A Groom for Red Riding Hood
Jennifer Greene
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Prologue
Mary Ellen Barnett slammed the car door, hitched her wedding gown to her knees and hiked up the porch steps into the kitchen. Without a pause for breath, she locked the door, pulled the curtains, flipped open the oven and switched on the gas.
Suicide was for cowards, but that didnt bother hershed been an ace pro coward for years. Truthfully, she was feeling more murderous than suicidal, but that was irrelevant, too. Shed had it. Really had it. Being jilted at the altar wasnt the first time shed made a humiliating fool of herself, but it was positively the last.
The sickly sweet gas fumes invaded the small, closed kitchen quickly. Too quickly. Cripes, they were making her gag. Shed never manage to kill herself offat least not before throwing up.
Impatiently she jerked off the gas, snapped the oven door closed and stormed outside.
There had to be another way. Yanking off her long white veil, she plopped her fanny on the porch steps and inhaled gulping lungfuls of fresh air.
A balmy breeze drifted off the Georgia coast. The blasted evening was damn near breathtaking. In any normal Christmas season, the weather would be obligingly cold, damp and dreary. Not this year. The wind drifted through her hair, as soothing as a caress, as soft as a whisper. The stars were just coming out, backdropped against a velvet sky and a dreamers crescent moon.
The night was so disgustingly wonderful that it was darn near impossible to concentrate on doing herself in, but Mary Ellen was furiously, stubbornly, bulldog-determined. How many times had she made embarrassing, mortifying, humiliating mistakes? Millions, thats how many. The flaws in her character were unfixable. God knew, shed tried. And though her self-esteem and self-respect were nonexistent at the moment, shed never lacked for imagination. The trick was simply applying her fertile mind to effective suicide methods.
She stuck her chin in her palm. Minutes passed. As violently and tenaciously as she focused on morbid thoughts...self-destructing just wasnt going to be that easy.
Gas was out. Car crashes were no good, eitherthere was too much risk of hurting someone else; shed die before hurting anyone elseand if she screwed up and failed to take herself out, she could end up a vegetable on machines that someone had to take care of. That was out of the question. Hanging was even less palatablesomebody would be stuck finding a gruesome scene. The time-honored traditional method of slitting ones wrists had that same unfortunate glitch and anyway she hatedreally hatedthe sight of blood.
She concentrated harder.
Poison struck her as a stupendous idea, but the thought of drinking drain cleaner was too repulsive to stomach. Swallowing enough pills to go to sleep was the easiest out, but there was an inherent problem with that method, too. Shed always been as healthy as a horse. The only medicine laying around was a little PMS stuff, and since that was a regular plague, there were only a few pills left in the bottle. Somehow she didnt think taking six tablets was going to get the job done.
Drowning was a possibility, but awfully tough to pull off. She could swim like a fish. Starvation? Mary Ellen rolled her eyes to the sky. Thatd never work. Shed been born with the appetite of a lumberjack. If there was food around, for absolute sure, shed never have the self-control to turn it down.
She scowled. There had to be some way. A suicide method that she couldnt bungle. A way that left no mess and looked like an accidenteveryone in town knew she was distraught and distracted after that debacle tonight in the church, so a careless accident would be understandable. She didnt want anyone blaming themselves. Shed never deliberately hurt anyone.
But damnation, there didnt seem to be a method that fit all the criteria.
The more she thought about it, the more she came to the unavoidably nasty conclusion thatblast and hell!she was just going to have to live.
That morose thought barely registered before an alternative took its place. She could run. If she was cowardly enough to consider suicidewhich she certainly wasthere was certainly no reason to sweat any scruples about running away from her problems. No one would miss her. Like removing a thorn or a bee stinger, it would be a relief to everyone if she were gone. Shed been a Class A problem from the day she was born, especially for those she loved. And living down this latest fiasco and humiliation would be far easier if she were removed from the picture.
The idea of running gained momentum like a tumbleweed gathering speed in a high wind. She could do it. Disappear. Become someone else. Go someplace where no one knew her or had any idea what a disastrous mess shed made of her life.
Positively it had to be a place with no menshed made a fool of herself for absolutely the last time over that half of the human speciesbut that tiny detail presented more of a challenge than a problem. There had to be someplace in the continental United States that had no men.
She just had to find it.
One
Steve Rawlings pushed open the door to Samsons and stomped the snow off his boots. The sudden warmth and light made his eyes sting. He yanked off his gloves and hat and automatically headed for the far booth in back. As he expected, the bit of a bar was packed. There was nothing to do on a bitter, blizzardy Monday night in Eagle Fallsexcept drink and indulge in a little male bonding over a football game.
The Lions were playing on the black-and-white over the bar. The picture was fuzzyTV reception was typically nip and tuck in this isolated corner of Michigans Upper Peninsula. Also, typically, beer was flowing freely. A few heads turned when Steve walked by. None of the men nodded or asked him to pull up a chair. Hed probably have keeled over from shock if they did. His work automatically gave him the popularity of a piranha with an infectious disease. He was used to it. So far, the guys had given him a wide, wary berth, but there were no overt signs of hostility. Hell, hed been some places where people greeted him with a shotgun.
Blowing on his cold hands, he slid into the worn pine booth. The windchill factor was a mean subzero. Hed been working outside for the better part of six hours. His boots were caked with ice, his hands too numb to function and his stomach was growling with hunger. Stiffly he unzipped his parka and pushed the coat off his shoulders. His head was bent when he heard the soft, feminine magnolia drawl. His eyes shot up.
There were women in Eagle Falls. Just not many. The total local population couldnt be more than a few hundredsummer cottages and hunting cabins were all boarded up by this time of year, and even the timber industry shut down in the dead of winter. Permanent residents were few. The area attracted wilderness lovers, loners, and for sure some families, but mostly people who chose to march to a different drummer. There were no lone women, for the obvious reason that there was spit little to appeal to a woman alone.
And especially a young woman like her.
She stood out like a rose in a pen of bulls. There wasnt a line on her faceshe couldnt be thirtyand wearing boots, she stood maybe five foot six. A cap of glossy hair framed her face, mink brown, worn short and smooth. Classic beauty was the wrong label. Cute was more like it. Real cute, honest cute. Her nose had a sassy tip, her chin had a dimple and a slash of dark brows arched over huge, startling blue eyes. Her mouth was small, naked of lipstick, as pink as a petal and shaped like a bow.
Steve rubbed the circulation back into his cold hands, studying the rest of her. Her clothes were straight L.L. Bean, a flapping flannel shirt worn over a black turtleneck sweater and jeans. The clothes looked new, the jeans still stiff, her boots unscuffed. Still, the denim fabric faithfully cupped the curve of a truly delectable fanny, and a man would have to be both blind and brain-dead not to notice how unforgettably she filled out that turtleneck.
He couldnt imagine what she was doing here.
Samson, the owner of the bar, was getting up in years and was plagued with arthritis. Steve understood why the old codger had hired help, just not how she fit in. Conceivably shed waited tables and tended bar before, but he doubted it. Frowning, he watched her awkwardly handling a heavy tray. Her clumsy juggling of the beer mugs suggested a total lack of experience at the job.
When her hands were full, Fred Claire took advantage and patted her behind with a wink for the other guys. Brick red color skated up her cheeks. A mug of beer started to tip and spill. The tray clattered to the table.
Steve scratched his chin. He had a sixth sense for trouble. Honing and fine-tuning that instinct was an automatic requirement with his work. In this case, he didnt smell trouble. Nothing about her attire was deliberately suggestive, but if she thought she could escape the guys attention in this place, she had to have a dreamers fantasy life. Most of the men were middle-aged, a fair slug of them marriedhardly Lothario types, but hell, she was a testosterone-arousing package of new, young, female and good-looking. The boys giving her a rush was as predictable as conflict in the Middle East.
Rowdy laughter echoed from the crowded table by the door. Fred and his cronies had clearly been drinking for several hours now, and they were all making a teasing fuss over the spilled beer. Rafer claimed loudly that there was a wet spot in his lap that hed sure appreciate her helping him with. The others snickered at his wit. The splotches of color on her cheeks darkened to the hue of a raw burn.
She was still flustered when she glanced up and spotted him. As soon as she escaped that table, she headed over and flipped open her order pad. Im sorry you had to wait. What would you like?
Coffee. And a couple of steaks if Samsons still got any in back. Rare.
She scribbled the order with her head tucked down, paying no attention to him until she suddenly glanced up. A couple of steaks? she echoed.
A couple. As in two, he affirmed.
She looked at him then. With him sitting down, she had no way of knowing he was six-three, but her gaze flickered over his rangy frame and broad shoulders. She wasnt the first woman to check him over. It wasnt Steves fault he was a hard man to ignorehe had no vote in his genetic inheritancebut his height and linebacker build made it tricky to hide in a crowd. His jet black hair, blue eyes and ruddy, clear skin added up to striking looks that had an embarrassing habit of attracting female attention. Most women took a second look.
Not her. After that quick shot at his face and shoulder span, her eyes dropped. Fast. She promptly wrote down two and underlined it. I can see itll be an uphill job filling you up. Ill nuke a couple of potatoes. And I think theres still a piece of apple pie in back
Thatd be great.
You want your coffee black or with cream?
Blackll do.
Okay. Ill be back as quick as I can.
She spun around, not once looking at him againbut hed had more than enough time to do a prowling close-up of her. Once the flush climbed down from her cheeks, her skin was as pale as ivory. Her voice was a velvet Southern drawl, soft, feminine and as vulnerable as everything else about her. The tag on her shirt read Mary Ellen. If Mary Ellen was looking for men, shed positively picked the right place. Winters were long and lonesome in this neck of the woods, and she couldnt find a higher male-to-female ratio outside of Alaska. Still, the image of man hungry didnt work at all. Her posture was as stiff as a poker, her expression a mirror of nerves and wariness, and those incredible eyes of hers were as skittish as a newborn colts.
He watched her take another orderstanding as she had at his booth, careful to keep from pinching and patting distance, not looking any of the boys in the eyeand then she disappeared into the back. A masculine bellow echoed through the room when the Lions fumbled the ball. Samson shot out from the kitchen, his white hair standing in spikes, waving a spatula, to armchair coach with the rest of them.
Steve rolled his shoulders, mentally blocking out the football game and the noise and his curiosity about the waitress, too. She wasnt his problem. Heaven knew, he had problems of his own. The smoky warmth of the bar was slowly unthawing his frozen bones, and weariness was starting to hit him in waves. If his stomach hadnt been pit-empty, hed have driven straight to his trailer and six straight hours in bed. His body was used to being pushed, and this snow squall was no worse than a hundred hed seen growing up on a Wyoming ranch, but the cold and exhaustion combined had been killers today. Weariness was dogging him as relentlessly as a shadow.
He didnt know his eyes had closed, yet they must have, because the aroma of fresh coffee suddenly startled him. The steaming mug was sitting in front of him, hotter than the devils breath. Mary Ellen had come and gone without his hearing her, but he could see her now, dodging around the room, serving fresh pitchers of foaming beer, ducking under the TV so she didnt block the view. Someone called out, Sweetheart? Darlin, we desperately need you over here. He saw her jaw clench and that cherry color shoot to her cheeks again.
If there was a woman less suited to working in a bar, he couldnt imagine one.
Over the next hour, she came to his table three times. She never said a word, never looked at him, but she kept his coffee filled; she served his steaks blood-rare with potatoes and trimmings hed never asked for, noticed when hed leveled that, and came back with a fat slice of apple pie heaped with ice cream. She didnt hoverhell, she didnt even ask what he wantedbut she took better care of him than a mother hen.