“Nothing fancy, but very functional,” Rebecca murmured, her gaze slowly surveying the kitchen. A battered copper teakettle sat on a back burner of the stove. “Ah,” she said with satisfaction.
It took only moments to fill the kettle with cold tap water and set it on the stove to heat. Rebecca opened cupboard doors until she found several mugs. The one she took down had a Montana State Fair and Rodeo emblem on the side. None of the cupboards held good china, although there was a collection of mismatched dishes, glasses, cups and bowls.
While she waited for the kettle to boil, she glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly five o’clock.
Rebecca was hungry. She’d swallowed less than half of the limp chicken and dry rice served as lunch on the plane. Then she’d downed a bottle of water and a candy bar while waiting for her rental car to be processed at the airport, but except for two tall take-out coffees she drank on the drive from Billings to Colson and the bagel she’d eaten at her 6:00 a.m. meeting before leaving for the airport in San Francisco, that was the sum total of her food intake for the day.
She was beyond hungry. She was starved.
The teakettle whistled, startling her and she quickly poured boiling water into her mug.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Rebecca jumped and spun to look at the door. A man stood just outside the screen door in the utility room. He yanked open the door and stepped into the kitchen, and she got a clearer view of him. He wasn’t a tall man; in fact, he was probably an inch or so shorter than her own five feet eight, but his legs were bowed and his back slightly bent, making it difficult to know how tall he might have been when young. His dusty jeans and snap-front western shirt were faded blue and worn white in places, his brown cowboy boots smeared with mud. At least, Rebecca assumed it was mud. She wasn’t sure. A shock of white hair was startlingly pale against the dark, weathered tan of his lined face, and bright blue eyes watched her suspiciously.
“Well?” he demanded.
Rebecca realized that she’d been staring, speechless, at him and hadn’t answered his question.
“I’m just brewing a mug of tea,” she offered. He didn’t relax, his gaze just as suspicious. “I’m the accountant from Bay Area Investments.”
The blue gaze sharpened. “I thought the accountant was a man.”
“He was. Is. He was stricken with a sudden illness, and the company sent me to take his place.”
“Humph,” the old man snorted. “That’s ridiculous. We can’t have a woman on the place.”
“So Mr. Rand said,” Rebecca said dryly, wondering if every man on Rand Ranch would dislike her on sight. “I’m guessing that you must be Hank?”
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
“Mr. Rand mentioned that one of the four men staying here didn’t care for women.”
“That’s right. I don’t. Women are nothin’ but trouble.”
“I promise I’ll do my best not to cause any trouble,” Rebecca assured him gravely.
“Hah. Promise all you want, won’t make any difference. Trouble follows women, regardless of what they say.”
Rebecca could see that the conversation wasn’t getting anywhere.
“I was just making a mug of tea, Mr., um, Hank. Would you like one?”
He gave her a withering glare. “No. Don’t drink tea. That’s a woman’s drink, ’cept for iced tea loaded with sugar in the summertime.”
“Oh.” Rebecca bit the inside of her lip to keep from grinning. Hank reminded her of elderly Mr. Althorpe, her neighbor at her condo in San Francisco. He proclaimed long and loud that he hated women, but he was a soft touch for the double-chocolate brownies she brought him from the bakery on the next block. She wondered briefly if the bakery would give her the recipe so she could try chocolate bribery on Hank.
“Men drink coffee, beer or whiskey,” the old man proclaimed, stomping to the sink. He scrubbed his hands and face, drying them on the towel hung on a rack inside the lower cabinet door.
“Would you like me to make you coffee, then?”
“No.” He shot her a scathing glance. “Women never make it strong enough.”
“Ah, I see.” She collected her tea, tossed the tea bag in the trash, stirred in sugar and retreated to the relative safety of the table.
“If you’re gonna be livin’ here, you’re gonna have to help with chores,” Hank warned.
“Certainly. Is there a schedule?”
“Of sorts. I do most of the cookin’ and everybody else helps out with cleanin’ up in the kitchen and the rest of the house.”
Rebecca didn’t miss the pointed look Hank gave her. Clearly, the kitchen was Hank’s territory.
“Can I help you with dinner tonight?” she offered, expecting him to refuse. To her surprise, he didn’t.
“Since I’m runnin’ late tonight, I suppose you can,” he agreed grumpily.
“What can I do?” She stood.
“You can get five good-sized baking potatoes from the sack in the basement. The door to the cellar is on the back porch.”
“Right.” Rebecca stepped into the utility room. A washer and dryer took up half of one wall, the other half lined with coat hooks and a collection of jackets. Below them, several pairs of rubber or leather boots stood. The far wall had more hooks for jackets and the door to the back step, standing open with the screen door outside closed. To her left, cabinets lined the wall on each side of a door. She pulled open the door, flicked on the switch and carefully descended steep stairs to the cool, concrete-walled basement. Rough plank shelves lined the walls, filled with enough canned goods to feed an army. She found the gunny sack of potatoes leaning against the wall. Juggling an armful, she left the basement for the kitchen and crossed to the sink. Hank shot her a glance when she tumbled the pile into the sink and began to wash them. Without commenting, she scrubbed them clean, deftly stabbed each three times with a knife from the block atop the counter and slipped them into the oven, setting the temperature at four hundred.
“Potatoes are in,” she told Hank. “What else can I do?”
When Jackson opened the back door and stepped into the utility room off the kitchen, it was nearly six-thirty. He was hot, dirty and tired. And he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about Rebecca Wallingford.
He saw her through the screen door to the kitchen the minute he stepped into the utility room. She was standing with her back to him, stirring something in a pan on the stove. Gone was the sophisticated black business suit and heels, replaced by a gathered white skirt that cinched in at her narrow waist and left the smooth, tanned length of legs bare from above her knees. The old radio on the shelf by the back door was tuned to a rock-and-roll station, and her ebony ponytail swung back and forth, brushing her nape as she swayed to the music.
Emotions,
