Kitabı oku: «A Cinderella Story»

One

Sam Henry hated December.

The days were too short, making the nights seem an eternity. It was cold and dark—and then there was the incessant Christmas badgering. Lights, trees, carols and an ever-increasing barrage of commercials urging you to shop, spend, buy. And every reminder of the holiday season ate at the edges of his soul and heart like drops of acid.

He scowled at the roaring fire in the hearth, slapped one hand on the mantel and rubbed his fingers over the polished edge of the wood. With his gaze locked on the flames, he told himself that if he could, he’d wipe the month of December from the calendar.

“You can’t stick your head in the snow and pretend Christmas isn’t happening.”

Sam flicked a glance at the woman in the open doorway. His housekeeper/cook/nag, Kaye Porter, stood there glaring at him through narrowed blue eyes. Hands at her wide hips, her gray-streaked black hair pulled back into a single thick braid that hung down over one shoulder, she shook her head. “There’s not enough snow to do it anyway, and whether you like it or not, Christmas is coming.”

“I don’t and it’s only coming if I acknowledge it,” Sam told her.

“Well, you’re going to have to pay attention because I’m out of here tomorrow.”

“I’ll give you a raise if you cancel your trip,” he said, willing to bargain to avoid the hassle of losing the woman who ran his house so he didn’t have to.

A short bark of laughter shot from her throat. “Not a chance. My friend Ruthie and I do this every year, as you well know. We’ve got our rooms booked and there’s no way we’re canceling.”

He’d known that—he just hadn’t wanted to think about it. Another reason to hate December. Every year, Kaye and Ruthie took a month-long vacation. A cruise to the Bahamas, then a stay at a splashy beachside hotel, followed by another cruise home. Kaye liked to say it was her therapy to get her through the rest of the year living with a crank like himself.

“If you love Christmas so much, why do you run to a beach every year?”

She sighed heavily. “Christmas is everywhere, you know. Even in hot, sandy places! We buy little trees, decorate them for our rooms. And the hotel lights up all the palm trees...” She sighed again, but this time, it was with delight. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Fine.” He pushed away from the hearth, tucked both hands into the pockets of his jeans and stared at her. Every year he tried to talk her out of leaving and every year he lost. Surrendering to the inevitable, he asked, “You need a ride to the airport?”

A small smile curved her mouth at the offer. “No, but thanks. Ruthie’s going to pick me up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. She’ll leave her car there so when we come back we don’t have to worry about taking one of those damn shuttles.”

“Okay then.” He took a breath and muttered, “Have a great time.”

“The enthusiasm in that suggestion is just one of the reasons I need this trip.” One dark eyebrow lifted. “You worry me, Sam. All locked away on this mountain hardly talking to anyone but me—”

She kept going, but Sam tuned out. He’d heard it all before. Kaye was determined to see him “start living” again. Didn’t seem to matter that he had no interest in that. While she talked, he glanced around the main room of what Kaye liked to call his personal prison.

It was a log home, the wood the color of warm honey, with lots of glass to spotlight the view that was breathtaking from every room. Pine forest surrounded the house, and a wide, private lake stretched out beyond a narrow slice of beach. He had a huge garage and several outbuildings, including a custom-designed workshop where Sam wished he was right at that moment.

This house, this sanctuary, was just what he’d been looking for when he’d come to Idaho five years ago. It was isolated, with a small town—Franklin—just fifteen minutes away when he needed supplies. A big city, with the airport and all manner of other distractions, was just an hour from there, not that he ever went. What he needed, he had Kaye pick up in Franklin and only rarely went to town himself.

The whole point of moving here had been to find quiet. Peace. Solitude. Hell, he could go weeks and never talk to anyone but Kaye. Thoughts of her brought him back to the conversation at hand.

“...Anyway,” she was saying, “my friend Joy will be here about ten tomorrow morning to fill in for me while I’m gone.”

He nodded. At least Kaye had done what she always did, arranged for one of her friends to come and stay for the month she’d be gone. Sam wouldn’t have to worry about cooking, cleaning or pretty much anything but keeping his distance from whatever busybody she’d found this year.

He folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not going to catch this one rifling through my desk, right?”

Kaye winced. “I will admit that having Betty come last year was a bad idea...”

“Yeah,” he agreed. She’d seemed nice enough, but the woman had poked her head into everything she could find. Within a week, Sam had sent her home and had spent the following three weeks eating grilled cheese sandwiches, canned soup and frozen pizza. “I’d say so.”

“She’s the curious sort.”

“She’s nosy.”

“Yes, well.” Kaye cleared her throat. “That was my mistake, I know. But my friend Joy isn’t a snoop. I think you’ll like her.”

“Not necessary,” he assured her. He didn’t want to like Joy. Hell, he didn’t want to talk to her if he could avoid it.

“Of course not.” Kaye shook her head again and gave him the kind of look teachers used to reserve for the kid acting up in class. “Wouldn’t want to be human or anything. Might set a nasty precedent.”

“Kaye...”

The woman had worked for him since he’d moved to Idaho five years ago. And since then, she’d muscled her way much deeper into his life than he’d planned on allowing. Not only did she take care of the house, but she looked after him despite the fact that he didn’t want her to. But Kaye was a force of nature, and it seemed her friends were a lot like her.

“Never mind. Anyway, to what I was saying, Joy already knows that you’re cranky and want to be left alone—”

He frowned at her. “Thanks.”

“Am I wrong?” When he didn’t answer, she nodded. “She’s a good cook and runs her own business on the internet.”

“You told me all of this already,” he pointed out. Though she hadn’t said what kind of business the amazing Joy ran. Still, how many different things could a woman in her fifties or sixties do online? Give knitting lessons? Run a babysitting service? Dog sitting? Hell, his own mother sold handmade dresses online, so there was just no telling.

“I know, I know.” Kaye waved away his interruption. “She’ll stay out of your way because she needs this time here. The contractor says they won’t have the fire damage at her house repaired until January, so being able to stay and work here was a godsend.”

“You told me this, too,” he reminded her. In fact, he’d heard more than enough about Joy the Wonder Friend. According to Kaye, she was smart, clever, a hard worker, had a wonderful sense of humor and did apparently everything just short of walking on water. “But how did the fire in her house start again? Is she a closet arsonist? A terrible cook who set fire to the stove?”

“Of course not!” Kaye sniffed audibly and stiffened as if someone had shoved a pole down the back of her sweatshirt. “I told you, there was a short in the wiring. The house she’s renting is just ancient and something was bound to go at some point. The owner of the house is having all the wiring redone, though, so it should be safe now.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” he said. And relieved he didn’t have to worry that Kaye’s friend was so old she’d forgotten to turn off an oven or something.

“I’m only trying to tell you—” she broke off to give him a small smile of understanding “—like I do every year, that you’ll survive the month of December just like you do every year.”

He ground his teeth together at the flash of sympathy that stirred and then vanished from her eyes. This was the problem with people getting to know too much about him. They felt as if they had the right to offer comfort where none was wanted—or needed. Sam liked Kaye fine, but there were parts of his life that were closed off. For a reason.

He’d get through the holidays his way. Which meant ignoring the forced cheer and the never-ending lineup of “feel good” holiday-themed movies where the hard-hearted hero does a turnaround and opens himself to love and the spirit of Christmas.

Hearts should never be open. Left them too vulnerable to being shattered.

And he’d never set himself up for that kind of pain again.

* * *

Early the following day Kaye was off on her vacation, and a few hours later Sam was swamped by the empty silence. He reminded himself that it was how he liked his life best. No one bothering him. No one talking at him. One of the reasons he and Kaye got along so well was that she respected his need to be left the hell alone. So now that he was by himself in the big house, why did he feel an itch along his spine?

“It’s December,” he muttered aloud. That was enough to explain the sense of discomfort that clung to him.

Hell, every year, this one damn month made life damn near unlivable. He pushed a hand through his hair, then scraped that hand across the stubble on his jaw. He couldn’t settle. Hadn’t even spent any time out in his workshop, and usually being out there eased his mind and kept him too busy to think about—

He put the brakes on that thought fast because he couldn’t risk opening doors that were better off sealed shut.

Scowling, he stared out the front window at the cold, dark day. The steel-gray clouds hung low enough that it looked as though they were actually skimming across the tops of the pines. The lake, in summer a brilliant sapphire blue, stretched out in front of him like a sheet of frozen pewter. The whole damn world seemed bleak and bitter, which only fed into what he felt every damn minute.

Memories rose up in the back of his mind, but he squelched them flat, as he always did. He’d worked too hard for too damn long to get beyond his past, to live and breathe—and hell, survive—to lose it all now. He’d beaten back his demons, and damned if he’d release them long enough to take a bite out of him now.

Resolve set firmly, Sam frowned again when an old blue four-door sedan barreled along his drive, kicking up gravel as it came to a stop in front of the house. For a second, he thought it must be Kaye’s friend Joy arriving. Then the driver stepped out of the car and that thought went out the window.

The driver was too young, for one thing. Every other friend Kaye had enlisted to help out had been her age or older. This woman was in her late twenties, he figured, gaze locked on her as she turned her face to stare up at the house. One look at her and Sam felt a punch of lust that stole his breath. Everything in him fisted tightly as he continued to watch her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood on the drive studying his house. Hell, she was like a ray of sunlight in the gray.

Her short curly hair was bright blond and flew about her face in the sharp wind that slapped rosy color into her cheeks. Her blue eyes swept the exterior of the house even as she moved around the car to the rear passenger side. Her black jeans hugged long legs, and her hiking boots looked scarred and well-worn. The cardinal-red parka she wore over a cream-colored sweater was a burst of color in a black-and-white world.

She was beautiful and moved with a kind of easy grace that made a man’s gaze follow her every movement. And even while he admitted that silently, Sam resented it. He wasn’t interested in women. Didn’t want to feel what she was making him feel. What he had to do was find out why the hell she was there and get her gone as fast as possible.

She had to be lost. His drive wasn’t that easy to find—purposely. He rarely got visitors, and those were mainly his family when he couldn’t stave off his parents or sister any longer.

Well, if she’d lost her way, he’d go out and give her directions to town, and then she’d be gone and he could get back to—whatever.

“Damn.” The single word slipped from his throat as she opened the car’s back door and a little girl jumped out. The eager anticipation stamped on the child’s face was like a dagger to the heart for Sam. He took a breath that fought its way into his chest and forced himself to look away from the kid. He didn’t do kids. Not for a long time now. Their voices. Their laughter. They were too small. Too vulnerable.

Too breakable.

What felt like darkness opened up in the center of his chest. Turning his back on the window, he left the room and headed for the front door. The faster he got rid of the gorgeous woman and her child, the better.

* * *

“It’s a fairy castle, Mommy!”

Joy Curran glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled at the excitement shining on her daughter’s face. At five years old, Holly was crazy about princesses, fairies and everyday magic she seemed to find wherever she looked.

Still smiling, Joy shifted her gaze from her daughter to the big house in front of her. Through the windshield, she scanned the front of the place and had to agree with Holly on this one. It did look like a castle.

Two stories, it spread across the land, pine trees spearing up all around it like sentries prepared to stand in defense. The smooth, glassy logs were the color of warm honey, and the wide, tall windows gave glimpses of the interior. A wraparound porch held chairs and gliders that invited visitors to sit and get comfortable. The house faced a private lake where a long dock jutted out into the water that was frozen over for winter. There was a wide deck studded with furniture draped in tarps for winter and a brick fire pit.

It would probably take her a half hour to look at everything, and it was way too cold to simply sit in her car and take it all in. So instead, she turned the engine off, then walked around to get Holly out of her car seat. While the little girl jumped up and down in excitement, pigtails flying, Joy grabbed her purse and headed for the front door. The cold wrapped itself around them and Joy shivered. There hadn’t been much snow so far this winter, but the cold sliced right down to the bone. All around her, the pines were green but the grass was brown, dotted with shrinking patches of snow. Holly kept hoping to make snow angels and snowmen, but so far, Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating.

The palatial house looked as if it had grown right out of the woods surrounding it. The place was gorgeous, but a little intimidating. And from everything she’d heard, so was the man who lived here. Oh, Kaye was crazy about him, but then Kaye took in stray dogs, cats, wounded birds and any lonely soul she happened across. But there was plenty of speculation about Sam Henry in town.

Joy knew he used to be a painter, and she’d actually seen a few of his paintings online. Judging by the art he created, she would have guessed him to be warm, optimistic and, well, nice. According to Kaye, though, the man was quiet, reclusive to the point of being a hermit, and she thought he was lonely at the bottom of it. But to Joy’s way of thinking, if you didn’t want to be lonely, you got out and met people. Heck, it was so rare to see Sam Henry in town, spotting him was the equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting. She’d caught only the occasional rare glimpse of the man herself.

But none of that mattered at the moment, Joy told herself. She and Holly needed a place to stay for the month, and this housesitting/cooking/cleaning job had turned up at just the right time. Taking Holly’s hand, she headed for the front door, the little girl skipping alongside her, chattering about princesses and castles the whole way.

For just a second, Joy envied her little girl’s simpler outlook on life. For Holly, this was an adventure in a magical castle. For Joy, it was moving into a big, secluded house with a secretive and, according to Kaye, cranky man. Okay, now she was making it sound like she was living in a Gothic novel. Kaye lived here year-round, right? And had for years. Surely Joy could survive a month. Determined now to get off on the right foot, she plastered a smile on her face, climbed up to the wide front porch and knocked on the double doors.

She was still smiling a moment later when the door was thrown open and she looked up into a pair of suspicious brown eyes. An instant snap of attraction slapped at Joy, surprising her with its force. His black hair was long, hitting past the collar of his dark red shirt, and the thick mass lifted slightly as another cold wind trickled past. His jaws were shadowed by whiskers and his mouth was a grim straight line. He was tall, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs currently encased in worn, faded denim that stacked on the tops of a pair of weathered brown cowboy boots.

If it wasn’t for the narrowed eyes and the grim expression on his face, he would have been the star of any number of Joy’s personal fantasies. Then he spoke and the already tattered remnants of said fantasy drifted away.

“This is private property,” he said in a voice that was more of a growl. “If you’re looking for town, go back to the main road and turn left. Stay on the road and you’ll get there in about twenty minutes.”

Well, this was starting off well.

“Thanks,” she said, desperately trying to hang on to the smile curving her mouth as well as her optimistic attitude. “But I’m not lost. I’ve just come from town.”

If anything, his frown deepened. “Then why’re you here?”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Joy said, half tugging Holly behind her. Not that she was afraid of him—but why subject her little girl to a man who looked like he’d rather slam the door in their faces than let them in?

“I repeat,” he said, “who are you?”

“I’m Joy. Kaye’s friend?” It came out as a question though she hadn’t meant it as one.

“You’re kidding.” His eyes went wide as his gaze swept her up and down in a fast yet thorough examination.

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. But when his features remained stiff and cold, she went for insulted.

“Is there a problem?” she asked. “Kaye told me you’d be expecting me and—”

“You’re not old.”

She blinked at him. “Thank you for noticing, though I’ve got to say, if Kaye ever hears you call her ‘old,’ it won’t be pretty.”

“That’s not—” He stopped and started again. “I was expecting a woman Kaye’s age,” he continued. “Not someone like you. Or,” he added with a brief glance at Holly, “a child.”

Why hadn’t Kaye told him about Holly? For a split second, Joy worried over that and wondered if he’d try to back out of their deal now. But an instant later she assured herself that no matter what happened, she was going to hold him to his word. She needed to be here and she wasn’t about to leave.

She took a breath and ignored the cool chill in his eyes. “Well, that’s a lovely welcome, thanks. Look, it’s cold out here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to come in and get settled.”

He shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, but Holly cut him off.

“Are you the prince?” She stepped out from behind her mother, tipped her head back and studied him.

“The what?”

Joy tensed. She didn’t want to stop Holly from talking—wasn’t entirely sure she could—but she was more than willing to intervene if the quietly hostile man said something she didn’t like.

“The prince,” Holly repeated, the tiny lisp that defined her voice tugging at Joy’s heart. “Princes live in castles.”

Joy caught the barest glimmer of a smile brush across his face before it was gone again. Somehow, though, that ghost of real emotion made her feel better.

“No,” he said and his voice was softer than it had been. “I’m not a prince.”

Joy could have said something to that, and judging by the glance he shot her, he half expected her to. But irritating him further wasn’t going to get her and Holly into the house and out of the cold.

“But he looks like a prince, doesn’t he, Mommy?”

A prince with a lousy attitude. A dark prince, maybe.

“Sure, honey,” she said with a smile for the little girl shifting from foot to foot in her eagerness to get inside the “castle.”

Turning back to the man who still stood like an immovable object in the doorway, Joy said reasonably, “Look, I’m sorry we aren’t what you were expecting. But here we are. Kaye told you about the fire at our house, right?”

“The firemen came and let me sit in the big truck with the lights going and it was really bright and blinking.”

“Is that right?” That vanishing smile of his came and went again in a blink.

“And it smelled really bad,” Holly put in, tugging her hand free so she could pinch her own nose.

“It did,” Joy agreed, running one hand over the back of Holly’s head. “And,” she continued, “it did enough damage that we can’t stay there while they’re fixing it—” She broke off and said, “Can we finish this inside? It’s cold out here.”

For a second, she wasn’t sure he’d agree, but then he nodded, moved back and opened the wide, heavy door. Heat rushed forward to greet them, and Joy nearly sighed in pleasure. She gave a quick look around at the entry hall. The gleaming, honey-colored logs shone in the overhead light. The entry floor was made up of huge square tiles in mottled earth tones. Probably way easier to clean up melting snow from tile floors instead of wood, she told herself and let her gaze quickly move over what she could see of the rest of the house.

It seemed even bigger on the inside, which was hard to believe, and with the lights on against the dark of winter, the whole place practically glowed. A long hallway led off to the back of the house, and on the right was a stairway leading to the second floor. Near the front door, there was a handmade coat tree boasting a half-dozen brass hooks and a padded bench attached.

Shrugging out of her parka, Joy hung it on one of the hooks, then turned and pulled Holly’s jacket off as well, hanging it alongside hers. The warmth of the house surrounded her and all Joy could think was, she really wanted to stay. She and Holly needed a place and this house with its soft glow was...welcoming, in spite of its owner.

She glanced at the man watching her, and one look told her that he really wanted her gone. But she wasn’t going to allow that.

The house was gigantic, plenty of room for her and Holly to live and still stay out of Sam Henry’s way. There was enough land around the house so that her little girl could play. One man to cook and clean for, which would leave her plenty of time to work on her laptop. And oh, if he made them leave, she and her daughter would end up staying in a hotel in town for a month. Just the thought of trying to keep a five-year-old happy when she was trapped in a small, single room for weeks made Joy tired.