The Cinderella List

Marlo gave him the address.

“It’s not far. I’ll take you home myself.”

“Oh, I couldn’t… A cab is fine…really.”

“Sure you could.” He pulled off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves as if he were about to go to work. His forearms were tanned and muscular. He wasn’t a stranger to physical work, Marlo noted. “I’ve had enough coffee now to keep me awake until the New Year. No use taking a cab and wasting my alertness.” He looked so appealing, so boyish and sincere that he was virtually irresistible.

Everything seemed to make worse the tumble of emotions coursing through her. Then why did she feel such an unwelcome attraction to Jake?

“I’m dying of embarrassment, you know. I don’t want you to bother.”

“No need. I’ll enjoy getting out for a drive.” He picked up the plate of cheesecakes. “Now that you know you’re going home soon, do you want to have one of these?”

Marlo’s stomach growled a response. She clamped a hand over her belly but it was too late. Hammond had heard it.

“I thought so. You were too busy to put any food in your own mouth.”

“That’s a little like stealing,” Marlo pointed out. “It’s your food. You bought it.”

“Then help me eat it.” He sank back into the leather chair in which he’d been sitting. Framed in dark leather and the faultless white of his shirt, he could have been posing for one of the handsome portraits that lined the staircase gallery.

Oh, why not? Marlo told herself. This was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. What was more, she knew just how good the Divas’ cheesecakes were.

“Even my father said your food was an enormous hit at the party.”

“‘Even’ your father?”

“His approval doesn’t come easily.” He paused a long time before adding, “Life has made him a suspicious man. When you get a compliment from him you can assume you’ve neared perfection.”

“I’m flattered.” And delighted, overwhelmed, ecstatic and probably falling in love with you, she might have added if she were being completely truthful. Of course, some things were better left unsaid.

“He’s requested that I put you on notice. Hammond Stables will be doing a significant number of events this fall and we’d like you to cater all of them.”

“As soon as the dates are fixed, I’ll put them on our calendar.” She should have left then but a comfortable languor washed over her. Jake seemed to feel it, too, and they sat in each other’s presence silently for a long while. Finally, she placed her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself up. “Now, I’d better be going.”

He stood swiftly. “Let me help you.” He reached out to help her up. She felt his warm, slightly rough palm, calloused from the chafing of the reins, no doubt, and the gentle squeeze of his fingers that brought her to her feet.

Gentlemanly. Check.

Jake led her toward the garage, another massive space with a black-and-white tiled floor and a bank of lockers against one wall. He chose one of the four cars there, a black BMW.

Even his car fit the List! Marlo ran a hand across the soft leather seat before putting her right hand to her left forearm. She gave herself a pinch. It hurt. She wasn’t dreaming.

It was easy to be silent, relaxing against the smooth leather, hearing the powerful drone of the engine, watching city lights go by. She sneaked a peek from the corner of her eye at her driver, his strong profile lit by streetlights and the glow from the dashboard. Marlo rued the fact that his lifestyle and his wealth were so foreign to her. She would have little idea how to live in his world, or he in hers.

Or maybe, she told herself, she was making unfair assumptions about Jake.

“Jake, what is it you want to accomplish with Hammond Stables?”

He turned and looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

Feeling as if she’d been x-rayed by lasers, she was glad when his eyes returned to the road. “Objectives, aspirations, wishes. Everyone who is successful has them.”

“You’re a funny little thing, you know that?”

At five feet nine inches, she was rarely called little, so she decided to take it as a compliment. “Why, thank you.”

He threw back his head and laughed, and her heart skipped a beat at the sound. “You took me off guard. I believe you have a knack for that.” He pressed his lips together to ponder the question. “Objectives, aspirations and wishes, huh? My objective is to continue the family business and take it to the next level, to raise the bar even further. My father and grandfather have done amazingly well and I feel it’s my duty to continue the tradition. I’ve already got my business plan in order.” He looked at her again and his eyes twinkled. “Would you like to see it?”

“No, thank you.” Marlo suddenly felt shy and prim, responses that were rare in her emotional vocabulary. “I was just making conversation. I didn’t expect you to write a treatise or anything.”

“It’s okay. I happen to like something more than casual conversation. I enjoy meaty topics. If you really want to know, my personal aspiration is to someday settle down, get married and have those grandchildren my father thinks he’s never going to get. Until then, I’m going to work at making my architectural firm one of the top in the city, and Hammond Farms recognized nationally.”

He pulled into the driveway of Marlo’s immaculate South Minneapolis bungalow. The darkness of the car’s interior felt uncomfortably intimate. To her surprise, Jake lifted her hand from her lap to his lips and kissed it. “And the wishes will have to wait for later.” He paused before continuing. “I overheard you and your partner talking back at the house. You said something that stuck with me. I wanted to know if you meant it.”

They had said a lot of things. That would teach her to keep her mouth shut while she was working. The easy, breezy conversation she and Lucy maintained was usually just mindless chatter—emphasis on mindless. What part of their empty-headed banter had he overheard? Hopefully he hadn’t heard them discussing the Cinderella List.

“You were discussing yourselves as children, as I recall,” Jake prodded. Marlo paged through her memory bank. She had no idea that Jake, on his trips in and out of the kitchen, had overheard them.

“I heard you say that you had a lot of compassion for children who struggled to learn, and that you wished you knew a way that you could help to make a difference for them.”

“I was a difficult child myself, according to my mother—at least until my parents discovered I was dyslexic. I transposed words and letters. My reading problems were mostly from seeing things backward.” Marlo smiled ruefully. “Even though I overcame it quickly in academics, my mother says it didn’t shake my penchant for doing other things in reverse order.”

She’d always believed that her dyslexia and proclivity to come at things from the wrong end had deepened the compassion she felt for her nephew, Brady.

“I thought you might be interested in something I’m doing at the stables…if my father doesn’t sink it before it starts.” Jake’s expression was cautiously neutral, as if he didn’t want Marlo to guess what he was thinking.

He chose his next words carefully. “The changes I’m currently making at the stable have my father and me at odds. He’s the opposite of calm and laid-back. He accuses me of being too easygoing and willing to go with the flow.” His eyes crinkled and a slow smile graced his lips. “I like to think I’m a lover, not a fighter, but my father is not always amused.”

“He doesn’t trust you?”

“The only person my father has ever accepted unconditionally is his friend Alfred. They were boys together, best friends. My father calls Alfred’s judgment ‘impeccable.’”

“What awful things are you doing? Insisting the horses have weekly pedicures? Wear diamond-encrusted saddles? Eat gourmet oats?”

Jake’s smile flashed in the dimness. “The show animals are practically doing that already—they have polished hooves, saddles and tack with bling, and highly regulated diets. That’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“I’m starting a hippotherapy program at Hammond Stables. Dad calls it a wild idea, a notion that I’ll lose interest in as soon as I find a high-rise to design.

“The program is designed for kids with special needs. And kids like you were—struggling with things beyond their control. Things like cerebral palsy, severe injury, mental and physical issues, strokes.”

Compassionate. Marlo liked that in a man. Check. “And your father disapproves of…what exactly?”

“Dad doesn’t feel disabled kids add to the ‘ambiance’ of the operation.” Jake’s expressive eyes darkened with anger. “He’s afraid potential buyers might not like competing with children for time in the arena.”

“What will you do?” she asked, feeling sympathy for his predicament.