by Julia London
“O-kay,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not perfect, okay? I know you’re pissed, but I—”
“Uh-uh,” Ella said. “Nope. Not listening. And I won’t until you apologize.”
“I just did! I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
“Not to me, Stacy, to Mariah. You have to apologize, and pay for the dress. You have to make this right!”
“Okay,” Stacy said. “I will, I swear I will, but Ella, will you please listen to me?”
Ella sighed. She knew how this would go. Stacy would apologize. She might even apologize to Mariah and make good on the dress. She’d swear she’d never do it again, but something would happen, and instead of facing her demons, she would shoplift again and say she couldn’t help it.
“Are you there?” Stacy asked plaintively.
“Yes. Fine, whatever. What do you have to tell me?”
“You know the sheriff?”
“No. I mean I’ve seen him, that’s all.”
“Sheriff Hurst is his name.”
“Right,” Ella said.
“He’s the one who hired me, which, you were right, I really needed the job, because it looks like me and the guys are going to Nashville in a couple of weeks. Anyway, I need my paycheck to help move us, but the sheriff has been harassing me.”
Ella pulled up to a stoplight. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” Stacy said impatiently. “He’s handsy. He remembers me from something that happened a long time ago, and he’s using it against me.”
“What happened?” Ella asked, confused.
Stacy sighed. “It’s a long story. I took something. Can’t I tell you over drinks?”
Ella didn’t want to have drinks with Stacy. She didn’t want to hear about another theft.
“Ella, please. I need you.”
She hated when Stacy appealed to her sense of loyalty. “Why am I still your friend?” she groaned.
“I don’t deserve you. I really don’t. And I wouldn’t ask you, but honestly? I’m a little scared. This guy won’t leave me alone, and I really don’t like where it’s going.”
“Okay,” Ella said, giving in. “Okay, Stacy.”
“Thank you!” Stacy said in relief.
“You promise you’ll apologize to Mariah?” Ella demanded.
“Yes, I will! Tonight? I mean, can I meet you tonight?”
“Not tonight. Friday. Come by the Magnolia at five. That’s an hour before my shift starts.”
“Okay. Thank you, Ella!”
“Call Mariah!”
It was too late—Stacy had already hung up.
Ella muttered a few things under her breath about Stacy, then drove home, her errands forgotten, her mind a million miles away, back in that foster house where Pam and Gary fought like cats while Stacy and Ella hid under a cover with a flashlight, trying with everything they had to pretend all was normal. When Ella graduated from college, Stacy was there, cheering loudly. When Stacy played her first big gig, Ella was there. She loved Stacy; she really did. But why did Stacy have to steal?
Ella was mulling it over as she turned onto the county road that led to her house, wondering if it was even possible that Stacy could change without a major intervention, like therapy. Or worse—jail.
She didn’t see Luca’s horse when she pulled up under the oak tree. She didn’t see him until she was walking up to the house and saw him on her porch steps. He was wearing a dirty white T-shirt, jeans and chaps, and a cowboy hat. And he was clutching a bouquet of wildflowers.
Ella’s heart began to skip through its own field of sunflowers. She smiled at him sitting like a poster child for sexy, romantic cowboys.
She forgot about Stacy.
She forgot what Mateo had said.
No matter what she thought of her and Luca’s situation, or whatever it was they were doing with each other, she was still mentally pinching herself with happiness every time he came around, and she didn’t want to stop until she was black and blue.
Chapter Twenty-four
Luca stood up as Ella walked up to the porch. She shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand and looked at the bouquet, tied with a string. “Are those for me?”
“For you,” he said. “But you may have to fight Priscilla for them. She thinks they’re her afternoon snack.”
Ella gazed up at him as she took the flowers from his hand. Her blue eyes were shining with pleasure, and Luca thought he could spend the rest of his life doing nothing but putting that smile on her face.
“I’m going to put them in some water. Come in,” she said. She was still smiling as she went up the steps and around him, her arm brushing against his before she unlocked her door and walked inside.
Luca followed her. He would follow this woman anywhere.
She went to the sink and filled a Mason jar with water. As she began to stuff the flowers into the jar, Luca walked up behind her and put his arms around her waist and kissed her nape. “I probably smell like a barnyard,” he muttered.
“You smell like sun and air,” she said.
He moved his mouth to her ear, and she bent her head to give him room. “I’ve missed you, Ella.”
She laughed softly. “You saw me just last night.”
“Yeah, but there were other people around us. It’s not the same.”
“No,” she agreed. She finished arranging the flowers in the jar.
“So,” he said, wondering how best to speak of things that rattled around in him. “I had a good time last night.”
“Yeah, it seemed so,” she said.
Her response, on a scale of one to ten, ten being a trip to the moon and one being a funeral, was about a three.
She stepped away from him with her jar of flowers to set them on the scarred bistro table she’d dug out of some trash heap.
Luca studied her, trying to gauge her mood. “We talked a lot about the ranch,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“We sprung the fund-raiser on you, too. I know I mentioned it before, but now we have a date. I would really love for you to come, Ella.”
“Oh, you don’t need me there,” she said, and gave a bit of a laugh.
Something uncomfortable fluttered in Luca’s heart. As if his heart had detected the unspoken subtext he feared. “I don’t need you there. I want you there.”
She winced. Winced. “I’ve never been to a fund-raiser or a fancy party—”
“It’s just a party,” he said quickly. “No big deal.”
She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “You mean it’s no big deal for you.”
Luca didn’t understand what was happening right now. Was the idea of a party at his family’s ranch that upsetting to her? Or was it something else? She had never once given him any reason to suspect she was intimidated by his name or his wealth. That’s what he appreciated about her—she knew who he was and cut him no slack for it. And she’d seemed so interested in what he was trying to accomplish. At least he thought she had.
“Is it my family?” he asked, landing on that idea. “I know I haven’t said a lot about them, but they are good people—”
“Luca,” she said quietly, cutting him off. “It’s not your family. It’s that I don’t belong at your house. I don’t want to go and meet a bunch of people I will never see again. I don’t have the fancy manners for an affair like that. I’m liable to do something I won’t even know is wrong. Use the wrong fork or something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re so different,” she said. “We come from very different backgrounds and life experiences and world views. And that . . . that world is nothing to do with me.”
It was his privilege, then. This was his fault—he’d been so caught up in her, and in the little fantasy he’d been living in here at the ol
d Kendall place, that he hadn’t really looked at it from her perspective. He couldn’t begin to guess what she’d heard about Three Rivers Ranch and the Prince family. He glanced at his watch. “Do you have someplace to be in the morning?”
“Not until tomorrow afternoon. Why?”
“I would like to take you to dinner. I’m going to ride home and get cleaned up. Then I’m going to pick you up. Wear a dress.”
“Wait, what? I’ve got some things I have to do—”
He shook his head. “This is my fault, Ella. I haven’t taken you on a proper date. I haven’t shown you my world. I have loved every minute being here, with you, away from all that,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Three Rivers Ranch. “I didn’t think about what you might need from me. I’m going to change that. Tonight. We can stay at my place in town.”
“Tonight?” She looked around her little kitchen. “What about the animals?”
He laughed. “They survived until you showed up to save them, didn’t they?”
“But I have to work.”
“When is the last time you took a day or two off from your work?”
She paused as if trying to remember her last vacation. “Give me a minute.”
“That’s what I thought.” He drew her into his arms. “Come on, baby—put on a pretty dress. Let me take you out and try to impress you.”
A very tentative smile began to curve her lips. “I’m pretty jaded, you know. I’d hate to see you get all dressed up and then I’m not impressed.”
“I love a challenge,” he said, and kissed her before she could refuse him. Luca was fundamentally an optimist. He believed that if he just hung in there, Ella would eventually see that what they had together was pretty damn great, and his wealth, and her lack of it, had no bearing on that. None. So he kissed her slowly and thoroughly, hoping he chased every doubt from her head. When he finally pulled away, he said, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Does that give you enough time?”
“I didn’t say I was going,” she said.
Luca groaned playfully. “At the risk of seeming too aggressive in this day and age, what if I say I’m not going anywhere until you say yes?”
Ella’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “A good feminist would advise you to rethink that. Lucky for you, I’m a mediocre feminist—so mediocre that I will ask you what sort of dress should I wear?”
Luca smiled with relief. “I am also only a mediocre feminist. Wear any dress you like—you look fantastic in everything, including snow boots.”
“Now you’re trying to butter me up,” she said with a broad smile. “You have to give me some clue. Are you picking me up in your truck or your Sombra?”
“Sombra,” he said without hesitation.
“Ooh, so it’s a Sombra kind of evening. That’s a different kind of dress altogether.”
“Does this mean you are officially agreeing to go out with me?” he asked.
“I’m going to let you try to impress me,” she said. “But it’s not a date.”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t even think of dating you.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back.”
“You said that like a thousand times already,” she teased him.
“Repetition is my only hope of getting through to you.”
She followed him to the door and leaned up against the post on the porch railing at the top of the stairs, watching him jog down to his horse and swing up on its back. He pulled the reins into his hand and turned his mount around. “See you soon,” he said.
“For heaven’s sake, go on already,” she said, laughing, and wiggled her fingers at him in a playful wave good-bye.
Luca rode full bore back to the ranch, even opting to cross the river at a low point rather than ride around to the old trestle bridge.
It was a running gag, this business of not dating, but he was beginning to feel a little anxious. He had the unsettling feeling that she would bolt on him if he wasn’t careful, and run off like a skittish fox. Maybe he was imagining things, but something was telling him that he and Ella were not quite on the same page.
The idea that she might not be feeling all the things he was feeling alarmed him. Which is why he intended to pull out all the stops tonight.
If she was going to bolt, at least he’d make sure she knew what she was bolting from.
Chapter Twenty-five
Ella had once read in a magazine that all a woman needed in her wardrobe was a good pair of jeans and a little black dress. She’d taken the advice to heart. She had lots of jeans, and after searching sale racks and thrift stores, she’d finally found a lovely black dress in a resale shop. It was sleeveless, made of silk and chiffon. It skimmed her legs just above her knees and had a V-neck so deep that she had to wear a special bra.
She put her hair up in a messy chignon just like she’d seen Stacy do with her hair extensions, and clipped on some fake pearl drop earrings that had not lost their luster. She added a delicate gold chain and heart necklace, the one Stacy had given to her when she’d graduated from college. I am so proud of you, Ella, she’d said. And then had promptly produced the receipt, in case there was any question about where she’d gotten the jewelry.
Ella slipped her feet into a pair of black stilettos and winced. She rarely wore heels this high and hoped she didn’t have to walk too far, because there was a strong possibility she’d hobble herself if she did. In her bedroom, she squinted at her reflection in the tarnished mirror, turning one way, then the other. “Okay,” she said to Buddy. “I think I’m ready. What do you think?”
His tail bumped hard against the wood floor.
“You probably say that to all the girls,” she said.
She gave the dog a biscuit, then made sure Priscilla had plenty of water on the back porch. Then she went outside and sat carefully on the steps of the porch to wait for Luca, because God knew he’d sneak up on her in that Sombra and probably find her hiking up her Spanx. She decided Luca was right—this sagging porch would be a lot more comfortable with a couple of chairs.
Her instincts were spot on, because she saw the Sombra before she heard its faint hum. And then Luca stepped out of the car.
She was not expecting this. She was not expecting her heart to leap right to her throat or her stomach to flutter quite so much. The man was truly stunning, and she felt seventeen all over again, all fluttery inside. Normally, she thought there was nothing quite as sexy as a cowboy in a faded T-shirt and dirty jeans, the sign of a man who worked for a living. But this guy, this handsome, debonair man walking toward her now blew the cowboy out of the water.
Luca was dressed like a man of the world, in slim black pants that fit him like a second skin, a dark blue checked jacket, and a dark blue collared shirt. He had brushed his hair back behind his ears and had shaved, and he smiled at her, all snowy white teeth and shining hazel eyes. He was breathtakingly beautiful. He looked like a real, honest-to-God prince. All he needed was a sash across his chest and a sword on his hip.
Ella slowly stood up, holding on to the railing to keep the fluttering from carrying her away.
“Wow,” Luca said. He walked up the steps and took her hands in his, spreading her arms wide and smiling as he ran his gaze over her. When he lifted his eyes to hers again, he gave her a sheepish smile. “Ella . . . do you have any idea how beautiful you are? Bella Ella.”
Bella Ella. “Thank you,” she said shyly. “And you have outdone yourself, sir. Very dashing.”
“Thank you,” he said with an incline of his head. “You have no idea how badly I want to zip that dress off you right now.”
“No way,” she warned him, and pressed a hand to her abdomen. “I put on Spanx for this, and I worked up quite an appetite squeezing into this dress. You have to feed me, as promised.”
He grinned. “Anything you want, Ella. Anything at all.”
T
he fluttering in her belly morphed into what felt like a vortex of geese. No one had ever said that to her before, and she didn’t know if he meant it or if it was just talk, the sort of thing men said on a fancy date, but he had a way of looking at her and speaking to her that made her feel as if she mattered. As if she truly meant something to him.
And she had never meant anything to anyone.
Luca tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and escorted her to the infamous Sombra.
On the way into the city, she examined the car and its various features. She was amazed by the technology alone. “My car is so old. I didn’t know they make them like this,” she said as she leaned forward to check out all the features on the dashboard.
“Your car is so old, I’m surprised you don’t have to hand crank it every morning,” he said, and folded her hand into his, resting it on the console, and continued to hold it for the thirty-minute drive into San Antonio.
At the Riverwalk, he pulled up to a valet stand outside a French restaurant. He tossed the key fob to the kid who jogged around to the driver’s side while another attendant helped Ella from the car. “The usual place, sir?” the young man asked.
“The usual place,” Luca said, and winked at Ella. With his hand on the small of her back, he escorted her inside. She breathed in the rarified air of a restaurant with tuxedoed waitstaff and tables covered in crisp white linens. It was the most upscale restaurant she’d ever been in.
“Good evening, Mr. Prince,” the maître d’ said. “We have your usual table ready, if you would care to follow me.” He began to walk, and Luca took Ella’s hand as they followed him.
“You have a usual table?” she whispered.
“I do,” he whispered back.
The table was set before a curved booth covered in red velvet. The view was of the Riverwalk, and the doors were open to the evening air. Two young men appeared and, in a flurry, put napkins in their laps and arranged china and silver and a variety of wine glasses. The last glass of wine Ella had drunk was out of a red Solo cup.