by Camryn Rhys
“Right.” Kyle kept his eye on the smoker. The ham was just about done, and it was almost time to serve the meal. Jamie still wasn’t there, and Brady was mad enough, he might hulk out at any minute.
It seemed like everything was falling apart.
“The real reason I came down here.” Brady hooked his fingers into the loops of his jeans and something in his face relaxed. “I heard my mom has been giving you a hard time about using stuff that she made.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding while his boss talked. “She said something about it.”
“Today?”
“No. At the beginning of the week.”
“Good.” He nodded. “I talked to her about it, and she shouldn’t give you any more trouble.”
Kyle’s eyes went to the spice box that sat under his prep station. He’d used the Cowboy Matchmaker on the ham. The thyme would be a nice surprise with the long-smoked meat. And the dessert blend had actually been great on the apple crumble topping, even if it was a bit sweet for his palate. But Jamie kept coming back for more when he wasn’t around. It was all gone now.
“She did say that we’d work on some new blends later. So I don’t mind trying to fit these in.” He gestured at the box.
Brady’s eyes went down below the prep station and he shifted his feet. “I’m saying don’t fit them in.”
His eyebrows raised of their own volition. “Don’t?”
“No.” His boss stepped in front of him and grabbed the box of spices. “In fact, I’m going to take them with me.”
“So, you’re not going to try to sell the Silver Spring Ranch spices?”
“No.” Brady clutched the box against his chest. “That’s really a waste of our money. It takes the focus off what Jamie is doing here.”
Kyle shrugged. “This is my first corporate gig, man. I’m gonna trust you on that one.”
Brady backed out of the kitchen. “If my mom gives you a hard time, just remember, I’m your boss. You don’t have to answer to her.”
There was that little truth, of course. Jamie wasn’t his boss. Mattie wasn’t his boss. Brady was the big cheese. His word was law.
Heat crawled up the back of his neck. And he was back to this conundrum again. He couldn’t keep allowing Brady to think he was married. If he wanted to continue working with the guy, he was going to have to correct the misunderstanding. Regardless of what happened with Jamie.
Or he was going to have to find himself a new job.
“What are you two whispering about over here?” Mattie’s voice was cheerful as she approached, but when she saw Brady holding the spice blend box, her countenance dropped.
“Don’t make a scene, Mom.” He held up one hand. “I’m putting my foot down this time.”
Her mouth hung open, but she didn’t speak. Her eyes were glued to the box that her son gripped out of reach. “We’ll talk about this on the way home,” she finally said, in a too-even tone.
“Speaking of home.” Brady nodded back toward the Jeep. “We should get going before it gets too dark. Work to do.”
“You’re not staying for dinner?” Kyle asked.
“We really should be going.” The older woman put a hand on her son’s arm. “We need to leave Jamie to her work. And you, too.” She flashed him a bright smile.
They turned away, silent all the way out of his sight, but he sensed a fight coming on. As adamant as Mattie had been about him using the spice blends, he couldn’t imagine she’d just give up.
But Kyle hadn’t minded using the spice blends, truth be told. They had the complexity and the balance that he liked when he made his own. It wasn’t what he would’ve done, but that didn’t make it wrong. He could work with what he had.
So, the night’s meal would be the last where he’d used Mattie’s spices. From here on out, it would be all new.
Chapter Fifteen
A buzz in Jamie’s pocket jolted her from her hungry stupor and punctuated the headache. She considered throwing the thing in the general direction of the river, or into the center of the corral and letting the horses trample it.
Instead, she swiped it open and focused her attention on the lit screen.
I’m almost out of food here.
Brady didn’t keep a lot of supplies at the outpost cabins. The Banfields had three on the corners of the thirty thousand-acre ranch, but they weren’t really stocked until they had to do prep for the winter. Eventually, he’d get around to noticing that there was traffic at one of them, though.
Would she lie to her brother? What if he found Charity there?
She could re-stock the place. Clean it up. Get Charity a hotel room and a job. Just not Kyle’s job.
A voice came from behind her. “Look. I know you saw us.”
Jamie turned to see the busty blonde smiling at her, with sickly white teeth. Her boobs pointing out like gravity-defying cantaloupe. Everything about her was fake. “Excuse me?”
Lady Cleavage put one hand on her hip and shook her head. “Rick and I. I know you saw us just now.”
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together and tried for considerate. But it might have bordered on constipated. “Did you need to talk about it?”
“It’s just…you saw me with Kyle, too. I wanted to explain.”
Her chest clamped down tight. “I saw you with Kyle?”
“Yesterday.” Lana swiped her hair over her shoulder. “You came up on us when we were arguing.”
“I did.” Jamie licked her lips and took in a long, slow breath. “I wasn’t sure if you saw me.”
“Oh, I saw you.” She cast a glance up and down Jamie’s body.
Something about the perusal made her heart jump, as though the blonde knew more than she was telling.
Lana couldn’t possibly have come across them. No one knew that part of the river but Jamie, and they certainly wouldn’t have been able to navigate it in the dark, without a flashlight.
“And you need to talk to me about it? Why?”
Lana fixed her dark blue eyes on Jamie and held her gaze. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
Her eyes flipped upward. “Oh, please. He had to have told you.”
“Told me what?”
“You didn’t ask him what we were fighting about?”
Jamie’s stomach dropped. She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t wanted to know the answer. “I figured you knew each other. It’s hard to explain all the familiarity, otherwise.”
“I never would’ve hidden it if Kyle hadn’t asked me to.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She tried to step around her, but Lana stopped her progress and a strange, almost concerned look came over her normally icy façade.
She put a hand on Jamie’s arm and squeezed. “I can tell there’s something going on with you two.”
“There is nothing going on with me and Kyle.”
“Right. Like you didn’t fuck my ex-husband last night.”
Her throat dried up. Her mouth stuck in a half-open O. Heat welled up in her face and she couldn’t speak.
Ex-husband?
Oh, God.
Ex. Husband.
“I didn’t have to see it to know it happened.” The blonde bitch queen released her arm and backed up a step. “You can’t hide secret sex from me, girl. I invented it.”
Jamie still couldn’t speak.
Lana swept around her and called over her shoulder. “Kyle looked like a kicked dog this morning when you blew him off. I know him too well to have to guess what that’s about.”
She watched the blonde sway as she sauntered away, her hips hitting a silent beat. Jamie took a step, following her without thinking. Lana was his ex? Fake-boob-fake-tan-fake-white-herd-thinning Lana?
The blonde laughed, and called back, “But I won’t tell if you won’t. Y’know, the fraternizing and all that.”
Jamie froze. The whole camp knew about the rules. And Brady was still there. She had to find her brother. With heart pounding, she to
ok off through the woods, bypassing the traveled areas, heading straight for the chuckwagon.
She came out of the trees into the open space near the makeshift wooden cage that held the wagon. The gates were open, smoke rose over the top of the canvas. Beyond the food area, most of the clients seemed to be seated in pairs. Eating.
Her stomach gnawed at itself, getting a good whiff of the food. But she stayed on the far side of the cage, where she couldn’t see the kitchen.
The Jeep was gone. Brady was probably back at the ranch already. Far from where Lana could get to him and put Kyle’s job in danger.
“You’re concentrating awful hard on something.” The voice wasn’t quite deep enough to be Kyle’s, and she turned to find Ray, one of the guests, leaning against a tree behind her, looking her up and down. “Looking for someone?”
“Hi, Ray.” She perked up her voice, trying to keep professional distance obvious between them. “How was dinner tonight?”
“Decent.” He tipped his cowboy hat, which looked ridiculous on him since he didn’t know how to wear one. An investment banker from Denver, he carried himself like a city guy.
Jamie half-admired him for his guts, and half-pitied him for his delusion. He wanted to be John Wayne but barely passed for John Travolta.
“I hope all the meals are satisfactory to our guests,” she said. “Kyle, our chef, is new to the Silver Spring Ranch and comes highly recommended.”
“It’s not the chef, it’s the company.” Ray pointed to the table he’d vacated, where Alice sat.
She was a cute redhead, and the one Jamie had picked for Ray for the week. She’d hidden Alice in the middle of Ray’s dates, hoping he’d be surprised by her. He, like all the other men on the trail, seemed to want Lana. But only one of them would end up matched with her.
Jamie had no doubt they’d all get her phone number one way or another, and given what Lana had just said about secret sex, she might be doing them all in the woods at night, anyway. Who knew? But only one man could have her. Those were the rules.
Ray had been matched with Lady Cleavage the day before, although she’d spent most of the time flirting with Troy, the guy she’d been paired with this morning. And today, she toyed with Rick, who would be her last partner of the week.
“Alice is perfect for you, Ray.” Jamie peered back at the cute redhead and smiled. Their compatibility scores were so high. She wanted them to like each other so much. “Your top goals in life are exactly the same. Did you know that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she’s fine. I’m sure she’s a nice girl.”
“But you want what you can’t have.” Typical dude. She crossed her arms. “I’m sorry, Ray, but the rules are the rules. You can’t be paired with Lana again until the last night, and that’s only if she picks you.”
He pulled his cowboy hat down, which looked infinitely more normal than tipped up like a 40s Western movie star or something. “I just hit it off with Lana, and I don’t see why we can’t be together.”
“Ladies’ choice, Ray,” Jamie reminded him.
“Is he bothering you?” Kyle’s voice sent a thrill through her whole body and she froze.
Jamie shook her head. “We’re fine.” When she sensed his presence at her back, she nodded at Ray, and he returned the gesture.
“I’ll just get back to Alice.” Tipping his hat again, he walked away like he was trying to channel Roy Rogers. But failing. Poor man.
“What’s his deal?” Kyle’s voice was insistent, but it was the fresh wave of delectable scents that made her turn around.
He held out a steaming plate. His features were tense, but there was an undeniable hope in his eyes that stabbed her heart.
When push came to shove, he’d lied to her twice. But she was still lying to him. Two wrongs didn’t make a right, though. Her insides were so mushy, and her head so achey, she didn’t know what to feel anymore.
Kyle’s hand went to her back and she jumped at the contact. “I saved you some food. Barely, though. These guys can eat.”
Jamie made a noise somewhere in the back of her throat. The pain in her head wouldn’t go away, and the food smelled so good. And Kyle had made it.
He guided her toward the tables. “I know you don’t really want to see me, but I’m not going to let you skip meals.”
She followed the delicious smell that pushed her almost as solidly as Kyle’s gentle hand. At the first empty table, he placed the food and appropriate utensils in front of her.
“Who said I don’t want to see you?”
He shrugged. “No one had to tell me, Jamie. When you’re not around, when you ignore me, I get it.” Kyle pressed his lips together and turned away.
“Where are you going?” she asked, almost reaching for him.
“To finish clean-up.”
Jamie shifted away from the center of the bench he’d seated her on. “Can you sit with me, just a sec? We need to talk.”
Kyle stared at her a long moment before answering and something went dead in his eyes. “Okay.”
Two couples squeezed past him on the trail as he came back to sit with her. Instead of sliding in next to her where she’d made room, he took the bench on the other side of the table.
“I haven’t been fair to you since you got here. You’re a good guy.”
“This is the weirdest breakup speech I’ve ever heard.”
Her skin heated at the thought of them being enough together that they’d need to break up. Was that what she wanted? To be with Kyle?
A memory of Sam flashed behind her eyes as she closed them. A stinky basement, a football game on TV, and after years of being secretly and painfully in love with him, it had only taken a day of his interest to get her to spread her legs, and the next day, she was as invisible as she had ever been.
Jamie shuddered and tears pressed at her eyes. These fucking memories. They were supposed to be buried deeper than this.
Sam had been just like Kyle. He’d seemed so genuine, and he had been so damn hot. But in the end, he hadn’t wanted to be with her.
And she hadn’t wanted to be with anyone since.
“This isn’t a breakup speech.” Jamie opened her eyes to find him at least momentarily relieved. “You can’t break up when you’re not together.”
He sucked air between his teeth. “Ouch.”
“Look, I ran into Lana.” Her insides burned, pushing away her guilt. How can I confront him about lying, and not tell him about Charity? She pushed the plate away.
“I thought as much.” He shook his head. “And she told you that we used to be married?”
Jamie nodded. “She did.”
“And you’re pissed. Rightfully so.”
She looked up into the trees, trying to find somewhere for her eyes to focus, but she couldn’t. I don’t know what I feel. But she couldn’t admit that. That would be way too much honesty.
“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about Lana, but at this point, I’m not sure it matters.” Jamie picked up her fork and pushed around the pieces of succulent ham. They looked heavenly, but she just couldn’t muster up the appetite.
“Can I explain?” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it back.
“You don’t have to explain, Kyle. Really.”
“Just let me.” He folded his fingers together on the dark wood and stared at them. “When I met Lana, I was young and stupid and I thought she was the world. Her father bought me a restaurant.” A long sigh, full of unreadable emotion, stopped his words. “Which was a godsend at the time, because it didn’t take long for her to lose interest in me, and she didn’t want kids anyway, and I needed something…”
“Kyle.” She pushed at his fingers with her fork. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I need you to know all of it.” He shook his head. “When I found out she was cheating—prolifically, by the way… Let me just say, that woman gives new definition to the concept of adultery.”
A wave of sorrow passed thr
ough her, almost like he radiated it. It took every ounce of fortitude for her not to touch him. But she couldn’t go there.
“I asked her for a divorce, and our pre-nup was… well, since I had nothing when I came in, I had nothing when I went out.” His jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek ticked, like he was holding something back.
“The restaurant?”
His laugh was quiet. “That’s why it took me so long to leave. I had built my reputation as an executive chef who owned my own place. When I tried to get other jobs, everyone thought my taking a demotion was a signal that something bad had happened. They thought I was hiding something. No one decent would hire me.”
Jamie could almost picture Kyle, in a gleaming, once-busy kitchen, saying his last goodbye. God. I tried to get this man fired. Tears welled up behind her eyes again. What kind of a bitch am I?
“And then I interviewed with Brady in April, and I thought… I can do this. I can sign the papers and let Lana go, and I’ll make a new life.” He shook his head. “When he called me back last week, I was on the last of my savings. It could not have come at a more perfect time.”
She licked her lips and everything inside deflated. “But that meant you needed to keep the job.” Which is what I almost took away from you. Guilt washed over her like an angry tide.
“That was why I didn’t correct the married misunderstanding, but then, I…” His cobalt eyes suddenly flickered up to meet hers. “I fell hard for you.”
The warmth nearly drowned out the pang of the guilt, but not quite. She opened her mouth to explain what a bitch she’d almost been to him. But she froze.
What if he’s telling the truth? Jamie studied his face, the wide open features, the earnestness. What if I’m wrong about beautiful men and their black hearts and wicked ways?
If that was true, then she could never tell him about Charity. Not about her planning, or any of it. It wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t gone through with it, and it wouldn’t matter why.
“And I didn’t want you to know about Lana because…well, because I’m petty.”
