Lawman of the Year, his Sam Browne belt, and even his motorcycle police boots, shined like mirrors. And somehow while dancing he was managing to hold his wide-brimmed hat in his uninjured hand.
The only trouble with Cinderella and Prince Charming was that Buck knew all too well who Cinderella really was. Awake or asleep she was beginning to haunt him, the most tantalizing, puzzling, desirable female he had ever known. But he knew in his heart that didn’t make it right. She was still Devil Anse’s granddaughter.
Besides, at any moment the clock would strike midnight and the whole thing would turn upside down.
Cinderella put her hand on his arm and said something Buck couldn’t quite make out. Sure enough, the clock was striking. He noticed now his bad arm was in a sling.
“Be careful,” Buck started to say.
Instead, she twined herself around him. The music grew faster. They spun with it. Buck couldn’t break away. She pressed against him so tightly his shoulder was in agony.
“Ow!” Buck yelled, becoming fully awake.
He still couldn’t move. The same body held him down in the bed, and hands – a mouth – were on his face. His bad arm was caught in between, shooting arrows of pain up into his collarbone. With an oath Buck flailed both arms, disregarding the agony, and flung himself out of bed, dragging the leechlike body with him.
“Wait!” Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs cried. “I’m just tryin’ to make it easier! For both of us!”
Buck staggered to the bedside lamp, hauling her with him. He turned it on.
“Easier?” He tried to pry her arms from around his neck, aware as he did so that her warm, slightly struggling body was pressed intimately against his pajama front. “What do you mean,” he bellowed, “easier for
He had no idea what she was talking about. The only thing that was plain was that the Scraggs girl was trying to assault him in his own bedroom. Had tried, actually, to crawl in bed with him.
“Yes.” Those luminous dark eyes were right in his. Her grip was surprisingly strong; he still hadn’t been able to get her hands unclasped from around his neck. “I’m gonna give you what you want,” she whispered huskily.
Without warning Scarlett Scraggs stood on tiptoe, strained upward, and glued her mouth against Buck’s.
His first impulse was to wrench her away from him using whatever force necessary. But then, as those indescribably soft and tempting lips pressed against his, Buck found his vision fogging. The room seemed to slowly revolve. Sensation became so heated that the knifelike pain in his arm and shoulder faded completely away.
Reluctantly, his own arms went around her.
“Scarlett,” he murmured, knowing he was a damned fool but not able to summon enough willpower to do much about it, “open your mouth.”
She did. Wide open.
“Not like that, sweetheart.” He put his thumb under the tip of her chin to gently close it. “Let’s try this again.”
Even as he spoke a small voice in the back of his mind warned him that Scarlett’s actual words were that she was going to give him what he wanted. Buck had no idea what he wanted at that moment, except the impossible.
He was lost. So drowned in the sexy, tender warmth of Devil Anse’s granddaughter that his mouth gently explored her lips and felt them open to him. It was a long time before Buck drew back. After that memorable kiss, Scarlett’s look was as dreamily unfocused as his.
He suddenly had a terrible suspicion. “Scarlett,” Buck said hoarsely, “have you ever been kissed before?”
He could see the answer in her face.
Scarlett Scraggs stood before him in a nightshirt with a faded Atlanta Braves logo on it, evidently something from the church’s used-clothing boxes, her beautiful young breasts thrusting up under the cloth temptingly. Around her ravishing face her dark curls were tumbled and mussed, her mouth slightly swollen with kissing. She looked ravishing. It was more than Buck could stand.
Somewhat roughly, he took her by the hand and pulled her to the door.
“Whatever this is all about,” Buck found himself saying, “it’ll have to wait until morning. We’ll thrash it out then.”
She pulled back from him. “I don’t want to wait until morning. We gotta -”
“It will wait,” Buck barked, “oh, yes it will!” He needed to get her out of there.
But she grabbed the doorjamb with both hands. “Don’t put me out yet! I need to talk to you!”
He pried her fingers loose. “You’ve got to go, Scarlett.” God knows there was regret in his heart.
“I’m sorry, but my – uh, bedroom is no place for you right now.”
She tried to fling herself at him again. “Well then, why can’t you kiss me one more time?” Those gorgeous dark eyes flashed up at him. “You can do that much, can’t you?”
“Not on your life!”
He pushed Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs out into the hall, and shut the door. He was, he realized, shaking.
Buck started for bed, then thought better of it, and returned to the door. And locked it.
Ten
The next morning the weather over the Blue Ridge mountains had cleared, but it was still cold, and the wind blew. Someone on the lower branches of the Living Christmas Tree lost their music to a sudden gust and sheets fluttered away across the courthouse lawn like a flock of winter birds. A burst of laughter broke up the chorus of “The Wassailing Song” and the singers straggled to a stop.
“All right, all right,” Mr. Ravenwood, the Nancyville high school bandmaster shouted. “Let’s hold it down.”
Some of the children who were too small to be a part of the tree were sent to chase the music. Scarlett wrapped her free arm around the wooden bar that held up her part of the scaffolding and shivered so hard that it made the boards shake.
Beside her, Farrie said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m just cold, that’s all.”
Her little sister’s expression said that Scarlett should have worn the good corduroy coat she’d gotten from Judy Heamstead’s church clothing boxes instead of just a light denim jacket. Everyone on the tree or down below among the parked cars was huddled in parkas or down-filled ski coats.
Farrie herself looked like a different child in a blue and white windbreaker, a knitted cap with a big white pompom, and matching blue mittens. Her eyes blazed with excitement, and her cheeks, red with the cold, looked as though someone had painted them. But then Farrie had been singing, Scarlett told herself. Anytime Farrie could sing she was happy.
“What’s going on? Who’s doing that up there?” Mr. Ravenwood had come close to the tree. “Stop it! You’re making the whole thing shake.”
Scarlett ducked her head. The last thing she wanted was to attract attention.
