Barbara White Daille - Honorable Rancher

No, not a princess. The one who took off without her glass slipper—Cinderella.

Dana was no Cinderella. She hadn’t left a shoe behind. Hadn’t even dropped a button from that pink dress as something for him to remember her by. As if he could ever forget her.

She’d been the heroine of a story he’d once created long ago, a story he’d had to write in his head because he hadn’t yet known how to spell all the words.

How did it go? Like in his niece’s storybook...

Once upon a time, that was it.

Once upon a time, in the Land of Enchantment—otherwise known as the state of New Mexico—Benjamin Franklin Sawyer had high hopes and a huge crush on the girl who sat one desk over from him in their classroom every day.

No other girl in town, Ben felt sure, could beat Dana Smith, and most likely no other woman in the world could compare to her, either. In any case, without a doubt, she was the cutest of all his female friends in their kindergarten classroom.

Unfortunately, when the teacher moved his best friend, Paul Wright, to the desk on the other side of Dana’s, Ben saw his hopes dashed.

The crush, however, continued. For a good long while.

As for Benjamin Franklin Sawyer’s hopes...

Well, not every story had a happy ending.

Not even Dana’s.

Since Paul’s death, they had seen less and less of each other. By her choice, not his.

She needed time, he had told himself. Needed space. So he’d waited. He’d talked himself down. He’d exercised every horse in his stable enough to cover every inch of the land he owned. When none of that worked, he’d bought the danged office building. And even that hadn’t brought him peace.

Seeing her now had.

He never could stand to watch her cry, but tonight, he welcomed those tears in her eyes and the way she’d hurried away from him. Doing fine, she’d said. Like hell. Her actions revealed more than she would willingly tell him. More than she’d ever want him to know.

She needed his help, though she refused to accept it.

The help he had promised Paul he would give her.

No matter how firmly she dug her heels in and how often she turned him down, he was damned well going to keep that promise.

* * *

AFTER ONE LAST BREATH of fresh air to calm herself, Dana slipped back into the banquet hall and sought safety at one of the tables.

“Hey, Dana, over here!”

Even above the music, she heard the familiar voice and fought to hide her cringe of dismay.

No safety for her tonight, anywhere.

Forcing a smile, she hurried toward the table halfway around the dance floor. Anything to keep from standing near the door. If Ben found her there, he would assume she had waited for him.

For the past year and more, she had done just the opposite—tried her best to keep out of his way. A ridiculous goal in a town the size of Flagman’s Folly, where you couldn’t step out your front door without meeting someone you knew.

Then he’d bought the building that housed her office, and she’d had to work twice as hard to avoid him. Ten times as hard to ignore her feelings. Because it wasn’t only anger and irritation that made her insist she was fine. And that had sent her running from him now.

Reaching the table, she smiled down at Tess’s aunt Ellamae. “Everything okay?” she asked. “Did you need something?”

“Everything’s fine,” the older woman said.

Fine. That word again. She resisted the urge to steal a backward glance at the French doors. To look for Ben.

They’d been friends forever, yet she couldn’t risk being near him anymore. Talking with him meant she had to raise her guard. Trying to make him understand how she felt made her frustrated, in more ways than she wanted to think about. Every time they spoke to each other, she left more shaken than before.

Even tonight, when she fled outside for a few minutes alone, she’d found no escape from him. Worse, sitting beside him in the moonlight, she’d had trouble catching her breath. And that had nothing to do with the formfitting bodice of her gown.

“We were wondering what you’d gotten up to,” Ellamae said.

She jumped. “Up to? Nothing. I’m the matron of honor, that’s all. It’s a busy job.”

“Yeah. So, it’s funny you found time to run off like that.”

Ellamae’s weatherworn face and gruff tone made most kids in town antsy around her. Her job as court clerk only increased their anxiety. But like a prickly pear cactus, her rough exterior covered the softness beneath.

Years of spending time around Tess’s family had taught Dana that. She could handle Ellamae. “I just went out for a quick breath of fresh air.”

“Not so quick, was it?”

She blinked. On the other hand, the woman’s tendency to see all and want to know all made her a bit antsy, too.

Especially when she had so much to hide.

The man on Ellamae’s other side broke in. “Glad you’re back, anyhow,” Judge Baylor said. “Wouldn’t want to miss Tess throwing out her bouquet.”

“Oh, I think I’ll pass.”

The judge’s bright blue eyes met hers. “Well, now. Can’t have you doing that, can we? It’s tradition.”

As Ellamae nodded vigorously, the bandleader made the announcement. At the tables around them, women jumped up from their seats.

Knowing enough not to protest, Dana swallowed a sigh. Everyone had respected her year and more of mourning, but with the folks of Flagman’s Folly, tradition was practically the law. And between them, Ellamae and the judge were the law in town.

“Time you got back into the swing of things,” Ellamae said.

Trust her to speak her mind. She now shooed Dana into the crowd with as much enthusiasm as little Becky Robertson shooed her chickens into their new coop.

Giving up, Dana joined the women surging toward the dance floor. Laughter broke out from behind her, and she looked back.

Ellamae stood waving a well-used baseball catcher’s mitt. She hurried to Dana’s side. “C’mon, girl, let’s move it. I got done out of catching the bouquet at Sam Robertson’s wedding, but I’m not missing a chance at this one.”

Almost the same words Dana had used to escape from Ben. Time to make good on her excuse. Refusing to look for him, she took her spot with the women. From the middle of the crowd, Lissa and Nate turned, grinning, to wave at her. She waved back.

Ellamae nudged her, making elbow room.

Dana laughed and edged a few steps away. Though she stayed on the fringes, she held her hands up as everyone else did and matched their wide smiles.

The bride listened to her guests, all telling her how and when and where to toss her bouquet. Dana knew each woman in the group hoped to become the lucky winner—especially Ellamae, who stood waving her mitt-clad hand above her head.

Good luck to her. And to anyone else on that dance floor.

As long as she stayed behind all the other women, the bouquet shouldn’t come anywhere near her. Just the idea that she might win the toss made her heart thud painfully.

Unable to stop herself, she glanced across the room. Ben stood near the French doors, gazing at her, and she hurriedly turned away. Knowing he watched only made things worse.

The sigh she swallowed bordered on a sob. Of all the folks in town who worried her, good old Ben topped the list. Not only because he kept offering to help her.

But because he would be the person most hurt by the secrets she kept.

“Everybody set?” Tess called.

The crowd murmured in anticipation, and Dana forced herself to focus. If she didn’t, it would be just her luck not to realize the bouquet had come right at her until too late—after her reflexes had kicked in and she had caught it.

Tess swung her arm as if winding up for a baseball pitch, then let the flower arrangement fly. It skimmed the fingertips of one woman after another, bouncing its way across the crowd.