Читать книгу Honky-Tonk Cinderella - Karen Templeton - Страница 9

He felt like an insect being scorched under a magnifying glass.

Barely nine in the morning, and already the west-Texas sun seared through Alek’s knit shirt as he walked down the dust-filmed, airless street. Even on shaded porches, petunias drooped in their baskets, commiserating with the patches of bleached grass infecting otherwise tidy lawns, while dogs sprawled like dead things under whatever shelter they could find, dreaming, not of steak or rabbits, Alek imagined, but of cooling breezes.

Hottest August on record, according to the woman at the quaint little bed and breakfast where he was staying. Just might be something to this global warmin’ business after all, she’d said, then told him the street he was looking for wasn’t but four blocks away, he couldn’t miss it. He walked slowly, squinting up through his sunglasses at hazed house numbers, uncomfortably aware of his loafers scuffing against the root-buckled pavement.

No one had recognized him. Thank God. True, he was more filled out, his hair both darker and shorter than it had been during his twenty-four-hour sojourn in Sandy Springs more than eleven years before. But unlike his hitherto reclusive sister, Sophie, Prince Aleksander Vlastos of Carpathia wasn’t exactly unknown to the press. Not these days, at any rate. And Jeff Henderson had been the town’s fair-haired boy, especially with his string of Grand Prix wins last year—

Up the street, a screen door slapped open. He stilled as a very pregnant woman, her dark, curly hair clipped up off her neck, came out onto the porch of a modest yellow-and-white two-story house huddled underneath a pair of ungainly mulberry trees. She paused to let out a half-grown, straw-colored pup too young to know how hot it was, then made her cumbersome, barefoot way down the gray steps. The dog tumbled down in front of her, nearly tripping her as she crossed to a hose neatly coiled by the outside spigot.

He said her name, softly. Prayed for the strength to get through this.

A sandwich of some sort clamped in one hand, she twisted on the water, then dragged the hose across the yard to a small flower bed, bending awkwardly to lay it among the wilted plants. Alek was still far enough away, his presence apparently camouflaged by the comfortless shade of a struggling cottonwood, that she hadn’t noticed him. His wrist, only recently sprung from a cast, complained; absently, he rubbed it.

And watched.

Too-thin arms protruded from a sleeveless white T-shirt underneath a pair of baggy, thigh-length overalls tenting over her bulging middle. Scraps of hair floated around her jaw; she impatiently shoved one of them behind her ear, her wedding rings flashing in the sunlight. He was pressing an unfair advantage, he knew, but he needed these few minutes to observe, to adjust. To prepare.

To face his memories, one at a time.

She slowly straightened, absently kneading the muscles in her lower back, turning just enough for him to glimpse her face. His breathing damn near stopped altogether: she was far too pale and frighteningly gaunt, despite the obvious weight gain from the pregnancy. Yet, oddly, her limbs seem weighted, burdened with a deep, soul-weary sadness that tore at his heart.

He’d bet his life she wouldn’t take his sudden appearance well. But he had his reasons for finding her, some of which would be readily apparent, even as others, still undefined, would perhaps become clear to them both with the passage of time. One reason, however, he would keep to himself. He’d hurt her once, albeit unintentionally; damned if he’d do it again.

Grief and regret clawed at the door to his consciousness, demanding an audience he refused to grant. Not now, at least. Now it was all he could do to make himself cross the street and face his past.

Not to mention a future that, six weeks ago, he couldn’t have dreamed of.

Luanne shoved her bangs off her already-sweaty forehead, allowing as how it was only marginally cooler out here than in the unair-conditioned house. God bless little boys who could sleep no matter what, she thought, then forced down another bite of the packaged cheeseburger she’d just microwaved, the only thing with protein in it she figured she could manage, just at the moment. The ketchup helped some. Funny how she’d always taken her hamburgers plain, until this pregnancy. Nowadays she pretty much only ate the hamburgers as an excuse for the ketchup.

She grimaced at the sorry-looking flowers, half of ’em all burned up and papery around the edges. Why was she even bothering? Wasn’t like she’d planted them herself, since they were here already when she’d rented the house two weeks ago. Like as not, unless they got some decent rain sometime soon, they were all gonna die, anyway—

Icy fingers squeezed her heart until she just about couldn’t breathe. She clamped shut her eyes, waiting it out, wondering why, instead of lessening, the pain only seemed to get worse with every passing day. After more than six weeks, it still made no sense, even though she’d reminded herself of Jeff’s death a hundred, a thousand times in a desperate attempt to assimilate the truth. Since the race had only been a practice session, there’d been no tape made of it, which she’d at first thought a blessing. Now she wondered if maybe witnessing her husband’s death might make it any more real.

Except she knew, deep down, that this was the good Lord’s way of sparing her and Chase from even more sorrow. Intellectually she knew the raw agony of loss would fade, that grief would eventually yield to acceptance….

The flowers blurred, the last bite of burger turning to cardboard in her mouth. Deep in her womb the baby stirred, sweetly oblivious. Luanne skimmed her fingers over her belly, almost reverently. She loved this child, who had taken so many years to conceive, with all her heart.

And she’d never resented anything so much in her entire life as she did being pregnant right now.

Guilt swamped her as she lunged for the spewing hose, jerking it up and across the yard, praying Odella didn’t get it into her head to come outside—

A movement out of the corner of her eye made her spin clumsily around, nearly tripping over the dog. She didn’t recognize him at first, what with his hair being shorter and him being older and the way he’d caught her off guard like that. On a cry of alarm she hurled the remains of the cheeseburger at his chest, then turned the hose on him, those being her only means of defense at hand.

“Luanne!” Alek tried to dodge the spray, as well as the dog who had dived for the burger before anybody might notice. “What the hell are you doing?”

Jerked back to her senses, she jettisoned the writhing hose and took off for the house, wanting to hide, wanting to die, wishing, wishing, wishing the nightmare would end—

Except Alek cut off her flight before she even hit the steps, whipping her around to face him. She could see little rivulets of water meandering down his just-shaved cheeks, dripping off a sharply defined jaw rigid with anguish; she flinched, even as her hands balled into fists of their own accord and began pummeling his chest.

“Why are you here?” she cried, flailing and beating and sobbing like a dadburned fool, dimly aware this was the first time since Jeff’s death she’d given her emotions their head. Ketchup streaked the drenched shirt, she noticed, sending a perverse trickle of satisfaction through her fury. “You are the last person I want to see right now!”

“You think I don’t know that?” His clipped, not-quite-British accent sent a herd of unwanted memories stampeding through her already muddled brain. She let out another sob, of frustration mostly, then suddenly Alek was holding her, stilling her hysteria, one gentle hand stroking her hair. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and she shut her eyes, realizing he smelled like ketchup and pricey cologne and, after all this time and much to her extreme annoyance, a lonely twenty-one-year-old girl’s fantasies.

She wrenched out of his arms, scrubbing the tears from her face, not sure which of them she was more angry with. Shame ripped through her that she should let another man—this man—touch her like that when she hadn’t been a widow but a few weeks. “Then why’d you come? And why now?”

Lord, but she sounded like a bitch. Which was not like her, not at all. Mama had always said there was little point in letting the bad stuff get you down, that a person’s outlook on life went a long way toward shaping his or her experiences. And Luanne, who had had more than her fair share of opportunity to put that philosophy to the test, had found it a useful one, more times than not.

Until now.

It was ungodly hot, she was pregnant, and her husband had died less than two months ago, leaving her with a devastated child who looked to her for bolstering when she could barely keep from drowning in sorrow herself. And then this man, whom she didn’t ever figure on seeing again, shows up without so much as a by-your-leave at eight-thirty in the morning and with her looking like…well, like someone without much reason for fixing herself up anymore.

Luanne swiped a stray hair out of her face, trying not to shake. “You could have at least given me some warning, instead of scaring me half to death like that.”

“I didn’t know where to find you at first,” Alek said, which she had to admit was a valid excuse, since she’d gone into seclusion with Chase immediately after the accident. But then he added, “And after I found out where you were, I was afraid…”

Luanne narrowed her eyes at that, straining to catch his meaning. “Afraid of what?”

Alek swept a trembling hand through his damp hair, not looking at her at first. And when he did, his eyes begged forgiveness.

“I want to meet my son.”

And Luanne marveled, in a stuttering, not-quite-focused kind of way, that there had been enough of her heart left intact to now be crumbling into a million pieces.

Even as short as she was, there was no avoiding the bitter, brittle heat of those impossibly blue eyes as Luanne backed away, her arms laced over her unborn child. The pup circled her feet, worried.

“Jeff swore to me he wouldn’t tell you.”

Alek swallowed down the acrid taste of guilt, hating this moment more than he’d ever hated anything in his life. “I haven’t known for long.”

He watched as her eyes squeezed shut, as she drew in a shuddering breath, opened them again. Resolve now flickered in their bright-blue depths, if not ameliorating the panic of moments before, at least fortifying it. “And I don’t suppose you’d consider pretending you’d never found out, would you?”

It was as close to begging as he imagined she’d ever come, and it nearly broke his heart. He dragged an arm across his wet face, then shook his head. “I think it’s time we all stopped pretending, don’t you?”

The prick to his conscience came hard and fast. How ironic to reach a point in his life where integrity should suddenly become all-important, only to have circumstances laugh in his face. But, in those cases where kindness and honesty seem to be mutually exclusive, which one was the more noble choice?

However, as he watched the clearly distraught woman in front of him, his ambivalence vanished. As did, apparently, some of her reticence. Her emotions as transparent as he remembered, Luanne stared at him for several seconds, then banged back the screen door. “Inside,” she said softly.

Alek and the pup both obeyed.

Once in the house, she headed down the short hallway toward the back, leaving a trail of damp footprints on the bare floor. She flapped her hand toward a sparsely furnished living room off to the left. “You may as well take a load off while I go to the little girl’s room.” The words were almost flippant, the tightness with which they were spoken, anything but.

“Luanne.”

She turned, her gaze wary.

“I’m not here to take Chase away from you.”

Purple smudges lurked underneath eyes now gone expressionless. “And I reckon I have your word on that?”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t expected her to laugh, although the sound was as dry and dusty as the air outside. “And just what’ve you ever done that would give me any reason to trust you, Your Highness?” she said, then disappeared down the hall.

Point to her.

Every muscle in his neck strung tight, Alek wandered into the bare-floored living room, the pup clicking at his heels. A quick swipe at his backside determined that he was dry enough to sit stiffly on the edge of a cushioned wicker chair; the pup wriggled over to him, flopping onto his back to get his stomach scratched. Alek complied, distractedly, glancing around the white-walled room, glaringly bright from the sunlight streaming in through the pair of curtainless windows. A large ceiling fan droned lazily overhead, barely stirring the thick, stifling air; dozens of boxes, like an oversize children’s block set, were towered throughout the room. Even from here he could see the labels: Books— History or Books—Bio or Books—Novels A-D. He wondered, vaguely, why she’d moved back from Dallas.

Back to where their child had been conceived, eleven years ago.

Alek leaned back on his elbows in the bleachers, oblivious to the sun biting through his cotton shirt and jeans, oblivious to everything save the sassy little Chevy Corsica spitting dirt from its wheels as it sped around the makeshift track. He’d come to Sandy Springs as he had to a dozen other small American towns—for the racing. Not the major venues, but the dusty little amateur tracks where tomorrow’s stars were earning their stripes, where dreams burned through a young man’s—or, less frequently, a woman’s—veins as hot and fierce as the souped-up stockcars burned rubber. He’d heard about the track from someone in another town, fifty miles to the east. And about twenty-two-year-old Jeff Henderson, who was gonna win one of the big ones one of these days, you just wait and see.

Prince Aleksander was hardly the first royal to be bitten by the racing bug. In fact, he could name at least a dozen blue-bloods who either drove or sponsored various teams, traveling from track to track to satisfy their lust. In Alek’s case, however, it wasn’t the thrill that had lured him into the sport as much as his discovery that racing was a terrific common denominator. Socioeconomic barriers simply vanished, leaving nothing except shared euphoria—or profound disappointment—in their place. And that camaraderie had gone a long way, in the past nine years since his parents’ deaths, to stanch a despair so chronic, he barely felt the ache anymore.

Still, it lurked inside him, just waiting for an unguarded moment to assault him afresh. So he kept on the move, racing pretty little cars and dallying with equally pretty women who understood not to expect emotional commitment. Not now, certainly. Perhaps not ever.

His grandmother, Princess Ivana, didn’t understand. And he knew she worried. Which worried him, in turn. To an extent. But not enough to date anyone for more than a few months. Or stay in Carpathia for more than a few days at a time.

Alek had been gone nearly six months this go-round, didn’t plan on returning for several more, at least. For some time he’d had the odd thought about putting together his own racing team. He had both money and connections; he could certainly get the cars. Now all he needed were drivers.

New drivers. Hungry drivers. Drivers who handled a car as sweetly as the cocky, loose-limbed kid he’d been honored to watch tear up a track this afternoon.

Not that he was anywhere near ready to make an offer, or even to reveal his true identity. In fact, he was using his father’s name—Hastings—rather than Vlastos, the royal name handed down through his grandmother and mother, masquerading as just another bored, wealthy European bumming around the States. Watching, taking mental notes, planning—those were sufficient for the moment. Alek took risks, yes, but he wasn’t impetuous. Or incautious. Still, a frisson of exquisite, almost sexual pleasure had hummed through his veins at the way Jeff Henderson seemed to effortlessly balance passion with precision. Like Alek, Jeff clearly only took chances he knew he could pull off.

The young man said as much, when Alek approached him after the practice session to compliment him on his style. Determination glittering in his golden-brown eyes, the freckled, mustached redhead with the ready smile soaked up the compliment, then went on to say that he intended to drive professionally one day. Just as soon as he found a sponsor.

Alek just smiled, then took Jeff up on his invitation to join him later on for a beer and a bite to eat at the local watering hole, if he had a mind.

The night had already cooled considerably when Alek pulled his rented Porsche convertible alongside a monster SUV in front of the post-and-rail fence edging someone’s pasture. A light breeze stirring his shoulder-length hair, he sat and stared for several moments at the neon-drenched adobe box from which blasted the sounds of a live country-western combo, complete with female vocalist with a set of lungs to rival any opera diva he’d ever heard.

Well. He supposed he was about to pay his first visit to a gen-u-wine honky-tonk.

Alek got out of the car, imagining that, unless he opened his mouth, he’d fit right in. The soft, button-fly jeans hailed from his Oxford days, as did the worn denim shirt, the sleeves rolled to just below his elbows. Of course, his two-week-old custom-made boots—when in Rome and all that—did creak a bit as he crossed the dirt lot, nodding in silent response to assorted “howdys” and “heys” along the way. His self-consciousness vanished, however, the instant he stepped inside the dimly lit bar choked with noise and body heat, his nostrils flaring at the tangled smells of hops, barbecue sauce, cheap perfume.

He scrubbed a palm across a jaw hazed with three-day-old stubble, then grinned, the despair retreating just a bit further into the shadows.

Cigarette smoke ghosting around the stage lights, the microphone squawked as the sultry-voiced singer asked for requests. A slightly slurred voice shouted out something rude: The dubious-aged, big-haired blonde, a blur of sequins and six-inch-long satin fringe, laughed and lobbed a zinger of a rebuttal in the heckler’s direction, just as a piercing whistle sliced through the din.

“Alek! Over here!”

Alek squinted through the haze and bodies, then chuckled at the sight of Jeff Henderson standing atop one of the tables, madly waving his arms and grinning with youthful exuberance.

“Sit, sit,” Jeff ordered after Alek threaded his way through the crush, then dropped into his own chair, edging back the brim of a ball cap with his thumb. “Beer?” Jeff asked. “Or something stronger?”

“Beer’s fine.” The singer launched forth into her next number. Jeff nodded, signaling to the pretty, dark-haired waitress a few tables away. “And food,” Alek added, snatching the laminated menu from the metal stand in front of him.

Jeff grabbed the menu from his hand, plopped it back into the stand. “Menus are for wimps. You come to Ed’s, you eat the barbecued ribs. Period. Side of slaw, side of beans. Biscuits to sop it all up with. Hey, sugar—” With another of those ingenuous grins, he reached up, playfully tugged at the hem of the waitress’s apron. “What took you so long?”

A quick laugh met Jeff’s remark—along with a good-natured smack on the hand with her order pad. A bit of a thing in a white sleeveless blouse and jeans, her nearly black hair waves framing classic features, the young woman was one of those rare creatures who, while undoubtedly pretty enough without makeup, could knock a man’s socks off with it. Smoky shadow and carefully applied eyeliner only served to accentuate huge, ice-blue eyes, while she had the kind of mouth just made for red lipstick. And Alek knew more than one European model who would kill for that flawless complexion.

“It’s about all these other customers, Jeffrey Eugene?” she said in an accent thick as treacle, then turned that bright, sweet smile on Alek, and he was startled to feel his blood stir in a way it hadn’t for a long, long time. Flirting with waitresses wasn’t Alek’s thing. Nor was he flirting now. Exactly. But that smile certainly snagged his attention. Not to mention a libido he’d been sorely neglecting of late.

“Luanne Evans, Alek Hastings.” Jeff took a swig of his beer, then another tug of her apron. “Be nice to him,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s from out of town.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her voice was breathy and weightless, like a child’s. She picked up Jeff’s sweating bottle, then wiped off the already-clean table, which made her breasts move in a way Alek found more than a little distracting. “From whereabouts?”

His eyes jerked to her face. “Carpathia.”

“No foolin’?”

Alek leaned back in his chair, a smile tickling his lips. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Some of us,” she said, obviously for Jeff’s benefit, “actually paid attention in geography class.” Then she rattled off not only the location of the tiny principality nestled in central Europe, but the square mileage, Carpathia’s capital and the fact that their monarchy—now constitutional—had gone unchallenged for more than four hundred years. And while Alek sat there, at once flummoxed and extraordinarily impressed, she stared at him for a long moment, ignoring repeated entreaties from the next table. Then she crossed her arms underneath that pair of truly lovely breasts. “One thing bothers me, though.”

“And what might that be?”

“What in tarnation are you doin’ here?”

Alex smiled. Slowly. Now he was flirting, no holds barred. Her directness, her intelligence, her spirit—and, all right, her physical attributes—positively inflamed him, body and soul. “I thought I knew, up until a few minutes ago.” The smile broadened as he leaned forward, let their gazes tangle. “But now I wonder if perhaps I’ve been led here…for reasons I’ve yet to discover.”

Although she kept her smile in place, not even the darkness could disguise her blush. Alek felt duly—and justifiably—chastised. But before he could apologize, he caught the look on Jeff’s face, one that clearly said I want that as he gave Luanne their orders, then snatched her pencil out of her hand. Playful, still. And respectful—Alek, took note—despite an attraction that Alek surmised had more substance than his friend was letting on.

“So, darlin’—when you gonna put me out of my misery and marry me?”

Ah.

But, apparently recovered from Alek’s gaffe, Luanne only laughed. Carefully arranged tendrils grazed her cheeks when she shook her head. “Now, you know as well as I do that marrying you would be like marrying my own brother.” She recovered her pencil, then popped him lightly on the head with it. “Wouldn’t be natural.” Then she sashayed off, giving them both an enticing view of the way her jeans cupped that extremely nice, perfectly rounded bottom, how her hair water-falled nearly to her waist.

On a sigh, Jeff lifted his bottle of beer, peered at it with one eye closed. “Kinda makes incest look a lot more attractive, don’t it?”

Alek chuckled, counting his blessings the young man had apparently missed Alek’s lame, and ill-considered, attempt at a pick-up line. “You’ve got a thing for her, I take it?”

Squinting, Jeff tipped back his chair. “Oh, we tease a lot, Lulabelle and me—shoot, we’ve known each other since we were in grade school—but I don’t suppose it would seem natural, like she said. But I’m here to tell you—” he nodded his beer bottle in Alek’s direction before he took a pull “—I’d do anything for that gal, I really would. No matter what my dang-fool family thinks.”

Alek frowned at the edge to Jeff’s voice. “Meaning?”

The chair thunked back to the floor as Jeff leaned forward again. “Meaning, some folks seem to think where you live or what you do for a living is more important than you who are. Never mind that Luanne was the smartest girl in school—fact, if it weren’t for her, I never would have gotten my sorry butt through algebra—or that, after her mama got sick, she supported the two of them for three years without askin’ for a lick of help from nobody.” Jeff shook his head, disgust pulling his mouth taut. “Galls the life out of me, sometimes, the way people judge other people, y’know? Well, damn it, I know what she’s worth. If anything, she’s far too good for the likes of ninety percent of the men around here, and that’s a fact.”

Although Alek had to smile at the young man’s pup-protecting-his-mistress loyalty, something—a vague disingenuousness, perhaps?—kicked up the odd hackle or two. Nothing he could define, just an odd feeling that a smart person would do well to not take Jeff’s easygoing manner at face value. However, applause for the singer, followed by Luanne’s appearance with their food, stanched further musings. The waitress had a smile and hair ruffle for Jeff…and a cool, cautious head-nod and “Hope you enjoy your dinner” for Alek. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, though, as much as…disappointed.

She moved off to another table a few feet away, chatting and joking with the patrons as if she’d known them all her life. Which she undoubtedly had.

Alek suppressed a sigh. Granted, he was used to getting what he wanted. In fact, most people would probably consider him spoiled. With good reason. Even so, he found no pleasure in using people or in taking undue advantage of his position.

Or in hurting feelings, if he could help it. That a woman working in a bar should be more thick-skinned was beside the point. Perhaps she had little choice in her place of employment. Perhaps she dreaded coming to work, night after night, fearing that, just because she was pretty and friendly, some moron might misinterpret her natural ebullience as a come-on.

Well, the least this moron could do was to attempt to remedy the situation.

She jerked, a little, when he caught up to her at the bar a little later. Although her lips curved into a smile as she deftly loaded drinks onto her tray, a certain guardedness immediately settled into those bright blue eyes—eyes that, nevertheless, had no compunction about meeting his.

“Everything okay?” she asked over the barrage of conversation cocooning them. “C’n I get you boys anything else?”

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said, and the eyes went saucer wide.

“For what?”

“For offending you earlier.”

She stared at him for a long moment, clearly having no earthly idea what to do with his comment. Then she yanked the tray off the bar, averting her gaze. “No offense taken,” she said softly.

Only she turned back, the beginnings of a smile tweaking at one corner of her mouth. “But I appreciate you taking the trouble to apologize. That was real sweet of you. Most men… Well, it was just real nice, is all. Thanks.”

And that should have been that. Except, for the rest of the evening Alek found his attention straying to the vivacious young woman with a laugh or smile or friendly word for everyone. If life had been less than kind to her, she certainly didn’t seem to be holding it against anyone. And he acknowledged to himself that, in those few seconds between his apology and her acceptance, something in Luanne Evans’s honest blue eyes had shot straight through to the cynicism knotted inside him, loosening it just a bit.

Edging aside the despair just enough to let in the barest trickle of something he couldn’t quite define. An alien feeling, to be sure, but pleasant enough to make him think, More, please, to inexplicably draw him to whatever it was that kept Luanne Evans’s smile so naturally, so constantly, in place.

To make him take the kind of chance he rarely did.

Jeff and he left together, around eleven. But at one in the morning—closing time—Alek returned, the parking lot now empty save for three or four pickups and a motorcycle the size of Poland close to the building. A storm had begun to brew: wind slapped at his hair and shirt as the tang of imminent rain filled his nostrils. Thunder trembled in the distance, accompanied by lightning that pounced across the relentlessly flat landscape in an eerily beautiful dance. He put up the top, then cut the engine and waited, realizing the odds of his making a complete ass of himself were about as high as they could get.

The first enormous drops began to pound the dirt when Luanne and another waitress emerged a few minutes later. He saw the other woman poke Luanne in the arm, point toward him; Luanne glanced over, enough light spilling from the bar for him to see her hesitate, then shake her head and swat in his direction, before the two of them took off in a blur of raindrops and giggles across the lot to their vehicles, their purses held over their heads. In an almost comical synchronization, two doors opened, two women jumped into their trucks, two doors slammed shut. The other woman took off first, tires spitting gravel as she gunned the truck out of the lot. Then, on a teeth-rattling bellow of thunder, the skies split open.

Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Alek thought on a bemused sigh as he reached for the ignition….

He squinted through the deluge at the sight of a figure clumsily hauling itself out of another pickup some twenty feet from Luanne’s. Obviously drunk and yelling something indecipherable, the man lurched unsteadily in her direction. Alek froze, barely having time to wonder why Luanne hadn’t left yet before the man jerked open her door.

Alek shot from the Porsche, reaching the old Ford just as the huge man lunged inside, groping like a bear for the obviously terrified waitress now huddled against the passenger-side door. Between the din from the storm and the other waitress’s departure, she must not have heard the man’s approach.

The walrus might have bested him in sheer mass, but at six foot one and nearly solid muscle—not to mention having sobriety and adrenaline on his side—Alek had the clear advantage. Greasy ponytail viced in one hand, the other twisting a massive, flabby arm into a tight hammerlock, Alek yanked the sputtering, cursing oaf out of the truck, keeping his grip iron tight as torrents of surprisingly frigid, blinding rain pelted them both.

“I take it,” Alek shouted to Luanne over the downpour, “this man’s attentions were unwelcome?”

A crack of thunder made her jump, but in the yellow glow from her truck’s ceiling light, he saw her wide-eyed nod.

“Just checking.” Alek then spun the drunk around, fully intending to connect fist to flabby jaw. Except, before he got the chance, the cretin let out a truly hideous belch, then splatted into the mud like a harpooned whale.

“What the hell?”

Alek’s gaze shot to another man in a white T-shirt and jeans—middle-aged, balding, big-bellied—bending over the fallen one. Hands on knees, completely oblivious to the rain, the man let out a short, pithy expletive before he glanced up—still bent over—and stuck out a hand. “Hey. Ed Torres. The owner.”

Alek returned the shake, blinking against the rain slamming into his face. “Alek Hastings—”

“Yeah. I know.” Ed grabbed the downed man’s chin, torqued his face from side to side. “One of those damn Simmons boys, looks like. Probably here for Earl’s third girl’s wedding, figured a little celebratin’ was in order. Worthless piece of…” Shaking his head in disgust, Ed straightened, pointlessly hitched up his jeans, then glanced into Luanne’s truck, rain sluicing off a face folded into a frown of genuine, fatherly concern. “Luanne, honey? You okay?”

She nodded, even though she clearly was anything but.

“Thirty-two years I’ve had this bar, and this is the first time one of my waitresses has been out-and-out accosted. I was just coming out, y’know, saw dogturd here headed toward Luanne’s truck. Lucky you got here when you did.” Worn features perked up into a grin; Alek thought he might have heard a chuckle over the next roll of thunder. “Yeah. Damn lucky. Hey—you mind gettin’ his feet, helping me drag his sorry ass inside? Last thing anybody needs is this idiot back behind the wheel. He can just wait inside until the sheriff shows up. So you might as well…you know…”

Ed nodded in Luanne’s direction. Offered a sodden, conspiratorial wink.

Alek wasn’t sure quite how to take that. However, he leaned into the truck where Luanne was still hunkered by the far door, still obviously shaken. His heart did a slow turn he decided he’d best not think too hard about. “Would it be too presumptuous to ask that you stay put until I get back?”

Her breasts rose rather prettily with the force of her enormous sigh, disseminating a hint—over the lethal dose of secondhand smoke trapped in her hair and clothes—of actually rather nice perfume. “Looks like I don’t have a choice, seeings Miss High and Mighty here—” she slammed the heel of her hand against the dashboard “—won’t start. Again. Otherwise I would’ve been gone long before…” She bit her lip, hauled in a short, steadying breath as she looked away. “Thank you,” she said, before her gaze met his, albeit reluctantly. “I’m much obliged.”

Alek shrugged. “Can’t take much credit, I’m afraid. But I can give you a ride home.”

She stiffened, looked away again. “I can get one from Ed.”

One hand braced on the roof of Luanne’s truck, Alek glanced around the lot. Other than the Porsche and Romeo’s truck, the Harley was the only vehicle in sight. He leaned back inside, determined to exude patience and sensitivity when, in fact, he was soaked through to his briefs and beginning to shiver and the adrenaline that had fueled his macho performance a few minutes ago had long since petered out. “It’s pouring.”

“I know that.”

He was reminded of the time when, as a child, he and the palace gamekeeper had come across a wounded wolf in the woods backing the estate. The poor thing was frightened out of its wits, but still fiercely wary of the humans who only wanted to help it.

“Luanne?” Ed’s exasperated voice cut through the pounding rain. “I know you’re shook up and all, but this ain’t no time for prevaricatin’. And you and I both know, you don’t want to be riding on the back of the Hawg in this weather.”

“I am not prevaricatin’!” Luanne shot back, then swiped back a stray hank of hair, obviously nearer to tears than she cared to admit. “I’m…weighin’ my options.”

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?”