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Lissa nodded. “Not just that job. I was out of consideration for any good job.”
“Didn’t you tell people what had happened?”
“I was upset. And humiliated. That scene… I can laugh at it now, but I couldn’t, not then. The entire thing was horrible. What he’d done to me, how I’d let him play me for such a fool…”
“You mean, you kept quiet?”
“Yes. By the time I tried to speak up, Raoul had destroyed my reputation. He said that I’d collapsed under pressure, that I’d walked out in the middle of the dinner service. By the time I tried to tell someone the truth, she just gave me this look, you know, a that’s-a-truly-pathetic-story look, and I knew it was all over.”
“And after that?”
“After that, I took any restaurant job I could find.”
“You should have called us,” Emily said indignantly. “Any of us. All of us.”
“Right. Just the way you called when you were broke and desperate in New York.”
Emily flushed. “Point made.”
“And then you saw an ad for a job at that ranch?”
“My agent called me about it. I thought it was for a chef’s position at one of those pricey spas. I flew up and when I realized what the job really was, I was pissed off.”
“I’ll bet,” Jaimie said grimly.
“I wasn’t going to stay. But a huge snowstorm blew in and I was stuck, so I made a couple of meals. Well, I was there, wasn’t I?” she said, skipping over the part where she and Nick had despised each other, the part where she’d agreed to trade a cooked meal for room and board.
“But the snow stopped, eventually.”
“Uh huh.”
“And?”
“And—and, things changed.”
“You discovered your real career was in feeding a bunch of grimy cowboys?”
“They weren’t grimy! And no, I didn’t decide that was what I wanted to do with my life. But…”
“But?”
“But—” She looked at her sisters. “But,” she said softly, “I got to know Nick.”
“Know him?” Jaimie said.
Lissa flushed. “Nick wasn’t hiding. He was healing.”
“So he claims,” Emily said. “We haven’t paid attention. Something about a stunt gone wrong?”
Lissa hesitated, but there was no longer any reason to keep Nick’s secret. She told her sisters what had happened, how seriously Nick had been injured, not only physically but emotionally.
“That must have been rough,” Jaimie said softly.
“It was. But he’s strong. He got through it. And I—”
“And you?”
“And I—I began to care for him.”
