Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final (5 page)

No way was this right.

Why hadn’t she asked Marcia more questions? If she’d known the name of this place last night, she could have Googled it. She could have Googled the owner—and who, exactly,
was
the owner? She didn’t know that, either. All she knew was that she didn’t like the feel of things, didn’t like how they were going or not going, to be accurate, and—

“Who the hell are you?”

The cowboy’s voice was rough. Raw as gravel. It suited how he looked.

“I asked you a question, lady. Who are you?”

She was a woman who wanted to blink her eyes open and discover that this was just a bad dream, was who she was, but this was not a dream.

She was alone in the middle of a rapidly-worsening snowstorm with a man who looked like an extra from a really, really bad spaghetti Western.

“Are you deaf? I said—”

“I heard what you said.” Lissa lifted her chin. “A better question is who are
you
?”

The man hadn’t expected that response. She could tell by the way he cocked his head.

Good.

She had lived in Paris, and not in an
arrondissement
favored by tourists. She’d lived in Chicago, and not many tourists had frequented those streets, either. Even Hollywood had its dark side.

The bottom line was that she was street-smart. And showing fear was a sign of weakness. Never mind that her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest.

She had attitude. That was all she had right now, and attitude was going to have to be enough.

“Answer the question. Who are you?”

Lissa drew herself up. “My name is Lissa Wilde.”

“No.”

“Yes. I am Lissa Wilde. The new chef.”

“The cook?” His gaze ran over her. “The hell you are.”

“I was hired last night and—” And, why in hell was she explaining herself to him? Lissa narrowed her eyes. “What is your name?”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? I want to know to whom I’m speaking.”

He laughed. More or less. It certainly wasn’t a nice sound.

“To whom?”

“To whom. Exactly. I want to know to whom I’m speaking so that I can tell your employer how insolent you are.”

“It’s Nick.”

“Nick what?”

“Nick Bannister. You want me to spell that for you?”

“And what is the name of your employer?”

“Don’t you know? You think you’re the new cook, but you don’t know the name of the man you’ll be working for?”

Lissa felt a flush rise in her cheeks.

“As I said, I was offered the position only last night and—”

“And you jumped at it. What’s the problem, Ms. Wilde? You desperate for work?”

“You aren’t just insolent, Mr. Bannister, you’re rude.”

“And we’re both going to get snowbound if we stand here much longer.” Nick Bannister limped forward a couple of steps. Lissa took an automatic step back. So much for the
no fear
thing. “Hand over that suitcase.”

“I’ll take care of it myself.”

“Sweet Jesus, lady, I’m not going to steal it. Hand the damned thing over.”

“Is it possible for you to complete a sentence without using an obscenity?”

“You think those are obscenities? You’ve got a lot to learn. Now, give me the suitcase.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

He cursed again, a string of words that she’d heard in some of the kitchens she’d worked back when she was just starting out. Then he closed his hand around the handle of the suitcase.

Around her hand.

His was big. It all but swallowed hers. And it was hard. Lissa had strong, hard hands for a woman. Years of chopping and slicing and handling oversized skillets had that effect on a woman’s hands, but his grip was far more powerful than hers.

Still, she fought him for control of the suitcase.

“Goddammit,” he said and as he did the crutch slipped and he teetered on the snow-covered ground.

Lissa reacted automatically, let go of the handle, reached out to steady him. He jerked back.

“Did I ask for your damned help?”

“Trust me,” she said coldly. “I wasn’t trying to help, I was trying to shove that crutch out from under your arm so you’d fall on your ass in the snow!”

There was a second of stunned silence. Then he laughed. Or, at least, he made that sound again, the one that resembled a laugh.

It made her even more angry. “You think this is funny?”

He stared at her while the seconds ticked away. Then he grabbed her suitcase and headed for the truck.

Now what?

Did she go with him to who knew where, or did she…

What?

There was no place else to go. Besides, once he dropped her off at the ranch house, the office, the main building that was surely not too far way, she’d never have to set eyes on him again.

Lissa gritted her teeth and marched to the truck, reached it in time to see the cowboy dump her case in the back, limp to the driver’s door and toss his crutch inside the cab.

He climbed in. It wasn’t easy; his leg was stiff as a board and he had to grab it with his hands to get his foot positioned under the dashboard.

“You can drive like that?” she said, before she could censor the words.

He looked at her.

She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt the cold rage in the look he gave her.

“I can drive just fine,” he said tightly. “Now, are you getting in or am I going to leave you here?”

Head up, back straight, she went to the passenger door. The door wouldn’t open. She pulled at the handle, jiggled it, but nothing happened until Nick Bannister leaned across and shoved the door open.

She climbed inside the cab.

To her surprise, it was clean. More than clean. The dashboard was polished. So was the old-fashioned leather bench seat. The cab even smelled good. Leather. Pine. Cold, clean mountain air.

“You might want to hang onto your seat. I drive fast.”

“Good. The faster, the better. I can hardly wait to meet your boss and tell him—”

“—that I’m rude and, what was it? Oh yeah. Insolent. Trust me, lady. It’ll be a waste of time. He already knows all about me.”

“Maybe you think the fact that you got me out of the weather will save you, but I promise you, it won’t.”

“I’d do the same for a heifer. Damned if I want the trouble of finding you frozen stiff come the spring thaw.”

Lissa swung toward him. “Just in case nobody’s told you, you are one unpleasant, nasty SOB!”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Duchess, but you’re not the first.”

“I’m happy to hear that there are others here who are as discerning as I am. And do not call me duchess.”

“Must you always get the last word?”

“Yes.”

She thought that maybe his lips twitched. She still couldn’t see much of his face, just enough to know that he had a cleft chin, a square jaw, and probably a week’s worth of dark stubble. Not that she gave a damn what he looked like. Count Dracula or Prince Charming, Nick Bannister was a foul-mouthed, mean-tempered piece of work.

All that mattered was reaching the lodge and meeting the person who’d hired her.

There was no point in judging the place by the isolation of the airstrip or by her surly escort.

No point at all, Lissa assured herself…

And hoped to hell that she was right.

CHAPTER THREE

I
t took twenty
minutes to reach the first signs of civilization.

Actually, that was an overstatement.

What they reached was a cluster of wooden outbuildings barely visible through the heavy snowfall, and a handful of what she assumed were corrals.

On a rise in the distance, she could see glimpses of a dark structure. Was that the lodge? It was big, but not big enough to house many guests. Maybe what she was looking at was a separate building from the lodge. A dining room. A card room. A bar.

She sat forward in her seat.

“Is that the Triple G?”

“Is what the Triple G?”

She looked at the cowboy. The short exchange was the first since they’d driven away from the airstrip, but his tone of voice was that of a man who’d been beleaguered with endless questions.

“That building, of course. Is it the Triple G?”

He looked at her, then back at what she assumed was the road. It was difficult to tell because of the snow.

“You’ve been on the Triple G since the plane landed.”

Lissa rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Bannister. I understand that we’re on Triple G land. What I meant was, is that building ahead of us the hotel?”

He looked at her again.

“The what?”

God. Which one of them was the idiot?

“The hotel,” she said with exaggerated patience. “The main house. The lodge. The resort. Whatever you want to call it. Is that where the guests stay? I thought it would be bigger… What?”

He was laughing. Laughing! The desire to add him to her
People She Wanted To Slug
list was strong, but so was her will to survive. Hitting a man driving an old truck far too fast through a snowstorm was probably not a good idea, and it showed just how far from reality she’d fallen that hitting a man who used a crutch didn’t even enter into the equation.

“What’s so funny?”

His laughter stopped as quickly as it had begun.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that ‘nothing’ routine! What were you laughing at?”

She might as well have been talking to a statue. Bannister clamped his lips together—she could see that they were firm lips, nicely shaped, which was pretty amazing when you realized that nothing else about him was nice—and stepped even harder on the gas.

The truck gave an alarming lurch. The engine coughed like
Mildred Pierce’s
dying daughter and really, why on earth did she watch all those old movies? The tires whined and spun before finally gripping the gravel hidden beneath what looked like several inches of snow as the cowboy, not only Insolent and Rude but also Despicable, stepped hard on the gas. The truck lunged forward, made it up the rise, through an open gate, and came to a bone-jarring stop right in front of the building.

It was a house. Just a house. Nice, but nothing remarkable about it. A house that was two stories high, a house that was made of wood, a house with a front porch…

Nick Bannister shut off the engine.

Tick, tick, tick.

Lissa took a deep breath. Held it. Then let it out.

OK. She’d misunderstood Marcia. The Triple G wasn’t a resort. It was a house people rented for long pseudo-Western weekends…

Except, why would they rent a house like this? Handsome, yes, but not spectacular. Not something out of Architectural Digest. Not something that would be featured in the Sunday real estate section of a big city newspaper.

Tick, tick, tick.

Lissa was ticking, too. Be cool, she told herself. There had to be a logical explanation.

“So,” she said, very calmly, “what’s this? The office?”

Mr. Despicable hobbled down from the cab of the truck, hauled his crutch from behind the seat, shoved the padded part under his arm and looked up at her.

“You getting out?”

“I asked you a question.”

“You’re good at asking questions.”

She craned her neck, her eyes following him as he made his way to the rear of the pickup. When she saw her suitcase somersault into the snow, she opened her door and climbed down.

“And you suck at answering them. I said, is this—”

“No.”

She reached for her suitcase. He brushed past her and picked it up.

“I can do that,” she said.

“Do you think I can’t?”

The question was filled with hostility. Lissa thought of half a dozen answers and discarded every one of them. Instead, she followed in his footsteps as he crabbed his way up the two steps to the porch. The man was spoiling for a fight and she’d be damned if she’d oblige.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“Which question?”

“Is this building the lodge office?”

“No.”

No. That was it. All of it. Could a person actually feel her blood pressure rise?

“If it isn’t the office, what is it?”

“I told you. It’s the Triple G.”

“Dammit, Bannister—” Lissa swallowed the rest of her words. She drew a long, steadying breath. She had to calm down. Letting this—this unpleasant cowboy piss her off wouldn’t solve anything. “What I mean is, is this all of it?”

He paused at a big, weathered wood door and turned toward her.

“What you
mean
is where are the hot tubs? The fire pit? The luxury accommodations? The candlelit dining room? The bar with its four-hundred-bucks-a-bottle vintage wines?”

There was an edge to his voice. And there was something else about his voice…

It seemed familiar.

How could that be? She’d yet to get a real look at his face, but if she’d ever met him before, she’d know it. Who could forget somebody this unpleasant? Still, he seemed familiar in other ways. His height. Those shoulders. The way he held himself. And that voice, aside from the edge to it, was, well, familiar, too. Deep. A little rough. And, despite everything, sexy.

Lissa blew a strand of snow-dampened hair out of her eyes.

Ridiculous.

The man was a stranger. She’d never seen him until today.

As for what he’d just said, and with such disdain… Well, he was a cowboy. He was a man accustomed to a rugged life. Things like hot tubs and saunas wouldn’t mean much to him, but they were the amenities that attracted the kind of clientele she wanted to cook for, the kind of clientele that had brought her here, and she wasn’t about to apologize for that.

And, really, there was no logic in making an enemy of a man who worked on the Triple G, so she forced herself to speak pleasantly.

“You’re right. I
am
wondering where those things are. I did notice several outbuildings, but where’s everything else? Maybe it’s the snow, but I can’t see much from here.”

“There’s a bunkhouse a couple of hundred yards away.”

“I’m not interested in the bunkhouse. It’s a nice touch, though. Authentic.”

He laughed again. God almighty, she
hated
that laugh! Remaining pleasant was going to be difficult.

“Oh, it’s authentic, all right.”

“Look, I’m not trying to pick a quarrel. I just want to know where the lodge is.”

“There is no lodge.”

So much for trying to be pleasant! Lissa slapped her hands on her hips.

“Are you being deliberately dense? So I’m using the wrong word. You know what I mean.” The cowboy dropped the suitcase, opened the massive wooden door and kicked the suitcase through it. “And do not, I repeat,
do not
treat my luggage as if it were a—a soccer ball!”

She swept past him, snatched up the suitcase…and found herself standing in an entry hall that looked pretty much like the entry hall in lots of ranch homes back in Texas. Not El Sueño, of course; despite its prize-horse-breeding program, its cattle, its acres of land given over to oil, El Sueño was a mansion disguised as a house, but growing up she’d had friends who lived on working ranches and they’d all looked like this. Dark wood paneling. Dark wood floors. Dead animals staring glassy-eyed from the walls. The smell of coffee and the faint-but-always-there scent of horses permeating the air.

A knot formed in Lissa’s belly. She heard the despicable cowboy limp up behind her, felt his presence loom over her.

“Welcome to the Triple G,” he said.

He didn’t say it nicely, but to hell with that.

“This,” Lissa said slowly, “this is it?”

“This is it,” he said, unbuttoning his denim jacket and working it off without dislodging the crutch under his left arm. “Not quite what you expected, Duchess?”

“Is it a—a boarding house?”

“It’s a home. At least, it used to be. Now it’s just tired house on a tired ranch.”

Nick limped past Lissa Wilde and hung his jacket on a big hook in one of the pine walls. He left the Stetson on. The last thing he needed was for a woman heading back to La La Land to recognize him. There were a dozen rumors about what had happened to him and where he was; he certainly wasn’t going to send the Wilde babe back to Hollywood to spread the word that she’d found the elusive Nick Gentry.

“But—but Marcia said…”

“Yeah. I can just imagine what she said. It was enough to bring you running in hopes of shaking your shapely ass for some Hollywood hotshot, but there ain’t no Hollywood hotshots here.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Lissa Wilde didn’t move or speak. Her disappointment was damn near palpable and he almost felt sorry for her until he reminded himself that feeling sorry for someone changed nothing.

Besides, he knew the type.

He’d dealt with it from the minute he’d earned his first box-office hit.

Small-town girl, pretty enough—this one certainly was—grows up hearing people tell her she’s beautiful, wins a couple of contests—Homecoming Queen, Miss Peach Blossom, whatever—and decides she’s going to be the next hot movie queen. That she has no talent doesn’t mean a damn. She figures all she needs is looks and a lucky break. Getting discovered by an agent while she’s waiting tables. Being noticed by a director while she’s working the bar at a fancy restaurant.

A hot babe passing herself off as a cook was a new one, but, hey, you wanted to make it big, you went with whatever you figured would work.

A cook. A chef. Right, Nick thought with world-weary cynicism. If Lissa Wilde— blond, blue-eyed, great face, five four or five, a hundred ten or twenty pounds of tits, legs and ass—had cooking skills, she’d picked them up working her way west in a succession of roadside diners.

It was just his luck that he’d have to tolerate her until the storm passed. The second it did, he’d call Hank, tell him to fly back from the airport at Billings—

“You have me all figured out.”

Her voice was low. Frigid. Nick shrugged, or tried to. Shrugging was another of those simple things that turned out to be hard to do with a crutch under your arm.

“Yeah, well, it’s not as if your type is unique.”

She spun toward him. Fire blazed in her eyes. They were, he had to admit, interesting eyes. Blue, he’d thought…but maybe they were green.

Not that he gave a damn.

“You,” she said, “you are, without question…”

“Yeah, yeah. A nasty, insolent SOB. You already said that.”

“Those descriptions don’t even come close.” She dropped the suitcase, raised her chin, pointed an index finger at his chest. “I am a classically trained chef. I plan menus. I create dishes. I run a kitchen and supervise its staff.” That pointing finger found its mark in the center of his rib cage and jabbed none too gently. “I do not,
do not
ever
shake my ass at anybody. You got that, cowboy?”

“Uh huh. You’re not the least bit interested in being the next Jennifer Lawrence or Megan Fox or Christ knows who else, discovered waiting tables or slinging hash at
The Griddle Café
.”

“I am
not
a wannbe actress! I am a chef! You think I’d have accepted this job in the middle of the wilderness if I weren’t? Although it’s pretty clear that there isn’t a job here.” Those amazing eyes narrowed. “Which brings me to the obvious question, Bannister. Why did you tell my agent you needed a cook?”

“Because I do. I need a cook. Not a chef. Not somebody who knows how to—how to glaze a pan—”

“Pans get deglazed, cowboy. Not glazed.”

“Whatever they get, that’s not what I need. This is a ranch. I have six guys sweating their balls off from dawn to dusk, and I need somebody to cook for them.”

“Let me get this straight. You need somebody to cook for a—a bunch of ranch hands?”

She looked—what? Stunned. Disappointed. Well, why wouldn’t she? She’d come here expecting a cushy job in a cushy place where she could cozy up to Hollywood royalty. Even on the odd chance that she really was a cook, she sure as hell wasn’t the kind he needed.

He had half a dozen rough-and-ready guys who needed feeding three times a day, men who wouldn’t know a quiche from a casserole. You couldn’t do a day’s work on fettuccine and foie gras. God knew he’d spent enough time in Hollywood to know what passed for food in the land of the infamously famous.

“You told this to Marcia?”

“Who?”

“My agent. She knew this?”

Did she? He couldn’t remember exactly what the conversation had been. He’d phoned the agency only because he’d been desperate; he’d Googled cooks and cooking and one of the first ads that had come up was for something called Cooks Unlimited.

“She knew,” he said, because what did it matter now? He was still without a cook and he had the feeling he would be for a long time to come. If his last cook had spread the word by now, nobody in three counties would want the job.

“I want to go back to L.A.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you do.”

“Immediately.”

“Well, Duchess, there’s a little problem with that. It’s called weather.”

“I don’t care about the weather! You hear me, cowboy? I am not spending another minute here.” She drew herself up, stepped closer and jabbed her finger into the center of his chest again. “You flew me in. Now you fly me—”

She gasped as Nick grabbed her hand.

“Do not,” he said through this teeth, “do not wag your finger at me again!”

“Let go!”

“And,” he growled, hauling her closer, “do not ever think of giving me orders. I’m in charge here.”