One Heart to Win (10 page)

Tiffany was incredulous. He had a wife? With the condition of the house, she’d naturally assumed his spouse must be deceased.

“Why am I not speaking to Mrs. Callahan then? My job would fall into her domain.”

“We don’t bother Mary with trifles. She took a bad fall some months back and is confined to bed until her bones mend. If you need anything or got questions, you see me or my oldest boy, Hunter.”

Ask her fiancé for help with her job? She pictured the two of them scrubbing floors together, side by side, on their knees, and had to quickly tamp down a hysterical laugh. And it would take too long for just two people to tackle a house this size. It would take an army to put this place to rights.

She didn’t mince words on that account. “The condition of your house is atrocious. I was told you have maids, but I see no evidence of that.”

Zachary started to frown. She’d undoubtedly offended him. She stiffened, waiting for him to put her in her place and afraid she might lose her temper over it and quit, before she’d even begun.

But he suddenly laughed instead. “Mighty assertive for a servant, ain’t you?” That amused him? He added, “Don’t know what that
atrocious
means, but I reckon it ain’t good. I’ve got eyes, gal. I know the place is messy, but we’ve been a might shorthanded the last few days. When Old Ed left us without warning, he took his kitchen helper with him. Pearl cleans downstairs, but her sister took sick, so she asked for a week off to help with her sister’s younguns. And Luella, who sees to the upstairs, said she’d quit if she had to do Pearl’s job, too. Couldn’t have that when we’re in the middle of this damn quitting spree. But now you’re here to get us cleaned up.” He ended that with a grin.

Tiffany was even more aghast. It was bad enough he was down to only one servant, albeit temporarily, but even the four he’d had weren’t enough for a house this size, and certainly not enough to require a housekeeper to supervise them.

“Are you aware, sir, what a housekeeper actually does?”

“Never had one, never even heard of one till we heard
Frank was bringing you in from Chicago and I got the idea to deprive him of your talents, whatever they are.”

He chuckled when he said that. Apparently he saw it as a one up on the Warrens. Had both sides resorted to pranks like this during the truce? Anything to discomfit the other side was permissible? But she wouldn’t remark on that. After all, it was better than bloodshed.

“As the name implies, I keep a house in order,” Tiffany explained. “However, I don’t actually clean a house. I am what might be considered a luxury for the lady of the house, allowing her to devote her time to her children or other pursuits. I make sure her house runs smoothly, that it’s spotless, that all the servants are doing what they are supposed to be doing. A housekeeper is rarely needed unless there is a large staff of servants, since it would be my duty to oversee them. I would also look after your valuables personally, things like your good china, silverware, whatever you wouldn’t trust to the hands of an ordinary maid.”

Zachary mulled that over for a moment. “Well, we ain’t got no good china. Mary had some fancy cutlery, but she considered it too fancy to actually use, so it rusts up in the attic. Ain’t gonna have a passel of servants for you to rule, but since you’ll have to do the cooking, I reckon you’ll be kept busy enough.”

“I don’t cook,” she said firmly.

“Yeah, I heard. It ain’t in that description you just gave. But since I’m paying you double, and you don’t intend to lift a broom, you’re gonna be our new cook, too.”

“You misunder—”

“ ’Sides, Frank Warren ain’t got a passel of servants either. He would’ve been asking you to pitch in on some other tasks as
well, without paying you double for it like I am. So why ain’t you sounding more grateful, huh?”

Tiffany’s cheeks turned red. Was she about to be fired? But how was she supposed to do something she didn’t know
how
to do? This wasn’t going to work out. She’d been insane to think it would. A housekeeper’s job wasn’t so difficult that she couldn’t have done it for a couple of months. A cook’s job was much more hands-on and required knowledge she didn’t possess. She didn’t even need more than one hand to count the number of times she’d stepped into a kitchen before today. Her mother employed more than one chef and a half dozen helpers to assist them. The food they prepared was exquisite, always interesting, but she’d never been curious enough about how it was prepared to venture into their domain, which was the hottest, messiest room in the house.

She could learn to cook, she supposed, but not without instruction or—a cookbook! She wondered if the general store in town even sold books, much less a specific kind, or for that matter if the owner could even read. Besides, even if she could miraculously find a cookbook in a town as small as Nashart, that wouldn’t help her tonight if these people expected her to feed them. And it was already late in the afternoon. Dinner should probably already have been started!

“Why ain’t you married, pretty gal like you?”

The question cut into her thoughts and brought her eyes back to Zachary. She almost smiled when she answered, “I’m engaged to be.” Only she would find that amusing since it was true for Jennifer and herself, Tiffany.

But to go by his sour expression he didn’t like that answer and was quick to say why. “You ain’t gonna up and leave us when you get hitched, are you?”

“I—I agreed to a two-month trial period here. If I like the area and the job, then my fiancé has agreed we can start our marriage here, instead of in California, which is his preference.”

“He actually let you come here alone?”

She told him what Jennifer would probably have said. “It was a matter of necessity. We’re both saving toward a nest egg, so we can buy our own house once we’re married.”

He chuckled. “So I’m actually helping you to get hitched all the sooner? Well, don’t you worry, you’ll earn every penny and then some. We’re even expecting a visitor from the East sometime this summer, and Mary’s been worrying about having fancy food on hand and some new curtains sewn for the parlor, but you’ll have time to get all that figured out.”

Tiffany groaned inwardly, afraid the visitor he was talking about was
her
. He actually wanted to impress Hunter’s fiancée? Or was it just his wife who did?

She decided to find out, asking carefully, “Do you often get visitors from so far away?”

“Ain’t a damn thing ordinary ’bout this visit,” he said in a grouchy tone.

She knew she was overstepping her bounds, that a housekeeper wouldn’t be so bold, but she couldn’t keep herself from asking, “Who is it?”

“That’s a sore subject, gal. Gives me indigestion just thinking ’bout it,” he said with a grimace. But when he saw her staring at him with such wide eyes, he amended, if evasively, “It’s just someone involved in an old business arrangement. You just worry ’bout getting the house in order.”

He
was
talking about her. She was sure of it. And he obviously found the marriage arrangement as distasteful as she did. Was he regretting that he’d agreed to it so long ago? Why didn’t
he just call it off then? Was it a matter of honor? Or maybe these Callahans had been hoping she wouldn’t survive to adulthood to marry their heir. She wished she could ask, but without Zachary’s actually mentioning her name or the betrothal, she couldn’t. But the lack of staff in his household was still a major problem and she could most definitely mention that.

“What I saw while walking through your house was much more than the accumulation of dust and dirt due to one servant’s absence for a few days. Your downstairs maid obviously hasn’t been doing her job.”

Zachary’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think of firing her, gal. Maids don’t grow on trees out here.”

“Firing and hiring would of course be at your discretion. I would merely make suggestions.”

“And expect me to agree to them?”

He didn’t look pleased. But at least he didn’t look angry either. Flustered was more like it. He was a rancher unfamiliar with the hierarchy of servants. And considering how few household servants he actually employed, that wasn’t surprising.

“We can address this issue after I’ve met your downstairs maid and find out if she’s lazy or simply ill trained. But since it sounds as if she won’t be returning soon enough for the job that needs immediate attention, I’m requesting the use of some of your hired hands to help get this house into a manageable condition.”

Zachary burst into laugher. “They won’t clean a house! They’re cattlemen, not maids. Actually, they might if
you
asked ’em.” He laughed again at that notion.

“You won’t insist that they help me?”

“Hell no. I ain’t risking good cowhands up and quitting on me ’cause you don’t know how to swing a broom.”

There came the blush again. It wasn’t a matter of knowing how, she thought indignantly, it was a matter of drawing the line, and this was where she drew hers. She’d hire and pay the maids herself if there were any to be had, but it sounded as if there weren’t. Obviously, he didn’t care that he was risking
her
up and quitting on him. She almost did. This was intolerable. His house was a pigsty!

It was on the tip of her tongue to confess who she really was and demand to be taken back to town when he looked over her shoulder and said, “Hunter, take our fancy housekeeper to the bunkhouse. Let her find out the hard way that cowboys ain’t gonna scrub floors for her.”

Chapter Twelve

T
IFFANY HAD ACTUALLY SEEN
out of the corner of her eye a group of men riding from the open range toward the house. They’d been too far off for her to tell if they were cowboys, then they were gone from view toward the back of the house. And while she’d thought she heard footsteps behind her a little later, she’d been too involved in her conversation with Zachary to turn around and confirm it.

Swinging around now to finally see who her fiancé was, she once again saw two men, not one. The teasing charmer was one of them. He was half sitting on the porch rail, wrists crossed over his bent knee, hat tipped low to shade his face. The other man was leaning against the wall next to the door, arms crossed over his chest. He was almost as tall as the charmer, which was probably still over six feet, and surprisingly, just as handsome. Something unsettling about him caused her to stare for a moment. A distinct air of . . . danger? Surely not, yet for some reason he made her think of an outlaw. The Callahans wouldn’t
harbor criminals, would they? Yet she couldn’t help imagining this was what an outlaw would look like when he wasn’t trying to disguise himself for a robbery.

Like the charmer, he also had black hair, though his was a little shorter and a lot neater. His boots weren’t scuffed, they were almost shining. The spurs certainly were. And he wore a black jacket more suited to a city street than a Montana ranch, a white shirt under it, and a thin cravat at his neck rather than a bandanna. His gun belt was much fancier, too, the black leather etched with a swirling design and adorned with silver studs. He didn’t dress like a cowboy, so why was he on a ranch? Was he a visitor from town? Or—was
he
Hunter? The thought nearly paralyzed her.

Not once, in all her musings about the man she was to marry, had she considered the possibility that she would be
afraid
of her husband. That was the “something” she sensed about this other man. He was clearly dangerous. And that settled that. If he was Hunter Callahan, she was leaving.

Neither man had yet moved. They both simply stared at her, not quite the way Cole had stared, but it was staring nonetheless. Powder-blue eyes roved over her in a lazy, appreciative manner. Stormy-gray eyes locked on hers and moved no farther. Both men were unnerving her. And she still didn’t know which one was Hunter!

The son should at least have said something to his father when he arrived, but he was probably more interested in listening to his father’s conversation with her. Or had they even heard it? It was a long porch, so maybe not.

Then both men straightened at once, leaving her still glancing expectantly between them, holding her breath.

“Come along, Red. This will be amusing.”

Her breath whooshed out. Hunter was the charmer and her relief was immediate, but only because the dark, dangerous one wasn’t her fiancé. As for Hunter, she wasn’t sure whether she was glad he was the charmer. But she couldn’t think about it now, when he wasn’t waiting for her and was already heading down the steps. The other man didn’t budge, at least not until she rushed past him to catch up with her fiancé.

Hunter glanced back and stopped before he rounded the corner of the house, but it wasn’t her he was looking at or talking to when he said, “Thought you were going to beat me to a bath, Degan?”

“That was before something occurred to break the tedium,” the dark, dangerous man replied in cultured tones.

“You’re just going to make the boys nervous,” Hunter warned.

“So?”

Hunter chuckled. “Suit yourself.”

Hunter didn’t seem to fear him, although implying that the hired hands did confirmed her suspicions that the man standing too close behind her was as dangerous as she’d guessed. She wanted to move away from him. She actually had an urge to run back to the house. Irrational fears, she chided herself. Then she realized Hunter was glancing down at her.