Snowbound Cinderella (4 page)

“Thanks. But I’d rather eat steak. I’d like mine medium, with a few mushrooms and onions on the side.”

“What you’d like and what you’ll get may be two different things.” He stopped tinkering with the generator long enough to devour the rest of his toast. Then he downed his hot chocolate in several long gulps. “Thanks. I guess this will hold me until dinnertime.”

“I should hope so.” Ciara picked up the tray and headed for the sink. “Because that’s all you’re getting, unless you make it yourself.”

Minutes later, Jace looked up to see her heading toward the bedroom. When the door closed he turned his attention to the generator. He really needed to get this thing in good working order as quickly as possible. He was desperate to restore enough power to use his laptop computer. He’d promised to check in with his wire service as soon as he arrived in the United States. By now they’d be wondering where he
was, and why he wasn’t bothering to contact them. He didn’t want his crew thinking he’d completely deserted them.

But the truth was, he suddenly couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for world news. It never seemed to change. When peace came to one area of the world, war inevitably broke out in another. He supposed the world would always be divided between men of goodwill, and men of ill will with a lust for power and domination.

He sat back to study the rusted wires in his hands. But his thoughts kept drifting to the woman in the other room. He’d told her more about himself than he’d intended. Maybe it was because she was so easy to talk to. She had a way of listening. Really listening—not just faking it. And she had a way of asking questions without being intrusive.

He grinned as he started scraping away rust before splicing several frayed wires. Next he’d be trying to convince himself that Ciara Wilde was just like any girl next door. Still, despite the movie star face and fabulous body, there was a freshness about her that was disarming.

Usually he could tell, after just a few minutes with someone, whether or not he wanted to know them better. In Ciara’s case, he sensed there was a whole lot more inside than the woman she showed to her public. Maybe, just maybe, he’d reserve judgment. It could be that his first impression had been colored by fatigue.

Or it might turn out that she was “Hollywood,” after all. In which case, he’d be only too happy to send her packing as soon as the weather allowed.

I
n her bedroom, Ciara opened the notebook and removed a sheaf of dog-eared papers. Since she had the luxury of several hours before dinner, she’d decided to use the time constructively. She pulled a chair close to the window for light, then set several candles on the nightstand. Tucking her knees under her, she began to scan the first page, making corrections as she read.

She’d been working on this screenplay for the better part of a year. At first it had seemed an impossible dream. With her demanding schedule, how could she ever hope to find the time to craft a script that was both bright and interesting, with characters who had depth and soul? But little by little it had begun to take shape. She wrote everywhere. Between scenes on the sound stage. During long evenings on location, while the rest of the cast and crew partied. She even wrote on weekends, whenever Brendan was engaged in his own movie projects.

Now that she’d completed several drafts, she had become even more critical. She’d read enough scripts in her time to know that her characters were coming along nicely. The dialogue flowed smoothly. The setting
was exactly the way she wanted it. But some of the action scenes still seemed contrived.

She paused, pen between her teeth.
Action.
That was it. That was what was all wrong. She’d been influenced by the sort of action Brendan faced in his movies. Sound effects and computer-generated explosions. Now she found herself thinking about the things Jace had lived through. She’d never before met anyone like Jace Lockhart, who had seen real terrorists, and had defused a live bomb. The mere thought of it had her heart pounding, her palms sweating.

How could anyone live their lives on the edge of danger each day, never knowing what they would have to face next? What would a man like Jace have inside him that would give him the courage, the nerve, to keep going?

She’d seen the televised news segments of the bloody scenes of carnage, when terrorists’ bombs had exploded in public places. The sight of the chaos, with dazed victims staggering out of harm’s way, was horrible to watch. How much worse must it be for Jace to have lived through it, when the victims weren’t strangers, but people he’d known and cared about? How could he keep everything in his life on an even keel, with such images burned indelibly into his mind?

Immersed in the feeling, she bent to the page and began to write, using Jace as her model. Only when the candles had burned too low, and the light outside the window grew too dark to make out the words on the page, did she look up to realize she’d been writing
for hours. She carefully placed the pages in the notebook and set it on the night table.

She had often lost herself in her writing. But there were always so many interruptions. These few hours had been like a special gift. No pressure. No schedule. No jarring telephone or fax to mar the silence. No signal from the director to prepare for another scene, or makeup and wardrobe people milling about.

Though it had been difficult at first, she had finally adjusted to having people around her constantly, dressing her, fussing over her hair and face.
Adapt or die,
Jace had said. She nodded. It was true. As alien as it had seemed to her, she had managed to adapt to a life lived constantly in the public eye. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

She stood by the window a moment, staring into the gathering shadows. What would it be like to live like this all the time? To have no distractions? No reporters pushing and shoving to be first with the latest tidbits of scandal. No one knocking on her door, telling her it was time for her voice coach, her dance instructor, her personal trainer.

As Brendan often reminded her, she couldn’t have it both ways. If she wanted the success and the glamour and the life-style, she had to accept the publicity, the hordes of reporters and the loss of privacy. But was it worth the price? Whenever she thought about leaving it all behind, she was reminded of the life she’d left. Would that be her fate? She shivered. No. She would never go back.

Money was important to her. Not just because of
the things it bought: the place in Malibu, and the pretty little house in Kentucky that she’d bought for her mother. More important, because it meant security and independence—something Ciara treasured above all else. She’d watched her mother struggle with the burden of six children and a husband who found all his dreams in a bottle. They’d moved from one shabby apartment to another, often leaving in the night when her mother couldn’t scrape up enough money to pay the rent. When her father had finally left them, her mother was forced to work two jobs just to keep her family together.

Ciara clutched her hand into a fist, until she forcibly relaxed each finger. She was never going back. If it meant playing empty-headed blondes jiggling in a bikini for the rest of her life, that’s what she’d do before she’d go back to the life she’d known as a child. Whenever she thought about leaving it all behind, she would suffer a flashback to her needy childhood. That was always enough to remind her that she couldn’t have it both ways.

Still, wasn’t it possible to have what she wanted, and reclaim her life? Or would she find her world crumbling, and all her hard-won independence lost?

When she had first voiced her concerns about a lack of privacy, Brendan had been quick to soothe. It was true that he had made a career of attracting the media. And that meant for her, as Mrs. Brendan Swift, whatever privacy she craved would be further eroded. It was only natural to assume that the marriage of two movie superstars would only increase the blinding
glare of the spotlight, he’d reminded her. But Brendan had also assured her that the merger of their two fortunes would “buy” them a certain amount of privacy. There was his mansion, of course, which had become such a fortress that the photographers could only snap their pictures from helicopters, unless specifically invited onto the grounds. But Brendan had a reputation for being a freewheeling spender. There were rumors that he spent as much as he earned. And lately she’d begun to wonder if his fortune was really all he led her to believe it was. There was the nagging little fear that he coveted her money, and her fame, as much as her love. When she’d suggested a prenuptial agreement, he had balked, saying that if the press learned of it, he’d look foolish. When she’d pressed, he’d gone into a rage. Hadn’t he been more than generous with all his ex-wives? Why wouldn’t he treat his current wife even better?

Brendan was so smooth, so persuasive. She felt as though she’d been swept along by the sheer force of his overpowering personality. He’d dismissed her worries and trampled all her defenses. Still, the nagging little fear persisted. Maybe because he’d been too smooth. Too persuasive. And a little too annoyed at her questions.

She’d tried to give him back the engagement ring, telling him she needed time to think. But he wouldn’t take it. He insisted that he loved her and that they’d work things out. But he refused to talk about the things that were really bothering her. He wanted to go ahead with the wedding and then work things out
afterward. He didn’t understand that she just couldn’t do it that way. And so she’d run two weeks before her wedding. And was running still. But sooner or later she would have to return for the reckoning. She’d better be prepared with the answers. And right now, she didn’t know what they were, what she wanted. All she knew was that she would have to live with her decisions.

She pressed her hands to her temples and rubbed at the headache that was beginning to throb. That’s what she got for thinking. But then, that was the reason she was here. To think. To plan. And to come to some decisions, no matter how painful.

Jace was doing some heavy thinking of his own. It helped to have the generator to focus on. But while his hands were busy, his mind was in overdrive. He’d forgotten just how pleasant it was to have an entire day to himself. No agenda. No video or audio. No notes to transcribe. He closed his eyes a moment, listening to the sounds of silence. No traffic screeching. No mobs shouting. No thunder of automatic rifle fire in the distance.

It had been years since he’d been back in the U.S. And even more years since he’d had absolutely nothing more pressing than a generator that required his attention. Why had he resisted so long? If he’d known how soothing, how healing this would be, he’d have been here months ago. Or would he?

Time for a little honesty. Maybe the truth was that he’d been afraid of this very thing. Afraid that if he
found life too pleasant, too undemanding, he might not want to return to the wars, the famines, the floods, the assassinations. And then where would he be? Until this past year he’d always known exactly what he wanted. To live life on the very edge of danger. To travel to distant lands. To experience the thrill of discovering something new and exciting just around the corner. Oh, there were times, especially in the past year, when he’d toyed with the idea of settling down. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up his globe-trotting life-style forever. And the thought that all his friends had become immersed in their own lives, with families of their own, made him feel as though he might have missed something important. But the idea of marriage, of a lifetime spent with one woman, seemed laughable.

Not that there hadn’t been women in his life. But all of them, like him, enjoyed a relationship free of commitment. Like him, they’d had demanding careers that filled whatever holes there might have been in their lives. That’s just the way he liked it. He’d always needed the freedom to come and go as he pleased.

Jace hadn’t been with a woman since Ireina. And he hadn’t met a woman who got under his skin enough to make him want to take that leap into happily-ever-after. In truth, he didn’t believe such a woman existed. He believed even less in happy endings.

He glanced at the darkened windows and pushed the generator and its parts aside. He’d deal with it
later. Now it was time to wash up and cook that dinner he’d promised. He was going to make Ciara Wilde eat her words.

No, he corrected. He was going to make her eat the best steak she’d ever tasted—and sigh in ecstacy over every single bite.

“Umm.” Ciara stepped from her bedroom and paused in the doorway. “Something smells heavenly.” She glanced toward the fireplace, where Jace was grilling steaks.

He looked up and absorbed a jolt to his system. She was still dressed in jeans and the flannel shirt. But she’d brushed her hair long and loose, and it fell in soft waves to her shoulders. The earlier walk in the fresh air had given her skin a healthy glow. Even without a trace of makeup she was stunning.

The cabin was snug and inviting. Jace had massed candles on the mantel. They cast a soft glow over the room. For the sake of warmth, he’d set two places side by side on the big coffee table, facing the fire. In the middle of the table was a bottle of wine and two stemmed glasses.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Wine? How in the world did you come up with that?”

He grinned. “I found a well-stocked wine rack in the pantry. Not that I’m surprised. The Fortunes have always enjoyed only the best food and wine. I hope you like merlot.” He poured, then handed her one glass, taking the other with him as he tended the steaks.

She sipped. “I can see that you’re taking your responsibility as cook seriously.”

“Absolutely.” He expertly turned the steaks. “That way, when you make breakfast tomorrow, you’ll have to work even harder to beat me, Hollywood.”

“Now why would I want to beat you? What makes you think I’m the least bit competitive?”

He shot her that grin that always seemed to send her heart into a tailspin. “You’re in a competitive business. You’d have to be as aggressive as all the sharks you swim with. Nobody gets as far as you have without fighting hard for it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You spend a day with me and decide you know all about me.”

“Oh, I don’t know everything. Yet,” he added ominously. “But I’ve already managed to observe a few things.”

She perched on the arm of the sofa. “Such as?”

He reached for a platter. “You don’t want anyone to know that you have a tender heart.”

“Ha. A lot you know. I’m tough as nails.”

“Uh-huh. You can say that, but I know better. You just pretend to be tough so you can keep that tender heart hidden.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So you won’t be taken advantage of.”

Ciara winced. She supposed it was the journalist in Jace Lockhart that had him trying to fit everyone into neat slots. Still, it was unnerving to have him figure her out so accurately.

She watched him spear the steaks onto the platter,
then open a steaming foil packet and arrange mushrooms and onions and chunks of roasted potatoes around the edge. She eyed the morsels, and used them to change the subject. “Now where did you find those?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted mushrooms and onions?”

“Yes. But I was only kidding. I didn’t really expect you to have any.”

“Be careful what you ask for, Hollywood. I told you. My sister, Mary Ellen, has excellent taste. If it comes in a can, a box or a package, she has it somewhere in this cabin. I thought the potatoes added a nice touch. Don’t you agree?” He set the platter between their plates, then reached for the bottle and topped off her glass and his own.

He lifted the glass, sipped, then said, “One more thing I noticed about you.”

Ciara tensed.

“You have a brain under all that lovely hair. But you don’t let too many people get inside it. Probably for the same reason you hide your heart.”

“So I won’t be taken advantage of?” Her tone was sarcastic, to hide the nerves that had surfaced.

He nodded. “You need to have the upper hand. It’s your armor. You like it when others expect someone quite different from the person you really are.”

“You mean the hard-edged, dumb blonde bimbo?”

He heard the bitterness in her tone. “I didn’t say that. But you do want to hide behind a mask.”

“Why should I?”

“So you’ll always be one step ahead of everyone else.”

She pressed her lips together. “Thank you for that in-depth analysis, doctor.”