Last night at the party, she had thought he was extremely handsome in his dark blue jeans, white oxford-cloth shirt and expensive caiman-leather boots. But that was nothing compared to the way he looked now. Wearing well-worn jeans and a chambray work shirt, he was downright devastating. With his dark eyes, black hair and a fashionable day’s growth of beard stubble, Donaldson had that bad boy appeal about him that was sure to send shivers up the spine of any woman with a pulse.
Disgusted with herself and her wayward thoughts, Taylor set the metal mixing bowls on the counter and reached for a carton of eggs. “Where’s my grandfather’s housekeeper?”
“Marie retired right after the first of the year and I just haven’t gotten around to hiring another one,” he answered.
She wasn’t surprised. The woman her grandfather had hired after her grandmother died had to be getting close to seventy. But on the other hand, she wouldn’t have put it past Donaldson to have fired the woman, either.
“I’ll have breakfast ready in a few minutes,” she said, cracking eggs into one of the bowls with one hand while she reached for a whisk with the other. “Why don’t you have a seat at the table?”
“What are you making?” he asked as he sat down at the head of the oak trestle table that had been in her grandmother’s family for over three generations.
“Blueberry and ricotta–stuffed French toast with blueberry syrup, link sausage and blueberries and cantaloupe covered with vanilla sauce,” she said, dipping extra thick slices of bread in the cinnamon-spiced egg mixture before placing them on the heated stovetop griddle.
“Sounds good, but isn’t that a little fancy for a typical ranch breakfast?” he commented. “You must really like to cook.”
She shrugged. “Since I graduated from the California School of Culinary Arts, then went to Paris for a year to study pastry, you might say I’m rather fond of it.”
“Do you have your own restaurant?”
Arranging the food on two plates, she shook her head. “No, I’m a personal chef. I’m mainly hired for dinner parties and other special in-home occasions, like graduation and anniversary celebrations.”
“That sounds like an interesting job,” he said conversationally. “Do you have many clients?”
Nodding, she poured vanilla sauce over the fruit. “When I first started, I registered with the personal chef association and they referred clients to me. Now the majority of the calls I get are referrals from clients or from people who have attended the dinner parties I’ve prepared.”
“You must be good at what you do,” he said, sounding thoughtful.
Taylor carried the plates over to the table and sat down. “I’ll let you be the judge.” She watched him eye the food in front of him as if he wasn’t sure it was safe to eat. Barely resisting the urge to laugh, she asked, “Is something wrong?”
“You made your opinion of me quite clear last night, so I’m sure you can understand my hesitation,” he said, giving her a deliberate smile.
“It’s true that I don’t completely trust you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t trust me.” She switched his plate with hers. “Now you have no reason not to try it.”
Picking up his knife and fork, he cut into the French toast. “What do you say we start over?” he suggested. “The least we can do is be civil to each other until you go back to Los Angeles.”
“I agree that being polite to each other would make negotiations for my buying your share of the ranch a lot easier,” she agreed, taking a bite of fruit.
“I told you last night I’m not selling. But you could always sell your half to me,” he said, taking a bite of toast.
“Absolutely not. I love the Lucky Ace. It represents the best part of my childhood.” Irritated by his offer to buy her share, Taylor put her fork down to glare at him. “My grandfather knew how much this place meant to me and he intended for me to have it. I’m not selling it to you or anyone else.”
Donaldson calmly took a sip of his coffee. “Then before you go back to Los Angeles, we’ll have to work out an agreement on how I run the day-to-day operations and how often you want to receive dividend checks.”
“I’m not going back to L.A.,” she said, taking great satisfaction in the annoyed expression that came over his handsome face.
A forkful of toast halfway to his mouth, he slowly lowered it back to his plate. “What do you mean you aren’t going back?”
Her appetite deserting her, she rose from the table to scrape the contents of her plate in the garbage disposal. “I have every intention of making the Lucky Ace my permanent home.”
“What about your clients back in Los Angeles?” he asked, looking more irritated with each passing second. “And that backpack wasn’t big enough to hold more than a handful of clothes.”
“I informed my clients of the move over a week ago and arranged for another chef to cover the dinner parties I had scheduled,” she said, watching the frown lines on his forehead deepen further. “I sublet my apartment, stored my furniture, and the clothes I was unable to bring with me in the car, I shipped here. Those cartons should arrive sometime next week. I told you last night when you went out to get my backpack that I was here to run the ranch and would get the rest of my things from the car today.”
He suddenly got up from the table, walked over to scrape his plate, then reached for the hat hanging beside the back door.
“Will you be back for lunch?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then I’ll have plenty of time to clean my room this morning before I bring my things in from the car and put them away this afternoon,” she said thoughtfully.
“I’ll go over to the bunkhouse and see if I can get one of the men to help you with that,” he answered without turning around.
Before she could thank him for his thoughtfulness, he opened the door to walk out onto the porch then forcefully pulled it shut behind him.
“He took that better than what I thought he would,” she murmured as she started rinsing their dishes to put into the dishwasher. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but Donaldson’s passive acceptance of her moving into the ranch house hadn’t been it.
Of course, she wasn’t foolish enough to think that he had given up trying to get her to sell her part of the ranch to him. But maybe now that he knew she was serious about living at the ranch, he was giving a little more thought to selling her his.
* * *
Lane rode his blue roan gelding across the pasture toward the barn at a slow walk. He had to find some way to get Taylor to sell him her share of the ranch. Or if that wasn’t something she was willing to do, at least get her to go back to Los Angeles and leave him the hell alone.
He could appreciate her sentimentality about the place her grandfather owned. But he had become attached to the property as well. For the first time in over twenty years he had a place he could truly call his own. It felt good and he wasn’t willing to give that up.
As he stared off across the land, he thought about the plans he had for the future. He’d made a fortune playing poker and having invested wisely, he never had to work another day in his life if he didn’t want to. But he didn’t consider playing poker or ranching actual jobs. Poker was a pastime. He enjoyed the challenge of competing with other equally skilled players and if he ever lost interest in it, he’d quit with no regrets. But ranching was a lifestyle, and up until six months ago, he hadn’t even realized how much he had missed it. That’s why he intended to improve the Lucky Ace by introducing a herd of free-range cattle, as well as start raising and training roping horses for rodeo.