Kara Lennox - Sassy Cinderella

“Ah, hell, that’s right,” Jonathan said. After the wedding, Pete and his long-time sweetheart, Sally Enderlin, were going on a weeklong cruise. “I don’t care. I’ll manage somehow.” But he really didn’t know how. His youngest brother, Wade, who ran a horse-breeding operation on his portion of the ranch, had offered to pitch in with the cattle-ranching work during Jonathan’s recuperation. But how in the world would Jon cook, clean and supervise his superactive kids?

“I’ll hire someone to come in,” Jonathan said decisively.

But Jeff was shaking his head. “You’ll need someone there all the time, at least for the first week or so.”

Jonathan looked to Allison, half hoping she’d volunteer. But realistically he knew she couldn’t. She was the dentist in Cottonwood, the small town where they all lived, and she had a thriving practice to manage. She couldn’t just take off a week.

Allison had a peculiar look on her face that Jonathan had come to associate with an impending brainstorm.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her point-blank.

“I have this friend in Dallas who’s a nurse,” Allison said, casting worried glances at Jeff. “She’s starting a new job in December, but for now she’s at loose ends. I’ve been trying to get her to come visit me in Cottonwood. If she knew someone here needed her nursing skills, she’d be here in a flash.”

“I do not need a nursemaid,” Jonathan protested, picturing some horse-faced pain queen with a hypodermic.

“But that’s precisely what you do need,” Jeff said. “I’d feel much better about releasing you if I knew a registered nurse was keeping an eye on you. Why don’t you call her, Allie?”

Allison looked at Jonathan. “It’s up to you.”

He saw no other alternative. Once this nurse saw he could take care of himself, she would leave him alone and focus on caring for the children. He nodded his assent.

Allison smiled and opened her purse. “I’ll call Sherry right now.”

Jeff’s jaw dropped. “Sherry? You mean Sherry McCormick, the she shark?”

“Oh, Jeff, you’re way too harsh. So, she had a crush on you. So what?” Allison scrolled through the phone numbers on her cell phone.

“A crush? She wanted to eat me alive at that convention.”

This was getting interesting, Jonathan thought. A she shark? Didn’t sound like a horse face, at least.

“She happens to be an excellent nurse,” Allison said. “At least, she just landed a job working for one of Dallas’s top cosmetic surgeons.”

“You can’t bring Sherry McCormick to Cottonwood,” Jeff said flatly. “A city girl like her won’t fit in here.”

“What’s the matter? You afraid she’ll come after you again? Well, don’t. She’s over you.”

“And you want to inflict her on Jonathan instead?”

Allison waved away Jeff’s concern. “Jonathan isn’t her type. Anyway, she told me she never gets involved with a patient. It isn’t professional.”

“Why am I not her type?” Jonathan wanted to know. Unfortunately, this Sherry sounded like his type—flashy and aggressive. His ex-wife, Rita, had been exactly that, all spike heels and expensive perfume. It had not been a match made in heaven. Rita had about died of boredom in tiny Cottonwood, Texas, and not even her two children had been enough to make her stick around. She’d fled to New Orleans, where she’d grown up, and saw the kids maybe twice a year.

“She goes for doctors and lawyers,” Jeff answered. “Guys in suits with expensive cars who will keep her on a steady diet of four-star restaurants and adorn her with diamonds.”

That certainly didn’t describe Jonathan.

“I’m not interested in romantic potential,” Jonathan said. “If she’s willing to come and can do the job, bring her on.”

Allison flashed a satisfied smile and dialed a number on her cell phone. Jeff groaned.

SHERRY MCCORMICK drove slowly around the town square of Cottonwood, hardly believing her eyes. It could have been a set from a Hollywood back lot—for a period piece from the 1920s. Quaint hardly began to describe this town.

Fortunately, Sherry was a sucker for quaint. The picturesque shops and restaurants charmed her silly. Did people really live like that? Even as she tried to tell herself the idea of residing in the sticks repulsed her, she felt an insistent pull toward this place.

Cottonwood was a town a person could call home.

Sherry had never lived in a place that felt like home. Certainly the double-wide in which she’d grown up hadn’t qualified. Her parents had been a lot more interested in drinking and smoking dope than raising their only child—except to sporadically hurl criticism and occasional pieces of furniture her way. That was their idea of parenting.

She was okay with her current home, a condo in Dallas she’d bought last year. She’d taken great care in decorating it, choosing each picture and accent piece one at a time. But no matter how many homey touches she added, it still felt cold to her. She supposed no place could feel really like a home when only one person lived there.

But maybe that was her lot in life. She sighed as she turned her car away from town and followed the directions Allison had given her to the Hardison Ranch. She’d tried really hard to find a companion, a man she was compatible with, one who would love her, one who wanted to commit and eventually grow old with her. But it seemed the harder she tried, the worse things turned out. She’d found plenty of men who would love her—for one night. Maybe she just wasn’t the kind of woman a man wanted hanging around for the rest of his life.

As sobering as that thought was, Sherry knew she could live without a husband. Growing old without children, though—she wasn’t going to settle for that. Still, at thirty-one, she had a little time. And until she figured out the rest of her life, she had her nursing career, which was a real blessing. She’d been let go from her last position, an event that seemed grossly unfair to Sherry. She was a good nurse, a conscientious one, and it was only a personality conflict that had gotten her fired. But then she’d landed a plum position with the best plastic surgeon in Dallas, along with a big hike in pay, so it had all worked out.

Even this chance to come to Cottonwood and take care of an injured rancher had come at the right time, convincing her that nursing was where she needed to focus her energies. Her new job didn’t start until next month and her finances were getting a little tight. The money she would earn as a live-in caregiver would help with some of those credit card bills she was using as a stopgap measure.

The Hardison Ranch was easy to find. She just had to follow what seemed like miles of white rail fences until she reached the main gate, which featured a hand-painted sign and a metal sculpture of a bucking longhorn cow. Or was it a bull? A steer? Whatever. Sherry knew nothing about cattle, and she didn’t want to.

She turned her Firebird right and through the gate, rumbling over a cattle guard, then down a long, red dirt drive. She noticed a picturesque red barn off to her right. It looked like the model for countless amateur oil paintings.

“What a trip,” she murmured aloud.

When the ranch house came into view, Sherry was impressed. It was a huge, rambling one-story building done in a pseudo log-cabin style. Pastures surrounded it on all sides, but a few trees had been spared to give the house shade from the hot Texas sun. Someone had planted chrysanthemums in front, which were covered in orange blossoms.

The house and grounds looked well maintained, and the few cows she saw in the distance grazed contentedly. She hoped the inside was as nice, but she had her doubts since from what Allison had told her, the Hardison Ranch was a bastion of male bachelorhood. She didn’t relish the thought of devoting all her time to scrubbing floors and toilets, but that was what she would do if she had to. When she’d left the trailer park, she’d sworn she would never live anyplace dirty again, not even temporarily.