Karen Templeton - Honky-Tonk Cinderella

“But that’s exactly what you did! I didn’t expect forever, Alek, and I know I was the pushy one that night, when it came right down to it—”

“Oh, for the love of God—”

Her hand shot up. “—but I thought I was at least worth a little common courtesy. This is a pointless conversation, Alek. If you were so all-fired intent on taking responsibility, you might’ve left me some way of getting in touch with you. Or bothered to tell me who you really were. But you didn’t, did you?”

The undulating drone of a cicada pierced the silence. Alek twisted away, breathing hard, until Luanne’s sigh behind him made him face her again. “Oh, Alek—you were a stranger passin’ through. I knew it, you knew it. Neither of us was looking for anything permanent. And happily-ever-afters don’t come from one-night stands. Besides, even if I didn’t know you were a prince, I sure as heck knew you were way out of my league, that we had no more in common than a sparrow and a peacock.” Her head tilted to one side. “But none of that’s here nor there because I didn’t know who or where you were, and by the time I found all that out, I’d been married for nearly eighteen months and…”

Alek frowned. “What?”

Luanne fidgeted with the bowl a moment, then walked over to the picnic table, banging the bowl back onto its top before settling carefully onto the bench.

Alek joined her. And waited.

Several more seconds passed before she said, “When you’re twenty-one and pregnant and an inch away from panic, a White Knight can look pretty dang good, let me tell you. My world, such as it was, had crumbled right out from under me. I hadn’t finished my education, I wasn’t gonna be able to work for much longer, and had no one to fall back on. Not a single, solitary soul.”

Her brow knotted, she swatted at an insect in front of her face. “I was out behind Ed’s one night, trying to get ahold of myself—I had no sickness to speak of, but my hormones were just all over the place and I cried, like, every ten minutes—when Jeff suddenly showed up out of nowhere, and before I knew what I was doing…I told him. He offered to marry me on the spot.”

I’d do anything for that gal….

Alek’s stomach clenched; he waited out the slight surge of nausea. “And he never asked who the father was?”

“Sure he did. First question out of his mouth. I told him it didn’t make any difference, sort of indicating it happened around the time of the Simmons wedding, that it was a one-time thing….” Her mouth stretched taut. “He never questioned me after that. All he wanted was my assurance that, if he took me and the baby on, there was no chance of the father’s comin’ back and making things complicated. I told him we were probably safe on that score…but he made me swear to never tell. Since I didn’t figure there’d ever be a problem, I agreed.”

Alek swore softly. Luanne crossed her arms.

“Even so, I didn’t think it was fair to Jeff, and I told him so, but he finally convinced me it was a blessed sight better than goin’ on public assistance when I couldn’t work anymore, that this way, I’d be able to get my degree like I’d planned. And we’d always been friends, good friends, so it wasn’t like we didn’t get along. And I trusted him, Alek. More than I’d ever trusted another man.” He caught the blush stealing across her cheeks, said nothing. She cleared her throat, looked straight ahead. “Marrying him was strictly a practical decision on my part. The last thing I expected was to…”

She glanced away, tucked an escaped curl behind her ear. “I’d never had a man be so good to me. Not for the long haul. Or to stand up for me the way he did. His parents were dead set against the marriage, but he refused to buckle to their objections. And after Jeff’s daddy died, right before Chase was born, his mama came around, treated me like gold until her own passing a couple years back. I remember waking up one morning, I guess when Chase was about six months old or so, and realizing, for the first time in my life, everything was going right for a change. I was gonna go back to school, I had a beautiful, healthy baby and a husband who adored me.”

She got awkwardly to her feet, waddled over to the clothesline, felt the shirt. “Then this contract arrives in the mail.” She unclipped the shirt from the line, handed it to Alek. “Here—stuff dries real fast in this heat.”

Silently, he got up, as well, took the still-damp shirt and slipped it on, all the while watching the gutsy, exhausted woman in front of him fight to keep her emotions in check.

“So what would you have done,” she said after a moment, “if you’d’ve been in my shoes?” Anguished eyes turned to his. “Would you have risked destroying the family you never thought you’d have by tellin’ the truth? Would you have found it in yourself to break a promise to the only person with the guts to stand by you when nobody else would, who loved your baby more than your own father ever loved you?”

“Oh, Luanne—”

But she cut him off, even though her nerves were clearly at the breaking point. “So I prayed, and prayed, and prayed until my knees were sore, asking the good Lord what I should do, what was the best in a field of bad choices. And it came to me the only practical thing was to keep my promise. Might’ve pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for those blamed tenth-birthday photos.” Her gaze slid to his nose. “Didn’t take much for Jeff to figure things out after that—”

“There you are!” called a raspy voice from the back steps. Alek looked up to see sunlight flash off a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on a shiny brown face underneath a cap of white curls. A shapeless dress in an innocuous print hugged an equally shapeless body held up by a pair of scrawny legs. “That boy of yours said you were out here. I don’t suppose you meant to leave the hose runnin’, so I shut it off, hope that was okay—” The woman lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Oh, I’m sorry! Didn’t know you had company! I just this minute took some biscuits outta the oven, thought maybe you and Chase might like some, you know, and then he told me to go on back…” The woman’s words drifted into an ether of curiosity and embarrassment.

Beside him, Luanne took several deep breaths to regain her control, then struggled to stand; instinctively, Alek rose at the same time, bracing his palm around one of her elbows to help her up. She darted a surprised, wary glance at him, but said nothing.

When they got closer to the house, Luanne introduced them. “Odella Stillwater, Alek Vlastos. An old friend of Jeff’s,” she added, a forced calm to her voice that put Alek on immediate alert. “Odella’s my neighbor to the east.”

Alek took Odella’s softly wrinkled hand in his. “Pleased to meet you.”

Clasping her other hand on top of his, the old woman squinted for a moment, as if trying to place him. Then, on a soft gasp, she gently squeezed his hand between both of hers. “Oh, land—you’re that prince fella, ain’tcha? That used to race with Jeff a while back?” A wealth of understanding—and compassion, Alek thought—seemed to flood her words.

He nodded.

Odella scrutinized him for another few seconds before at last releasing his hand, then ushered them all back inside as if the house were hers, not Luanne’s, insisting they get to those biscuits before they went stone cold.

One glance at Luanne’s strained features told Alek she was obviously no more in the mood for a chitchat over a plate of biscuits than he was. But neither would she have hurt Odella’s feeling for the world. When she went to call Chase into the kitchen from the living room, however, and the boy flat-out refused to come, Alek saw her cheeks blaze.