Karen Templeton - Honky-Tonk Cinderella

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?”

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—”