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“When my dad passed ten years ago, I realized I didn’t have ranching in my blood, at least not as much as I thought I did. I spent a couple of years doing nothing, letting the ranch management run on autopilot, but the problem with that was I also ignored everything else. Myself, my son, and my marriage. Not proud of it. It was sad but not surprising when Julie said she’d met someone new. She made me promise to go to grief counseling. I did, and it helped some. What helped even more, was throwing myself into projects. FFirstFirst, I renovated the cabins to be rented out to skiers. Then everything snowballed from there, pun intended.”
When Jesse had described all of that, I hadn’t known that he meant all of…this.
“This took a lot of hard work and vision, Jesse. I’m proud of you.”
He finally parks the truck in front of a large log cabin with a stone foundation and a wraparound porch lined with rocking chairs and hung with rustic log porch swings. Over the double doors hangs a hammered copper sign that reads, “Blue Spruce Ballroom.”
Jesse cuts the engine and turns to me. “Thank you for saying that, Mariam. But it took no more vision and will than it took for you to move across the country to open a bakery.”
“Don’t be modest. I didn’t build anything from the ground up. Look at this place.”
He shrugs. “Just a restaurant and meeting room. Good news for us, the team meeting is finished with lunch, and they’re down at the zip lines for the rest of the afternoon. Let’s see if Dominique left us some food.”
And then I forget about giving him shit for being too humble because my stomach growls at the mention of food.
Always the gentleman, Jesse helps me out of the truck, takes my hand in his, and leads me inside. We cross the dim, empty ballroom into the still-lit kitchens.
I gape at all the equipment as he digs around in one of several refrigerators. The state-of-the-art commercial mixers and Viking ovens will feature heavily in my wet dreams tonight.
“Ah, dammit, Dominique,” Jesse growls and mutters as I wander around, gawking at all the counter space. When I make a loop through the kitchen and return to the prep area, strewn with sliced vegetables and meat, I find Jesse setting a large skillet on the stove.
“What’s wrong?”
He chuckles and shakes his head, looking over a recipe.
“Nothing. Dominique busting my balls,” he says.
Why does that make me feel jealous?
“What does that mean?” I ask, approaching from behind to scan the recipe. I slip one arm around his middle, hoping I’m not acting too clingy.
“It means she’s making me cook for you. She says that’s a surefire way for me to win you over.”
I breathe. “Oh. She’s right. And I like her, by the way.”
I pop myself onto a stool to enjoy the view of this hot cowboy sautéeing meat and asparagus, plus a sauce with seventeen ingredients.
Part of me wants to help, but another part relishes staring at him when he cooks. The brow furrowed in concentration, the concentration, the way he’s rolled up the sleeves of his button-up shirt. Even the splatters of sauce—all of it is sexy as hell. Nobody at culinary school ever looked this good in a kitchen.
Soon enough, the two of us are hunkered down at the prep table, devouring our dishes of salmon and sides. Some of it is overcooked, some is undercooked, but all of it is utterly perfect and delicious because Jesse tried.
I hop up and clear his place before he can stop me. “That was wonderful.”
“I’m much better at breakfast. Eggs, bacon. I can make biscuits from a box. And coffee. I make excellent black coffee,” he tells me as we wash dishes together in the massive stainless steel sink.
I snort. “I no longer believe anything you say about yourself. You’re painfully modest.”
He answers this by flicking me with a handful of soap suds, some landing on my face.
I yelp in surprise and splash him with the water I’m using to rinse. More suds fly at me, which has me scooping a massive handful of bubbles and chucking it at him before running.
Where am I going? No idea.
As Jesse chases me with a wet, rolled-up towel, I bolt out of the kitchen, screeching with laughter.
Do I think he’s going to snap me with that? No. But I have been whipped with wet towels plenty of times before—hello, culinary school full of men—so it wouldn’t bother me in the least. But Jesse doesn’t need to know that.
Through the dark ballroom, I come to a sliding door, shrieking and clamoring for the latch. When I finally throw it open, I find myself outside on an enormous deck overlooking a reedy pond with a pier and a gazebo. At first, it looks like I have nowhere to run. Until I find the stairs leading from the deck to the grass below.
