Buch lesen: «Cinderella's Sweet-Talking Marine»

Chapter One

Ben Kozlowski was a Marine with money. But it hadn’t made him a happy man. The inheritance from his wealthy oilman grandfather had made him feel somewhat guilty when he’d first heard about it. After all, he’d done nothing to deserve it.

But that guilt was nothing compared to the guilt that had driven him into this honky-tonk just off the North Carolina Interstate, in a town called Pine Hills. He wasn’t there to drown his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey, tempting as that might sound. No, he was here looking for a woman.

And not just any woman. He was here to find Ellie Jensen.

A neighbor at her apartment building said she was at work and had given him the name of this place.

Ben had been in plenty of bars during the course of his adult life, from cantinas in South America to exotic dives in Asia. Each had their own unique smell blended with the customary tobacco smoke. This particular place seemed to specialize in the scent of burnt onions. A big chalkboard on the wall proclaimed that Al’s Place made burgers the way you wanted them—hot and juicy. And apparently dripping with onions.

The place was crowded, with country music blaring from a jukebox in the corner. Guys wearing jeans and T-shirts pressed their beer bellies against the bar, barely able to fit onto the stools provided. They sported a variety of baseball caps advertising various brands of their favorite malt liquor beverage.

The rest of the room had booths around the perimeter and tables placed wherever they’d fit, not leaving much room for the servers to get by.

Which seemed to suit the clientele just fine.

Ben could understand the appeal. The females—and all the servers were female—were dressed in short, tight denim skirts and skimpy tank tops. The closer the servers got, the easier it was for the customers to cop a feel.

Ben tugged out the well-worn photo and fingered the sweet face displayed there. John Riley had been one of Ben’s closest friends and Ellie was John’s sister, his only family.

Take care of my sister. Promise me you’ll take care of my sister. Ben had held John in his arms as he lay mortally wounded by friendly fire and he’d sworn he’d take care of his friend’s sister.

So here he was.

And there she was. He spotted her across the smoke-filled room. She was struggling to balance a tray filled with heavy beer mugs while avoiding the unwanted advances of a customer.

Ben was at her side a second later. “Let the lady go.”

His tone of voice, that of a Marine who meant business, got the customer’s attention despite the fact that he’d had a few too many brews. But it didn’t make him obey the order. “Who’re you?” the guy slurred.

“I’m the man who’s going to make you sorry you were born if you don’t let her go right now.”

This time the guy not only paid attention, he obeyed. Holding up his hands in the international signal of surrender, he said, “Hey bud, I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Ben ignored the man and instead focused his attention on Ellie. She’d hurried on to another table, depositing the beers as quickly as she could before returning to the bar for another order.

She had incredibly long legs and a graceful way of moving. Her dark hair was pinned up as if she’d tried to get it out of her way, but one strand had come undone, drawing his attention to her nape. Her skin was creamy pale, not tanned. The line of her back was as rigidly upright as that of any private in the Marine Corps standing at attention.

She clearly didn’t belong in a place like this. So what was she doing working here?

Ellie was aware of the man staring at her. She’d noticed him the moment he’d walked in. He was that kind of guy. The kind you noticed. He had dark hair and was alarmingly handsome with light hazel eyes that caught her attention even from across the smoky room.

She also was aware that, given his short haircut, he was probably military. Which would explain his lean but muscular build and the tense and dangerous aura he projected. Camp Lejeune, one of the major Marine training bases, was almost an hour away. Not right in their backyard, but close enough to get an occasional visitor.

Ellie was grateful that the stranger rescued her from the huge bear of a drunk who’d been pawing her. But that didn’t mean that she was looking to start anything with this newcomer. Gratitude only went so far, and she’d learned early on that it didn’t pay to count on anyone but yourself.

She’d forgotten that lesson when she’d fallen in love with her ex-husband, Perry Jensen. She’d let him sweep her off her feet with his sweet-talking, charming ways. No good had come of it, except for her daughter, Amy. Amy was the reason for Ellie to get up in the morning.

That was especially true now that Ellie’s brother, Johnny, was dead. She still couldn’t believe that he was gone. She liked to think that he was still serving the Marines someplace overseas. But the arrival of the representative of the Marine Corps had been all too real when he’d told her the news of Johnny’s death, and conveyed the appreciation of a nation and the regret of the entire Corps.

Friendly fire. Under investigation. She’d only registered part of what the uniformed representative had said six weeks ago. Johnny had been buried with full military honors. She’d been given a folded flag as an official remembrance.

But Ellie couldn’t think about that now. She had a job to do. She couldn’t afford to give the manager of this dive any excuse to fire her. She needed the money.

The newcomer was still staring at her. She could feel his eyes on her, but his gaze didn’t have the smarmy feel of so many of the others. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, which was common enough attire in this part of the country. But he wore them with a confidence that stood out. He stood out.

And he was walking toward her.

Great. Now she’d have to deal with him. Well, better to confront before being confronted. Keeping her smile cool and her voice equally so, she said, “Thanks again for your help.”

“I need to talk to you.”

Yeah, right. How many times had she heard that line since she’d started waitressing. Come on, honey, sit down and talk to me. “Sorry, but I’m very busy right now.”

“Ellie,” he began when she interrupted him.

“How do you know my name?”

“Can we go someplace to talk?”

“No.” The intense way he was looking at her made her nervous.

“I’m not here to hurt you. I’ve come to help.”

Yeah, right. “As I said, I’m busy right now.”

“This man bothering you?” Earl, the burly bartender, demanded. A professional wrestler in a previous life, Earl’s smooth head was as buffed as his muscular arms.

The newcomer didn’t appear the least bit intimidated. “Where were you when that drunk customer was bothering her?” he demanded of Earl.

“Serving drinks, that’s where I was. I may have missed that action but I can still take you out if I have to.”

“There’s no need for that,” Ellie said, putting her hand on Earl’s beefy arm, just above the barbed wire tattoo and below the one of a bulldog.

“Former Marine?” the newcomer asked Earl who nodded.

The newcomer then lifted the cuff on his T-shirt to show his own bulldog tattoo.

“Ooh-rah!” Earl shouted, startling Ellie and half the guys at the bar.

“Ooh-rah!” the newcomer repeated, just as intensely if not as loudly before slapping Earl’s outstretched hand in a high five. “Captain Ben Kozlowski,” he said to Earl. “Do you mind if I talk to Ellie here for a few minutes? It’s official business.”

Her heart stopped. “Is it Johnny? Did they make a mistake? Is he still alive?”

She vaguely saw Ben shake his head before the entire room telescoped and went black.

Ben caught Ellie before she collapsed onto the floor. Sweeping her up into his arms, he followed Earl’s hurried directions to the employee’s exit and the fresh air outside. A rush of warmth hit him, rising from the pavement.

Although it was only early March, the temperature was already in the low eighties today. The bright sunlight highlighted Ellie’s pale face. She felt so fragile as he carried her.

Ben cursed himself for not having handled things better. But his track record in that department lately was pretty abysmal. He hadn’t been doing much right lately. He wasn’t here on any official business of the Marine Corps, he was here to honor his buddy’s dying wishes.

Heading for his Bronco, Ben shifted her in his arms as he opened the passenger door and gently set her on the seat before reaching for the bottle of water he had nearby. Keeping one arm around her, he dabbed some water on a paper towel he ripped from a roll behind the driver’s seat. Before placing the dampened cloth on her forehead, he felt her neck to check her pulse. Her skin was so soft beneath his fingertips.

“Get your hands off me!” She shoved him away with surprising strength and he narrowly avoided hitting the back of his head on the dashboard.

“Take it easy,” he said in a soothing voice, holding his hands up as the guy had in the bar earlier. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She knew better. He’d already hurt her just by being here. And he’d angered her by showing up at her place of employment. She felt like an idiot for passing out the way she had, even if it had only been for a moment. She glared at him. She’d displayed weakness, something she hated, and it was all his fault. Reason alone to want him gone. “Since when do the Marines send someone out of uniform to do anything official? I’m not buying that story for one minute. So you’d better start talking, Captain, and you’d better start talking fast or I’ll have Earl take care of you.” Her words reflected her fury. “What kind of idiot walks into a bar and tells a woman who’s recently lost her brother what you told me?”

“Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Ben Kozlowski. I knew your brother. He was a close buddy of mine.”

“How close? Were you there when he died?”

Ben nodded.

“Then why didn’t you do something to save him?”

His gut clenched. Her unsteady question wasn’t one he hadn’t asked himself a thousand times ever since that awful moment. He’d give anything to have changed the way things had happened.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t bring him back.”

“I realize that.”

Her gaze turned suspicious. “You weren’t the one who shot him, were you?”

“No, I wasn’t the one who shot him.” But he might as well have been. Not that he could tell her that. He wasn’t here to try and clear his conscience. He was here to make good on a promise. A vow.

So Ben slammed the hatch on his own turbulent emotions, and concentrated on Ellie. She was clearly displeased with him and he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t handled things very well so far.

She was still pale, but she was no weak victim. There was nothing submissive about the tilt of her chin.

He was watching her again. She felt his gaze on her. She met it head-on. She wasn’t going to back away. “Johnny wrote me about you.” She fiercely tried to keep her voice steady. She’d already made a big enough fool of herself by fainting like that. And then by spurning his apology, asking him if he’d shot her brother. She was a mess. Not like her. She had to get her act together. She hadn’t had time to eat that day. Low blood sugar, that’s why she’d passed out. She gathered her thoughts. “You weren’t at his funeral, though.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I was still overseas.”

“Is that why you tracked me down? To offer your condolences?”

“I wanted to check up on you.”

“I appreciate the thought,” she said stiffly, clearly indicating that she didn’t really appreciate it at all. “But there’s no need.”

“I think there’s every need. You don’t belong in a place like this.” He jerked his head toward the bar.

“I can take care of myself.”

“It didn’t look that way to me.”

She tugged on the skimpy hem of her skirt before replying. “I don’t need you walking into my life and telling me what to do. What I do need is to get back to work.”

“You just fainted!”

“Because you scared me by saying you were here on official business about Johnny.” It was idiotic of her to think that the military had made a mistake. She’d stood by the grave site. Seen his casket lowered into the ground. But she’d had a vivid dream the night before where her brother, with that crooked grin of his, had told her that his death was a big mistake.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have put it that way.”

“Yeah, well…” She swung her long legs out the open car door, dislodging him in the process.

Standing, he held out his hand to assist her, but she didn’t take his offer of help, preferring to do it herself.

She was taller than he’d thought at first, the top of her head reaching to just beneath his chin. He reached out to smooth the tendrils of dark hair that had fallen across her pale face.

“When was the last time you ate?” he demanded.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, backing up to glare at him.

“You’re not pregnant, are you? Is that why you fainted?”

“No, I’m not pregnant,” she said, highly offended.

“Look, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”

“What’s going on is that you are beginning to irritate me,” Ellie retorted. “What gives you the right to walk in here out of the blue and start interrogating me as if I were one of your Marines? I’m not. I’m the responsible mother of a five-year-old. I can handle anything.” She prayed that if she kept saying that often enough, she’d start believing it eventually.

Maybe she could handle anything, but Ben knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t handle the fact that she was swaying on her feet from exhaustion, that she was clearly struggling to make ends meet. “Why do you work here? I thought John told me you were waitressing in a nice family restaurant, some sort of mom-and-pop place.”

“I was, but it went bankrupt suddenly a few months ago. This was the only job I could get. I don’t have a college degree.” She’d left school to work, to support Perry who was getting his degree. Yet another example of how love had blinded her and made her stupid. “I didn’t want my brother worrying about me so I didn’t tell him about my new job. Which reminds me, how did you find me?”

“I had your address. From John. You weren’t there, but a neighbor told me you worked here.” He waved his hand toward Al’s Place in a dismissive move. “Let me help you. I can give you some money until things settle down.”

“I can’t take money from you.” What kind of woman did he think she was? “I don’t need any handouts.”

“John would want me to help you and he’d want you to accept that help.”

His words hit a nerve. “Don’t you dare tell me what my brother would want!” she said fiercely. “I knew him better than you did. We grew up together. Being bounced from foster home to foster home, we only had each other to count on. I knew my brother my entire life. All twenty-five years of it. And now he’s gone. So don’t you try and make me do what you want by using my brother’s name.”

She didn’t even realize she’d been jabbing her finger at Ben’s chest until he cradled her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I seem to be messing up a lot today.”

He was certainly messing up her self-control. First fainting like that, and then going ballistic on him.

And now, with his fingers enclosing hers, she felt something new—the stirring of attraction. Her unexpected reaction threw her. The aching need to be held, to be comforted, to be loved threatened to overwhelm her.

Her startled gaze met his. This close to him she could see flecks of green in his hazel eyes, could see the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, could see a faint scar along the right line of his jaw.

The warmth from his fingers sent treacherous longings through her. It had been so long since she’d felt this powerful tug, this whirlpool of dangerously seductive sensations.

She couldn’t give in. She had to be strong.

But that was hard to do given the fact that her emotions had been dangerously close to the surface ever since her brother’s death. More and more she felt as if she were being buried alive beneath a pile of problems too insurmountable to overcome.

She knew she couldn’t give in, she knew she couldn’t give up. She had Amy to think of.

Just thinking about her little girl gave Ellie strength. Amy was the best kid on the face of the earth. And Perry was the scum of the earth for not realizing that and cherishing and protecting his little girl, instead of abandoning them when he found out two years ago that Amy had asthma.

No, Ellie, had to be strong, not just for herself but for Amy. She couldn’t be distracted by sexual chemistry.

Belatedly tugging her hand from Ben’s, she repeated her earlier statement. “I have to get back to work.”

“Why won’t you let me help you?”

Because then I might become dependent on that help and when you leave, the situation would just get worse. Been there, done that. Aloud, she said, “Because, it’s best that I stand on my own two feet.”

“So you’re telling me that you have so many friends, that you can’t use another one? You can depend on me, Ellie. I didn’t just track you down to say hi, and then walk away. I’m here for the long-term.”

“You’re a Marine, Ben. You don’t stay anywhere long-term. Your life belongs to the Corps.”

“I’ve got a new deployment relatively nearby, at Camp Lejeune. So I will be nearby. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

His smile was charming, his tone of voice encouraging. But she’d heard it before. Perry telling her she could count on him, that he’d always be there for her. Talk was cheap.

No, she had to be strong, she had to rely on herself only.

As if to prove that he was just as determined as she was, Ben stayed at Al’s Place until her shift was over. He held the door open for her as she left, and insisted on walking her to her car, which looked like it was held together with baling wire.

The ten-year-old Toyota certainly wouldn’t win any beauty contests—not with its multicolored body, a majority of which was green, except for the passenger doors which were silver. A friend of a friend knew someone who did cheap body work, and when someone had slammed into her car while it was parked in the supermarket lot, she didn’t have the money to get it fixed. Contacting her auto insurance company was out of the question because that would only raise her premiums, which she barely scraped out now.

“How many miles do you have on this thing?” Ben asked, as if suspicious it couldn’t go another mile without falling apart.

There were mornings when it refused to turn over that she wondered the same thing. “The odometer stopped working at 199,999 miles. It may not look pretty but it gets me from point A to point B.”

“Are you headed straight home?”

She nodded. She was too tired to argue with him anymore.

“What about dinner?”

“What about it?” she countered.

“Would you and your daughter join me for dinner tonight? My treat. I hear there’s a great steak house near here.”

Being strong only went so far. She was down to her last package of macaroni and cheese and one oversized generic-brand can of green beans, which was what they’d had for dinner last night.

Tomorrow was payday so she’d be able buy more food then. But tonight…

Steak? When was the last time she’d had steak?

What was the harm in going out with Ben just this once? Amy would get a good dinner. Surely it wouldn’t hurt.

What would hurt would be to believe that Ben would still be here a week from now, or two weeks. To believe his charming words, to fall for his sexy good looks. That would be a huge mistake. One the formerly weak Ellie might have made when she still believed in happily-ever-after.

But the new Ellie knew better. No matter how good his hands had felt on her, no matter how seductive the chemistry might be, the only thing she could count on was that Ellie had to take care of Ellie. And take care of her daughter.

That was the bottom line, that was where her focus was and would remain…no matter how attractive Captain Ben Kozlowski was.