His Cinderella Housekeeper 3-in-1

by Various

  “Why the hell not? There’s nobody to see us.”

  “Slow down. Maybe because I’m not done kissing you yet,” she replied.

  “So you want more kisses?”

  “Maybe just a few more.” She giggled primly, eyeing his lips.

  Oh, that mouth of his. That beautiful, beautiful mouth!

  His lips claimed hers greedily again, as if he, too, were starved for her loving and would never get his fill. Soon his kisses grew more urgent and she was gasping with such intense pleasure her feelings terrified her.

  The dusty cactus and mesquite stretching toward the endless, flat horizon seemed to whirl around her. Soon she felt so dizzy and faint she could barely stand.

  “No,” she moaned, gripping him by the waist. “We…we can’t do this.”

  “Wrap your legs around me the way you used to,” he ordered.

  Every sense in her female being went on red alert. But she said, “I’m just your housekeeper now.”

  “You’re way overdue for a promotion. I have a job in mind you’re way better qualified for.”

  “Oh, Phillip— We’ve got to stop! Really!”

  “Really?” he murmured, pressing her closer. He stared at her, his gaze drifting from her lips to her breasts, to her belly and lower…

  She had to stop him.

  Her hands fell from his neck and pushed against his massive chest. For a minute or two, he resisted.

  “If we let this get out of hand, we’d only end up hurting each other.”

  He didn’t say anything, so it was up to her to do the smart thing.

  “Find that nice, churchgoing girl,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to his. “She’s not me, and we both know it.”

  “Are you really so sure?” he muttered, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her toward the door.

  She liked being in his arms. She liked it too much. “We tried before. I loved the sound of the guitar and the glitter of bright lights, and you loved the sound of bullets.”

  “Not anymore. I know what I want now, and it’s not war or death. But what do you want, Celeste? You came home. To me. Why?”

  “You keep saying that…like it means something. It doesn’t.”

  “Maybe it does.”

  “This isn’t home…. At least, it’s not my home.”

  He let her go. “Maybe it could be. You could stay and keep writing your songs.”

  “Could I?” She stared at her guitar in the rocker and hugged herself. “Yes, I always write songs wherever I am. I can’t seem to stop.” She fought to calm herself. It was unbearably exciting to even think she might have him and her music, too. But how? How? He’d said dreams didn’t die, and he was right. Hers hadn’t. But wasn’t that the problem for them?

  Besides, because of her early losses and pain, she couldn’t trust him or herself or their love.

  Some part of her thought it would all go away. Still, she couldn’t stop her feelings for him any more than she could stop the music in her soul. It was as if he’d claimed a part of her, and she’d never be free again.

  If she let this go any further, they’d fall in love all over again. Someday she would have to choose. If they stopped now, maybe they wouldn’t have to hurt each other again.

  She studied the hollows beneath his cheekbones. She caught the faint scent of laundry detergent from his freshly washed shirt. She wanted him so much, she ached. And she loved the wild loneliness of his ranch. Maybe he really was tired of war. Well, she was definitely tired of lousy gigs and cheap apartments with rented furniture. It was so nice here with him where she felt safe, where he made her feel beautiful and special. But was he enough for a girl like her? Wouldn’t her dream always be there between them? Would the bright lights beckon her again after a few more months?

  Confused and lonely as she was, it would be too easy to lead him on, to live here under his protection until she felt safe and had enough money to pursue her real dream, which had always been singing. But she wanted him. Oh, how she wanted him.

  She stared at his dark, tanned face, into his wild silver eyes that carved out her soul. In this moment she wanted him even more than she could ever imagine wanting to be a star. But when he leaned down and tried to kiss her again, she shook her head sadly and bit her lip.

  Lifting her guitar from the rocker, she began to sing to him, “Without you, I’m on the road to nowhere…”

  “So that’s how it is!”

  “That’s how it has to be,” she whispered.

  “Maybe we’re both on the road to nowhere.” He lashed out, suddenly angry at her rejection.

  “When you came back—you put me in hell. Did you know that? You think I’m made of iron?

  That I’m some kind of cold-blooded killing machine?”

  “I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”

  “You’re so damned beautiful. So damned sweet. You! It’s always about you! Stay away from me—you hear!”

  He stomped into the house and slammed the door so hard the whole house shook.

  “I’ve been trying to!” she yelled.

  Alone on the porch, she felt as if the big desolate landscape had swallowed her alive. She sucked in a breath. Panic tore through her.

  “I—I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I wanted.” She went to the door and then clenched her fingers and sank to the porch floor. “Why do we always end up hurting each other?”

  She put down her guitar and fought her tears.

  Chapter 4

  Phillip turned the window unit in the kitchen up full-blast to drown out Celeste’s plaintive voice. When he could still hear her singing, he splashed two shots of bourbon onto ice in a short glass and quickly gulped it down, coughing when the stuff burned like acid. Not that he felt it as he began to pace.

  A message light blinked on his answering machine. Welcoming any distraction, he strode over to the phone and punched the play button. Justin Wainwright’s deep voice came on instantly. Justin was the local sheriff, and with Phillip’s help, he was investigating the cow killing that had terrified Celeste.

  “Thanks for all your input, Westin. Afraid I still can’t pin that dead cow to the Gonzalez character you mentioned even though the FBI is taking your concerns very seriously. The feds are sending an agent to check out our theory about Gonzalez smuggling guns out of Mission Creek—”

  Phillip deleted the message, turned the machine off and moved toward the air conditioner so he could watch Celeste through the window. Her golden head was lowered over her guitar, and he realized she was crying as she sang softly to herself.

  Despite the bourbon, he could still taste her. A chill shot through him that had nothing to do with the icy air. He’d made her cry again because he was cold and cruel.

  Gonzalez and Wainwright were forgotten, as Phillip raked his hand through the thick darkness of his hair. He was a fool to care about her. Furious at both Celeste and himself, he commanded his feelings to shut down. He always shut down before combat. It never took long. In less than five minutes, he’d no longer be human. Tears wouldn’t matter. Nothing would matter except accomplishing his objectives.

  He moved away from the air conditioner. Maybe it was better this way. He couldn’t take another night or another day with her in his house, unless he could have her.

  When she came inside, they ate dinner in silence. Oh, she tried to make conversation, and he tried to mumble appropriate answers to her idiotic questions. Why did women always want to talk when you felt like tearing furniture apart with your bare hands or ripping the oak floor up with a claw hammer?

  Sweetly she asked if something was wrong with the meal.

  How the hell would he know? As if he could taste anything but her. Maybe the steak—she’d actually cooked beef tonight—was delicious. Who the hell cared? He was shutting down, going deep, deep inside himself.

  He was good at this game. He’d learned that if he did this before combat, the fear couldn’t take over. Instead of going mad or
becoming paralyzed with terror, he became inhuman and turned himself into some sort of soulless killing machine. Once, in such a state, he’d run straight at a tank in Iraq.

  “We shouldn’t have kissed,” Celeste said.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he replied.

  Her glistening lashes fluttered. Somehow she seemed far away, and he was glad. Her rejection didn’t hurt quite so much.

  He wasn’t good with rejection. The Marines had a policy—they didn’t leave anybody behind.

  That policy was why he’d become a Marine.

  He’d been left behind his whole damn life.

  Rejection.

  His rich socialite mother hadn’t wanted him. He’d been an accident and beautiful, glamorous, Kathryn Westin’s only child. He’d been a big baby, ten pounds, and she’d never forgiven him for her stretch marks. As soon as he was old enough, she’d packed him off to military school in Harlingen, Texas.

  The other boys went home for the summer. He’d been sent to expensive camps near Hunt, Texas, which had an emerald-green river and was some of the most beautiful hill country in central Texas. At Christmas he’d gone to his grandmothers, who were good to him in their way. But he hadn’t been close to them, and they weren’t his mother. He’d rarely seen his mother. She hadn’t even bothered to watch him graduate from high school or college.

  Celeste stood and picked up her dinner plate, snapping him back to the present. She walked over to the sink and rinsed her dishes. Even though he knew he was in his own kitchen and she was real, not a phantom, he felt as if he was in a dream. As if she wasn’t really there. As if nothing could touch him or hurt him.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered, turning around when she was done.

  He nodded. “Why?”

  “You seem kinda strange.”

  “I think I’ll go for a walk. Don’t wait up.”

  As if she would—

  “Oh, Phillip, Sheriff Wainwright called about that cow—”

  “I know.” He slammed out the door. When the light came on in the living room, he watched her settle herself on his couch to watch his television, which was something she never did, if he was in there.

  Rejection. Funny, he couldn’t feel a thing now.

  Nobody had ever wanted him. Nobody except the Marines.

  Boot camp had proved more than even he could bear, so after ten days of abusive military garbage, he’d rejected the Marines and their madmen drill instructors and had gone AWOL.

  He’d hidden out in the swamp that surrounded the base for a week, with nothing to eat but raw lizards and snakes, with nothing to drink but swamp water. He’d squatted up to his eyeballs in mud and scorpions and mosquitoes while platoons had searched for him. That was when he’d first learned to shut down emotionally.

  The MPs had finally found him, of course, and had hauled him to the brig in handcuffs. The meanest sergeant on the base had taken over at that point. He’d made a show of verbally flaying Phillip in front of his platoon. Then he’d collared Phillip and shoved him toward his office for a private torture session. He’d pushed Phillip into a chair and slammed the door.

  “A week? You ate lizards? Snakes? What were you thinking about, kid?”

  “Wasn’t thinking. Shut down.”

  “Crazy kid. You ate snakes? What the hell were you trying to prove?”

  “Shut down.”

  The sergeant had crossed his arms over his bull-thick chest and eyeballed him. “Either you’re going to make one hell of a crazy Marine. Or…”

  He let that word hang like a grenade that had been thrown. His eyes narrowed. “Or I’m going to personally take you back to that swamp and feed you to the alligators and snakes myself.

  Do we have an understanding, kid?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do we have an understanding?” he’d screamed in that awful maniacle tone that had driven Phillip to go AWOL in the first place.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Seven days on snakes and swamp water. You’re a born Marine. You’re crazy enough to be anything you want to be. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  Then the sergeant had given him a fatherly pat. “Now you make me proud, son.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  From that day, the Marines had been Phillip’s home and his family. They’d been enough.

  Until Celeste. Now that she’d come back he wanted more.

  He wanted Celeste.

  Shut down! Shut down! Dive!

  When he got back from his hour-long walk, Celeste was in the middle of watching some chick-flick called When Harry Met Sally. Curled up at one end of the couch, she was munching fat-free microwave popcorn out of a sack. Her golden hair flowed down her back.

  Hell, she looked like an angel.

  “Want some?” She smiled at him as he shut the front door and then held up her popcorn bag.

  When he hesitated, she shook it.

  He went over to her and scooped out a handful. Their hands brushed, and to his surprise he felt a jolt.

  Shut down.

  Their eyes met and he felt pulled toward her like an iron filing to a powerful magnet. No matter how hard he tried to ignore her and shut down, he was failing big-time. Just the sight of her on his couch, and her golden female beauty had his blood heating and his heart pounding.

  “This is a great movie,” she said. “One of the best.”

  “Never saw it,” he mumbled, determined to stumble to bed.

  “’Cause you prefer those boring old war movies.”

  “Movies with no mush.”

  “Hey, sit down. Watch this! This is my favorite! Meg’s in a restaurant—”

  Sure enough, Meg Ryan was in a restaurant proving to Billy Crystal that a woman could fake an orgasm. Meg was cute. The scene was hot. Meg got hotter and hotter. Just watching her throw back her head and gasp made Phillip want Celeste in bed, made him want to see Celeste’s face when she came.

  He went around the sofa and sat beside Celeste. She squirmed a little, relocating as far from him as possible. Meg twisted and writhed and struggled to breathe. Celeste turned beet-red.

  She didn’t look at him, though, and she didn’t get up.

  They pretended to watch the movie together. Every scene, every piece of dialogue between the mismatched lovers maddened him and made him want Celeste more.

  Shut down! But he couldn’t.

  When it was over, Celeste looked as though she might cry just as she had on the porch.

  “What’s wrong?” Phillip whispered from his end of the sofa.

  “They got together.”

  “It’s called a happy ending. You’re supposed to be happy.”

  She sobbed a little. “I am. I—I am.”

  He couldn’t stand for her to cry, even over a silly movie. Used to, he would have taken her in his arms.

  Don’t touch her. She doesn’t want you. She’ll reject you.

  Finally, he edged closer and took her hand in his. He fought to ignore that her fingers felt like soft, warm velvet against his rougher palm. “If they could fall in love and make it work, anybody could,” he said.

  What the hell are you doing, Westin?

  She fell for his line—hook, line and sinker.

  “Even us?” she whispered, glancing up at him with big, shy, shining eyes.

  “Maybe it was too damn easy the first time,” he muttered.

  “Love at first sight?” she murmured on another little sob, brushing a wild strand of gold behind her ear.

  “You were singing in that tight red dress. Every man in that awful bar…”

  “Oh, dear, that awful dress—”

  “Not awful. Sexy. So sexy.”

  “You came up and asked me after the fight if I needed a ride home. You had such beautiful manners…even in that bar.”

  “You wiped off my bloody brow with that napkin and said yes, so sweetly, so tenderly.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She touched the wound on his cheek.
<
br />   All of a sudden he couldn’t stop looking into her big blue eyes. She had him, right where she wanted him. Or did he have her?

  “No seat belt, huh?” she whispered. “What really happened?”

  “You don’t want to know.” He pulled her closer and traced the contours of her face with his hands.

  “Some silly war?”

  “Can we start over?” He wanted to know. What the hell was he doing? He was supposed to be shutting down. And here he was, coming up for air.

  “You mean, sex?”

  “Sex would be nice.”

  “Will you hate me in the morning the way Billy Crystal—”

  “I didn’t run last time, did I?”

  She bit her lip. “I would’ve come back. You wouldn’t let me.”

  She would’ve come back. Was that true? He’d been too damned proud to go after her. “If you run off after fame and fortune, why would you want to come back here to me?”

  “Maybe they aren’t enough. I wouldn’t know because I never had them. I thought you’d chase me.”

  “What are you really doing here? You could have gone anywhere. Why me?”

  As always, that particular question made her pale and she refused to answer. And the fact that she refused to answer made him suspicious, made him want to ask that question over and over again even though he knew it made her uncomfortable.

  Hell. Why was he so damn sure her coming back here to him meant something? Ego, that’s why. Because he wanted to believe she’d come back to him, that was why.

  If he was wrong, why had she come? If there was another reason, why wouldn’t she tell him?

  She leaned into him and kissed him. “You were always in my heart. You’ve got to believe that.”

  “That damn song of yours sure got to me.”

  “So you listened to it?”

  “About a million times.”

  She beamed up at him.

  “I’ve got the CD. I used to lie in bed and drink my bourbon straight from the bottle and listen to it over and over. It was as close as I could get to you.”

  “I wrote it for you. But I guess you figured that out.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled her close.

  “Oh, Phillip—”

  To his surprise she circled his neck with her arms.