She finished her shower, dried off, and changed into new clothes so that she could start cleaning up the floors where she’d tracked mud. Despite her complaints, Hettie would help. She didn’t really mind housework. Neither did Janie, although her late mother would be horrified if she could see her only child on the floor with a scrub brush alongside Hettie’s ample figure.
Janie helped with everything, except cooking. Her expertise in the kitchen was, to put it mildly, nonexistent. But, she thought, brightening, that was the next thing on her list of projects. She was undergoing a major self-improvement. First she was going to learn ranching—even if it killed her—and then she was going to learn to cook.
She wished this transformation had been her idea, but actually, it had been Marilee’s. The other girl had told her, in confidence, that she’d been talking to Leo and Leo had told her flatly that the reason he didn’t notice Janie was that she didn’t know anything about ranching. She was too well-dressed, too chic, too sophisticated. And the worst thing was that she didn’t know anything about cooking, either, Marilee claimed. So if Janie wanted to land that big, hunky fish, she was going to have to make some major changes.
It sounded like a good plan, and Marilee had been her friend since grammar school, when the Morgan family had moved next door. So Janie accepted Marilee’s advice with great pleasure, knowing that her best friend would never steer her wrong. She was going to stay home—not go back to college—and she was going to show Leo Hart that she could be the sort of woman who appealed to him. She’d work so hard at it, she’d have to succeed!
Not that her attempts at riding a horse were anything to write home about, she had to admit as she mopped her way down the long wooden floor of the hall. But she was a rancher’s daughter. She’d get better with practice.
She did keep trying. A week later, she was making biscuits in the kitchen—or trying to learn how—when she dropped the paper flour bag hard on the counter and was dusted from head to toe with the white substance.
It would have to be just that minute that her father came in the back door with Leo in tow.
“Janie?” her father exclaimed, wide-eyed.
“Hi, Dad!” she said with a big grin. “Hi, Leo.”
“What in blazes are you doing?” her father demanded.
“Putting the flour in a canister,” she lied, still smiling.
“Where’s Hettie?” he asked.
Their housekeeper was hiding in the bedroom, supposedly making beds, and trying not to howl at Janie’s pitiful efforts. “Cleaning, I believe,” she said.
“Aunt Lydia not around?”
“Playing bridge with the Harrisons,” she said.
“Bridge!” her father scoffed. “If it isn’t bridge, it’s golf. If it isn’t golf, it’s tennis… Is she coming over today to go over those stocks with me or not?” he persisted, because they jointly owned some of his late wife’s shares and couldn’t sell them without Lydia’s permission. If he could ever find the blasted woman!
“She said she wasn’t coming over until Saturday, Dad,” Janie reminded him.
He let out an angry sigh. “Well, come on, Leo, I’ll show you the ones I want to sell and let you advise me. They’re in my desk… damn bridge! I can’t do a thing until Lydia makes up her mind.”
Leo gave Janie a curious glance but he kept walking and didn’t say another word to her. Minutes later, he left—out the front door, not the back.
Janie’s self-improvement campaign continued into the following week with calf roping, which old John was teaching her out in the corral. Since she could now loop the rope around a practice wooden cow with horns, she was progressing to livestock.
She followed John’s careful instruction and tossed her loop over the head of the calf, but she’d forgotten to dig her heels in. The calf hadn’t. He jerked her off her feet and proceeded to run around the ring like a wild thing, trying to get away from the human slithering after him at a breakneck pace.
Of course, Leo would drive up next to the corral in time to see John catch and throw the calf, leaving Janie covered in mud. She looked like a road disaster.
This time Leo didn’t speak. He was too busy laughing. Janie couldn’t speak, either, her mouth was full of mud. She gave both men a glare and stomped off toward the back door of the house, trailing mud and unspeakable stuff, fuming the whole while.
A bath and change of clothes improved her looks and her smell. She was resigned to finding Leo gone when she got out, so she didn’t bother to dress up or put on makeup. She wandered out to the kitchen in jeans and a loose long-sleeved denim shirt, with her hair in a lopsided ponytail and her feet bare.
“You’ll step on something sharp and cripple yourself,” Hettie warned, turning from the counter where she was making rolls, her ample arms up the elbows in flour.
“I have tough feet,” Janie protested with a warm smile. She went up and hugged Hettie hard from behind, loving the familiar smells of freshly washed cotton and flour that seemed to cling to her. Hettie had been around since Janie was six. She couldn’t imagine life without the gray-haired, blue-eyed treasure with her constantly disheveled hair and worried expression. “Oh, Hettie, what would we do without you?” she asked on a sigh, and closed her eyes.
“Get away, you pest,” Hettie muttered, “I know what you’re up to… Janie Brewster, I’ll whack you!”
But Janie was already out of reach, dangling Hettie’s apron from one hand, her green eyes dancing with mischief.
“You put that back on me or you’ll get no rolls tonight!” Hettie raged at her.
“All right, all right, I was only kidding,” Janie chuckled. She replaced the apron around Hettie’s girth and was fastening it when she heard the door open behind her.
“You stop teaching her these tricks!” Hettie growled at the newcomer.
“Who, me?” Leo exclaimed with total innocence.
Janie’s hands fumbled with the apron. Her heart ran wild. He hadn’t left. She’d thought he was gone, and she hadn’t bothered with her appearance. He was still here, and she looked like last year’s roast!
“You’ll drop that apron, Janie,” Leo scolded playfully.
Janie glanced at him as she retied the apron. “You can talk,” she chided. “I hear your housekeepers keep quitting because you untie aprons constantly! One kept a broom handle!”
“She broke it on my hard head,” he said smugly. “What are you making, Hettie?”
“Rolls,” she said. She glanced warily at Leo. “I can’t make biscuits. Sorry.”
He gave her a hard glare. “Just because I did something a little offbeat…”
“Carried that little chef right out of his restaurant, with him kicking and screaming all the way, I heard,” Hettie mused, eyes twinkling.
“He said he could bake biscuits. I was only taking him home with me to let him prove it,” Leo said belligerently.
“That’s not what he thought,” Hettie chuckled. “I hear he dropped the charges…?”
“Nervous little guy,” Leo said, shaking his head. “He’d never have worked out, anyway.” He gave her a long