Lynna Banning – Wild West Christmas: A Family for the Rancher / Dance with a Cowboy / Christmas in Smoke River (страница 14)

“You’ll never convince me of that.” He grinned. “You look like you know exactly.”

“I don’t,” she admitted, feeling the sudden need to get this off her chest. She motioned him down the hall, farther from the open door of the boys’ room, and lifted a finger to halt him before retreating a few steps into her own room. She returned with Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, offering it in two hands. “I’ve been using this.”

He accepted the well-worn volume and thumbed through the dog-eared pages.

“Didn’t figure you’d know your way around a kitchen. You learned all you been doing from this?” He held up the heavy book.

“Some. But not the food preparation or mothering. I’ve been cooking for years, and mothering is akin to nursing, I think.”

He extended the book and she returned the volume to the table just inside her room.

“Your mom wasn’t much of a—what’d that book call it—a household manager?”

“No. As you correctly surmised, she directs, plans menus and goes over the accounts with the housekeeper.”

“What about mothering? She do any of that?”

She couldn’t hold his searching gaze and for a moment considered changing the topic or outright lying. But she knew what her lie of omission had cost her before. So she buckled down and prepared to answer him. She hoped he wouldn’t show her any pity. It was too ridiculous. She’d had every advantage that money could buy and yet, she felt so uncertain.

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