Karen Templeton - Honky-Tonk Cinderella

It didn’t work.

“Just got to thinking, is all,” she said at last, offering a lame attempt at a smile. “My mind tends to wander these days.”

When he looked like he might reach out, she quickly moved to the refrigerator, plucking a can of orange juice from the freezer and swallowing past the lump in her throat. Maybe she’d been able to tuck her memories away in the very back of the bottom drawer of her consciousness, where they’d lain, undisturbed and unmissed, for more than ten years. But try as she might, there was no way to hide them completely, to pretend that things had happened differently. The fact was, she had prodded Alek into the affair, knowing full well nothing permanent could come of it. She hadn’t expected anything more. She hadn’t wanted anything more, not then. She’d said she’d deal with the consequences, and she’d meant it.

So she’d best be about dealing with them, hadn’t she?

In a daze, Alek watched Luanne make up the frozen juice as he scanned the sunny, white kitchen, wondering again why she’d left Dallas. While the house was spotless—no surprise there—even a quick perusal revealed the chipped paint on the cabinets, the worn gold-flecked linoleum, the out-of-date appliances flanked by cookbooks and glass jars holding pasta and rice.

He self-consciously crossed to the aluminum-framed screen door to watch Chase half-heartedly toss a tennis ball for the dog in the weed-choked backyard. The scene he’d just witnessed between Luanne and Chase had nearly been his undoing, coagulating his emotions into an opaque mass at the base of his throat. If he’d had any doubts at all about Luanne’s feelings for Jeff, those had vanished like a puff of smoke on a windy day…only to replaced by something that felt suspiciously, and cruelly, like envy.

And an even stronger urge to bolt.

But his bolting days were over. All his adult life, Alek had shunned responsibility—personal, emotional, social—for reasons he’d never been able to define, any more than one can define one’s instinct for survival. But he’d also grown tired of feeling rudderless, of having no focus to his existence beyond the pursuit of a series of momentary gratifications. So, even before the accident, he’d begun the delayed—and not nearly as arduous as he would have thought—task of growing up. He’d all but given up the racing. And the women. In fact, he’d been celibate for longer than most men would readily admit, not a little surprised to find a certain…serenity in abstinence he wouldn’t have believed possible even a year ago. The throne would be his, sooner or later—not even his indomitable grandmother would live forever—and duty beckoned. Or, in his case, bellowed. Carpathia might be small, but his country’s stability in an area of the world subject to constant turmoil could not be underestimated, and the prince at last fully understood—and accepted—the importance of his role in years to come.

And that role included protecting those whose responsibility came under his care, whether he—or they—sought it or not.

“Here.” Alek turned to see Luanne holding out a glass of orange juice. Her hand was shaking. “Freshly reconstituted.”

He took the juice, starting slightly when Luanne suddenly flapped at his shirt. “Give that to me so I can wash out that stain before it sets.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hand me the dang shirt, Alek.” When he still hesitated, she said, “I have to keep busy, keep moving or I’ll go out of my mind.”

So he set the juice down on the counter and stripped off the shirt, which she snatched from him, dunking it a moment later into a small basin of suds in the sink, her movements agitated, jerky.

Her son’s, however, were another story, Alek noticed as he returned his attention outside. Seated cross-legged in the browning grass underneath a quiescent sycamore, Chase’s anguish abraded a wound inside Alek still raw after all these years. His sister had been about Chase’s age when their parents died in that plane crash; he remembered watching her muddle through her grief, his own sense of loss rendering him virtually useless. And their grandmother had been heartbroken at the loss of her only child. So the three of them had spun in their own sad, separate orbits, unable to offer—or even accept, really—much in the way of solace. Alek was determined not to let history repeat itself, even if he hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

“Chase misses Jeff terribly, doesn’t he?”

Luanne’s silence behind him was excruciatingly eloquent. He turned, something inside him splintering into myriad white-hot shards at her ravaged expression. Then she averted her eyes, scrubbing the shirt so hard, he feared for the skin on her hands.

Alek closed the distance between them, aching to touch her again, knowing he would be rebuffed if he did. Pride churned through this woman’s veins where mere mortals had blood, coloring her actions—and perceptions—far more than her heartache. This time, however, he suspected she’d just about used up even her considerable resources for bouncing back. Despite her valiant attempts to sound on top of things, she couldn’t mask the sense of defeat that had obviously taken up bone-chilling residence in her soul.

“Luanne,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I have no intention of trying to replace Jeff. I won’t…come between the boy and the man he knew as his father.” Her back still to him, she nodded stiffly. Alek turned again to the doorway, willing his lungs to work. “I never meant to be the bad guy in all this.”

The refrigerator clicked on; outside, the dog yapped for Chase to toss him his ball. He heard Luanne wring out the shirt, plop it into something, then come up beside him. “Jeff got the mutt for Chase’s birthday,” she said quietly, swiping back her hair with her damp hand. “Since Blue finally died of honorable old age last winter. There are days I swear if it hadn’t been for that dog, one or both of us might not have made it.” Her gaze flicked to his, then away. “There aren’t any ‘bad guys’ in this, Alek. I made a series of decisions based on what I thought was best at the time. Lettin’ myself get all caught up in regrets now is not only pointless but a waste of energy.”

He didn’t believe her for a minute, but he nodded anyway, then took a sip of the juice, shoving all the things he could never say to the back of his brain. “What happened to the house in Dallas?”

“Sold it.” She shifted the plastic basin so it rested on one of her hips.

“Why?”

“Because it was too big. Too fancy. I hated Dallas. I’m a small-town gal. Big cities are okay to visit, but living in ’em gives me the willies. Besides, I want my children to have a normal life, y’know? I want ’em to go to public school and be able to hang out with their friends and go ride their bikes without having to be afraid they might get kidnapped or something.”

“You were afraid for Chase?”

“From time to time. Not that Jeff knew. But I always felt, in that big house, we were sitting ducks, especially with him being gone so much. I had no idea—” Her lower lip caught between her teeth for a moment. “I know this sounds real disloyal, but I honestly never dreamed Jeff’s career would take off the way it did. I figured, y’know, maybe he’d have a few races, grow out of it, come back home and settle down….”

She rubbed her cheek with her shoulder, swallowed. “I’ve spent the past ten years of my life bein’ scared, holding my breath every time Jeff left for another race, every time Chase went out to play. Don’t get me wrong—I miss that man more than I ever thought I could miss another human being. But in a way, now that we’re back home, I finally feel like maybe I can breathe again.”