Page 10 of A Mustang River Christmas

“Really?”

She wondered how bad his accident must have been.

“Yeah, he left all that behind. And I really did think he’d left it forever.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah... I don’t know. It’s just good to see him doing this again. I’m glad.”

“Well, I’m grateful, because I was making a mess of it. Anyway, it’s only Wednesday, but...”

“It’s still going to be a busy night.”

Dinner service was smooth and easy tonight. It would be interesting to see how Chloe did when they were in the throes of a weekend rush, but for now everything was going great.

But Laney was fluttering, waiting for Pike to come in.

And when he did, with the new and improved base for the hotel, her stomach went tight, like a fist was gripping it. He looked so good in his faded black jeans, black cowboy boots, and tight black t-shirt. She would never have said that cowboys were her type, but she’d developed a craving ever since meeting him. She would have said that men were not her type anymore. Not after the whole debacle with Jonas. It had been so hellish. She had internally sworn off the entire gender.

But Pike made that difficult.

“How was Chloe’s second day?” he asked, as he set the wood base down on the counter.

“It was great. She’s wonderful. And I don’t need you to intervene with anything just yet. Though, we’ll see how she handles Friday and Saturday.”

“You got a full house?”

“Yes. And a couple fairly complex specials. She might be cursing the word remoulade by the end of the evening.”

“Ah. I don’t miss my sous chef days.”

“You know what? Neither do I. Where did you start working in kitchens?”

“New Mexico,” he said. “I was almost eighteen when I got my first job washing dishes. Then started getting trained as a cook.”

“Oh, you were a line cook? I bet you fucked up some lives.”

“Well, yeah. I did. Got Melinda pregnant with Chloe, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Sorry. I was trying to be funny.”

“It’s kind of funny. Line cooks are never beating the allegations. But it was when I realized I needed to get my shit together, because I was suddenly a husband and about to be a dad. Got really serious. Really, really serious. Then, when I was working as a sous chef at a place in Santa Fe, I got called in to assist with some pastries. Found my passion. Still worked evenings as a sous chef. Started selling concoctions that I made in the mornings at a stand. Coffee and pastries. Took the extra money that I made, and moved everybody to Paris for a little bit to study pastry while I worked in kitchens there.”

“You worked in kitchens in Paris?”

“Yes, I did. And I got very good at taking abuse and swearing in French.”

“I would never have guessed this about you.”

He smiled and the skin by his eyes crinkled. Damn that man was fine. “Well, I’m a dark horse.”

“So...were you raised on a ranch?”

He shook his head. “No. I wasn’t. My dad worked on a ranch near Santa Fe when I was growing up, though, so I had some exposure to it. It was always something that I knew I loved. That was one reason when I was able to take work at the Gold Leaf Hotel in Wyoming, I took it. With that place opening, and my getting to do what I wanted with it, I not only got to fulfill some career ambitions, I got to buy a ranch.”

“Oh.”

It had never occurred to her that he might have owned his own ranch. And this was why he had never totally made sense. He wasn’t the kind of person to naturally work on someone else’s land. He was the man in charge. Her body had known that from the beginning.