Read Cinderfella for Free Online Page B

was not Ash Coleman! Why, her Ash was beautiful. Smart and witty and handsome. He had to be. That was the way she had remembered him all these years. This man had done battle with a pig and lost, ending up face down in the mud. She’d seen a portion of the undignified contest as she’d approached the farm, but it hadn’t occurred to her, not once, that the man she watched might be Ash.
    Eight years was a very long time.
    â€œI can’t stay long,” she began cautiously, having no choice but to accept this man’s claim that he was, indeed, Ash Coleman. “I heard about your father, and I just wanted to pay my respects.”
    Ash nodded his head in acknowledgment, but his eyes never left her, didn’t drop to the ground or stray to the side.
    â€œYour father was,” she said softly, “a wonderful man.”
    He stepped forward. “Yes, he was.” There was a huskiness in his voice that hadn’t been there eight years ago, another reminder that Ash Coleman was a man, now, and not a boy. “He always liked you, Runt, better than those prissy sisters of yours. He said you had sand.”
    When he grinned, his smile was startlingly white against a mud-splattered face and heavy dark beard. Another step, and he stood beside her. He placed a soothing, muddy hand on the horse’s neck.
    â€œDid he really?”
    Ash lifted his arms to assist her from the saddle. Long, muddy, wet arms. Impossibly long, impossibly muddy. When she’d left Salley Creek he’d been lanky and perhaps a trifle awkward, but he’d grown into his height in the past eight years. Ash’s legs were long but not too long, and he seemed comfortable in his tall body, graceful in a way that was impossible for growing boys. He was lean still, but there was nothing skinny about him. The shoulders were wide, the arms muscular, and the legs filled those denim trousers almost obscenely. His hands were big and strong and dirty, a working man’s hands offered to her. Goodness, if she thought about this a moment longer she was going to blush and stammer like a silly girl, and that would never do.
    She hesitated, looking down critically. “You seem to have stepped into something.”
    He glanced down at the big battered boots that had recently been dragged through the mud and otherwise befouled.
    â€œWell,” he drawled. “This is a farm. It happens.”
    Charmaine had no intention of leaving her safe and relatively clean perch. Obviously Ash realized this, and he let his arms fall. The mare pranced anxiously, and Ash reached out to soothe her once again, this time with a few soft words as well as his muddy hand against the mare’s neck.
    â€œWe’re having a big party in two weeks,” she blurted out, deciding to proceed with the other purpose of her visit. “A masked ball, actually,” she sighed. “I know it’s ridiculous, but my father is bound and determined to prove to me that there’s nothing I can have in Boston that I can’t have here.”
    â€œStuart Haley always was a stubborn man,” Ash said softly.
    Charmaine didn’t attempt to defend her father against the all-too-true charge. “You’re invited, of course,” she said brightly. Perhaps too brightly. “It should be fun. Everyone will be there.”
    â€œI’m not much for parties,” Ash said. His eyes were no longer locked on her, they were on the horse’s fine, creamy neck. “But I appreciate the invitation.”
    It was a very nice refusal, and Charmaine found she was ungraciously relieved. Perhaps some things from childhood shouldn’t be revisited. They didn’t always stand up to expectations. “Well, if you change your mind. . . . ”
    â€œNow, my stepmother and my stepbrothers, I’m sure they’d enjoy a masked ball,” he said with a hint of amusement.
    â€œBy all means, I’d love for them to come, also. I