Porcupine Ranch

Clayton checked his watch, and her gaze followed his, noting the sunbleached hairs curling from his shirt sleeve, surrounding the leather band.

“Ready to fix a little lunch for six hungry cowboys?” he asked.

She nodded, wondering if a lie had to be verbalized or if movement counted. Lying by omission, lying by nod.

She was ready for a lot of things—to run screaming from the house, to murder Samuel, to press the hairs on Clayton’s wrist and watch them spring back, but she was in no way ready to fix a little lunch.

Wondering how the heck she was going to get out of this one, Hannah went downstairs with him to the big kitchen. As he pointed out the location of all the unassembled food components, she made an effort to memorize everything he said.

Flour in the big canister, sugar next, then coffee. Cans of food in the pantry.

The peanut butter jar greeted her like an old friend in a world of strangers. She wanted to embrace it. She didn’t see any blackberry jam, but there was a big jar of strawberry preserves. That would do. She could make lunch after all.

“Through that door is the laundry room and a big freezer with plenty of meat and vegetables.”

She could check that for the possibility of froze, dinners.

“I know it’s late,” Clayton said, standing behind her, his warm breath stirring her hair. “You don’t need to come up with anything elaborate. We’ve been eating sandwiches so long, anything else will be welcome.”

Anything else? So much for her lunch plans. Back to square one.

For a long moment he didn’t move, just stood there behind her so close she could smell his leather, sunshine and warm earth scent that teased her senses and somehow made her feel even more confused.

He needed to leave so she could catch her breath. So she could go upstairs and look up lunch in the cookbook. Surely he didn’t plan to wait around for her to make the meal? How in the world was she supposed to look it up then figure out how to do it with him watching?

“So,” he said, “what do you need to get started?”

She turned to look at him. He was planning to wait around and watch her.

In desperation she pointed upward. “I need—”

“Oh, sure,” he said, stepping back. “You do remember where the bathroom is?”

The bathroom? Oh, well. It didn’t matter what he thought she was doing as long as she could get to that cookbook. Hannah nodded, then darted away and charged upstairs.

She opened the small bag and hurriedly flipped the cookbook open to the index, to the L’s.

Liver…surely they wouldn’t expect her to make that.

Lobster…oh, she loved lobster thermidor. When she’d lived at home, she’d frequently asked their cook to make it. This wasn’t going to be so tough after all.

Lunch dishes. There it was! She turned excitedly to the page.

Soup and sandwich. No, that wouldn’t do. Clayton had nixed the sandwiches.

Pasta salad. Perfect! She loved the colorful curly pasta and all the little bits of goodies.

If she could program a computer, surely she could do this. Other people cooked all the time.

She winced at that thought, her parents’ oftrepeated statements playing again in her head about what other people could do. All your friends have learned to dance. All your friends can make small talk with the guests at parties and dinners. All your friends make their parents proud of them.

Being able to understand advanced calculus and quantum physics or program a computer hadn’t helped her then.

But now she had specific directions, and she could follow directions, she told herself reassuringly.

The recipe purported to be adequate for four people, so she’d better double it to feed seven. She read it twice, carefully doubling and memorizing every measurement, every detail.

Clayton smiled eagerly at her when she came back down to the kitchen. He had a nice smile. His white teeth made his tan look even more golden and turned the crinkles around his eyes into sunbursts. For a brief, unreal instant, she fantasized that the sparkle in those eyes was for her, but she knew it was only because he was hungry, and he expected her to feed him. Her own lips turned upward at that ridiculous thought.

His expression seemed to soften as if a haze settled around his face. “Nice.” He spoke the single word quietly, almost indistinctly. It sounded like nice, but that made no sense. It was completely out of context.

“Ice?” she questioned. That would be logical since they were dealing with food.

“Huh?”

“Rice?” she guessed desperately. “Mice?” Surely not.

He shook his head and cleared his throat. “What do you need first?”

“Pasta,” she said, hoping he’d forget about the rice…or those mice. “A sixteen-ounce package of pasta.” Maybe he’d leave once he was sure she knew where things were located.

“Pasta?” He opened the pantry door, reached behind some boxes and came out with a huge package of spaghetti. “Like this?”

She shook her head. “No. Curly, colored pasta.” She moved to check in the pantry herself, but he moved at the same time…directly into contact with her. Her hands went up in automatic defense and encountered soft, warm denim with the feel of solid muscle beneath—Clayton’s chest. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she felt his hands on her shoulders, steadying himself.

The hot blood rushed to her face, to her hands where they touched him, to her shoulders where he touched her. Every one of those spots felt much warmer than 98.6 degrees. Was this how cases of spontaneous combustion occurred?

“Sorry,” he mumbled, backing away, taking his odd heat-producing properties with him. “I’d, uh, better go check on the guys. Tell them lunch is on the way. In, what, half an hour? Forty-five minutes?”

“Forty-five minutes. Sure.” She had no idea if that would be long enough, but she’d have agreed to anything to get him to leave.

His going made the kitchen seem much larger and more open. She could breathe deeply now. She’d surely be able to get through this cooking ordeal a lot more easily.

So why did the large, open kitchen feel so empty?

Shrugging off the inexplicable feeling, she started scrounging through the pantry, looking for pasta. She couldn’t find any of the colorful, curly kind, but she did unearth a couple of packages of macaroni. A monochrome start, but the bits of olives and other components should liven it up.

Following the advice of the recipe, she checked the package directions for the pasta and carefully measured enough water for both packages into a pan, then set it on the stove to boil.

This was easy. Why had she worried? She was going to be able to do this.

In her mind’s eye she could see Clayton sitting at the head of the big oak dining table they’d passed on their way to the kitchen. She could see a big smile spreading across his face, tilting the corners of his eyes, as he tasted his first bite of her pasta salad.

Stop that! she ordered herself. What was the matter with her? She was no longer an insecure teenager, falling all over herself in a vain attempt to please everybody she met. She had only to please herself. Clayton’s opinion wasn’t important.

She focused on the macaroni package directions. Cook six to nine minutes or until tender.

Six to nine minutes or until tender? What the heck kind of direction was that? A thirty-three and one-third percent variance with an open-ended conclusion? She could just see herself writing instructions for her computer games like that. Click left mouse button six to nine times or until something you like happens.