Cooking Up Trouble Read online

  How nice he was. Heather wished she deserved his kindness. “Thank you very much, Mr. St. Pierre. But there’s truly nothing wrong. I’m only—a little nervous about cooking, you see. I, um, haven’t been very handy in the kitchen before this.” Which was probably the first absolute truth she’d uttered since she accepted this wretched job.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that from Mrs. Van der Linden, but I couldn’t credit her words. Your cooking is superb.”

  “Thank you.” Heather wanted to crawl under a rug and die.

  “That being the case, I wondered if you’re up to doing something more ambitious.”

  Her heart sank. “Something more ambitious?” She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t ask.

  “I’ve been considering giving a dinner party for some of my neighbors.”

  “Oh.”

  “I fear I haven’t been particularly sociable since I moved to Fort Summers. The truth is that I’ve concentrated so hard on building my ranching operation that I haven’t until now given much thought to getting to know the people in the community.”

  “I see.” Heather tried to take comfort from the sure knowledge that D.A. Bologh could probably whip up a feast for thousands with a wave of his hand, but couldn’t. D.A. Bologh gave her the creeps, and there were no two ways about it.

  “Do you think you’d be up to preparing dinner for a party of . . .” He hesitated for a moment and seemed to be thinking. Heather held her breath. “Say fifteen people or thereabouts? Sixteen, I suppose, would be better, to keep the numbers even.”

  “I shouldn’t think that would be a problem, Mr. St. Pierre.” And if it was, she’d just shoot herself.

  His smile almost knocked her flat. She took another deep breath and nearly hyperventilated. This was absurd. Not only was she in a constant state of frenzy because of the lies she’d told, but she also had this terribly unladylike reaction to her employer. Who thought she was a very pretty young woman. She gulped, wishing she hadn’t remembered his words.

  He probably hadn’t meant them.

  But what if he had? The other men in town seemed to think she was pretty.

  Bother, if she didn’t stop getting distracted, she’d never get anywhere. Philippe St. Pierre had just said something and was now looking at her quizzically, as if he expected an answer, and she had no idea what he’d said. This was terrible.

  “Um, I beg your pardon, Mr. St. Pierre. I was—thinking of a menu for the party.” Liar, liar. How could she tell such whoppers? She never used to be a liar.

  “Ah, I see.”

  Was it her imagination, or did his smile warm up ever so slightly? Heather licked her lips and paid attention.

  “Actually, I was asking you what you thought you might serve.”

  “Oh.” Shoot, now what? Stall, that’s what. “Um, may I get back to you on that, Mr. St. Pierre? I still have some thinking to do.”

  “Certainly.”

  He kept staring at her, and Heather felt her nerves skip wildly. He was so different from the other men she knew; she’d already discovered within herself a very improper impulse to explore his differences in depth. Perhaps by hand. If he didn’t stop staring at her, her reserve might crack and she’d do it, too.

  She told herself severely that just because she’d become a liar and a cheat, it didn’t mean she had to become a hussy, too.

  “Miss Mahaffey,” he said after too many tense moments, “would you be willing to assist me with the guest list and perhaps address the invitations?”

  “The—the guest list?” He was going to make a guest list and send invitations? Shoot, when her folks had people over for supper, they just invited them on the street. This, she guessed, was the difference between first class and no class. “I’ll be happy to, Mr. St. Pierre.” That was the truth, too, and she felt minimally better about herself for a second. Didn’t last long. As soon as he smiled again, she had to fight to keep from fainting.

  “Fine. That’s fine. When do you suppose you’ll have the menu prepared?”

  Merciful heavens, he wanted to accept or reject the menu? She was glad she lived in the West, if this is what people who lived back East had to go through in the course of their employment. “Um, I don’t know. In an hour or so?”

  “All right, and then perhaps you can tell me when you’d be able to prepare the feast. I don’t want to rush you.”

  Rush her? Was he joshing her? But of course, he didn’t know her evil secret. “It’s not a problem, Mr. St. Pierre. I’m sure a week will be plenty of time to prepare.” Then again, what did she know? Maybe dinner parties typically took months of preparation. She wished she knew more about what her job entailed.

  “That quickly? I’m impressed. I thought you might have to order something special.”

  “Special? Er, no, I don’t think so. Um, I don’t go in for really fancy stuff.”

  “You could have fooled me.” He chuckled. His chuckle, unlike the chuckle of D.A. Bologh, made Heather want to curl up and bask in its warmth.

  She was obviously insane.

  She thanked her lucky stars when Philippe dismissed her a few moments later, and she could escape to her kitchen. Except it wasn’t her kitchen. D.A. Bologh still sat at the kitchen table, and he still looked wicked.

  But she needed him. Heavens above, what had she done?

  * * *

  Philippe watched Heather leave the library and experienced a mad desire to beat her to the door, slam it, trap her, and then ravish her, totally and completely. He’d bet that it wouldn’t take him too long to light the fires of passion in her—if he ever got past her tightly controlled reserve. He sensed passions inside of her, banked and ready for release.

  Shaking his head hard, he told himself to stop dwelling on it. He had plans in that direction already, and he aimed to carry them out. Besides, he had a dinner party to prepare for. He snorted derisively. He wanted to socialize with Fort Summers society about as much as he wanted to return to New Orleans, which was not at all.

  Nevertheless, it had occurred to him that it would be interesting—perhaps even amusing—to see how long it would take him to break down Heather Mahaffey’s resistance to his charm, and he’d decided that working with her in some joint operation might do it. It generally didn’t take long, primarily because he was good-looking and had lots of money. Women went for that sort of thing.

  He couldn’t understand why Heather didn’t. Perhaps she had a beau among the rustic cowboys in his employ or the gents in town. He frowned at the thought of the lovely Heather on the arm of Sandy Porter, the town’s rough-hewn blacksmith, or someone of that ilk. Not that he didn’t like Sandy, who was polite and friendly. And the man was a fine blacksmith.

  “Merde,” he muttered, furious with himself for thinking about the girl at all, much less inventing reasons to get together with her. This was most unlike him.

  She was unique, however, in his experience of women. Not only was she as pretty as any of the women around whom he’d grown up in New Orleans—and the house in which his mother worked had only employed the loveliest females in town—but she seemed totally unaware of her beauty. Or, if she was aware that she was pretty, she didn’t seem to value her looks a whole lot.

  Her attitude, in fact, was completely out of the ordinary. Most of the women Philippe had heretofore known would have killed to possess half of Heather’s natural beauty, because it would have made the chore of snagging husbands and/or protectors that much easier.

  Not Heather. She didn’t seem to be in the market for a husband, a protector, or anything other than a paying job.

  In other words, she didn’t expect the world to take care of her but thought she had to do it herself, and Philippe honored her for her spirit. He didn’t even mind too much that she cooked in the French manner. He’d sworn that he’d never again eat anything that reminded him of his French-Cajun roots. That had been a childish vow, however, and he knew it now. Food fueled the body. What did it matter how it was prepared? At least the meal
s she fixed were tasty, and he shouldn’t complain if they reminded him of New Orleans.

  This dinner party idea was probably a good one, even if he didn’t feel much like socializing. A keen observer, Philippe had figured out already that folks tended to band together here on the western frontier. People needed each other here as they didn’t elsewhere. It would do him no harm, socially, politically, or financially, to be considered one of the locals, no matter how little he wanted to need his fellow human beings.

  Isolation. It was all he’d ever known, and he craved it as some people craved love. Philippe didn’t need love. He didn’t need anything or anybody. He’d created himself, and he aimed to perpetrate his creation without assistance from anyone else in the world. If you allowed other people to matter, you were then vulnerable, and Philippe would never again be vulnerable. That was one vow he aimed to keep. He would, however, play the game society expected because it would make his life easier.

  That’s why he aimed to become better acquainted with Heather Mahaffey. She could be his link to the society in Fort Summers. That’s really the only reason he’d asked her to assist him in preparing for the dinner party in the first place.

  He felt a little better after he’d cleared up the matter in his own mind.

  * * *

  Yvonne St. Pierre had curled up on the gorgeous Turkish carpet in her boudoir hours before and still huddled there, her head buried in her arms, her arms folded on the seat of an expensive medallion-backed chair. She’d been alternately sobbing and moaning, wondering how much worse her life could get.

  D.A. Bologh had found her son, and he now aimed to ruin Philippe’s life, as he’d ruined hers. This was her real punishment. All of those preceding years had been merely a build-up to the shattering climax. She’d believed for decades that her punishment would end with her. She ought to have known better. D.A. Bologh would never let a person in his thrall off the hook so easily.

  “Cheer up, my sweet, it’s not all that bad.”

  Yvonne’s head jerked up. “You,” she said, her voice raw with pain.

  “Who else?” D.A. grinned and twirled his mustache.

  She didn’t answer. What could she say? She didn’t dare ask about Philippe. Not that it mattered. D.A. was impervious to time, space, and mortality, and he already knew how badly she was hurting inside. The irony was that none of her anguish showed in her flawless skin, brilliant black eyes, or lush, firm body. She took a couple of hiccupping breaths, hoping to control her tears. It always amused D.A. when she cried, and she didn’t want to provide any more entertainment for him than she had to.

  D.A. perched negligently on the arm of a beautifully carved medallion-backed sofa, a match to the piece upon which Yvonne had been crying. Sounding as if he were continuing a conversation they’d been engaged in for hours, he said, “This gentleman of my new-found acquaintance—the one in New Mexico Territory? The one whose last name is St. Pierre?”

  Yvonne uttered an involuntary cry of protest.

  D.A. laughed. “Don’t fret yourself, dear heart. He’s prospered amazingly. Do you know that he’s a secret philanthropist?”

  She didn’t speak.

  “He is. In fact, he supports an orphanage right here in New Orleans. I understand he feels some sort of kinship with the orphaned children, and thinks he’d have been better off to have been raised in an orphanage. He bears some sort of grudge against his mother for some reason.”

  Yvonne couldn’t help it. A pain tore through her heart, and she sobbed again.

  “But he’s rich now. He can afford to support any number of orphanages, I’ll warrant.” He pretended to look bemused. “I wonder if he’s already met up with one of my kin and made some kind of a deal.”

  “No!” She leaped to her feet and blindly attacked D.A. Bologh, scratching at his face with long fingernails, beating him with her fists, kicking at him with her bare feet. None of her frenzied attempts at mayhem made the least dent in his diabolical humor, of course. He merely laughed harder, clasped her wrists in a demonic grip, and lifted her from the floor.

  “Tut, tut, sweetie pie. There’s no need for all of this passion. You know good and well there’s nothing you can do to stop me from doing anything I want to do.”

  “No,” she sobbed, collapsing at his feet. “No, please, no. Not Philippe.”

  “Nonsense. The man’s already so deeply affected by our bargain that he hates you and has turned himself into a cold fish on account of you. He’s sworn never to allow a woman to touch his hard heart, the fool.”

  Beyond words, Yvonne only wept softly into her hands.

  “Yes, indeed, he truly loathes you, my dear. Of course, he has no idea you did it all for him. How could he?”

  No answer.

  “But there’s a sweet young thing working there as his cook. I think Philippe is rather taken with her, in spite of his avowed refusal to become emotionally entangled with any one female.”

  With streaming eyes, Yvonne looked at her tormenter. “Please don’t hurt her, D.A. And please, please don’t hurt him. Please let them be. Abuse me if you must, but don’t hurt them.”

  He eyed her coldly. “Why?”

  “Why? Haven’t you done enough damage? Haven’t you exacted enough grief from me? Why start on them? If there’s a chance for them to be happy together, please don’t take it away from them.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Fun!” Yvonne was too outraged to go on. Besides, she knew no pleas of hers would touch this immovable rock of evil who’d been her undoing so many years ago.

  “Unfortunately, the dear thing can’t cook.”

  “She—she can’t cook?”

  “The child could burn water.”

  “B-but you said . . .”

  “Indeed. I said she’s been hired as his cook.”

  Yvonne brushed a hand under her eyes to wipe away tears. “I don’t understand.” She didn’t know what she feared more: knowing or not knowing.

  D.A. nodded. “Can’t cook worth cow-pies. The girl could probably poison me—although I wouldn’t get your hopes up if I were you. But that’s all right. I’m helping her.”

  A horrified, strangled, “No,” crawled from Yvonne’s throat.

  D.A. smiled down upon her, and Yvonne knew that her sacrifice, the one she’d made thirty-three years before in the first terrifying months of her captivity in the house on Bourbon Street, had been for naught. She’d made the bargain to save her son. But she hadn’t saved anybody, and now Philippe, the only person on earth who mattered to her, was going to be punished for her sins.

  “Oh, but yes, sweetheart. And I think we should have us a little celebration in honor of what’s sure to transpire shortly.”

  He slid to the seat of the sofa and lifted Yvonne onto his lap. She protested feebly, but he only laughed and began making his devilish magic on her body. Soon she was writhing with need, hate, and passion, and D.A. thrust himself into her slick, tight passage.

  “You’re so very good at this, Yvonne. Everyone should be so good at their line of work.”

  She scratched at him with her nails even as she achieved her convulsive release.

  D.A.’s laughter echoed and re-echoed in the room and seemed to ricochet from the walls and floors and ceiling until Yvonne had to clap her hands to her ears.

  He left her soon after that, and Yvonne did something she hadn’t done in thirty-three years. She threw herself on the floor again, folded her arms on the cushion of a chair, hid her face in her arms, and she prayed.

  No bolt of lightning struck her, so she kept it up until the sun went down and rose again and she had to prepare to dine with her latest protector.

  Chapter Ten

  Philippe stared at Gil McGill, aghast. “Dammit, how could something like that have happened?”

  Miserable, Gil shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir, dammit!” Gil flinched, and Philippe was sorry. Distracted, he ran a hand throu
gh his hair. “I’m sorry, Gil. But how in the name of all that’s holy could a mile of fencing have been destroyed overnight?”

  “I wish to God I knew. It happened quick, too, because I’ve got men riding the fences all night long. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours between ride-bys, and that’s awfully damned quick to take out a mile of fencing.”

  Philippe frowned and stared at the floor. What the devil was going on here? It’s almost as if some malignant force was trying to drive him out of business. Or out of his mind. It wasn’t bad enough that he had to consciously force improper thoughts of Heather Mahaffey out of his brain whenever he had work to do, but now his livelihood was in danger. And why? How? And who was doing it? Philippe couldn’t figure it out.

  Lifting his head, he again pinned Gil with his frowning gaze. “Are you sure there’s no one in Fort Summers who has some kind of grudge against me?”

  Gil looked startled. “Good Lord, no. Everyone respects you, as far as I know.”

  Philippe only stared at him for another few seconds. Then he sighed and said, “I only wish I knew what was going on. Then maybe we could figure out how to fight it.”

  “Er, you don’t know of anyone who’s mad at you, do you?”

  “Not that mad.” In spite of the circumstances, Philippe grinned. “I’m not really a bad man, you know, Gil. Only a prudent one who’s quick to seize opportunities as they present themselves.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I figured.” Gil sounded almost as if he wished the problems on the ranch could be explained away by blaming them on a feud.

  “Keep up the good work, Gil. I’ll set men to fixing the fence tomorrow. Have you found out if any cattle have wandered off?”

  “A few have. I’ve already sent men out to round them up.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your efficiency. You probably deserve a raise in pay.”

  “God, no, sir!” Gil cried, startled. “I’m sure I don’t deserve any such thing. After all, I’m the one who let your beeves disappear and your fences get torn down.”