Carla Kelly (25 page)

While the nests cooled on the work table, she removed the roast and covered it with the hardening oyster blanket and set it in the warming oven. After pouring perry vinegar over it, Julia set the warm liver salad, quivering on watercress, in the middle of the table next to the string bean salad. Quickly she filled the fried potato nests with creamed peas and put them next to the Duchess Potatoes. Careful not to disturb it, she carried the roast in its oyster blanket to the head of the table, where Mr. Otto could carve it.

When she heard the cattle, Julia went to the kitchen door again and stood there as the men of the Double Tipi, plus others she didn't know, rode over the ridge and through the open gate of the corral that Matt and James had strengthened yesterday. She couldn't help blushing when Mr. Otto, sprouting several days’ growth of whiskers, tipped his hat to her.
Oh, Mr. Otto, I have such a meal for you,
she thought, barely able to contain her excitement.

She went into the kitchen and traded her stained apron for a spotless white one. Eager to share what she did so well, Julia went back to the door to watch the men corral the noisy cattle and then stable their horses. Impatient, she silently urged them to speed through the currying and graining.

Mr. Otto came in first. Suddenly shy, Julia put her hands behind her back like a little girl. “Welcome back,” she said. “I've fixed quite a dinner for you.”

He looked over her shoulder at the laden table. “I brought along a few extra mouths to feed,” he told her, his eyes on the food. “McLemore still thinks you'll swoon over him and start cooking in
his
kitchen. Marlowe wasn't about to miss this, and there are two cattle buyers all ready to be impressed.”

She watched his face, wondering what he was searching for, and stepped back so he could get closer to the table. He stood there for the longest time. She could hardly keep her delight to herself. “Takes your breath away, doesn't it?” she asked finally, unable to resist.

He turned around and stared at her until she felt a slow blush rise up her chest to her neck. “Darling, where are the steaks and hash browns?”

“Oh, that. I told you I could do much better, Mr. Otto.” She gestured to the table, suddenly less sure of herself. “This is what happens when you hire a graduate of the Boston Cooking School.”

She stepped aside as the other dusty men came into the kitchen, hats in hand, with their eyes on the table.

“D-do be seated,” Julia said after clearing her throat, which suddenly felt dry.

Chairs scraped out, but to her discomfort, no one sat down. The room was quiet as the men looked up and down the table.

Mr. Otto whispered in her ear. “Where's the steak?”

“I cooked a roast,” she whispered back.

He looked at the table and frowned. “I don't even see that,” he whispered again.

Julia felt her heart begin to sink. “It … it's under the oyster blanket. Right there.”

“Good grief,” he said as he sat down heavily. He looked around. “Sit down, gents.”

Julia couldn't overlook the men's reluctance. She went to the stove and returned with the soup tureen she had brought from home. “We're starting with watercress soup, which is followed by string bean salad and warm liver salad.”

Ten pairs of eyes looked at her simultaneously, and she felt her heart slide down to her shoes. Doc looked away first, staring down at the tin bowl in front of him as she ladled in the pale green and creamy soup. Matt sighed and stared briefly at the ceiling, as though invoking saints. Charlie McLemore's expression was unreadable. To Julia's horrified eyes, it looked more like relief than anything else—relief that she had not actually accepted his proposal of two weeks ago.

She went around the silent table, doling out the lovely watercress soup that two Congressmen and a Boston alderman had praised when she served them a year ago, at her Fancy Cooking examination dinner. She darted a glance at Mr. Otto, but his expression was unreadable. He dipped a cautious spoon into the smooth goodness that had been rewarded with an A grade in Boston.

“It's cream of watercress soup,” she managed. “Very nourishing.”

“Very green,” McLemore said softly as he set down his spoon.

The silence seemed to hum. “Try some of the warm liver salad,” she whispered.

“Not in my lifetime,” he said. As she watched, her eyes wide, McLemore got up, put on his Stetson, and walked out the door without another word.

“But it's my best meal,” Julia said to no one in particular as Marlowe rose too.

“I'm sure it is, Julia,” he said, and his expression was kind. “I just remembered that Alice wanted me to come right home.”

“We'll come with you,” one of the buyers said hurriedly, his face red. “Miss Darling, we need to get to Cheyenne. You know, lots of paperwork there, to get ready for this shipment.”

“I…”

She stopped. She was just speaking to their backs. Horrified, she didn't know where to look. As it turned out, it didn't matter, because no one was looking at her except Mr. Otto.

She reached out to pass him the warm liver salad and stopped.
Alice Marlowe warned me, and I didn't listen,
Julia thought, as the acutest humiliation settled around her like the oyster blanket around her beautiful roast. She looked around the table, deeply aware that not one man still seated there wanted what she had prepared. In her confidence—maybe her arrogance—she had gone against every gentle hint lobbed in her direction.

“I'm truly sorry about this,” she said. Her voice seemed unnaturally high to her ears, but at least she wasn't in tears. “Matt, you know where those steaks are that you cut yesterday.”

He nodded.

“I've left a mess here in the kitchen, so perhaps you could take them to the bunkhouse, and you all can fry your own dinner.”

All the chairs scraped back at the same time; they couldn't leave the room fast enough.

She looked at James, who was watching her, his eyes uncertain. “James, you and Matt know how good the Duchess Potatoes are. Carry that platter to the bunkhouse, will you?”

“They
are
good,” Matt said.

“Take the cake too,” Julia said. She went to the work-table by the Queen Atlantic and picked up the lovely loaf cake, all speckled with silver dots. She had spent hours placing each little medallion.

Willy Bill eyed it with suspicion. “Looks like buckshot.”

“Take it, Bill.”

There wasn't any arguing with Mr. Otto's tone of voice. The old hand picked it up gingerly as though he expected it to explode and held it out far in front of him.

Julia watched the men file out the kitchen door, James bringing up the rear with the Duchess Potatoes, each a little dollop of perfection. He looked back at her, and she gave him the only smile she had left anywhere.

“Have a seat, Darling.”

She hadn't heard Mr. Otto rise, and there he was behind her. She gave him only the quickest glance, too ashamed to actually look in his eyes. She did see that he was holding a chair out for her. She sat down, her hands in her lap, her eyes on her plate, so embarrassed that she almost asked the Lord to open up the floor and let her slide away in blessed oblivion.

He sat down again. Her cheeks burned, and she held her lips tight together, determined not to cry. In her ignorance, she had fixed the best meal she knew how. Her return ticket was in the bureau in her room. She could be on her way tomorrow.
Fire me, Mr. Otto,
she thought.
Just fire me, and get it over with.

he stared down at the table, blinking back tears.

When she finally looked up, Mr. Otto was eating the warm liver salad, his eyes on her as he chewed and manfully swallowed. He managed two bites and was about to fork up another when she stopped him.

“You needn't eat that, Mr. Otto,” she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

“I won't argue,” he told her. “I've never been partial to string beans, so I'll let that one go, as well.” He tapped the oyster blanket covering the roast in front of him. “What's underneath this?”

“A roast, medium rare,” she whispered, not certain if he was trying to humiliate her or if he just was curious.
Julia, you know he's not cruel,
she reminded herself. “You can just peel back the blanket and slice off some roast.”

He did as she said without comment, slicing off a healthy slab of meat, pink all the way through. “I usually like my meat a little more done, but I'll give it a try,” he told her as he cut himself a piece and popped it in his mouth. He nodded. “Not bad at all.”

It wasn't precisely fulsome praise, but she felt some of the heat leave her face. She tried to arrange her expression along neutral lines as she looked at her empty plate again, convinced that she would never eat or cook another morsel at the Double Tipi. Her brief tenure was coming to an end.

“And those little bird nest things over there?”

Julia looked up. He was pointing with his fork at her lovely Potatoes en Surprise, those crisp little baskets holding creamed peas.

“Potatoes en Surprise,” she told him calmly, even if she couldn't look him in the eyes. “I fried the shredded potatoes, shaped them into nests, and put creamed peas in the nests.”

“That
is
a surprise.” He took one, eyed it a moment, and forked into it. “Not sure about that one,” he said when he finished one nest. “Still…” He took another nest onto his plate.

Why did it take her so long to realize what he was doing? Deserted by his hands, friends, and business associates and all by himself, he was being kind to someone who had come up fearsomely short. She didn't know Mr. Otto well, but she knew he did not suffer fools gladly. He was being more considerate than she had any right to expect.

Julia Darling, he at least deserves the courtesy of your regard,
she thought, as she mustered up her courage and looked him in the face.
And it certainly won't hurt you to apologize.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Otto,” she said, grateful to speak the words and thankful for her own calmness, especially when she was churning inside. “I … I just thought that when you specified a graduate of the Boston School of Cookery, you wanted what a graduate would do. You're being awfully nice about this, but you can go ahead and fire me. I deserve it and I don't mind.”

He was silent for a long moment, idly twirling his fork in the potato nest, agitating the creamed peas. “I can't do that, Darling,” he said finally. “Remember that contract we signed? It protects me, but it also protects you. Nope. We have a year to get it right.”

He had her there. She wanted to say something; what, she wasn't sure, when she heard horses in the front yard. She looked out the window to see Charles McLemore again, Mr. Marlowe at his side. Both men looked tight-lipped and grim, and she knew why.

“H'mm. Maybe they changed their feeble minds about dinner,” Mr. Otto commented as he sliced off more roast.

“No, Mr. Otto. I've done a worse thing. Let me show you what I did.”

The men hadn't dismounted yet. They seemed to be arguing. Julia rose and beckoned Mr. Otto to follow her. She led him into the parlor, warm and inviting now, with the lovely building paper Mr. Rudiger had applied. Mr. Otto looked around, appreciative.