Wyoming Cinderella (Silhouette Desire)

by Cathleen Galitz

  She clambered down from her precarious perch. “Glad you could make it after all,” she hollered out, watching him lumber down the hill in a red T-shirt and a pair of jeans that made him seem a native born and bred. It seemed impossible that Hawk was as comfortable in a boardroom as he was in this mountain setting. Overhead his namesake flew in a wide circle with his mate surveying all that was his.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he said. “Moments like these are exactly why I left Chicago in the first place.”

  His gaze was warm upon her as she swung from a low branch and landed on the ground in front of him. Rather like a ripe peach, he thought, surveying a worn pair of shorts that did wonders for her delightfully rounded figure. Hawk felt a twinge of guilt that he’d never paid her limited and, as Frannie put it, “deplorable” wardrobe much attention. He recalled her pointed remarks. It simply won’t do to have your hired help running around looking like Daisy Mae. What will people think?

  Probably that he was a cheap son of a gun who didn’t pay well. He promised to remedy the situation immediately.

  “Oooh, oooh!” cried Sarah who had just realized the worm she had retrieved from the bait can was cold and wiggly.

  Hawk and Ella shared a laugh at her expense. Her feminine pout would have done her Aunt Frannie proud.

  “Can you stay a while?” Ella asked over the hammering of her heart. This was the first opportunity the two of them had had to be together without Frannie’s surveillance since their guest had appeared on the scene, and Ella’s body was reacting as if they were completely alone and naked. Despite the inappropriateness of her thoughts, she couldn’t help but let her gaze drift to the blanket she had spread on the ground earlier for the picnic to come. She suddenly had a better idea how to implement that comfy old quilt.

  “You have no idea just how much I’d like that,” Hawk told her with a rueful shake of his head. “But the truth of the matter is Frannie sent me here on a mission. It’s not exactly a position I relish either.”

  Ella crooked a wicked eyebrow at him. “Did I just hear you say something about a missionary position?”

  Realizing that she had actually blurted out the bawdy remark, she blushed. The sound of Hawk’s laughter echoed off the mountain walls and resonated in the chambers of an ever-expanding heart.

  “Now there’s a proposition intended to knock a man’s socks off,” he said. “I have to admit I’m never surprised by what comes out of those adorable Kewpie doll lips. If I don’t get to finger paint with you again soon, I think I’ll explode.”

  Ella pursed those aforementioned lips at him and blew him a kiss. Even though her heart was reacting like someone had just shot her full of adrenaline, she assumed he was only toying with her. If anything, her lips, like her figure, were a little too full to be fashionable. Once, a woman she didn’t even know asked her if she availed herself of collagen injections. The only other notable remark anyone ever made about her lips was that they sometimes moved too much. Years of being “shushed” by child service organizations and adults in charge had taught her to be less boisterous. Considering the fact that no one seemed willing to listen to her anyway, Ella had thought it a valuable lesson. It was just too bad that it was one she couldn’t master.

  At the moment she was just happy to be flirting with Hawk. Since Frannie’s entry into their lives, Ella had begun to wonder if he even remembered she was alive. Unfortunately, their present circumstances were hardly suited to the kind of romantic flings idealized in the media. Aside from being pestered by horseflies the size of a thumb, the children needed constant attention. Between rebaiting hooks, untangling line and unhooking snags there wasn’t enough time to sneak in a kiss let alone something more decadent upon the quilt spread on the ground.

  “Frannie wants to take the children to town to find them some clothes for the party. Since it’s Wednesday and your art class day, I thought you might want to take the afternoon off and do some shopping yourself. I want you to buy yourself some nice clothes—on me,” he hastened to add. Hawk wasn’t sure why he expected Ella to protest, but he had noticed she spent very little of her paycheck on herself. Was she saving up for something special? Surely she couldn’t have too many bills accumulated of her own.

  “Pick up some suitable clothes for everyday interactions with the children and find yourself something special for the party. I want you to feel comfortable.”

  When he pulled his credit card from his wallet, Ella felt conflicted. She was thrilled to actually be invited to the ball rather than being relegated to baby-sitting in the basement. Ella suspected that if Frannie had her way, she would be assigned to sit at the children’s table in the kitchen for the duration of the party. However, the use of the word “suitable” implied that he was displeased with her shoddy wardrobe. Ashamed at the thought that he might be embarrassed to be seen with her in public, Ella tilted her chin proudly in the air and considered refusing his offer outright. Didn’t he know that she was more than the clothes she wore? Still, she really didn’t want to throw his generosity back in his face. When the universe opened up its arms and offered her a gift, she had learned to accept it graciously. The thought of actually shopping for herself without worrying about the cost was something out of a childhood fantasy. She squinted at Hawk.

  “You look more like a hairy godmother than a fairy one,” she remarked.

  When Hawk smiled, the warmth of it soaked into her very bones. To be thus pampered was such a foreign concept to her that she couldn’t help but be the teeniest bit skeptical about it.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Positive,” he assured her, slipping the credit card into the palm of her hand.

  Ella almost jumped from the bolt of sexual tension that traveled from his hand to hers and raced along every nerve ending in her body. Her eyes widened in amazement that a simple touch could transfer such an intensity of emotion. A whimper escaped her lips as Hawk reached out with his other hand to steady her by the elbow. It had quite the opposite effect upon her. Her knees turned suddenly gelatinous.

  “And I don’t want you shopping the discount stores either,” he told her sternly.

  Ella hadn’t the heart to tell him that Lander had few if any exclusive shops. The thought of how Frannie would react to the discovery caused Ella to smile. Frannie could, of course, drive a hundred and fifty miles to Casper, an impractical endeavor given the time of day. Ella thought it also highly improbable that Frannie would ever leave Hawk and his nanny unsupervised overnight without the children to put a damper on any illicit happenings. The very thought coaxed a throaty laugh from Ella’s throat.

  “And I don’t want you coming home until you can’t stuff any more packages into the car either,” he told her.

  The look of incredibility upon Ella’s face touched something deep inside Hawk. Having been married to a woman who demanded the finest of everything without regard to cost or an appreciative thank-you, he was surprised by how much he wanted to spoil Ella. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to accompany her into town where he could shower her with the kind of expensive shopping trip that would make her feel like a queen. Unfortunately, he’d already told Frannie that he was awaiting an important conference call, and he couldn’t chance running into her and the children while shopping. In a town the size of Lander, the chances of avoiding one another were highly unlikely.

  Not having had so much as a nibble for quite some time, Sarah threw down her pole and marched over to the picnic basket. “I’m hungry!” she complained.

  “Me, too,” Hawk growled in a low tone as he looked directly into Ella’s eyes so that she could not mistake his innuendo.

  Her stomach fluttered at his intended meaning, and she grew slick with wanting him. “Then let me feed you,” she replied breathlessly.

  Ella knew that both his body and soul were in need of nourishment. She had missed him something awful over the last couple of days and longed to reconnect in the most intimate of ways. Tha
t being impossible given their circumstances, she proceeded to satisfy his physical appetite, if not his carnal one.

  He lay upon the blanket looking up at the clouds as if seeing them for the first time since his childhood. Beneath his adult burdens, he had almost forgotten how intense the sky was, how billowy the clouds.

  When Hawk took his shoes off and dangled his toes over the bank, the children shouted their astonishment that their staid daddy found pleasure in the same simple things that so delighted their young hearts. They chomped happily upon celery sticks filled with peanut butter and raisins, a concoction Ella dubbed ants on a log, while she proceeded to put Hawk’s head in her lap and feed him grapes one by one. The fact that it reminded them both of silly old movies featuring Roman slave girls and hedonistic rulers made the experience no less sensual. How long, she asked him, had it been since Hawk had played “pretend”?

  Hawk couldn’t remember exactly. He knew only that something about Ella put him in touch with a creative side that he had bound and gagged for the better part of his adult life. It wasn’t so much that he was ready to abandon his charts and figures for good, just that maybe it was time to put them in their proper place in a life too encumbered by responsibilities.

  “Yoo-hoo!” called an irritated voice from afar.

  Frannie was waving her arms trying to get their attention. Her shopping attire looked slightly ridiculous from atop the adjacent hillside. Having so recently ruined her own under similar conditions, Ella could attest to the fact that high heels didn’t hold up well beneath the punishment of rocky terrain. Her matching purse and hat would provide little cushioning if she tripped and came tumbling down the slope in a blaze of peach silk.

  “Time to go, kids!” Frannie called, from her rocky roost above. Ella felt the woman’s eagle eyes boring into her.

  “We’ll be right there,” Hawk hollered in reply. A deep sigh insinuated just how disinclined he was to leave this peaceful sanctuary. He trailed the edge of his hand along the curve of her face and left his trademark tingle upon her skin. “We need to talk soon,” he told Ella, reluctantly getting to his feet.

  She couldn’t have agreed more as she put her hand in his and allowed him to pull her up beside him. Together they gathered up fishing poles, uneaten lunches and any remaining trash. Billy refused to let go of his catch as he made his way up the hill with his drying trophy in hand. He was the first to reach the top.

  “Look!” he exclaimed proudly, thrusting the fish in Frannie’s face. “I caught it all by myself.”

  To her credit Frannie didn’t scream or reprimand Billy for his social faux pas. “That’s nice, dear,” she managed to say without toppling from the boulder upon which she was sitting so daintily. “Maybe Ella can put it in the freezer so you can show it to all your friends.”

  “Or maybe I’ll just cook it up with the ones I caught, and we can have a scrumptious down-home meal for supper tomorrow,” she said, climbing up the steep slope with Hawk at her heels.

  “Yummy!” decreed Sarah who was saving energy by riding piggyback on her daddy.

  Frannie gave Ella a look intended to kill on sight. Clearly she preferred eating raw fish sushi-style to one that Ella had prepared in any countrified manner. Then again their fashionable guest was not used to eating “supper” period. Frannie had already chided her for using such gauche terminology. Apparently the rich ate “dinner.” Not that Ella could see why it mattered anyway. As far as she could tell, Frannie maintained that chic skeletal figure by nibbling on little but crackers and rice cakes throughout the day.

  When Hawk reached the top of the hill, huffing a little from his added load, Frannie launched herself from her boulder to hang on to his arm. For a moment Ella feared he might topple beneath all that feminine attention. Ever the gentleman, he set Sarah down and guided Frannie back down the rugged trail to the ranch house, which Ella noted she’d had no trouble maneuvering on her own getting there. Realizing it did her little good to brood over the way the two of them looked so fine together—Frannie so elegant and fragile-looking hanging on his arm and Hawk so deliciously virile—Ella turned her thoughts down a more productive avenue.

  The anticipation of a shopping spree for herself was almost more than she could imagine. It was far too delectable an event to savor alone. Phoebe had wonderful taste in clothes and had often chided her friend for not sprucing up more often.

  “Girl, with your figure if you’d give half an interest to what you’re wearing, you’d have all the eligible bachelors in the country eating out of your talented little hand.”

  Bolstered by the thought that Phoebe might actually be able to help her find something that wouldn’t embarrass Hawk at what was certain to be the social event of the year, she trudged back to the house unassisted with a smile on her face.

  An hour and half later, she and Phoebe were combing the local hot spots for the latest in ballroom attire. Her friend threw a fit when Ella suggested rummaging through close-out racks of last season’s prom dresses.

  “Honey, when a man gives you his credit card and says to pick out something extra special, he isn’t expecting you to show up in something from the clearance rack.” Phoebe twirled a lock of her long, blond hair around her index finger in an uncharacteristically nervous mannerism.

  “Are you sure I’m invited?” she asked.

  “For the tenth time, I told you Her Highness requested I bring along some interesting artist types to add a certain avant-garde element to what is certain to be a lot of boring business types, and I can’t think of anyone who could do that better than you.”

  Mentally Ella made a note to send Phoebe one of Frannie’s fancy engraved invitations to allay any fears she may have about crashing the party.

  “I have a hunch she was thinking more of Lyle Fenmore than Phoebe Tyler,” Phoebe replied, tossing out the name of one of the state’s most renowned artists.

  Ultimately, the possibility of connecting with some fabulous man of means overcame any indecision on her part as she guided Ella toward their best bet in town, the bridal store. “With any luck, Shirley’s got some dresses that don’t look like taffeta bridesmaid cutouts.”

  Shirley assured them that she did indeed. In fact, she just had a shipment arrive earlier in the day that she was just in the process of hanging out. Buying something for Phoebe was a cinch. Her waist-length blond hair and svelte figure cried out for classic black satin with a thigh-high cut up one long leg. Ella was self-conscious about making her selection. Color was particularly important. She worried that her auburn hair would clash with any of the more vivid gowns with which Shirley suggested. Although she had no intention of competing with Frannie at this fete, she could not get the image out of her mind of that outrageously priced, silver bugle-beaded dress that she had hung up in the guest room. Next to that slinky creation, Ella was sure she would look like a stuffed sausage in whatever gown she chose.

  Shirley and Phoebe both protested that the last thing she should do was cover up her fabulous hourglass figure. After much deliberation, Ella decided to trust her own instincts and chose a romantic country-style gown that suited her personality. Spaghetti straps held up an antique lace neckline and a matching hem peeked seductively out from a soft rayon crepe. The pearl buttons that ran up both sides accentuated her figure, and an unpretentious dark green bouquet print made a feminine understatement against which all the glitter in the world would have trouble competing. Though sedate on the hanger, the way Ella filled it out was most certainly not.

  Not that anyone could convince her of how mouth-wateringly gorgeous she actually looked in the dress. As much as she would have loved to indulge in a daring little red-sequined number with a plunging neckline, Ella knew she would never feel comfortable in it. She was simply relieved to have found something that would neither embarrass her nor try to make her into something she was not.

  She supposed her insecurity stemmed from her first junior high dance so long, long ago. Being an orphan, Ella hadn’t th
e luxury of running out and buying trendy brand-name dresses off the rack. Instead, she used what little money she had saved and sewed her own party dress. So long had she labored over that dress, ripping out the seams and restitching until it was the absolute best she could make it, that Ella could still recall the fabric.

  The color of lemon sherbet, the straight shift was offset with a darling front panel of white eyelet and a short flared skirt. She had felt very grown up and almost pretty in it until she overhead a couple of the more popular girls making loud and cruel comments about “Carrottop” in her homemade frock. Ella pretended not to hear, and for the rest of the evening kept her chin bravely up, refusing to plant herself against the wall like so many of her peers. Feigning a boldness she did not feel, she coaxed more than one shy wallflower onto the dance floor and pretended to have a good time. Not until she was safely back in the dank basement room of her foster home did she allow her tears to fall freely.

  With a car full of beautiful clothes, Ella hoped those ugly duckling days were behind her. However, she harbored no delusions about suddenly turning into a beautiful swan any time soon. Simply not tripping over her own two feet in front of Hawk’s assemblage of esteemed guests would be enough for Ella to count the evening a success.

  As silly as it was, Ella couldn’t help but get lost in a fantasy in which her lovely new dress would magically transform her into a princess and cause Hawk to look at her with new eyes. What she really feared was that she would feel as homespun and out of place as she did back in junior high school when she’d been forced to endure the slings of snotty rich schoolgirls mocking her homemade clothes.

  In between his obligations to his guests and pandering to Frannie’s needs, Ella hoped Hawk would be able to fit in a dance or two with her. The thought of being held tightly in his arms and publicly acknowledged as a woman in her own right would be heavenly indeed. Unfortunately, her sense of joyful expectation was short-lived as anger and guilt dueled within her breast. Considering that Hawk certainly hadn’t had any trouble dancing with her horizontally, she indignantly thought the least he could do was indulge her in a vertical waltz.