Hot Westmoreland Nights - Brenda Jackson [7]
Crap!
He slid the truck into gear to start moving again. What he should do is to turn around, go back and tell her as nicely as he could that she wouldn’t work out. Then he’d call the employment agency and request that they send out a replacement.
He checked his watch, wondering how much time it would take to get another cook out to his place. Would the agency be able to find someone else right away? At least in time for lunch? Probably not, which meant he was stuck with the woman at least through today. But what if the agency couldn’t find anyone else by tomorrow? What then?
He brought the truck to another stop and rubbed his hand down his face. This wasn’t good. The shearers had been at it since six that morning after eating the pitiful breakfast that he had prepared. And he of all people knew his men worked hard and expected a good meal at lunch to keep going until the end of the day. And as their employer it was his job to make sure they got it.
As he turned his truck toward the area where the shearing plant was located he set his jaw in determination as he thought about the challenges that lay ahead with his new cook. He grabbed his cell phone off the seat beside him and figured that maybe he should call the house and check on her, make sure things were running smoothly, and then he quickly decided against it. Although he hadn’t given the woman time to say much of anything, he had liked the sound that had flowed from her lips with the few words that she’d spoken.
She looked young, maybe a year or two older than his sister Megan who would be turning twenty-five in a few months. Why would a woman that young want to be a ranch cook? The scowl on his face deepened. Sniffing behind any woman was something he hadn’t done in a long time and was something he wouldn’t be doing now.
A satisfied smile touched Chloe’s face as she glanced around the huge kitchen thinking she had somehow pulled it off. Granted she’d had to call Mama Francine and the older woman had walked her through the peach cobbler recipe, but once Chloe had begun moving around, getting familiar with her surroundings, she had felt within her element. She had made herself at home. She enjoyed cooking, although she would prefer not doing so on a constant basis for a small army.
Ramsey Westmoreland had a well-equipped kitchen with beautiful granite countertops and a number of shining stainless steel pots hanging from a rack. There was an industrial-size refrigerator, a large stove and a spacious walk-in pantry filled to capacity and in neat order. She had been able to find everything she had needed without any problems.
She had glanced through the cook’s log that was kept on the kitchen counter. She saw that on most Mondays the men were fed chicken and dumplings, string beans and bread pudding for lunch. To Chloe’s way of thinking that menu sounded bland and she had a mind to fix something different. She’d decided on lasagna, a tossed salad and Texas toast. For dessert she figured the peach cobbler would do the trick.
And she had set the table differently. Although she figured when it was time to eat a hungry man didn’t care how the table looked, she decided to spruce things up with a different tablecloth, a springy yellow instead of the plaid one that had been on the table and appeared to have seen better days.
It seems that knowing he would always feed a huge work crew, Mr. Westmoreland had built a spacious banquet-size dining room off from the eat-in kitchen with tables and chairs to comfortably accommodate around fifty people. To her way of thinking, it was a smart move and showed just how much he cared for his employees. They would feel important enough to eat under the boss’s roof instead of them being relegated to eating in the bunkhouse. To her that said a lot about the kind of employer he was.
She checked her watch. With less than fifteen