So she was firm. Neither he nor his newlywed cousin would be charged for the repairs to the room, but he was damn well paying for the bottles of expensive champagne he’d ordered.
Ellen was good at her job, knew how and where to hold the line and do it without inciting a confrontation. In fact, her natural personality was the same—she hated conflict, so she was good at getting out ahead of it, and at negotiating around it. She read people and situations well and found the smoothest path through to mutual satisfaction—or, if not that, at least a resolution with minimal drama.
She told herself she’d staved off heartbreak more than once by seeing it coming and getting out of its way. In quiet moments alone, she could admit to herself that wasn’t entirely true. Her heart had been broken more than once. But at least she’d never lost her dignity because of it. She’d walked away with her head high, without drama or scandal or too much gossip. In a town like Jasper Ridge, that was a real achievement to be proud of.
Jasper Ridge was a tiny town of a little more than two thousand people—maybe up to four thousand if you counted in the Sawtooth Jasper Reservation and the farmers and ranchers who lived close enough to call Jasper Ridge their town. The pool for finding romance was more of a puddle. She’d been involved with a few men, a couple of them seriously enough for her to think it could be more, but it never had panned out.
The most recent time had been one of those heartbreaks, when she’d walked away from a very good thing because she’d seen its end speeding toward her. She’d been right, too. Rather than get trapped in the latest town soap opera, this one a love triangle, she’d simply stepped out of the way and let the saga carry on without her. Nobody paid much attention to Ellen after that, so she’d been able to lick her wounds and move on in peace.
As a girl, Ellen hadn’t had much ambition. No wanderlust, no dreams beyond the limits of Jasper Ridge. She’d figured on living a life like her mom: married early, a mother early, a regular farm wife for life. She’d expected the Moondancer to be a temporary thing until she found a man worth marrying and got that life started. Then she’d discovered she was good at the work, and not so good at picking men, so she’d started paying more attention to the thing she did well.
At the age of thirty-five, Ellen was one of the most successful, and influential, people in her little hometown. But she was beginning to think she’d never have someone to share real love with, the kind of love that lasted.
It was time to start planning for a life without it.
Chapter Two
When Ellen managed to get down to the staff dining room at about twelve-thirty, Luke was already seated and halfway through a roast beef sandwich and a big order of steak fries.
She went to the kitchen, and Naomi Thomas, the head chef, handed her a plate that she’d already had waiting. Naomi understood Ellen well.
Naomi had been running the kitchen as long as the Moondancer had been in operation, and except for regular meetings to discuss the food budget and menus and any special requests from upcoming guests and events, Ellen stayed out of her way.
Naomi called herself a cook, and most of the Moondancer’s fare was the homestyle menu their guests expected, with a little Indigenous flair from her own Shoshone culture, but she was as skilled as any top-tier chef, and when she had the chance, she pulled out all the stops.
Staff lunch was not a chance for her to pull out the stops. Usually, the staff menu was sandwiches, soups, salad, and chili. All of it delicious, of course.
“Thanks, Naomi,” Ellen said with a smile as she took the plate of grilled chicken breast on sourdough and a salad. “You need anything last-minute for tonight?”
Though for the most part at an event like this corporate retreat, meals were served at will within a range of hours for each, with snacks throughout each day, they always presented an elaborate buffet spread for the first night and the Chuck Wagon Dinner for the last.
Ellen always asked if Naomi needed anything for these larger meals, and the answer was always the same.
Naomi smiled and gave Ellen a gentle push toward the door. “Get out of my kitchen, Ellie, and take a break. Everything’s under control.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ellen poured herself a glass of ice water and headed out to meet Luke.
He stood and held a chair for her as she came to the table.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“I don’t mind. You’re the one with the packed schedule.” He sat back down and returned to his meal.
Luke and Ellen had started working at the Moondancer at about the same time, though he was five or six years older. He’d started out as a ranch hand, doing grunt work in the stables and pastures while she was doing grunt work in the big house. But he was active on the rodeo circuit, too, as a major contender and then champion in tie-down roping events, and that skill had gotten him on Catherine’s radar, so he’d moved up to more responsibility more quickly than Ellen, who’d been good at making beds and who hadn’t been encouraging to the handsy guests.
By the time Ellen was managing the ranch, Luke had been the livestock manager for a few years. Technically, she was his boss now, but truly, they were equals—she ran the humans and he ran the animals.
His charges were often the better behaved.
Luke was kind of an odd duck. For the most part, he kept to himself, but not like a hermit. He managed to be in the middle of just about everything without pulling any attention to himself. She didn’t think he’d ever had an actual girlfriend, or even dated that much. The few girls she knew he’d gone out with gossiped that he was the dullest date in the history of the sport.
Ellen thought maybe he was just shy in that particular situation and preferred his own company. On the ranch, he was good with the guests, a great teacher, and especially good with children. He was a magician with animals—in fact, Ellen would say his deepest relationships were with his horse, his dog, and his hawk. He also had a reputation for being a white knight around the ranch, often showing up out of nowhere to defuse a dicey situation between one of the girls and a guest.
He’d saved Ellen’s life once—literally. Several years back, she’d been snooping in the bunkhouse, trying to get information on one of Catherine’s shady hires, a guy the Cahills had suspected—correctly—of being a hired killer. Said hired killer had caught Ellen in his room and beat her to hell and back. If Luke hadn’t been there and heard the commotion, she might not have managed the return trip.
They were both hometown kids and had known each other in some way or another from childhood. She knew the kind of details about his family that got whispered in the cereal aisle at the IGA. And yet, Ellen couldn’t say she understood much about the man sitting beside her. He was an enigma and a paradox—a loner who was always in the middle of everything; a teacher, performer, and athlete who didn’t like attention; an animal lover who spent the first hours of most days fetching and cleaning the carcasses of his hawk’s kills.
He was also a massive, black-bearded, black-eyed, muscle-bound mountain who looked like he could kill a grown man with a single clench of his fist—and had a resting expression that suggested the intent—but he had the softest voice of any man she’d ever known. It wasn’t high—the opposite, actually—and not even especially quiet. Just soft. Gentle. A warm, sweet, slow drawl, like molasses rolling over her mom’s gingerbread pancakes.