A Cowboy in the Kitchen (5 page)

Keep your head
, she ordered herself, straightening her purposely unsexy ponytail, smoothing her purposely unsexy long-sleeved yellow T-shirt, tucked into purposely unsexy on-the-loose-side old jeans. She picked up her lunch-recipes folder and the bag of groceries she'd shopped for on her lunch break and headed up the steps to the porch. She forced herself not to glance over to the right just past the house at the barn, now a traditional red, where she and West had spent an unforgettable hour.

She took a deep breath and rang the bell.

Seconds later, there he was, his expression serious as he ushered her inside, taking the bag of groceries. Before she could ask him if everything was okay, he headed toward the kitchen. She followed him through the living room, liking the two big red comfy-looking sofas, lots of throw pillows, a plush area rug, an enormous round wooden coffee table piled with kids' books and action figures and a furry dog bed on which a beagle eyed her.

“Daisy's not much of a watchdog,” West said as he led the way into the kitchen, the walls a warm yellow, the wooden cabinetry white and appliances stainless steel. He put the bag of groceries on the island in the center of the room, and Annabel placed the folder next to it, then looked over at West, who was holding up a bottle of red wine. She nodded and he poured two glasses.

“The more you can pack into tonight's lesson, the better,” he said, handing her a glass.

She took the wine, wishing she could read his mind. Something was clearly bothering him. “Are you ever going to tell me why it's worth one thousand bucks to make a chicken salad sandwich?”

He leaned back against the refrigerator, covered in his daughter's paintings and school notices and quizzes, and took a long drink of his wine. “That's complicated.”

Chicken salad was complicated? She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. “Okay,” she said. “So let's get started.” She dug into the grocery bag, taking out a rotisserie chicken. “At our dinner lesson, I'll teach you how to roast a chicken, using the leftovers for chicken salad sandwiches the next day. But for now we'll use a preroasted chicken. Rotisserie chickens are great when you're in a hurry—”

He put his wine down and came over, standing so close she could smell his shampoo. He stared at the chicken. She realized he'd been a million miles away and had just clicked back to her. “I admit I buy those a few times a week. Quick and easy.”

“That's fine,” she said, for a moment overwhelmed by his nearness, by his muscled forearm, his hand in his pocket. Annabel was tall, almost five foot nine, but West towered over her at six-three.

To stop focusing on his face, his body, the clean scent of him, she launched into a lecture about how long to keep a roast chicken in the fridge, then ticked off on her fingers the various lunches he could make from it.

“Aside from chicken salad, there's tacos, stir-fry, po'boys, cold or hot chicken sandwiches and—” She stopped, realizing that he was staring out the window...at nothing she could see. He was definitely preoccupied. His gaze moved to the sink, where Annabel could see a cup with cartoon monkeys on it. “West? Are you all right?”

He paced to the window, then over to the refrigerator, where he stared at the photographs and watercolors his daughter had painted. Then he titled his head back and closed his eyes for a second.

Whatever was complicated about chicken salad was tearing West apart.

“This is what it'll feel like,” he finally said. He paced the length of the kitchen. “This goddamned silence is what it'll be like if they take her away from me. The lack of her, the weird quiet that comes from not hearing her voice, her saying ‘Daddy, look,' every two minutes.”

He grabbed an apple from a basket on the island and hurled it into the sink so hard it bounced back and landed on the floor. Daisy came over and sniffed it, then stared up at West. He kneeled down beside the dog and buried his face in her brown bristly fur, picking up the apple and tossing it in the trash. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

Annabel froze, then kneeled down across from him and put her hand on his shoulder. “If who takes who away from you? Are you talking about your daughter?”

He stood up and walked across the kitchen, then back to the other side of the counter, bracing his arms on the sides. “Lucy's maternal grandparents. Raina and Landon Dunkin. They think I'm unfit to raise Lucy. They say they're going to fight for custody.”

She bolted up. “What? But anyone can see you're a great father. I can see that and I've been back in town for three days. Even the little things—the way you played thumb war with her at Hurley's tonight. Six times until your meals came. Letting her make a sundae out of her piece of cake.”

He dropped down on one of the chairs and took a slug of his wine, gesturing for Annabel to come sit. “The Dunkins would say she shouldn't have had that piece of cake, that it's too much sugar. But then I let her add whipped cream too. God, maybe I
don't
think. Maybe I don't know how to do this, how to be a good father.” His jaw was set hard, his expression grim as he leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

She moved over with her own wine and sat down across from him. “Come on, a slice of cake? What could they really think is so terrible?”

“They came over earlier today when I burned my attempt at French toast—the kitchen was all smoky, the smoke alarm blaring. And before that someone at the pediatrician's office tattled to them that Lucy was there today after falling out of a tree. She scraped up her leg pretty bad.”

“I've had a few smoky kitchens in my day, and I'm a chef,” she said. “It happens. And tree scrapes? That's childhood.”

He seemed to calm down a bit, but then he stood up and started pacing again. “They think I'm unfit. And maybe they're right. Maybe I'm not the best dad. I know I'm not exactly a mother. But I love Lucy more than anything in the world. They can't take her from me.”

Suddenly she understood why making scrambled eggs and chicken salad was worth a thousand bucks. He wanted to be a better father to prove to the Dunkins that he could take care of his daughter.

“Should I stop her from climbing trees? Should I make her wear dresses like Raina wants? Should I hire a housekeeper and cook even though the last one told Lucy she was a bad girl for leaving her action figures on the rug instead of putting them away? Another one forgot Lucy was allergic to soy and made her some supposedly healthy smoothie and Lucy ended up in the ER. I'm doing my best and it's not good enough. Never will be,” he muttered, then stalked out of the kitchen.

She trailed after him. “Surely if you talk to them, explain how much you love her, that you're trying, that you're taking this intensive cooking class—”

“I called Raina before I brought Lucy over to the restaurant tonight. I told her I was really working at this, that you were teaching me to cook. ‘Too little, too late, sorry,' was all she said before hanging up on me.” He sat down on one of the red sofas, his head in his hands.

Annabel sat down beside him. She wanted to put her arm around him, assure him he'd get through this. Could the Dunkins really take his daughter away from him? The thought chilled her. She could just imagine what it did to West. “It's not too late for anything. You're a good father. You care. You're paying me a fortune to teach you to cook for your child. You love that girl and that's all that matters.”

“It's not all that matters to the Dunkins. Apparently, if I really loved her, I wouldn't have done X, Y or Z.” He turned and looked at her, his expression slowly changing from worry to determination. “But you're right, Annabel. It's not too late and I do care. So screw this useless moping. I'm not going to sit here and do nothing. I'm going to fight for my daughter. And one of those ways is to show them or the courts that I can take care of her. So let's continue with the lunch lesson.”

And so they headed back into the kitchen, where Annabel taught him how to make chicken salad and baked chicken fingers, how to make a Cobb salad, how to make a perfect BLT. “Kids love chicken fingers,” she said, sliding the tray of them in the oven. “You can keep these in the fridge and heat them up for Lucy tomorrow. At the last restaurant I worked at in Dallas, I offered children's cooking classes and the kids made these. I'll bet Lucy would love cooking with you.”

“I saw how great you were with her at the restaurant,” he said. “You'd be a great mother. I'm surprised you're not married with two kids already.”

She stared at the floor, suddenly reminded that she'd better be careful of how much this man was getting inside her again. She made a show of looking at her watch. It was almost eleven-thirty. “I should get home,” she said. “Maybe you could ask the Dunkins to stay for breakfast tomorrow morning when they drop off Lucy—you can show them your omelet skills.”

“The smoky kitchen was the final straw. And they'll take her directly to school anyway. But thank you, Annabel,” he said, holding her gaze. “I know I asked a lot of you and that I'm probably not your favorite person,” he added.

She froze for a second. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah.”

A flash of memory came over her, of West kissing her so hard her knees buckled, of desire she'd never felt before or since rushing over every inch of her body. She took in West's warm brown eyes, the tangle of thick dark hair, the midnight stubble shadowing his square jaw. She tamped back the urge to reach a hand to his face.
Get back on track, Annabel. The right track
, she ordered herself.
Your thoughts are headed for a derailment.
She glanced down at her slip-on canvas sneakers to clear her mind of his face and body. Finally she looked back up. “You're a good father, West. Anyone can see that.”

“Anyone but the Dunkins,” he said. He walked her out to her car, the moonlight casting shadows on his face. “Thank you again, Annabel. For everything.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it, a thank-you gesture, nothing more, but instead of letting go, he held on, his gaze moving from their entwined hands slowly up to her face, her lips, her eyes. He reached a hand to her cheek, and she leaned into his palm, her hand tightening on his.

And then he backed her slowly against the car, his mouth coming down on hers. She closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of his lips on hers.
West, West, West,
she thought.

“What am I doing?” he said suddenly, pulling away.

What was
she
doing?
Lord, Annabel.

“I can't do this.” He backed up, looking up at the sky, full of stars, distant lights of a plane inching across. “I'm sorry, Annabel. It just... I guess for a minute there I wanted to forget how insane my life is right now.”

Red-hot anger—and a spiral of sadness—spun around her stomach. She was a placeholder—again.
Not.

She turned around and opened her car door before she could slap him or unleash seven years' worth of
how dare you!
on him. His life
was
insane right now. It had been then. But that didn't mean he could...use her to forget that crazy life. No way, bucko. He wasn't attracted to her seven years ago; she wasn't his kind of girl, and she still wasn't.

She was about to let him have it, but when she turned around to face him, the look in his eyes—the worry, fear, torment—softened her ire and she found herself giving his hand a squeeze.

She looked up at the sky, trying to clear her mind. “I meant what I said, West. You're a good father and
you
should be raising Lucy. You. Just show them who you are.”

“Maybe that's what I'm afraid of,” he said so softly she wasn't sure she'd heard him right.

People always show you, tell you loud and clear, who they are
, Gram's favorite saying running through her mind again.
It's up to you to be watching and listening, not ignoring red flags waving in the breeze because of a handsome face or smooth talk.

Okay, so maybe West Montgomery wasn't a man to marry. The rebel in the leather jacket who broke your heart never was, right? But that didn't mean he was an unfit father. That she saw, heard with her own eyes and ears.

She squeezed his hand again and got in the car, tears stinging the backs of her eyes as she drove away, a glance in the rearview mirror letting her know he was still there, watching her go.

* * *

When West woke up in the morning, his stupidity punched him hard in the gut. Why the hell had he gone and kissed Annabel last night? Now he'd mucked things up with her, made things...weird. One minute, he'd been about to hold her car door open for her to say goodbye, and the next, what he saw in her eyes meant so much to him that he'd been overwhelmed and wanted to kiss her, wanted to soak up all that belief she had in him.

You're a good father, West. Anyone can see that
.

Those two sentences had touched him so deeply, felt so good, that he wanted more. So he'd kissed her like a fool, when romance and women were off the table. And Annabel Hurley? That cut too deep. She was a reminder of how his parents had felt about him. She was a reminder of the kind of love he could have had if he hadn't let her go. She was a reminder that if
hadn't
dropped her for Lorna, there would be no Lucy. And she was a reminder that not one woman had ever stirred in him the kind of feelings she had and still did. He wanted to talk to Annabel, hear what she had to say and then pick her up in his arms and carry her to his bed.

And deep down, where things burned in his gut, his feelings for Annabel Hurley were just too...intense for him to deal with, which meant he had to shut them down. His focus had to be on Lucy, on keeping Lucy, on saving his family. Instead he was making out with Annabel Hurley in his front yard. “You're a bad father,” he whispered, shame settling in his stomach.
So forget Annabel. Forget kissing her, forget what you want to do to her.