Karen Templeton - Honky-Tonk Cinderella

Holding back the memories of that night eleven years ago was something else again….

Sitting in the Porsche in the pouring rain, wondering if she’d truly gone and lost her mind, Luanne could just make out Alek’s mad dash from Ed’s to the car. Not that running did him any good, seeing as he was already soaked through. Unmindful of the wet leather seat—he’d left his door open—he scooted behind the steering wheel and slammed shut his door, shoving one hand through his dripping hair which, combined with his shadowed jaw, made him look almost…wild. For a brief moment she thought he might shake himself like a dog, finding herself mildly disappointed when he didn’t. Her gaze then lingered on his body just long enough to determine that what the wet shirt and jeans had molded themselves to was lean and hard, and that this was having a profound and disturbing effect on her good sense.

She quickly looked away. Here her nerves had just settled down some, and then all that lean, male hardness had to go sending them haywire all over again.

Not, however, because he frightened, or even intimidated her, despite his being more refined and classier than any man she’d ever met, let alone ridden alone in a car with. Oh, no. What had gotten to her, from the moment they met—and what had, paradoxically, made her turn away when she’d seen his car in the lot—was what she’d seen in his eyes.

Working in a bar the way she did, Luanne had gotten real good at discerning, from a person’s body language and the expression in his eyes, not just whether he was dealing with some trial or other, but what that trial might be. She wasn’t sure whether this ability of hers was a gift or a burden, but her knack for pinpointing people’s troubles had proved to be extremely useful on more than one occasion.

Maybe she was only twenty-one, but she’d already seen for herself any number of times that there was a lot of truth in what folks said about money not buying happiness. An adage she suspected held especially true in this case. Off and on throughout the evening she had found herself contemplating Alek Hastings, coming to the eventual conclusion that this was a man with great emptiness inside him, despite his surface cheerfulness. She had not, however, arrived at this diagnosis because she had any special powers to read a person’s mind, as much as this was a general truth she’d learned about men with wanderlust.

Unfortunately, neither of those things stopped her from being powerfully attracted to the man, nor from thinking about things she shouldn’t.

“All recovered now?” Alek now asked, interrupting her thoughts. She managed a nod, not trusting her voice. The rain had dropped the temperature considerably; even wearing the sweater she kept in the truck, she wrapped her arms around herself, only to realize how cold he must be, being wet and all.

“Where you staying?” she asked, only to feel her face immediately flame at how he might interpret her question. “What I mean is, you’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t get outta those wet clothes….”

That got a chuckle. Now even the roots of her hair felt hot, propelling her next words out on an exasperated rush. “I just meant maybe you might be more comfortable if you changed into dry clothes before you took me home. That’s all.”

“I know that’s what you meant,” he said, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “And yes, I think that’s an excellent idea, since I don’t much relish the thought of catching pneumonia. I’m staying at the Come On Inn.”

She burst out laughing. “You have got to be kidding!”

In the glow from the dash, she saw another grin split the dark contours of his beard-hazed face. “So sue me. I’m a sucker for tacky motels.”

“Well then, buddy, you are definitely staying at the right place. How on earth do you get any sleep, though, is what I want to know. I hear the walls are notoriously thin.”

His resulting low laugh sent a whole swarm of warm, foolish thoughts spiraling through her. “Earplugs.”

She found herself chuckling back, wondering at how she could feel so relaxed with her nerves all lit up the way they were. Then she allowed as how the Come On was on the way to her place, and off they purred in his fancy car, his headlights spearing the night as the windshield wipers whispered away the rain. He handled the car like it was part of him, with finesse and confidence, but no bravado, for which she and her twanging nerves were immensely grateful.

Alek popped a cassette into the player on the dash. A minute later, lush, glorious music filled the car.

“It sounds like Beethoven,” she said deliberately, “but I don’t recognize it.”

She saw the flinch of surprise, his hands tighten, just barely, on the wheel. “It’s the Choral Fantasy. He used this as a warm-up for the Ninth Symphony.”

“Ah.” Luanne sighed and let herself sink into the glove-soft leather, shutting her eyes, silently thanking her mother for sending away for one of those cassette sets of The World’s Best-Loved Melodies for $24.95 when Luanne wasn’t but a little girl. “It’s beautiful.”

Which would have been the cue for most men to say, “So are you,” but he didn’t. Instead he said, “So tell me—when that jerk opened your car door, why didn’t you pop out the passenger side and run back to Ed’s?”

“Can’t,” she said on a shrug. “That door hasn’t worked since probably 1976.”

“Never mind the engine?”

“Oh, the engine’s all right, usually.” Then she laughed. “Hey, I bought her off of Fred Sellers for two hundred bucks, what did I expect? And Jeff keeps her tuned up for me for free. Ordinarily Flo and I get along just fine.”

“Flo?”

“The truck. Which reminds me—don’t let me forget to call Jeff when I get home, have him go over and see what’s wrong with her.”

She thought she saw Alek do one of those things with his jaw that men do when they want to ask you something that’s none of their business, but they were pulling up in front of his room at the Come On, anyway, which Luanne figured was probably fortuitous.

He wasn’t gone five minutes, during which time the storm pretty much played itself out. When he returned, he was wearing a serious bad-boy leather jacket over fresh jeans and a plain white shirt, open at the collar, that showed off his dark complexion quite nicely.

Luanne reminded herself that staring was impolite.

She also reminded herself, as she directed Alek onto the dirt road that led to her trailer on the Carlisles’ property, where she lived rent free in exchange for her tutoring their kids during the school year—which was more of a challenge than she’d ever admit to the children’s parents—that she was not in the habit of inviting strange men into her house in the wee hours of the morning, not even those who had come to her rescue. Heck, she didn’t even invite men she knew inside her trailer. Bad enough fending them off in their trucks.

And if the rest of the ride from Alek’s motel had passed in silence, or been filled with dribs and drabs of stilted, boring conversation, she supposed she wouldn’t be tormenting herself like this.

But it hadn’t. And because it hadn’t, it struck Luanne that she had been sorely neglecting herself of late. And then there was this out-and-out sexual attraction that was making her itchy all over and her blood purr like the Porsche’s engine. So by the time they got to the trailer, and Blue, the shepherd mix who’d shown up on her doorstep last year, had made a mad dash out of his dog house for the car, barking his fool head off, she had just about twisted herself inside out with her ambivalence.

Then she looked up and saw her home for what it was—a tacky single-wide with fake wood paneling and fifteen-year-old gold shag carpeting besides.