district a little more appealing. Just because this was the first good prospect she’d seen in the two weeks since she started looking, didn’t mean it was the only possibility.
“Sit down, Carlene, and call me Win.”
“No, really. I need to go.” She turned to leave.
But his voice stopped her. “I said sit down.” His tone made the quietly spoken command more intense than shouting could have.
She turned back to face him.
He smiled and her stomach dipped and that was so not good. “If you can’t follow one simple direction, we’re going to have a pretty rough working relationship.”
Frowning, she remained standing. “I don’t think we can have a working relationship at all, Mr Garrison.”
“Why? Because I sometimes talk in monosyllable?”
“No. Because you are rude and I don’t work well with rude people.” It was the truth. She’d gotten chewed out more than once at the Dry Gulch for taking a bad-mannered customer to task for their behavior.
“If I apologize, will you finish the interview?”
She didn’t think he was the kind of man that apologized often. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“On why you were discourteous to begin with.”
“What exactly did you consider the discourtesy, if you don’t mind me asking? My one-word replies or my warning?”
She felt herself blush because she’d been rude too. Insulting even and it hadn’t gone over his head. He’d simply opted not to make an issue of it.
She sighed. “The warning. Most women would not find your assumption that they are looking at you as a potential mate on such short acquaintance flattering.”
Even as she said the words, she felt silly. She was taking them far too personally. Really.
His cynical laugh didn’t make her feel any better. “Honey, I’m a rich man with a lifestyle a lot of people covet. A fair number of women would consider marriage a nice way to ensure they share it. I learned a long time ago to make my lack of interest in marriage clear from the beginning, no matter what relationship between me and the woman.” He certainly wasn’t talking in single syllables right now.
“You mean you warn all your dates and hands the same way?”
“Yes. I don’t have any women working the Bar G right now, but the female vet got her warning the first time she came out to check the horses.”
“It’s like a religion with you,” she said, a little awed by his vehemence.
He sat up, planting his booted feet securely under him. “You could see it that way. You sure talk fancy for a housekeeper.”
But not for a high school English teacher with a degree in French literature, she thought. “Is that a strike against me?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you sit down and we’ll discuss it?”
She acquiesced.
He smiled again and she decided that she preferred it when he frowned. His smile was entirely too sexy and the last thing she needed was to think of her employer, particularly this one, as sexy in any way. He wasn’t interested in marriage and she wasn’t interested in an affair.
That left sexy out of their equation.
“What kind of experience do you have?” he asked.
“Not a lot,” she admitted. “Not any paid, but I can cook and I’ve been keeping house for myself since I went away to college.”
Of course, keeping up with her dorm room and then small apartments was nothing on the scale of his three-story mansion, but she would cope.
“If you can cook as well as you talk, the hands are going to love you.” He gave her another once-over, this time, instead of chills, his gaze making her go hot in places an employer should not affect. “Then again, once they get a look at you, they’ll think they’ve gone to heaven even if your food tastes like cow pies.”
This she was used to. This she could handle. At least that was what she tried to convince herself. Men had been making comments about her figure for years. She had learned long ago that the best way to deal with the comments was to ignore them. “Ever eaten any?”
“Any what?”
“Cow pies?”
“No,” he said, with a hint of smile in his voice.
“Then I guess you won’t know if my cooking falls under that category, now, will you?”
The smile became a full-blown chuckle. “Guess not. You start tomorrow morning, Tex.”
“My name is Carlene.”
“But you talk like a Texan.”
“I’ll have to work harder on that. I’ll never live there again.” Too much pain she never wanted to revisit.
Relaxing against the brown leather couch in his living room, Win swirled the whiskey in his glass before taking a swallow. It had been several hours since Carlene Daniels had left. His new housekeeper. He grinned.
She had a body that would make most men uncomfortable in their jeans and talked like a prissy little schoolmarm. Remembering the curves her loose top had been unable to hide, he amended his thoughts. The lady wasn’t exactly little, at least not in some places. She wasn’t too big either. She was a perfect pocket Venus, with womanly curves that led to a naturally small waist. She was the stuff of most adolescent male dreams, maybe most adult ones as well.
She’d certainly been the subject of too many of his waking thoughts today. He still couldn’t figure out what gremlin had gotten into him and prompted him to offer her the job. She had no experience. He sure as hell hoped she could cook. His hands might like looking at a sexy woman like her, but that would grow old pretty darn quick if she didn’t feed them right. He sighed.
Maybe he should assign Shorty to help her until she got used to the routine. The diminutive man made lousy biscuits, but he knew the quantities and types of food horsemen ate.
She’d probably talk Shorty’s ears off. The woman had a mouth on her and it was plain as the day was long
