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Back then, his father had talked about restoring the place to what it had once been, but he’d lost interest in everything after Nick’s mother died. What had once been a profitable if not prosperous ranch had slowly fallen apart.
Nick was bringing it back out of necessity. The house would have fallen down without some repairs. Besides, when it came time to put it on the market, who would want to buy a disaster?
So far, he’d put money into only the most vital repairs. A new roof. A new heating system. A new well. The place still looked like shit—peeling paint inside almost all the rooms, soot-stained ceilings wherever there were fireplaces, antiquated plumbing and furniture that he suspected might even be turned down by Goodwill—but the thick walls and foundation were as sound as when his who-knew-which great-grandfather had built the place in the 1840s.
It had been a four-room cabin back then.
As a boy, Nick had found it fascinating to think of the generations of Gentrys who had put so much work into the Triple G, adding outbuildings and line shacks, and expanding the original four rooms to twelve. But by time he left, the only part of the house’s history that fascinated him was trying to figure out why all those Gentrys had spent time and sweat on the place instead of packing their bags and walking away.
He’d done that once and he could hardly wait to do it again.
This was not home; it had not been home for most of his life. He had no feelings of nostalgia for the land or the house, only relief that he could stay tucked away here while he tried to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
And he’d have plenty of time to do it. The house still needed work. Plaster. Paint. Floors. Ceilings. And furniture. Yeah, it needed the whole treatment.
So did his leg, he thought, grimacing as he massaged the muscles in his thigh.
The difference was that the house would respond well to some new touches.
His leg was a lost cause.
Use it, the therapist said. Accept it, the orthopedist who might as well have been a shrink said. And the real shrink that he’d agreed to see, only once, had put it more bluntly. Stop thinking about how this happened, he said, and get on with your life.
Sure, Nick thought. No problem there, right?
As if in mournful agreement, a gust of wind howled through the surrounding aspens like hungry wolves.
It was going to be a bad night.
At least he didn’t have to worry about his crew. All six had made it back to the bunkhouse; his foreman had phoned to tell him they were OK.
“We’ll hang in here until supper,” Ace had said. “The boys can hardly wait to see what that new cook you hired serves up.”
Neither could he.
The last cook had specialized in chili. Nick had come to hate the stuff and his boys had grown to despise it, but the meals served up by Gus, a younger guy who’d been doing most of the cooking the past week, made even chili look good.
That was one of the reasons Nick had been so desperate to get a replacement, and fast.
There was just so much anybody could take of what might have been beef fried in fat until it had the taste and texture of leather.
“Dammit,” he said, and he tossed aside his pen, tilted back his chair and folded his arms over his chest.
God only knew what Lissa Wilde would call a meal.
Assuming he bought into her being a chef, it might be something like tête de veau Cordon Bleu, a delicacy he’d had on his first movie-star trip to France. Nick had grown up eating beef, but the memory of that particular dish still made him shudder.
His best hope was that she was a cook of sorts, that she’d worked at roadside diners while she made her way west to Hollywood. If so, she’d be able to peer into the kitchen’s huge pantry and freezer and put together a meal that would at least fill the bellies of hard-working, hard-living men.
His frown deepened.
Yeah, but he wasn’t counting on it.
For starters, he really didn’t know what was in the pantry or freezer. Cooky and then Gus had been dealing with that, not him.
Besides, no matter what the Wilde babe said, he couldn’t imagine her having any familiarity with a skillet and a stove. It wasn’t the way she was dressed. Her clothes were not attention-getters. Neither was her hair or makeup, assuming she even had makeup on, and he wasn’t positive that she did.
It was her manner.
