The Reluctant Cinderella

“You mean when everyone else is gone for the holiday?”

“Exactly.” She turned to Greg, met those velvety brown eyes of his and told herself that the thrill that shimmered through her every time she looked at him didn’t mean a thing. “It’s so…peaceful. For a change.”

“Your offices are in Poughkeepsie, you said?”

She nodded. “Close to home and economical. You live here in the city now, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a loft apartment right on Broadway, two and a half blocks up from the office.”

“Convenient.”

“That’s what I tell myself….” He had a great voice. Deep. Smooth as melted chocolate. But did he sound kind of…wistful?

She thought of Carly, wondered as she’d wondered more than once in the past months just what had gone wrong there—two beautiful people with everything going for them. Two nice people. Really, their breakup made no sense.

Megan dared to suggest, “You sound…I don’t know. As if you’re not happy living in the city.”

His warm gaze cooled just a little. “I’m happy. Perfectly. And here we are….” The limo rolled to a stop in front of the restaurant and the driver got out and opened the door for them.

“Thank you, Jerry.” Greg pressed some bills into the driver’s palm. “We’ll be awhile. I’ll call for you when we’re ready to go.”

“Good enough, Mr. Banning.” Jerry tipped his chauffeur’s cap and got back behind the wheel.

After the heat of the summer day, the restaurant was cool and dim and inviting. The hostess called Greg by name and took them to a corner table. Even with half of Manhattan out of town, the place was almost full. “Must be popular,” Megan said to Greg once the hostess had left them.

“It is. Deservedly so.” The wine steward appeared. He and Greg conferred briefly. The steward nodded and left, reappearing a moment later with bottle of chenin blanc. There was pouring and tasting. Finally, the wine guy left. Greg held up his glass. “To Design Solutions. Much success.”

Oh, well. One glass wouldn’t hurt. And she was pretty much finished working for the day, anyway. She touched her glass to his. “To success.” She sipped. The wine was excellent. “Umm. Wonderful. Too wonderful….”

“Is that bad?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Not in the least.”

He leaned a little closer across the snowy white tablecloth. “You are amazing. You know that?”

A curl of alarm tightened inside her. She ordered it gone. He wasn’t putting a move on her. No way. It was just a compliment. No big deal. “People from the neighborhood are always surprised when I happen to run into them during working hours.”

“On Danbury Way you always seemed so…”

She laughed again. “I believe the word you’re looking for is shy? Or maybe bland? Or just plain dumpy…”

He pretended to look injured. “Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to—and I confess, okay? In the neighborhood I do like to, er, play it low-key.”

He sipped from his wine. “Why?”

“Habit, I guess. And, oh, I don’t know. Everyone at home sees me a certain way. And I don’t disillusion them.”

“But if it’s not the real you…”

It seemed so natural to lean toward him, to brush the back of his hand with light fingers, to enjoy the lazy, pleasured feel of that brief touch. “But it is the real me.”

He frowned, though his eyes had a teasing light in them. “Then who is it I’m sitting across from right now?”

She shrugged. “This is me, too.”

“Ah,” he said, but he still looked doubtful.

She explained further. “They’re both me. I guess this is more the new me—and at home, I’m pretty much the old me. If that makes any sense.”

“I’ll take the new you.”

Before she could come up with a suitably lighthearted reply, the waiter appeared.

After they ordered, Greg asked how she’d come to live over her sister’s garage. She explained about wanting to put everything she had into starting up her company. “That was three years ago,” she said. “And Angela and her ex, Jerome, were calling it quits. My moving into the apartment at her house worked out for everyone. Angela and the kids can use the extra money I pay in rent, and I get a nice, reasonably priced place to live. I can zip back from Poughkeepsie at four most days and stay with the kids after school until Ange gets home from work. Then, if I have anything that won’t wait, I hop the train and head back to the office to put in a few hours in the evening.”

And why was she telling him all this? As if it mattered in the least to Greg Banning how she and Angela juggled child care and the necessity of bringing home a paycheck.

He remarked in a tone that said he really was interested, “Sounds like a tight schedule.”

“It is. For both Angela and me. But we manage….”

“You’re smiling. I think you love your sister a lot.”

“Yeah. I do. She’s my best friend.”

“Any other sisters? Brothers?”

“Nope. Just the two of us—in fact, I was adopted into the Schumacher family when I was eleven and Angela was thirteen….” It had been a very tough time, those first years after her parents died. Megan had been bounced from one foster home to the next.

“Your birth parents?”

Was this getting just a little too personal? Probably. But then again, none of it was any deep, dark secret. “I was seven when they died. We went on a family vacation in the Bahamas—my parents, my brother and me. Mom and Dad rented a boat and took us out on the ocean. A sudden storm blew in. The boat capsized. I survived by catching a piece of driftwood and holding on until help finally came. My parents and my little brother…not so lucky. They said it was a miracle that I lived through it, that they even found me….”

Funny. After all these years, it still got to her, to remember the ones she’d lost so long ago. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear her mother’s warm laughter, see her father’s loving smile. She’d adored her bratty brother, Ethan, even though he could be so annoying.

Not much remained to her of the day she had lost them. She recalled that the sun had been shining when they set out. The sky had darkened. And after that, she had only a series of vague, awful impressions of clinging to that bit of driftwood in an endless, choppy sea, calling for her mother, her father and Ethan until her throat was too raw to make a sound….

Greg’s big, warm hand settled over hers on the white tablecloth. She looked down at it—tanned, dusted with golden hair, strong and capable looking. It felt really good, to have him touching her.

Much, much too good…

She eased her hand away, picked up her wineglass and knocked back a giant-size gulp.

Greg’s dark eyes held sympathy and understanding. “What a horrible thing to happen—to anyone. But especially to a little girl.”

She beamed him a determined smile. “Well. I got through it. And eventually, the Schumachers adopted me. Angela and I hit it off from the first. And then, three years later, our parents divorced. It was pretty bad, especially for Angela, who’d had just about the perfect childhood up till then.”