With flour-dusted fingers, she grabbed the phone, pressed the off button and went back to work.
Not an easy chore, since the counters at the Lucky 7 Ranch were just a bit too high. She had to get on tiptoe in order to roll out the top crust.
The century-old kitchen was a cook’s delight. In fact, everything about the house appealed to her. Everything up to and including its occupant.
Shane Landry appealed to her in a lot of ways. Too many. Which was why she did her level best to keep her distance. She’d worked too long and too hard to do otherwise. She was not going to turn into a woman like her mother. Not going to repeat the pattern she’d learned at the feet of a master. She attacked the dough with gusto as she mentally reviewed her mother’s choices. Taylor had made that promise to herself on her thirteenth birthday. Until she had created a life for herself, no man was welcome as anything more than a temporary diversion. She’d never be dependent.
Which was why Shane was such a dangerous temptation. Temptation being the operative word. It seemed unfair that one man should be given so many gifts. She frowned at her own lack of self-restraint. No good would or could come of fantasizing about him.
Though she was weeks from graduation, she hardly needed an advanced degree to diagnose the fact that she was attracted to the wrong man. She blew out a breath of frustration as she lifted the crust on top of the sliced apples and began crimping the edges with a vengeance.
“Killing it or cooking it?” Shane asked when he sauntered into the room a second later.
His large hand snaked around her, snatching a slice of apple out of the pie before she could stop him. She slapped his fingers. The quick, fraction-of-a-second contact was all it took for her pulse to kick into gear. Damn! No touching, she reminded herself. Thinking about him was bad enough. Physical contact with Shane made her almost forget why he was off-limits.
She nudged him back with her elbow. Did the blasted man always have to stand so close? “Stick your hands in my food again and I’ll kill you and cook you. Not necessarily in that order. Don’t you have someplace to be? Other than here?” Where I won’t smell the fresh scent of soap mingling with your cologne? Where I won’t feel the warmth of your body or know that all I have to do is turn around to be in your arms?
“I belong here,” Shane reminded her. Taylor frowned again when she noticed a new bruise on his wrist as he stole another apple slice and his arm brushed hers. “You’re in a particularly nasty mood today,” he said cheerfully. “What happened, did they cancel Dr. Phil? Bummer.”
“Do not mock Dr. Phil,” Taylor insisted, stepping away before she turned to glare up at him. “He’s a very insightful, intelligent man. Two things, by the way, you are not.”
“But I’m the man who pays you, so how about something to eat?”
“Sure. Put on your shoes and socks and go to the fridge.”
His crystal-blue eyes glinted with humor. “Housekeeper, Taylor. From the ancient Greek phrase meaning ‘keep the people in the house happy.’ This is me…” he paused and waved his hands “…not happy.”
“And this is me…” she gave him her brightest smile “…not caring.”
He couldn’t help but watch as she put the pie in the oven, stiffened her spine and walked out of the room with all the airs and dignity of royalty departing the throne. There was the added bonus of seeing her hips sway with each step. Taylor had a killer body. She kept him awake nights. Which sucked, since there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about his attraction to her. Seth’s sage advice aside, Shane still didn’t think he was ready to hang himself out there just to have her slice him to shreds with that sharp tongue and even sharper mind. Especially not when she’d practically just called him stupid.
Shane took a few minutes to clean up her baking mess, then rummaged around, finally settling on some cheese and crackers. There was a wonderful smell coming from the Crock-Pot, so he knew better than to spoil his appetite. In addition to her physical perfection, Taylor was a really great cook. He tried to tell himself that he’d kept her on for that reason and that reason alone after Sam, Callie and the kids had moved out last fall.
After that, there really wasn’t a need for live-in help. Not when it was just him. And Taylor.
And enough sexual tension knotting his gut to choke several of his prize bulls.
He took the same seat at the kitchen table that had been his since he’d graduated from a high chair. He cut off a hunk of cheese and slipped it into his mouth, chasing it with a long swallow of beer.
He was still sad over the recent confirmation that his parents were gone. It didn’t make sense. Who would have wanted to kill them?
He took a healthy slug of his beer, enjoying the whiff of pot roast and the mouthwatering aroma of hot apple pie.
Shane had a feeling his mom would have adored Taylor. And—God—she would have loved all her grandbabies, too. It was sad to realize his parents would never be a part of their grandchildren’s lives. It wasn’t fair, he thought grimly.
Shane focused on being happy for all his brothers. He adored his sisters-in-law and all the little Landrys they had produced. He felt like the odd man out, though. Again.
As the youngest of the seven sons of Caleb and Priscilla, he also held the dubious distinction of being the only one who had rebelled as a teenager. The only one who had inspired the ire of their father and the protection of their mother.
Shane suffered a familiar pinch in his chest. Suddenly, the snack wasn’t all that appetizing, so he shoved it nearer the center of the large oak table that dominated the room, and concentrated on his beer.
Thinking about the recent loss filled him with guilt. He knew something about the time just before their murder. Something he’d never been able to share. Not with his brothers, not with anyone. It was gnawing at his insides.
Chapter Two
Taylor liked the structure of her life. A life, she acknowledged, as she carried the heavy tray stacked with pies toward the bunkhouse, that didn’t fit any of the criteria she’d so carefully defined. “How did I manage to mess up so royally?” she whispered as she trudged across the moist ground, doing her best to balance the tray and avoid a huge mud puddle courtesy of the early snowmelt.
Didn’t matter. It would be history soon. She’d get back on track. She’d forget that she actually liked caring for a family—lessons learned and reinforced over and over during her tenure on the ranch. She couldn’t erase the last five years. Probably wouldn’t even if she could. It would mean forgetting how much she loved preparing meals, planning parties and celebrating milestones, and she didn’t want to do that. But she couldn’t make that her whole life, right? No. Career had to be the focus. That was the smart choice. Relationships couldn’t be controlled, and had the ability to evaporate in a second. She didn’t want to be one of those sad women sitting alone in some dingy apartment, pining for a man. Men made you desperate and she’d had enough of desperate to last a lifetime.
So, while she liked her current life, Taylor knew it had to end. Time to move on. Captain her own ship. Float her own boat. “When did I become the queen of the nautical metaphor?” she grumbled, sidestepping another hazardous mud puddle.
Here she was, on the brink of checking off one of the major things on her life-goals list, and she wasn’t happy. That was annoying as sin. She should be ecstatic, exuberantly anticipating her future.
A future that didn’t include the large, loving Landry family. Taylor felt a chill carried on the early evening air. Within a week of meeting the Landrys, all of her preconceived notions had started to crumble. Everything, absolutely everything, she’d been living, breathing, believing, planning and plotting for much of her life had collapsed, crumpled, shattered. It wasn’t supposed to be like th—
She