ISBN-10: 1-5161-0928-7 (ebook)
First Print Edition: July 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0929-6
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0929-5
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To the food crew at 49 Mary. I miss our times in the kitchen.
Acknowledgments
A special shout out to Bill Addison and Amanda Gold for all the cooking expertise. I couldn’t have done it without you. Any mistakes made are my own. Thanks to the entire staff at Kensington. John Scognamiglio, Alex Nicolajsen, Jane Nutter and the rest of the crew, you’ve been my writing family for the last six years and for that I’m so grateful. And always thanks to my non-writing family who endure my crazy schedule, my plot panic attacks and all the other eccentricities that go with being a writer. You too, Rebecca Hunter. I’m so thankful for your friendship.
Chapter 1
It was midday and Sawyer Dalton desperately needed a shower and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. He’d caught a red-eye from Heathrow to Sacramento after a four-day journalism conference where he’d spent his nights drinking and telling war stories into the wee hours of the morning.
As he pulled past the ranch gate, his chest gave a little kick, like it always did. Five hundred acres of the most pristine land in the Sierra foothills. Okay, he was biased. But Dry Creek Ranch, a working cow-calf operation, had been in his family for four generations.
On a clear day, you could see all the way to Banner Mountain. And the green, grassy hills rippled through the valley like a storybook version of the countryside. A series of gable barns, worn and weathered, dotted the landscape, their rooflines often hidden in the tall pines.
Now, the ranch belonged to Sawyer and his two cousins, Jace and Cash, an inheritance from his late grandfather. And while the ranch had fallen into disrepair, Sawyer and his cousins had big plans to someday restore the place to its former glory.
They just had to keep from losing it first.
He didn’t bother with the garage, just parked his Range Rover in his driveway. Slinging his duffel strap over his arm, he climbed the stairs to his apartment. It had once been the hayloft of an old livestock barn. He’d hired a San Francisco architect to convert it into 2000 square feet of kick-ass, mostly open, living space with lots of windows, open-beam ceilings, and modern amenities. The bottom had been turned into a garage and workspace, while still preserving the barn’s rustic charm.
When he wasn’t traveling for work—which was all the time—the ranch and the loft were home sweet home.
He made it to the top of the stairs and tripped over a pile of luggage on the landing. Louis Vuitton. Not his—he’d be the laughing stock of the press corps—and sure the hell not his cousins’. None of them owned anything remotely designerish, unless you counted Levi’s and Stetson. Besides, Cash and Jace both had their own homes on the ranch.
“Hello?” He craned his neck around the corner to find the house empty. Someone, however, had left a pile of dishes in the sink and cooking accoutrements all over the counter. It wasn’t like Cash or Jace, or their women, to lend out Sawyer’s house without permission.
Yet, there were people camping here and they weren’t cleaning up after themselves.
He supposed the mystery would soon solve itself when whoever it was returned to claim the luggage.
Unable to keep his eyes open, he headed to his bedroom, dropping his duffel on the floor. On his way to the bathroom, he dragged his T-shirt over his head, tossing it somewhere in the vicinity of the hamper. Next, he went to work on his belt, looking forward to cranking up all six jets in his walk-in shower. The water pressure in his London hotel had sucked.
“Who are you?”
He jumped at the voice, then whipped his head around to find a woman sitting in his bed with her legs drawn up and a laptop perched on her knees. She looked vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough to be in his bedroom.
Yep, apparently he’d missed the memo that his home had been turned into an Airbnb in his absence.
“I’ll ask you the same,” he said. “And since this is my house, you go first.”
She flicked her gaze at his bare chest, then went back to studying her laptop. “You must be Wendy’s son,” she said, distracted by whatever was on her screen. “She’s been trying to reach you.”
Ah, his mother.
Why she’d sent a complete stranger to his apartment was beyond anyone’s guess. “I’ve been on an airplane for the last fourteen hours.”
“That’s probably why she couldn’t reach you.” She tapped the space bar on her keyboard, completely absorbed in whatever she was looking at. “She said you’d be gone awhile and it would be okay if I stayed here.”
“She did, did she? Well, I’m home now, so that obviously won’t work.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. That’s what she said. I saw a big house on my way in. Can’t you stay there?”
The question threw him for a second. “Uh, no, because I live here.” What part of that was she having trouble understanding?
“Okay, then I’ll stay in the big house.”
Wow. He shook his head.
“Yeah, I don’t think so. My cousin and his two kids and fiancée live in the big house. Last I heard, they weren’t taking in boarders. Why don’t we start with you telling me who you are?” He’d take up the rest of this freak show with his mother.
“Son of a bitch!” She slammed her laptop closed, scrambled off the bed, and swiped a smartphone off his dresser—which was now covered with women’s lingerie—punched in a number and started yelling at someone.
He listened in because he was nosy and because she made it difficult not too. People on the other side of the continent could hear her, she was that loud. From her side of the conversation he extrapolated that it was a business situation. Someone was pulling out of a deal and she was going apeshit over it.
He searched his duffel for his own phone and took it into the living room. Sure enough, there were four missed calls from his mother and a CALL ME ASAP text.
He took a long, calming breath and dialed.
She answered on the first ring. “How’s London, darling?”
“The trip was great until I got home.” He leaned against the wall and cradled the phone to his ear with his shoulder. “Who is she and why is she here?”
“Oh, boy.” Long pause. “You said you’d be overseas until August.”
“I got all my interviews done for the piece I’m writing and came home a week early. Who is she, Mom, and why have you foisted her on Dry Creek Ranch?”
“You didn’t recognize her?” His mother was pacing now; Sawyer could hear her high heels clicking on the marble floor in her office. “I guess that’s good. She’s Gina DeRose.”
“That FoodFlicks chick?” Sawyer had caught her food show a few times. Not because he liked to cook, but because Gina DeRose was hot. At least on television. It was amazing what makeup and good lighting could do.
“Not just FoodFlicks. She owns an entire culinary empire. Cookbooks, kitchenware, pots and pans, her own line of seasonings, cake mixes, and packaged frozen foods.”
He moved to the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge, looking for a bottle of water. They seemed to have all disappeared.
“What