The Cowboy's Lady

“So you found us another cook?” Cody asked.

His uncle Ted nodded, gnawing at his toothpick. “Working on lunch in the cookhouse as we speak.”

Relief surged through him. “That’s great. I know the hands have been whining about the food. So who did you find?”

“A surprise,” Ted said with a grin Cody didn’t trust.

“You know I don’t like surprises. Just tell me. Clayton’s not that big. Please don’t tell me you listened to Jonathan and got Vivienne Clayton to come and cook.” The city chef would never last on the ranch.

Ted said nothing. Instead he opened the door of the cook shack with a flourish. Cody stepped inside.

And stared in disbelief as the very person he had warned his uncle against now stood in his kitchen.

* * *

Rocky Mountain Heirs:

When the greatest fortune of all is love.

The Nanny’s Homecoming—Linda Goodnight

July 2011

The Sheriff’s Runaway Bride—Arlene James

August 2011

The Doctor’s Family—Lenora Worth

September 2011

The Cowboy’s Lady—Carolyne Aarsen

October 2011

The Loner’s Thanksgiving Wish—Roxanne Rustand

November 2011

The Prodigal’s Christmas Reunion—Kathryn Springer

December 2011

About the Author

CAROLYNE AARSEN and her husband, Richard, live on a small ranch in northern Alberta, where they have raised four children and numerous foster children and are still raising cattle. Carolyne crafts her stories in an office with a large west-facing window through which she can watch the changing seasons while struggling to make her words obey.

The Cowboy’s Lady

Carolyne Aarsen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

I’d like to dedicate this book to my amazing

fellow authors in this series: Linda Goodnight,

Deb Rather a.k.a. Arlene James, Lenora Worth,

Roxanne Rustand and Kathryn Springer.

It has been a lot of fun working with you all.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on

your own understanding. In all your ways submit

to him and he will make your paths straight.

—Proverbs 3:5–6

Chapter One

She was back where she started.

How many years had she itched to get out of Clayton, Colorado, aka Hicksville? As soon as she graduated from high school, Vivienne Clayton headed for New York to make her name as a gourmet chef.

But here she was. Back in her hometown. And looking for a job at the Cowboy Café.

Oh, the irony!

Vivienne adjusted the black cardigan she put over the white ruffled T-shirt she’d agonized over choosing. She glanced down at the skinny jeans and black flats she’d chosen for her mission. Too dressy? Not dressy enough?

It would be perfect if she were applying for a chef’s job at any restaurant in New York.

But for the Cowboy Café?

C’mon, Vivienne, she told herself, finger combing her long hair away from her face. You’re a Cordon Bleu–trained chef. You can rise to any culinary occasion. Rise to this one.

And before she left the house this morning, her sister Brooke had said she’d be praying for her—for what that was worth. Vivienne wasn’t sure God heard prayers anymore.

Back in New York, living in her tiny apartment, she felt like a minuscule mote in the endless humanity filling the city. She doubted God even knew where she was then.

Doubted he even cared that she was back in her hometown now.

Just before she took a step up to the door, a memory intruded. Her as a young girl coming to this selfsame café, hoping to get a job as a waitress, hoping to help out her family after her father passed away.

But that was then. This was now, and now she was taking charge of her life.

Before she could reach for the door, however, it flew open and a teenage girl stormed out, sandy brown hair flowing out behind her, her eyes a smudge of black mascara and green eye shadow, tears coursing down her cheeks.

“I hate the ranch. I hate living there!” she shouted to the tall, broad-shouldered man who came out right behind her, dropping his cowboy hat on his head. “Just because you’re my brother doesn’t mean you can make me go back.”

“Bonnie, now is not the time,” the man growled. He slanted an embarrassed glance toward Vivienne.

And to her surprise, Vivienne couldn’t look away. Time halted as her heart quickened with an unidentifiable emotion.

He was good-looking—she had to concede that—but something else was happening with her reaction to him. She knew him. Clayton wasn’t a large town, and she had grown up here. She held his gaze, searching his hazel eyes, making note of his dark brown hair, glancing over his stubbled cheeks and chin.

“Viv?” he asked, his dark eyebrows shooting together in a frown. “Vivienne Clayton? I heard you were back.”

She blinked, trying in vain to pull up something to trigger a memory. But nothing. She lifted her hands as if in surrender. “Sorry, I don’t remember who you are.”

His eyes grew suddenly hard and he pulled back as if she had slapped him. “And why would you?” he said with a short laugh.

Who was he? And why did she feel they had some history? Some connection? And how come he seemed angry with her?

“So are we going back to your stupid ranch, Cody?” Bonnie’s imperious voice rang out down the street as the man named Cody jerked his gaze away from Vivienne’s.

“Just get into the truck,” he ordered. “We’re leaving right now.”

As he walked away, his long legs eating up the distance between him and the young girl, the mention of his name teased recollection out of Vivienne’s past. And her face flushed as the memory returned.

It was years ago. When she was still in high school. She had been hanging around after school with her friends, tossing her long blond hair in an effort to gain the attention of the basketball player who had snagged her interest.

Until a tall, lanky senior tapped her lightly on the shoulder, asking if he could talk to her. She turned to him, puzzled as to what he could want.

Working his cowboy hat in his hands as he stood in front of her, Cody Jameson stumbled out a halting request for a date.

Normally, if a senior asked a sophomore to go out, the answer would be an automatic yes. But Vivienne remembered looking at the frayed collar of his shirt and the patch on his faded blue jeans. While the other guys in school all wore loose shirts open over T-shirts, baggy pants and sneakers, Cody still wore narrow blue jeans, shirts with snaps and cowboy boots.

And while Cody wasn’t hard on the eyes and seemed like a decent guy, a cowboy from Clayton, Colorado, had never figured in Vivienne’s glittering future in the Big Apple.

Hearing her friends giggling at Cody’s stumbling invitation didn’t help the situation. Though she kind of liked Cody, there was no way she could accept his date in front of them. They’d tease her forever. So she laughed, as well, just to show her friends he didn’t matter, and turned him down flat.

After that she saw him from time to time. Once she had hoped to approach him, to apologize, but she never worked up the nerve.

After graduation, he disappeared to his uncle Ted’s ranch, where he lived and worked. And when she graduated a few years later, she hightailed it out of Clayton and never gave him a second thought.

Until now.

Cody Jameson had filled out and grown up, she thought, watching as he pulled his cowboy hat lower on his head before yanking open the truck door for Bonnie, his broad shoulders straining at his shirt.

But he was still a cowboy and she was a city girl, albeit transplanted to Clayton. Just for a while, she reminded herself as she pushed the old memories and history aside. I just have to stay long enough to fulfill the terms of the will. That’s all.

And for now her biggest concern involved getting a job. Though Brooke liked having her live in the same house and hadn’t pushed her older sister to work, Vivienne was too used to pulling her weight. She wanted to be able to pay her share of the bills.

Country music and conversation washed over her as she stepped inside the diner. Kylie Jones, recently engaged to Vivienne’s brother Zach, stood by a table of patrons, hands on her hips, her brown ponytail bobbing as she laughed at one of the jokes from the group of old men hunched over the table.

Two stools at the counter were empty, so she walked over to one and sat down.

Then Kylie saw Vivienne and scurried over, grinning. “Welcome back! How was Denver? Busy?”

“Compared to New York, no. But it was fun.” She’d gone to Denver to connect with an old friend she’d gone to school with and to give herself some breathing space.

Three months ago her life was on a completely different track. A tiny apartment in New York City. Sous chef in a trendy and up-and-coming restaurant and a boss who was encouraging, fun to work with and very attractive. They had dated a few times. During their last date they had shared hopes and dreams and whispered promises of a future.

When news came of the will and the inheritance, Vivienne wasn’t sure she wanted to give up what she had—especially when the money from Grandpa Clayton had so many strings attached. One of which was moving back to Clayton for a year.

Then, shortly after she’d come back from her grandfather’s funeral, her boss told her they weren’t compatible. Then he quit.

Vivienne’s heart was broken. On top of all of this, the new chef was demanding and hypercritical of everything Vivienne did. She began doubting her skills and grew increasingly tentative. Five weeks ago she made a drastic mistake on a menu for a small, exclusive wedding at the restaurant.

And it cost Vivienne her job.

Now she was back in Clayton. No job. No money saved up. No boyfriend.

Back where she started. Looking for work and banking on a maybe.

Kylie grabbed a menu from the old cash register and poked her thumb over her shoulder. “There’s an empty space in the back if you prefer to sit there. I have to bus it yet—”

“Sorry, Kylie, I’m not here to eat. I’m, um … well … looking for a job.”

A frown wrinkled Kylie’s forehead. “A job? But you’re getting—”

Vivienne held up a manicured hand, forestalling the next statement. As Zach’s fiancée, Kylie would know about the inheritance their grandfather, George Clayton Senior, had given to each of his six grandchildren. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money no matter where you came from. And the 500 acres of land was a bonus, as well. But all of this would only come to each of them if all six of the cousins showed up by Christmas and then stayed around Clayton for a year.

Trouble was, none of the cousins knew if the sixth, Lucas, would show up in time, if at all. And if she stuck around Clayton for a year, Vivienne still had to find a way to pay off school debt and a credit card she had maxed out while she worked in New York.

“You know I won’t get the money unless we all stick around for an entire year,” she said with a determined note in her voice. “And until then I still need to eat and pay bills. So I thought I’d see if you had any openings.”

Kylie ran a thumbnail along the edge of the menu, biting her lower lip. “We really don’t need a waitress,” she said slowly.

“I was thinking of the cooking part.”

This netted her another frown from Kylie as she glanced over her shoulder. Vivienne followed her gaze and caught sight of Jerome’s lanky frame through the pass-through window as he flipped a burger on the grill, the sizzle of grease and the smell wafting over her at the same time.

Burgers? Really?

Don’t be a snob. You need work.

“Um, I’m not sure Gerald or Jerome need any help.” Kylie worried at her lower lip, wearing away the pink lipstick she had been wearing. “You’ll have to talk to Erin about that.”

“Who wants to talk to me?” A woman with red hair and a pencil stuck behind her ear showed up at the cash register beside the seat on which Vivienne had perched. The register chimed as she rang up a total and pulled the bill out of the top.

“I do.” Vivienne tossed a glance at an old cowboy limping toward the counter. She had to hurry. Ted Jameson, Cody Jameson’s uncle, may walk slow, but she remembered all too well that anything he found out spread through town faster than a wildfire. “I was wondering if you need a cook.”

Erin shot her a frown, then grinned as she glanced from Kylie to Vivienne. “This is a joke, right?”

Vivienne squirmed. “No. I’m serious. I need a job.”

“But goodness, girl. You’re a Cordon Bleu–trained chef. And you’re getting your inheritance.”

Vivienne resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Who in town didn’t know about her grandfather’s will?

Kylie leaned closer, lowering her voice. “She only gets the money if all the cousins stick around for a year.”

Erin nodded, understanding. Then she gave Vivienne an apologetic look. “Sorry, hon. I’ve got nothing. Jerome and Gerald don’t really need any help.”

“I can do pies,” she offered. “And my mousse cake is so light, it would just float in here.”

Erin scratched the side of her head with her index finger. “Arabella does most of my dessert and pastries.”

So much for that idea. Vivienne had never thought her own cousin would end up being her competition for work.

“What about working for the resorts over the pass?” Erin suggested, brightening.

“I don’t—”

“Her brother Zach would never let her do that,” Kylie interjected with a firm shake of her head. “Not after that horrible accident he had to deal with on the road up there. And winter is coming, so the roads would be really bad.”

Erin folded the bill she had just printed off.

“Even if she applied and got a job, he’d talk her out of it,” Kylie continued, crossing her arms over her chest in a decisive manner, as if she and her fiancée were on the same page.

“So she can’t work there,” Erin replied.

I’m right here, Vivienne felt like saying as their talk slipped past her.

“Who can’t work where?” Ted Jameson had reached the counter at the same time Erin and Kylie had reached their conclusion. His blue eyes looked all the brighter against his tanned skin. A fine network of white lines radiating from his eyes deepened as he frowned down at her. A battered straw cowboy hat sat askew on his head, and the grin he gave her had a few gaps.

“Vivienne—” Erin said.

“—Can’t cook at the resorts over the pass,” Kylie finished.

“You can’t cook?” Ted asked, leaning to one side to pull his wallet out of the back pocket of a pair of blue jeans shiny with grime. Vivienne guessed they hadn’t been washed in months.

Mental note. Don’t sit in any booth Ted has just sat in.

“I thought you liked to cook,” he continued. “Thought you were some fancy chef?”

“That’s right,” Vivienne said, struggling to keep the haughty edge out of her voice. “I trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.”

Ted eased a few bills out of a wallet thick with cash. “Well, I suppose that means something to somebody.”

“It’s a very famous cooking school,” Kylie explained. “Gourmet cooking, in fact.”

“Gourmet, you say?” He snickered as he shoved his wallet in his back pocket. “Hey. That rhymes. I’m a poet.”

“And you didn’t know it,” Kylie finished for him with a happy grin.

“So you really know your way around a kitchen?” Ted asked, snagging a toothpick out of the miniature wooden barrel sitting beside the cash register.

“Yes, I do. I cook very well.” This was said with a defensive tone. Very well was not a phrase to be used by a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu. Graduates of that famous cooking school were superb. Amazing. Par excellence.

But her confidence had been shaken in the past month. How could things have gone so wrong with the wedding menu? She never had any doubts about her cooking.

Don’t go there. That’s over. Stick around long enough to get your inheritance. Then you can go back to New York with your head held high and your bank account flush. Then you can start your own restaurant and prove your old boss wrong.

“And you need a job?”

“Yes. I do.”

Ted looked her up and down, as he unwrapped the toothpick. Vivienne felt like he was assessing her as he would a prize stud or a bull.

“You look like you have an idea,” Kylie prodded.

A few more people came up behind Ted to pay their bills. The entry grew crowded.

Ted angled his head to the door as he tucked the toothpick in his mouth. “Let’s chat outside,” he said to Vivienne.

So she followed Ted across the street to the park, where he sat down on a picnic bench. Vivienne glanced down at the seat, trying not to make a face at the bird droppings liberally decorating the bench. She found a clear spot on the edge and perched there, hoping she didn’t come into contact with any other questionable material.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, crossing her long legs and flipping her long hair back over her shoulder.

“We’ll consider this part of your interview,” Ted said, resting his elbows on the rough wood of the table.

“Interview?”

“Yep. If it’s a cooking job you’re looking for, we could sure use you up at the Circle C.”

“But that’s a ranch,” Vivienne said, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. The sun had drifted behind a cloud and a breeze had picked up, tossing bright yellow leaves around their table, swinging the seats on the swings of the playground beside them. “I’m a gourmet chef.”

“Well, yeah. I get that.” The toothpick in his mouth migrated from one side to the other.

“I do gourmet cooking for high-end restaurants.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Ted leaned closer, his gnarled hands folded together, his eyes twinkling at her. “But we need a cook, and from what I hear, you need a cooking job.”

Vivienne chewed her lip, her eyes flicking down the street to the grocery store across from the Cowboy Café and the drugstore beside it. She doubted either place was hiring.

The squeaking of the chains from the swings created a melancholy counterpoint to her reality. No job, no skills other than kitchen ones.

She glanced back at Ted, wondering what Cody would think of this setup. “Do you think I would get the job if I applied?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure you’d get the job.”

“But shouldn’t I do a test meal first?”

“If that’s what you want.” Ted gave her an encouraging grin.

Even as she turned the idea over in her head, Vivienne couldn’t stop her mind from moving ahead. Sure, it was cowboys she would be feeding, but surely she didn’t have to serve steak and biscuits every day? She could still bring her own brand of cooking to her job. Keep her skills sharp.

“So do I bring my own ingredients? Or is the kitchen fully stocked?” she asked.

“Honey, you bring what you think you’ll need and I’ll make sure the kitchen is clean and ready for you.”

Vivienne couldn’t help another look at the grime on the elbows of his shirt, the bits of mud and straw still clinging to his worn cowboy boots.

She made a note to bring her own pail and disinfectant.

“I guess I can show up tomorrow,” she said.

“Sounds good.” He pressed his hands against the top of the table to get up. “Now I gotta check in on my little girl, Karlee. She works at Hair Today, you know.” He pointed a crooked finger at Vivienne’s hair. “She could get you set up with a whole new look. She’s good.”

Vivienne nodded, then held her hand up to stop him. “So just to clarify. I head down Railroad Avenue to get to the Circle C?”

Ted frowned. “You’ve never been there before?”

She shook her head.

“Really.” He rubbed his forefinger alongside his nose in a gesture of puzzlement. “I thought for sure …” He flapped his hand again. “But, yeah, that’s right.” He pulled a tattered agenda out of his pocket, licked his finger and flicked through the pages. Then he ripped out an empty piece of paper edged with grease. “I’ll give you the directions, just in case.” He sketched a map with the stub of a pencil.

“And here’s where the cookhouse is,” Ted said, drawing an arrow, too.

“And how will I know which one is the cookhouse?”

“It’s the long, skinny building. The one with the most worn path to it,” he said with a chuckle. “Cowboys love their grub.”

He gave her the map and she folded it carefully over, trying to avoid the grease stains. “So I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“You bet.” He tipped his hat to her, then eased away from the table. He shook her hand, gave her another gap-toothed grin, then limped across the grass to the other side of the park where Hair Today was located.

Vivienne watched him go, shivering as another breeze created a swirl of orange and yellow leaves around the table. Fall was definitely creeping up, bringing a hint of cold with it. Could she really spend a winter in Clayton stuck out on a ranch in the boonies?

She glanced down at the map in her hand, misgivings eroding her decision.

But what was her alternative? Pound the few streets of town looking for something—anything—to pay her living expenses and her debts? Move back to New York and lose a chance at starting her own restaurant with the money from the inheritance?

But what if Lucas didn’t show up in time? Their grandfather’s will clearly stipulated that they all had to be around for them all to get their money. Would she be making a wrong career move for nothing?

She shook her head, dislodging her second thoughts. This was an opportunity to keep her cooking skills sharp and make some money.

And for now, she had no other choice.

“So you found us another cook?” Cody hung the halters on the pegs from the tack shed, glancing over his shoulder at Ted. “I’m impressed.”

His uncle nodded, gnawing at his toothpick. “Working on lunch in the cookhouse as we speak.”

Relief surged through him. “That’s great. I know the hands have been whining about the food.”

“Delores’s grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and supper only get a man so far,” Ted said.

“At least it’s food.” Cody had been fielding steady complaints about the grub ever since the last cook got fired for just about killing the hands with food poisoning. He’d managed to rope Delores, a hired hand’s wife, into cooking. She claimed the only thing she made was reservations. Or grilled cheese sandwiches. So that’s what they’d been eating. “So who did you find?”

“A surprise,” Ted said with a grin Cody didn’t trust.

“You know I don’t like surprises. Just tell me. Clayton’s not that big.” He stopped and put his hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Is it Arabella? Did you talk her into coming?” He could hardly believe his luck. Just thinking about Arabella’s pies and pastries got his mouth watering.

Ted angled him an “Are you kidding” look as he limped toward the cook shack. “Woman’s got triplets and takes care of that Jasmine girl. As if she’d have time to come out and cook for us.”

“So who did you get? Please don’t tell me you listened to Jonathan and got Vivienne Clayton to come and cook.”