Cooking Up Trouble Read online

  COOKING UP TROUBLE

  By

  Alice Duncan

  (writing as Emma Craig)

  Cooking Up Trouble

  Copyright © 2000 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  Published 2000 by Dorchester Publishing Co.

  A Love Spell Book

  Smashwords edition September 1, 2009

  Visit aliceduncan.net

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Chapter One

  Forever afterward, Heather Mahaffey blamed it on the wind. If the winds hadn’t been particularly fierce that spring of 1895, she’d never have lost her head and done what she did.

  But that spring the wind blew all day, every day. And it blew hard.

  Folks woke up with their bedclothes sprinkled with fine, powdery dust that had seeped in through cracks in walls. Dust colored their hair and got into their food.

  Children walked to school and arrived with their bare ankles red and raw from having been sanded by wind-born grit. Clothes that had been hung on lines had to be shaken out before they were folded. Even then, women despaired of ever seeing a white sheet again. All the clothes took on a grayish cast—the color of the wind.

  Farm wives and merchants wiped dust from their furniture and wares every morning only to have to repeat the process in the evening.

  Birds flapped forward and flew backward.

  Mrs. Trujillo’s cat, while attempting a leap from the fence onto Mr. Maynard’s bald pate, got swept away by a gust of wind and ended up in Mr. Pollard’s yard, frightening his dog under the house.

  When cowboys on outlying ranches drove their herds down Main Street, the dust didn’t hang in the air as it did during the summertime. Rather, the huge clouds of dust churned up by the cattle’s hooves were slammed by the wind into buildings and scraped the paint from their walls. Businessmen stopped sweeping the boardwalk in front of their stores after a while since the gesture was so futile as to be downright depressing.

  Therefore, Heather wasn’t the only one who blamed the wind. Lots of folks went a little crazy during that blustery springtime in southeastern New Mexico Territory. The wind shrieked day and night, blowing everything that wasn’t nailed down to perdition—and even things that were nailed down, sometimes.

  The steeple on Fort Summers’ Southern Methodist Episcopal Church, erected by the congregation only the prior June, tumbled down, impaling one of Mr. Ojeda’s hay bales and scaring his aging mother into a string of prayers against the Methodists from which it took her five days to recover. Since Mr. Ojeda wasn’t a church-going man no matter which denomination was in question, he wasn’t pleased by his mother’s prayers any more than he was by the ruined hay bale. He didn’t blame the Methodists; he blamed the wind. Heather, although a staunch Methodist herself, understood both points of view.

  Mr. Custer’s windmill blew over. The roof of the Packards’ barn was blown into Mr. Gonzales’s pasture and scared his cows out of a month’s worth of milk.

  More than one front door got ripped from its hinges when a child carelessly shoved it open. One had to hold onto doors if one expected to keep them attached to one’s house. It was not surprising, then, that Heather was sure it was the wind making her turn reckless that tempestuous April day. She knew it was the wind that propelled her into accepting the job Philippe St. Pierre had offered her as cook on his ranch.

  If it wasn’t the wind’s fault, then Heather was in deep trouble because she couldn’t cook a lick. Her whole family knew it, so perhaps the wind had addled her father’s brain, too, when he’d told Philippe how handy Heather was in the kitchen.

  It all started at the spring dance, held at the Fort Summers Civic Hall. Everyone who lived in the area went to the dance on that wind-whipped spring evening, because it had been rumored that Philippe St. Pierre would be there. He’d lived in the area for more than a year, but had until now been rather reclusive. Everybody wanted to snag this opportunity to meet him. After all, none of the folks who lived in Fort Summers or on the farms and ranches in the vicinity of Fort Summers had ever met a wealthy man before. Life was a hardscrabble affair on the high plains, and it didn’t afford men much in the way of riches. Except for a lucky few, like Philippe St. Pierre.

  “He’s from Louisiana,” Geraldine Swift, Heather’s best friend, told Heather at the dance. “That’s how come he has a French name.” Her pale blue eyes, masked slightly behind her spectacles, glittered with curiosity.

  Heather eyed Geraldine over her fan—even though the wind was blowing a hurricane outside, the Civic Hall itself was warm and stuffy, mainly because nobody dared open a window for fear the guests would be blown out through windows on the other side. “What does Louisiana have to do with it?”

  Geraldine, who read a lot, looked superior. Heather didn’t mind. As far as she was concerned, Geraldine was superior. She was also a great source for information. “Lots of Frenchmen live in Louisiana. The French used to own it, after all.”

  “Oh.” That made sense to Heather. Sort of like the Spanish used to own New Mexico Territory. That’s why there were a lot of Spanish-speaking folks living here.

  “Anyhow, I don’t know why he decided to move here to this out-of-the-way place, but he’s established the biggest cattle ranch since John Chisum’s day. Now he’s rich as Croesus.”

  “Who’s Croesus?”

  Geraldine looked at Heather with pity, and Heather guessed she shouldn’t have asked.

  “Croesus was like Midas.”

  “Oh.” Heather remembered Midas.

  “Anyway,” Geraldine continued. “Everything the man touches turns to gold, and he’s awfully rich.”

  “Mercy.” Heather guessed he must be rich if his operation rivaled Chisum’s—she presumed in the days before Chisum went bust. Chisum was an impressive act to follow. “I hope he’s got more morals and higher standards than Chisum had.”

  Heather’s foot began tapping when the fiddles started. She loved music and adored dancing. She hoped she’d get to dance with Mr. St. Pierre. A body could tell a lot about a person by the way he danced.

  Geraldine giggled. “How you talk, Heather! I’m sure Mr. St. Pierre has morals and standards. And he’s as handsome as the devil, too, isn’t he?”

  Heather glanced at her best friend again, and Geraldine blushed. Geraldine, a fine, upstanding young Christian woman, wasn’t accustomed to using words like “devil” in everyday conversation. Unlike Heather, Geraldine was extremely proper and well-behaved.

  However, Heather had to agree that Philippe St. Pierre was a very handsome man. And—good heavens! He was talking to her father.

  Heather’s heart hitched. She hoped Pa wasn’t telling tales to Mr. St. Pierre. As much as she loved and honored her father, she’d lived with him for too many years not to understand his failings, one of which was a tendency to embellish his family’s virtues and downplay their failings.

  The men turned, and Philippe St. Pierre cast a bored-looking glance at Heather and Geraldine.

  The young women gasped in unison. Heather plied her fan wildly and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Oh, no! They’re headed this way!”

  Geraldine’s own fan had been hanging on a ribbon at her side. She lifted it quickly, flicked it open, and hid behind it. Remembering her spectacles,
she yanked them off and stuffed them into her skirt pocket. “Do you think they’re coming to meet us?” Her voice shook with fright.

  “I imagine so,” Heather, on the other hand, was beginning to feel pretty gloomy. “I wonder what Pa’s been telling him about me.”

  Shoot, she hoped he hadn’t said anything too awfully outrageous. The last time Pa got carried away, he’d managed to convince a visiting lawyer that Jimmy, one of Heather’s younger brothers, was a circuit judge. Since Jimmy was, at the time, only eight years old—a precocious eight, to be sure, but still and all—his term in office, if any, lay far in his future.

  “I hope he hasn’t said anything about me,” Geraldine muttered.

  Heather shook her head. “He won’t. He only brags on his children. I wish he’d stop.” She said it wistfully, knowing the wish to be idle. Patricia, Heather’s older sister, had once thrown a king-sized temper tantrum at her father, who had looked sad, apologized, and then gone out the next day to tell folks that his darling Patricia was going to be the finest actress the world had ever seen.

  Most of the folks in town accepted Mr. Mahaffey’s foibles as they accepted those of the rest of their neighbors. Fort Summers, sitting as it did in the southeastern-most part of the territory, bang up against the Texas border and hundreds of miles away from a city of any size, was too small and isolated for feuds to blossom successfully. People needed each other and, therefore, the citizens had become a far more tolerant lot than those in many communities. Heather often had reason to bless them for their forbearance.

  Of course, Mrs. Mahaffey was a saint, and that helped the family’s standing in the community considerably. Heather believed her mother’s overall wonderfulness did much to soften the effects of her father’s tall tales. At least nobody called him a flat-out liar, a degree of restraint which the whole family appreciated.

  He claimed he couldn’t help it because he was Irish. Heather, never having met any Irishmen other than those in her family, all of whom shared her father’s dramatic tendencies, had thus far discovered no reason to doubt him. She hoped this didn’t bode ill for her own personal future. She’d hate to fall victim to some Irish curse that doomed folks in her family to a life of counter-veracity.

  She breathed a relieved sigh when she saw that Pa and Mr. St. Pierre had been stalled in their forward progress by Mrs. Van der Linden. Heather believed Mrs. Van der Linden could stop a train if she took it in her head to do so. Stout and determined, Mrs. Van der Linden didn’t scruple to force herself and her opinions on others. She was happy to tell everyone that, unlike Heather’s father, she believed in plain speaking, and that she always called a spade a spade. Heather thought Mrs. Van der Linden sometimes jumped to conclusions, and that she’d called a shovel a spade on more than one occasion. She’d never say so to Mrs. Van der Linden’s face.

  “Let’s move,” she suggested under her voice to Geraldine. “I don’t want them to catch us.” She took Geraldine’s arm.

  Geraldine resisted. “No. I want to meet him. I wonder if he’s married.”

  “Lord, Geraldine, what difference does that make?”

  “You never know. He might favor one of the local girls.” She smiled musingly.

  Heather wanted to smack her.

  Geraldine sighed. “I’ve never seen such a handsome man.”

  “You can’t see him now, either, unless you put your cheaters back on.” grumbled Heather.

  “Oh, I can’t do that!” Geraldine cried, appalled. “What would he think of me?”

  “He’d think you’re a sensible young woman who isn’t vain about her appearance.” Heather wouldn’t say so, but she didn’t think Geraldine’s specs detracted from her overall looks any, as they weren’t that great to begin with.

  Heather, on the other hand, was acknowledged to be the loveliest girl in the village. Heather herself didn’t put much stock in other people’s opinions of her looks. She’d learned from the cradle that looks counted for little in a rough-and-tumble world like the one in which she lived. Besides, she knew herself to possess many detrimental qualities that should negate her looks in any sensible person. Indeed, she’d overheard Mrs. Van der Linden tell a neighbor, “Heather Mahaffey’s beauty is a mockery. If there was any justice in the world, she’d be as ugly as her sins.”

  Heather, while acknowledging that Mrs. Van der Linden had reason to be distressed at that particular time, since Heather had accidentally dyed Sissy, Mrs. Van der Linden’s white cat, green, she didn’t account one tiny accident as a sin. And that other time, if she’d been reading and allowed Bessy, the Mahaffey milk cow, to roam into Mrs. Van der Linden’s onion patch, she was sorry about it. But she’d paid for the onions. Indeed, the entire Mahaffey family had paid for that particular error on Heather’s part by having to drink onion-tainted milk for three days. The butter made from the same source had been rather interesting when spread on ears of hot, sweet corn.

  But that was nothing to the point. “Please come with me, Geraldine. I don’t think I want to know what Pa’s said to that man about me.”

  “I do.” Geraldine dug in her heels and didn’t budge.

  Heather sighed despairingly. Usually Geraldine did as Heather asked, since Heather had the more forceful personality of the two, but every now and then she got a stubborn spell. From the expression on her face, Heather figured she was in the thrall of one of those spells now.

  “I’m going to get myself some lemonade.” Heather, who could be pretty stubborn herself when circumstances called for it, dodged behind her friend and headed to the lemonade bowl. Her gratitude was unfeigned when Gil McGill offered her an arm.

  “Let’s dance, Heather.”

  “Happy to.” Heather was extremely glad to be bounced off in Gil’s arms, almost in time to the music. Gil wasn’t much of a dancer, but he’d spared her what she feared might be an embarrassing encounter.

  Her happiness in reprieve was short-lived. As Gil yanked her this way and that, Heather caught the occasional glimpse of her father and Mr. St. Pierre. “Fudge,” she muttered. Mr. St. Pierre was looking directly at her, and her father was still talking to him. He was also making huge, sweeping gestures with his hands. Heather knew what that meant.

  “Beg pardon?” Gil panted.

  She gave him a smile that she knew to be stunning. She’d practiced, after all, and used it on certain boys when she wanted them to leave her alone. It usually stunned them into immobility, and she made her escape while they were still gawking. This time her smile made Gil stumble, but that was all right, because his stumble propelled them out of the line of Mr. St. Pierre’s hot, French gaze.

  “Oops. Sorry.” Gil’s face flamed red.

  “Think nothing of it, Gil.” Heather gave him another smile. This one evidently struck him dumb, for he didn’t speak. He didn’t stumble again, either, however, and Heather considered that an improvement. She managed to sneak discreet peaks at Philippe St. Pierre as she bounded around the dance floor with her partner.

  She gulped. Mercy, but Mr. St. Pierre had dark eyes, and they were framed by the sootiest eyelashes she’d ever seen. He also appeared to have lots of dark hair, and it shone in the lantern light and looked thick and wavy. His hair fell almost to his collar. That was a lot longer than most men in Fort Summers wore their hair. Heather suspected Mr. St. Pierre would find it practical to keep his own hair short after the cattle season progressed toward summer, what with the heat and dust and all.

  He also had darkish skin. Were all Frenchmen so dark? Heather’s heart had begun to palpitate alarmingly. She chalked it up to the energetic dance and her partner’s awkward steps.

  The fiddles had been playing a lively tune and were building to a climax. The end arrived at last, and Heather and Gil came to a huffing stop. Gil snatched a bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped his brow. He grinned at Heather. “Thanks. That was fun.”

  “Thank you, Gil. I enjoyed it.”

  Heather turned and saw her father and Philippe St. Pierr
e. Blast! They’d found her again, and now they were heading at her like a couple of thirsty longhorns aiming at a river. She knew she couldn’t postpone the meeting any longer. It was probably better this way. The longer Mr. St. Pierre spent in Pa’s company, the farther Heather would fall from the Frenchman’s esteem if he ever learned the truth. The good Lord only knew what sterling—and erroneous—attributes Pa had crowned her with this time.

  Steeling herself, she smiled at the two men. This wasn’t her stunning smile. Rather, it was one meant to welcome Mr. St. Pierre to the community. It was friendly. Pleasant. Not necessarily inviting. Neutral. Yes indeed. It was the most neutral smile Heather had in her repertoire.

  He, on the other hand, had about the coldest expression on his face that Heather had ever seen. She swallowed. He looked intimidating, actually. She caught a glimpse of Geraldine in the crowd behind her father, and wished she hadn’t tried to avoid the introduction before. Now she’d have to meet the man all by herself, without her friend to support her.

  Bother! What was wrong with her? She’d met men before. She cranked her friendly smile up a notch. “Hello, Pa. Nice dance, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, me girl, ‘tis a lovely dance. And I have a new fella here who wants to meet you. I’ve told him all about you.”

  Mr. Mahaffey winked at her, and Heather’s heart sank to her dancing slippers. It was as she feared: Her father had been filling Mr. St. Pierre’s head with exaggerated claims about Heather and her virtues.

  “Heather Mahaffey,” her father went on, “‘tis a pleasure to introduce you to the newest addition to our little community here in Fort Summers, Mr. Philippe St. Pierre.”

  Heather gulped and extended her hand. She even managed a small but creditable curtsy. Mr. St. Pierre bowed slightly, took her hand in his much larger, darker one, lifted it to his lips, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. She almost fainted dead away from the thrill that shot through her at the touch of his lips on her flesh.