Read Online Forget Me Not by Stef Ann Holm - Free Book Online Page A

Tilden, her father, before amassing his fortune, had been an uneducated steamboat captain. His vocabulary had been liberally salted with words not ordinarily heard in polite society. He’d never given a moment over people’s reactions to his language, but her mother, Victoria, had. His coarse verbiage had nearly been her ruination.
    â€œI did the cooking before y’all came along. J.D. had no call to hire you. The boys like what I fix.”
    Josephine detected a hint of jealousy in his grizzled tone. To think, Boots McCall was jealous of her. It was absurd.
    â€œI’ll tell y’all right now, them boys don’t like anything showy on their plates. None of your ornamental, highfalutin foods that’s dressed up with greens. If the good Lord wanted man to eat salad, he would have made him into a cow.”
    An odious smell came from the stove. A burning, smoky scent that stung her nose. Josephine dropped the sifter to investigate, momentarily putting her opinion of Boots to the side.
    Billowing through the seams in the plates, a thick stream of black smoke rose from the stove. Panicking, Josephine opened the dampers that were closed andclosed the dampers that were open. Her quick switches didn’t make matters any better. She stood back, helplessly staring at the growing cloud of smoke, at a loss over what to do next.
    Scooting off his stool with an unexpected spryness, Boots slid open the oven damper, half closed the chimney damper, and fine-tuned the other two. When he was finished, he took up his stool once more.
    â€œGood gawd,” he muttered, “you’re like to burn the place up.”
    The hiss of the stove and crackle of burning wood filled the gap of silence between them. At length, Boots further accused, “Y’all don’t know a kitchen from a bull’s hind end.”
    Josephine didn’t know whether she should be relieved the jig was up or staunchly deny his accusation. She had no opportunity to do either. A bubbling sound—or, rather, an ominous rumble that crackled like thunder—came from the pot. No sooner had she decided that the pot was dangerous and should be examined from a safe distance than the lid shot up and smacked the ceiling, and a blurred expulsion of red blobs erupted like a squished bug.
    â€œGood gawd!” Boots swore as he backed off the chair and scooted toward the back door.
    Particles of tomatoes shot through the kitchen, smattering Josephine with hot darts on her thin sleeves as she held her arms out.
    â€œOuch!” she screamed, leaping backward to the sting of something hitting her in the cheek. She felt the debris fall in her hair, pepper her shirt, her skirt, and her shoes. Red everywhere. Everything was covered with tomato pulp. The open cookbook, the counter, the flour, the bowl, the sifter. It was a disaster. A great, big, disastrous mess.
    The meal was ruined.
    Having never tried and failed so miserably at something, Josephine hadn’t honed her strong or full emotions. She hadn’t developed a thick skin. Everythingshe’d done in her life up to leaving New York had been safe. Secure. For the first time, she had to face the facts. She was a failure.
    A failure of a wife.
    A failure of a cook.
    Once she accepted that, the high dam that had been keeping her innermost feelings from emotional exposure finally burst. She fell into a fit of weeping the likes of which she had never before unleashed.
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    The boys had assembled at the dining table, with J.D. sitting at the head. All of them had gotten spiffed up to meet the new cook. Those who had been covered with mud and grime, several reeking with blood from a day’s work in the corral, had all taken frigid baths in the creek wearing their long johns. Manners were in place. In an unspoken courtesy, not a single revolver was present. Each had hung his gun belt on one of the series of hooks in the front room. Hats weren’t