Cowboy In The Kitchen

The crispy pastry melted on her tongue, leaving a hint of honey and earthy sweetness.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“No,” she mumbled, savoring another bite.

“My brother Cullen’s place is only a couple miles from here. If Alma’s there, she’ll be happy to whip up some killer huevos rancheros. Her tortillas are always made from scratch.” His eyes sparked at the mention of the Mexican favorites.

“Maybe another morning. Today I’m in the mood for something French prepared by my new executive chef.”

“Does an omelet au fromage appeal to you?”

“Does Limburger cheese stink?”

“Well, then, let’s go.” Without hesitation he stood and offered his hand to help her to her feet, then swept his palm toward the side drive where both their vehicles were parked. She stepped toward her rental car with his footsteps a respectful distance behind.

“I’ll follow you in my car.”

He was being suspiciously agreeable. Over the course of their brief negotiation, the man had morphed from righteous indignation to effusive gratitude. Somewhere in that pendulum swing of emotion was the real Hunt Temple, and given long enough she might be able to sift through the chaff and find the grain. If not, that was okay, too.

She’d come to Texas to realize her dream, not analyze a man.

* * *

A SHORT WHILE LATER, Gillian stepped across the threshold of Cullen’s home and followed his lead straight to the kitchen. The hacienda-style room was cozy and welcoming. Hunt pulled a tall hand-tooled stool away from the mosaic-tile counter and held the chair while she stepped up onto it and settled in to watch him work. He took a knee-length white apron from a drawer and secured it around his waist. Then he reached for a skillet, sprinkled it with oil and positioned it on a lit burner.

He grabbed two eggs from the fridge and cracked them against the side of a clear mixing bowl. A shard of white shell fell atop the golden yellow yolks.

“Glad I’ve already got the job,” he said as he fished out the fragment.

“Am I making you nervous?”

“In a way,” he admitted, above the fury of his whisk. “It’s a bit unusual to be hired before you ever serve a meal to the boss.”

“Oh, you’ve served me before.”

Hunt turned puzzled eyes her way, the brows above his slate-colored irises raised in question.

“I was checking out the small hotels in Cancun last summer. I had the opportunity to eat in your restaurant on an evening when you were expediting the kitchen.”

“And how was your meal?” He was fishing for a compliment.

“The snapper was overcooked and underseasoned. I sent it back to the kitchen.”

The ultimate insult hit the chef like a dart to his chest. Hunt melodramatically clutched his heart with both palms and mock-swooned against the kitchen wall, and Gillian could swear her own heart reacted, as well.

Being around this man was either going to be great fun or a great big mistake.

CHAPTER THREE

“DON’T HOLD BACK, little brother. Tell us how you really feel about your rich boss lady.” Joiner, the middle Temple brother, poked fun at Hunt’s diatribe over his new employer.

“I can’t help it. The more I listen to her big ideas, the more they worry me.” Hunt sank deeper into the sofa in McCarthy’s office. McCarthy sat behind the desk, and Joiner sprawled on the sofa beside Hunt. Cullen was in a corner, his nose in a book. “She’s determined to import a bunch of strangers so they can create a new ‘culture.’” He made quote marks in the air. “This is Texas, for pity’s sake. Why would anybody in their right mind want to replace the historical culture of Temple Territory that already exists? She’s on a collision course with reality, and I’m afraid my reputation as a chef could go down in flames with her.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Cowboy Chef,” Joiner said, making fun of Hunt’s television identity. A lifelong lover of horses, Joiner was the closest thing to a real cowboy in the family. He’d always held it over the heads of his younger brothers, whom he’d berated as a bookworm and a kitchen mouse, regardless of the fact that both could have played professional baseball.

“Life will continue,” Joiner insisted. “You have to move on to another dream now that McCarthy’s let the estate get away from you.”

“Just wait a doggone minute.” McCarthy’s dark stare landed on each of his brothers. “I’m fed up with you three holding me accountable for seeing Daddy’s mission to clear our name accomplished. We’ve all wasted a lot of years talking a good game, but none of us ever put our shoulder to the wheel and made things happen. You can’t blame me because the bank finally found a buyer, and reclaiming Pap’s place is never gonna happen.”

Cullen took a break from the textbook he was thumbing through. “I’m not so sure Daddy would want a lot of attention drawn to the Temple name now anyway, not after all the years it took for the gossip to die down. Why, wasn’t he in agreement with Pap’s decision not to come home after he got out of prison?”

“Yes, but he never dreamed he wouldn’t see Pap again,” McCarthy said.

“It’s the old man’s fault for going out to West Texas and getting himself killed working on that dangerous gas well. Otherwise we might have grown up with the flesh-and-blood Pap instead of this infamous legend Daddy spent his adult life trying to live down,” Cullen insisted.

McCarthy sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. He pushed out of his chair and moved to the foot of the desk.

“Pay attention while I spell this out for you knuckleheads one last time.” McCarthy slapped the tabletop to draw Joiner’s gaze away from his iPhone. “I was only a senior in high school when we had the conversation, but Daddy was clear on this subject, almost as if he sensed he wouldn’t be around to do it himself. Pap stayed away so Daddy and Mama wouldn’t have to raise us in earshot of constantly wagging tongues. Daddy was establishing himself at the hospital when Pap was paroled. Coming home would only have stirred the pot again. So he left well enough alone, and on the day he walked free, Pap went in the opposite direction.”

“So he pretty much abandoned Daddy.”

“Cullen, it’s not as if he was left on a doorstep in a basket. He was a grown man with four boys of his own. Pap did what he thought was right, and Daddy let him go. It was years before Daddy was finally able to put behind him the stigma that went along with Pap’s crime, and by then the old man was long dead. Still, Daddy felt he needed to forgive his father, and do something public to restore honor to our name.”

“Why didn’t Daddy just buy Temple Territory himself?”

“Like everybody else in Texas, he believed the place was jinxed, purchased and cursed by hot oil. But once he found out Pap had been killed, Daddy fixed his mind on going out to that well site to mark his father’s grave properly.”

“And they didn’t make it,” Cullen said quietly.

The private aircraft had gone down in the Apache Mountains, killing the two on board and leaving four teenage boys in Kilgore in the care of Alma and Felix Ortiz.

They all fell silent, and Hunt decided to change the mood of the room.

“Well, I never bought into that business about the property being cursed, and with any luck Pap’s place isn’t completely out of my reach yet,” Hunt announced.

Three pairs of expectant eyes waited for him to continue.

“How’s that?” McCarthy spoke up as he settled again into his chair.

“In case nobody’s been listening, I’ve got a job—at Moore House. I’m on the inside, and I plan to stay all up in that lady’s business to slow her down before she changes anything that can’t be put right.”

“Instead of fighting the inevitable, why don’t you tell some of those wealthy friends you’ve been feedin’ for free all these years that it’s payback time,” Joiner snapped. “Get them to invest in your own restaurant. You can call it Hunt’s Hangout or something equally sophisticated.”

“You have no idea how much capital that would require.” Hunt had already done the math for himself out of morbid curiosity and been depressed for days by the number.

“But I’m sure Gillian Moore does, and she didn’t seem to have any problem rounding up the cash. So instead of whining, why don’t you put on your big-boy boots and compete with her?” Cullen chucked a wad of paper at his twin.

It bounced off the center of Hunt’s forehead. He rubbed the spot where a pointy corner had poked his flesh. Instead of admonishing his brother for almost putting his eye out, Hunt marked the moment. He went all in. He’d always planned to have his own place one day. If somebody was going to change the fate of Temple Territory, why shouldn’t it be a Temple heir? And once Gillian Moore realized she’d bitten off more than she could chew, she might be willing to take a loss for the property and go home, leaving Pap’s place to its rightful owners. And leaving Hunt to repair the damage the made-for-TV Cowboy Chef had done to his real-life relationships in Kilgore.