“Did you know his wife?” One thing about two women working together, talking was a natural way to pass the time.

“Sí.”

“What was she like?”

Maria flipped the bacon sizzling in the pan. “It’s not good to speak badly of the dead, but I did not like her.”

“Why not?”

“Ms. Heather always wanted attention. She flirted with the men and liked to make trouble. Señor Kade’s a good man. He deserved someone better.”

“I see.” Breakfast preparations continued with only a few minor catastrophes, which Ellie figured would smooth out as she got used to the job. Maria told her they made sack lunches for the men’s midday meal, since they were often too far away to come all the way back to the house. The Diamond Bar was a far bigger spread than the small ranch she had been raised on.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. At five a.m., the men started filtering in from the bunkhouse, removing their hats and coats one by one, hanging them on the coatrack next to the door. Last night at supper, Kade had introduced her to all of them.

“Mornin’, ma’am.” Roy Cobb was tall and beanpole thin, with a cowlick in the middle of his forehead. Ellie had a very good memory and a knack for recalling faces.

“Good morning, Roy.”

“Ms. Bowman,” another man said. Seth Ackerman, early forties, curly brown hair and crooked bottom teeth.

“Seth.”

Each man greeted her. Slate Crawford, not bad-looking, with linebacker shoulders as wide as Kade’s but more thickly muscled, and short brown hair neatly trimmed. He had all the markings of a lady’s man, and she couldn’t help wondering if he had been one of Heather’s lovers. Then she remembered Kade’s hard jaw and the dark look in his eyes when he had talked about this wife.

Probably not.

Turtle Farley was short and stout, round-faced and always grinning.

Alejandro Ramirez followed him in, tall, well-built, jet-black hair and eyes, just enough of a Spanish accent to sound sexy. He was incredibly good-looking. Maria blushed every time Alejandro glanced her way, though he didn’t seem to notice.

Riley Parker was engaged to be married to a girl who lived down the road. He had a mop of blond hair he constantly shoved back from his forehead.

Last man in, Kade’s foreman, Wyatt Knowles, was older, maybe sixty, with silver hair and a handlebar mustache that curved around his mouth and turned up at the ends. He was quiet-spoken and always watchful, which likely made him good at his job.

The men were sitting at the table, wolfing down their meals, when Kade walked into the kitchen. The room momentarily went silent, his larger-than-life persona briefly capturing everyone’s attention. Then they returned to shoveling food into their mouths.