The Secret Ingredient

by Raine Cantrell

  The Secret Ingredient

  Raine Cantrell

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Theresa DiBenedetto

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition July 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-345-8

  Also by Raine Cantrell

  Wildflower

  Silver Mist

  Western Winds

  Calico

  Desert Sunrise

  Tarnished Hearts

  Darling Annie

  Whisper My Name

  The Homecoming

  Novellas

  The Bride’s Gift

  Miss Delwin’s Delights

  The Secret Ingredient

  More than a Miracle

  A Time for Giving

  Apache Fire

  Chapter 1

  Colorado, 1888

  “You are a hardheaded, hard-hearted, opinionated, bossy, stubborn, annoying man!” Toe tapping to the tune of the waves of anger rolling through her, Miss Halimeda Pruitt ticked each fault off on her fingers, then snapped them beneath the nose of the recipient of her latest human good deed, one Cade McAllister.

  “And you, Miss Pruitt, are the most—” Guilt snapped Cade’s teeth together with an audible click. He glared around the shadowed interior of the dilapidated barn. Blue eyes glittered as his hands clenched at his sides to prevent him from lifting the chin-high shrew off the soles of her high-button shoes and setting her down in the newly delivered wagonload of fresh hay. Strength of will allowed him to close the mental door on the scene that would follow.

  “Two more useless critters,” he muttered. “Don’t expect me to feed them.”

  “I never asked you to. I never asked you to do one chore on my property. All you need to do is rest, heal your broken leg, and leave.”

  “As soon as I can, Miss Pruitt. As soon as I can.”

  Hallie watched his limping retreat with a great deal of sadness. His muttering should have blistered her ears, but strangely enough, did not. She had deliberately provoked Cade. He had been trying unsuccessfully for the past week to make her see the error of her ways. Cade didn’t understand why she took in animals that no one else wanted.

  But then, why should Cade be different from so many other men that had found their way to the spare room when no one else would take care of them? Gamblers all, regardless of how they had been wounded, from miners out of the Never Summer range above her deep valley ranch to those like Cade McAllister who had been taken in by a pretty face and robbed of all his savings.

  Like her mother and grandmother before her, Hallie opened her home to them, but unlike the two loving women Hallie would not repeat their mistakes. She never allowed her heart to be involved.

  When loneliness swamped her, she wanted to have someone to love, someone who would accept her and love her in return.

  The animals posed no risk, unlike Cade McAllister.

  She winced as the back door to the kitchen slammed and turned back to settle in the newest addition to her family. By suppertime Cade would be in a mellow mood. She had left him one of her favorite chocolates. Only Doc Burnswait was aware of the small addition she made to the confections.

  After all, a woman alone had to protect herself.

  When this reminder did not stifle the flush of guilt, Hallie thought of all the extra rest Cade McAllister was receiving, and the more he rested, the quicker he would heal and be on his way.

  The thought did not cheer her.

  Cade McAllister, all six foot two of lean, hard muscle, slumped against the door frame of his room. He stared at the sweet evidence that Miss Halimeda Pruitt left in his room. It sat in a lacy paper cup propped on his pillow like some unblinking eye of judgment.

  Three days ago, driven by unquenchable curiosity, Cade committed an unforgivable violation. No one knew about it, least of all the woman he had sinned against.

  After boarding with Hallie for five weeks, he still wanted to ridicule her attempts to dose him with confections to stop his craving a drink of whiskey. He longed to sneer at her offerings found whenever his back was turned.

  Pathetic, infernal, interfering woman.

  In the next breath, he amended his thought. How could he be angry with the woman who had taken him in when no one else would? He wouldn’t be if she just once listened to reason and that was the truth.

  Doc Burnswait said his leg was almost healed. He had taken off the cast. Cade figured in a few weeks he would be ready to cut his losses and ride away from this isolated, broken-down excuse for a ranch.

  He could last a few more weeks here.

  Couldn’t he?

  Cade didn’t search deeply for an answer.

  Only his desperate straits made him agree with Doc’s suggestion to stay here. But the good doctor’s solution created a problem—spelled with a capital P.

  Pruitt. One Miss Halimeda Pruitt who did not know the meaning of the word quit.

  Cade, feeling the aching throb of his leg, limped into the room and with a resigned sigh, closed the door behind him. He yanked off the sweat dampened neckerchief from his neck and started to unbutton his chambray shirt. His gaze locked onto the linen pillowcase and its sweet offering.

  “What have I done to deserve this?” he muttered.

  Too late, he thought to warn himself not to think of the answer.

  The image of the sauciest bit of southern drawling baggage ever to grace a poker table rose in his mind like a haunting nightmare. No man liked being reminded of how he had played the fool, but that was the role Cade had played.

  He had delivered a herd of cattle to the Double Bar J ranch south of Denver, and when the other men rode back to Texas, Cade decided to stay on. Spring had come to the Colorado mountains and Cade went looking for land to buy. He had found a grassland valley, but the purchase would take all his savings. Eager to increase his stake, he risked only the bonus he had received for bringing the herd up north earlier than expected.

  Miss Lurette Beauclare, a widow fallen on hard times, had cleaned him out of his money, lured him to her room where two of her cohorts had beaten him senseless, stole his savings, and broken his leg when they dumped him in a ravine and left him to die.

  A broken wheel led to Doc Burnswait discovering him. Without a penny to his name, no one would take Cade in until his leg healed—no one but Doc and Miss Halimeda Pruitt. The woman had even paid Doc his fee, then settled the livery bill so Cade could have his horse.

  Guilt for his transgression rolled over Cade like a high mountain storm. His conscience was pricked like forked lightning had hit it. He didn’t have the good sense God gave a mule to appreciate his Christian benefactor.

  Or maybe he did. Maybe keeping his distance from the woman was enough. If it wasn’t, and his thoughts about the hay and Hallie rushed back before he could stop them, maybe the best thing he could do for her and his sanity was to believe that fully healed or not, he should leave her and the sorriest excuses for critters that had ever been set on this earth.

  The woman dared accuse him of being stubborn. Her streak of stubborne
ss was so wide, the whole of the Colorado River could flow through it. She refused to listen to reason about her animals. She refused his advice, or had until today, in a gentle, admonishing tone.

  How could she not see that she was in danger of losing her land if she kept feeding those critters, which included a sow too old to breed—named of all things, Eternal—and the dried up cow called Divine; to Faith, Hope, and Charity, three graceless swayback nags fit for glue and little else.

  The woman coddled them all. Grain and corn, hay and apples.

  He shuddered thinking about Sweetcakes, the most obnoxious billy goat born to bedevil a man, and Forage, a sheep that couldn’t find a blade of grass unless it was under her nose, and wouldn’t drink unless the water was freshly pumped into the trough and perfectly still.

  Pruitt’s latest follies came in the form of the newly christened Steadfast, a burro who thought itself a dog, so doggedly did the animal follow Hallie around, and Patience the mule, who would try a saint’s patience with its ornery ways.

  Unwanted every one of them. Unwanted that is, by anyone but Hallie.

  Desperate. That’s what he had been. Desperate and insane to allow the woman to get under his skin.

  He didn’t want to put up with more of Hallie’s persnickety ways. Especially now, that he knew …

  “No.” The whisper fell from his lips as denial and prayer. Cade avoided the trap before he fell into it again.

  He stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the chair where his gunbelt lay. Miss Pruitt did not hold with a man wearing a gun. He raked back the shaggy length of his black hair, once more looking at the pillow. He never wanted to eat another of her chocolate bonbons again, as a substitute for belting down a man-sized, throat-burning, gut-clenching glass of whiskey.

  She refused to buy him a bottle when she went into Denver, rare as the trip was. He couldn’t fight with her about it; after all it was her money, but she didn’t preach to him about the sins of indulging in the devil’s drink or remind him of the straits he found himself in because he had been drunk that night.

  Oh, no. Not Miss Halimeda Pruitt. She used a far more potent weapon on him. She widened those green eyes with an oh-how-disappointed-I-am-in-you look.

  “Lord,” he muttered, moving as quickly as his aching leg allowed to snatch the chocolate off the pillow, “when you test a man’s fortitude, you really test his limits with a woman like Hallie.”

  Because he was desperate to stop thinking about a drink—and Cade told himself that was the only reason why—he plopped the sweet confection into his mouth.

  This one was new; beneath the chocolate coat was a fondant center filled with nuts and a hint of cherries. The candy disappeared in two bites.

  “This is what I’m reduced to? Blazing hell! I can’t take anymore.”

  Good for whatever ails you. Hallie’s words. Hallie’s belief. He grudgingly admitted that eating her chocolates mellowed his mood. But by the Almighty, he knew what ailed him, and confections didn’t come close to being as good.

  What’s more, he knew what ailed Miss Halimeda Pruitt.

  Bonbons lost out in a minute flat.

  So did whiskey and every other vice known to man or woman.

  Hallie didn’t need her store-bought confections any more than he did.

  Miss Hallie needed a man.

  Cade closed his eyes as he rubbed the back of his neck. For the hundredth time he wished he’d never given in to the urge to enter her bedroom when she went to Denver to replenish supplies.

  Three days ago. Three nights of tossing and turning with a restless need that refused to let go of him—and that blind-as-a-bat woman had no idea of the torment she caused.

  “All right, I used the hind end of a horse for judgment.” The admission didn’t help. That burning curiosity for a clue to Hallie’s character got the better of him and he had opened the door opposite his room.

  He hadn’t even had the decency to hesitate when he lifted the latch.

  Then he’d stood in her doorway staring like a wet-behind-the-ears kid caught with his pants down, muttering imprecations like a miner coming out of the mountains after working his claim alone for a year.

  The thought of his reaction, the sight burned into his memory brought forth a low, deep groan. How could he have known? Hallie had been a shy little mouse until he had been able to move around and help her with chores. Then he made the mistake of trying to talk some sense into the woman, thinking she would welcome his advice, and she showed him a passionate side. True, that passion took the form of temper to protect her useless animals, but he’d wanted to discover all the hidden depths of Halimeda Pruitt from that moment.

  And once he had stood on the threshold of her room not even the instant promise of being visited with the Lord’s wrath would have stopped him from going inside.

  The window of his room was open to admit the cool spring breeze sweeping down from the Never Summer Range, named by the Arapaho Indians for the snows that never melted off the mountains. But all Cade could inhale was the faint scent of roses, the scent that had swirled around him when he entered Hallie’s room.

  He closed his eyes, once more seeing himself gaze slowly around the room lit by dimmed sunlight peeking between the red velvet drapes on the two windows. Plush carpet had cushioned his steps.

  Her dressing table was crowded with bottles and jars. He was drawn there first. Hood’s Sarsaparilla, the strongest most efficient and cheapest purifer of the blood. Globe pills for headaches. Perfumes of White Rose, Rose Geranium, Blue Lilies, Persian Lilac, and Colgate’s Cashmere. Sachet powders to match every one. Miss Libby’s Face Wash and Hand Cream. He had lifted the crystal stoppers, opened jars, and smelled every one of them.

  Intoxicating scents meant to cloud a man’s thinking. Scents to entice, and arouse and seduce. Cade was not immune.

  From the dressing table he had wandered to the red brocade lady’s slipper chair in the corner and picked up a handful of lacy underthings. Pale pink ribbons and tiny embroidered roses, cobwebbed lace and sheer cotton made up drawers and camisoles. The froth of feminine underpinnings were enough to enflame an eunuch.

  Or a saint.

  Cade was far from either one.

  He remembered how his gaze had skimmed over the bed, then returned to feast on the large four-poster covered with a red velvet spread. The headboard was nearly invisible due to the pile of pillows. Red satin trimmed with black lace, white silk, and tassels; touchable, inviting pillows.

  His hands curled at his sides, but in her room he had grabbed hold of the bedpost, fighting the image of Hallie in that bed.

  He was reliving every moment again, losing track of time now as he had that afternoon, just as he lost control of his breathing. When he roused himself, he found his hand grasping the silky fur coverlet folded at the foot of the bed.

  Jealousy rose with a growl from inside him. Hallie was no trapper. With the love of animals too useless to another, the woman would never kill one for its fur.

  A gift then, Cade thought. He didn’t like the turn his mind took from that moment. Didn’t like or understand the unreasoning jealousy that prevailed.

  He couldn’t deny the fur. It was real. As real as his belief that someone had given Hallie a gift of precious furs.

  His teeth were bared as he fought off the image of Hallie lying against the fur … waiting….

  He recalled the devil’s own whisper guiding him to her writing desk between the windows. He seemed to be acting outside of himself when he had lit the crystal lamp. The whisper nagged, cajoled, and enticed him, but Cade ignored it to lift the lamp and investigate what hid behind the large painted screen. The paintings themselves held his attention. Each panel portrayed a lady at her bath. Roman or Greek maids, he saw, in various states of nudity, yet curiously innocent.

  He discovered Hallie used Jubel’s tooth powder and french milled rose-scented soap. A full-length mirror stood next to the washstand. T
he wood frame had been polished to a satin finish and he had stared at his reflection.

  His shadowed, unshaven face added to his rough appearance and the reflection seemed to whisper that he didn’t belong there. He had turned away only to brush his hand against the silken nightgown tossed over the dressing screen.

  Cade realized then that he didn’t known Halimeda Pruitt at all.

  He had returned to the desk, intending to blow out the lamp and leave. But there, light pooling like a devil’s promise, was an open journal. The pages were filled with Hallie’s neat handwriting.

  Had he hesitated once before he had lifted the open journal?

  Cade groaned softly, squeezing his eyes tight, wishing he could remember, wishing he’d never let temptation allow him to read what Hallie had written.

  Perhaps some good conscience would have stopped him if his own name had not appeared in the first sentence. He could see it as if he were still holding the leather-bound journal in front of his eyes right now. A familiar sexual stirring came within him, the same that had begun that day, the same that never truly left him.

  He had read what Hallie wrote. Her most private thoughts. Her secret, vivid dreams.

  It was enough to make a man break out in a sweat even then, and it did the very same thing to him now as he thought about that passionate woman hidden in homespun.

  With a start Cade opened his eyes. He rubbed his forehead, realizing that he was in his room. He had done some foolish things in twenty-nine years, but he never thought of himself as a stupid man.

  Stupid, dumb-as-a-doornail kind of stupid. That is exactly what he had been. Not once had he guessed what a bubbling cauldron of feminine longings Hallie Pruitt was by looking at her.

  Tender, merciful, compassionate, yes. He could easily attribute these wonderful traits to Hallie. Bedridden and totally dependent on her care, he had not one hint, not one inkling of what went on in her mind. At first he had thought her as sharp and tough as a cactus thorn. But that sweet, oh-so-shy smile—dammit—the woman fooled him.