“Does that mean you prefer the bunkhouse?”
Lissa gritted her teeth. “I assume,” she said, each word frosted with icy sarcasm, “you have an indoor kitchen.”
“To the left, past the stairs.”
“You have a menu in mind?” she asked with saccharine sweetness. “Boeuf bourguignon? Poulet à l’orange?”
“Very funny.”
“Yes.” Her smile widened; it could have killed. “I’m known for my sense of humor.”
“Find something and cook it. Just be sure it’ll feed a bunch of hungry men.”
That took the smug smile off her face. “What hungry men?”
“I told you. This is a working ranch, Duchess. I have six guys who’ll be showing up in a couple of hours, cold, tired and hungry. They’ll expect something that will stick to their—”
Thud!
Lissa Wilde spun toward the closed door at the end of the hall. “What was that?”
Aw, hell!
Nick knew what it was.
It was Brutus. The Newfoundland.
He’d confined the dog in his office when he went to the airstrip. The big dog loved snow. Keeping him in the truck cab would have been impossible; keeping him from scaring the new cook would be been equally impossible. Nick had learned the hard way that there were lots of people scared spitless by a dog the size of a bear.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The office door shuddered. Lissa looked at Nick.
“What,” she demanded, “is making that noise?”
He thought of telling her that it was a bear. That it was a crazed moose. In the end, there was no time to tell her anything.
Two more thuds and the office door flew open. A black shape as big as her old VW hurtled toward Lissa, panting and drooling, nails scrabbling over the worn wood floor.
“Whoa,” she said, and Brutus woofed with joy when he spotted someone deserving of a Newfoundland welcome.
Amazing, considering that the dog never offered that welcome to anyone but him, but there wasn’t time to think about that; there was only time to say Brutus in a sharp voice…
Too late,
The dog flung himself at Lissa, paws flattened against her shoulders. A long pink tongue slopped across her face.
They went down in a heap, woman and dog, and Nick cursed and started the seemingly endless procedure that would lead to his divesting himself of the crutch, leaning it against the wall at an angle where he’d be able to reach it after he got them apart, and how in hell was he doing to do that when squatting or bending was damn near out of the ques—
“Oh, you beautiful baby,” Lissa Wilde said.
Nick blinked.
Brutus’s tail was wagging like a metronome gone insane.
Nick looked at his traitorous dog and the woman who wanted him to believe that she was a chef. The dog was lying on top of her; her arms were wound around his neck.
Nick felt every muscle in his body turn hard.