your nose to the kitchen.” She left, pulling the door shut behind her.
It took Josie only a few minutes to use the bathroom and put on yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She pulled her hair up in a ponytail and stared at her reflection with a wince. Pale, with dark circles under her eyes, she looked as exhausted as she felt. While she’d jumped at the chance to get out of LA, she wasn’t sure after her adventures today that she was cut out for this kind of place.
She took a deep breath. She could do it. It was six weeks in the middle of nowhere, cooking for four people. She’d spent the past few years cooking for critics and crowds, her life consumed by her career. How hard could it be?
Josie slept like a rock, and woke up confused when her smartphone alarm went off. She never slept through the night, in fact had prescription sleep medication that she tried not to take but often had to after several restless nights.
Blinking the sleep from her eyes, it took her a few seconds to remember where she was. The Silver River Ranch. She got up and hurried through her morning routine. Rosa had said she was usually in the kitchen by five, and it was nearly that now.
She hurried through the dark house and nearly screamed when a shadow detached itself from the darkness near the fireplace and hurtled itself at her, panting.
She darted behind a chair and whacked her shin on something hard. She bit back a curse and rubbed her aching leg as the shadow—a dark-colored dog—nosed her, tail going a mile a minute.
“You scared me,” she said accusingly, and the dog sat, tail still going, apparently unfazed by her tone.
She sighed and gave the dog’s head a quick pat, her heart still racing. She wasn’t a fan of dogs. Or animals in general, though she’d taken riding lessons as a teen. She’d never had a pet in any of her thirty-two years. Her parents had been too busy, and she’d followed right in their footsteps in terms of throwing herself wholeheartedly into her work. No time for houseplants, much less a pet.
She moved around the dog, who trotted behind her into the kitchen. It already smelled heavenly, and most important, like coffee. Aunt Rosa looked up with a smile. “Good morning. Did you sleep okay? Ah, I see you met Hank.”
“Good morning. I did, thanks.” She decided not to mention her little run-in in the living room with the furniture. Getting spooked by an animal seemed like a poor start to her job here. “You let the ranch dogs in the house?” Apparently giving up on Josie, Hank trotted over to Rosa, who rubbed his ears.
“Not the working ones. When they get old or can’t work for some reason they’ll usually get adopted by a family member. Hank is Luke’s dog.” To the dog, she said, “Go lie down, Hank.” He gave Josie another long look, then meandered out of the kitchen.
Rosa nodded toward the stack of white mugs on the counter next to the huge coffeepot. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” She moved around the island and poured a cup, adding a little milk and sugar. She closed her eyes as she took a sip. “Wow. This is really excellent coffee, Aunt Rosa.”
“Luke wants only the best,” Rosa said cheerfully, and Josie’s stomach soured just a little. Only the best was a familiar refrain. From her parents, from Russ.
She forced her lips into a smile. “Well, he got it here, for sure.” She set the mug down with a solid clink on the granite counter, eager to get started. “So...where do I start?”
The next hour passed in a comfortable blur of cooking and preparation. Josie enjoyed the chance to cook with her aunt, and the time passed quickly. She eyed the mountain of food on the platters and Rosa, catching her expression, laughed.
“Yep, only three men and then you and I and Alice. But remember, this isn’t just a nice meal out. This has to fuel them for hours and they can’t just run in and grab a snack. They’ll put a hurting on it.”
Almost on cue, Josie heard the low rumble of men’s voices and they entered the kitchen. Her gaze landed on Luke first. He just had on worn jeans and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt and the same hat as the night before, but her pulse gave a little skip. He gave her a polite nod. Before she could respond, two big guys stepped between them, and she looked up at them, startled. Her first thought was she’d never seen such good-looking siblings. All of them were tall and lean, with similar blue eyes, but their hair color wasn’t all the same. Luke’s was darker brown and these two were lighter. Still, they shared the same wide smile, similar to the one Alice had given her last night.
“Good morning,” the taller of the two said with a charming grin. “I’m Cade, and this is Jake. You must be Josie.”
“I am,” she said, shaking first Cade’s outstretched hand, then Jake’s. No little zings or fizzles of awareness. Which was good, of course, but why had it happened with Luke? Maybe she’d just been tired. “Nice to meet you guys.”
Behind them, Luke already had a plate, which he was heaping with food. Cade winked at her and said, “Looking forward to getting to know you better. Rosa’s said a lot about you.”
Ignoring the flirtatious first part of his comment, a little shiver of worry ran down her spine. Rosa didn’t gossip, but what had she said? Josie hadn’t talked a lot about her relationship with Russ, or the financial woes that had dogged them, but with his outsize personality and popular cooking show, he often made the gossip pages.
Rosa was beside her then, her hand light on Josie’s arm. “I talked up your cooking skills,” she said cheerfully. “As you’ve worked hard for them.”
Josie relaxed slightly. “Ah. Well, I’m not sure you guys want the kind of food I’ve been cooking for the past year or so. More for show than sustenance.” There may have been the slightest tinge of bitterness in her tone, so she smiled at both men to soften it. “So I’m looking forward to cooking real meals again.”
They exchanged a bit more good-natured chatter as Cade and Jake loaded up their plates and then left for the dining room, where she could hear the clink of silverware and the low rumble of voices.
“I didn’t say anything about your personal life,” Rosa said quietly as she carried a platter to the sink. “I just said you were between jobs at the moment and could fill in for me temporarily. I don’t know all that happened with you, honey, but I know it must have been bad to put those shadows in your eyes and to bring you all the way up here.”
The concern in her aunt’s voice made Josie want to cry. She blinked away the moisture. “I won’t lie. It’s been rough. But it’ll all work out.” She took a deep breath. “What can you tell me about those two?”
There was a slight pause, then apparently her aunt accepted the change in subject. “Cade is a flirt,” she said. “Harmless, but a flirt nonetheless. But he won’t push you or take it too far. He just loves women of all ages. Luke is the opposite. He won’t flirt at all. Jake is in the middle. They’re all good boys. Any one of them would be a wonderful catch.”
Josie bit back a sigh. While that was good to know, she wasn’t looking for any kind of relationship—long-term or temporary. Of all she’d been through personally, the worst had been realizing that engaged hadn’t meant the same thing to Russ as it did to her. Thank God she’d figured it all out well before the wedding.
