Cinderella Search

by Gill, Judy Griffith

  “So, in order to regain the inn, your father asked you to make nice with me? Keep me happy, maybe? What was that supposed to accomplish?”

  “If … if we don’t make enough to cover our bid, and your family takes over, Dad—we all thought it would be to our advantage to have you in our corner.”

  “We, we, we,” he said, leaping up and pacing away from her. “You’re the one who seduced the hell out of me when you saw I wasn’t about to leave. You’re—”

  “No!” she cried, rising just as swiftly. “I didn’t seduce you! I tried to resist you, but—”’

  “Garbage,” he snapped, crowding in on her so close she felt the heat of his body. It would have melted her, but for the anger she saw simmering through him. “You learned a lot from that little princess story of yours, didn’t you? Made it a pattern for your life, maybe? You couldn’t slay the dragon by fair means, so you used foul. You outsmarted me, played me for a fool, made me show off and exhaust myself trying to prove to you what a wonderful dragon I was until I was too weak to resist you.”

  “You’re crazy! It wasn’t like that at all. It—”

  “Maybe I was crazy, but I’m not anymore. I’m beginning to see straight. You’re the one who’s trying to keep anyone else from buying the inn.”

  “Not just me,” she protested. “Us. We, the committee in charge of fund-raising. The whole town.”

  “It wasn’t the whole town that got into my blood, who kissed me till my eyes crossed, who made love to me like a sorceress. God!” Steve exploded, clamping his hands over her shoulders, unable to hide his roiling emotions from her.

  She winced and he let her go, turned and strode away from her, coming to a halt near the huge fireplace. There, he spun and faced her again from a safer distance. “And you called me an opportunist!”

  “I didn’t know you then, Steve. Didn’t care about—”

  He cut off her words with a chopping motion of his hand. “Don’t bother, Lissa. Your explanations are specious just because they come from you. I don’t like being manipulated. I don’t like being used, and that’s exactly what you’ve done to me from the very beginning, you and those big brown eyes of yours, that sexy body. How do I know you didn’t crash through the ceiling on purpose, just to intrigue me?”

  “I didn’t!” she shouted. Then, as if remembering where she was, and that it was the middle of the night, she modulated her tone. “You’ve got it all wrong!” she went on, pleading now. “Remember, when this all started, I hadn’t even met you, hadn’t come to know you. I hadn’t learned to … care about you.”

  “And you want me to believe that you do now?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. Those damned brown eyes brimmed with unshed tears. They were nearly his undoing, but he steeled himself, let his anger feed on itself, feeling it swell in his chest. “You don’t care about me now,” he accused, “and you didn’t care about me then.”

  “Not then, no. I admit that. All I cared about was the inn and my dad. He desperately wants it back. Steve, please understand. It was in his family for years. His father lost it in … in a pinochle game of all things, to one of his rich guests who then made him manager.

  “The inn was my dad’s home from the time he was born. He thought of it as his baby from the age of twenty when his father was killed in a plane crash and he took over managing it. He made it what it is now. Or, what it used to be, what the entire town knows he can make it again, once he’s in a position to take charge. I’ll do anything to help him achieve that goal.”

  Steve stood silent, digesting what she’d said. “Obviously, then, you should be able to understand my doing what my father wants me to do, right?”

  Miserably, she nodded, so miserably, he almost forgave her, almost told her the truth, that he wasn’t there on his father’s behalf. “Yes. I suppose so,” she said. “Your father runs a successful business. I know he needs to find opportunities to expand his area of operations. But not here, Steve. Please, that’s all I’m asking of you, not here!”

  “Why not here? Because you don’t want him to? Aren’t you the one who told me no one can have everything they want?”

  “This isn’t just for me. It’s for my dad. It’s important to him in a way that it can’t possibly be important to yours. The inn is all he knows, Steve, all he wants.”

  “And you’re such a dutiful daughter, you’d even sleep with the enemy to get him what he wants. How altruistic of you, Lissa.”

  He watched anger replace sorrow in her eyes, watched her chin come up and color flare in her cheeks. He’d never wanted her more than at that moment. But to take her now, to make love to her before he sorted through what he really felt for her after these revelations would have been wrong. For both of them.

  Her anger was short-lived. “No. Not altruistic in the least,” she said, dropping down onto a chair, defeat in the droop of her shoulders. “If your father’s company gets the inn, there’s no guarantee they’ll do as the previous owners have done and let my dad store his old junk in the attic. If it has to be moved out, he’ll expect me to move off my boat and into a house where there’s room for it—and him. That’s what he wanted when I first came back. It would take two of us to pay the rent, but I don’t want to have to live with him, or his moldy old furniture that he keeps telling me is my ‘heritage.’ It’s a heritage I have no use for. Nor do I want to live in a house. I have my boat. It’s my freedom. I love it. I can’t give it up.”

  “Even if your moving into a house with him would make your father happy?”

  “That’s unfair,” she said. “Yes, I want Dad to be happy, but not at the expense of my own happiness. And unless he gets his job and his life back, I can’t have mine back.”

  “So when he’s happily managing this place again, you’re free to go. Go where, Lissa?”

  “I told you. I want to put my boat to work. I want to run tours. Oh, God, is it so hard to understand that I just want my dad to have what he wants, so I can live my own life again?”

  Right. A life in which she’d have no use for furniture, no use for a house—a home.

  Those two statements answered a lot of questions for him. Lissa Wilkins had no use for permanency. It wasn’t just the fear that she’d be left high and dry and hurting she’d been crying over. It was the fear of losing her freedom. If her dad got the inn back, then she’d be gone on the morning tide.

  Why it surprised him, he didn’t know. Why it hurt him so, he didn’t want to think about. And he’d thought she was crying because he couldn’t offer her any ironclad guarantees. Bull. She was the one who couldn’t do that.

  It struck him then that she hadn’t said she’d been crying because of his inability to provide guarantees, but because of their inability. She didn’t believe that his love, or her own for him, could create the kind of guarantees something in her yearned for—something she worked so hard at squelching. After all, she didn’t believe in happy endings.

  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday … Where was Steve? She looked at the register each night she came on duty, but he hadn’t checked out. She’d had dinner with her dad and Rosa at Chuckles on Thursday. He hadn’t been there. She’d sat in the lounge for more than three hours after arriving at work, and he didn’t come downstairs. On Friday, someone mentioned he’d been fishing and had donated three salmon for the community barbecue during festival weekend.

  Okay, he was avoiding her. That should have suited her just fine. It didn’t She ached to see him, yearned for just one more chance to make him understand. But he gave her no opportunity. On Friday night, she even considered slipping upstairs and knocking on his door, but pride held her back. Pride, mixed with a hefty dose of fear. As long as she hadn’t heard him say it was over, a small, secret part of her could pretend. Pretending was all right, wasn’t it? Just sometimes? After all, a little fantasy went a long way toward soothing an unsoothable pain.

  Saturday morning, after an exhausting night trying to sleep, she grate
fully turned the desk over to a sour faced Pete. He had still not forgiven her for calling him in early when she’d needed to escape. He’d made her week even more miserable than it had to be. Hell, he’d made much of the past two years miserable for her. This morning though, he was in an even fouler mood than normal because when she left, she wouldn’t be back for two full weeks and he’d have to find a different whipping girl on whom to vent his spleen. Gertie, the relief desk clerk would be taking her place. Lissa could almost laugh, since nobody, but nobody, intimidated Gertie. Especially not Pete.

  Thank goodness the festival was the following weekend. The take would be tallied up, and maybe, just maybe, Pete would be out of a job. As, of course, would she. She couldn’t wait.

  No sooner had Lissa returned to the boat than the phone started ringing. The exhibitor on the other end was demanding running water in his booth. By the time he hung up, she was envisioning fifty garden hoses strung together, snaking across the park. Hoo-boy!

  The phone rang again immediately, and Lissa soothed another worried exhibitor. The minute that caller hung up, there was hammering on the door. In quick succession she dealt with the problems of six people, most of whom wanted to change the location of their particular booths.

  “Traffic flow,” said Hank Marsden a regular exhibitor who created wrought-iron sculptures. “You have to think of traffic flow, Lissa. If people enter the park here—” with a grimy fingernail he jabbed at the plan spread out on the coffee table “—they’ll have spent all their money before they get to mine.” She’d had this argument with him twice before, and moved his booth both times. This year she meant to stand firm.

  Someone else knocked on the door. “Come in!” she called, hoping it was another participant who also hated his or her location and would be willing to trade with Hank.

  She had no idea if the man who trotted down the companionway still intended to have a booth. There was nothing on her master plan that said he did. But suddenly her mouth went dry.

  Steve’s question echoed in her mind. Who gets to write the falling-in-love schedule?

  She’d like to ask him who got to write the falling-out-of-love schedule. Obviously, he did. He looked bright-eyed, well rested, and not in the least disturbed. She just wished he’d tell her his secret. Then, on the other hand, maybe she didn’t want to know it. Maybe it was simply the fact that he had never been in love with her, had merely tossed the word around as casually as most men did in order to get what they wanted. It took her a moment to remember he hadn’t said that word until after he’d gotten what he wanted.

  She would dearly have liked to ask him what he wanted now, but couldn’t speak. She managed a courteous nod and waved him to the settee. He listened as she and Hank continued to wrangle over booth locations.

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Please do.” She kept her tone cool.

  “If Hank’s booth were here,” he said, tapping the paper with the tip of a pencil, “his customers could back right in here.” He indicated a position at the rear of the parking area. “We could tape it off and mark it as a loading zone.”

  Hank leaned over the paper, brightening. “Right. There’d only be about ten feet to carry things. And a lot of my stuff is heavy. But is there a path through the underbrush there?”

  Lissa shrugged. “If there isn’t one now, there’s sure to be by the end of the festival. If,” she added, “if I can persuade the renter of booth twenty-three to trade with you.” She shuffled through the sheaf of papers that should have been in order, but no longer were.

  “No problem,” Steve said. “That’s my booth, and I’m more than happy to trade if it makes things work out for you.”

  She stared at him, trying to read his expression, but somehow he’d managed to hide his thoughts and feelings, as if he’d pulled the shades down over them.

  “Great!” Hank said, pumping Steve’s hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal, buddy. What are you selling, anyway?”

  “Chances,” Steve said. “The same thing as I’m taking,” he added in a lower voice.

  “And now, gentlemen,” Lissa said quickly, “if you’ll forgive me, I worked on this stuff all night and haven’t had any sleep yet.” Not for the world would she admit she hadn’t slept because thoughts of Steve had kept her awake. “I’m going to unplug my phone, put a Do Not Disturb sign on my door, and go to bed.”

  Hank, now that he was satisfied, became contrite and apologized profusely for the intrusion as he wrote out his check for the balance of his booth rental.

  Steve said nothing, only opened the door for Hank and let him out. Then he closed it after him and stood looking at Lissa.

  Lissa stared fixedly at the blank sheet of paper she’d torn off a writing tablet, then at the black felt marker in her hand, watching it shake.

  “Lissa, look at me.” Steve’s voice poured over her like warm honey.

  She didn’t look at him, but finished printing DO NOT DISTURB, then carefully set the pen down. Steve took the sign and fixed it to the outside of the door, which he closed firmly and locked from the inside. Lissa hovered halfway between the saloon and the galley, halfway between telling him to go and begging him to stay.

  He approached her slowly. When his fingers touched her cheek, she flinched, but didn’t back away. “What do you want here?” she asked. “You sure as hell don’t need a booth. You already know whose tattoo you saw, who fell through your ceiling. You don’t have to try that sandal on ‘every girl in the kingdom’ as your signs say, to find your princess. Haven’t you figured it out yet, Steve? There are no more princesses in this world. And no princes.”

  “How about dragons?”

  “Lots of those.”

  “And you want to slay them all. All by yourself.”

  “And you think, in running this booth, in helping us make money, you’re going to prove to me you can slay a few for me?”

  “I don’t want to have to prove anything to you, Lissa, but I’ve advertised it,” he said. “Promised prizes. So I plan to go through with it.”

  She clenched her fists. “All right. Go through with it. Since you’ve also advertised that all proceeds will go to the community fund, you have no need to be here. You don’t have to pay me rent.”

  “I have a need to be here,” he said levelly. “A need to talk to you.”

  “What about? Didn’t you say all you had to Tuesday night?”

  “I wasn’t being fair to you Tuesday night. You’ve been fighting for the inn a long time. I know that. I also know you weren’t using me or trying to distract me with sex. Okay, maybe it took me a while to realize it and decide what to do. I never said I was a quick study.”

  “You said you loved me, Steve, yet you were willing to jump to conclusions about my motives the minute you found out I’m against your father’s buying the inn.”

  “I do love you, and I was wrong to jump to those conclusions. I also have to tell you that as far as I’m aware, my father has never heard of Madrona Cove, the Madrona Inn, or even Quadra Island. He didn’t send me here to check things out preparatory to his making a bid. If there’s another buyer in the picture, I don’t know who it is. The only reason I came here is because a friend recommended it. He used to come here with his family when he was a kid. You might even remember him. Jake Wallace?”

  “I remember Jake.”

  “We were on shipboard together this past winter.” Lissa backed away, searching his eyes, looking for truth. About Jake, she believed him, but about the rest of it, she was still unsure. It was hard to give up a preconceived notion. And if it wasn’t Jackson Resorts who was interested, then who could it be?

  As if he sensed her confusion, Steve said quietly, “You can either believe me or not. The choice is yours. That’s what I meant when I said I was taking chances. I’m taking chances on something I believe is right for both of us.”

  In other words, the ball was in her court.

  Chapter Nine

  LISSA MET HIS
STEADY gaze, struggling to speak past the tension in her throat. Finally, she was able to whisper, “I … believe you.”

  He took a step closer to her.

  “I wasn’t lying, Steve.”

  “When you said you cared about me?”

  She nodded. He took another step toward her. “I want more than that,” he said.

  She couldn’t answer him. Not in words. She took a step toward him, and then, suddenly, the world was right-side-up again as they tightly embraced.

  His kiss was deep and dark and full of promise. His eyes, when he lifted his head, were filled with love and compassion. “You need sleep,” he said, lifting her off her feet and carrying her through the galley, then into her cabin. “And I mean to stand guard and make sure you get it.”

  He laid her down on her berth. She kept her arms around his neck. “Uh, do you think you could stand guard from a prone position?”

  He laughed and slid his length against hers. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Maybe,” she said, a few moments later, “I’m not as tired as I thought I was.”

  “Well, in that case,” he said, rolling to one side and scooping up a few of the packets still strewn across her bedside table. “What will it be, Pink Peppermint-Stick, Cinnamon Sizzler, or Chocko-Cocko?”

  “What? You made that up!”

  “Did not.”

  She read the label on the brown foil. He hadn’t made it up. They collapsed together, giggling, then kissing, and Lissa found herself wondering exactly how many different descriptions the manufacturers of those condoms had come up with. And how many they’d go through while Steve’s vacation lasted.

  She didn’t dare think of the time to follow.

  He looked good with a hammer in his hand, Lissa decided Monday morning. Wielding it, he looked even better. The muscles in his back rippled in the sunlight as he nailed the roof of his booth in place, using boards painted to look like the stone blocks of a castle—the one Cinderella lived in. As she watched him, Lissa paused in her work of helping Caroline set up her booth nearby.