Chapter 3 #2
A thing? He hitched his brows but withheld comment. What the hell did he care whether she came? “Okay. It’s over at the big ranch house if you change your mind. Can I have more of the soufflé?” He’d cleaned his plate.
She pushed the crock toward him and stirred her pot on the stove. “Knock yourself out.”
“What’s the soup for?”
“It’s not soup, it’s stock. It’s good to have as a base.” She put her spoon down and came back to the breakfast bar. “How come you live here instead of LA?”
“Like it here better,” he said as he wolfed down his second piece of soufflé.
She took a visual stroll down his Levi’s to his cowboy boots. “Why? You seem more sophisticated than your average cowpoke.”
“You know a lot of ranchers, then? Because beef is a two-and-a-half-billion-dollar industry in California. We cowpokes are pretty damned sophisticated.”
“If it’s so lucrative, why do you have to moonlight as a journalist?”
Because he loved being a journalist and because Dry Creek Ranch took every resource they had just to keep the lights on. “Someone’s gotta make the world a better place.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “A little high on yourself, aren’t you?”
Her stock bubbled over and she hustled over to the stove to turn the flame down. “Is there a kitchen store around here?”
“There’s Tess’ in Grass Valley. Why? What do you need?”
“Just wondering,” she said. “Are there any good gourmet markets?”
“There’s a number of farmers’ markets in the area. But as far as a Dean and DeLuca, you’d have to go to St. Helena for that. But there’s the internet. They do deliver out here—in Timbuktu.”
She blew out a breath and sank into one of the barstools. “I’m trying to cut the cord with the World Wide Web these days.”
“My mother said something about pictures.”
A splotch of pink crept up her neck until it reached her cheeks. “Did you see it?”
“I didn’t look.” Though he’d thought about it a few times.
He found a roll of cellophane he didn’t know he had, wrapped up the rest of the soufflé, and put it in his fridge.
A little presumptuous, but the price of using his kitchen without his permission was excellent leftovers.
“Don’t you have people who can get you the things you need? ”
“Your mother told me not to tell anyone where I am. My staff all signed NDAs but…you know how that goes.”
He nodded, because he did. People liked to talk for all kinds of reasons, including for money, which the tabloids would pay. Handsomely. “How long are you planning to stay in hiding?”
She hitched her shoulders. “Your mom thinks I need to lay low and stay out of the spotlight at least until the meeting with ChefAid.” Staying out of sight might quell some of the chatter.
And that’s what he was afraid of. Because it meant she’d be here for thirty-eight more days.
Even if her soufflé was out of this world, he didn’t want to like her.
Besides making herself too at home in his loft, she hadn’t shown the least bit of remorse for screwing around with someone else’s husband. She was just sorry she got caught.
That told him a lot about her character and character was everything to Sawyer. His grandfather used to say, “A man without character is a man without a soul.”
“How much do you have riding on the ChefAid gig?” It had to be a lucrative deal. But according to his mother, Gina had a large portfolio. Maybe a few days from now, she’d come to the conclusion that living in the sticks wasn’t worth it and crawl back to wherever she came from.
She sighed, deliberated for a moment, and finally said, “A nice piece of my net worth, especially now that my show might get canceled for good and I have investors pulling out left and right.”
Well, there went that theory.
Her handbag began to chirp and she stuck a spoon in his hand. “Stir that.” She fished her phone out of her purse and took it inside his bedroom, leaving him alone with her chicken stock.
A short time later she appeared, her lips pressed in a grim line. “I’ve got to go.”
Before he could ask her if everything was all right, she jogged down the stairs and let the screen door slam. From his window, he watched her BMW jackknife on the dirt road, leaving a cloud of dust behind her.
He turned the stock to simmer. One look around the kitchen and it didn’t take long for him to realize that she’d stuck him with all the dishes.
* * * *
That evening Sawyer drove the half mile to Jace’s. He would’ve walked, but he had a case of beer and a few bottles of wine. The gang was out back where Jace had the grill fired up. Sawyer stowed the beverages in the outdoor fridge and uncorked a bottle of Napa Cabernet to let it breathe.
Charlie and Aubrey would appreciate the wine. Jace and Cash, on the other hand, would drink swill from a paper cup.
Once his hands were empty, Ellie and Grady tackled him. They liked to stand on his feet while he walked like a robot. Jace’s oldest boy stood back. At fourteen, Travis was too cool to be demonstrative. He bobbed his chin at Sawyer, instead.
Sawyer broke away from the little ones and put Travis in a headlock. “How you doin’, pardner?”
“Good. Dad says a movie star lives here now.”
“Not a movie star. She’s on TV, though. And she’s only here temporarily.” Hopefully more temporary than thirty-eight days.
Cash cuffed him on the back. “Welcome home. Jace says you had a successful trip.”
Sawyer shrugged. “The work half of the trip was productive. The other half was a lot of drinking and catching up with old colleagues. You know the drill.” He grinned because Cash, a former FBI agent, had had a one-night stand with a cop at a law-enforcement conference and along came Ellie.
Sawyer suspected there was more sleeping around at law-enforcement conferences than there was at journalism conferences. Either that or Sawyer was an unlucky bastard.
“You met your new neighbor yet?” Sawyer probably should’ve talked to Cash before foisting her onto his cousin’s side of the ranch.
“Not yet. We saw her car parked at the cabin this morning and Aubrey’s been hanging out on the porch in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.” Cash rolled his eyes. “Have you ever seen this cooking show she’s so famous for?”
“A few times.” More than Sawyer liked to admit, given that his idea of cooking was nuking a frozen burrito in the microwave or driving over to the coffee shop in Dry Creek.
“I guess I’m the only one on God’s green earth who hasn’t seen it. Even Ellie knew who Gina DeRose was.”
If her reputation continued to take a beating, she’d be filed away in the unemployed has-been pile. She was perilously close now. Then her name would be as obscure as one of those one-hit wonders who no one remembered except for the song.
Sawyer suspected the only reason she’d survived thus far was because Dalton and Associates—i.e. his parents—were master crisis managers.
“No great loss,” he told Cash and stifled his own eye roll.
“Who wants burgers and who wants steaks?” Jace called. He was wearing his Mr. Good Lookin’ is Cooking apron that Aubrey had given him years ago and that he hauled out at every barbecue. The thing had been washed so many dang times the letters were starting to fade.
“Steaks,” Aubrey and Charlie shouted from the picnic table, where they’d already made a good dent on a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
The kids all called for hamburgers. Sawyer checked out the offerings that had been laid out on an old wooden trestle table: At least three different salads, a fruit platter, snacks of assorted varieties, and a dozen condiments.
He filched one of the bags of chips and joined Jace and Cash at the grill.
“Any of you have time tomorrow to help move the herd to the lower south pasture?” Jace asked. “I took the morning off but could use a hand or two.”
“Sure,” Cash and Sawyer said in unison.
Sawyer was gone the most and tried to make up for ranch work whenever he was home by doing double duty. They couldn’t afford hands and for the most part did everything themselves, including mending the never-ending deterioration of fencing across their 500 acres.
There wasn’t anything Sawyer wouldn’t do to save the Dalton legacy. Besides a truckload of happy childhood memoires of weekends and holidays on the ranch, it was their grandfather’s dying wish that they hold on to the land and make it prosper again.
Jasper Dalton had been larger than life, an almost mythical figure. Cowboy. Rancher. A symbol of honor and integrity and all that was right in the world.
When Sawyer’s job took him to the dankest, darkest places on earth, all he had to do was think of his grandfather to keep him centered. To give him hope.
They stood over the fire, eating chips and drinking beer in companionable silence.
Cash and Jace had always been more like brothers to Sawyer than first cousins.
And with them all living on the ranch together, the three of them had grown even closer.
But now that both men had women in their lives, Sawyer sometimes felt like a fifth wheel.
Jace raised his chin and shielded his eyes with his hand to block the sun as he stared out over the fields. “Looks like we’ve got one more.”
Sawyer followed Jace’s gaze. Gina was crossing the field, carrying something in one hand and swatting the air with the other. She didn’t seem too steady on her feet and Sawyer wondered if she was drunk. “I sort of invited her.”
“I thought you didn’t like her.” Jace jabbed Sawyer in the ribs with his elbow.
“I don’t. But she showed up this morning to use my stove and somehow I let our barbecue slip out. What was I supposed to do; say you can’t come?”
“Nope. You did the right thing.” Jace exchanged a glance with Cash and the two of them grinned.