Free On Lavender Lane by Joann Ross Page A

prince in shining armor would come riding up on a white horse to her family’s small northern Arizona ranch, declare her the woman he’d been searching the entire world for, and carry her off to his castle, where white swans floated on mirrored blue lakes, bluebirds sang in flowering trees, unicorns walked in wildflower meadows beneath shimmering rainbows, and everyone lived happily ever after.
    Even after she’d outgrown the unicorns, bluebirds, and rainbows, Stephanie never quite abandoned her dream.
    She’d been waiting tables at the famed El Tovar Hotel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon between her sophomore and junior year of college to raise much-needed tuition money when Peter Fletcher sat down at her table. Heir to a Colorado oil-and-mining fortune, he’d seemed intelligent, witty, and devastatingly sophisticated.
    And, if that wasn’t enough, he was, quite honestly, the most handsome man she’d ever seen who wasn’t up on a movie screen.
    With the Arizona sunset turning his hair to molten gold, he’d personified a quote she’d torn from a magazine and pasted on her bulletin board back when she’d been in middle school: “Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.”
    He’d swept her off her feet—which hadn’t been all that difficult, since she’d been waiting for him for nearly her entire life—and into his bed. Unlike Cinderella, she didn’t run away at the stroke of midnight, but stayed the night.
    The next morning, he’d complained when she’d gotten up with the sun because her current schedule had her working breakfast and dinner.
    “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” he asked, looking unbelievably hot as he lay naked amid the tangled sheets when she came out of the bathroom, dressed in the uniform she’d been wearing last night when she’d left the dining room with him.
    His chest was darkly tanned and ripped and, amazingly, after all the times they’d made love, he was blatantly, breathtakingly aroused.
    She’d done that! The idea was enough to make her head spin. Stephanie was nothing like the women she suspected he was normally attracted to. The type of tall, sophisticated blondes from wealthy families whose engagement photos always
showed up on the society pages of newspapers and glossy magazines. She was neither tall nor sophisticated. As for her family, like most ranchers, it was a constant struggle to stay afloat.
    But instead of being tired of her that next morning, as she’d secretly feared, Peter was telling her he’d miss her and didn’t know how he’d get through the lonely hours while she was delivering hash browns and fried eggs to the lodge’s breakfast crowd.
    “I want to stay,” she said. “But I really need the job.”
    He waved the statement away with that beautiful, long-fingered hand that had created such havoc over every inch of her body. “You’re too smart to be waiting tables.”
    Having been brought up to respect honest work and the people who did it, Stephanie had never felt embarrassed about her job. Until now.
    “I need the money. For college.”
    She’d thought a career in hotel or restaurant management would be fulfilling, which is why she’d first begun working at the National Park lodge during her summer vacations back in high school, starting out washing dishes and eventually working her way up to server.
    “Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it,” he said without blinking an eye.
    Her first thought was to wonder what it must be like to have so much money that you didn’t even have to think about throwing it away. Her second thought was that his offer wasn’t at all flattering.
    She tossed up her chin. She might want to stay with him, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But she was a rancher’s daughter and had a strong streak of pride.
    “I’m not some hooker you can buy to have sex with.” She’d never been promiscuous. In fact, he was only her