Cinderella's Midnight Kiss

“Cynthia, have you been messing with my roses again?” Lorna Stephenson called out from the back parlor, where she was currently nursing a headache with a lavender-water-soaked cloth and a glass of medicinal brandy.

“No, ma’am, I haven’t. I think Charlie was playing ball out there earlier, though. You might mention it to his mother.”

If Cindy had had her way, she would have cut every flower in the yard and begged more from the neighbors, and done the wedding flowers herself. At least that way Aunt S.’s precious roses would be appreciated instead of trampled underfoot by a six-year-old hellion who didn’t know the meaning of the word no.

But Aunt S. preferred the stiff, formal arrangements of the local florist over Cindy’s big, cheerful armfuls of whatever happened to be blooming, all intertwined with wild honeysuckle and flowering blackberry vines.

Three days and counting. The house was gleaming. Cindy unexpectedly felt a surge of nostalgia—either that or the half sandwich she’d grabbed on the run for lunch hadn’t settled properly.

Well, no, it was nostalgia, because while indigestion made her stomach burn, it didn’t make her throat ache and her nose turn red. And after all, it was some sort of milestone, she supposed. The courtesy cousin she had practically grown up with was about to marry and leave home. Even though they’d never gotten along particularly well, she would miss her.

The wedding gown. Oh, yes, she reminded herself as she dashed up the back stairs—she really did need to offer a bit of advice, the thing was so blessed plain!

“Steff, about your gown,” she said, rushing breathlessly into the big corner bedroom that had once been Aunt S. and Uncle Henry’s. “It needs something, don’t you think?”

“Don’t you dare touch my wedding gown! It’s a designer original!”

Steff described it as elegant. Cindy called it drab. “It won’t take much,” she said earnestly. “Just a little dab of lace at the neckline, maybe your something old? Or I have some white velvet roses, the really good kind, not the junk from the craft store. I could sort of arrange them—”

“No.”

“You’ll need something borrowed, and they’d look super at the waist. You probably wouldn’t even need to bother with a bouquet.”

Steff rolled her eyes, and Cindy flushed. She knew what they all thought of her hats, even though she’d explained they were only working designs and that the real models, when she could afford to make them, would be far more beautiful “I just thought I’d offer to…you know. Help perk it up a bit.”

It was probably fortunate that Aunt S. called upstairs at that moment. “Cin-dee!”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m coming.”

It was Charlie again. He hadn’t been invited, but his mother, lacking a baby-sitter, had brought him along anyway. Cindy was right on his heels as he went whooping and hollering down the front stairs. Charlie was quick as a weasel, out the front door before she could grab onto his shirttail.

“Go on outside and don’t come in again until he’s thoroughly worn out,” ordered Aunt S., who was of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard school of child-rearing.

Cindy’s sympathies were with Charlie. She’d been only slightly older than he was now when she’d first met her courtesy aunt. Old enough to recognize a dragon in a black silk dress, but not old enough to deal with one. Little had changed since then.

They played ball until Charlie smacked one into the rose garden, then they switched to guess what color car passes by next. It was a slow game. At this time of day, there wasn’t much traffic.

“Hey, a squirrel! I’m gonna catch him and put him in a box and take him home!”

“Charlie, leave that animal alone, he’s got teeth that can—Charlie!”

The car came around the curve so fast there was no time to think. Cindy practically flew forward, tackling the heedless child and rolling them both into the azalea hedge across the street.

“Idiot! You blooming idiot!” she screeched at the driver of the luxury car, which had swerved to the curb and come to a tire-squealing stop. Breathless, she was still sprawled across Charlie’s body when the car door swung open and one long, khaki-clad leg emerged.

“Hey, you’re squashing me,” Charlie protested. At least he was still in one piece. Just to be sure, she quickly felt his arms and legs before allowing him to squirm away from her. “You wait right there. Don’t you dare move an inch from this spot,” she warned, and such was her tone of voice that the child gulped and nodded.

“But you scared that old squirrel away,” he accused. Pale, on the verge of tears, he was determined not to let on how frightened he was.

Cindy, still on her hands and knees, was torn between hugging him and shaking some sense into him. “Good thing I did,” she growled. “He’d have bitten your finger off and likely died of food poisoning.”

Struggling stiffly to her feet, she caught her breath as pain sliced through her from an assortment of minor ailments. Gravelly asphalt and hard, rocky earth weren’t exactly kind to tender flesh, even when wearing jeans. She’d raked the skin off both knees and the heels of both hands.

“You little fool, don’t you know any better than to run out into the street without looking?” a man’s voice said. “Wait—don’t move, you might be hurt.”

Fear caught up with Charlie and he began to sob just as Cindy opened her mouth to let fly with a few choice phrases. She closed it again in deference to tender young ears. Charlie didn’t need his already impressive vocabulary expanded. Fortunately she’d had years of practice in the art of swallowing her temper.

The reckless fool from the car had his hands on her thigh. “Stop that! Don’t you know any better than to drive like a bat out of he—heck in a residential neighborhood?” Eyes blazing, she went to shove him away.

“Stand still. Oh, God, your hands are bleeding.” Manacling her wrists, he lifted them for a closer look.

Cindy peered at her stinging palms, then lifted accusing eyes to his face. “You were—”

Oh, no. Oh, please no, not him!

“You’re right. I was driving too fast. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me, tell that poor child you nearly ran down!”

“Can you bend your knee?”

She’d already flexed both knees. They stung like the very devil, but at least they both worked.

“You didn’t hit your head, did you?” He had the kind of voice that ought to be labeled hazardous to a woman’s health. Or her whatever. It set off nerves she didn’t even know she had, and that was saying a lot, because at the moment most of her nerves were busy registering acute pain.

Charlie was sniffling, clinging to her thigh and wiping his nose on the leg of her jeans. She gave the star of a thousand daydreams one long, glowering look and jerked her hands free of his grasp.

This was not the way she’d planned it. She’d planned to be wearing her yellow cotton, with her hair in a French braid, with eye shadow and lipstick and enough powder to disguise her freckles.

Instead she was standing here in thin, worn out jeans, every trembling cell in her body awash with pain and embarrassment, not to mention fright and the dregs of an ancient crush. “Oh…blast!” she cried. Sweeping Charlie up in her arms, she marched across the street, leaving John Hale Hitchcock staring after her.

Actually, march didn’t exactly describe it. Charlie was a lot heavier than he looked, and her hip hurt. She’d already given it a good workout what with the wedding and all the extra work and chasing after Charlie. A five-yard dash followed by a flying tackle hadn’t helped matters.

Hitch stared after the woman he’d nearly run down. Something about that wild red hair and that stubborn little chin snagged at his memory, but he couldn’t quite place her. Not too surprising, since it had been years since he’d last visited Mocksville. She’d royally chewed him out, and with just cause. He had been speeding. The signs said 35. He’d been doing at least 45. The stop-off at his parents’ place still had his gut tied in knots. After all these years, you’d think he’d have learned how to deal with the doubts, the frustrated feeling of being a kid who’d done something unforgivable. The feeling that he was somehow responsible for the fact that his parents would rather retreat to their separate studies than spend five minutes with their only son.

One of these days he’d wise up and stop trying. They had his phone number, in case they should ever want to reach him.

Hitch sat in the car for several minutes, still shaken, before starting the engine and creeping the remaining few yards to the MacCollums’ driveway. He owed the little firebrand an apology. If she hadn’t been right on the kid’s heels when he burst out of the hedge, Hitch would have struck him, sure as the world. It was a wonder he hadn’t hit them both, driving with his mind on other matters. At that speed, he’d have passed right by Mac’s place without even slowing down.

He’d have to check on her later, to be sure she wasn’t seriously hurt. She’d been limping when she’d disappeared into the Stephensons’ house next door. Mac might know who she was—a pint-size redhead with blazing blue eyes and a tongue like a whipsaw. A wedding guest, maybe. Possibly a baby-sitter. Whoever she was, she deserved a proper apology, and before he left town he would see that she got one.

A day later, Hitch was actually beginning to unwind. In the process of putting in a couple of killer years trying to get his business up and running, he’d nearly forgotten how to relax.

The MacCollums taught him all over again. No way could anyone stand on ceremony in a house that was casual to the point of sloppiness, in which meals were taken in the big family kitchen with everyone wanting to know all about his business, and what it was, exactly, that an industrial engineer did, and how his folks, who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, were getting along. And incidentally, when he was going to settle down and raise a family. Knowing that the MacCollums’ interest was prompted by genuine caring, Hitch couldn’t resent it.

The friendly inquisition eased off whenever a friend or neighbor would drop in. Someone would bring over a watermelon or a bucket of tomatoes or a basket of figs, and talk would shift to the wedding and Mac’s ski resorts, and where the happy couple planned to live.

Mac spent as much time as possible at the Stephensons’ house with his fiancée. The poor guy was besotted. Steff spent considerably less time at the MacCollums’ place. Hitch wished them both well, but didn’t hold out much hope for a long and happy union.