Charm School for Cowboys Read online

  Short-Order Cook...And A Baby On Board

  As if meeting his birth mother and discovering he has a twin brother aren’t enough to test a man, Jake Morrow’s short one ranch cook. So when pregnant Emma Hurley comes looking for a job and whips up the best steak dinner he’s ever had, Jake hires her on the spot. And when Emma’s father demands she marry or lose her family farm, Jake stuns Emma—and himself—by proposing.

  After being left in the lurch, Emma can handle five hungry, romance-challenged cowboys. Well, except for one—the handsome rancher and Blue Gulch’s most eligible bachelor—who gallantly comes to her rescue. Only now Emma’s gone and fallen for her pretend fiancé. But Jake isn’t looking for a forever kind of love...is he?

  Jake walked over and reached up a hand to Emma’s face. He could see this was tearing her in two, breaking her heart.

  He took a deep breath. Expelled it. Turned and paced the length of the bedroom. Looked at Emma. Looked out the window. Closed his eyes. Opened them and found her looking at him as though he might need medical attention. Which he might.

  He paced some more, then stopped. “Marry me, Emma. We’re both not looking for a real relationship or a real marriage. You’ll save the farm.”

  What the hell? Had he just said that? Had he just proposed to Emma?

  Good God, he had. Without thinking. Gun to head, what are you going to do, Morrow? Well, this was the answer.

  A marriage proposal.

  She stared at him. “Jake. You can’t be serious. What could you possibly get out of this?”

  “The best cook in Texas?” he said, managing a weak smile.

  Had he just said that? What the hell was wrong with him? If anyone needed Emma’s charm school for cowboys, he did. Good Lord.

  * * *

  HURLEY’S HOMESTYLE KITCHEN: There’s nothing more delicious than falling in love...

  Dear Reader,

  In my previous Special Edition, The Cook’s Secret Ingredient, the heroine’s aunt Sarah takes the first step in reaching out to the twin sons she gave up for adoption as a teenager thirty-two years earlier. In Charm School for Cowboys, one of those twins, our handsome hero, Jake Morrow, has moved to Blue Gulch to connect with Sarah and begin the search for his biological twin brother, who was adopted by a different family.

  But a few things hold Jake back from his quest. There’s a lot going on at his Texas ranch. Like how his younger brother feels about Jake seeking his twin. Then there are his rough-around-the-edges ranch hands, who all have trouble in the romance department and sorely need charm school. Emma Hurley, the new cook at the Full Circle, is pregnant and on her own, yet tries to help the cowboys turn their luck around. Jake just might find himself unexpectedly transformed, too. Especially when Emma’s father issues her an ultimatum and everyone discovers what family, in all its forms, really means...

  I hope you enjoy Jake and Emma’s story. I love to hear from readers! You can write me at [email protected] or under my real name, [email protected]. Meg Maxwell is a pen name, if you didn’t already know!

  Yours,

  Meg Maxwell

  Charm School for Cowboys

  Meg Maxwell

  Meg Maxwell lives on the coast of Maine with her teenage son, their beagle and their black-and-white cat. When she’s not writing, Meg is either reading, at the movies or thinking up new story ideas on her favorite little beach (even in winter) just minutes from her house. Interesting fact: Meg Maxwell is a pseudonym for author Melissa Senate, whose women’s fiction titles have been published in over twenty-five countries.

  Books by Meg Maxwell

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen

  A Cowboy in the Kitchen

  The Detective’s 8 lb, 10 oz Surprise

  The Cowboy’s Big Family Tree

  The Cook’s Secret Ingredient

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  In dear memory of Greg Pope.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Her Kind of Doctor by Stella Bagwell

  Chapter One

  “I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man in Texas, Hank Timber!”

  Jake Morrow glanced up in time to see Fern, a neighboring rancher who’d dropped off the four billy goats he’d purchased for the Full Circle Ranch, scowling at his foreman. Fern stomped to her truck and sped off, dust and gravel flying in her wake.

  Hank didn’t even bother waving away the dirt and grit that now covered him. He shoved his hands in his pockets, his expression forlorn as Jake approached.

  “Didn’t go so well, huh?” Jake asked his foreman. Hank, twice divorced, had mentioned at breakfast this morning that he thought Fern was “darn pretty and had a way about her” and planned to ask her out to dinner at Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen, everyone’s favorite restaurant in Blue Gulch.

  Hank sighed. “I thought that rancher to rancher, I could ask her out by joking that we already had something in common—how we’d both stink of cow dung while chowing down on supper. Then I sniffed around her and nodded and laughed. Instead of saying yes to a date tonight, she got all mad.” He shrugged, watching Fern’s truck disappear down the Full Circle’s long dirt drive.

  Jake refrained from slamming his palm against his forehead. At this rate, Hank would be single forever. Of the four cowboys working for Jake at the Full Circle Ranch, his foreman wasn’t even the most clueless when it came to women. No, Jake would say it was a four-way tie. Forty-two-year-old Hank had been in love with Fern since he laid eyes on her a month ago while listening to her presentation on calving season at the local rancher’s association meeting. Twenty-five-year-old Golden, who’d earned the nickname from the motto about silence, was so shy and quiet he turned away any time the young woman he had a mad crush on, a Hurley’s waitress, was around. Fifty-two-year-old Grizzle, who hadn’t shaved or had a haircut in years, maybe a decade, spoke wistfully of his late wife and how he wished he could find someone as special, but had scared a little girl at the feed store in town with just the sight of him. Then there was Jake’s own brother CJ, ten years his junior at twenty-two, who took full advantage of his good looks and ranch-honed muscles to play the field. CJ had left a trail of broken hearts and parents, older sisters, and bffs to storm up to Jake in town and let him know just what a “no-good lying player” his brother was. Charles John Morrow was a good guy, Jake knew that more than he knew just about anything, but when it came to love and romance, CJ was an absolute hot mess, a train wreck, as his neighbor’s teenage daughter would put it. CJ would just say, Well, what was I supposed to do? Propose? She just wasn’t the one. The Morrow brothers had been in Blue Gulch all of one month, and at least ten young women hadn’t been “the one.”

  Jake couldn’t relate to all this hankering for “the one.” He’d been
able to once, though. Five years ago he’d even gotten down on one knee and proposed with a skywriter spelling out the words in puffy white across the dusky sky. But his girlfriend Samantha wouldn’t say yes without certain conditions being met, difficult conditions that Jake had realized she was probably right about and so had tried to meet. Jake was adopted and had no knowledge of his medical history. Samantha didn’t feel comfortable starting a future, which would include children and a lifetime together, without knowing what was in that history. And so Jake, not quite comfortable with digging into a past he wasn’t all that interested in, had gone through his late parents’ documents, looking for information on the adoption agency that had handled his case so he could contact them.

  What he’d found among those papers had shocked him.

  Jake had a biological twin brother who’d been adopted by another family. The scrawled notation on a document didn’t say anything else.

  A twin brother—out there in this world.

  Jake had lain awake night after night, thinking about the twin, wondering if they were identical or fraternal. If they were similar despite being raised apart. His curiosity burned with a fundamental need to know more. And so five years ago, he’d written a brief letter to his birth mother, sent it to the adoption agency to be placed in his file, and put the search in motion.

  CJ had freaked out. He’d only been seventeen then and they’d recently lost their parents; suddenly his older brother wanted to find his birth mother and twin. It had been too much for CJ. Samantha had thought that CJ was being a spoiled brat who would simply have to deal with it. Problem was, Jake had understood both sides. They’d both been right—CJ to feel...threatened, and Samantha to want to know how her future, how her children, might be affected by Jake. But after CJ had broken down one night, sobbing, unable to even speak, his grief, his fear speaking for itself, Jake had told Samantha now wasn’t the time for him to find his birth mother, that maybe in six months, he could broach it again with CJ.

  Samantha had flipped. You’re putting CJ first, she’d shouted, pointing a long nail at his chest. The man I marry will put me first. She’d stormed out, and that was the last Jake had seen of her.

  But his birth mother hadn’t responded to the letter anyway—until just two months ago. Out of the clear blue sky on a rainy March afternoon, he’d received a call from a private investigator in Blue Gulch about how his birth mother had read his letter five years ago, was sorry for the long delay and hoped to make contact. At first Jake had said he wasn’t interested and practically hung up on the investigator. But then his birth mother, Sarah Mack, had written him a short letter, assuring him that when he was ready she’d be there, and he’d been unable to stop thinking about her. Who she was, what the circumstances of his birth were, what she might know about his twin. And so he’d called Sarah Mack, who lived clear across Texas. Three meetings in Blue Gulch later, Jake had developed a real kinship with Sarah and with the quaint ranching town. And since Jake had been dealing with a bitter uncle who felt the Morrow family ranch should have passed on to him and was constantly filing lawsuits, Jake brought up the idea to CJ of just walking away and starting over in Blue Gulch; he’d seen a ranch for sale that had felt like home the minute he stepped on the land. CJ, who as usual had been dealing with an angry ex who liked to pass by with a rifle out her car window, had quietly agreed but had made it crystal clear that Jake’s birth family wasn’t a subject he wanted to talk about.

  Sarah Mack had told him the only thing she knew about his twin was that they were fraternal. Thirty-two years ago, at a home for pregnant teenagers, she hadn’t been able to hold either baby, let alone see them, but she’d overheard a nurse comment on it. She didn’t know anything about who might have adopted him. There was nothing in the twins’ file to indicate he wanted to make contact, but Sarah had left her own information for him. Lately, the idea of finding his twin was consuming Jake to the point he couldn’t sleep at night.

  Now he glanced over at CJ in the barn, his brother grinning while telling a dirty joke that had even shy Golden doubling over with laughter. Jake wasn’t sure if he should start the search on the down low or talk to CJ about it first. Since his brother had agreed to move to where his birth mother lived, where her family lived, CJ had to have come around somewhat. But something told him his brother wouldn’t be comfortable about Jake trying to make contact with his twin, even if CJ wasn’t that grieving seventeen-year-old kid anymore.

  “Speaking of dinner tonight, who’s on duty to cook?” Jake asked Hank, gesturing at the other cowboys; CJ and Golden were checking on Frodo, the very old gelding Jake had rescued, while Golden cleaned up the barn for the night.

  Hank pulled out the little notebook he carried everywhere. A folded up schedule of the month of May. “Tonight is CJ. Guess we’re having burned burgers and charred beans.”

  Again. Except last night, on Golden’s turn, the burgers were mostly raw and the beans hard as a rock. “I need to find us a cook,” Jake said for the hundredth time. He’d put an ad in the local free weekly and stuck a notice up on the town green’s bulletin board, but none of the applicants were right for the job, and Jake wasn’t all that picky. Most had issues with the early morning breakfast hour, which was five sharp at the Full Circle, meaning arriving for work at four thirty before the birds were even awake. He’d added “live-in” to the ads, noting the job would come with room and board, but of the bunch who’d applied, two had turned up drunk for the interview and five had no cooking experience and couldn’t even tell Jake how to make scrambled eggs. The last applicant, a woman with real experience as a sauté cook in the steak house in town, broke into tears during the interview and confessed she didn’t really want the job—she only wanted to be close to CJ, who’d dumped her after two dates.

  “Oh hell, I’ll cook tonight,” Jake said, craving a steak grilled just right, a baked potato with sour cream and chives, and cold, fresh salad with croutons and his favorite dressing, blue cheese. All that times five meant dinner would be a while, and he still had phone calls to return, invoices to pay and auction sites to look over for livestock.

  He sent Hank to tell Golden, still a rookie, that he’d put Starlight’s saddle backward on its stand, then turned toward the house and the kitchen. He had a mind to sneak into Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen tomorrow and offer to pay any one of their cooks double their salary to come work for him. But then he wouldn’t be able to show his face there again, and he craved their po’boys too often for that. Plus, no one messed with Essie Hurley, who owned the place.

  His phone buzzed with a text—from Fern, who’d sold him the goats earlier. That flock of sheep we talked about? I’m selling it to the LoneStar Ranch instead. Their foreman doesn’t tell me I smell like cow crap.

  Oh hell, he thought for the millionth time, shaking his head.

  * * *

  Emma Hurley had been through a trying time or two in her twenty-six years, but nothing compared to locating one very handsome, slippery cowboy who clearly did not want to be found. Well, I finally did find you, Joshua Smith, and I’m coming whether you like it or not!

  She’d been trying to track down the guy for six weeks now, ever since she’d discovered she was pregnant. Once the shock had worn off she was filled with a deep-down happiness about the baby, but she still wondered how on earth she could have been so careless to sleep with a stranger—a ridiculously good-looking, smooth-talking stranger who’d said all the right things, including that of course he would use a condom. The condom had torn, apparently. If Joshua had noticed, he hadn’t said anything. But maybe he had noticed. And maybe that was why he was gone without a word in the middle of the night, no note, no cell phone number, no nothing.

  Once she knew she was pregnant, she tried to find him by asking around the rodeo circuit, where they’d met, but no one seemed to have heard of a rookie bull rider named Joshua Smith. Finally, another cowboy said he
was pretty sure Joshua worked on a ranch in Blue Gulch, which had been a relief—Emma had family in that town, a great-aunt, Essie Hurley, who owned a popular restaurant, and three cousins. But after weeks in Blue Gulch, staying at Essie’s and working part-time at Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen when it was clear Essie didn’t need the help, Emma still hadn’t tracked Joshua down.

  Until this morning—when she’d been waiting on her iced mocha at the coffee shop and overheard two men talking about the rodeo as they were walking out. She’d asked them if they knew of a cowboy named Joshua Smith and she’d expected the usual, “No, sorry.” But a funny look came over one of the men’s faces and he said, “Joshua Smith? Do you mean Tex? Bull rider, right?”

  Emma had almost dropped the iced mocha the barista had handed her. Apparently, Joshua had recently gotten a job at the Full Circle ranch ten miles out of town and only went by Tex. He probably switched to his given name for women he wanted to seduce. Joshua Smith sounded like a man who’d be there in the morning; Tex, more like a good-time guy. Nevertheless. She’d found him!

  Now, as she followed the directions her great-aunt had given her to the ranch, she thought about how easy it had been for Joshua—Tex—to fool her. The day she’d met him, back in late January, she’d had a whopper of an argument with her father, a CEO whose photo should appear beside the dictionary definition of the word controlling. Reginald Hurley was upset that she wouldn’t quit her job as a short-order cook in an all-night diner, a place she loved working, with coworkers she adored and a manager who liked coming up with funny names for the specials. You’ll never meet an appropriate man in a greasy spoon like that, Emma, her father always said. Let me get you a job at Le Vieux—it’s a four-star restaurant.

  Emma had tried that already; after culinary school she’d worked in three fancy restaurants. In one, the chef screamed in her ear to the point she’d drop expensive cuts of meat. In another, the sous-chef would slap her on the butt everytime he passed her, then lied about her work performance when she reported him to the owner. In the final one, a customer had sent back his salmon three times; it wasn’t “just right” and he couldn’t explain why, and she’d been fired on the spot. The next day she’d seen the help-wanted sign in the diner, noticed that the cooks visible through the open area behind the counter were whistling and chatting away, and she’d gone right in. The manager liked to give awards to the staff to keep them happy. She’d won Best Burger, Best Flapjacks and Best Attitude on Busy Sunday Mornings.

 
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