Cinderella Search Read Online Free

head. The blood’s from my nose, the result of that crazy woman kicking me.”
    “Woman?” Lissa made her eyes big and round. “Oh, yes. You mentioned a woman when you called downstairs. Where … um, where is she?”
    He tilted his head back to stare at the hole. She watched him swallow before he turned to her. “I don’t know.” His brows drew together. “I couldn’t pull her down, so I boosted her back up. At her request.”
    His eyes narrowed as he glanced at her. “I use the word ‘request’ loosely. She threw the trunk at me, then disappeared.”
    “Of course.” Lissa nodded sympathetically. “This woman who disappeared threw the trunk at you.” She smiled kindly. “Are you absolutely sure it didn’t hit you on the head?”
    “Yes, dammit, I’m sure! Listen, if you think I’m imagining the woman, I can give you details. She’s wearing ugly brown leather sandals, has long legs, and some kind of bug tattooed on her butt. This is a small town. Doesn’t that help you identify her?”
    Lissa kept her face serene and her tone even. She prayed the tingle of heat she felt in her face didn’t show as a betraying blush. “No, sir,” she said. “Uh, you were at Chuckles this evening, I believe?”
    He glared. “I am not drunk.”
    “Of course not, sir. I wasn’t suggesting you were.”
    He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his low-slung jeans, his blue eyes narrowing to slits. “You sure as hell were.”
    “It’s just that …” She shrugged helplessly and worked up a consoling smile. “Well, sometimes people on vacation feel a little more relaxed than they normally do, and drink more than they intended and then begin to take some of the local legends too seriously, and—”
    “Legends?” He snorted derisively. “Oh, you mean the ghost.”
    Feeling like an idiot, but knowing it was for a good cause, Lissa said, “I wouldn’t dismiss her too lightly. She was my great-grandmother. She appears to some people or makes her presence known in other ways. Sometimes she laughs, though mostly she cries.”
    He gave her a skeptical grin. “Oh? Why?”
    “Shortly after my great-grandfather, who built the inn, died, she lost one of the pearl earrings he’d given her for their tenth anniversary. She was distraught, and spent one long, rainy December night outside with a lantern, searching for it all over the grounds. She got pneumonia. The staff put her to bed—the family lived here on the top floor—and she continued wandering from room to room in delirium, trying to find that earring. She died, leaving her only child, my grandfather, an orphan. They say she’s still searching for her earring.”
    She rubbed her arms as if a chill had run over her and looked over her shoulder. “I spent my summers in this very room, and I can tell you … odd things happen.”
    He bit his bottom lip for an instant, looking just a little uneasy. She had to struggle to keep a straight face. “You own this inn?” he asked.
    “My family used to,” she said.
    “My father owns several resorts,” he said. “I don’t think any of them are haunted.”
    Well! He was certainly up-front about what his father did. Maybe he didn’t realize they all knew exactly why he was here.
    “I can’t swear the place is haunted,” she said. “My dad insists the sounds are nothing more than the wind in the limbs of the arbutus tree the inn’s named for.”
    “Madrona Inn is named for an arbutus tree?”
    “Madrona is the Spanish name for the tree. This is one of the northernmost specimens on the coast, and one of the oldest, I think, judging by its size. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. The big, gnarled, twisted, red-barked tree outside the dining room? It comes right up to the windows on this floor and sometimes makes terrible noises when the wind blows. That’s probably all you heard tonight.” She hoped she’d managed to inject a note of doubt into her voice.
    She smiled. “Also, if you’ve had a little more