Cinderella Story

“Yes.” She wondered how she could sound so cool and in control. Since she’d been widowed nearly three years ago, she hadn’t even dated. She thought she’d forgotten how to talk to a single man, much less how to flirt with one. Yet, she must be doing something right because Alex Bennett was still there.

“Interesting nonwedding.” Watching her take a bite of a strawberry, Alex wondered how her lips would taste.

“Very.” Think of something to say! she ordered herself, but small talk had never been her strong point. Smiling stiffly, she bit into a tiny finger sandwich.

You’re boring her, Alex chided himself. “Rather a Gothic atmosphere, don’t you think? The bride flees the wedding in the midst of a raging storm, and the mother of the groom doesn’t even show up. Now the groom appears to be missing, and we, the guests, are left to fend for ourselves by candlelight.”

“A night fraught with intrigue,” Nina quipped.

“And music,” Alex noted as the strains of a popular song filled the air. A glance over his shoulder told him that one of the guests had discovered the piano in the corner. The opportunity to test the feel of her in his arms was too strong to resist. “Would you care to dance?” Without giving her an opportunity to say no, he quickly set the glasses of champagne on a nearby table, then gently eased her plate from her hands and set it down with the glasses.

As he drew her into a loose embrace, the scent of his after-shave teased her senses, and she was acutely aware of his strength. How much she liked being in his arms shook her, and a curl of guilt wove through her. Tom Lindstrom had been her childhood sweetheart, and there had never been another man in her life other than him. It’s just a dance, she admonished herself.

Alex didn’t think any woman had ever felt so good in his arms. Nor had he ever been so sharply aware of another…her soft perfume, the cut of her jaw, the curve of her hips, the velvet look of her lips. It’s this strange night. The lightning is filling the air with electricity, causing my perceptions to be heightened, he reasoned.

Nina felt herself wanting to move closer. For the first time since Tom’s death, she found herself missing male companionship. Well, she was only human, and thirty-one was still young.

The song finished, and at the shouted request of one of the guests, the pianist began pounding out an old rock and roll tune. Still Alex held her and continued to move slowly, as if the strains of the other song still filled the air.

“I think we’re out of sync with the rest of the room,” she said, but did not fight his lead, choosing to remain in his arms and move with him.

“I prefer to think they are out of sync with us.”

His breath played on the sensitized skin of her neck, and her blood began to heat. A crack of thunder shook the building. She trembled and he drew her closer. “I’ll protect you,” he said gruffly, and marveled at just how much he wanted to do that and a whole lot more.

Her senses reeling, Nina looked up, uncertain what to say. Until now she’d been too nervous to look into his eyes. Now she realized they were green…a warm, inviting green like the woods on a summer day. Her gaze locked with his, and she felt herself being drawn into their lush depths.

“You have the most kissable-looking lips I’ve ever seen,” he said, his face moving closer to hers.

Suddenly panic flowed through her. Her resistance was dangerously too low. This was all happening much too fast! She was letting her fantasy get out of hand. In the cold light of dawn, when he discovered she was a poor widow with three children, he was bound to bolt.

“I just remembered something I have to do.” She squirmed out of his arms and rushed from the room.

Alex followed her into the hall, but in the dimly lit passages, he lost her.

Chapter One

“The end is near,” the lanky, white-haired, eighty-five-year-old man propped up by pillows in the large four-poster bed announced with conviction. “I can feel death breathing down on my neck.”

Alex studied his grandfather’s lined, weather-worn features with concern. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing William Bennett pale and weak. “You should be in a hospital.”

“I ain’t goin’ no place. When you’ve got as much money as I have, the doctors come to you.” The frown on the old man’s face deepened. “But there are things money can’t buy. I’d hoped to bounce a great-grandchild on my knee before I went to those oil fields in the sky, but that doesn’t seem likely now. However, I’d die a happy man if I knew you’d, at least, found yourself a wife. You’re thirty-seven. A man should be putting down roots at that age.”

“We Bennett men don’t have much luck at finding women whose roots take hold,” Alex reminded him.

The old man scowled. “Be that as it may. Your dad and I both tried. If we hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here today. You need an heir, boy. When I’m gone you’ll be the last of our line.”

Alex had been certain the old man was too ornery to die. At twelve, William had gone to work in the oil fields, learning the business from the bottom up. He was tough as leather and had the determination of a bull with a purpose. It had been by sheer grit, willpower and the sweat of his brow that he’d held his fledgling drilling company together until they’d hit their first oil well some sixty years ago.

The muscles in Alex’s throat constricted. William Bennett was the only real family he had. He’d raised Alex and taught him all he knew about the oil business. The day Alex turned twenty-one, William had made him a full partner. He loved the old man and hated to feel he’d let him down in any way. A small lie couldn’t hurt, he reasoned. “I have found someone.”

William Bennett’s eyes, jade green like those of his grandson, flashed with pleasure. “You have?”

“She’s got raven hair…so black it shines in candlelight. Her eyes are hazel with tiny gold flecks.” Startled, Alex realized he was describing the woman he’d encountered more than three weeks earlier at Randi Howell’s nonwedding. Grudgingly, he admitted she’d haunted his dreams that night. The next day, he’d thought he’d seen her on the street, but when he’d caught up with the woman he’d thought was her, he realized his mistake. He’d felt like an idiot. He’d made it a practice never to get too interested in any woman.

Still, after the incident on the street, he’d made an attempt to find her, but no one he asked knew a Nina who fitted her description. Then he’d had to leave Grand Springs on business and had only been back once, just long enough to attend Olivia Stuart’s funeral. He’d thought he’d put the dark-haired Nina out of his mind. Apparently, he hadn’t.

“Sounds very tempting,” William said.

“She is,” Alex admitted, recalling how much he’d wanted to taste her lips.

“I want to meet her.”

“She doesn’t live here in Denver. She lives in Grand Springs.” Even as he said this, Alex had his doubts. His inability to find anyone who knew her had caused him to come very close to concluding that she had merely been in town for the wedding…probably a school chum of the bride. The only thing keeping him from being absolutely certain of this was the nagging feeling that there had been something familiar about her. As a part-time resident of Grand Springs, he only attended a few social functions a year there. It was possible he’d seen her across a room but never spoken to her. Again her face haunted him. Had she been with someone, and that was why he hadn’t approached her one of those other times he’d seen her? It occurred to him that she might already be spoken for and had only been alone the night of the wedding because the man in her life couldn’t attend or they’d had a lover’s quarrel. An emotional attachment to another man would explain her sudden flight. This thought caused a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Grand Springs. That’s that town where your school buddy, Noah…something or other…” William said, jerking Alex’s attention back to his grandfather.

“Noah Howell,” Alex said, filling in the blank and marveling at how completely his mysterious black-haired woman could take over his mind.

“Noah Howell, the doctor. Right. That’s where you built that vacation place you run away to when you want to get off by yourself. And you donated some money to a children’s wing for their hospital there, didn’t you?”

“That’s the place.”

William nodded, satisfied he knew the locale about which they were speaking. “Have you two set a date?”

“Not yet,” Alex hedged.

“I hope you don’t plan to wait long. No sense in cooling your heels. That ain’t going to get you heirs.”

“I’m sure we’ll set the date soon.” Alex didn’t like the way this lie was escalating, but he didn’t see any way to stop it, short of disappointing the old man.

“I probably won’t live to see the wedding, anyway.” William sighed heavily and grasped Alex’s hand. “Bring her here. I want to meet her before I meet my Maker.”

Mentally Alex kicked himself. He should have known the old man would make this request. “I’m not too sure she can get away.”

“Persuade her,” William insisted. He tried to rise, then sank back. “Otherwise, I’m going to get to Grand Springs on a gurney if I have to. I want to meet my future granddaughter-in-law.”

Alex read the determination in his grandfather’s eyes. There was no stopping William Bennett once he set his mind to something. “All right, I will,” he promised.

William smiled triumphantly. “Well, get cracking,” he ordered.

* * *

As Alex drove back to Grand Springs, the scowl on his face deepened with each mile. He didn’t like lying to his grandfather. On the other hand, seeking this Nina out and enlisting her aid wasn’t a bad idea. That he could close his eyes and actually feel her in his arms made him uneasy. No other woman had ever had such a lasting effect on him. He was certain it was merely a residual effect induced by the strangeness of that night. But she had disturbed his peace of mind. However, once he found her, she would no longer be a mystery woman and he’d no longer be haunted by her.

He’d offer to pay her to play his fiancée for a couple of days. A sudden worry that she wouldn’t cooperate crossed his mind. A cynical smirk distorted his features. Any woman could be bought for the right price.

* * *