A Taste of Heaven (7 page)

He went on eating, never taking his eyes off
her. “How much tobacco are you planning to get? And kerosene?”

“What?” She blinked.

“What about beans, and dried fruit?” He gave
her a knowing look and put his empty plate on the table. “Come on,
Mrs. Ross,” he commanded.

He turned and walked back through the doorway
to the dining room, never once checking to see if she followed. She
had to move fast to keep up—his strides were long, and his spurs
rang as he crossed the floor. They passed through the parlor to a
closed door at the end of the house. When he flung open the door,
she saw a room that contained a big rolltop desk, a long table, and
lots of empty glass-fronted cabinets. The scent of wood from the
peeled-log walls was especially strong here, as though the room was
often closed up.

Libby stood back as he opened the desk to
reveal pigeonholes stuffed with papers that appeared to have no
organization. But without hesitation, he reached for one page in
particular and put it in her hands.

“That, Mrs. Ross, is what we typically buy
when we stock provisions around here.”

He'd handed her a receipt from Osmer's
Dry Goods. The items and quantities listed there, written with a
careless hand in brown ink, staggered Libby. Yes, there was
tobacco: thirty pounds of plug and ten pounds of rolling tobacco.
And a lot of other—
equipment
was the description that came to her mind: three Colt
revolvers and fifteen boxes of cartridges, a roll of rope, twenty
boxes of matches, one hundred pounds of soap, and ten gallons of
kerosene. But where was the food? she wondered. Oh, there—one
hundred pounds of sugar, fifteen tins of Arbuckle coffee, five
hundred—
five hundred
—pounds
of bacon and salt pork, five gallons of molasses, three hundred
pounds of flour, two hundred pounds of beans, forty pounds of dried
apples, two boxes of soda, a box of pepper and a bag of salt.
Civilized people didn't eat like this. What on earth could she make
of salt pork? It wouldn't surprise her if they expected her to mix
the tobacco with it and create some kind of dreadful
stew.

“My goodness,” she breathed.

“Not the same as cooking for a family in
Chicago?” he inquired, his arms folded over his wide chest. He wore
a smug expression that made Libby feel two feet tall.

“My wagon won't hold all this.” She gestured
feebly at the list.

“Not if it's that wobbly wreck I saw out by
the barn, it won't. I don't know how you got this far with it.”

“Then I suppose you might have something else
I can take to Heavenly? If I'm going to go, I'd better get started.
Maybe you could just harness the horse for me—”

He looked at her as though she'd lost her
mind. “You're not going alone.” The flat declaration hung between
them.

“Well, yes, I am. It's part of my job to
stock the kitchen. Everyone else is busy.” Libby twiddled with her
collar button, wondering why he found that odd. He so obviously
expected all the men to do their part, and she meant to do
hers.

He lifted his brows and looked exasperated
again. “Mrs. Ross, in the first place, the wagon I'm thinking of
needs a team of four horses to pull it. You'll have to get one of
the boys to drive you. Secondly, even if you were going to Heavenly
just to buy hairpins, someone from the Lodestar would go with you.
I won't allow a woman to go anywhere alone around here, especially
a city-bred woman.”

He said “city-bred” in a way that made it
sound as though she wouldn't even have the wits to come in from a
rainstorm. “Why ever not? I drove to town by myself from Ben's
place, and that was sixteen miles from Heavenly. And anyway, all of
your men are—”

He closed up the desk with a soft thud. “Luck
got you there, not skill. And you weren't my responsibility then.
But you are now, and will be as long as you're at the
Lodestar.”

His responsibility? She'd left Chicago,
heartbroken and disgraced, had traveled thirteen hundred hard
miles, survived the horrible winter with Ben, watched him die in
that tiny cabin, and buried him by herself. No one had been
responsible for her then, or really even worried about what
happened to her. She wasn't going to let this man treat her like a
helpless child now. “You are not responsible for me, Mr. Hollins. I
can take care of myself. Besides, there's no one—”

He gave her a look of absolute
authority, and his words dropped to a decisive tone. “I am
responsible for everyone and everything on this place, from the
smallest calf on up to you and Rory and Joe. And that's
my
job, Mrs. Ross—”

Libby winced.

“What's the matter?” he snapped, seeing her
expression.

The impatient note in his voice was
intimidating, but she braved it through. “Mr. Hollins, really, I
wish everyone here would just call me Libby.”

He stared at her, then combed his fingers
through his chestnut hair. Just briefly, his autocratic confidence
slipped and he seemed almost self-conscious.

“Well, uh—Lib— No, let's just leave things as
they are, Mrs. Ross.”

She felt her ears and cheeks burn with
embarrassment. Certainly, he was right, she thought. Better that
they remain as formal as possible. But she wasn't used to it, and
oh how she wished her name was still Garrison. It would be again,
she promised herself, just as soon as she left Montana.

He gestured at the receipt she still held.
“Get what's on that list, and anything else you think you'll need.
Nort Osmer will add it all to the Lodestar account. Now go ask Joe
to have someone hitch the wagon and take you to town.”

“Mr. Hollins, I've been trying to tell you
that they've gone, all your men. I watched them ride away just a
few minutes ago. I believe I heard Joe say they were going
somewhere he called the southwest line. And Charlie went someplace
else with three of the others.”

“Damn it, that's right,” he groused. “The
north range.” He let out an exasperated sigh and looked around the
office, as though he might find a way out of this predicament in
the log walls. Finally he brought his eyes back to her.

“Well, saddle up, Mrs. Ross. We're going to
Heavenly.”

T
yler and Libby
jounced along without speaking, following the rutted road that led
to Heavenly. The silence was broken only by the rattling wagon, and
the jingle of harness. The low clouds lifted a bit as the morning
and miles passed. But the wind, blowing down from Canada, still
held a piercing chill.

Tyler maintained a firm grip on the lines of
the four horses, but his mind kept straying to the woman sitting
next to him on the narrow seat. It was impossible to ignore her
when they kept bumping thighs and hips and knees.

He was accustomed to dealing with the
vagaries of nature, from bad weather to the unpredictability of
cattle and horses, and everything in between. But to come home and
find a woman in his house? He felt like he'd been poleaxed. Worse
still, it looked like he was stuck with her for a couple of weeks,
probably until Joe found someone else to cook for them, both at the
ranch and on the drive. But even a week or two would be too long.
And she wanted to be called by her first name? Absolutely not. At
least, be wouldn't do it. That was her first step in establishing
herself permanently in the kitchen, and he wasn't about to allow
that. His life was arranged precisely as he wanted it, with his
privacy and routine intact. The last thing he'd welcome was someone
to disrupt it. Or worse, to change it.

The Lodestar was no place for a woman anyway,
he reiterated to himself, shrugging deeper into his sheepskin coat.
Who could know that better than he did? This one was city-bred, to
boot; soft and delicate, and not accustomed to the everyday
hardships of life on the frontier. He let a sidelong glance slide
to her again. She was small and fine boned, and she sat on that
wagon seat like she had a broom handle for a backbone. With both
feet planted together firmly on the floorboards, she'd tucked her
gray-striped skirt under her to keep it from billowing. Her head
was protected from the biting wind by only a thin wool shawl, and
her gloves were carefully mended in several places. He could see
that she was cold. That she'd made it through the winter surprised
him.

He forced his gaze back to the road and
wrapped the reins more securely around his gloved fists. A pretty,
unattached female would only be a distraction. And she was pretty.
He'd already noticed the men acting like a bunch of wall-eyed
calves when he looked out his office window and saw her waving to
them in the yard. Charlie especially seemed to be suffering from
calico fever. Damn it all, work was bound to come to a grinding
halt as long as she was there. He needed every man's mind on the
business at hand, not on this woman with honey-colored hair and big
gray eyes.

Even though the Lodestar was in better shape
than most of the other ranches in this section, the winter had cost
him dearly. God, the snow. Remembering the blinding whiteness, he
tightened his jaw. In his thirty-two years he'd never seen anything
like it, anywhere. It had begun falling on Christmas Eve and didn't
stop until the middle of February. During those weeks, the
temperature dropped to twenty below. In the house, he wore nearly
as many clothes as he did to go outside. And while the winter crew
was just across the yard in the bunkhouse, he felt like he was the
last person on earth, alone in the bleak, frozen wilderness.

But the wind had been his biggest torment.
He'd lost track of the nights he'd lain awake, worrying about his
stock and listening to the wind. It howled like a banshee through
the valley, driving blankets of snow ahead that drifted as high as
the windows on the second floor. Sometimes its voice would change.
It would wail over ice-hardened cutbanks and through bare-limbed
trees like a high, thin scream. Or it would slow to a monotonous
moaning for hours on end. One night, he was jolted from a restless
doze, panicky and sweating despite the cold, when the wind sounded
like a crying baby. In all, his present was enough to contend
with—he didn't need reminders of his past.

Now he was forced to sell off part of his
remaining herd to raise cash. He shifted on the wagon seat, trying
to loosen the tension between his shoulders, and kept his eyes on
the cedars and yellow pines that lined the road. Fate seemed to be
continuing its war against him—first the winter, now this new cook.
With all the ranches in the territory, what stroke of bad luck had
dumped her in his lap? On second thought, he really didn't want to
know.

Tyler didn't want to know anything about
Libby Ross except when she'd be leaving.

*~*~*

The stiffness in Libby’s spine eased a bit
when she saw the shapes of Heavenly's buildings emerge from the
misty valley ahead. She was anxious to be off this wagon and away
from Tyler Hollins until she had to return to the ranch. Being
trapped with him on that narrow seat in the middle of the prairie
was, oddly enough, as confining as a closet. She tried to keep from
bumping into him, but every time the wagon hit a chuck hole or a
groove in the road, they were thrown against each other. He hadn't
spoken one word to her for the entire five-mile journey, but his
general displeasure was as hard and uncomfortable as the rough
ride.

With far more expertise than she'd
shown yesterday, he pulled the team and wagon around to the side of
Osmer's Dry Goods. Of course he managed the horses well—he must
have worked with them all of his life. But he surprised her when he
jumped down, lithe as a cat, and thrust a hand up to help her
descend. She'd have expected him to let her find her own way down
from the high perch. At least he had
some
manners. But she looked into his upturned
face and faltered for an instant, caught by the intensity of his
blue eyes. When she didn't respond, he grasped her by the waist and
lifted her down effortlessly, setting her on her feet.

“Well, look who's back already,” Nort Osmer
called from his counter when they walked in. In front of him, a
pile of bills was laid out like a hand of solitaire. “Howdy, Mrs.
Ross, Tyler.”

Libby smiled at the shop owner. It was good
to see a friendly face after the tense journey from the Lodestar.
“Good morning, Mr. Osmer.”

“Say, Ty, wasn't it a fair piece of luck that
I found this nice lady to cook for your boys? They sure were in a
fix when she came along.” Nort poked his pencil behind his ear and
regathered the bills into an untidy stack. Sparing Libby a wry
glance, Tyler pushed back his hat and pulled off his gloves. “Yeah,
lucky.” Within the confines of the dry goods store, she thought his
considerable height made him look tall enough to reach up and touch
the rafters overhead.

“No, no, don't worry about thanking me. I was
happy to help.” Nort rubbed his hands together. “Now, what can I do
for you today?”

“We need to lay in supplies, Nort.” Tyler
turned toward her. “Mrs. Ross, you have the list.”

“Oh—yes.” Libby fumbled in her skirt pocket
and brought out the piece of paper he'd given her earlier.

“I'll get my boy to start loading your
wagon,” Nort said, scanning the list. “How're things over in Miles
City?”

Tyler shook his head. “I don't know what's
going to happen to most of the ranchers around here after this
winter.” The two men fell to discussing cattle prices and the fate
of neighboring ranches while Nort filled their order.

She let their voices fade to the back of her
mind as she looked around at the merchandise. She'd been so tired
and distressed yesterday, she hadn't really paid much attention to
the curious variety of items that Osmer's carried. On the walls she
saw traps with vicious-looking teeth, rolls of wire, tanned animal
hides, and rifles. Arranged in a display case were dainty gold
thimbles and vanity sets. But in the corner of the store, where the
wood stove was stoked with a hot fire, she was drawn to a
collection of warm ladies' gloves and wraps. One shawl in
particular caught her eye, the one hanging on the shoulders of a
dressmaker's dummy.