“Nobody leaves?” Hannah repeated, somehow managing to fill each word to bursting point with panic.
What on earth was the matter with her? Clayton wondered. She sounded as though she’d been sentenced to life in a maximum security prison. She’d just taken the job. Surely she wasn’t already planning to leave. That would set a new record, even for this ranch.
Nobody leaves the ranch unless it’s an emergency?
Clayton’s words hit Hannah smack in the gut like a bad case of botulism.
So much for her plans to be out of there before night. Clayton wasn’t talking about just a day or two. Did this emergency thing mean she’d have to burn down the house to get out? Or would a complete nervous breakdown be sufficient?
Hoping for a sudden time warp to fold around her and drag her anywhere but where she was, Hannah followed Clayton’s towering figure across the yard and into the house.
His broad back and denim-clad thighs made her blood run hot on the way to her heart and cold on the way back as she thought of having to face him, talk to him. Or maybe it was all running at the same time, sharing the same vein. The way she felt right now, anything was possible. Except, apparently, that time warp. She remained stuck in the here and now.
Clayton led her upstairs to a large, dark room at the end of the hall. Large dark furniture, including a four-poster bed, loomed at her. She was supposed to sleep in this mausoleum?
He deposited her bags inside the door. “Your bathroom is two doors down. Sorry it’s not private. This house was built before we had indoor plumbing this far out of the city.”
Not private? Hannah gulped at the thought of sharing a bathroom…and sharing it with this overwhelming male person.
“Of course, the only visitors we ever have are my mother and her husband. So, except for the fact that you have to go out in the hall, it’s pretty much private.” Hannah released a soft sigh of relief mingled with a tiny hint of disappointment that Clayton apparently had his own bathroom. “Clothes closet through there, linen closet in the hall,” he continued, obviously unaware of her personal drama.
Clayton checked his watch, and her gaze followed his, noting the sunbleached hairs curling from his shirt sleeve, surrounding the leather band.
“Ready to fix a little lunch for six hungry cowboys?” he asked.
She nodded, wondering if a lie had to be verbalized or if movement counted. Lying by omission, lying by nod.
She was ready for a lot of things—to run screaming from the house, to murder Samuel, to press the hairs on Clayton’s wrist and watch them spring back, but she was in no way ready to fix a little lunch.
Wondering how the heck she was going to get out of this one, Hannah went downstairs with him to the big kitchen. As he pointed out the location of all the unassembled food components, she made an effort to memorize everything he said.
Flour in the big canister, sugar next, then coffee. Cans of food in the pantry.
The peanut butter jar greeted her like an old friend in a world of strangers. She wanted to embrace it. She didn’t see any blackberry jam, but there was a big jar of strawberry preserves. That would do. She could make lunch after all.
“Through that door is the laundry room and a big freezer with plenty of meat and vegetables.”
She could check that for the possibility of froze, dinners.
“I know it’s late,” Clayton said, standing behind her, his warm breath stirring her hair. “You don’t need to come up with anything elaborate. We’ve been eating sandwiches so long, anything else will be welcome.”
Anything else? So much for her lunch plans. Back to square one.
For a long moment he didn’t move, just stood there behind her so close she could smell his leather, sunshine and warm earth scent that teased her senses and somehow made her feel even more confused.
He needed to leave so she could catch her breath. So she could go upstairs and look up lunch in the cookbook. Surely he didn’t plan to wait around for her to make the meal? How in the world was she supposed to look it up then figure out how to do it with him watching?
“So,” he said, “what do you need to get started?”
She turned to look at him. He was planning to wait around and watch her.
In desperation she pointed upward. “I need—”
“Oh, sure,” he said, stepping back. “You do remember where the bathroom is?”
The bathroom? Oh, well. It didn’t matter what he thought she was doing as long as she could get to that cookbook. Hannah nodded, then darted away and charged upstairs.
She opened the small bag and hurriedly flipped the cookbook open to the index, to the L’s.
Liver…surely they wouldn’t expect her to make that.
Lobster…oh, she loved lobster thermidor. When she’d lived at home, she’d frequently asked their cook to make it. This wasn’t going to be so tough after all.
Lunch dishes. There it was! She turned excitedly to the page.
Soup and sandwich. No, that wouldn’t do. Clayton had nixed the sandwiches.
Pasta salad. Perfect! She loved the colorful curly pasta and all the little bits of goodies.
If she could program a computer, surely she could do this. Other people cooked all the time.
She winced at that thought, her parents’ oftrepeated statements playing again in her head about what other people could do. All your friends have learned to dance. All your friends can make small talk with the guests at parties and dinners. All your friends make their parents proud of them.
Being able to understand advanced calculus and quantum physics or program a computer hadn’t helped her then.
But now she had specific directions, and she could follow directions, she told herself reassuringly.
The recipe purported to be adequate for four people, so she’d better double it to feed seven. She read it twice, carefully doubling and memorizing every measurement, every detail.
Clayton smiled eagerly at her when she came back down to the kitchen. He had a nice smile. His white teeth made his tan look even more golden and turned the crinkles around his eyes into sunbursts. For a brief, unreal instant, she fantasized that the sparkle in those eyes was for her, but she knew it was only because he was hungry, and he expected her to feed him. Her own lips turned upward at that ridiculous thought.
His expression seemed to soften as if a haze settled around his face. “Nice.” He spoke the single word quietly, almost indistinctly. It sounded like nice, but that made no sense. It was completely out of context.
“Ice?” she questioned. That would be logical since they were dealing with food.
“Huh?”
“Rice?” she guessed desperately. “Mice?” Surely not.
He shook his head and cleared his throat. “What do you need first?”
“Pasta,” she said, hoping he’d forget about the rice…or those mice. “A sixteen-ounce