But at the moment, he didn’t look like an outlaw. In fact, his expression was simply inscrutable. And when he took the plate out of her hand to begin drying it, she almost let out a nervous giggle. What had he said? Oh, yes, she wasn’t likely to find a cookbook in town. Anna had already pointed out that the general store probably only carried essentials. But where did that leave her?
Desperately she said, “The man named Jakes can’t cook for the Callahans?”
“Was already asked and refused. He cooks for the hands, on the range and in the bunkhouse. Besides, his plain fare might be filling, but it’s generally tasteless.”
She was reaching her wit’s end on how she was going to cook for these people without some sort of instruction.
She handed him another plate. Their shoulders touched that time. Her stomach flip-flopped with fear. Yet it appeared he didn’t even notice. But she inched away from him so it wouldn’t happen again.
Scrubbing the next dish a little harder, she said, “I’m posting a letter to my mother tomorrow. I can ask her to send me a cookbook.”
“And in the meantime?”
Nearly every word Degan Grant said was pointing her toward the door. And his proximity to her was shoving her in that direction. Leave, she told herself, dilemma solved—the cooking dilemma anyway.
One last option occurred to her. “I’ll talk to Mrs. Callahan. She must have some old family recipes she can impart. I’ll explain to her how unreasonable her husband has been.”
“The woman is probably partial to her husband. You might not want to say things like unreasonable in reference to him.”
True. And she didn’t really want to consult Mary Callahan. The woman would end up telling her husband, then Zachary would have to face that he was paying Tiffany double for nothing. His lack of staff had already negated the job of housekeeper. Cook was all that was left. And if she couldn’t succeed at that job, she might just get fired. What an appalling thought. Not once since she’d come up with this scheme had she imagined that could happen.
Blatant failure—that possibility was more unsettling than giving up. Maybe she could spend more time in town tomorrow than she’d planned on. Someone there should be able to help her.
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Other than quitting?”
She glanced up at him again. He was looking directly at her this time, which was more than a little disconcerting, though surprisingly, not actually frightening. The man was obviously dangerous, but good grief, he really was handsome in a dark sort of way.
She blushed at the thought and handed him the last dish to dry. “Yes, other than that.” She moved to the table to gather up two pots to bring to the sink. They’d barely made a dent, which prompted her to add, “Why is this room such an appalling mess? Did one of the Callahans try to cook in here?”
An image of Hunter came to mind, standing in front of the cast-iron stove stirring pots, and her lips turned up slightly in a smirk. Degan didn’t notice because he was stacking the cleaned plates in a cupboard.
“No, Ed left angry. He made one of his fancier meals, to soften the blow that he was quitting. It had the opposite effect. He made his announcement while we were still eating. Zach got furious. They had words, loud ones. Ed took off without cleaning up that night.”
“Mr. Callahan should have controlled his temper better,” she mumbled to herself.
Degan returned in time to take the first pot from her. Feeling a little more comfortable with him, she said, “What do you do here, Mr. Grant, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t herd cattle.”
He said nothing more. And suddenly he looked dangerous again. She shouldn’t have asked. What was she thinking!? She started scrubbing the remaining pots with a vengeance. She didn’t look up until she heard someone behind her say, “You have got to be kidding!”
Chapter Fourteen
DEGAN MUST HAVE RECOGNIZED the voice behind them because he didn’t turn around. Tiffany thought it might be Hunter sounding so incredulous, but she wasn’t sure, so she glanced over her shoulder. Hunter was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at Degan’s back as Degan dried dishes.
Tiffany looked back at Degan. He was completely unperturbed, not the least embarrassed to be found working in a kitchen. Still without turning, Degan said, “Seemed the thing to do if we ever want to get a decent meal around here again.”
“You’re just not used to trail food,” Hunter pointed out.
“Thankfully,” Degan replied drily.
Tiffany moved to get the last pot that had been left on the stove, which drew Hunter’s attention to her. “Didn’t actually expect to see you pitching in, Red,” he said in a lazy drawl. “Figured you’d just be cracking the whip.”
She stiffened over that snide remark. “If you aren’t going to help, Mr. Callahan, then I suggest you leave.”
“Hell no. This is where the entertain—”
Fed up with his teasing, she tossed a wet rag in his direction. It landed short of his feet. She wished it had hit his chest, though she would probably have ended up regretting it if it did. “Then you help. And you can start by scrubbing down that table.”
He didn’t refuse. In fact, he was smiling as he came farther into the room, rag in hand. Did he find everything amusing? Then it occurred to her that she had reacted as Tiffany, not as Jennifer. The new housekeeper would never have given the owner’s son an order like that.
Degan finally turned around and leaned back against the work board while he finished drying a pot. Tiffany guessed he just wanted to see for himself if Hunter would really help. To be fair, she knew she wouldn’t if she were in Hunter’s place. It’s what hired help was for, even if the Callahans didn’t have the right sort of help right now.
But Hunter surprised her. He started scrubbing the table. And serious for the moment, he nodded toward the door before he told Degan, “The boys are slacking off. They’ll never get any sleep tonight at this rate. They need incentive. You’re incentive.”
Degan didn’t argue with that reasoning. He set the pot down and left the room.
Tiffany didn’t pretend not to know what Hunter had meant by incentive. “Why are they afraid of him?”
“Why are you whispering?”
She didn’t realize she was. Louder she said, “Would you answer, please?”
“He’s a killer. They know it.”
She gasped. “So he is an outlaw?”
Back came Hunter’s amusement. He laughed. “No, he’s just fast enough with a gun that he makes his living at it. Outlaws live outside the law. Degan doesn’t go around shooting people just for the fun of it—well, not that I’ve ever seen. Around here, he abides by the law.”
“What is his profession actually called?”
Hunter shrugged. “Gunslinger, hired gun, peacemaker, take your pick.”
Tiffany was intrigued by the last description. “How does he go about making peace?”
Hunter chuckled. “By scaring off the opposition.”
“You aren’t afraid of him?”
Hunter seemed genuinely surprised by that question. “Why would I be? He works for us, not the Warrens.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “So if he worked for them instead, you’d be worried?”
“Maybe—if I didn’t know him. He’s not a bushwhacker. He doesn’t start fights. He’s too fast for that. Simply wouldn’t be fair.”
“You actually know this, or it’s just your opinion?”
Hunter was suddenly frowning. “Why so many questions about Degan?”
“If I’m going to work here—”
“If?”
“Yes, if I am, I need to know that it’s safe to do so. So why did your father hire him?”
“There was an altercation a few months ago that put a dent in the truce we have with our neighbors. My brother Cole gave Roy Warren a shiner when they were working on my house together. A few days later, Cole’s ear was nearly shot o
ff. We’ve no doubt it was Roy trying to get even. But sending Sheriff Ross over to talk to Roy set off the Warren brothers’ tempers.”
“Something else occurred?”
“The oldest boy, Sam, came looking for a fight because of it. Damn obvious, too, with him showing up at the Blue Ribbon Saloon. We frequent that watering hole, Warrens usually stay away from it. He sat in on a poker game with my brother John and accused him of cheating. John won’t take that from anyone, much less a Warren. They went outside to square off in the street. One of them would’ve died that night if the sheriff didn’t arrive to break it up and toss them both in jail for the rest of the night. Sam apologized in the morning, said he was so drunk he couldn’t see straight.”
“And your brother’s excuse?”
Hunter raised a brow. “John’s a might hot-tempered, but he didn’t need an excuse. Cheating at cards isn’t taken lightly in these parts, and being accused of it when it ain’t so—the surprise was that John didn’t shoot Sam right there at the table for an insult like that. If that wasn’t enough to start up the war again, someone took a potshot at me when I was in town one morning picking up a new saddle. I’d just left the saddle shop when the shot was fired and knocked me back through the shop window.”
Tiffany gasped. “You actually took a bullet?”
Hunter started to laugh. “My new saddle did. I just came away with a few scratches from the broken glass.”
“Who shot at you?”
“Never did find out. There were a few drifters in town that morning, but the train was also in the station and a handful of passengers were roaming about town, too. But Carl Warren was also in town that day.”
Tiffany had to bite her tongue to keep from defending her brothers—when she wasn’t supposed to even know them. Nonetheless, she pointed out, “It sounds like a lot of assumptions without much proof.”
“Maybe not much proof, but they’re assumptions based on reason. When Pa heard that Degan Grant was in the area, he tracked him down and hired him.”
“To kill the Warrens!?”
Hunter snorted at her guess. “No, to keep them from killing any of us. Pa would rather it didn’t come to bloodshed, when we’re so close to a permanent truce through marriage.”
She didn’t need to ask, but Jennifer probably would have. “Who’s getting married?”
“The Warrens have a daughter.”
She waited for him to elaborate. She hoped to find out what he thought of being engaged to a stranger all these years. Did he hate the idea as much as she did? If he did, they could be allies! Two heads would be better than one at figuring out how to keep the truce without sacrificing anyone at the altar. But he obviously wasn’t going to discuss it. His eyes had been on her all this time, rather than on the job he was supposed to be doing. Now his eyes were on the table and he went back to scrubbing it. While she was getting some of her curiosity about these people satisfied, it wasn’t proper to ask him his personal feelings—not yet anyway.
She got back to the gunslinger, whom Hunter apparently didn’t mind talking about. “So in this case, Mr. Grant is acting as a guard?”
“You could say that. Pretty damn annoying though. Ain’t like we can’t take care of ourselves.”
So Degan was just a deterrent. She could see how he was suited for that task, she just didn’t see why he was needed. Roy would never do what Hunter had just claimed, and neither would Carl. Sam, on the other hand . . .
She didn’t know her brothers as well as she’d like, she hadn’t seen any of them for the last five years, but they’d continued to write to her. She was fairly certain none of them would take potshots at someone, heated temper or no. Least of all Roy, whom they were accusing of starting these altercations. He was a dreamer. He wrote poetry. He was only ten and a half months younger than she was. But she could see Sam getting so angry at the Callahans’ accusing Roy of something he didn’t do that he’d want to take the fight to the Callahans. As the oldest of the four, Sam saw himself as their protector. But even Sam was only nineteen! And she couldn’t imagine any Warren siblings trying to shoot someone on the sly, and not just once but twice!
Which was why it occurred to her to ask, “What did your sheriff have to say about those shootings?”
“Ross deals in facts, not speculations. Whatever his opinion is, he won’t share it until he has proof one way or the other.”
It was too bad Hunter’s family wasn’t of a like mind, but she wasn’t going to insult him by saying so. Instead she asked, “Is your family at odds with any of the other ranchers in the area?”
“Everyone in and around Nashart, with the exception of the Callahans and the Warrens, has always gotten along just fine. There’s even common ground these days, with everyone banding together against the miners who moved into the area recently. A lot of the townsfolk are worried Nashart is going to turn into another Virginia City, Helena, or Butte, big mining towns west of here that lure in a bad element.”
She was surprised. “This is the first I’m hearing that Nashart is a mining town.”
“One mine doesn’t constitute a mining town, at least not yet. Earlier in the year, copper was found in a gulch just east of us, a bit too close for comfort. Butte is one of the biggest mining towns in the territory. One of the mine owners there by the name of Harding sent one of his crews here. A mine was in operation pretty much overnight before anyone in Nashart even heard of the find.”
“And?”
“Two veins were found. One of them runs under our property. We didn’t even know they were digging under us until one of their tunnels collapsed and left a damn big hole that a few of our cattle got injured in. Pa was furious, but Harding’s foreman claimed they didn’t know they’d trespassed. So they tried to buy that strip of land from us, tried to lease the mining rights, even offered to make us partners. Pa said no on all counts. He’s a cattleman through and through. He could care less that we’re sitting on a rich copper vein. And, yes, it’s already occurred to me that Harding wouldn’t mind if we up and moved—or died.”
Tiffany felt anger rising and her tone with it. “So you’ve got a mine owner who wants your land, but you naturally assumed it was young boys who took those shots at you and Cole? When it could have been a miner instead?”
“What makes you think the Warren boys are young?”
“I just assumed, since Cole is and he and Roy had that first altercation.”
“After those two fought, yeah, it was natural to assume that. Still is. Harding was told no. The sheriff was called in. Ain’t nothing they can do but finish off the vein they got and move on. Gold, silver, copper, it’s all been found in Montana, too much to kill for it.”
“Maybe Mr. Harding doesn’t see it that way.”
“Then he’d be a fool!”
“Who says he isn’t?” she shot back angrily.
“Is it my turn to say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding’?”
Degan was back, leaning against the doorframe. He didn’t look amused, merely curious. Hunter threw down his rag and walked out of the room without another word. Tiffany faced the sink again to hide her blush. Did she really just participate in a shouting match with the owner’s son?
Stiffly she said to the man behind her, “Are you going to inform Callahan senior that I should be fired?”
“You want to be fired?”
She swung around. “You don’t think I should be? I’m sure Hunter does now.”
There it was again, that slight turning up of the lips that could have been a smile but wasn’t. “Because you had an opinion?”
“It was an inappropriate disagreement. I should have kept my thoughts to myself.”
“If Hunter wants to fire you, he’ll do it himself—but I guarantee that’s not what he wants.”
Chapter Fifteen
TIFFANY RETIRED EARLY THAT night to the bedroom she’d picked out earlier, a rather nice room, if spartan and small. A tall bureau, a standing wardrobe with a narrow mirror on the
inside of one door, a double bed with a side table and lamp, an unlit brazier for the winter. So maybe it was a little too spartan. She might ask Anna to build her some extra furniture since at least she was going to have a lot of spare time in the coming weeks. She smiled tiredly with the thought. While Anna might have confessed she could do things like that, Tiffany just couldn’t picture the petite maid sawing boards and swinging hammers. But then she couldn’t really picture herself cooking, either.
This corner bedroom at the back of the house was directly over the kitchen. She’d selected it because it had three windows, which would let in more breeze if needed. She stood at one of the two windows that faced east. It was so dark outside she could hardly see anything, except the moon and the stars. How different from the nighttime view she was used to from her bedroom at home. There she could see streetlamps, elegant town houses, large coaches plodding down the street, even late at night. Here she saw a few flickering lights from the bunkhouse and more stars than she’d ever seen in her life. And heard an animal howling in the distance. A dog? Surely not a wolf.
At least she was satisfied that the house, while not spotless, was clean enough to live in. She was grateful to the cowhands. Now she could walk down the hall without sneezing. They’d done as she’d asked and in only a few hours. While they’d complained when they’d started cleaning the house, they’d actually looked worried about having done it right while she inspected the rooms.
One of them even surprised her. Slim, the cowboy with the exceptionally long mustache, had rushed into the main room carrying a jar of wildflowers. She’d been inspecting the furniture, running her fingers along the backs of the chairs and the dining table, when he’d handed her the flowers, saying, “My ma liked flowers in the house. Didn’t see any here, not even dried-up dead ones.”
She’d been so touched her eyes got a little misty. But she definitely got a little carried away with her role when she promised that the first cake she made would be for them. The cowboys were thrilled, hooting and calling out their favorite kinds of cake. She’d groaned over her impulsiveness, remembering that she had to learn how to cook first!