Free A Cowboy in the Kitchen by Meg Maxwell Page A

didn’t need. Worse, Clyde’s daughter, Francie, had been part of Lorna Dunkin’s posse back in middle school and high school.
    Laughter, then: Oh my God, Geekabel, those suede flats are like from the ’80s. Get a clue. Those suede flats had been her mother’s, and Annabel cherished them. Or she’d find herself behind Lorna and Francie and their friends on the lunch line at school and hear, I’d kill to be as skinny as Geekabel but only if I could keep my 32-Cs and my tiny waist. I mean, what’s the point of being a rail if you look like a boy? Then laughter, firm agreement and discussion. Annabel couldn’t imagine snooty Francie Heff eating something as common as a burger, even at her father’s own restaurant, so maybe she wouldn’t have to see much of her old tormentor. If she did, Annabel would just stare her down and give it right back to her.
    Eyeing the sign announcing the Burgertopia again, Annabel thought of the bills and the amount left in Gram’s business account. Plus, a quarterly loan payment was coming due soon. Her stomach churned and panic crawled up her spine. “Between Sau Lin’s noodle shop, the new steak house and the Burgertopia, we’ll have a trickle of customers. I’m all for new businesses opening in town, but we’re in trouble.”
    If only there were money to build the back patio the way Gram had always dreamed, surrounded by the beautiful oaks and the wildflowers. They could put a children’s playground back there and hire a sitter so people could eat dinner in peace. They could break down the wall to the too-big hallway and add five tables to the main dining room. They could spruce up the place with warm yellow paint and new dishware and cutlery. They could hire a full-time cook to take the pressure off her and Hattie, someone as great as Essie’s former longtime assistant cook, Martha, who knew the recipes inside and out but had long ago moved to Austin.
    These were all ideas that couldn’t come to fruition. There was barely money to pay the bills. And with the loan coming due in a month and very little hope to pay it...
    Hattie covered Annabel’s hand and patted it. “Listen, all we can do is make the best food we know how and keep folks coming in.” She added Worcestershire sauce to the meat loaf, Annabel comforted by the fact that Gram’s century-old recipe, handed down from her mother, was the best meat loaf anyone had ever had.
    Yes. Focus on making the best chicken-fried steak and meat loaf and braised short ribs and garlic mashed potatoes and po’boy sandwiches—like the ones that West loved so much—in the county, she told herself. That was what Gram had always said. Just focus on being the best you you can be and don’t worry about anyone else.
    Why did she have to bring West into the equation? A man who kissed and took it back. A man who broke her heart so irrevocably she felt split in two for over a year. A man who’d hurt her so badly she’d been dumb enough to let her heartbreak control her, keeping her away from home, from her gram, from Clem, for so long.
    She’d never let that happen again. She might still believe in love, but she’d never be a dummy about it again—that was for sure. Though she wondered if a person could help it, if you were swept away and caught up and couldn’t control it. There were people like her friend Sally from Dallas who specifically looked for a husband she liked who met her long list of criteria, including big salary and lack of family history of cancer and male pattern baldness. Annabel had gone to her wedding, and Sally had looked awfully happy with her wealthy husband with his head full of thick hair, a man Sally liked and admired but didn’t love. Then there was Annabel’s cousin Susannah clear across Texas who’d fallen madly in love with a hilarious, kind bull rider with no money, married him in a