Karen Templeton - Honky-Tonk Cinderella

She looked at him, tears glinting in her eyes. “Then you showed up.”

The screen door slammed behind her as she waddled out and down the steps to hang up the shirt on the clothesline outside.

And Alek stared after her, his hand tightly fisted around the glass, once again thrown back into the past….

The screen door slammed shut behind Alek as he followed Luanne and the dog into the stifling trailer. She hurried to open all the windows to let in the cooling breezes, muttering something about popping into the shower to get the godawful cigarette smoke out of her hair, she wouldn’t be but a minute.

Damn. If he’d possessed even a grain of sense, he would have driven away and not looked back. That she trusted him not to leave—that she trusted him, period—he found little short of stunning.

When was the last time he’d been this conflicted about sleeping with a woman? Bloody hell—he’d never expected her to come on to him, to do this…this about-face just when he’d decided nothing was going to happen. Or that he should suddenly have an attack of conscience about the whole thing.

Alek heard the shower go on; he let out an enormous sigh, swiftly followed by a groan. All right—so he wanted Luanne Evans more than he’d ever wanted another woman, a realization he found at once frightening, exhilarating and incredibly perplexing. But he’d always, always, been the master of his emotions when it came to his relationships. A state of affairs that had been blown entirely out of the water by the mixture of vulnerability and honesty and goodness now standing naked on the other side of a very thin wall.

Oh, dear God.

Alek dropped onto the futon sofa in the minuscule living room, on some subliminal level taking in the bright pillows and framed prints by assorted Impressionists—Luanne’s attempt, he supposed, to bring cheer to the dark, paneled walls and worn furniture.

Then he noticed the books. Thousands of them, it seemed, neatly corralled in several cheap bookcases. Intrigued, and momentarily distracted from the problem at hand, he got up to inspect the case nearest to him. A hodgepodge, to be sure—everything from history to science to religion to novels of every conceivable genre, mostly paperbacks, but some hardbacks as well…

“Mama always said people are more inclined to take a person seriously who is widely read.”

Alek looked up to see Luanne towel-drying her hair, her figure hidden underneath what looked like a man’s shirt worn over white shorts. As he suspected, she was just as beautiful without her makeup. But what knocked him for a loop was the graciousness she exuded, a sense of being completely comfortable with who she was.

Willing his hammering heart to calm down, Alek glanced back at the bookshelf, tugging out a copy of Hugo’s Les Misérables. In French. “In…more than one language, I take it?”

She shifted the towel to another section of hair, shrugged. “Mama was part Cajun, so I learned French early on. Or her version of it, leastways. Took four years of it in high school, too.”

One eyebrow lifted. “Are you fluent?”

“Pretty much. Although I have the world’s worst accent, which you can imagine,” she said on a laugh, which immediately dimmed to a soft smile. “At one time I thought I might even apply for one of those student exchange programs, y’know? Except then Mama got sick…”

Her eyes lowered; she rubbed harder at her hair. Ignoring the prick to his heart, Alek leaned one elbow against the bookcase. “And was your mother right? About people taking you more seriously?”

That got another laugh. Her garnet-red nails glistened as she skimmed them through her hair. “To be honest—” she frowned, gathered up the ends of her hair in the towel again “—I can’t say as I’ve found folks around here have been all that impressed, no. I think they see me as some kind of misfit, if you wanna know the truth. Heck—” She tossed the towel over her shoulder and tramped over to the refrigerator. “One of the advantages of livin’ way out here—” she yanked open the refrigerator “—is that I can play my classical music loud as I want, nobody’s gonna say boo. Oh, shoot—I forgot to make tea before I left.”

She grabbed a tray of ice from the freezer, then a pair of purple plastic tumblers from a cupboard. Clunking several pieces of ice into the tumblers, she nodded toward an unopened bottle of Coke sitting on the counter. “This okay?”

Alek nodded, feeling slightly as though he were caught in a whirlwind, then asked, “So what do you like to read most?”

“Oh, heavens—if it’s got words, I’ll read it. Started when I was four, haven’t been able to get my fill yet.” She plucked the large bottle off the counter, bracing it against her midsection. “I’ve been to all sorts of places, just from reading, that most folk don’t even know about. Like Carpathia—”

She gave the bottle top a sharp twist…then let out a yelp as the warm soda geysered four feet into the air, instantly drenching everything.

While Luanne shrieked with laughter, they both fumbled for several seconds to get the top back on the still-spewing bottle. At last, the eruption contained, they stood in shock, staring at the streaks of soda meandering down walls and refrigerator, dripping off counters, collecting in puddles on the floor, which the dog was valiantly cleaning up. Then they looked at each other. Luanne collapsed against the counter, howling, as Alek snatched a paper towel off the holder over the counter, swiping a stream of cola off his cheek.

“Is this how you treat all the guys?”

“Only the ones I really, really like,” she got out, and something warm and giddy and as bubbly as the soda erupted inside him, and somehow or other, she was in his arms and her mouth was under his….

For a second or two, at least.

With a wistful little sigh, she backed away. “I cannot tell you how this pains me—” she squatted to get a small plastic bucket and a sponge from underneath the sink “—but if we leave this, the ants’ll have a field day.”

And the fizzies inside Alek’s brain deflated enough for him to realize what he’d done. But until he figured out how to gracefully extricate himself from his own idiocy, he took the now-filled bucket from Luanne and started cleaning the refrigerator.

“Now, that is amazing,” she said behind him.

“What is?”

“I do not believe I have ever seen a man clean anything that didn’t have an engine and wheels.”

Their eyes met for an instant before she grabbed another sponge from below the sink and started in on the lower cabinets, which the dog was precleaning for her. For several seconds Alek just watched her, listening to her chatter to the dog, whose tail was going as fast as his tongue. Perhaps sensing she was being observed, she twisted to look up at him, her smile fading when she caught his expression. On a heavy sigh, she sat back on her heels, staring at the cabinet in front of her. “Don’t say it.”

He dropped the sponge into the pail and squatted beside her, brushing an errant curl off her face, wondering if she had any idea how potent her innocence was. “You can’t really think our sleeping together is a good idea?”

Her mouth quirked into a shaky grin. “Was it something I sprayed?”

He laughed in spite of the heaviness gnawing at him. “Hardly. But you’re just not the type of woman I usually—”

Her head jerked around, hurt flaring in her eyes. Alek swiped his damp hand on his jeans, then cupped her face in his hands, linking their gazes. The scent of her, the feel of her, winnowed past barriers he’d long thought impenetrable, soothing and exhilarating and terrifying him all at once. “That’s not what I meant,” he said in a fierce whisper. “You’re worth a dozen of those other women, do you know that?”