MIDNIGHT CINDERELLA

by Eileen Wilks

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  MIDNIGHT CINDERELLA

  Eileen Wilks

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

  ^»

  It was ten minutes until midnight, according to the cracked clock on the wall. Hannah looked at it and frowned. She didn't like being without a watch, and she didn't like waiting. Her old, dependable watch had stopped working two days ago and her new employer wasn't here yet. Her choices were limited.

  To some people, midnight meant the witching hour. To Hannah Maria McBride, reared on the Brothers Grimm and other fantasies, it meant the moment Cinderella's beautiful clothes turned back into rags. Unfortunately, the people sharing the bus station's waiting area with her bore even less resemblance to Prince Charming than her worn jeans and bulky parka did to Cinderella's ball dress.

  She tightened her grip on her backpack, scooted her suitcase a little farther under the bench she sat on, and looked around. The bus station hadn't improved in the hour she'd spent waiting there. The walls were still dirty, the floor was still dirty and she was still the only woman in the place.

  The old man sleeping on the bench in the corner didn't worry her. The three young men who'd just come in, passing a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 between them, did. Especially the scrawny one, the one with long hair the color and texture of twine. His empty eyes followed her like the sights on a rifle.

  She was also bothered by the condition of her wallet. Thirty-four dollars and seventeen cents wouldn't go far if her new employer didn't show up. He was supposed to have been here an hour ago. Nor was she happy about the slimy smile on the face of the ticket agent.

  All in all, she was beginning to feel a bit uncertain about what to do next. The feeling was as unwelcome as it was unfamiliar.

  Hannah was a rare combination of haste and patience. The way she saw it, action—any action—was bound to be better than sitting around worrying to death about her problems, and if this attitude led her to rush her decisions at times, she shrugged and refused to regret the consequences. But she was a practical woman. Life had taught her the difference between dreams and reality, and working as a nurse's aide the past three years had underlined that lesson. So she was capable of great patience … when she had to be.

  Traveling by bus suited her fondness for efficiency, since she could do other important things, like sleep or read, while the driver did his job. The main reason she'd come here by bus tonight, though—the one she preferred not to dwell on—was money.

  Money annoyed Hannah. She didn't intend to let it control her life, and she never used it to measure a person's worth. But she couldn't get around the fact that she did need money to survive, just like everyone else, and she couldn't help thinking that one or two of the ragged people who shared the bus station with her tonight were a bit … disquieting.

  Yes, she thought, pleased with herself for remembering today's word, that's exactly right. Disquieting: causing anxiety or uneasiness; disturbing. Maybe, to pass the time, she could look up tomorrow's word. She glanced at the cracked clock again. Four minutes until midnight. Technically it wasn't quite tomorrow yet, but it was close enough that it wasn't really cheating to peek ahead. She pulled her word-a-day book out of the pocket of her backpack and turned to the page for February 23rd.

  Enigma, she read. A puzzling occurrence; a puzzling or contradictory character.

  An unpleasant giggle distracted her. The scrawny youth with the twine hair was still watching her, but it was his friend with the droopy mustache who was giggling in that nasty, high-pitched way. Hannah frowned at them. She knew better than to let them realize they were making her a teensy bit nervous. Not scared, not really, not with the ticket agent right over—

  She glanced behind her at the counter. No one was there.

  He must have gone to the men's room, she told herself, or on some other very brief errand. Something that wouldn't keep him away long at all. No doubt he would be right back. All the same—

  There was that giggle again.

  All the same, maybe she would try calling her employer. Maybe he hadn't gotten the message she'd left on his machine when she first arrived. She stood and dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans for a quarter. Right away, she wished she'd zipped up her coat first.

  Hannah wasn't a beauty. She knew that, but she also knew that beauty intimidated men, while looks like hers… Well, it was true that some men were put off by a woman who stood a hair under five foot ten inches tall in her stocking feet. Some didn't like redheads, or care for long hair so curly that it looked like she'd stuck her finger in an electric socket. And there were men who didn't like a woman with an old-fashioned, hourglass shape.

  But not that many.

  The giggler stared at her chest. He grinned like the idiot he was, puffed out his own chest and strutted toward her. His friends fell into step alongside him.

  Hannah didn't consider it safe to turn her back on any wild or feral creature. She stood her ground.

  The giggler stopped right in front of her. He looked at her, but he talked to his friends as if she weren't there. "Whatcha think, Sammie? You been starin' at her tits, haven't you? I gotta say, those are some mighty fine tits."

  Hannah's lips tightened.

  "You think she's sellin' it, Mario?" That came from the tall one. The scrawny one didn't say a word.

  "Sure she is," the giggler said, spreading his mustache wide in a smile that showed off his yellow teeth. "Why else would she be hangin' out here? Hey, honey, I got twenty bucks. You got a place, or you wanna use the back seat of my car?"

  Hannah shook her head. Looking disgusted was easy; looking calm took more effort. But she'd dealt with creeps just as obnoxious during her stint as a bartender. "You boys ought to know better than to talk trash to a woman you don't know. What if I were an undercover cop?"

  He snorted. "An undercover cop? In Bitter Creek? Not likely. You don't look much like the sheriff or any of his boys."

  "But I'm not from around here, now, am I?" she said patiently. "I just came in on the bus."

  His brows puckered in sudden—and probably painful—thought. "Cops don't ride buses."

  She lifted one eyebrow, a trick she'd mastered in the eighth grade to irritate her sister. "Know a lot about undercover cops, do you?"

  The tall one snickered. "Ooh, Mario, I think she likes you."

  Giggles flushed. "I know how to handle a smart-mouthed—"

  "You boys need to leave now." The new voice was deep, male, and as coldly confident as winter.

  Hannah was startled, but nowhere near as startled as the "boys." They jumped, jerked and moved hastily away, giving her a clear view of the man who'd entered the bus station, unnoticed, while she was surrounded.

  He wasn't a man who went unnoticed often. She would bet on that.

  "She with you?" Giggles spoke with more respect than she would have expected him to show anyone who wasn't holding a gun.

  Her champion was a big man. That was the second thing she noticed about him—his sheer size. He was unusually tall, yes, but it was the entire, oversize package that drew a woman's attention, not just his height. In his sheepskin jacket and dark brown cowboy hat, he looked larger than life, as if he could have stepped down from some billboard advertising saddles or cigarettes.

  But his size wasn't the first thing she'd noticed. No, because first she'd heard his voice, that cold-as-death voice. She'd heard it once before. When he hired her.

  "Does it matter?" he said at last.

  "Not a bit," the tall one assured him. "We was just having a little fun, but— oomph!"


  The last sound was a reaction to having Mario's elbow jabbed in his ribs. "C'mon, you idiot. No harm meant, Mr. Jones. We were just on our way out."

  "Then go." He stepped aside to let Giggles & Friends make their exit.

  Hannah wasn't one to hold a grudge. She smiled at her new boss, prepared to forgive him for making her wait. "Thanks for getting rid of those idiots. You're Nathan Jones, right? I'm Hannah McBride."

  Nate could almost hear the Fates laughing their heads off as he crossed the room. To think that he'd risked having Jessie Ramirez—proud of his new deputy's badge—pull him over for speeding on his way into town! He'd been worried that the nurse waiting at the bus station for him might take a look around, get disgusted and hop on the next bus out of here. Bitter Creek, Texas, wasn't much to look at in the daytime. At a quarter past midnight, it looked like the back end of nowhere.

  There hadn't been much point in hurrying, though, had there? This woman wasn't going to stay.

  Hannah McBride, the woman he'd hired on the basis of a phone interview and a friend's hearty recommendation, was the sort of woman a man usually sees in the glossy pages of a men's magazine, not a dingy bus station. And certainly not at his ranch. Actually, he realized as he drew near, her face was nothing special—nice, but average, and peppered with freckles. And young. Too young. Her chin had a stubborn look to it, and her eyes were a friendly brown. But what man was going to notice her eyes? Any male who summoned the strength of mind to look above her shoulders was just going to get trapped in all that hair.

  Lord, that hair.

  She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman. Once. Whatever lingering thoughts Nathan held of the placid, practical creature he had thought he'd hired evaporated when he stopped in front of flame-haired reality. He shook his head in disgust. If he weren't desperate, he would put her on the next bus heading back where she came from.

  He raised his voice. "George!"

  The door behind the ticket counter opened and a small, prematurely balding man came out. "Who the—oh, it's you."

  "What did you do, run and hide in the office when Mario and his friends came in?"

  "No," Hannah said. "He waited until they started hassling me to disappear."

  "I don't like trouble," the little man muttered.

  "You think I do?" Most of her hair was pulled back in a loose, sexy ponytail, but one strand had worked its way loose. She brushed it back impatiently.

  Desire flicked him on the raw. Obviously his body had no more sense at thirty-two than it had at twenty-two, but his body wasn't in charge. And the rest of him knew better. "Women like you are trouble."

  "If you'd been here when you said you would be, there wouldn't have been a problem." She stuck the paperback book she'd been holding in the backpack, hefted it and reached for the suitcase by her feet.

  He grabbed the suitcase before she could, and scowled. "How old are you, anyway?"

  "Twenty-four," she said, straightening. "Not that it's any of your business. So why weren't you here on time? Did you forget about me?"

  He hated being late. It put him at fault, and the only thing he hated more than being at fault was having things go to hell so thoroughly that he was never able, afterward, to sort out how much of the blame was his. "I had a cow that needed doctoring. I'm here now."

  "Do you often ignore your phone? I called."

  "When I've got both hands up a cow's ass, I do." He shifted the suitcase to his other hand. The damn thing was one of those old-fashioned, hard-sided sort that weigh a ton even empty. And this one sure wasn't empty.

  "Isn't your brother at the house? I know he's injured, but surely he's able to answer the phone."

  "I keep the ringer turned off on the phone in Mark's room so no damn fool female can call and wake him up after he finally gets to sleep."

  "His pain meds should help him sleep."

  "He doesn't like to take pills."

  "Ah." She nodded. "One of those, is he? Well, unless there's some outside reason, like substance abuse, that he shouldn't—"

  "I said he doesn't take pills. Not even aspirin."

  "I'll get him to take the pain medicine, though. He needs the sleep."

  He paused, frustrated because she was right. Mark's hangup about drugs was keeping him from getting the rest his body needed to heal. "You won't be here long enough to talk Mark into anything." He would see to that.

  "Nonsense. It won't take me the entire two months to have him taking his pain pills."

  "You won't be here that long."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Our agreement was for two months."

  The ticket agent broke in. "This is the nurse you hired to replace Mrs. Grimes?"

  "Nurse's aide," Hannah corrected.

  Nathan glanced at the ticket agent. George had always been a nosy little runt, even back in grade school. The little man's eyes bulged with astonished speculation. "If I'd known this was who you was waiting on, ma'am … if I'd known—" He broke off, fairly quivering with all the things he didn't dare say.

  "You want to explain to me why it's any of your business who I hire, George?"

  "It isn't, no, of course it isn't." He licked his lips. "I was just curious. You understand. I want you to know that I don't believe all that stuff Ben Rydell has been saying."

  Nate felt a distant twinge of curiosity about what kind of garbage Rydell was spreading this time, but he didn't have time to care. "Then you don't have anything to be nervous about, do you?" He turned to the woman he had to take home with him. Temporarily. "Come on."

  She didn't budge. "I want to know what you meant about me not being here for the two months we agreed on."

  "You aren't right for the job. Damned if I know why Harry didn't warn me what you looked like when he recommended you. But I'm a fair man. When I find someone else, I'll give you an extra day's wages for your trouble."

  "You call that fair? One day's wages, instead of two months?" She propped one hand on her hip and scowled. The backpack swung from her other hand. "And just what is wrong with the way I look?"

  "There are six of us out at the ranch right now—three hands, my foreman, my brother and me. All male. Six men to one woman might be just the way you like things, but I don't have time to sort out whatever trouble you stir up."

  "Now, you listen here! I don't know what your problem is, if you're a woman-hater or something, but I intend to be treated with respect, Mr. Jones."

  He started for the door. "Nathan," he said.

  "What?" This time, at least, she was following.

  "Call me Nathan, or Nate," he said, shoving the door open. "'Mr. Jones' makes me think someone wants my father." Or that the bailiff wanted him on his feet. Some memories didn't fade, no matter how much time passed.

  Nathan Jones was not a simple man, Hannah decided when she saw that he meant to hold the door open for her. It was obvious he'd taken one look at her and made assumptions, and while this was hardly the first time someone had leaped to those conclusions, it still smarted. Yet there he stood, holding the door for her.

  She couldn't decide if his display of courtesy was more intriguing or irritating.

  The moment she stepped outside, wind slapped her in the face with air shipped direct from Canada, courtesy of the huge wind tunnel of the Great Plains. She tucked her chin down and tried to think of a way to connect with this aggravating man with the bad attitude. "Does your father live nearby?"

  "No." He headed for a big, white pickup truck near the door. "He's dead."

  "Oh, I'm sorry." While he tossed her suitcase into the pickup's bed, she tried the passenger door. It wasn't locked, so she climbed into the cab, chucking her backpack in the space behind the seat, glad to get out of that wind. She pulled the door closed, shutting herself up in darkness and the smell of the past.

  Leather and machinery. Horses and tobacco. The mingled scents were too intimate, and far too familiar.

  The bridle she'd glimpsed behind the driver's seat explained the mixed leather-an
d-horse smell; the oily scent of machinery must be from the mysterious mechanical part that sat on newspaper on the seat beside her. The stubbed-out cigar she'd seen in the ashtray accounted for the smell of tobacco… And the dozens of ranches and highways and goodbyes of her childhood explained the motionless way she sat, waiting for the onslaught from the past to fade.

  How many years had it been? Eight, nearly nine? She hadn't lived on a ranch since she turned sixteen and decided she'd rather get married than follow her cowboy father to yet another town. Of course, she'd been convinced it was love, not a hunger for roots, that had made Barry so irresistible.

  Now here she was, closed up in what was every bit a rancher's work truck, and planning to live on a ranch once more. Temporarily, of course.

  Her new boss opened his door, and the overhead light came on again. He was so tall that he had to take his hat off and set it on the seat when he slid behind the wheel. What a strange, closed face he had. She liked his eyebrows, though. The rest of his face was regular enough to be considered handsome, which she thought rather boring. But those eyebrows! They had personality. They didn't match, for one thing. Both were thick and dark, but one was straight, a frowning slash above his right eye, while the left one had a built-in quirk that gave it a quizzical look.

  She wondered what he looked like when he smiled.

  "What the hell are you staring at?"

  If he ever smiled. "Your eyebrows."

  He stared. "What does … no," he said, pulling the door closed and recreating the darkness inside the cab of the truck. "No, if I ask, you might tell me." He started the engine.

  He was certainly a big man. He took up an unreasonable amount of space, making the cab of the truck feel suddenly crowded. "Your ranch is about thirty minutes away, I think you said?"

  He grunted, looked over his shoulder and started backing up.

  She let him get the pickup out of the parking lot and tried again. "Is it near the canyon?"