Her Right-Hand Cowboy (Forever, Tx Series Book 21) Read online

  “Well, whatever you choose to call it, you coming back here at this time saved me a lot of work,” he told her. “Paulina tends not to be all that pliable,” Mitch confided. Then he said warmly, “Thanks.”

  Granted she was secretly proud of herself, but admitting that made her seem somehow vulnerable in her own eyes. So she dismissed his compliment. “I didn’t really do anything. It’s just nature’s way of filling a vacuum.”

  Mitch could only shake his head. “You are a really hard woman to give a compliment to, you know that?”

  Ena handed over the rope that he had put around the foal’s neck. “Watching this little guy eat made me realize how hungry I was. I’m going in to see if I can scour up something to eat,” she told Mitch, walking away from the mare and what appeared to be the mare’s newly adopted foal.

  Mitch watched her go. He was about to tell her that she didn’t need to scour anything, because when he had gone in to check, The housekeeper, Felicity, was preparing a fried-chicken dinner. She’d probably finished by now and most likely was waiting on “the new boss lady” to come in.

  But that was an experience she needed to have firsthand, he thought. So he let Ena go to the ranch house while he got the new “mother” and her foster colt bedded down for the night.

  The second Ena walked in through the door, she could smell it. Someone had cooked something.

  Chicken?

  Had Mitch prepared dinner for them while she’d been busy with the foal and his new “mother”? If that were the case, why hadn’t he said anything to her?

  She was on her way to the kitchen by way of the dining room when she stopped in her tracks.

  The table was formally set.

  Had Mitch done that, too? He didn’t strike her as someone who would do something like that, not formally at least. He struck her more of the anything-goes type, which meant that she’d have to get her own silverware and dinner plate.

  By now she caught another scent. Flowers? No, she detected lilacs, which had to be a cologne. Not the kind that doubled as an aftershave lotion.

  Had he brought in a woman to do the cooking?

  Ena wasn’t sure what to expect as she walked toward the kitchen. While her mother had been alive, all the meals had always been prepared by her. After her mother had passed away, her father had a series of housekeepers who did the cooking and cleaning.

  None of them lasted longer than three months. Most handed in their notices sooner, unable to put up with the demands that her father always issued. When she’d walked in the front door, Ena had been ready to take over the kitchen despite the long day she had put in.

  But it didn’t look as if she had to.

  Just as she was about to troop into the kitchen to find exactly who was behind this scent that had come wafting in to greet her, Ena all but collided with a small compact-looking woman, standing no taller than five foot one.

  The woman wore her salt-and-pepper hair up in some sort of hairstyle she’d fashioned that looked like it was half a twist, half a bun. Judging from the dusting of flour that was on the top of her blouse and apron, the woman Ena had narrowly avoided tripping over was the source of not just the cologne but the delicious aroma tempting her, as well.

  The woman was carrying out a platter filled with fried chicken pieces.

  “Ah, you are here at last,” the woman declared with latent satisfaction. “The food was not going to remain warm much longer. Sit,” she ordered, gesturing at the place setting at the head of the table.

  Ena didn’t recognize this miniature tyrant of a woman at all. If she was one of the housekeepers her father had gone through, she had no recollection of her.

  Looking at her, Ena said, “And you are...?”

  “Busy,” the woman responded crisply. “And you will be underfoot if you come into my kitchen.” She nodded toward the front door. “Mr. Mitch should be here any minute. With the others,” the housekeeper added.

  “The others?” Ena repeated, confused. “What others?” she asked.

  “The men who work on the ranch, of course,” the woman told her.

  Of course? There was no of course about it. The scenario the woman was describing was a far cry from the almost solitary meals that she had taken in this room with her father the last two years before she’d left.

  “Don’t they eat in the bunkhouse?” Ena asked, still confused.

  “Mr. Bruce said it would be easier for me if everyone ate in here. That was why he had this big table made.”

  Now that the woman mentioned it, Ena noted that the dining room table was close to one and a half times larger than the one that had been there the last time she had eaten in this room.

  “I see you’ve met Felicity,” Mitch said, walking in. “Dinner smells great, Felicity,” he told the housekeeper.

  Felicity looked unfazed by the compliment. “It tastes even better if you eat it warm.”

  Ena stared as Mitch took his seat to the right of her chair. She wasn’t accustomed to having a foreman eat with her, much less having all the hired hands piling in, as well. “When did all this happen?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around the fact that, according to the housekeeper, this had been her father’s idea.

  “A few years back.” He saw the skeptical expression on Ena’s face. He had a feeling he knew what she was thinking. That her father hadn’t been behind the suggestion. “I told you your father had changed,” Mitch reminded her.

  “Was this your idea?” Ena asked, watching as the ranch hands filed in and took their seats around the table.

  He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d had nothing to do with it, Mitch thought. “Let’s just say it was a joint idea, one that your dad agreed only made sense.” He could see that she had more questions for him. He second-guessed her. “Your dad saw the advantages of a good meal being the easiest way to keep his men working like well-oiled machines. And Felicity’s meals were fantastic,” he added. “So if Felicity had to cook for everyone, everyone might as well be in the same room to eat those meals. That made it easier on Felicity.” Mitch looked around the table. “Dig in, men. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow,” he told them.

  “Every day’s a big day,” Wade said as Mitch’s lead ranch hand helped himself to several big pieces of Felicity’s fried chicken.

  Ena’s brow furrowed. “What’s tomorrow?” she asked, looking from Wade to Mitch.

  “Wednesday,” Mitch answered simply.

  “What he means to say is that every day really is a big day.” Billy spoke up, trying to make the foreman’s comment less mysterious.

  “That’s just his way of keeping the rest of us from slacking off,” Wade told her in between sinking his teeth into the chicken thigh he had speared.

  “Why don’t you try the mashed potatoes?” Mitch urged, holding out a big serving bowl toward Ena. “In case you didn’t know, Felicity makes the best mashed potatoes around,” he told her.

  How could she know? Ena wanted to ask. She hadn’t even known about Felicity until just now.

  “It’s true,” Billy confirmed eagerly, jumping into what he thought was a conversation. “Even better than my mama’s.”

  “You didn’t have a mama,” one of the other ranch hands teased. “Everyone knows you were hatched out of an egg.”

  “That’s enough,” Mitch announced forcefully. “I’m sure that Miss O’Rourke doesn’t want to hear you all behaving like a bunch of schoolboys. Do you?” he asked, looking toward Ena for backup.

  If she were being honest with herself, Ena wasn’t sure if she felt the hired hands’ behavior was irritating or entertaining. It was certainly a far cry from what she remembered meals being like when it was just her father and her.

  Back then, the air was either filled with recriminations all surrounding her behavior or it was filled with silence because she couldn’t find a to
pic that was safe to broach to her father without hearing any criticism. Ena liked neither, especially not the criticism.

  Deciding it was safer to be easygoing, Ena said, “I don’t mind.”

  Her answer immediately won over every man at the table. They all grinned at her almost in unison—and then they all started talking at once, asking her questions, offering comments and information.

  Some also told her which of the horses might be ready to be auctioned off and which of the stallions should be kept as breeding stock.

  Ena did her best to try to keep everything that was being said at the table straight, but it was all too easy to just lose the thread of what someone was saying, or who was saying it.

  By the time dinner was over and the hired hands finally all took their leave, going to the bunkhouse, Ena felt as if her brain were exploding. Not the way it had when she was having a migraine, but it was still being overtaxed.

  The expression on Mitch’s face when he looked at her was nothing if not sympathetic. And then he smiled at her. “Worn-out yet?”

  “Oh, I’m way past worn-out,” Ena told him. She really hated admitting a weakness, or appearing vulnerable. But she felt that on some level, she and Mitch had a bond. So she asked, “Is it like this all the time?”

  “This was a slow day,” he replied.

  Her eyes widened like cornflowers searching for sunlight. “You’re kidding.”

  “Maybe just a little,” he admitted, trying to put her at ease, at least to some degree. “But not nearly as much as you’d like me to be. Ranching isn’t for sissies,” he told her. Then he waited a beat before adding, “That’s something else your dad liked to say.”

  “Yes, I’m familiar with that saying of his,” she replied, her face clouding over. “Do you make a habit of quoting my father?”

  Maybe he’d overstepped here, but since he had taken that step, he couldn’t retreat. That would be counterproductive.

  “Only if the occasion calls for it,” he told her. “I guess I just wanted you to appreciate the man your father was. He changed from the image you’ve been carrying around in your head,” he explained. “He was a man who decided to take a chance on an eighteen-year-old orphan when he didn’t have to—and all common sense told him not to.”

  He saw her mouth harden just a bit around her jawline and her eyes flash.

  “Too bad he didn’t want to do that with the daughter he did have,” Ena murmured.

  Abruptly, she pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. Instead of heading for the stairs, the way he thought she would, Mitch saw her heading toward the kitchen. Thinking he might have to avert a situation in the making, he quickly hurried after her.

  “That was a very good meal, Felicity,” he heard her say to the housekeeper. “I enjoyed it a lot.”

  The woman turned her head in Ena’s direction, her expression ambiguous. And then she smiled at her. “It was my pleasure, Miss Ena,” she told the young woman with feeling.

  “How long did you work for my father?” Ena asked.

  Felicity didn’t have to pause to answer. “Eight years.”

  “You stayed with him for eight whole years?” Ena asked, stunned.

  “Yes, I did,” the housekeeper replied without any hesitation.

  “That’s amazing,” Ena marveled.

  Felicity didn’t see what the big mystery was. “Mr. Bruce paid well and he was a good man to work for. He was hard, but he was also fair.”

  Ena had to admit that she was nothing short of amazed.

  The housekeeper wasn’t the first one to call her father a good man or say that he was a fair man to work for. Had her father actually undergone some sort of earthshaking rebirth in his later years? Because no one would have ever referred to Bruce O’Rourke as being good back when she had lived with him.

  She felt almost angry that he had changed this much in his later years—because her mother hadn’t been the beneficiary of this miraculous personality change. He had been this really difficult man to deal with back in those days. While Ena was happy that other people found him a good, decent man to work for, she was highly resentful that her father hadn’t come around this way while her mother was still alive.

  Ena felt tears forming.

  Bruce O’Rourke had cheated her mother, Ena thought bitterly. This was just one more thing that she couldn’t forgive her father for.

  Chapter Eight

  Ena hated having to be in a position where she was forced to make excuses. Doing so brought back painfully uncomfortable memories. Suddenly, she was an adolescent, standing before her father and explaining why she had done, or had not done, something. Which was why she avoided the entire scenario if she possibly could.

  But she couldn’t this time. Couldn’t avoid the call she was going to have to make to Jay Whittaker at her firm in Dallas.

  Whittaker wasn’t exactly her boss so much as he was the senior partner in the accounting firm where she had worked ever since she had graduated from college. But even though he wasn’t her boss, she always had the feeling that the vastly competitive man was persistently watching her, waiting for her to slip up and make some sort of mistake. It wasn’t anything he had ever actually said to her as much as it was the attitude he seemed to exude. He enjoyed bullying people. It made him feel important.

  But Ena knew that the longer she put off calling Whittaker, the longer the call and its outcome loomed over her.

  So the following morning, right after spending a restless night followed by breakfast she couldn’t really get down, she put in a call to the Dallas office. It was 8:20 a.m., the time when Whittaker always showed up in the morning. She knew it was because he liked getting the jump on the people he worked with.

  Sitting in the small crowded room her father used to call his den, Ena listened to the phone she’d dialed on her father’s landline ring.

  The phone on the other end was picked up after two rings. Ena willed the knot in her stomach to go away.

  “Mr. Whittaker, it’s Ena—” she began, only to have the scratchy-sounding voice belonging to Jay Whittaker cut her off.

  “When can I expect you back?” Whittaker asked bluntly without any polite exchange between them. “Friday?”

  Typical, she thought before trying again. “No, I’m afraid not—”

  “What do you mean afraid?” Whittaker asked, interrupting her again.

  Whittaker was accustomed to firing out questions rapidly and getting back answers the same way. Ena was certain that the man had never had a leisurely conversation in his life.

  Putting the call on speakerphone, she wearily attempted to explain, “My father had an unexpected clause in his will—”

  “What kind of clause?” Whittaker asked her impatiently.

  “The kind that is going to wind up making me stay here for the next six months,” she answered through clenched teeth.

  As much as she didn’t like being controlled by her father or being forced to stay here in order to comply with the will, Ena liked having to explain herself to Whittaker even less.

  “Six months?” The base of the landline all but vibrated from the impact of his high-pitched voice. Ena was just grateful she wasn’t holding the receiver against her ear.

  Ignoring the man’s very obvious display of anger, Ena plowed straight to her point. “I’m going to have to request a leave of absence.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Whittaker said in a tone that told her that he was anything but sorry, “but you can’t ask for one out of the blue. The firm can’t—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish. “You can call it a family emergency,” she informed him. “I have enough vacation time accrued over the last six years to actually cover the time I’m going to need,” she pointed out, her voice growing in strength.

  The one thing she hated more than having to explain her
self was having to ask for a favor. But strictly speaking, this couldn’t be called that.

  Only Whittaker would think of it in those terms.

  “And you expect your job to just be here waiting for you once this so-called emergency of yours is over with, is that it?” Whittaker asked, a nasty edge to his voice.

  Ena tried another approach. She really didn’t want to make waves. In general, the firm had been good to her. Whittaker was the only one who had ever been difficult to deal with.

  “I can go over some of the work that needs to be done from here. I can work on it in the evening and email it to the office. My assistant at the firm can handle the rest,” she assured Whittaker. “Don’t worry, the work will be covered.”

  Whittaker sounded far from placated. Or maybe he just wanted to use this as an excuse to get her out of the way, Ena thought as she heard him say, “I’ll have to bring this to Mr. Blackwell’s attention.”

  “I realize that. But you don’t have to.” Before he could say anything to contradict her, Ena told him, “I’m going to be making a formal request for this leave and sending it to Mr. Blackwell as soon as I get off this phone.”

  That temporarily took the wind out of the other man’s sails. Whittaker made a disgruntled noise. “You realize that the reason you were hired ahead of the other applicants was because you didn’t have any baggage. We thought that would prevent this sort of thing from happening and hampering the company.”

  “The firm isn’t being hampered. It’s just being mildly inconvenienced,” she told him firmly. “Believe me, I’m not happy about this.”

  “That makes two of us,” Whittaker bit off. He made another aggravated sound, then told her, “I want regular updates from you. I’ll have one of the assistants send out one of your accounts to you the second I clear this with Mr. Blackwell.”

  With that, Ena heard the connection terminate. Swallowing a few choice words, she leaned back in her chair.

  “Nice guy,” Mitch said, coming into the den. “He your boss?”