Cinderella's Big Sky Groom by Christine Rimmer Read Free Book Online Page B

along similar lines. She knew as well as Ross did that going to his house was taking this risky flirtation one step too far. But still…
    It was her birthday. Her special, magical Cinderella birthday. Tonight, for the first time in her life, she was living a fairy tale. She was Cinderella at the ball, Sleeping Beauty awakened and ugly-duckling-turned-swan all rolled into one.
    Don’t let it end yet, she kept thinking. Not yet. Oh, not quite yet…
    He put his hand at her back, as he’d done in the restaurant. She felt that touch through every fiber of her being. “Come on,” he said. “It’s too cold to stand here on the street a minute longer. Let’s go.”
    Â 
    The house was five miles northeast of town, perched on a rocky ledge that led down to Black Bear Lake. A soaring structure of rough-hewn spruce logs and tall, gleaming windows, it was surrounded by stately fir trees.
    Ross led her inside, took her coat and purse and put them in the closet near the front door. Then he ushered her into a massive great room, where the floor-to-ceiling fireplace was made of big smooth stones—collected from the eastern slopes of the Rockies, he told her. There was a mantel of sorts, a heavy wooden shelf, built into the stones. And a big clock on the mantel. A clock that said it was 7:36.
    Ross took a minute to open the fireplace insert and strike a match to the logs already laid over kindling within.
    As she waited for him to light the fire, Lynn admired the room. Overhead, huge logs formed the spokes of a giant arching wheel. The furniture around her looked inviting. It was upholstered in deep brown leather and jewel-toned chenille. Out the big windows, through the lacy branches of the firs, she could see the darkly gleaming waters of the lake.
    He offered coffee. “Or maybe you’d prefer brandy?”
    She decided on the brandy. The very idea of it was just so lovely and decadent. She’d never been a woman who drank brandy. Until tonight.
    At the far end of the room, and at a right angle to the fireplace, there was a long bar that divided the kitchen from the dining area. Ross went around behind the bar and took a bottle from a cabinet. From the rack overhead he removed two big balloon-shaped glasses, the kind made just for sipping brandy.
    Once he’d poured them each a glass, he gave her a tour. He led her first to his downstairs study with its own library of gold-tooled leather books, then through two bedrooms off the great room, each with its own private bath—and finally up the wide rough-hewn stairs and down a hall.
    They glanced into two more bedrooms. Then came the master suite, which was almost as big as the great room downstairs and faced northwest.
    Lynn followed him into the room, where rich-colored kilim rugs covered the hardwood floors. His bed was king-size, of heavy, dark wood. In the sitting area the leather chairs were deeply tufted, finished with nailhead trim. Western art and a few rare-looking Indian tapestries adorned the rough-textured walls. Right then, the huge windows showed only the stars and the shadowy forms of the Crazy Mountains in the distance. But in daylight, the view of blue sky and snow-capped mountains would be breathtaking.
    She murmured, “Oh, Ross. It’s just beautiful.”
    He gave her his rueful smile and ran a forefinger along the surface of a mahogany table. “Dusty, though. My housekeeper is as useless as my secretary.” He didn’t realize his mistake until the words were already out.
    Just like that, the lovely mood fizzled and faded.
    Ross’s smile faded, too. He shook his head. “That was a stupid thing to say.”
    Lynn felt as if a large hand had reached out and shaken her, jarring her cruelly from a sweet and impossible dream. What in the world was she doinghere, in a rich man’s bedroom after dark, a glass of brandy in her hand?
    She heard herself asking, “Is Trish…really all