Honky-Tonk Cinderella. Karen Templeton

me so I can wash out that stain before it sets.”

      “You don’t have to—”

      “Hand me the dang shirt, Alek.” When he still hesitated, she said, “I have to keep busy, keep moving or I’ll go out of my mind.”

      So he set the juice down on the counter and stripped off the shirt, which she snatched from him, dunking it a moment later into a small basin of suds in the sink, her movements agitated, jerky.

      Her son’s, however, were another story, Alek noticed as he returned his attention outside. Seated cross-legged in the browning grass underneath a quiescent sycamore, Chase’s anguish abraded a wound inside Alek still raw after all these years. His sister had been about Chase’s age when their parents died in that plane crash; he remembered watching her muddle through her grief, his own sense of loss rendering him virtually useless. And their grandmother had been heartbroken at the loss of her only child. So the three of them had spun in their own sad, separate orbits, unable to offer—or even accept, really—much in the way of solace. Alek was determined not to let history repeat itself, even if he hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

      “Chase misses Jeff terribly, doesn’t he?”

      Luanne’s silence behind him was excruciatingly eloquent. He turned, something inside him splintering into myriad white-hot shards at her ravaged expression. Then she averted her eyes, scrubbing the shirt so hard, he feared for the skin on her hands.

      Alek closed the distance between them, aching to touch her again, knowing he would be rebuffed if he did. Pride churned through this woman’s veins where mere mortals had blood, coloring her actions—and perceptions—far more than her heartache. This time, however, he suspected she’d just about used up even her considerable resources for bouncing back. Despite her valiant attempts to sound on top of things, she couldn’t mask the sense of defeat that had obviously taken up bone-chilling residence in her soul.

      “Luanne,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I have no intention of trying to replace Jeff. I won’t…come between the boy and the man he knew as his father.” Her back still to him, she nodded stiffly. Alek turned again to the doorway, willing his lungs to work. “I never meant to be the bad guy in all this.”

      The refrigerator clicked on; outside, the dog yapped for Chase to toss him his ball. He heard Luanne wring out the shirt, plop it into something, then come up beside him. “Jeff got the mutt for Chase’s birthday,” she said quietly, swiping back her hair with her damp hand. “Since Blue finally died of honorable old age last winter. There are days I swear if it hadn’t been for that dog, one or both of us might not have made it.” Her gaze flicked to his, then away. “There aren’t any ‘bad guys’ in this, Alek. I made a series of decisions based on what I thought was best at the time. Lettin’ myself get all caught up in regrets now is not only pointless but a waste of energy.”

      He didn’t believe her for a minute, but he nodded anyway, then took a sip of the juice, shoving all the things he could never say to the back of his brain. “What happened to the house in Dallas?”

      “Sold it.” She shifted the plastic basin so it rested on one of her hips.

      “Why?”

      “Because it was too big. Too fancy. I hated Dallas. I’m a small-town gal. Big cities are okay to visit, but living in ’em gives me the willies. Besides, I want my children to have a normal life, y’know? I want ’em to go to public school and be able to hang out with their friends and go ride their bikes without having to be afraid they might get kidnapped or something.”

      “You were afraid for Chase?”

      “From time to time. Not that Jeff knew. But I always felt, in that big house, we were sitting ducks, especially with him being gone so much. I had no idea—” Her lower lip caught between her teeth for a moment. “I know this sounds real disloyal, but I honestly never dreamed Jeff’s career would take off the way it did. I figured, y’know, maybe he’d have a few races, grow out of it, come back home and settle down….”

      She rubbed her cheek with her shoulder, swallowed. “I’ve spent the past ten years of my life bein’ scared, holding my breath every time Jeff left for another race, every time Chase went out to play. Don’t get me wrong—I miss that man more than I ever thought I could miss another human being. But in a way, now that we’re back home, I finally feel like maybe I can breathe again.”

      She looked at him, tears glinting in her eyes. “Then you showed up.”

      The screen door slammed behind her as she waddled out and down the steps to hang up the shirt on the clothesline outside.

      And Alek stared after her, his hand tightly fisted around the glass, once again thrown back into the past….

      The screen door slammed shut behind Alek as he followed Luanne and the dog into the stifling trailer. She hurried to open all the windows to let in the cooling breezes, muttering something about popping into the shower to get the godawful cigarette smoke out of her hair, she wouldn’t be but a minute.

      Damn. If he’d possessed even a grain of sense, he would have driven away and not looked back. That she trusted him not to leave—that she trusted him, period—he found little short of stunning.

      When was the last time he’d been this conflicted about sleeping with a woman? Bloody hell—he’d never expected her to come on to him, to do this…this about-face just when he’d decided nothing was going to happen. Or that he should suddenly have an attack of conscience about the whole thing.

      Alek heard the shower go on; he let out an enormous sigh, swiftly followed by a groan. All right—so he wanted Luanne Evans more than he’d ever wanted another woman, a realization he found at once frightening, exhilarating and incredibly perplexing. But he’d always, always, been the master of his emotions when it came to his relationships. A state of affairs that had been blown entirely out of the water by the mixture of vulnerability and honesty and goodness now standing naked on the other side of a very thin wall.

      Oh, dear God.

      Alek dropped onto the futon sofa in the minuscule living room, on some subliminal level taking in the bright pillows and framed prints by assorted Impressionists—Luanne’s attempt, he supposed, to bring cheer to the dark, paneled walls and worn furniture.

      Then he noticed the books. Thousands of them, it seemed, neatly corralled in several cheap bookcases. Intrigued, and momentarily distracted from the problem at hand, he got up to inspect the case nearest to him. A hodgepodge, to be sure—everything from history to science to religion to novels of every conceivable genre, mostly paperbacks, but some hardbacks as well…

      “Mama always said people are more inclined to take a person seriously who is widely read.”

      Alek looked up to see Luanne towel-drying her hair, her figure hidden underneath what looked like a man’s shirt worn over white shorts. As he suspected, she was just as beautiful without her makeup. But what knocked him for a loop was the graciousness she exuded, a sense of being completely comfortable with who she was.

      Willing his hammering heart to calm down, Alek glanced back at the bookshelf, tugging out a copy of Hugo’s Les Misérables. In French. “In…more than one language, I take it?”

      She shifted the towel to another section of hair, shrugged. “Mama was part Cajun, so I learned French early on. Or her version of it, leastways. Took four years of it in high school, too.”

      One eyebrow lifted. “Are you fluent?”

      “Pretty much. Although I have the world’s worst accent, which you can imagine,” she said on a laugh, which immediately dimmed to a soft smile. “At one time I thought I might even apply for one of those student exchange programs, y’know? Except then Mama got sick…”

      Her eyes lowered; she rubbed harder at her hair. Ignoring the prick to his heart, Alek leaned one elbow against the bookcase. “And was your mother right? About people taking you more seriously?”

      That