Rob nodded his understanding. “Thanks again for the clothes, Nick. I’ll keep my eyes open, and we’ve got Maverick.”
After Nick left, Rob thought about the danger he might put MJ in by staying here. “He could be right, MJ. I don’t want to do anything that will put you at risk.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up. It probably isn’t Kent, but he’s the only person I could think of. Besides, I feel safer with you and Maverick here than I do alone. Ridgeview is a safe place, but since this happened, it has me nervous. Don’t even think about going back to the Ridgeview Motel.”
“All right. I’ll stay, but only because Maverick being here will protect us both.” Maverick sat watching them, wagging his tail slightly.
“Good. It’s settled then. Now, I’m going to take a shower. Then I’ll make us breakfast.”
He grinned at her. Under all that shyness and her soft voice, she was a determined young woman with a backbone of steel. He liked that a lot. Maybe too much.
Chapter Thirteen
MJ found Rob in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Maverick sat at his feet, gazing between a frying pan of sizzling bacon and Rob, as if he could will the man to drop something.
“Wow. I didn’t expect this. You can cook?”
“Sure, I can cook a half a dozen things. Breakfast is my specialty. I’m glad you had bacon, because it isn’t breakfast without it. Do you want eggs or pancakes or both?”
“Seriously? I can’t eat that much. I usually have yogurt or toast.”
Rob made a face. “To each their own, but since I’m cooking, I’m making a full meal.” He tossed an egg into the air and turned and caught it behind his back.
“I’ll have eggs—unless you end up breaking them all.”
“No worries. I’ve been juggling eggs since I was a kid. How do you like them? Fried? Scrambled? Or maybe you’d like an omelet.”
“Ooh, an omelet sounds wonderful.” She hurried over to the refrigerator to check on ingredients she could add to it. She felt Rob at her back, peering in, too.
“How about mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and cheese?” he asked as she reached for those same items.
“Great minds think alike, I guess.” It amazed her how in synch they were with each other.
He took the ingredients and carried them to the counter. “Why don’t you sit while I get everything ready?” He ordered Maverick away, and the dog lay down on the rug near the back door.
She watched Rob competently chop the onion and tomato and wash and slice the fresh mushrooms. She pulled the cheese grater out of the drawer and handed it to him.
“How did you learn to cook?”
“My mom taught me. As a rancher’s wife, she did the cooking for our family and the ranch hands. Everybody ate meals together—a big farm breakfast, box lunches in the middle of the day since we couldn’t take a long break, and a great home-cooked meal like stew, meatloaf, pot roast, or fried chicken for supper. I was an only child, so it made sense for me to help her out in the kitchen. Eventually, I stepped in to do all the cooking when she got sick.”
“What happened?”
“Cancer. She fought it for nearly six years. I was in high school when she died. The end was rough. It invaded so many parts of her body, she couldn’t fight any longer.”
“I’m sorry, Rob.”
He shrugged, but she could tell it had been terrible for him.
“My dad lost the will to keep on struggling as a cattle rancher. He sold off nearly a third of the herd while she was sick. I suspect the medical bills demanded it. When she died, his heart was no longer in it. He sold off some land. I helped as much as I could while going to school. I did the cooking, and he reduced the number of ranch hands. When I graduated from high school, I just wanted to move on. I considered going to college, but we didn’t have the money. Joining the military seemed like a way to learn something besides ranching. By then, I was sick of all the struggle that came with it. When I went to visit him after basic, he looked like he’d aged ten years, and the ranch looked run-down. Dad died of a heart attack during my first deployment. I felt guilty about leaving him alone, but I couldn’t stay there and watch everything go downhill. Maybe if I’d stayed, things would have been different.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I’d planned to stay in the Army. Now when I think about what I want to do, I think about getting my own spread, finding a ranch and raising cattle, and maybe some other stock. Funny how things change.”
She watched as he took a half dozen eggs and broke them into a crockery bowl. He scraped the mushrooms, onions and tomato pieces off the cutting board and combined them with the eggs before pouring half into a slope-sided frying pan. He pulled paper towels off the roll to drain the bacon, and slice by slice took it out of the large pan. She got up and fetched her grease jar from the cabinet under the sink.
“Will you go back to Colorado?”
He poured the bacon drippings into it, continuing to talk as he did so. “I haven’t decided yet. The droughts out west have made it difficult for ranchers and farmers to maintain their stock. Plus, the price of land has gone up because of population growth and suburban development.”
“We see that around Ridgeview County, too. Old family farms are turning into subdivisions, and rural land gets paved over by roads to carry people back and forth to Knoxville. It makes me sad, because I love
