Cinderella's Big Sky Groom Read online

  That would mean he would come after her.

  Oh, that would be lovely.

  So she could run—and probably get caught anyway.

  Or she could stay and face the music.

  Her whole body was shaking, with humiliation more than cold.

  She gritted her teeth and commanded the shaking to stop. Miraculously, it did. Drawing back her shoulders, she sucked in a quivering breath and looked up the road.

  The battered pickup trundling her way was close enough now that she recognized it. It belonged to Winona Cobbs, the woman most people in Whitehorn believed to be a psychic. Winona Cobbs, probably headed into town to pick up a few things.

  And doubtless to have breakfast at the Hip Hop Café with her friend Lily Mae.

  Chapter Eight

  The old pickup crossed the broken line that ran down the center of the road and rattled to a stop right next to where Lynn stood on the cowcatcher. The woman in the driver’s seat, her gray hair braided and coiled into a crown on top of her head, stared at Lynn through the side window with fathomless eyes.

  Lynn stared right back.

  After a minute, Winona cranked the window down. “Good morning, Lynn.” The wrinkles that spread like fans from the corners of those wise eyes deepened as she smiled. “It’s a little cold this morning.”

  Lynn fisted her hand a bit tighter at her coat collar. “Yes. It is. Very brisk.”

  “Looks like you forgot to wear your shoes.”

  It was only a simple observation on Winona’s part. It shouldn’t have inspired a flood of emotion. Still, Lynn felt a hot, insistent pressure at the back of her throat.

  No. She would not.

  She would not surrender to the final humiliation of bursting into tears. She gulped those tears, swallowed them back down her throat. Then she held up her remaining shoe and spoke with as much dignity as she could muster. “I didn’t forget to wear my shoes. I’ve lost one, that’s all.”

  “Hmm,” said the psychic. “Hmmm…”

  Lynn didn’t like the sudden faraway look in Winona’s eyes. “Er…Winona?”

  The older woman poked a plump hand out the open window. She wore a huge squash-blossom ring on her third finger. “Give me that.”

  Reflexively, Lynn grabbed her shoe close. “What?”

  “Give me that shoe.”

  “I don’t—”

  “The shoe. Let me have it.”

  “But—”

  Winona snapped her fingers. “Give it to me. Now.”

  Something in Winona’s voice made Lynn hold out the shoe. Winona took it. Lynn felt it leave her hand and longed to reach in the window and snatch it back.

  But it was too late. Winona clutched the shoe to her generous bosom and closed her eyes. A humming sound issued from deep in her chest.

  Lynn suggested sheepishly, “You know, Winona, I don’t really think I’m in the mood for a vision right now.”

  Winona was not listening. She began speaking low, in an eerie singsong. “What is lost shall be found, in a scattering of dust….”

  Lynn cleared her throat. “Winona, I mean it. It’s just…not a good time for me.”

  Winona didn’t seem to care what time it was. She still had her eyes closed. She was swaying a little in her seat now, her head facing front, cradling Lynn’s shoe as if it were a lost, needy child.

  “Winona. Can you hear me?”

  “A ring and a lie,” Winona chanted. “A lie that brings truth…”

  “Winona. Please…”

  “The teacher teaches, the prince must learn….”

  The prince…

  Lynn let out a small cry as last night came spinning back to her again, stunning and lovely. Utterly wrong. Terrifyingly right…

  “They shall take the wrong twin. But love shall return, in the darkest night of fear and misery…and silence. I do hear the silence. Such a horrible silence, when the lost one comes home….” Winona turned her head slowly. She opened her eyes and looked right at Lynn, right through Lynn, it felt like. Her wrinkled mouth bloomed in a smile full of secrets, of mysteries, of the limitless unknown.

  Lynn felt the goose bumps, rising all over her body, goose bumps that had nothing at all to do with the morning chill.

  “Only remember…” Winona’s voice was a sigh. It was the wind, blowing down off the Crazies, rustling the pine trees, making the branches whisper together. “Through it all, there is but one magic. And that magic is love. Believe in it. It won’t let you down. Do you hear me, child?”

  “I…yes.” Lynn’s reply felt dragged out of her. “Yes, I hear you. I do.”

  The secret smile faded. Winona blinked and shook her head. “Well. That was interesting.” Her wild gray eyebrows drew together. “Did you get anything from that?”

  Lynn had no answer ready. At that moment, she could only stare.

  “Never mind,” Winona said gently. “When the time is right, all will be revealed—and you had better hop in, don’t you think?”

  The swift change of subject made Lynn stagger back a step.

  “Come on, come on….” Winona leaned away from Lynn to open the passenger door.

  Still, Lynn hesitated, the strange things Winona had said whirling through her mind.

  A ring and a lie?

  And what twin? There were no twins in Lynn’s life right now. Were there?

  “Are you coming with me or not?” demanded Winona.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m coming.” It seemed the most logical course at that point. She’d already been caught. And going with Winona would save her poor feet the painful walk back to that house, save her from having to see Ross, to talk to him, to look into his eyes.

  “Hurry up, then.”

  “Yes. All right.” Lynn ran around the front of the pickup and climbed in.

  “Shut that door now. I’ll turn up the heater.” Winona clucked her tongue. “Just look at those feet of yours.”

  “They’ll be all right. Really.”

  “Here.”

  Lynn accepted her shoe.

  Winona flipped a dial and a strong blast of warm air issued from under the dashboard. “How’s that?”

  “Wonderful. Thank you.”

  “You want to go home?”

  “No. Take me to my school, please.”

  Winona shifted into gear and steered the old pickup back out onto her side of the road.

  It was seven o’clock when Lynn parked her Blazer in the driveway of the clapboard-sided house on Shiloh Street where she had grown up.

  She had exactly one hour to pull herself together, drive back to the school and be ready at her desk when the eight-o’clock bell rang.

  She was terribly tempted to call in sick, to run to her bedroom, jump into her bed and hide there until—when?

  No. It wouldn’t work. Winona was probably at the Hip Hop right now. Comparing notes with Lily Mae. Adding two and two and coming up with four. Lynn’s fall from grace would be all over town by lunchtime. If she cowered in her bedroom, she would only make an awful situation worse. She might be labeled a fallen woman by some. But she would be a fallen woman who kept her back straight and her chin high, thank you very much.

  Her purse and her shoe were lying on the seat. Lynn picked them up and got out of the Blazer, her mind turning to thoughts of her sister, who would be waiting inside.

  Pretty, petite Trish, Lynn thought bleakly. Trish, with her big crush on Ross Garrison. Trish, who was going to be hopping mad at Lynn when word of where Lynn had been last night got around. Trish, who would end up feeling hurt and betrayed…

  Lynn wanted to beat herself over the head with her red shoe. What had ever made her imagine that she would get away with this?

  The lady in red had stolen her one night of love.

  And now the woman in brown would have to pay the price.

  Shamefully, Lynn couldn’t keep herself from trying to enlist the sympathy of the Almighty as she limped up the front step.

  Please, dear God. I know I’
ve done wrong. But let Trish still be in bed. Let me be able to put off facing her for just a little bit longer. Just do this one thing for me, oh, won’t You please?

  God did not answer her cowardly prayer.

  When Lynn let herself in the door, Trish was standing in the tiny front foyer, fully dressed in a tight denim skirt and satiny blouse. Her small, slim hands were fisted on her hips. She tossed her head of shining black hair and began firing off angry questions.

  “What’s going on? Where have you been? How could you scare us like this?”

  “Trish, I…”

  But the recriminations had started. And Trish ran right over Lynn in her eagerness to let them all out. “You’ve been gone all night and you never stayed out past ten in your whole life. I have been just about out of my mind. Mom called. To wish you a happy birthday. That was at about seven last night. I told her I’d have you call her when you got in. But you didn’t get in. And then, around ten, she called again. When I said you still weren’t here, she got all frantic. You know she’s not supposed to let herself get frantic. You know it’s not good for her heart.” Jewel had suffered a mild heart attack not long after Lynn’s father had died. Her doctor was constantly reminding her to take her medication—and not to let herself get worked up about things.

  Trish barreled on. “But she was frantic. And then I started getting frantic. I called that friend of yours, that Danielle Mitchell, and she said I shouldn’t worry. She said she was sure that you were just fine.”

  Trish tossed her head again and huffed out an outraged breath. “Just fine, that’s what she told me. That’s all she would tell me. So I had to call Mom back and try to settle her down. It wasn’t any picnic. She wanted to call the sheriff’s office, and it took just about all the convincing I had in me to keep her from doing it. When I finally got off the phone with her, I went to bed. But I didn’t sleep hardly a wink and—” Trish cut herself off in midtirade, her jade-green eyes narrowing.

  Lynn looked down. Her coat had fallen open.

  Trish had seen what was underneath. “Where did that dress come from? And what did you do to your hair—and why are you running around barefooted?”

  “Trish,” Lynn began, and then had no idea what to say next.

  “Trish?” her sister repeated. “Trish? Is that all you’ve got say to me? Just my own name?”

  “I…I’m running very late. I have to get to my classroom.”

  Trish marched to the foot of the stairs and planted herself there, blocking Lynn from going up them. “I want to know where you’ve been all night long.”

  “No, you don’t,” Lynn muttered under her breath.

  “What? What was that?”

  Lynn drew herself up. It seemed she’d had to do that a hundred times already since daybreak. Suck in a breath and set her chin high. “Listen. I’m very sorry if I frightened you. It was terribly thoughtless of me not to call you.”

  “Humph. Well. It sure was.”

  “Please…forgive me. I’ll never do that again.” She meant that. With all her heart. Once, after all, was stacking up to be way more than enough.

  “But where were you?”

  “I just…don’t have time to go into it now. I have to get to work. I really do.”

  Trish folded her arms across her chest and looked truculent. “I just want to know what is going on here.”

  “There is nothing going on.” Was that a whopping lie, or what? But what else could she say? She had neither the time nor the heart to tell Trish the grim truth right now.

  And maybe, deep in her coward’s soul, she was still hoping that she wouldn’t have to. That Lily Mae and Winona would never get around to comparing notes, to adding two and two.

  “Trish, please. We can discuss this tonight. But now I’ve got to get ready for work.”

  Trish tapped her dainty foot and made a tight, growling sound. “Oh, all right. Fine. You just go on. You get ready for work.” She moved to the side a fraction.

  Lynn saw her chance and took it. She slid around her sister and hurried up the stairs.

  Thirty minutes later she was rushing back down. She got out the door before Trish could appear again and start asking more questions.

  She’d reached her Blazer when she saw the Mercedes SUV, parked on the street not twenty feet away.

  Ross.

  Just sitting there, in the driver’s seat, looking at her.

  Well, and what was he supposed to do, a voice in her mind inquired dryly, the way you ran off like that, miles from town on foot? The man might not be looking for a permanent relationship, but he’d certainly want to be sure that his lady friends got home all right.

  She ran to his driver’s side window before he could decide to get out and come to her.

  He pushed a button and the window slid down.

  She started talking before he could say anything. “I’m fine. I’m sorry if I scared you. As you can see, I got home all right.”

  “Did you?” His voice sounded…she couldn’t really say how it sounded. Distant. Wary. A little bit cold.

  She looked at his side view mirror. At her neighbor’s curtained windows opposite where he’d parked. She couldn’t bear to look directly at him. And Lord, how she hoped no one had seen him.

  “Yes, it all…worked out. You didn’t happen to bring my shoe, did you?”

  “Your shoe?”

  She could tell from the tone of his voice that he didn’t know what she was talking about. “The one that fell off my foot. On the stairs? I couldn’t find it this morning.”

  “I haven’t seen it. I’ll look for it, though.”

  “Good. All right. And I’m late. I have to go.”

  “Lynn—”

  A whimper of pure misery escaped her. “Just…please. I really do have to go. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

  Before he could say another word, she turned and left him, praying he wouldn’t be foolish enough to get out and come after her.

  He wasn’t. She heard the Mercedes start up. She was getting into her Blazer when he pulled away from the curb and drove off.

  Somehow, Lynn got through the morning at school. She did her job and she thought she did it reasonably well.

  Danielle arrived to pick up Sara a few minutes after everyone else had left. She had Lynn’s plain skirt and blouse folded over her arm—and a worried look in her eye.

  She spoke to her daughter first. “Go and get your things, Sara, and put on your jacket.”

  Once Sara had disappeared into the coat nook, Danielle turned to Lynn. “Trish called me last night.”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “Are you…okay?”

  Lynn looked into her friend’s eyes. She saw understanding and affection there. And she knew that when she was ready to talk about this, there would be someone to listen. “I’ve been better. Have you…heard anything? Around town?”

  “Heard anything?”

  “Rumors. About me. And Ross Garrison…”

  “No, not a word.”

  “Well. It’s early yet.”

  Danielle sighed. “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not. I’ve been…really stupid. And thoughtless. And…actually, I think I hate myself right now.”

  Danielle squeezed her arm. “Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s bad enough. Believe me.”

  Sara appeared in the doorway to the coat nook. “Mommy! I can’t find my snack box.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “But I—”

  “Sara. I’ll be right there.”

  With a little grunt of irritation, Sara vanished again.

  “Come to my place,” Danielle said. “Tonight. After Sara goes to bed. We can talk then.”

  Lynn thought of Trish’s angry green eyes. “I think I could end up being real busy tonight.”

  “When you’re ready, then. My door is open.”

  “Thank you. It means a lot.”

  Lynn staye
d in her classroom until five. She rearranged supply closets and cleaned out her desk, worked on her lesson plans and made turkeys and Pilgrim hats out of construction paper as examples for class projects, since the Thanksgiving season was coming up soon.

  She found some crackers and a little box of raisins in a desk drawer and ate them as the lunch she hadn’t had time to pack.

  She was hiding, and she knew it. Putting off facing people—her sister and the rest of her family, especially. But it was legitimate hiding, she rationalized. Because it was all work that really did have to be done.

  The janitor came in at four to empty the waste-baskets. Lynn greeted him and he grunted a hello at her. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

  The school secretary, Mrs. Parchly, stuck her head in the door at four-thirty. “My. You’re working late….” Was that a knowing gleam in those slightly bulging eyes of hers?

  “I…had a few things to catch up on.”

  “I brought you those new attendance forms.”

  Lynn took the forms and thanked her, then Mrs. Parchly left.

  Lynn decided to stop at the market on her way home. It was only more avoidance of Trish and the bleak confrontation that waited at home, and she knew it. But she went anyway.

  She thought that the checker looked at her strangely, but maybe that was just her own guilt and nerves talking. She saw several people she knew and all of them smiled at her and greeted her kindly.

  She got home at six.

  And found her stepmother’s car parked in the driveway.

  They were waiting for her in the kitchen, sitting at the round maple table in the breakfast nook: the women of her family. Trish and Arlene. And Jewel.

  She stepped into the room with her two bags of groceries and longed only to drop them and run. Run and run and never look back.

  They knew.

  She could see it on their faces. She had to force her legs to carry her the few steps to the counter opposite the stove. She slid the bags onto it.

  Jewel spoke first. “Well,” she said, her small pink mouth as tight as the string on a miser’s purse. “You finally decided to come home and face us.”