by JoAnn Ross
“That’s better.” He stabbed a whole wheat waffle and deposited it on her plate. Then he drenched his own in maple syrup and took a bite. “It’s pretty good,” he said, torn between the need to compliment her and the reluctance to encourage her.
“Thank you. Of course, if the contents of your refrigerator and pantry were any indication, it’s been a while since you had any home cooking. Good or bad.”
“Got me there,” he said agreeably.
Clint kind of liked the way she talked back to him. She wasn’t as easily intimidated as many of the fine citizens of Whiskey River. Although he’d always been pretty much of a loner in the western ranching community, ever since Laura’s murder—even though he’d been proven innocent and released from jail—there were still people who crossed the street when they saw him coming. And the few friends he did have in town had been tiptoeing around him as if they were afraid of saying anything that might depress him.
As if his life weren’t already as damn depressing as it could get.
“It looks as if we’re in for quite a storm,” Sunny said, glancing out the window where the driven snow had reduced the visibility to nearly zero.
Clint glared out at the white stuff being whipped against the glass. “It’ll pass,” he muttered. “It always does.”
Sunny didn’t argue with that. Nor did she agree. But Clint found the faint smile hovering at the corners of her full rosy lips suspicious, just the same.
As he and Sunny had done last night, they finished the meal in silence. When he leaned back and lit a cigarette, Sunny took it as a sign he was done and began clearing the table.
“I haven’t figured out why yet, but for some reason you’re determined to worm your way into my life, aren’t you?”
His tone and his description irked Sunny. “You’ve such a way with words. And why would your life, which you seemed willing to throw away, be any of my business?”
“Good question. Are you saying I’m mistaken?”
“No.”
“Aha.” He nodded, satisfied.
“I’m saying you’re dead wrong.” It was, admittedly, an out-and-out he. But she didn’t believe he was ready for the truth.
“All right.” He blew out a plume of smoke. “Let me rephrase it, then. How about, you’re determined to worm your way into my house?”
“That isn’t much better. But it’s closer.” She met his steady, challenging gaze. “I told you last night,” she said softly, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You don’t have any family?”
“No.”
“No husband, kids?”
“No.” She did not add that that was one of the few downsides to her career as a fairy godmother.
“How about lovers?”
The way he was suddenly looking at her, as if seeing her as a woman for the first time, made Sunny suddenly very nervous. Her skin warmed beneath the unwavering gaze and although she was certain it must be her imagination, it seemed the pulse in the base of her throat had suddenly trebled its beat.
“No.” She tried to drag her eyes from his and found herself inescapably snared by that appraising blue gaze.
“No?” He shook his head. “Baby, the guys must all be dead from the waist down where you come from.”
It was not a compliment. Not really. But Sunny’s mutinous body strangely decided to take it as one. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she murmured. “Would you like some more coffee?”
He ignored her offer. “What would you do,” he asked instead, “if I told you that you could have the job?”
“Really?” Pleasure lit her eyes to a burnished gold that made him almost feel guilty about what he was about to say. “Do you mean it?”
“I never say anything I don’t mean.” He rubbed his chin and continued to smoke as he gave her a deliberately slow perusal from the top of her gilt head down to her feet, clad in a pair of high-top sneakers with scarlet laces. “Ask anyone.”
His gaze returned to her face which was still flushed with pleasure. He wondered idly how pleased she’d be when she heard the rest of his offer.
“You already know about Laura.”
“Yes.” She nodded. The sympathetic shadow in her gleaming eyes created another little prick of guilt that Clint steadfastly ignored. “You must have loved her a great deal.”
“I did. Absolutely. Unequivocally.” He took another long drag on the cigarette. “Needless to say, I haven’t been up to rejoining the dating game these past few months.”
“Oh, I can understand that.” She rushed over, sat down in the chair beside him and took his free hand in hers. “It’s not easy, getting back into the swing of things.”
Pleased with how this conversation seemed to have taken an unexpectedly romantic turn, Sunny was tempted to explain her presence here in Whiskey River. What a relief it would be for Clint to learn he wasn’t going to have to go searching for a new love because it was her job to find one for him!
He looked down at their linked ringers—his dark, hers as pale as the snow that was falling outside—and felt a strange pull that wasn’t quite sexual, but disturbing just the same.
“The thing is,” he continued, ignoring this new feeling as he’d ignored the guilt, “celibacy can get a little monotonous, if you know what I mean. So, although I’ve never stooped to paying a woman, I suppose I could make an exception.” He paused, watching for his words to sink in. “In your case.”
“I don’t understand.” She spoke slowly, her wide, innocent eyes on his. “Are you actually offering to pay me to make love with you?”
“No.”
“Oh.” The single word was expelled on a long breath. Her relief was so palpable, Clint felt as if he could reach out and touch it.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with love. I’m talking about sex. Since you need a place to stay, and I’ll admit to getting damn horny, it seems the logical thing for us to do is work out a deal that solves both our problems.”
Sunny was not an absolute innocent. Several centuries of observing the inhabitants of the world had allowed her to witness everything—good and evil—that human beings did to, and with, one another. She should not have been shocked when Clint took her for a prostitute, but she was both shocked and hurt.
“I can’t believe you said that.”
She looked so distressed and her voice was trembling so that Cliff, who’d decided the ad was a ruse, almost apologized. She was such a damn good actress, he was sure that Mariah had to be at the bottom of this deception. Even though Laura’s younger sister had left Hollywood after inheriting the Swann ranch, she still wrote screenplays and the occasional made-for-television movie. She’d know lots of would-be starlets who’d be willing to go to bed for a part. Or even the rent money.
He was a little disappointed that Mariah, who knew better than anyone how much he’d loved Laura, would think that a warm female body in his bed would make up for all he’d lost. But then again, she’d lived in Tinseltown for a long time; maybe among the lotus eaters, sex wasn’t taken so seriously.
“It was Mariah, wasn’t it?” he asked, deciding to get the game playing over with.
“Mariah?” Sunny asked blankly.
“She’s the one who hired you. She’s the one who sent you here.”
“I told you, I came because of that ad—”
“Yeah, the one in the Rim Rock Record.” That brought up another possibility. “Which means Mac had to be in on the scheme, too.”
“Mac?”
“Mackenzie Reardon. He’s publisher of the paper.” He was also an old friend. “He’s getting married to Noel Giraudeau.”
“Princess Noel Giraudeau?”
The stunning blonde, the papparazzi had dubbed the Ice Princess had once gone on a photo safari with the Princess of Wales. Sunny remembered the occasion all too well because when the Prince of Wales had opted out of the trip at the last minute, Sunny had harbored doubts about his commitment to what she’d hoped was a t
rue love match. With the crystal clear view of hindsight, Sunny realized she should have given up on the relationship right then.
“Yeah.”
“From what I’ve seen—in the papers—” Sunny said quickly, when his eyes narrowed again, “the princess seems to be a lovely woman.”
“Inside and out,” Clint confirmed, his expression softening slightly at the mention of the woman who’d expressed such concern for him over these past months. “And since I don’t think she’d agree to the scheme, Mariah and Mac must have done it on their own.” He was also certain that Mariah’s new husband, Trace Callahan, would not have had anything to do with such an illegal arrangement. Although he admittedly hadn’t been thinking all that clearly in those days immediately following Laura’s death, the one thing that had sunk in was that Whiskey River’s sheriff definitely took his job seriously.
“I’m not a prostitute.” She lifted her chin. “And I definitely didn’t come here to have sex with you.”
He gave her another long look. Just when Sunny’s nerves were approaching the screaming point, he shrugged.
“Too bad.”
Before she could come up with a response to that, he stood up, pulled his shearling-lined jacket from a hook on the wall and shrugged into it.
“Where are you going?”
He threw her a look over his shoulder. “I figured I’d go out and feed the horses. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the sex?”
“No.” She bit her lip to keep from asking him to please be patient. Just a little longer.
As he watched her small white teeth worrying that soft pink flesh, Clint felt the age-old attraction of male for female, and decided it was definitely time to leave.
“Too bad,” he repeated, then left the cozy warmth of the kitchen.
As she watched him disappearing into the swirling white snow, Sunny closed her eyes, and wished, for a fleeting moment, that she was a mortal woman. One who could take him to his bed and soothe the pain that never left his haunted eyes. A ragged pain she feared he could feel all the way to his soul.
Minutes passed. Although she was admittedly a little out of practice when it came to computing earth time when the grandfather clock in the front room tolled the hour on a pleasing peal of Westminster chimes, Sunny was sure Clint had been outside far too long.
Standing at the window, she shut out the blizzard and tried desperately to focus on him. To hear him, or see him. But there was nothing. Only a deep black void behind her lids that changed to a blurry white world when she opened her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she wondered out loud. She glanced up, half expecting an answer, disappointed when none was forthcoming. “Why can’t I see him?”
A thought occurred to her, more chilling than the weather. What if he’d done what he’d been about to do when she’d first arrived? What if he’d killed himself? Or even worse, what if he’d shot himself, but was still alive, barely clinging to existence, his life force slowly draining away, so weak she was unable to sense it?
Making romantic matches that failed was a bad enough stain on her permanent record. There was no way Sunny was going to allow an assignment to die. And even as she ran out into the snow in search of him, she knew that her need to find Clint, to save him, went a great deal deeper than mere duty.
The icy wind whipped away his name as soon as it escaped her lips. Unaccustomed to mortal form, she’d forgotten about the need for any kind of overcoat, and desperately tried to recall the temperature at which human blood froze.
She conjured up a vision of a jacket, the twin of Clint’s shearling-lined one, blinked, and was both surprised and troubled when she didn’t immediately find herself wrapped in its warmth. She blinked again. Nothing.
Distressed and confused, she waved her ice-cold hand in a graceful arc, deciding that her only hope was to stop the blizzard. But the snow continued to drift down like feathers shaken from a huge down pillow overhead and the temperature continued to drop.
As much as she longed for the safety and warmth of the house, Sunny was even more concerned about Clint’s safety. Her feet felt like blocks of ice and as she made her way through the drifting white snow, hopefully in the direction he’d taken, she found it more and more difficult to keep her legs moving.
She fell once, stumbling to her knees in a deep drift. She pushed herself to her feet and kept on going. After stum bling a second time, it was even more difficult to stand up. But she made it. Only to fall a third time.
“Damn you, Clint Garvey,” she muttered on something between a sob and a wail, “I’ve never, in all my life, been given such an impossible assignment.”
She wasn’t going to fail, Sunny assured herself as she struggled to her feet yet again and continued trudging forward. Now the wind was blowing ice in her face that stung like needles against her cheeks. She began to wonder if she’d gone the wrong way. Surely the barn wasn’t this far from the house?
She looked around her, but saw nothing but a white curtain in all directions. She made a cone with her hands again and called out his name. But as before, the only answer was the howl of the wind in the tops of the whitefrosted pine trees.
Disoriented, she tried to remember the direction she’d seen him take when he’d left the kitchen, but she was exhausted from the cold and effort and discouragement.
She cried out as she stumbled over a downed tree that had been buried by the snow. Snow she’d thought she’d been oh, so clever in stirring up in the first place. She was on her hands and knees when she realized she had no strength to go another foot. She sank back into the snowbank, feeling more alone than she’d ever felt in her life.
SUNNY WAS FAR from alone. Two fairy godmothers—one tall and spare, the other short and pleasingly plump-watched her desperate struggles.
“Are you certain this is the thing to do?” Andromeda asked. “It’s been a very long time since the girl has visited earth. She’s obviously forgotten mortal survival skills.”
“She won’t need them,” Harmony said with her usual unwavering confidence.
“But perhaps we could slow the storm—”
“No.” The smile gracing the face of the legendary fairy godmother was almost beatific. “Sunny was the one who conjured up the storm. She was the one who asked to be mortal. She’ll have to learn to live with the consequences.”
“Then she will live?”
“Of course. I have very special plans for our Sunny. Plans that will solve both our problems.”
Harmony’s smile widened and her eyes danced merrily. It had been a long time since she’d experienced the joys of a seemingly impossible assignment. She’d always believed in going out while you were on top, which was why she’d retired after the prince had taken sweet, pretty, admittedly dim little Cindy to his palace, where they had gone on to live happily ever after.
Clint Garvey was definitely no prince. At least not the chivalrous knight-in-shining-armor type that filled the gilt-edged pages of fairy-tale books. But Harmony knew him to be a special man, imbued with a steely integrity and capable of a deep and abiding love, even if he believed he had no more love to give.
The trick was to find him an equally special woman-a brave, intelligent resourceful woman. One spirited enough to stand up to him and patient enough to prove to him that he was better than he thought he was.
Who better than Sunny to tempt and torment him, even as she taught him to trust again?
“I still wonder if we should have told her the truth,” Andromeda continued to fret.
Such worry was uncharacteristic, but Sunny was a special case. Although she tried not to become emotionally attached to the students who were assigned to her for a brief time before moving up in the hierarchy, it had been impossible not to grow fond of the always optimistic, open-hearted young apprentice fairy godmother.
“It’s better this way.”
“But what if the girl actually manages to make a match? What if she matches Clint Garvey with the wrong woman? She do
es have a disastrous history of doing just that.”
“Ah, but she isn’t the one making this match,” Harmony reminded her long-time friend. “I am.”
That said, she waved her wand and watched with satisfaction as the magic dust made the falling snow suddenly begin to sparkle like diamonds as it settled over Sunny.
4
CLINT WAS ON his way back to the house when he nearly stumbled over Sunny. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he demanded as he scooped her out of the snowbank.
“I was trying to rescue you,” she said without an instant’s hesitation.
Clint cursed inwardly. “Who do you think you are, lady? My guardian angel?”
Sunny latched on to his words, not noticing that they’d been ground out through clenched teeth. Relieved that he was the one to have brought the subject up, Sunny impulsively decided to tell him the truth. If Clint Garvey could accept the fact that she had only his best interests at heart, he’d undoubtedly be more willing to accept the woman she chose for him.
As they entered the house, she smiled her warmest, most beguiling smile. A smile designed to assure him that he was in good hands. “Actually, since you brought it up, that’s close. Actually, I’m your fairy godmother.”
Hell, she was either nuts, or being out in that blizzard had frozen some brain cells.
“How stupid of me not to have recognized you right off the bat,” he drawled, as he plunked her down on a kitchen chair. “I suppose my only excuse is that I mistook you for Glinda the Good Witch.”
Sunny’s spirits sagged. The warmth she’d begun to feel in her veins upon entering the room faded. “You don’t believe me.”
“What’s not to believe? Doesn’t everyone have a fairy godmother?” The sarcasm in his voice echoed that in his icy blue eyes.
“Of course they do, but—”
“So where are your gilded wings?”
Although she knew his question was meant to be rhetorical, she decided to answer it anyway. “Now you’re referring to guardian angels. I’m a fairy—”
“Godmother. Yeah, we’ve already established that. So, what happens now? Do I get three wishes?”
