Charm School For Cowboys. Meg Maxwell
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he should let CJ know, not start a big inquiry on the down low as though he was sneaking behind his brother’s back.
He’d talk to CJ about it tomorrow.
And who knew if Carson Ford would even be able to find his twin? The private investigator had easily found Jake, at his birth mother’s request, because he’d left his contact info for his file at the adoption agency. Because, then again, the case had been personal to Carson then and it would be personal this time too. Jake sat back and smiled at the story Carson had finally told him about how he’d come to be involved in looking for him.
Apparently, Carson’s father, a widowed banker in Blue Gulch, had gone to a fortune-teller who’d told him that his second great love would be a green-eyed hairstylist named Sarah. Carson had thought his father was nuts for believing in that “malarkey.” But his father had believed, and so Carson had gone on the hunt with the fortune-teller’s daughter, Olivia Mack, to prove his father wrong—and because Olivia had been sure the mystery woman was her own estranged aunt. Only thing Carson had done was prove his father and the fortune-teller right: Sarah Mack and Edmund Ford had fallen deeply in love. And so had Carson and Olivia—when neither of them was looking for love. There was going to be a big double wedding in the fall, to which Jake was invited and would attend. And considering that Olivia ran the Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen food truck, where Emma sometimes helped out, he had no doubt his new cook would be invited too.
The thought of Emma Hurley brought her pretty face to mind, her big blue eyes and the long lashes. He sure wished she was going to the dance.
Would he feel ready for a relationship, for love and marriage and all that, if he found his twin and settled that part of his life? Maybe. Then again, he still felt a bitter sting anytime he thought of his ex, how she’d bailed on him when he’d wanted to wait, for CJ’s sake, to dig through his past. He’d realized as the days and months and years had gone by that he’d stopped trusting, stopped expecting anything from anyone.
So, no, this buck would not be asking anyone to dance tonight. And especially not the only woman he wanted to dance with.
* * *
Parking in the center of town at 10:00 a.m. was a breeze; Emma found a spot right in front of the apricot-colored Victorian that housed Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen. She loved Blue Gulch. Though the town bordered Oak Creek, where she’d grown up, she hadn’t spent much time with her Blue Gulch relatives. Her father had had some long-ago falling-out with his uncle and his wife, Essie Hurley, and according to what her dad had said over the years, he’d tried to tell his uncle and Essie how to run the restaurant, then had gloated when it ran into financially slow patches. The relationship had quickly soured, and Emma had grown up barely knowing Essie or her cousins, who Essie had raised after their parents had died in an accident. But the past weeks that Emma had been in town, living in the Victorian, sneezing up a storm over the puppies despite her allergy medication, had been absolutely wonderful. Emma’s dad drove people away with his bossy, controlling way, and right here she had all this family—kind, welcoming, and with a love of cooking in common.
“How’s the new boss treating you?” Essie asked, giving Emma a hug in the big country kitchen. Seventy-six-year-old Essie had had a health scare last year, and though she’d cut back on too much time on her feet, her granddaughters had had special chairs made just for her that could reach varying heights, from the worktable to the ovens, to the counters, so she could sit and make her famed sauces and soups and amazing entrées.
“I came downstairs at four thirty this morning to start breakfast, and guess what?” Emma said, tying on her Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen apron. “The whole crew—Hank, Grizzle, Golden and CJ, he’s Jake’s brother, were all in the kitchen cooking already—everything from eggs to bacon and pancakes with blueberries. They’d felt terrible when they heard I’d come to the ranch looking for Joshua—Tex—only to hear that he’d died in a riding accident. They’re a really nice group of cowboys.”
“Wait. Grizzle was cooking?” Annabel Hurley Montgomery asked with a grin. She was dredging chicken wings in flour, and Emma went over to take on the prep.
“You know Grizzle?” Emma asked.
“Sure do,” Annabel said. “He used to work at a farm nearby and would come in for lunch every day. When I was thirteen, Georgia and I were picking herbs in the fields out back when we saw that the stray dog that was always hanging around in the river had gotten caught in a current. Georgia and I almost drowned trying to save it and we made so much noise that some people came running. Grizzle jumped right in and saved that dog. But the dog was so scared she bit him. Blood was running down his arms but he held on tight and brought that dog to the riverbank.”
“Aww,” Emma said, her huge platter of wings ready for the fryer. She grabbed another platter and started on another batch, flour and egg wash under her nails. “Was the dog all right? Was Grizzle all right?”
Annabel nodded. “Both were fine. That dog had taken off the minute its feet hit land, but that night it laid down right on the front porch of Grizzle’s house. Grizzle adopted her and named her River. She never bit again. When River was dying and it was time to let her go, Grizzle invited me and my sisters to the little funeral he had in his yard, since we were the ones who brought them together. Remember how we sobbed?” she said to Georgia.
Annabel’s older sister, Georgia Hurley Slater, who baked for the restaurant, smiled. “River turned out to be the sweetest dog ever.”
Clementine Hurley Grainger, the youngest of her cousins and head waitress, came into the kitchen and said hi to Emma and announced they were having two big groups for lunch, the library’s book club, which had close to twenty members, at twelve thirty, and the rancher’s association bigwigs at 1:00 p.m. There were only six of them, but they always ordered enough food for double, and Hurley’s portions were generous to begin with.
Emma glanced at her cousins, their wedding rings gleaming, and a bit of envy poked at her. The three Hurley sisters had found wonderful husbands, and both Annabel and Georgia had babies. Clementine had a daughter who she’d adopted from foster care and her husband’s orphaned twin nephews, and sometimes Emma would see the big family together, wives, husbands, children, and she’d wish she could have that for herself. She had the extended family, sure. But her baby’s father was gone. Her mother was long gone. Her own father was, as usual, demanding she live according to his rules for her, so she didn’t even have the comfort of her dad in her life right now. She thought of him, missing those rare times when he could be so loving and kind. She sure wished he was by her side right now, but that just couldn’t be. She was on her own and would be fine. She had the Hurleys of Blue Gulch, and she’d found a perfect job and place to live. She’d raise her baby among friends, loving friends. I can do this, she reminded herself. I want to do this.
“Oh, and I ran into Olivia Mack this morning,” Clementine added. “She mentioned she’d be coming in for lunch at noon with her husband-and in-laws-to-be.”
“Does Olivia need me to cover the food truck this afternoon, then?” Emma asked, dredging what had to be her hundredth chicken wing in flour, then dipping it in the egg wash and coating it in flour again before laying it on the platter. When Emma had first started working at Hurley’s, she’d trained at their food truck, which was parked on the other end of Main Street and served po’boys of all kinds and the best cannoli Emma had ever had. Olivia, the cook and manager, had met the man she was marrying this fall while working in the food truck.
“Dylan’s working the truck today,” Essie said. Dylan, one of their cooks, was just eighteen years old and a single father of an adorable baby boy named Timmy. “I didn’t want to overtax you on your first day at the ranch.”
Emma smiled at her aunt and got busy. After she had hundreds of chicken wings ready for the fryer for the first wave of the lunch rush, she moved on to assisting Essie, who was working on sauces. Emma loved making barbecue sauce, and Hurley’s had at least ten variations. Then she moved on to preparing the spicy coleslaw, which Emma had been craving lately. Forget pickles. Emma could eat smothered pulled pork po’boys with a side of the spicy slaw every day. With a cannoli