Free Fortune's Cinderella by Karen Templeton

even less sure why her mother’d come. Especially since Sandra had made it more than plain from the moment she walked into Christina’s room that not only was her boss at the restaurant where she worked as a hostess, a job she’d held on to, according to her, “for security,” even after her remarriage—not happy about her leaving early, but that she couldn’t stay because she needed to get back to Houston ASAP.
    Probably to fix Helpless Harry—Sandra’s husband, although not Christina’s stepfather by any stretch of the imagination—his supper.
    “But…I could use some help getting home,” Christina said. “Since you’re here and all.”
    “Oh.” Sandra checked her watch. Something flashy. Christina was guessing Harry had Money. Taste, no. Money, yes. Then blue eyes rimmed with far too much eyeliner met Christina’s. Her mother had been pretty, once upon a time, blond and cute and curvy.
    And she still was, on a good day, in the right light. Hospital fluorescents, however, were not kind to older women with penchants for fake tans and frosted lipstick. Her all-black outfit wasn’t helping, either. “But…if I hadn’t come, what would you have done?”
    After Christina’s father walked out—there’d been some talk of Christina’s being a “surprise,” that her father had only married Sandra out of guilt—Sandra hadn’t exactly embraced single motherhood with grace and fortitude. Oh, she’d done her best, Christina never doubted that. Unfortunately, her “best” hadn’t been very good.
    “Never mind,” Christina said, even though she had no earthly clue what to do. She didn’t have cab fare, if she could even find a driver willing to haul her all the way to Red Rock. And her seventy-eight-year-old landlady didn’t drive anymore. At least not that Christina knew about. She supposed she could call Jimmy, her boss, for a ride, but the very thought made her skin crawl. Recently divorced, Jimmy was a lonely man. A fact which he took great pains to impress upon Christina every chance he got.
    “Oh, now, I’m sure you’ll figure out something,” her mother said. “You always do. Here,” she said, upending a used Walmart bag onto the end of Christina’s bed. Out tumbled a pair of blindingly purple Spandex capris and a badly pilled, black and silver sweater, along with a pair of underpants—at least three sizes too large—and a stretched-out camisole top. “I brought you some clothes, like you asked. But I didn’t figure there was any point in bringing one of my bras—it would be way too big for you. Don’t bother returning them, it’s all stuff from the Goodwill pile, anyway.”
    Christina stared at the clothes, closer to tears now than when she’d thought she might die. Which at the moment seemed preferable to wearing these clothes. She never asked, or expected, anything from her mother, but just this once—since, you know, she had cheated death and all—would it have killed the woman to drop a few bucks for a pair of Hanes sweats or something? Some new underwear in Christina’s size—?
    “Oh, good—you’re still here! They said at the nurses’ station you were being discharged.”
    She looked up to see a grinning—and cleaned-up, she noticed—Scott, precariously hanging onto a potted plant, a ridiculously large stuffed hound dog, a box of candy and a helium-bloated “Get Well!” balloon in about a thousand eye-popping colors, bobbing up near the ceiling.
    And her heart stuttered.
    “And who is this?” her mother asked, her nostrils flaring like a bloodhound catching a scent.
    “Mama, this is Scott Fortune. He…he and his family were also in the airport when the tornado hit. Scott, this is my mother, Sandra.”
    Somehow he shifted all the offerings into his left arm to shake her mother’s hand. “Do you live in Red Rock?”
    “Oh, good Lord, no. Not anymore. Been in Houston for several years now.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Fortune? Related to the Red Rock