Too Hot To Handle

by Elizabeth Lowell

She took a step backward, then another, retreating from Reever. She had managed to get along very well with everyone at the ranch but its boss. No matter what she did, how well she did it, or how careful she was to be cheerful and respectful of him at all times, he rode her hard about her youth, her softness, and her unfamiliarity with ranch chores.

  She didn’t want to give him another verbal stick to beat her with. She had to reach the kitchen and get her hands cleaned up before he noticed them.

  “It was my fault,” she said quickly. “You’re right. I’m clumsy. I’m sorry. You can take the eggs out of my pay. I’d better get back to the kitchen,” she continued as she turned, trying to use her body to shield her painful hands from Reever’s glance as she moved. “I don’t want the beans to burn.”

  She knew the exact instant he saw her fingers. His body went absolutely still, then his hands shot out and fastened around her wrists. The words he said made her wish that she could fall right through the ground. She tried not to show it. She had decided to treat Reever like the hardest coach she had ever had. No matter how sarcastic, how cut­ting, how cruel he was, she would be unfailingly agreeable, never argue and never, ever show how badly she was being cut up.

  “Where the hell are the leather gloves I told you to buy?” he finished with a snarl.

  Mentally she braced herself and said quietly, “I didn’t buy them.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t buy them.”

  “Why not?”

  For a long moment she said nothing, knowing that her next words would set off his famous temper but good. The job as cook wasn’t high-paying work. There was no reason for it to be. room, board, laundry, almost everything was paid for by the ranch. She was given a small—very small—weekly salary. Out of that she had already bought shoes, socks, a new T-shirt and a pair of jeans to replace the clothes that had been ruined the day she had tried to walk to town.

  Nor did the money drain end there. She had had to buy costly anti-inflammatory medicine and elastic ban­dages for her knee in order to keep up with the demands of her job. Then there was soap, lotion, shampoo, tooth­paste, and intimate feminine items. By the time she had bought the necessities, there was nothing left, not even enough to pay her way to a movie in town.

  The leather gloves that Reever had ordered her to buy would cost the equivalent of half a week’s pay. She didn’t have it. She was saving for her next prescription payment.

  “I’ll look for gloves the next time I’m in town,” she said, knowing that look was all she would be able to do. She could barely afford to renew her prescription for her knee. Then there was the second set of weights she had ordered to allow her to con­tinue strengthening her knee. They were coming COD. She had to be able to pay for them. She couldn’t do that if she bought the gloves.

  “I didn’t tell you to buy them next week,” he said roughly. “I told you to buy them two weeks ago when you started stumbling around after the men in the barn and the corral. Remember?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The formality wasn’t sarcastic, it was a reflex left from years of being coached by overbearing males. But Reever didn’t know that. His eyes nar­rowed as though she had slapped him.

  “Just plain Reever, city girl. Think you can re­member it, or should I have that hen tattoo it on the back of your soft, useless hands?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said tightly, struggling to keep her voice from breaking.

  He stared at her downcast eyes, but she neither moved nor looked up at him. She had been like this since that first day in the kitchen—polite, respectful, trying very hard to please.

  And the harder she tried, the more angry he became.

  Tory realized it but didn’t know what she could do. The verbal punishment Reever had given her for her flip remark about taking up the oldest profession still made her pale with humiliation every time she thought about it. So she stayed polite and cheerful and prayed that sooner or later he would get tired of peeling strips off her, or she would be able to save enough for that bus ticket home.

  Only it wasn’t home she would be going toward, and she knew it. It was simply the only place she had left to go.

  “Wash your hands,” he said in disgust. “I’ll have one of the men drive you into town so a doctor can look at them.”

  She stared at him. “But when Jed got that wicked rope burn, you didn’t make him go to town. Why should I go for a few lousy pinpricks?”

  Reever’s mouth flattened until there was nothing but a tight line beneath his black mustache. He held her hand up to her face as though the fingers were separate condemnations. Blood trickled from the various small wounds the hens had inflicted.

  “Jed isn’t a soft little girl.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “I said go and you’ll go.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t afford a doctor.”

  In silence Reever examined the thoroughly pecked flesh on her hands. “Is that why you didn’t buy gloves?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  When his eyes shifted up to her face, she couldn’t help flinching. Seeing that didn’t make his temper any softer. Or his tongue. “Then maybe you should have spent less money painting the town red with the boys.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think that I didn’t notice all of you pil­ing into Smitty’s car on Saturday afternoon and not coming back until early Sunday morning?”

  She closed her eyes, telling herself that she could not, simply could not, let her temper slide out from under her control. “It was Dutch’s birthday.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Was it a Dutch treat all around,” he said sardonically, “with you doing the treating and the boys doing the paying?”

  All the words she couldn’t say crowded her throat. She pulled her hands free of Reever’s grasp and said, “I’ll buy gloves as soon as I can afford them.”

  “Better buy a face mask, too, city girl. That old hen will peck your eyes out next time.”

  Reever watched Tory’s retreat with narrow, steel-colored eyes. When he looked down at his scarred leather gloves and saw her blood on them, he swore savagely. Abruptly he kicked aside the egg basket, climbed the stepladder, and opened the henhouse door.

  As Tory soaked her hands in a pan of warm, io­dine-tinted water, she heard another wild squawking from the henhouse. It ended before she could see what was happening.

  An hour later Jed came into the kitchen, carrying the egg basket. “Boss says he wants chicken and dumplings for dinner.”

  “I’ll check the freezer, but I think I fried the last chickens for Sunday lunch.”

  “No problem,” he said, reaching into the basket and tossing the plucked, cleaned, and rather lean body of a chicken on the counter.

  Tory gave him a startled look.

  Jed grinned. “Guess the ‘feathered phenomenon’ pecked the boss once too often. He wrung her neck and cleaned her himself.” Jed spotted her hands. “Holy cow, Tory. What—oh, Lord! It wasn’t Reever the hen got, was it?”

  She smiled crookedly. “Like Reever says, I’m clumsy.”

  “Clumsy?” Jed gave her an incredulous look. “You’re about as clumsy as the mama cat when she’s prowling for mice in the barn.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  Her mouth turned down as she remembered all the times she had made a fool of herself in front of Reever—most recently at the henhouse. She had no illusions as to how graceful she had looked with her butt hanging out of the chicken coop and her legs kicking air. Sighing, she picked up the big hen gin­gerly.

  It was one thing to gather eggs that were still warm. It was quite another to confront a barely cooled chicken carcass.

  “Pretend you just unwrapped it from the store,” Jed offered, grinning at her discomfort.

  She smiled weakly and began
filling a big pot with water as Jed closed the screen door behind him. While the hen simmered on the stove, Tory found the old ranch cookbook that had become her bible in the last few weeks. Being a short-order cook hadn’t given her a large list of specialties. While her pancakes had been wonderful, her biscuits could have been used to shoe horses, as Reever had pointed out. She had kept trying, working when no one was around, until she had learned how to make a tender, savory biscuit. The men had complimented her extravagantly.

  Reever had said, “Pass the butter.”

  It had been that way with everything. If she did it badly, he let her know in no soft terms. If she did it well, he ignored her. Dutch had told her that it was nothing personal—Reever was like that with ev­erybody. But even Dutch had to admit that the boss gave Tory less slack and more spur than anyone else in the outfit.

  Her solution had been to work longer and harder, just as she had done at the swim club, hoping that sooner or later Reever would let up. In the past even her toughest coach had acknowledged when she had done a good job.

  But not Reever. It seemed that the harder she worked, the more sarcastically critical he became.

  Nothing personal.

  She wished that she could believe it. She wished that she could forget all the times that he had cut her with his caustic appraisals of her as a cook, egg collector, dishwasher—and woman. That most of all. The memory of how her breasts had risen eagerly to his touch humiliated her to her core. Even now he had only to look at her and she felt it starting all over again, the shivering, melting fire.

  Honey, you’re so clumsy you’d have to give your tricks combat pay.

  Nothing personal?

  Yeah. Sure.

  Gloomily she began to read the recipe for chicken and dumplings. For once she had all the ingredients on hand, including an old, tough hen.

  Throughout the day she hovered over the stew pot, tasting, poking, adjusting herbs and salt as the cooking progressed. The chicken itself had a fine flavor that kept improving as the hours passed. When it was time for the dumplings, Tory did ev­erything according to the book, bit into a dumpling, and knew she was in for the cutting edge of Reever’s tongue. With a sinking heart she threw out the first batch and made more dumplings, measuring the flour so scrupulously that she all but counted each particle. The result looked and tasted like what it was.

  Boiled dough.

  Unfortunately the dumplings were the back­bone of the meal, for one chicken divided among nine mouths didn’t go very far, even when that chicken was formerly the biggest, meanest hen in all of Arizona.

  As Tory set the table, she braced herself for the ordeal to come. The chicken was tender and flavor­ful, quite the best that she had ever tasted, although she had to admit that revenge might have been part of the savor—her hands still hurt from the punctures and bruises the hen had inflicted. The vegetables she had cooked were just right, firm rather than mushy, with a scattering of herbs to bring out their natural flavor.

  And the dumplings still tasted like boiled dough.

  The men piled into the kitchen as she was pour­ing the thick, lethal coffee that they all loved and she could barely swallow.

  “Evening, Tory,” Dutch said, hanging his bat­tered hat on a knob projecting from one of the old oak chairs that surrounded the scarred wooden din­ing table. He slid into his chair eagerly. “Been smelling this all day. Driving me crazy, it smells so good.”

  The others were right on Dutch’s heels. Within moments the big kitchen was full of hungry men. One of them was Reever. He gave Tory’s hands a long glance while she poured his coffee. His eyes nar­rowed at the sight of the small, livid wounds dotting her fine-grained skin.

  “Jed,” Dutch, said “you better check the hen­house after dinner. When I went by on the way in, that one-eyed hen didn’t come out to peck at my boots through the wire. She might be sick.”

  “Nope,” Jed said, helping himself to chicken and dumplings. “That crazy old biddy done pecked her last,” he drawled.

  “Yeah?” Dutch asked, forking a chunk of chicken into his mouth. “Lord, Tory, you’re gonna spoil us,” he said, closing his eyes and chewing slowly. “Best chicken I ever had.” He sighed and turned his attention back to Jed. “What happened to the hen?”

  “Reever wrung her neck.”

  Dutch looked at his dinner plate with new interest. “I’ll be damned.” He looked at Reever. “Hell, boss, I thought you said you’d never touch one feather on that mean old—”

  “Are you going to talk or eat?” Reever cut in.

  Tory stared at Reever, wondering if that really could be a dull red climbing up his blunt cheek­bones. Quickly she glanced away, concentrating on pouring Dutch’s coffee without spilling a drop. She didn’t need another of Reever’s cutting comments on her clumsiness.

  “I can eat and talk at the same time,” Dutch said, grinning. “What changed your mind about that crazy old hen? Did she peck your favorite horse? Did she—” Dutch’s baiting words stopped abruptly when he saw Tory’s hands hovering over his coffee cup. He muttered something under his breath and shot Reever an approving glance before looking back at Tory. “The boys and I will take turns on the dishes until you’re healed. Ma always said there’s nothing worse than dirty dishwater for in­fecting cuts.”

  “That’s all right, Dutch,” Tory said quickly. “I’ll just put iodine on my hands afterward.”

  “Hell, girl, don’t be silly,” Dutch said, his voice gruff. “Who sewed up the rip in my new shirt so good I couldn’t even see the mend? Who spent half the night writing letters to the government for Teague and Miller so they wouldn’t be shamed by their spelling in front of city folks? Who’s been changing the dressing on Smitty’s best horse so that the cut heals twice as quick? Who’s been—”

  “Pass the dumplings,” Reever said coolly, cut­ting across Dutch’s words.

  Tory heard the anger vibrating in his curt command and wondered what was wrong now. As she handed him the dumplings, she realized that whatever was riding him would soon be replaced by the dull taste of her dumplings. She watched his strong white teeth bite into a creamy lump of boiled flour and braced herself for the worst.

  He grunted, heaped more dumplings on his plate and resumed eating.

  She almost dropped the coffeepot in disbelief. She watched the other men from the corner of her eye as she finished pouring coffee. They at­tacked the dumplings with every evidence of plea­sure, complimenting her between bites. With a soundless sigh, she took her place at the table and ate a bite of dumpling herself, wondering if it had somehow been miraculously transformed by the trip from the stove to the table. A single bite told her that nothing about the dumpling had changed. She’d eaten tastier library paste.

  Thank God that Reever hadn’t.

  She ate slowly, ignoring the dumpling, listening to the men talk about how the range was greening at the higher elevations as spring progressed up the steep slopes of Blue Wolf Mountain, which made up the northwestern half of the Sundance. All the talk of spring and growing things reminded her of the garden she wanted.

  “Jed?” she asked quietly, catching his eye. “Are you going into town soon?”

  “Early tomorrow morning. Need something?”

  “Seeds.”

  Although she had tried to keep her voice down, she sensed Reever’s sudden interest.

  “Sure. What kind of flowers you want?” Jed asked.

  “Beans, tomatoes, peas, squash, parsley, onions, carrots.” She paused for breath. “Corn, too. Do you think I can grow corn out back?”

  Jed shrugged, smiling. “Beats me. I couldn’t grow a toadstool if I tried.”

  She didn’t really hear him. She was remember­ing the last time she had stood in a supermarket in Southern California, slowly turning a rack of seed pack­ets, watching the brightly colored pic­tures flow by with a hunger that sh
e was just now understanding.

  “Zinnias,” she murmured. “And sweet peas and marigolds and daisies and—” She laughed sud­denly. “Oh, all of them, Jed. Every seed you can buy. I want to plant them all, watch those first tiny shoots push up from the ground, see all the different shapes of leaves and flowers.” Abruptly she re­membered that seeds weren’t free. Some of the vivid pleasure faded from her expression. “Well, not all at once, of course.” She smiled crookedly. “About three dollars’ worth to start, okay?”

  Jed smiled. “You got it.”

  “Where are you going to plant all that?” Reever asked, looking at her with an expression that she didn’t understand.

  “Out back where the kitchen garden was.”

  “‘Was’ is right,” he retorted. “That ground hasn’t been touched since my grand­mother Abby Reever died a half century ago. After her the Reever and Sundance wives lived in the city. They sucked the ranch dry buying store beef and fancy clothes, and they wouldn’t have dirtied their fingernails in a kitchen garden to save their lives. City girls every one of them.”

  Contempt resonated in his voice. Every year he managed the ranch for his aunts and his cousins, dividing the hard-won profits with them. Fifty-five percent to the Sundance family, including Payton, who had earned a fortune investing the money elsewhere. Forty-five percent to Reever, who reinvested every penny in the ranch itself, even though his was not the deciding vote in how the ranch was run. Payton could, and had, forced Reever to build the Sundance Retreat up on Wolf Lake. Reever had given in finally because he knew that Payton would lose interest in the retreat after a few years. Then the beautiful cedar lodge and outbuildings would make a perfect center for the ranch, miles closer to the road than the present ranch house.

  And one day the Sundance would be Reever’s, all of it.

  Until then Reever’s “pay” every year for man­aging the ranch for his aunts and cousins was an­other one percent ownership of the ranch that no­body else in his family wanted. They wanted the money that the ranch yielded beneath Reever’s sweat and skill, though. His aunts wanted to be car­ried on Reever’s broad back so that they’d never have to work.