Buch lesen: «Sassy Cinderella»

Chapter One

He had no idea how it had happened. One minute he was herding a bunch of cows to their winter pasture. The next, Jonathan Hardison was flying through the air, landing on his head with a thud hard enough to knock the air out of him, then being stomped on by the same stupid horse that had just bucked him off.

Damn, being stomped on hurt. A white-hot pain stabbed through his leg, but he was no stranger to pain. Ranching wasn’t an occupation for any guy who couldn’t stand the sight of blood or who got the vapors if he cut his hand on barbed wire.

As he lay there on the ground, struggling to get a breath, his right-hand man got off his horse and came over to check out the damages. Cal Chandler was a new man at the Hardison Ranch, but he was the local veterinarian’s grandson, and he seemed competent enough.

Until now.

Cal just stared at Jonathan, gaping.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Jonathan said when he could finally catch enough breath to speak. “Help me up.”

“I don’t think so, boss,” Cal said in a shaky voice. He waved away Jon’s horse, which had come over to investigate why his master was on the ground, having apparently forgotten that moments ago he was in a blind, bucking panic. “I think you better just stay right there till an ambulance gets here.”

“What? Have you gone loco? I might be a little banged up…” Jonathan leaned up on one elbow, then wished he hadn’t because he got a good look at his leg. It was bent in a place no leg should be bent.

“You got a cell phone on you?” Cal asked.

“In the saddlebag,” Jon said, just before he passed out.

“IT ISN’T AS BAD as it could have been,” said Jeff, Jonathan’s brother, the next day at Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas. Tyler was the closest big town to the Hardison Ranch. “It was an ugly break, but at least the swelling’s down.”

“So let me go home,” Jon grumbled. Lying in bed doing nothing was not his favorite way to spend time.

“Tomorrow. Maybe,” Jeff said. “I’m more worried about the concussion than the leg, to tell you the truth.” Jeff also happened to be Jonathan’s doctor, and he seemed to love bossing his older brother around.

“Like hell, ‘maybe,”’ Jonathan said. “I’ll check my own damn self out.”

“Ohh, surly, are we?” Jeff’s fiancée, Allison, had also dropped in for a visit, as if this was some kind of social event. Allison’s presence was the only thing that kept Jonathan from cussing Jeff out.

“You’d be surly, too, if you had to wear one of these stupid gowns with your butt hanging out.”

“Seriously, Jon,” Allison said, “you shouldn’t go home until you’re sure you can handle it. You’ll be on crutches—”

“No way. Put one of those rubber tips on this thing,” Jonathan said, knocking his knuckles against his cast. “I can walk.”

“You cannot walk,” Jeff said. “You put weight on this leg at this stage, it’ll never heal.”

“Then give me the crutches and let me get out of here.”

“Maybe,” Jeff said again. That word was starting to tick Jonathan off.

“Even with crutches, you’re going to need some help when you go home,” Allison said. “You’ve got two lively kids to care for.”

“Pete can handle the kids,” Jonathan said, referring to their eighty-one-year-old grandfather. Pete had built the Hardison Ranch from nothing, but he’d long ago deeded the property to his three grandsons and retired. He still lived in the house, though, and he helped take care of Jonathan’s children: eight-year-old Sam and seven-year-old Kristin. He said it made him feel useful, which was just fine with Jonathan, since he’d been long divorced and needed help at home.

“You’re forgetting,” Jeff said. “Pete and Sally are getting married this Saturday.”

“Ah, hell, that’s right,” Jonathan said. After the wedding, Pete and his long-time sweetheart, Sally Enderlin, were going on a weeklong cruise. “I don’t care. I’ll manage somehow.” But he really didn’t know how. His youngest brother, Wade, who ran a horse-breeding operation on his portion of the ranch, had offered to pitch in with the cattle-ranching work during Jonathan’s recuperation. But how in the world would Jon cook, clean and supervise his superactive kids?

“I’ll hire someone to come in,” Jonathan said decisively.

But Jeff was shaking his head. “You’ll need someone there all the time, at least for the first week or so.”

Jonathan looked to Allison, half hoping she’d volunteer. But realistically he knew she couldn’t. She was the dentist in Cottonwood, the small town where they all lived, and she had a thriving practice to manage. She couldn’t just take off a week.

Allison had a peculiar look on her face that Jonathan had come to associate with an impending brainstorm.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her point-blank.

“I have this friend in Dallas who’s a nurse,” Allison said, casting worried glances at Jeff. “She’s starting a new job in December, but for now she’s at loose ends. I’ve been trying to get her to come visit me in Cottonwood. If she knew someone here needed her nursing skills, she’d be here in a flash.”

“I do not need a nursemaid,” Jonathan protested, picturing some horse-faced pain queen with a hypodermic.

“But that’s precisely what you do need,” Jeff said. “I’d feel much better about releasing you if I knew a registered nurse was keeping an eye on you. Why don’t you call her, Allie?”

Allison looked at Jonathan. “It’s up to you.”

He saw no other alternative. Once this nurse saw he could take care of himself, she would leave him alone and focus on caring for the children. He nodded his assent.

Allison smiled and opened her purse. “I’ll call Sherry right now.”

Jeff’s jaw dropped. “Sherry? You mean Sherry McCormick, the she shark?”

“Oh, Jeff, you’re way too harsh. So, she had a crush on you. So what?” Allison scrolled through the phone numbers on her cell phone.

“A crush? She wanted to eat me alive at that convention.”

This was getting interesting, Jonathan thought. A she shark? Didn’t sound like a horse face, at least.

“She happens to be an excellent nurse,” Allison said. “At least, she just landed a job working for one of Dallas’s top cosmetic surgeons.”

“You can’t bring Sherry McCormick to Cottonwood,” Jeff said flatly. “A city girl like her won’t fit in here.”

“What’s the matter? You afraid she’ll come after you again? Well, don’t. She’s over you.”

“And you want to inflict her on Jonathan instead?”

Allison waved away Jeff’s concern. “Jonathan isn’t her type. Anyway, she told me she never gets involved with a patient. It isn’t professional.”

“Why am I not her type?” Jonathan wanted to know. Unfortunately, this Sherry sounded like his type—flashy and aggressive. His ex-wife, Rita, had been exactly that, all spike heels and expensive perfume. It had not been a match made in heaven. Rita had about died of boredom in tiny Cottonwood, Texas, and not even her two children had been enough to make her stick around. She’d fled to New Orleans, where she’d grown up, and saw the kids maybe twice a year.

“She goes for doctors and lawyers,” Jeff answered. “Guys in suits with expensive cars who will keep her on a steady diet of four-star restaurants and adorn her with diamonds.”

That certainly didn’t describe Jonathan.

“I’m not interested in romantic potential,” Jonathan said. “If she’s willing to come and can do the job, bring her on.”

Allison flashed a satisfied smile and dialed a number on her cell phone. Jeff groaned.

SHERRY MCCORMICK drove slowly around the town square of Cottonwood, hardly believing her eyes. It could have been a set from a Hollywood back lot—for a period piece from the 1920s. Quaint hardly began to describe this town.

Fortunately, Sherry was a sucker for quaint. The picturesque shops and restaurants charmed her silly. Did people really live like that? Even as she tried to tell herself the idea of residing in the sticks repulsed her, she felt an insistent pull toward this place.

Cottonwood was a town a person could call home.

Sherry had never lived in a place that felt like home. Certainly the double-wide in which she’d grown up hadn’t qualified. Her parents had been a lot more interested in drinking and smoking dope than raising their only child—except to sporadically hurl criticism and occasional pieces of furniture her way. That was their idea of parenting.

She was okay with her current home, a condo in Dallas she’d bought last year. She’d taken great care in decorating it, choosing each picture and accent piece one at a time. But no matter how many homey touches she added, it still felt cold to her. She supposed no place could feel really like a home when only one person lived there.

But maybe that was her lot in life. She sighed as she turned her car away from town and followed the directions Allison had given her to the Hardison Ranch. She’d tried really hard to find a companion, a man she was compatible with, one who would love her, one who wanted to commit and eventually grow old with her. But it seemed the harder she tried, the worse things turned out. She’d found plenty of men who would love her—for one night. Maybe she just wasn’t the kind of woman a man wanted hanging around for the rest of his life.

As sobering as that thought was, Sherry knew she could live without a husband. Growing old without children, though—she wasn’t going to settle for that. Still, at thirty-one, she had a little time. And until she figured out the rest of her life, she had her nursing career, which was a real blessing. She’d been let go from her last position, an event that seemed grossly unfair to Sherry. She was a good nurse, a conscientious one, and it was only a personality conflict that had gotten her fired. But then she’d landed a plum position with the best plastic surgeon in Dallas, along with a big hike in pay, so it had all worked out.

Even this chance to come to Cottonwood and take care of an injured rancher had come at the right time, convincing her that nursing was where she needed to focus her energies. Her new job didn’t start until next month and her finances were getting a little tight. The money she would earn as a live-in caregiver would help with some of those credit card bills she was using as a stopgap measure.

The Hardison Ranch was easy to find. She just had to follow what seemed like miles of white rail fences until she reached the main gate, which featured a hand-painted sign and a metal sculpture of a bucking longhorn cow. Or was it a bull? A steer? Whatever. Sherry knew nothing about cattle, and she didn’t want to.

She turned her Firebird right and through the gate, rumbling over a cattle guard, then down a long, red dirt drive. She noticed a picturesque red barn off to her right. It looked like the model for countless amateur oil paintings.

“What a trip,” she murmured aloud.

When the ranch house came into view, Sherry was impressed. It was a huge, rambling one-story building done in a pseudo log-cabin style. Pastures surrounded it on all sides, but a few trees had been spared to give the house shade from the hot Texas sun. Someone had planted chrysanthemums in front, which were covered in orange blossoms.

The house and grounds looked well maintained, and the few cows she saw in the distance grazed contentedly. She hoped the inside was as nice, but she had her doubts since from what Allison had told her, the Hardison Ranch was a bastion of male bachelorhood. She didn’t relish the thought of devoting all her time to scrubbing floors and toilets, but that was what she would do if she had to. When she’d left the trailer park, she’d sworn she would never live anyplace dirty again, not even temporarily.

Sherry pulled her Firebird next to a pickup truck. Several other vehicles were parked in the drive, all of them trucks or SUVs. Her little red sports car looked out of place, she thought with a grin, wondering what her new employer would think of it.

She hadn’t given much thought to her boss and patient, Jonathan Hardison. When she’d asked Allison if Jonathan was as cute as his younger brother, her friend had been cagey with her answer, saying, “He’s handsome enough when he smiles, which isn’t very often.” Sherry figured that was fair warning that Jonathan wouldn’t be an easy customer.

Well, soon she’d know exactly what the situation was. She couldn’t sit here in the car all day. She applied a fresh coat of lipstick, powdered her nose, fluffed her blond hair, grabbed her overnight case from the passenger seat, and got out of the car.

“SHE’S HERE!” announced Sam, Jonathan’s eight-year-old son, who peered excitedly out the living room window.

“I wanna see!” Jon’s seven-year-old, Kristin, raced to the window to join her brother.

If Jonathan could have done the same, he would have. But he was stuck in a recliner, his leg elevated on pillows. He could move, even walk with the aid of crutches when he had to, but Jeff had ordered him to stay put unless absolutely necessary.

For once, Jonathan had listened to his brother. Now that he was off those nice painkilling drugs they’d given him at the hospital, the leg hurt—a lot. He would do whatever it took to heal the fracture as quickly as he could so he could get back to work. If that meant acting like an invalid for a few days, he’d do it.

His whole family had come to the hospital this morning to take him home, like it was some kind of party. Now they were crawling all over the house. Jeff and their father, Edward Hardison, who was also a doctor, were here to instruct Jonathan’s new nurse on his care. Wade was here ostensibly because he was running the ranch for the next couple of weeks, but Jonathan suspected Wade and his wife, Anne, were hanging around because they were curious about the new nurse.

Allison was also there to greet Sherry because she’d arranged the whole thing. Gregarious Sally, Pete’s fiancée, didn’t really have an excuse for being here, except that she and Pete were seldom apart these days. They’d all been fussing around him like old women, fixing up a guest room, doing laundry, stocking the pantry. Much as he loved his family, Jonathan wished they would all just go away and leave him in peace. He could work things out with the nursemaid himself.

Wade joined the kids at the window and let out a low whistle. “Allison, are you nuts? She doesn’t even look like a nurse. She looks like a—”

“Don’t say it.” Allison held up her hand to halt her future-brother-in-law’s tirade. “You can’t judge a book by its cover. Haven’t you ever heard that?”

Like a what? Jonathan wanted to know.

“Let’s have a look at her,” said Pete, Jonathan’s wiry grandfather, toddling over to the living room window and peeking around the edge of the curtain. “She can’t be that—holy moly, that’s some hunk of woman.”

“Pete, really,” Allison admonished. “Sherry is…an individual. She has her own unique sense of style.”

“Yeah, kind of trashy chic,” added Anne, who was peeking through the shades from a different window. “My gosh, get a load of that car!”

“Get a load of those spike heels,” Wade added.

“She’s wearing leopard-skin pants!” Sam observed.

“For pity’s sake,” Jonathan said, “the woman’s going to think we’re a bunch of weirdos, peering at people through cracks in the curtains.” But his mind was focused on the comment—some hunk of woman…trashy chic…spike heels…leopard-skin pants. He was undoubtedly intrigued. Did that mean big hair and tight clothes? His heart beat a little faster at the thought even as he told himself to knock it off. The last thing he needed was to develop a crush on some fast-talking city girl.

The doorbell rang, and Allison gave an exasperated sigh. “Anyone else want to take a verbal shot at poor Sherry before I let her in? ’Cause I promise you, first person who says anything mean to her face, I’ll kick ’em clean to the Gulf of Mexico.”

As Allison opened the door, Jonathan pretended to find great interest in the TV Guide. Everyone else could make a big to-do over Sherry. He intended for her to know she’d been allowed here under protest. Agreeing to the nurse was the only way he could get Jeff to discharge him from the hospital.

“Allie, honey, you look fabulous!” The newcomer stepped through the door and enveloped Allison in a hug. “Being engaged must agree with you. Jeff, you rascal, it’s about time someone made an honest man out of you.” She kissed Jeff on the cheek.

Jonathan watched all this from the corner of his eye, getting only an impression of a slender body topped with a huge cloud of blond hair. He was dying to get a good look at her, but he didn’t want to be caught staring. And he had this niggling suspicion that he would want to stare.

Allison introduced Sherry to the rest of the crowd, including the children, who had suddenly gone mute.

Finally Jonathan couldn’t put it off. Allison was leading Sherry to his corner of the room. He looked up from the TV Guide and assumed a smile, which immediately froze on his face. Standing before him was the most fantastic creature he’d ever laid eyes on, a cross between Florence Nightingale and Madonna.

“Jonathan, this is Sherry McCormick,” Allison was saying. Jonathan was only vaguely aware of what anyone said, however, as a buzz had started in his head, drowning out everything else.

Sherry held out her hand. Her fingers were tipped with inch-long, peach nails that exactly matched her lipstick. “Nice to meet you, Jonathan. I hope I can be a big help to you.”

Her voice was high-pitched and breathy, kind of like Marilyn Monroe’s. Jonathan took her hand, which felt cool and soft against his. He squeezed it briefly and murmured some pleasantry.

This was his nurse? He could more easily picture her sashaying down a runway than pushing a wheelchair down a hospital corridor. But she was a friend of Allison’s, and she had a sincere-looking smile, so he supposed he had to trust that she had some idea of how to take care of people.

“So how did you manage to do this to yourself?” Sherry asked, indicating the full-leg fiberglass cast.

Jonathan didn’t want to talk about his accident. He hadn’t been bucked from a horse for a good many years, and it was an embarrassment that he’d let his normally placid gelding get the best of him.

“Sheer stupidity,” he finally answered, hoping it would quell her curiosity.

“Let me show you to your room,” Allison said. She looked at the small case Sherry held in her left hand. “You brought more luggage than that, right?”

“Oh, lots more,” Sherry replied. “I don’t travel light.”

“If you’ll give me your keys,” Jeff said, “I’ll bring your stuff in from the car.”

Sherry obliged him, then allowed Allison to lead her down a hallway to the bedrooms. The children, who’d been staring at Sherry as if she were some exotic animal at the zoo, trailed after the two women. “You’re right across the hall from Jonathan,” Allison was saying as their voices faded away.

“Holy cow,” Pete said, stifling a laugh.

“She’s…different,” said Edward, who made a show of mopping his round face with his handkerchief.

“Jeff warned us Sherry was flamboyant,” Wade said, grinning ear to ear. “But nothing could have prepared me for the reality. She’s kind of…”

“Kind of what?” Anne asked in a teasing voice as she joined Wade on the couch, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Last I checked, you liked big hair and tight clothes.”

Wade’s face turned ruddy. “Not for a nurse,” he murmured, though he and Anne shared an understanding look. Anne, who was normally a sedate, conservative attorney, had first caught Wade’s eye by decking herself out like a country-western singer, complete with sequins, and brazenly flirting with him at a rodeo.

Edward fixed his oldest son with a penetrating stare. “You’re awfully quiet about all this. What do you think of her? Are you comfortable with her taking care of you and the kids?”

Comfortable? Not likely, when he had an arousal like a steel bar pushing against his jeans.

He shrugged, trying to look indifferent. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, and if she’s not, I’ll send her packing.” He fervently hoped she would be a terrible nurse, and that he would find ten excuses before nightfall to fire her. Because otherwise he was going to have to work to keep his hands off her.