by Marla Monroe
Here she was, back at home in Pearl, Kentucky, and about to be kicked out of her apartment. She had thirty days before she’d be jobless and homeless. There wasn’t much to the tiny town with less than four hundred residents, which meant there weren’t any jobs to be had either. She’d used all of her savings applying for positions all over the states in hopes of finding a chef’s position, but the only offers she’d had were for menial kitchen jobs. She had a feeling that she’d been blackballed by Gregg, the bastard.
She put the finishing touches on the form then uploaded her résumé and hit the send button before she talked herself out of it. As a chef at the ranch, she shouldn’t have to deal with the horses at all. She could easily avoid them if she got the job. She wasn’t exactly guaranteed the position. She continued to scroll through want ads in hopes of finding something more to her liking, but nothing jumped out at her. Finally, she shut down the computer and stood to stretch.
It had been almost nine when she’d sat down at the desk to look. Now it was nearly one in the afternoon. No wonder she was stiff and hungry. The cereal she’d had for breakfast had long since been burned away. Billy Jean wandered into the kitchen and contemplated her choices for something to eat. She had to be careful with the money she had left. Among her sparse choices was ramen noodles. She sighed and grabbed a pack of the chicken flavored. They would do.
A knock at the door while she was filling the boiler with water startled her. She frowned. There weren’t many people in town who wouldn’t be at work at that hour. She set the boiler on the stove and hurried over to the door. When she opened it, her mouth dropped open in surprise. Gregg, her former employer’s son, stood on the threshold with a scowl on his face.
“You live in this dump?” He pushed his way past her to step inside.
“What are you doing here?” she finally managed to ask.
“I came to offer you a position as Dartmouth’s assistant in Washington and The Point,” he said, a smug smile on his face. “It’s obvious you haven’t secured a position anywhere else yet.”
“No thanks to you, I’m sure.” Billy Jean crossed her arms over her chest. “What are the benefits?”
“You aren’t in much of a position to negotiate benefits, BJ.”
“Stop calling me that. It’s degrading,” she snapped.
He smirked. “I much prefer Jean, but you insist on Billy. That is not the name of an award winning chef, love.”
“Well, at least you admit that my skills are excellent. I did win several awards for my cooking.” She tapped her foot. “Again. What are the benefits?”
He sighed and settled his hands on his hips, his face held nothing but boredom. “Paid insurance, three weeks of vacation, the only holidays would be Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Day.” He named a generous salary and waited expectantly.
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Are you expecting me to entertain for my job?” she asked.
“Actually, I was thinking that becoming my wife would work out much better for both of us. What do you think?” he asked, brushing at the arm of his suit jacket.
Billy Jean nearly hooted with laughter. She might have gotten a college degree and traveled the world, but when it came to who she was, Kentucky would always be a part of her. It came through loud and clear now.
“Why Gregg, I know I should be plumb flattered that you’d consider a hillbilly like me to be your wife, but fact is, I don’t want to be your wife. I just want you to leave me alone and stop telling people not to hire me. I haven’t done a damn thing to you to deserve this kind of treatment.”
“You’ll never amount to anything being from this godforsaken place. If you marry me, people will overlook your background and give you a chance—like I’m doing. Don’t throw that away because of pride, love.” He looked around him and sniffed. “Do you really like living this way?”
“There’s nothing wrong with how I live. It’s cleaner than some of the places I’ve been with you, and it came from honest wages. I didn’t bilk someone for the money to pay for it,” she argued.
“I’m giving you one more chance, Jean. Marry me or you might as well hang it up as a chef. You’ll never have your own kitchen in anything outside of a greasy spoon.”
She swallowed hard then slowly walked over to the door and opened it. “You need to leave, Gregg. I don’t expect to see you again.”
His mouth opened in surprise before he quickly closed it and lifted his chin in the air like the pompous ass he was. Without another word, he stomped through the door and turned as if to say something else, but she slammed the door in his face and locked it—loudly. Then she returned to the kitchen to heat the water for her most excellent meal of chicken-flavored ramen noodles.
* * * *
“What do you mean you’re going to turn my Internet off? I have to have it to find a job. I paid my bill last month. Why can’t you give me fifteen days like you did last time?” she asked.
“We’ve let you be late for the last three months. We just can’t keep doing that, Billy Jean,” Herb Mayfield said.
“Herb. You’ve known me all my life. You know I’ll pay what I owe. Just give me a few more days to put out some more résumés. Then I can go and check my messages at the library. It takes too long to pull up anything there to try and fill out applications. It keeps timing out.” Without the Internet, she was going to have an even harder time finding a job.
“Look. I’ll let you keep it on through the weekend, but I’m turning it off Monday morning at nine. It’s the best I can do.”
“Okay. Thanks, Herb,” she said with a sigh. “I appreciate the extra time.”
Billy Jean pressed end on her phone and prayed she had enough time left on it to make some phone calls if she needed to. She’d had to turn off her own phone a month ago and was using one of the cheapie pay-as-you-go phones now. Not having a job sucked.
I guess I could ask Uncle Ed for a job.
But that meant being around horses where it had happened. She wasn’t sure she could stomach that, even if it meant putting food on the table. She could survive on ramen noodles for a few weeks. She wasn’t sure she would survive going back to the place where she’d nearly died and had lost her best friend. It had been a long time ago, but some memories don’t dull with time.
Shaking her head, Billy Jean forced the memories back to the tiny box she kept locked away inside her head. She had more important things to do now than wallow in self-pity. She needed to be using the Internet every second she could to find a job. She only had a few days left. It was Friday night and come Monday morning, her lifeline to the outside world would be severed.
The first thing she did was check her e-mail. As usual, there were the obligatory sales pushes and a few penis enlargement ads that had made it through her spam filter. Also, apparently, there were a lot of Chinese girls wanting to marry her out there, too.
Not interested.
Finally she got down to the meager but genuine e-mails that would tell her if she was being considered or not.
She stared at the screen for over a full minute before she finally convinced herself to open the first e-mail. It was from one of the blind box ads she’d answered. As soon as it popped open, she knew she’d been scammed on that one. It turned out to be an ad for online cooking lessons with one of the most notable chefs in the country. Right. She’d fall for that one. It would only cost her a thousand dollars to get her genuine certificate of culinary approval. How could you teach someone how to be a chef through the Internet? How to cook? Maybe. But becoming a chef was much more in depth than learning to boil an egg or the different temperatures of steak.
She deleted it and opened the next one, another blind box e-mail. This one turned out to be legit, but it apologized that it could not offer her the position. They had found someone more suitable for their kitchen somewhere else.
As she closed the next two with th
e same response, Billy Jean tried to ignore the tears that had begun to fall. She would not break down. Somewhere out there was a position for her. The fact that she’d already lowered her expectations to include chain restaurants wasn’t helping. It looked as if she would need to drop down another rung and apply to be a short order cook at some greasy spoon just like Gregg had predicted.
When she opened one that was from someone named Laredo Marshall with a subject line of Chief Chef Position, she didn’t hold out much hope. It took her reading through the first paragraph twice to realize she’d just been offered a job, a real position as head chef. Then she continued reading and realized it was for the ranch in Montana. All of the excitement that had soared through her heart quickly downgraded to relief that someone had actually offered her a job.
She left that e-mail open and quickly pored through the remaining three in hopes that one of them would turn out to be another, better offer, only to strike out. Accepting the job would end all of her financial problems and give her a place to live. If she didn’t take it, she would soon be out on the street with no way to even go anywhere to find a job. Her options were limited.
Face it, my options are zero to none. Either I take this job or I’m reduced to begging on the street corner. In Pearl I wouldn’t even be able to survive on the street.
Instead of looking at the offer as a trip to the gallows, she should be seeing it as a wish come true. The salary range they had quoted was fair considering that room and board came with it. What more could she ask for considering the future she was presently looking at?
Billy Jean pulled the e-mail back up and read through it one more time. Then she crafted an answer she hoped didn’t make her sound like a diva. Really, she wasn’t one. She just wanted to be sure that she wouldn’t have to be around horses. It was her one sticking point. Then she thanked them for their offer and hit the send button, praying she wasn’t making a huge mistake.
With no other reason to browse through cyberspace, she made sure she hadn’t missed anything when she’d started packing earlier. Moving was inevitable no matter what since she didn’t have the rent for another month. She had already sold everything she could live without and was down to eating off the kitchen counter and sleeping on a blow up mattress on the floor. All of her clothes were packed, and she used her bathroom items out of a plastic bin where all she had to do was add the top and carry it out to the car.
It seemed a little pathetic that all she had left in the world was reduced to two suitcases and eight boxes, two of which held cookbooks. She remembered when she’d been a teenager and her parents had been around how happy they all had been. Then the accident happened when she’d been sixteen and everything changed. Her parents had grown apart and finally divorced two years later. They moved away, leaving her there in Pearl all alone. She’d gone off to college to get her degree, but moved back to Pearl after the disaster with Gregg when she’d had nowhere else to go.
She sighed and finally wandered back to the computer to check her messages. To her surprise, there was already another e-mail from the ranch. She opened it and was relieved to find that she wouldn’t have to deal with the horses. Her duties only included planning the meals for the guests and staff and cooking them.
The cheap cell phone rang, startling her. She jumped up and grabbed it off the kitchen counter.
“Hello?”
“Is this Billy Jean Simmons?” a deep masculine voice asked.
“This is she. How may I help you?”
“This is Laredo Marshall from Bear Mountain Ranch in Montana. I hope it isn’t too late to call,” he said.
“No. Not at all. I was just reading your reply to my questions.” Billy Jean couldn’t get over how the sound of his voice affected her. She could swear her panties were wet.
“Good. I wanted to find out how soon you could start.”
“Oh, I can start immediately, or at least as soon as I get there. When did you need me?” she asked.
“Yesterday. With the staff settling in, we’re hard pressed to feed them. They work hard and deserve good food,” he said. “Do you think you can make it by Tuesday?”
Billy Jean did some quick calculations in her head. It would take roughly thirty hours of driving to get there. She’d have to stop at some point for a few hours of sleep. She could handle that.
“I should be able to without any trouble. You said I would have a place to stay, right?” she asked.
“Yes. You have your own quarters in the main lodge over the kitchen. The office manager is also staying upstairs as well, so you won’t be alone in the building. You’ll have an assistant to help you and eventually, you’ll have more help, but we’re just getting things set up now.”
“It sounds fine to me. I’ll see you Tuesday,” she said.
“Have a safe trip and call if you have any trouble. Good bye.”
Billy Jean hit end on the cell and sank to the chair in front of her desk. Wow. She was leaving in the morning. She would need to get an early start and get her SUV packed so she could make the rounds and get things turned off before she left. She would turn her key into the apartment manager and be on her way. Somehow she hadn’t expected it to happen this fast. She had thought she would have the rest of the month to get used to the idea of leaving and to say good-bye to everyone.
To who? I don’t have any friends here anymore. Everyone I went to school with left for greener pastures while I was trying to avoid Gregg all those months.
With nothing left to do but pack up the computer, Billy Jean walked to the bathroom and drifted through her nightly ritual to get ready for bed. Between wondering what her new life would be like and trying to ignore the way her new boss’s voice affected her, she found herself still standing in the shower when the water turned cold. With a strangled yelp, Billy Jean turned the water off and grabbed a towel to dry off.
None of the guys she’d gone out with in the past had ever affected her like that, and her boss had only spoken with her over the phone. Gregg certainly never gave her goose bumps or had her pussy dripping with just his voice. All she felt around him was disgust and the urge to throw up.
She crawled on her rubber mattress and pulled the covers up. Reaching over, she set her alarm clock for an ungodly hour and prayed she didn’t sleep through it. Starting off the first day of the rest of her life by oversleeping wouldn’t help her mood any on the long drive ahead of her. She needed all the positive energy she could gather to make it through the next few days. She had a strange feeling that something was about to happen, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for whatever it was.
Chapter Two
“Damn, I sure hope that chef you hired shows up soon. I’m sick of cooking, and I wasn’t much of a cook to begin with. Trying to fix enough food that’s eatable for eight people is a lot harder than it looks.” Laramie threw himself down onto a chair in Laredo’s office.
“Suck it up, Marine. She’ll be here sometime on Tuesday. I talked with her last night and she said she’d start out this morning. Kentucky is a pretty long drive from here,” Laredo said.
He wasn’t really paying much attention to his brother. Laramie liked to bitch and moan. He was trying to figure out how to estimate supplies for the number of guests they were expecting the next week. They would all arrive at various times on Sunday. He had their itineraries all printed out and a schedule figured up for the staff to pick them up at the airport. One couple was driving up from Utah, so he didn’t have to worry about getting them there.
“I’m not in the fucking marines anymore. I’m supposed to be working a ranch, not slinging slop.”
Laredo looked up and scowled at his twin. “Why are you bothering me? I’ve got too much going on to waste time listening to you complain.”
Laramie grinned. “Actually, I came to see if you wanted me to help with something. I have hamburger patties all made up and the potatoes cut up for fries soaking in the fridge. Thought you might could use some assistance.”
&nb
sp; Laredo shook his head. He could always count on his little brother to offer a hand. He snorted. Laramie was only younger by eight minutes, and they were identical twins so it was hard to tell them apart, yet he’d always thought of him as his little brother.
“How about looking over this list of supplies for the next week and see if I’m missing something or underestimating anything. We can always run and get anything we need, but I’d rather not make trips we don’t have to,” he said, handing the folder to Laramie.
“I can’t imagine you not having everything nailed down to the last grain of rice, Commando.”
Laredo winced at his nickname. He’d earned that as a kid when he’d raced around naked as a jaybird much to his mom’s distress. His dad had thought it was cute as had the ranch hands who’d given him the name. Thanks to his meddlesome brother, the damn thing had stuck all through the service as well.
“Yeah, well. I’ve never had to plan for something like this before. Guests aren’t soldiers who eat what and when they’re told. They expect a certain level of luxury, whereas a fresh bar of soap and an actual toothbrush were luxuries to us as marines,” he said.
His twin grinned and leaned back to study the file. He looked over the daily schedule for the next week and tweaked it here and there.
“So this chef you hired? What were her references like?” Laramie asked.
Laredo winced. He’d hoped no one would ask him that. “Um, about what I expected for what we are offering,” he hedged, continuing to look busily over the schedule.
Laramie’s head snapped up. “What do you mean by that?”
He sighed and dropped the papers to the desk and dug his fingers through the slowly growing crew cut. Then he looked up and tried to keep his features neutral.
“She’s newly out of school so her only experience is a tour with a company that owns five star restaurants all over the world. She had excellent grades in all of her classes.”
