Honky-Tonk Cinderella

A quick laugh met Jeff’s remark—along with a good-natured smack on the hand with her order pad. A bit of a thing in a white sleeveless blouse and jeans, her nearly black hair waves framing classic features, the young woman was one of those rare creatures who, while undoubtedly pretty enough without makeup, could knock a man’s socks off with it. Smoky shadow and carefully applied eyeliner only served to accentuate huge, ice-blue eyes, while she had the kind of mouth just made for red lipstick. And Alek knew more than one European model who would kill for that flawless complexion.

“It’s about all these other customers, Jeffrey Eugene?” she said in an accent thick as treacle, then turned that bright, sweet smile on Alek, and he was startled to feel his blood stir in a way it hadn’t for a long, long time. Flirting with waitresses wasn’t Alek’s thing. Nor was he flirting now. Exactly. But that smile certainly snagged his attention. Not to mention a libido he’d been sorely neglecting of late.

“Luanne Evans, Alek Hastings.” Jeff took a swig of his beer, then another tug of her apron. “Be nice to him,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s from out of town.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her voice was breathy and weightless, like a child’s. She picked up Jeff’s sweating bottle, then wiped off the already-clean table, which made her breasts move in a way Alek found more than a little distracting. “From whereabouts?”

His eyes jerked to her face. “Carpathia.”

“No foolin’?”

Alek leaned back in his chair, a smile tickling his lips. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Some of us,” she said, obviously for Jeff’s benefit, “actually paid attention in geography class.” Then she rattled off not only the location of the tiny principality nestled in central Europe, but the square mileage, Carpathia’s capital and the fact that their monarchy—now constitutional—had gone unchallenged for more than four hundred years. And while Alek sat there, at once flummoxed and extraordinarily impressed, she stared at him for a long moment, ignoring repeated entreaties from the next table. Then she crossed her arms underneath that pair of truly lovely breasts. “One thing bothers me, though.”

“And what might that be?”

“What in tarnation are you doin’ here?”

Alex smiled. Slowly. Now he was flirting, no holds barred. Her directness, her intelligence, her spirit—and, all right, her physical attributes—positively inflamed him, body and soul. “I thought I knew, up until a few minutes ago.” The smile broadened as he leaned forward, let their gazes tangle. “But now I wonder if perhaps I’ve been led here…for reasons I’ve yet to discover.”

Although she kept her smile in place, not even the darkness could disguise her blush. Alek felt duly—and justifiably—chastised. But before he could apologize, he caught the look on Jeff’s face, one that clearly said I want that as he gave Luanne their orders, then snatched her pencil out of her hand. Playful, still. And respectful—Alek, took note—despite an attraction that Alek surmised had more substance than his friend was letting on.

“So, darlin’—when you gonna put me out of my misery and marry me?”

Ah.

But, apparently recovered from Alek’s gaffe, Luanne only laughed. Carefully arranged tendrils grazed her cheeks when she shook her head. “Now, you know as well as I do that marrying you would be like marrying my own brother.” She recovered her pencil, then popped him lightly on the head with it. “Wouldn’t be natural.” Then she sashayed off, giving them both an enticing view of the way her jeans cupped that extremely nice, perfectly rounded bottom, how her hair water-falled nearly to her waist.

On a sigh, Jeff lifted his bottle of beer, peered at it with one eye closed. “Kinda makes incest look a lot more attractive, don’t it?”

Alek chuckled, counting his blessings the young man had apparently missed Alek’s lame, and ill-considered, attempt at a pick-up line. “You’ve got a thing for her, I take it?”

Squinting, Jeff tipped back his chair. “Oh, we tease a lot, Lulabelle and me—shoot, we’ve known each other since we were in grade school—but I don’t suppose it would seem natural, like she said. But I’m here to tell you—” he nodded his beer bottle in Alek’s direction before he took a pull “—I’d do anything for that gal, I really would. No matter what my dang-fool family thinks.”

Alek frowned at the edge to Jeff’s voice. “Meaning?”

The chair thunked back to the floor as Jeff leaned forward again. “Meaning, some folks seem to think where you live or what you do for a living is more important than you who are. Never mind that Luanne was the smartest girl in school—fact, if it weren’t for her, I never would have gotten my sorry butt through algebra—or that, after her mama got sick, she supported the two of them for three years without askin’ for a lick of help from nobody.” Jeff shook his head, disgust pulling his mouth taut. “Galls the life out of me, sometimes, the way people judge other people, y’know? Well, damn it, I know what she’s worth. If anything, she’s far too good for the likes of ninety percent of the men around here, and that’s a fact.”

Although Alek had to smile at the young man’s pup-protecting-his-mistress loyalty, something—a vague disingenuousness, perhaps?—kicked up the odd hackle or two. Nothing he could define, just an odd feeling that a smart person would do well to not take Jeff’s easygoing manner at face value. However, applause for the singer, followed by Luanne’s appearance with their food, stanched further musings. The waitress had a smile and hair ruffle for Jeff…and a cool, cautious head-nod and “Hope you enjoy your dinner” for Alek. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, though, as much as…disappointed.

She moved off to another table a few feet away, chatting and joking with the patrons as if she’d known them all her life. Which she undoubtedly had.

Alek suppressed a sigh. Granted, he was used to getting what he wanted. In fact, most people would probably consider him spoiled. With good reason. Even so, he found no pleasure in using people or in taking undue advantage of his position.

Or in hurting feelings, if he could help it. That a woman working in a bar should be more thick-skinned was beside the point. Perhaps she had little choice in her place of employment. Perhaps she dreaded coming to work, night after night, fearing that, just because she was pretty and friendly, some moron might misinterpret her natural ebullience as a come-on.

Well, the least this moron could do was to attempt to remedy the situation.

She jerked, a little, when he caught up to her at the bar a little later. Although her lips curved into a smile as she deftly loaded drinks onto her tray, a certain guardedness immediately settled into those bright blue eyes—eyes that, nevertheless, had no compunction about meeting his.

“Everything okay?” she asked over the barrage of conversation cocooning them. “C’n I get you boys anything else?”

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said, and the eyes went saucer wide.

“For what?”

“For offending you earlier.”

She stared at him for a long moment, clearly having no earthly idea what to do with his comment. Then she yanked the tray off the bar, averting her gaze. “No offense taken,” she said softly.

Only she turned back, the beginnings of a smile tweaking at one corner of her mouth. “But I appreciate you taking the trouble to apologize. That was real sweet of you. Most men… Well, it was just real nice, is all. Thanks.”

And that should have been that. Except, for the rest of the evening Alek found his attention straying to the vivacious young woman with a laugh or smile or friendly word for everyone. If life had been less than kind to her, she certainly didn’t seem to be holding it against anyone. And he acknowledged to himself that, in those few seconds between his apology and her acceptance, something in Luanne Evans’s honest blue eyes had shot straight through to the cynicism knotted inside him, loosening it just a bit.

Edging aside the despair just enough to let in the barest trickle of something he couldn’t quite define. An alien feeling, to be sure, but pleasant enough to make him think, More, please, to inexplicably draw him to whatever it was that kept Luanne Evans’s smile so naturally, so constantly, in place.

To make him take the kind of chance he rarely did.

Jeff and he left together, around eleven. But at one in the morning—closing time—Alek returned, the parking lot now empty save for three or four pickups and a motorcycle the size of Poland close to the building. A storm had begun to brew: wind slapped at his hair and shirt as the tang of imminent rain filled his nostrils. Thunder trembled in the distance, accompanied by lightning that pounced across the relentlessly flat landscape in an eerily beautiful dance. He put up the top, then cut the engine and waited, realizing the odds of his making a complete ass of himself were about as high as they could get.

The first enormous drops began to pound the dirt when Luanne and another waitress emerged a few minutes later. He saw the other woman poke Luanne in the arm, point toward him; Luanne glanced over, enough light spilling from the bar for him to see her hesitate, then shake her head and swat in his direction, before the two of them took off in a blur of raindrops and giggles across the lot to their vehicles, their purses held over their heads. In an almost comical synchronization, two doors opened, two women jumped into their trucks, two doors slammed shut. The other woman took off first, tires spitting gravel as she gunned the truck out of the lot. Then, on a teeth-rattling bellow of thunder, the skies split open.

Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Alek thought on a bemused sigh as he reached for the ignition….

He squinted through the deluge at the sight of a figure clumsily hauling itself out of another pickup some twenty feet from Luanne’s. Obviously drunk and yelling something indecipherable, the man lurched unsteadily in her direction. Alek froze, barely having time to wonder why Luanne hadn’t left yet before the man jerked open her door.

Alek shot from the Porsche, reaching the old Ford just as the huge man lunged inside, groping like a bear for the obviously terrified waitress now huddled against the passenger-side door. Between the din from the storm and the other waitress’s departure, she must not have heard the man’s approach.

The walrus might have bested him in sheer mass, but at six foot one and nearly solid muscle—not to mention having sobriety and adrenaline on his side—Alek had the clear advantage. Greasy ponytail viced in one hand, the other twisting a massive, flabby arm into a tight hammerlock, Alek yanked the sputtering, cursing oaf out of the truck, keeping his grip iron tight as torrents of surprisingly frigid, blinding rain pelted them both.

“I take it,” Alek shouted to Luanne over the downpour, “this man’s attentions were unwelcome?”

A crack of thunder made her jump, but in the yellow glow from her truck’s ceiling light, he saw her wide-eyed nod.

“Just checking.” Alek then spun the drunk around, fully intending to connect fist to flabby jaw. Except, before he got the chance, the cretin let out a truly hideous belch, then splatted into the mud like a harpooned whale.

“What the hell?”

Alek’s gaze shot to another man in a white T-shirt and jeans—middle-aged, balding, big-bellied—bending over the fallen one. Hands on knees, completely oblivious to the rain, the man let out a short, pithy expletive before he glanced up—still bent over—and stuck out a hand. “Hey. Ed Torres. The owner.”

Alek returned the shake, blinking against the rain slamming into his face. “Alek Hastings—”

“Yeah. I know.” Ed grabbed the downed man’s chin, torqued his face from side to side. “One of those damn Simmons boys, looks like. Probably here for Earl’s third girl’s wedding, figured a little celebratin’ was in order. Worthless piece of…” Shaking his head in disgust, Ed straightened, pointlessly hitched up his jeans, then glanced into Luanne’s truck, rain sluicing off a face folded into a frown of genuine, fatherly concern. “Luanne, honey? You okay?”

She nodded, even though she clearly was anything but.

“Thirty-two years I’ve had this bar, and this is the first time one of my waitresses has been out-and-out accosted. I was just coming out, y’know, saw dogturd here headed toward Luanne’s truck. Lucky you got here when you did.” Worn features perked up into a grin; Alek thought he might have heard a chuckle over the next roll of thunder. “Yeah. Damn lucky. Hey—you mind gettin’ his feet, helping me drag his sorry ass inside? Last thing anybody needs is this idiot back behind the wheel. He can just wait inside until the sheriff shows up. So you might as well…you know…”

Ed nodded in Luanne’s direction. Offered a sodden, conspiratorial wink.

Alek wasn’t sure quite how to take that. However, he leaned into the truck where Luanne was still hunkered by the far door, still obviously shaken. His heart did a slow turn he decided he’d best not think too hard about. “Would it be too presumptuous to ask that you stay put until I get back?”

Her breasts rose rather prettily with the force of her enormous sigh, disseminating a hint—over the lethal dose of secondhand smoke trapped in her hair and clothes—of actually rather nice perfume. “Looks like I don’t have a choice, seeings Miss High and Mighty here—” she slammed the heel of her hand against the dashboard “—won’t start. Again. Otherwise I would’ve been gone long before…” She bit her lip, hauled in a short, steadying breath as she looked away. “Thank you,” she said, before her gaze met his, albeit reluctantly. “I’m much obliged.”

Alek shrugged. “Can’t take much credit, I’m afraid. But I can give you a ride home.”

She stiffened, looked away again. “I can get one from Ed.”

One hand braced on the roof of Luanne’s truck, Alek glanced around the lot. Other than the Porsche and Romeo’s truck, the Harley was the only vehicle in sight. He leaned back inside, determined to exude patience and sensitivity when, in fact, he was soaked through to his briefs and beginning to shiver and the adrenaline that had fueled his macho performance a few minutes ago had long since petered out. “It’s pouring.”

“I know that.”

He was reminded of the time when, as a child, he and the palace gamekeeper had come across a wounded wolf in the woods backing the estate. The poor thing was frightened out of its wits, but still fiercely wary of the humans who only wanted to help it.

“Luanne?” Ed’s exasperated voice cut through the pounding rain. “I know you’re shook up and all, but this ain’t no time for prevaricatin’. And you and I both know, you don’t want to be riding on the back of the Hawg in this weather.”

“I am not prevaricatin’!” Luanne shot back, then swiped back a stray hank of hair, obviously nearer to tears than she cared to admit. “I’m…weighin’ my options.”

Alek and Ed exchanged a weary, universally understood glance.

“Besides,” Alek pressed, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “Ed has to stay until the sheriff shows up. And who knows how long that could take?”

Luanne’s mouth thinned, her arms tightening around her ribs.

“Tell you what, then,” he said. “You ‘weigh your options’ while I help Ed get this creep—” who was beginning to groan ominously at Alek’s feet “—inside. Then you can let me know what you decide when I return. Would that be acceptable?”

Very slowly one dark eyebrow slid up. And, if he wasn’t mistaken—yes, there it went—a corner of her mouth twitched as she gave a nod.

But damned if she wasn’t sitting in the Porsche when he got back….

Loud, irregular clomping in the hallway behind him jerked Alek to his feet. Instinctively he faced the door, almost immediately finding himself the recipient of a mutinous, ice-blue glare, a sharp contrast to the tinges of childish pink that still lingered in the high-boned, freckled cheeks, the flattened mouth.

Then the mouth opened and spat out, “Who the heck are you?”

Chapter 2

Drowning in a gray T-shirt, baggy shorts and a pair of heavily-tooled, well-worn cowboy boots that wouldn’t fit him properly for at least another three or four years, the kid seemed tall for ten. And thin—his wide, serious eyes enormous in the narrow face. Red highlights glimmered in uncombed brown hair that straggled below tops of ears and eyebrows, the color not dissimilar to Alek’s at that age. Luanne’s eyes, absolutely; but to someone who didn’t know otherwise, Jeff’s build, Jeff’s coloring.

That nose, however, could be seen in any number of portraits lining Carpathia’s palace walls, a feature that had chosen, as it had done with both Alek and his sister, not to transform until the onset of puberty. Jeff had shown Alek innumerable pictures of Chase as a little boy, and not once had Alek even suspected that Jeff wasn’t the child’s father.

Until now. Now there was no doubt, even if he hadn’t already known. Without thinking, Alek rubbed the telltale bump on the bridge of his own nose, then rose and extended his hand, swallowing down the nerves that threatened to make him dizzy. His sister, the one who’d set up the refugee children’s home in Carpathia, the one who’d married a man with five kids, had a natural affinity for children. Not Alek. Children had always made Alek feel awkward, off-kilter.

Especially grief-stricken children who just happened to carry his genes.

Awe and anger, both, nearly rendered him speechless. Except he managed to get out, “I’m Alek, Chase. A friend of…Jeff’s.”

Recognition flared in the boy’s eyes. “Why’d you come? It’s all your fault! Why’d you have to come and make everything worse?”

The room fairly shook as the child stomped out of the room, the pup whimpering at his run-down heels.

Luanne had just about made it back to the living room when Chase nearly mowed her down. She grabbed him by the shoulders, her heart cramping all over again when she saw the tears. Even before Jeff’s death, he’d always cried more than any boy she’d ever known, and he hated it. Hated it.

But there used to be a lot more giggles than tears. And almost never any anger. During the past weeks, however, it was almost like someone had taken away her bright, easygoing child, leaving in his place this pile of screaming, snarling emotions and Luanne at her wit’s end. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand, or even thought Chase was overreacting and should be settling down a bit by now. After all, she was just as much torn up as he was. But it frustrated the very life out of her that she couldn’t make her baby’s hurt go away. In fact, more than once she’d been downright panicked that she might lose it herself.

However, since there was nobody else to pick up the pieces if she did fall apart, that was a luxury she simply could not allow herself.

“Hey, baby,” she said over her own thudding heart, combing his hair back from his face. “What’s going on—?”

“Why’s he here? Why’d he have to come? If it wasn’t for him, Daddy’d still be alive!”

Luanne flinched. “That’s not true, Chase Eugene Henderson, and I don’t want to hear you say that again, you hear me?”

“But if it hadn’t’ve been for him and Daddy making that bet—”

“Then Daddy would’ve found somebody else to make it with! Now you listen to me…” Her grasp tightened, making him look her right in the eye. Not that they hadn’t had this conversation a dozen or more times already, but you would’ve thought the edge might’ve at least begun to wear down some by now. Instead, the pain only seemed to get sharper, brighter, like the way the sun hurts your eyes when you walk out of a movie theater in the middle of the day. “Your daddy had the racing fever long before he met Prince Aleksander. Long before. Oh, shoot, honey—I know all you can think is, if he hadn’t’ve been racing, he wouldn’t’ve been killed. But your daddy could’ve no more stopped racing than he could’ve stopped breathing. Racing’s what he lived for.” And what he died for, she thought as she sucked in a sharp, dry breath. “Whether we understood it or not—”

“You could’ve asked him to stop! Bet he would’ve quit, if you’d’ve asked him!”

She looked over Chase’s shoulder to see Alek standing in the living room doorway, frowning, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Or the rest of him, for that matter. “Should I leave?” he mouthed. And if she’d thought he meant really leave—as in leave her house, the state, her life—she might’ve nodded. Since she doubted that was the case, she shook her head, pinning him with her gaze. Stay, her glare said. See how much my baby needs his mama, the only constant in his life right now.

Except, she hadn’t expected to see her silent demand register on Alek’s expression quite so clearly. She lowered her eyes quickly to her son’s face, stumbling over her words. “Wh-which is why I n-never asked him to.”

Chase swiped at his cheeks. “That don’t make sense, Mama.”

“Doesn’t make sense, and no, I know it doesn’t. But, see—your daddy always said he’d do anything for me. So how could I ask him to quit doin’ the one thing he loved most? That would’ve killed him, or just about, because it would’ve killed his soul.” She cupped Chase’s jaw in her hands, wishing she could kiss away the owie the way she used to when he was little. “I just couldn’t do that to him, baby.”

Her son just looked at her long and hard for several seconds, then asked, “When’s it gonna stop hurting, Mama? When’s the pain gonna go away?”

His plea echoed through the icy hollowness where her heart was supposed to be. She pulled him into a fierce hug, pressing kisses into his unkempt hair. He didn’t return the embrace, which tore her up inside even more, but no way was she going to let go. “I don’t know, baby. All I know is, it will. Eventually, it will.”

It had to, or her heart was going to plumb crack right in two.

Alek cleared his throat. Chase jumped, whirled around, plastering his bony little body against Luanne’s.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He lifted his gaze, briefly, to Luanne’s. “Either of you.” His crisp accent only added to the edginess crackling around them. “I would never have done anything to purposely hurt your father. Or you.”

Luanne touched Chase’s head. “Alek got hurt in that crash, too—”

“Yeah, but he’s alive! Daddy’s not!”

“Chase—!”

“It’s all right,” Alek said gently, if a little stiffly. But like he was making an effort, at least. “I understand what he’s feeling—”

“No, you don’t!” Chase’s hands fisted at his sides; his thin frame feeling brittle underneath Luanne’s hands. “You can’t!”

The child’s pain vibrated in the room like a living thing as Luanne watched compassion flood features more sharply defined than a decade before, features she hadn’t really gotten a good look at until this point, what with the sheer shock of seeing him again combined with all these emotions and worries clawing at her. She’d seen photos, of course, during the past decade, photos she’d deliberately sought out, just to prove to herself…

About a hundred miles underneath her misery, memories stirred and stretched. She refused to pay them any mind.

Then she noticed that Alek had crouched down in front of the boy, his hands resting on his knees, not even blinking when Chase recoiled further against her. She could tell Alek was as much at a loss as she was. Maybe more so. That he was scared, too, and maybe more than a little confused. His attempt to comfort a strange child when it was obvious the whole situation made him highly uncomfortable impressed her in a way she would not have thought possible ten minutes before.

And if it was a bad thing to feel a little relief at having someone take the burden from her shoulders, even for a minute, well then, the world would just have to deal with that.

“I lost both my parents when I was sixteen, Chase,” Alek said. “And for a very long time, I felt as if someone had poured acid into my gut, it hurt so badly. So, yes…I do know what you’re feeling.”