6
AH, BAD DE PAINT FUMES. She’d recognize that smell anywhere. The last ad campaign she’d done before leaving Chicago had been on Chic Celebrity Room Paint. She’d had to test the colors before being able to write the ad copy about them.
Here in Colorado, the paint wasn’t Paul Newman Baby Blue or Marilyn Monroe Blond or Smashing Pumpkins Orange. Here Zane was tackling the job of repainting the housekeeper’s room like a man possessed... and he was painting it white. Plain white.
The housekeeper’s quarters were located down a short hallway off the kitchen, isolated from the rest of the house.
The twins had wanted to help their father, but Buck had taken pity on Zane and had taken the kids off on a trip to their Uncle Cord’s cabin in the mountains. Only Buck’s promise that they’d look for Cockeyed Curly’s treasure map while they were there had drawn the kids away.
Before leaving, Buck had told her that Cord was the loner in the family, while Reno was the charmer. Which left Zane as what? she wondered. The responsible one, the stubborn devil of a cowboy whose kisses made her knees melt and her insides hum? An apt description in her view, but one she doubted the rest of his family shared.
Tracy had opened the kitchen windows to let in some fresh air. For once it wasn’t because she’d darkened some pot or ruined some meal. It was because she was getting giddy from the paint fumes.
She certainly wasn’t getting giddy about being alone in the house with Zane. Compared to the male models she’d worked with on advertising layouts, he wasn’t even that exceptionally good-looking. Or even as good-looking as Dennis was in his smooth yuppie kind of way. Dennis lived for Italian suits and vintage California wines, for his own cappuccino and latte machines, his own coffee grinder and special blend of beans. Zane was nothing like Dennis.
She was still trying to figure out why she’d responded to his kiss the way she had in the barn last night. Here she was, thirty years old, and she’d never felt such passion, never desired a man more—not even Dennis. Despite those hormone-driven feelings, she’d spoken the truth when she’d told Zane she was no more eager to get involved with him than he was with her. She’d just been politer about it.
She hadn’t told him he didn’t fulfill any of the qualifications she had for a future mate. Partly because she no longer had a list of qualifications. Not after Dennis. He’d shot that theory out of the water. She’d thought he was everything she’d wanted in a man—but he was minus a few things, like integrity for one.
Zane seemed to have plenty of that. And a love and loyalty for his family that was admirable. Just like the Cartwright family on Bonanza. But come to think of it, none of those Cartwright boys ever did find the right woman for them.
Wiping down an already clean countertop, Tracy wondered who the right woman would be for Zane. Apparently it wasn’t her. Which was just fine by her. She was just here for the summer, enough time to get a new perspective on her life and what she wanted to do with it—whether she wanted to return to Chicago or start fresh somewhere else.
For the time being, all she wanted was a cool drink of lemonade. The pitcher she’d made last night had plenty left. Maybe Zane would like a glass, too? It was only polite to ask him. What any housekeeper would do. Then she’d get to work on the living room while Buck and the twins were out of the way.
Last night Tracy’s response to King, the iguana, had instigated a breakthrough of sorts with the twins. Rusty had actually shown her his snake, Precious, and had done so with pride rather than mischief in mind.
As for their father, well there was no telling what was on his mind. He wasn’t saying, and she sure wasn’t asking. When she brought him a glass of lemonade, he just took it from her and drank it all down, said thanks and then went back to working. He had a pair of painter’s overalls on over his jeans and denim shirt.
“The painting would go faster if we both worked on the room,” she noted.
“Painting isn’t part of your job. Besides I’m almost done in here.”
She tried to ignore the slight sting his dismissal caused. She’d never thought of herself as having a thin skin before. She’d always been able to blend her creative and her business sides together with a professionalism that precluded her having hurt feelings if a client didn’t like one of her ad ideas.
The problem here was that she wasn’t pitching an ad campaign, so the rejection wasn’t of her work, it was of her. Personally. Not professionally. Not that he was all that impressed by her professionalism as a housekeeper. So what would impress him?
She needed to forget about all this relationship stuff and concentrate on cleaning the living room. Practical stuff like stacking old newspapers and gathering up dirty clothes. She had yet to tackle the wash, come to think of it. One peek in the laundry room and the mountain of clothes waiting there had sent her scuttling back to the kitchen.
Before leaving, she took a quick glance around the housekeeper’s room, which was large and airy with a window facing the range of mountains. Since Zane had finished painting one side of the room already, he’d removed the tarp from the few pieces of furniture on that side of the room. The rustic pine bed, nightstand and chest of drawers were more intricately designed and crafted than the set upstairs.
Noticing her gaze on the furniture, Zane said, “My brother Cord made those.”
“He’s very talented. There’s a huge demand for handmade western-style furniture,” she added, running a hand over the smooth headboard.
“So he tells me.”
“It must be nice having all your family live so close by.”
“Family is important out here.”
“Family is important wherever you are,” she gently corrected him.
Looking away, he said, “I...uh...I told the twins we’d spend twin time together tonight.”
Tracy smiled. “I’m so glad! What did they say?”
“They didn’t have to say anything,” he noted gruffly. “The look on their faces said it all.”
“They were pleased.”
“Yeah. They were pleased.” Zane’s blue eyes met hers, and for an instant she felt like she’d stuck a wet finger in the toaster, something she’d done the other morning and gotten a zing of an electric shock.
Don’t get sappy, she warned herself. She was just suffering from withdrawal symptoms because she didn’t have an ad campaign to work on, although she had already done a few sketches for a possible label for Buck’s Barbecue Sauce. Just doodles really, but it kept her occupied when she’d had a hard time falling asleep last night. And it was better than thinking about Zane.
“Well, I should get back to work,” she said, already taking a few steps toward the door. “Do you want me to start packing up my stuff to move it down here?”
“No sense packing it all up only to unpack it again. Just bring down the drawers and dump ’em in the drawers here. The room should stop smelling of paint in about another hour or two.”
During that time, Tracy focused her energies on cleaning the living room. And she discovered that the carpeting was green, a yucky avocado green from the sixties, but a cleaner green than it had been thanks to some heavy-duty vacuuming from a machine that had probably been built when Kennedy was president.
When Buck mentioned that the house had hardwood floors beneath the grungy carpet she’d been tempted to suggest taking up the worn-out carpet and letting the flooring beneath take its place. She could already see it in her mind’s eye—the mellow glow of oak flooring with the scattering of Native American rugs—Navajo maybe. In earth tones. It was enough to get her creative juices flowing.
It was probably too soon to go redecorating Zane’s house. After all she’d only been there a few days. But she had already ordered new appliances for the kitchen, they were coming tomorrow. Maybe in a week or so she’d bring up the matter of removing the carpet and resanding the floors. How hard could that be?
Once the living room had been restored to some semblance of order, Tracy moved upstairs to get her things. She only had an hour or so before she had to start the evening meal. Was it too soon to have spaghetti again? She’d managed that fairly well, since all that was involved was boiling pasta and opening ajar of sauce and warming it up.
Wanting to be more efficient, she put all her things in two drawers, filled to overflowing, and then put one on top of the other to carry downstairs. She had just enough room to see over the top, if she was careful.
She was careful, but the combination of both drawers was heavier than she thought it would be. The top drawer was about to slide sideways when Zane came to her rescue halfway down the stairs.
“Here, give me that.” He took both drawers from her and briskly made his way to her new quarters.
“Just set the drawers on the bed,” she requested, trailing right behind him.
When he did as she asked, a mound of her silky lingerie slid out of the drawer. He instinctively grabbed for it, and a moment later her apricot-colored bra-and-panty set was dangling from his fingertips. He looked at the clothing as if it were a poisonous snake about to bite him.
The man had been married. Surely he’d seen women’s underwear before? Just not her underwear. She snatched the clothing from his hands. The tips of her fingers brushed his, and she shivered at the contact.
Everything simple became rich with meaning when she was with him. Her startled eyes met his. She was close enough to see them darken. He could speak volumes with those blue eyes of his, and she was beginning to learn his visual language. He wasn’t a man of many words, but with eyes like those he didn’t have to be. They spoke for him, said what he couldn’t or wouldn’t. That she wasn’t the only one who felt this intense attraction, that he was tempted by her, that she had power over him just as he had power over her. Sensual power.
Then he blinked and the moment was over. “What’s for supper?” he asked as if nothing had happened.
“Spaghetti?” she said. “Or I could make my specialty, Shrimp de Jonghe, if you have any shrimp in the freezer.”
“Shrimp isn’t exactly cowboy food.”
“It’s very healthy and good for you.”
“You don’t aim on changing our eating habits, do you?” he asked suspiciously.
“Other than having Lucky use a napkin rather than wiping her mouth on her shirtsleeve, no, I had no plans to change anyone’s eating habits.”
“I meant serving up those fancy yuppie meals with a spoonful of mystery food in the middle of an empty plate decorated with fancy swirls of sauce.”
“You’re not a fan of French cuisine, I gather.”
“I prefer real food.”
“Only because you’ve never eaten crème brûlée.” She licked her lips just at the thought of the dessert.
Zane was not equally impressed. “It’s just pudding with a sugary crust on top,” he scoffed. “You think I’ve never eaten in a French restaurant? I went to college in Seattle. They’ve got plenty of French restaurants there. You don’t have to look so shocked. You think I’ve never been off the ranch?”
“I don’t know what to think.” That much was true. Just when she thought she had Zane pegged, he went and startled her. She couldn’t decide whether she liked that or not.
THE NEXT DAY Zane was in a bad mood for some reason, but the good news was that the new appliances were delivered without incident. That’s how she’d like her life to be for a week or two—without incident.
But it wasn’t meant to be. At least, not yet While her spaghetti last night had been good, she’d ruined the eggs this morning—her last time cooking on the old stove. The new one hadn’t been connected in time for lunch so she’d had to make tuna fish sandwiches. Cowboys weren’t real fond of tuna fish, she quickly learned. At least not the cowboys on the Best ranch.
Once the appliances were installed and the workman had departed, she couldn’t wait to show Zane how great the kitchen looked. She grabbed him the minute he walked in the mudroom, not even waiting for him to actually walk into the kitchen.
“Come look!”
“Look at what?” he asked as she dragged him over to the sink.
“Everything.” She held her arms wide to embrace the entire kitchen, sparkling clean, with the new white stove and dishwasher. Standing before them like a game-show model, she waved her arms toward the shining appliances. “Self-cleaning oven, electronicignition burners. And the dishwasher does pots and pans, too. And I found room for the things I brought with me from Chicago. See, I came prepared. I’ve got a salad shooter, and a cookie shooter.”
“The only thing we shoot around here are housekeepers who can’t cook,” Zane growled.
Fed up with his crabbiness—he’d been like this all day—she responded by sticking her thumbs in her ears and wiggling her fingers at him.
He stared at her in astonishment.
“A little something your kids taught me,” she noted demurely. “Consider yourself lucky I didn’t pour honey over you the way the kids almost did to me this morning. They had an open plastic bottle of it rigged to the top of the door frame into the pantry.”
Zane couldn’t answer. He was all caught up in the image of her covering him with honey.
“They assured me it was a little something left over from when I first arrived and they wanted me to leave. I think it was a test of sorts and I passed it. Since you told them you’d be spending more time with them, things have been much better. In fact, aside from this honey incident they’ve been remarkably good, considering.”
“Considering?” Zane’s voice was raspy. He knew what he’d been considering. Tracy. Wearing honey and a wicked smile. Nothing else.
“Considering they are the Best twins, able to strike fear into the hearts of shopkeepers and housekeepers alike.”
He laughed.
She smiled at him, her delight evident. “You should do that more often.”
He had a feeling he would be with her in the house. It was hard not to when she was so bright and chipper. Not to mention sexy. And he wasn’t going to mention it or even think about it. Yeah, right. And pigs could fly.
FEELING CONFIDENT NOW that she was cooking on a new stove, Tracy decided to try out the new pressure cooker she’d brought with her and use it to make Potage Saint Germain, or split pea soup.
As she’d told Zane, her specialty was getting people to stop and say wow. And okay, so they were saying wow about her cooking because it was so bad right now, but that would change. She’d picked up a magazine called Quick Cooking at the supermarket the other day and had gotten plenty of ideas from that.
This recipe was from one of the cookbooks she’d brought from Chicago and it didn’t call for cooking the soup in the pressure cooker, but she decided it would save time to do so.
Meanwhile, she had to get back to the wash, or more specifically, the dryer, which was buzzing at her as if mocking the fact that she hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn that feature off when a load was finished. “I heard you the first time,” she shouted as she headed for the vocal dryer.
“Who are you talking to?” Lucky demanded.
“The dryer.”
“Do all city girls talk to dryers?”
“I didn’t talk to dryers when I lived in the city.” She used to drop her dirty clothes off at a laundry in the lobby of her condo building. They’d magically come back all clean and pressed.
“Then why do you talk to them here?”
“Because they talk to me first. Buzzing at me. Oops.” She looked in dismay at the T-shirt she’d put in a half hour earlier, which was now twice as wide and half as long as it had been. She’d grown tired of reading all the labels on every item of clothing—all of them had said Tumble Dry, so after a while she’d stopped looking.
Meanwhile the washing machine had suddenly taken to shaking as if it was drunk and about to heave. Something was definitely wrong with the spin cycle. This was only her second load of wash. She punched what looked as if it should be the off button. It didn’t work.
“You open the lid and it turns off,” Lucky told her as if she were the adult and Tracy the child.
“Right. I knew that.” Lifting the lid made the machine grind to a shuddering halt. Peering inside, Tracy frowned at something that looked remarkably like...a pair of suede boots? Her boots. “What are my boots doing in the wash?”
“Getting clean,” the little girl replied.
Tracy didn’t have time to discuss why suede and washing machines did not go well together, because she’d suddenly become aware of a hissing noise coming from the kitchen. The rattling heaves of the washing machine had drowned it out before. Now she heard it with dread. Her soup!
Racing back into the kitchen, Tracy arrived just in time to see the vent on top of the pressure cooker bubbling ominously. Oh, no! She’d forgotten to put the weight thingamajig on top of the vent. Too late. A geyser of split peas spewed clear to the ceiling, where the steaming gooey green masses clung like something nasty and noxious.
“Why are you cooking snot?” Lucky asked from behind her.
“I’m not...it’s split pea soup.”
Gazing up at the glop on the ceiling, Lucky said, “Is that how you’re supposed to split the peas?”
“I doubt it,” Tracy muttered. “You stay back while I turn this thing off.” Once the burner had been turned off, the pressure cooker eventually stopped its spewing.
So much for impressing Zane with her culinary skills. Not that he cared much for French cooking anyway. Especially when it was hanging from the ceiling.
Tracy plastered a bright smile on her face. “So...how about spaghetti for dinner tonight?”
In the end, she went with several family-size pizzas she found in the freezer instead of spaghetti. Add a large salad and presto—dinner, with not a minute to spare. Cleaning up the split pea mess had taken more time than she thought. Any hope of keeping the incident quiet went out the window when Lucky regaled everyone with the story.
The silver lining was that, once again, Beauty the hog would benefit from Tracy’s mishap in the kitchen.
And the lesson was to always read directions all the way through to the end—where it said never to cook applesauce or dried peas in the pressure cooker. Now she knew why.
As Tracy loaded the dishwasher after dinner, the twins helped her by putting the silverware in the washing basket while keeping her up-to-date on her duties as housekeeper. It seemed, as far as they were concerned, pizza every night was de rigueur.
“A housekeeper can cook pizza for dinner all the time,” Rusty said.
“Yeah, but she can’t make us eat everything on our plates,” Lucky added.
Rusty nodded his agreement. “Or get mad if we feed our pizza or cake to our snake. A housekeeper would never get mad about that.”
“Son of a buck, you kids are full of hooey,” Buck scoffed as he entered the kitchen, adding a cackle of laughter for good measure. “I’ll tell you what a good housekeeper does. Follows orders. My orders. And is a good listener. Appreciates my poetry. Is a great cook. And it would be nice if she could play the fiddle or sing.” -
“And she should be able to pitch a baseball,” Rusty added.
“And know all the words to the songs on The Lion King video,” Lucky inserted.
“And be able to bake an apple pie that’ll melt in your mouth,” Buck said wistfully.
“What’s going on in here?” Zane asked as he joined them. “A family conference?”
“We were just telling her how to be a good housekeeper,” Lucky said.
“She has a name,” Zane pointed out. “It’s Tracy. Or Ms. Campbell.”
“Tracy is fine,” she said. Especially the way Zane said it. There they were again. Those forbidden thoughts. What was wrong with her? Not a week ago, she’d been engaged to be married and now here she was getting all gooey about the way some sexy rancher said her name.
It was one thing to notice that he’d look good in a jeans commercial, it was quite another to like the way he said her name or the way his fingers felt on her breast or the way his tongue tickled the roof of her mouth when he kissed her.
“Can anyone tell me why there’s a pair of wet boots in the washing machine?” Buck inquired from the laundry room.
“They were dirty,” Tracy replied, exchanging a grin with Lucky. The little girl grinned back as if they were co-conspirators.
Buck chortled. “That explains it then.”
For the first time since she’d arrived at the ranch lost and soaking wet, she felt like part of the family. And it was a good feeling.
AS THE DAYS PROGRESSED, Tracy settled into a routine. And that old saying about practice making perfect did apply to cooking. Not that she was anywhere near perfect yet, but things were slowly improving.
By her third week on the ranch she’d actually mastered the art of having everything prepared at the same time, ready for the table. No more waiting around for the potatoes to be done while the meat got cold. She’d even managed to set a lovely table, including a centerpiece of wildflowers she’d gathered from around the house—stiff-stemmed black-eyed Susans and magenta spikes of fireweed. She’d found an easy recipe for fast-baked fish and dilled rice, which she served with honey-glazed baby carrots.
She’d no sooner placed the meal on the table and sat down when everyone started reaching and gobbling. Five minutes later the food was gone. She’d worked all afternoon on it, and they’d inhaled it as if it were fast food from a burger joint instead of the first perfect meal she’d ever made. There had been no savoring, no compliments.
Sure Lucky hadn’t wiped her mouth on her sleeve and had used her napkin, and Murph’n’Earl had given her shy smiles, but that was it. She’d barely had time to eat a few bites, and they were ready for dessert.
“You ate it all!” she yelled at them all.
Buck blinked at her accusatory tone. “Something wrong with that?”
She blinked back tears. “No one even paused to enjoy it.”
“We ate it, didn’t we?” Buck looked and sounded aggrieved, as only a male of the species could. “That means we enjoyed it. You fixed us supper. It’s supposed to be eaten.”
“Eaten, not devoured,” she retorted, deciding that men really were from Mars. “It was a masterpiece.”
Buck frowned in confusion. “It was just fish and carrots.”
“Yes, but made just right. My first perfect dinner!” she practically wailed. Sleep deprivation was starting to take its toll on her. She didn’t finish her work until late at night, and then she had to get up before the birds the next morning.
A more experienced housekeeper could probably get things done in half the time, but not her. She’d had to resort to using twenty-five-watt bulbs in the living room because she had yet to dust in there, and the dimmer light hid that fact. A little tip she’d picked up from a housekeeping site on the Internet.
“I liked the fish,” Rusty said, reaching over to squeeze her hand as if sensing she wanted to cry. “It didn’t taste like a city girl made it. It was real good, and I had seconds. It was so good I wouldn’t even give some to Precious or Joe because I wanted it all for me.”
“You’re right, it was wonderful,” Zane confirmed in that shimmy-provoking voice of his. “Tracy, I apologize for our lack of manners. We’ve been without a woman’s civilizing influence for so long that we’ve resorted to acting like a bunch of rowdy cowboys gathered ’round the chuck wagon.”
“No offense intended, ma’am,” Murph said.
“Best meal I’ve had in weeks,” Earl added.
Since Tracy had been cooking their meals for weeks, she decided this was a backhanded compliment but an accurate one. Her dinner tonight had far exceeded everything else she’d done up to that point. That’s why she’d been so upset that they hadn’t noticed, although she supposed the fact that they’d eaten every scrap was their way of saying it was good. But there were times when she needed to hear the words, darn it.
To make up for it, Zane insisted on serving dessert—scoops of Rocky Road ice cream. He even stuck around afterward to help her tidy up in the kitchen, a first.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he paused to carefully replace the dish towel through the handle of the refrigerator the way she liked before continuing, “that you’re welcome to ride any of the horses anytime you’d like.”
“I don’t exactly have a lot of free time.”
A guilty expression flashed over his face. “I haven’t given you a day off since you’ve been here, have I? Sorry about that. Time tends to get away from me. From now on you can have Sundays off. How does that sound?”
“Nice.”
“And as I said, you’re welcome to take one of the horses.”
“I don’t know how to ride,” she interrupted him, still feeling out of sorts.
“I’ll teach you. Think of it as my way of repaying you for the wonderful meal.”
Tracy tried not to notice how good his denim-clad behind looked as he bent over to put a bowl in the dishwasher, before just giving up and letting herself surreptitiously enjoy the view. “You already pay me to make wonderful meals.”
“Yeah, but this was your first perfect one. It deserves something special to mark the occasion.” He straightened and smiled at her. “Besides, riding is one of those skills a good housekeeper should have, like knowing all the words to the songs on The Lion King video.”
She eyed him suspiciously, wondering if she was being set up here. “You’re telling me that your previous housekeepers could ride horses?”
Zane nodded. “All twelve of them could ride. Even old Mrs. Battle, who was eighty if she was a day.”
“Well, if Mrs. Battle can do it, then so can L”
That philosophy sounded fine until Tracy found herself face to face with a giant of a horse a few days later. “Is this the one that gets fresh? Because I’m telling you that one of these horses copped a feel the last time I was out here.”
“That would have been Randy,” Zane said.
“An apt name.”
Zane laughed. She liked his laugh.
“People treat horses the way they treat people,” he was saying.
If that was true then Zane must be really great with people, because he was certainly magical with the horses, even with the feisty Bashful, who was anything but. Randy was the horse who’d laughed at her, but Bashful was the one who looked at her as if he wanted to bite a chunk out of her.
“Just a guess here, but riding means I have to get close to the horse, right?” Her nervousness was cloaked in humor, but he heard it.
“Are you afraid of horses?”
“Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for something that is so much heavier and bigger than I am.”
“I’m bigger and heavier than you are,” Zane pointed out, “yet I don’t see you showing me a lot of healthy respect.”
The man was actually teasing her! Standing there, in his denim shirt with the snap closures and long sleeves rolled up to show his tanned forearms. She’d already memorized the fit of his jeans, the image indelibly imprinted on her brain. His cowboy boots were scuffed and worn, a working rancher’s boots, not an urban cowboy’s. His hat was white, like one of the good guys.
She wiped the damp palms of her hands on her jeans, suddenly at a loss for words.
Zane just smiled and said, “We’ll start out easy with Mabel. She’s very reliable.”
Mabel might be reliable but she was still the size of a house. Or that’s how she appeared from Tracy’s five-foot-five perspective. But Mabel did seem to have friendly eyes, complete with a set of gorgeous eyelashes.
“First off, I’ll show you how to walk around a horse. Here, give me your hand.” He took it, then frowned at the scrape at the back of her knuckles. “How did you do that?”
She mumbled her reply.
He leaned closer. “What did you say?”
“I said I scraped it on the brownies I made this morning.” The look she gave him dared him to say anything. “I lost track of time and they overcooked. They were harder than rocks by the time they cooled down, and I had to scrape the pan to hack them out of there.”
While she talked, he absently brushed his thumb over her knuckles as if to soothe the hurt. Once he realized what he was doing he quickly placed her hand near the back of the horse’s rib cage.
“Okay, you stand here, with your rib cage against the horse’s. No, get closer.” As he positioned her, his fingers brushed her breast. “Sorry about that,” he muttered. “Okay, now move around to the other side. This way.” He walked around the back of the horse to the other side.
“You sure this isn’t some kind of plot for revenge for that quiche I made the other night?” she asked suspiciously. “I mean, this isn’t a setup where the horse is going to smack me in the face with her tail or something, is it?”
“Oh ye of little faith.”
“I’m not the one who doesn’t trust city girls.” The words were out before she could stop them.
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t trust me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then prove it,” he said. “Walk around the horse. I’ll be right here. She won’t hurt you.”
And what about you? she wondered. Will you hurt me?
Only if you let him, her inner voice replied.