MIDNIGHT CINDERELLA

by Eileen Wilks

  Mark's lip lifted in a sneer. "Nothing, now. Your new bimbo did a fair job of playing nurse."

  She sneered right back. She'd learned long ago that arguing with men who jumped to conclusions based on a woman's bra size wasn't worth the trouble. "I'm not playing. I expect to be paid." She turned to her boss. "Your brother decided to use his broken arm to lift two hundred pounds of man. He got his cast caught in the trapeze. Not too bright."

  Nathan turned his scowl on his brother. "Idiot."

  "I'm sick and tired of hollering for you every time I want to turn over."

  "No problem," Hannah said, wondering if she was imagining the tension between the brothers. "You can holler for me from now on."

  "You?"

  His astonishment irritated her. "Why not?"

  Nathan spoke before his brother could. Irony tinted the smooth, rumbly voice that did such peculiar things to Hannah's insides. "Mark, this is Hannah McBride, the nurse I told you about. I picked her up at the bus station last night."

  "Home health aide," she corrected conscientiously. She was five semesters from being able to call herself "nurse."

  A smile started in Mark's dark eyes. "Obviously I'm an idiot." He glanced at his brother. "She's sure easier on the eyes than Mrs. Grimes."

  "Don't get used to it. She's temporary."

  "Maybe not," she said, looking over the clutter covering the top of the little bedside table. "Mr. Jones—"

  "Nate."

  "Nate, then. You can go now. Mark and I will get acquainted better if you aren't hanging over us like a storm cloud."

  Mark seemed to like that. "Yeah, go away, Nate. Hannah and I want to get acquainted."

  Her boss looked at her, his face expressionless. "I'll take care of whatever Mark needs while you get some clothes on."

  Hannah was abruptly reminded of her bare feet. She curled her cold toes self-consciously and reminded herself that she was covered more completely now, in unrevealing flannel, than she would be when she put on her uniform. He was the one with the problem, making it sound as if she were running around half-naked. "I'll change when I shower, which will be after I get your brother comfortable, and before I come down to fix breakfast."

  "Breakfast isn't included in your duties."

  "No, but my meals are included in my wages and I eat breakfast. If I'm going to cook for myself, I may as well fix enough for you and your brother, too."

  "I ate with the hands." His eyes were a flat, unrevealing black.

  "Suit yourself."

  Mark snorted. "Maybe you like Julio's version of pancakes, but I don't. Feel free to cook my breakfast anytime, Hannah." He grinned.

  Lord, what a sight. She shook her head. "That gorgeous face of yours is going to take some getting used to. It's as distracting as a train wreck."

  Nate made a disgusted noise and turned to go. "I'll take the intercom to the barn with me, Mark—in case you need me."

  Impulsively, thinking only of getting onto a better footing with her grouchy boss, she reached out to stop him. "Mr. Jones—Nathan—if you want to try my pancakes, you're welcome to." She laid a hand on his arm.

  He did stop. So, for a second, did her breath.

  Hannah was a toucher. Physical contact was part of her job, of course; she had to touch her patients to help, to ease, to comfort. But one reason she was drawn to nursing was that she had always connected with others physically. She was a confirmed collar-smoother, arm-patter and hug-giver, so touching this man through the thickness of his jacket shouldn't have had any effect on her. Yet she felt as if she'd received a soundless shout into her system—a quick, wordless pulse that echoed inside her even after she dropped her hand, startled.

  He turned his head. "I don't like to be pawed."

  Pawed? Pawed? "Yes, sir," she said frigidly.

  Mark's cheerful voice broke the sudden, strained silence. "Go away, Nate. Take your sour face out of here. You're leaving me in good hands." Mark aimed a leer at Hannah that would have been more believable if he hadn't been pallid from pain.

  Finally, Nate left. And thank goodness for that, Hannah told herself. She did not need his bad attitude cluttering up the sickroom.

  "Well." Mark smiled widely, looking at her chest. "Alone at last."

  "A lot of good that will do you. Hey," she said, putting her hand breast-high and lifting it, directing his gaze up to her face. "I'm up here, okay? You may as well know that I have a few rules."

  "You may as well know I don't pay much attention to rules."

  He was going to be a challenge, all right. "It might motivate you to remember that you're at my mercy. First rule—looking's okay, but no touching. I've got quick reflexes, and I might hurt you. Second rule—I don't care how bad a mood you're in, no throwing things. Especially food."

  He scowled. "Nate told you about that? Well, did he tell you what that old bat had the nerve to—"

  "Doesn't matter," she interrupted, picking up one of the pill bottles from the cluttered bedside table and reading the label. "You can throw a temper fit if you like, but don't throw anything else or I feed you oatmeal for three days. Third rule—don't pull any macho crap with me. If I ask you a question, I want a straight answer. Did you get much sleep last night?"

  "Some."

  She wagged the pill bottle at him accusingly. "Uh-uh. Wrong answer. The truth is that you slept lousy, just like you have every night since the accident, because you don't want to take your pain medication."

  "I don't addle my body with drugs."

  "No, you prefer to lie awake for hours, hurting all over. Well, you and I are going to have to talk about that. Right now, though, I'm going to see if I can make you more comfortable while we talk."

  She pushed the button, lowering the head of the bed again, then she untucked one of the blankets and pulled it off the bed.

  "If you'll come closer, I'll tell you how to make me a lot more comfortable," he suggested.

  She ignored that, rolling the blanket up snugly to make a bolster she could use to prop him partly on his side. "I know what happened. This morning you couldn't stand just lying there anymore. Only you can't use your left arm to shift yourself because of those cracked ribs, so you tried to use your right arm, cast and all." She settled the rolled blanket next to him. "But why didn't you call your brother? He gets up early."

  "Nathan's already shorthanded," he muttered. "He doesn't need me yelling at him every five minutes."

  Her boss was shorthanded, was he? Well, with an attitude like his, that was no wonder. Especially if he made a point of telling all his employees that he'd once killed a man. Especially if the man he'd killed had been an employee—

  Cut it out, she told her overactive imagination. "Let's see if we can't find a position that doesn't offend any of your broken places. I'm going to roll you just a bit onto your side. Don't try to help." She positioned her hands carefully on his shoulder and hip.

  He did try to help, of course—the macho idiot—and hurt himself in the process.

  "Next time, pretend you're a sack of potatoes," she said when she had him on his side. She used the pillows to elevate and stabilize his broken leg in the new position. "You know, you aren't doing yourself any favors by refusing your pain medication. If pain keeps you awake, your body isn't getting the rest it needs to heal. How does this feel?"

  "Better," he said grudgingly, but the lines of his face eased as he shifted into the new position with a sigh. "You're bossy as hell, aren't you?"

  "Yep. That's why I went into nursing—so I can tyrannize poor, helpless patients like you."

  She asked him a few questions about his diet and listened to his answers with most of her mind—the part that wasn't trying to figure out what that last, warning look from her boss had meant. When Mark said he avoided eggs, fried foods and fatty meat, and that he preferred fresh vegetables, she chuckled. "Now I've heard it all. A health-conscious motorcycle jock with a cattle ranch."

  "This isn't my ranch."

  "Well, you l
ive here, so I thought—"

  "No. Not since I was sixteen."

  "Oh?" She paused, two dirty glasses in one hand, a sports magazine in the other. His expression resembled his brother's at that moment—closed, with No Trespassing signs posted. "Does that mean you can get away with being a vegetarian?" she asked lightly.

  He relaxed. "If you don't eat red meat around here, they think you've joined a cult and try to debrief you."

  "I'll remember that. If you're not a rancher, what do you do for a living?"

  "I'm a mechanic."

  "Ah. So you're a health nut who fixes engines and won't touch your legally prescribed painkiller, but you don't object to skimming your body across the pavement at fifty miles an hour."

  "Forty miles an hour. And the sonofa—the idiot who ran the red light didn't give me much choice."

  "At least you had the sense to wear a helmet."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because you're alive, and you still know how to speak in complete sentences."

  "Good point." He nodded. "As a matter of fact, I always wear a helmet. Leathers, too, which kept most of my surface intact."

  "And a lovely surface it is, too. I'm sure women everywhere appreciate the care you take of it." Hannah wasn't surprised to find herself unmoved, except in a purely aesthetic way, by that stunning exterior. He was a patient, after all.

  "So, Hannah … why did Nathan say you were temporary?"

  It wasn't until that moment that she realized she'd made up her mind. Was it folly or intuition that decided her? Whichever, she was suddenly certain this was where she was supposed to be. Mark needed her.

  So did Nathan.

  No, she told herself firmly. Taking care of her patient was enough. She had a great need to be needed, but she was not the sort of fool who would try to mend a man like Nathan Jones. "That would be because he's an idiot," she said firmly, collecting the rest of the clutter that needed to go to the kitchen. "I'm staying."

  "Are you, now?" For the first time, Mark forgot to leer or flirt. "It's going to be interesting to see which of you is right about that."

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  The sun was up, but invisible in the overcast sky. Nate's breath frosted the early morning air as he crossed to the stable with Trixie frisking at his side. The big Labrador loved cold weather. She snapped at the snowflakes that were drifting down and melting as soon as they touched the ground.

  It had been a dry year. Every thimbleful of moisture was welcome, but it was hard not to grudge those thimbles when they needed buckets.

  He met his foreman in the horse stable for their usual morning consultation. Both men kept an eye on the sky through the open stable doors while they talked. Nate asked Abe to ride out with one of the hands, checking for heifers with a poor sense of timing. The first-timers weren't supposed to start calving for another two weeks, with the experienced cows starting to drop their calves around April first, but you never knew what a heifer would do.

  "Thought you was gonna do that. Didn't that nurse show up?" Abe reached for his back pocket and pulled out a round tin of chewing tobacco. Abe Larimer was nearing seventy, but Nate wouldn't have dared call his foreman an old man. Whittled down a bit, maybe, leaving only the toughest scraps of hide and bone, along with the sharp, squinty eyes of a man who'd spent a lifetime resting his eyes on horizons not pimpled by buildings.

  "She's here," Nate said, "but I doubt she'll stay."

  "No?" He pushed the lid off the tin with one thumb. "She get spooked, then? I thought that friend of yours was gonna fill her in on things."

  "He didn't." Nate wasn't going to explain why that woman had to leave. No way was he going to say that he didn't want her around because it hurt him to look at her. It was funny, though. Until he'd seen Hannah in that bus station, he would have sworn he was over Jenny.

  Abe selected a plug of tobacco. "Guess you'll be taking her back to town today—if she ain't too scared to ride in the truck with you. Heh." Even Abe's laugh had dried out over the years, so that it came out sounding halfway between a snort and a chuckle.

  "She may stay a couple of days—long enough for me to get someone from an agency."

  "Thought you didn't like them agencies." The plug went in his cheek.

  Nate was an intensely private man. He didn't like agencies and he didn't like having a stranger in his house. He didn't like leaving Mark in the hands of someone he didn't know, either, but between Mark's temper and his own reputation there wasn't anyone local left to try. "I might not have much choice."

  "So this gal ain't what your friend said she'd be?"

  "Nothing wrong with her credentials," he said neutrally. And she wasn't Jenny, he reminded himself. Similar features and a lush body didn't make her into his ex-wife. "But I'll be staying close to the house today, just in case."

  Abe nodded and chewed thoughtfully a moment. "You want Felix and Tommie pouring cake?" He referred to the endless winter chore of feeding the cattle.

  "Yeah." The question was unnecessary; Abe knew as well as Nate did where the hands were needed, but the old man's sense of propriety made him phrase his decisions as questions. "Another of Rydell's cows was shot yesterday."

  Abe shook his head in disgust and spat a stream of brown juice on the ground. "Them kids today don't know what trouble is," he said darkly, if somewhat obscurely. "I don't s'pose you want to move any of the herd to the south field."

  "Not yet." Whoever was taking potshots at cattle was doing it from the comfort of a car or truck, which meant the cattle in fields bordering the highway were at risk. But the gramma grass in the south field had suffered badly in last year's drought, and Nate didn't want to stress it. "Maybe I'll be able to ride out tomorrow—see if we can move a few dozen head over."

  After Abe left, Nate headed for the cow barn to tend the animals too ill or hurt or valuable to trust to the open range. It was warm inside, animal-warm and animal-musty. He unbuttoned his denim jacket and pulled his gloves out of his pocket. Work would get his body and mind back under control … though he felt like a fool for needing the control. All he'd seen was her toes, for God's sake, ten perfectly ordinary toes peeking out from under that oversize sack of a nightgown. It was absurd to be aroused by the sight of a woman's toes.

  But the woman made him hot. That was the plain fact, however unwelcome. Seeing her bare feet had made him think about how warm and soft and naked she was, underneath all that flannel.

  Mark had liked looking at her, too, hadn't he?

  Nate forced his mind away from the house, his brother and the woman who was taking care of him right now. There were cows to doctor, stalls to muck out. Work was one of the two things that had never failed Nate. Hard, physical labor settled him, smoothed out the knots in his mind and made the unbearable just one more problem on a long list.

  Work was one thing a rancher never ran short of, either, he reflected wryly as he lifted the latch on King Lear's stall. There had been a possibility of freezing rain the last two nights, which meant the prize-winning Hereford had been shut up in the barn. The enormous bull was in a festive mood that morning, wagging his big head and making a playful attempt to gore Nate when Nate turned him into the paddock.

  Normally Nate didn't muck out stalls, not even King Lear's. He was a ranch manager, not a ranch hand. Oh, he knew how to do any of the jobs he called on his hands to perform, and he worked alongside them when necessary, but his time was usually better spent elsewhere. When he could, he took the jobs that got him on a horse, because he loved to ride. And, like every soul who earns his living from the land, he watched the weather.

  He kept an eye on it now as he broke open the bale of hay he'd tossed down from the loft. The weather was teasing them today, shaking a few stray snowflakes out of the clouds to drift down like dandruff.

  Nate had expected to ride out today, but he couldn't bring himself to go off and leave his brother alone all day with her. He'd seen the way Mark looked
at her. Nate didn't blame his brother for looking, or for getting turned on by what he saw. How could he, when he had the same stupid reaction? But there was no way he would let a woman like that get her hooks in Mark. No way at all.

  Not again.

  The portable intercom sat on a shelf by the door. Normally Nate left his end of the unit turned on, and if Mark wanted something he turned his end on. It had been reassuringly quiet all morning. The woman must be taking care of Mark, or he would have heard something by now.

  Unless he'd accidentally turned the volume down… That had happened once. Best to make sure, he thought, and reached for the knob.

  The aftereffects of arousal had left his senses keener than usual, making him aware of kinetic sensations. Maybe that heightened awareness pried some sort of internal door open.

  Maybe he was too aware of the woman back at the house with his brother, and all the possibilities that implied. Or maybe it was the sight of his hand in the gray light of a winter day—just that—that triggered the past.

  Whatever the reason, as he stretched out his hand, he noticed the dark hairs on the back of it, the strong lines of the tendons, the thick knuckles and small, healing scabs of a working man. And he remembered…

  It was winter. She wore jeans and a pink quilted jacket, and they were in the barn—this very barn—sitting in the loft with their legs dangling over the edge. His hand was on her thigh, his fingers curved greedily around it, and she was warm beneath the denim. She had a pen in her hand, and she was using it to write on the back of his hand. Even then his hand had been dusted with black hair and a few scattered nicks and scrapes.

  A moment before, they'd been kissing, and she had straw in her hair. He had just asked her to go with him. She was laughing with delight, her full lips turned up as she told him, yes, she'd go with him. But he needn't think that meant she would go all the way because she wasn't going to do that until she was a senior—and they were only juniors. She had always been one to plan things, and expect others to fall in with her plans. As Nate had done.

  Her green eyes had sparkled so as she laughed and teased and wrote on the back of his hand with her pen. She'd done that all the time when they were in high school. She'd wanted everyone to know he was hers, so she'd written her name on him.