“Who is it?” came Ella’s startled cry.
“It’s me,” Hawk called roughly not bothering with his name.
“Go away!”
He didn’t bother arguing with her. Hawk placed his shoulder against the door and put all his weight behind it. Living as she did, Ella had never bothered with security locks, and the single bolt she used gave way as easily as she had given herself to Hawk. Wood splintered, and dust flew. Ella drew herself up in her bed with a homemade quilt clutched to her heart.
“What do you want?” she demanded to know.
Hawk didn’t answer. He was too busy looking for a light switch. After stumbling around in the dark for a long moment, he came to realize that the cabin was without electricity. Using only the light from the kerosene lamp burning atop a rough-hewn table in the center of the room, he discovered that not only was there no electricity or phone, it appeared the only water available was from the old hand pump out front. He shook his head in disbelief. This couldn’t possibly be where Ella had actually resided before coming to work for him.
Tears sprung to his eyes. He was ashamed that he’d ever thought this gentlewoman a gold digger. That she lived within such achingly modest means cracked his heart wide open like an egg. He’d had no idea.
No idea other than the way she looked at his home as if it were a castle or the way she never spent anything on herself or how she treated hot baths and central air as if they were untold luxuries. He rebuked himself for not reading the signs which had been posted all over the place had he but opened his eyes to see.
How Ella had managed to turn such squalid conditions into a homey environment with little more than some paint and an artistic flair was nothing short of amazing. Hawk had been too self-absorbed in his own problems to actually take her talent seriously. Studying the paintings that lined the walls, he realized what a mistake that had been. They defied his initial belief that her interest in art was simply the diversion it had been for so many of Lauren’s bored women friends. The difference being that Ella’s work showed genuine talent.
Though her fanciful depictions of Western gnomes and fairies hidden in the landscape appealed to the child in him, the man in him responded at a purely gut level to the most powerful rendition of a hawk that he had ever seen. Impossible not to recognize himself in the bold strokes, he was flattered by the way she had captured his masculine aura. If this was truly the way she saw him, Hawk knew he would be a fool to ever let her go.
Her pride already hurt, Ella stiffened her backbone against Hawk’s opinion of her humble home, of her artistic ability, and of her, period. Unable to mention his upcoming wedding in any but an indirect manner, she glanced meaningfully at the gaping hole where her door used to be.
“If you’re looking for a baby-sitter while you’re on your honeymoon, I’ve got to tell you that you’ve come knocking on the wrong door.”
Striking an indignant pose in her cotton pajamas put Ella at a decided disadvantage. Hawk, on the other hand, looked fabulous in a Western-cut black tuxedo. His white shirt fairly glowed in the dim light.
“I am afraid that I do need your help in that department if the wedding is going to go off as planned,” he told her sheepishly. His presence swallowed up the small abode.
Ella couldn’t believe he had the gall to speak to her thus. As always in times of greatest pain, Ella called upon a reserve of sorely wounded pride to hold her chin up high.
“Let me be among the first to congratulate you,” she said over the railroad tie stuck sideways in her throat. “But I’m afraid I’ll be unavailable then.”
That Hawk actually had the audacity to approach her four-poster bed and hazard to sit down beside her sent Ella scuttling as far away from him as the span of old bed would allow. Flattening herself against the rough log walls, she pulled the blanket up to her chin.
Hawk shook his head in disappointment. “That’s going to put quite a damper in my plans,” he said, reaching for her hands.
Ella swore she would slap him if he dared suggest that they remain “friends.” She hadn’t thought him capable of such thoughtless cruelty. As if stung by his touch, she pulled her hands out of his.
He looked hurt by her reaction. “You see,” he explained, “my sister-in-law has volunteered to fill in the baby-sitter position. Now all I have to do is locate a willing bride for the ceremony.”
Ella looked at him as if he had lost his mind. At last, understanding dawned in her features as she leapt to a terrible conclusion. From the horrified expression on his face when he first surveyed his surrounding, she assumed that he must see her as a charity case. Perhaps he was under the mistaken impression that she was pregnant and it was her crazy hormones that had driven her running out of his house into the night. And then there was the insidious possibility that Frannie might have turned him down, thus making Ella second choice in providing his children a stand-in mother. Whatever his reasoning, she hastened to set the man straight.
“You are under no obligation to propose out of pity for me,” she told him stiffly. “That is, if you call what just transpired a proposal. Besides, I thought you and Frannie—”
“Are very dear friends,” Hawk finished for her. “It seems Frannie thought I was capable of feeling something more for her, but when I assured her that it is you I love, she very graciously suggested I go after you.”
Those sweet words had the power to resuscitate a heart Ella had thought dead just a few short hours ago. Hawk loved her! He had said the words aloud, hadn’t he? Still, Ella couldn’t quite believe her ears. Nor could she imagine Frannie feeling anything but contempt for her. Nonetheless she was struck by a sense of pity for the elegant woman who had everything that money could buy—except her heart’s desire.
“Is she going to be all right?” Ella heard herself asking.
“I imagine that as we speak she and Phoebe are vying for the attention of every eligible bachelor at the party. By the way, your friend has a wicked tongue which she used to lash me soundly before shoving me out the door, promising to entertain my guests for the remainder of the evening, and pointing me in the general direction of your home.”
Ella smiled at the image. She hoped Phoebe would someday find the Prince Charming she deserved. And where better than at an official fancy dress ball at what was destined to be the site of her best friend’s wedding?
Ella jumped in surprise when Hissy Face joined them on the bed, demanding a share of the credit for bringing these two star-crossed lovers together. Taking the cat in her arms, she feigned a preoccupation with petting the precocious feline.
“You aren’t just asking me to marry you because you need a charity to write off on your taxes?” she wanted to know. “Because I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I have been for years.”
With that, she took a letter from a ledge above the bed and thrust it at Hawk.
“It’s from a publisher,” she announced proudly.
The letter which had arrived earlier in the day provided little balm for Ella’s broken heart. In the light of Hawk’s proposal, it gave her a thread of self-reliance to cling to if this man were motivated by anything other than love.
“They want to buy one of my children’s books. With the advance they’ve offered, I’ll be able to start college full-time next semester.”
Hawk didn’t bother unfolding the letter though his smile alone would have provided enough illumination for him to read it comfortably. “That’s wonderful,” he told her, sounding genuinely happy with her success. “But there’s no need for you to reiterate the fact that you can manage very well on your own with me, angel. I’m the one who desperately needs you.”
That said, Hawk proceeded to get down upon one knee at her bedside and pull a ring box from his pocket. “Will you marry me, Ella?”
Ella took the velvet case into her hands and felt its warmth spill into her palms and spread into her heart. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to tempt fate. If she
were to accept his proposal, it had to be on her terms. She wanted the whole fairy tale, not simply the trappings.
“Only if you’re not in the market for a substitute mother for your children. And a substitute wife for Lauren.”
Hawk looked so startled by the idea that Ella had to believe his intentions pure. Her name was a sweet echo off the four walls that sheltered them.
“Ella, darling,” he said. “There’s something you need to know. I’m not sure exactly what you believe about my marriage, but the truth of the matter is that Lauren only married me for my money because her family was in dire financial straits.”
Hawk paused a long time not so much to let that startling bit of information sink in but because what he was about to share was so painful that he had only recently come to terms with it himself.
“Lauren was with her lover when she was in the accident that took her life.”
“Oh, Hawk,” Ella exclaimed with a compassion that superseded any reservations she ever might have had.
All the time she thought he was avoiding the subject of Lauren hadn’t been to preserve the sanctity of their marriage vows but rather because it evoked such disturbing memories of her ultimate betrayal. How agonizing it must have been for him to share his humiliation with her.
“Of course I’ll never tell the children,” he said gruffly. “I don’t know what good it would do to tarnish the memory of their mother that way. But I want you to know, Ella, that you are twice the mother to them that Lauren ever thought of being. And more of a woman than she could have ever hoped to become.”
“I love you,” Ella told him, thinking Lauren a fool. “You, not your money or your status. You. And, yes, I will marry you.”
With that, she bid him get up from the cold wooden floor to join her beneath the covers of a bed warmed by her body. What did it matter that the wind was whistling in through the broken door when they could keep each other sheltered from the cold world without? It was time to prove to Hawk and to herself that hearts do their best healing one beat at a time.
Declaring her life truly fairy-tale perfect, Ella embraced the helpless, hopeless, hungry feeling of being in love with the most wonderful man in the world. Kneeling precariously upon the old feather bed, Ella directed her fingers to the buttons of his tuxedo. A moment later she sent his jacket sailing across the room, quickly followed by shirt, tie, pants and briefs.
Once he was naked and hard and in her arms, she whispered, “There’s only one thing left that worries me.”
Hawk stiffened in her arms and she hastened to explain lest she worry him needlessly.
“I left the finger paints back at your place.”
Hawk’s laugh was half-growl. “Don’t you worry,” he said nibbling on the hollow of her neck in the very spot that made her wild. “I’m going to paint you all the colors of the world and give it back to you on a silver platter.”
Ella sighed contentedly as he proceeded to do just that, brushing her from head to toe with his fingers and tongue and entire body. No mere canvas could hold the colors that exploded in Ella’s mind as Hawk made love to her in such a deliberate fashion most women could but imagine in their sweetest dreams. Glorious pinks and golds of a summer sunrise, dazzling silver from stars sprinkling the heavens above, iridescent greens and blues of mermaids playing tag amid whitecaps, roses and rainbows and indigo twilights all were evoked by the gentleness of Hawk’s touch.
That he was capable of such tenderness was Ella’s undoing. None of the frantic haste which distinguished their earlier lovemaking marred the passion of their newly pronounced commitment to each another. Languid and deep flowed the river of their love. Hawk kissed the fragrant tresses of Ella’s hair, her eyelids, her nose, down her neck, along the soft, sensitive underside of her arms, out to the palms of her work roughened hands to the sensitive nerves of her fingertips.
She begged him to stop and allow her to return his kisses, but he bid her remain still and continued his erotic path over her full, sensitive breasts, savoring the taste of her nipples in his mouth. “So sweet,” he murmured lovingly, making her ache with longing for him. No part of her body, nary a single rib, escaped the nips and nibbles that marked her tenderly as his own. Ella pulled that magnificent head of his up to her own and orchestrated the sounds of his slow, eager surrender.
Kissing him softly at first, she tasted the promise on his lips, then slowly deepened it in a deliberate attempt to physically share her very soul with him. The cat curled up at the foot of the bed purred no more contentedly than did Ella.
In the flickering light, the painting of that mystical bird which Ella had painted came to life. As it lifted its magnificent wings, Ella felt herself lifted higher and higher above the mundane world. Sprouting wings herself, she competed move for move with her partner in a crescendo of airborne acrobatics. Together they climbed the heavens toward the peak of ecstasy. Mesmerized by each other, they locked talons at the height of their passionate dance, and the two became one, spiritually and physically.
Plummeting through the sky in a death-defying free fall, they tumbled through the clouds past hundreds of feet of sheer cliff walls. Just before reaching the surface of a shimmering lake below, something purely magical happened. Feeling Ella tremble in his arms at the peak of passion, Hawk groaned aloud. Shuddering, he gave all of himself, spreading his wings wide and bidding her soar with him back toward the sun. Spent, they glided effortlessly above a world so far beneath them that it couldn’t hope to ever touch what they felt for one another.
This sacred act of merging love and sensuality in no way diminished their need for touch. Not the kind of thoughtless lover to roll away once his more immediate needs were sated, Hawk planned on sustaining this intimacy for a lifetime. Declaring that Ella’s fresh-eyed innocence had given him another chance at making a good life for his children—and himself—he held her tenderly in his arms and made plans for a future together.
A future that included laughter and children and magic. A future worthy of the kind of happily-ever-after that everyone deserves, but only the bravest of hearts is willing to commit a lifetime not only to make come true, but to last forever.
A once-upon-a-time skeptic, Ella allowed herself to accept the fairy tale ending that truly belonged to her. Circumstances of birth and lack of opportunity were nothing in comparison to how this wonderful man made her feel. No longer the ugly duckling of her youth, she was transformed into a real-life Cinderella and made beautiful, not by the twirling of a godmother’s wand, but by the power of Hawk’s eternal love.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0430-0
WYOMING CINDERELLA
Copyright © 2001 by Cathleen Galitz
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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