Cinderella Search (18 page)

“Rosa? Your dad and Rosa are an item?”

“They were. Till you interfered. If that woman had been forced to go elsewhere for a room, Dad wouldn’t have become instantly infatuated and—”

He caught her in a bear hug, winked, then dropped his lashes to half-mast. “And you wouldn’t have the sexiest roommate in town. I saw this as a serendipitous opportunity. I give up my room for a lady in distress, and get to legitimately spend my nights aboard your boat. Of course,” he added with another wink, “I’ll put my gear in one of the aft cabins just in case you want your reputation protected.”

Lissa sighed and snuggled against him, unable to resist. And of course he hadn’t known about her dad and Rosa. He hadn’t been here long enough to have noticed all the little nuances everyone else could see.

“I don’t think I have a bit of reputation left. There probably isn’t a soul in Madrona Cove who’ll believe you’re sleeping in an aft cabin.”

He kissed her. “Do you mind?”

She laughed. “The only thing I’d mind was if you really did want to sleep back there.”

“Rosa!” Lissa exclaimed as she opened the door of her boat two days later. Tears streaked down Rosa’s face. “What’s wrong?” As if she didn’t know. “Come sit down. I’ll make some tea.”

Rosa had herself under better control by the time Lissa returned with the tea. She sniffed and sat up straight in her chair. “Your father’s fallen in love with that woman.”

“Oh, Rosa, maybe he’s just going through a mid-life crisis.”

“Hah! He left mid-life behind fifteen years ago. Trouble is, I’m older than he is and now he’s set his sights on someone younger. He’s been with her almost constantly for the last two days. They’ve had every meal together, he’s spent hours up in her room—talking, supposedly, but I know better. Frank Wilkins isn’t that much of a talker. He’s more of a—” She broke off, turning her face away.

Lissa poured two cups of herbal tea and put one in Rosa’s trembling hands.

“I never asked, because I didn’t think it was my business, but well, you and Dad … for years I’ve wondered why you didn’t marry.”

“I couldn’t.” Rosa lifted a tragic face to Lissa. “I was married till just a couple of years ago. My husband was in a home. He died the month before your dad had his stroke. I was free then, but Frank wouldn’t marry me ’cause he was sick and didn’t think he had anything to offer me.”

“He’s not sick now, Rosa.”

“But he still doesn’t think he has anything to offer me.” She sipped her tea, then set it down. “I wonder what he thinks he’s got to offer that woman? Or maybe he doesn’t have to offer her anything. She looks rich, doesn’t she? Maybe she’s offering him something he can’t refuse. Maybe she’s going to buy the inn for him or something. How can I compete with that? I’m sixty-four. I’ll have my old-age pension next year. But it sure won’t make me rich. It won’t help me buy the inn for him.”

“We’re going to buy the inn, Rosa. This festival is going to be the best one ever. Just you wait. And when Dad’s reinstated as manager, you and he will move into the manager’s suite—together.”

“Nice try, Lissa, but don’t hold your breath.”

It was Thursday at ten in the morning when John Drysdale, the Realtor, sauntered up to Lissa and dropped his bombshell. Wearing brightly polished shoes, a blue suit and a red tie, with his professionally styled hair perfect as always, he looked completely out of place amid the bustle of jeans-clad townsfolk rushing around getting ready for the festival.

“Well,” he said. “You got till five-thirty Saturday to make good on your offer.”

She dropped the archery target she was nailing to a post. She also dropped the hammer. It landed on her toe. She scarcely felt the pain. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, knowing perfectly well what he meant.

“The seventy-two-hour clause. It’s been invoked. Someone made an offer as of five-thirty, yesterday afternoon. I got over here to tell you as soon as I could.”

“It can’t be true! You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

He shook his head. Lissa closed her eyes tight. She didn’t know why her brain kept insisting on denying the truth. Her stomach already knew it. It lay so heavily within her she was one big ache. Her head spun. How could this be happening? Steve had said … No! Her every instinct told her he hadn’t lied. He loved her. She had to trust him. It was not his father who’d put in the offer. Someone else had. “But who?”

She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Drysdale spoke cheerfully, cutting into her chaotic thoughts, “You know I can’t tell you that, Lissa. But if you and your committee can come up with the money before half-past five on Saturday, you’re in. If not, you’re out.”

How could he sound so uncaring, so unfeeling? Didn’t he know what this meant to the community, to her father? “But John! You know we won’t have the tally from the festival until Sunday at the earliest! You can’t do this to us!”

“It’s not personal, Lissa. It’s business. I represent the vendor. I have to accept the offer of anyone who comes to me with the cash.”

“But we’ll have it!” she protested. “We will!”

He shrugged. “Maybe so, but if you don’t have it by Saturday, it’ll be too late. Sorry, Lissa. See you.”

“Wait!” she said, taking two running steps after him. “John, don’t … don’t tell anyone else about this. Not yet. Please. Not with the festival so close.” Was there a chance, some small, remote chance, they could pull it off?

He shrugged, “No skin off my nose. I don’t want to rain on your parade. Just so long as you realize I’ll need a check by five-thirty Saturday afternoon.” He paused. “Certified.”

She closed her eyes again. When she opened them, John Drysdale was gone.

Twenty minutes later, she sat staring in dismay at the figures Debra Hix, treasurer of the committee, showed her. Debra, a canny businesswoman, owner of the hardware store, and successful accountant in her “spare” time, knew what she was talking about. Her gray eyes gazed compassionately into Lissa’s as she ran a hand through her short, crisp hair. “I don’t see any way, honey.”

“Not even if we collect the cash from all the community-sponsored booths just before five on Saturday?”

Sadly, Debbie shook her head. “It won’t be enough. We’ll still need the percentage we get from all the other booths, and even then, it’ll be a squeaker. And we won’t see any of that for at least three days. Most of it will take a couple of weeks to get to us. And the bank’s not even open on Saturday afternoon at that time to certify a check even if we could get enough cash in the account.”

“Then it’s game over.”

Debbie studied the figures, tapped the paper with her pencil, and said, “Maybe we could try for a loan again. Damn! If the hardware store wasn’t so heavily mortgaged, I’d offer to put it up as collateral, but …”

Lissa hugged her. She knew how hopeless it was to try to get a loan. They’d tried. But as a group, they had no assets. The bank wouldn’t talk to them.

“Thanks, Deb. I’d do the same with Boss Lady, only she’s got a mortgage as big as some small countries’ national debt. I just don’t know how I’m going to tell my dad.”

Debbie nodded with understanding. “Then don’t. Not yet. Let him enjoy as much of the festival as he can. Deals have fallen through before, you know, and until the last minute of those seventy-two hours has run out, we really haven’t lost.”

Unconvinced, Lissa left the hardware store.

All she wanted now was to crawl into Steve’s arms, have him hold her, comfort her, tell her it would be all right. The depth of her need for him scared her.

She went to him anyway.

She found him exactly where she’d expected to. “I’ll have a kid down here,” he was saying as she approached his booth. She couldn’t see him, so he must be crouched behind the counter. “He’ll hook a shoe on each time someone puts a line down, but every third shoe will be that Birkenstock sandal I told you about, since every ticket buys three chances.”

The woman he addressed laughed. “Since you know who was in the attic, darling, why does it matter who owns the sandal?”

Lissa stopped in her tracks. Darling?

“It doesn’t,” he said. “but someone has to win the grand prize, Mom, since I’ve already offered it.” Lissa stared at Loretta Forsythe’s elegant, silk-bloused back. Mom?

Her ears hummed so loud she almost missed Steve’s next words. “It may as well be the woman who fits the sandal, in true Cinderella fashion. Dad’s offered a two week, all-expenses vacation. Someone might as well enjoy it.”

“Too bad it’s not your Lissa’s sandal, Stevie. The hot-springs resort would make a good place for a honeymoon. Almost as good as the Madrona Inn.”

Steve thumped something under the counter, then stood, his normal grin on his face. “You let me worry about that, Mom. The last thing I want is—Lissa!”

She stared at him, reading the guilt on his face, the shock, the truth.

Still, she had to say it. “Mom? This woman is your mother?”

“Yes.” He scrambled out from behind the counter. “Lissa, God, don’t look at me like that! Please, listen to me. I can explain. I—”

“Go to hell, Steve Jackson,” she said, and her words seemed to stop him in midstride. “Just go to hell. I was a total idiot to believe you, to trust you. Well, never again.” She laughed, her voice cracking. “And to think I came to you for comfort when I heard someone had invoked the seventy-two hour clause! Okay, fine. You’ve won. We won’t have enough money to make good our bid for several days after that. I hope you and your family enjoy your new acquisition.”

She spun on her heel and marched across the park, seeing no one, hearing no one. It took her all of five minutes to unplug everything, cast off and head Boss Lady out of Madrona Cove. Okay, so she was running away. She knew it, and she didn’t care.

How many dragons was one woman supposed to try to slay in a lifetime? She’d taken on her last one and she’d lost. Funny how she’d never before noticed how much a dragon could resemble a snake.

If only she didn’t have to go back to the Cove for the festival, Lissa thought. She’d just keep right on traveling. Desolation Sound would make an appropriate destination, wouldn’t it, given the state of her emotions?

But her father would be devastated enough to learn of the loss of his last shot at regaining the inn. She couldn’t desert him when he needed her the most. Still, she needed some time to herself before the festival began. She’d anchor out until Saturday morning. She was entitled to time and space to lick her wounds.

H
E MADE A BEAUTIFUL
Prince Charming. Steve looked better in purple tights and puffy pantaloons than Lissa could possibly have imagined. The knee-length pants, gold with royal-purple insets, matched his ermine trimmed gold crown, and his gold tunic molded to his chest like paint.

A parade of hopeful Cinderellas flocked to his royal booth. He ushered each one to a gilt throne, seated her as if she were a real princess, and handed her a fishing pole. Then he knelt before her and tried to fit each shoe she caught to her foot. Most didn’t fit, but each visitor left happily, dizzily overwhelmed by the consolation prize—one of his exquisite kisses.

She shouldn’t have come back. She’d realized that the minute she finished tying up the boat and heard the festivities carrying on as if no one had missed her. Conscience, loyalty, duty and concern about her father had forced her to haul up anchor and chug back to the Cove.

Well, she was here now. And she was damned if she’d let Steve, or anyone else, see how shattered she was inside. Strolling around the park, she checked on most of the booths, acting like the coordinator she was supposed to be. She dealt with minor problems, laughed and joked and hid her pain deep inside. When she came to Steve’s booth, though, she sailed right on past. No one there even seemed to notice her presence. “Hey, Caroline, could you use a break?” she asked, approaching the kissing booth.

“Wow, could I ever!” Caroline patted her lips with her fingertips. “They’re beginning to wear out. Take over—it’s all yours.”

Lissa put her heart and soul into every kiss she sold, breaking Caroline’s rule of no touching except for lips. Soon a line as long as Steve’s had formed in front of the kissing booth. Money piled up in the cash drawer. Lissa’s head spun with weariness and her lips ached from overuse. Hey, she thought groggily, maybe they’d take in enough from this booth alone to meet the deadline—if it wasn’t for the need of a certified check. But wait. Cash was legal tender. Surely that trumped a check, certified or not, any day.

Caroline came back after her lunch break, took one look at the overflowing cash box and stepped in to help take up some of the slack.

“Holy cow!” she muttered to Lissa between patrons. “I wish I’d agreed to full-body contact years ago. We’d have had that inn long ago! I hope you can stick around for the rest of the afternoon. Then, if Jase comes over, I can tell him the lineup’s for you.”

Caroline flung herself wholeheartedly into a kiss that left her client staggering, as Lissa finished with her own. Then she looked up at the next man in line, and saw a tilted golden crown and a pair of blue eyes glaring into hers.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said in a low voice, but obviously furious. “You took off with everything I own, you know. I didn’t have so much as a razor! And your dad’s been going nuts, worrying about you.”

She couldn’t have cared less about his razor. He appeared perfectly shaved. “Well, he’ll have something a whole lot worse to worry about soon, won’t he?” She looked pointedly at her watch which read one-thirty-five.

“Lissa, if you hadn’t—”

“Hey, you gonna pay your money and get your kiss, or you gonna stand there yacking?” asked the guy behind him.

Steve glanced over his satin shoulder and said, “There’s another kisser.”

“Yeah, but this is the one I lined up for. Move it, pal, or you might find yourself getting a fist in your kisser.”

Steve slapped his money on the counter and grabbed Lissa, bending her over his arm and kissing the living daylights out of her. When he lifted his head and stood her upright, she was the one ready to stagger. She was extremely careful not to, but shoved his money in the drawer and turned to the impatient next-in-line. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve stalk back to his booth where his lineup was twenty deep again.