Cinderella After Midnight

The councillor’s open-jawed interest in everything she said then allowed her to run on about the charming bed-and-breakfast mansion she was staying at in upper Highgate Street, and how the owner of the bed-and-breakfast was very concerned about the proposed rezoning of one block of lower Highgate Street, where, she understood, the houses had been built on the sight of a former tannery.

The ground, according to the bed-and-breakfast owner, was hopelessly contaminated from the tanning chemicals below the surface of added top soil and rock fill, and it would be a tragedy, quite simply a shocking, frightful tragedy, if the contamination—not known about by the general public, by the way, because it had been hushed up—was brought to the surface through reckless bulldozing by developers.

In any case, the heritage value of the old Victorian houses on that particular block was, “like my own ancestral estate of Dungrove Castle,” absolutely priceless and must on no account be sacrificed to the frightful greed of commercial interests.

“Lady Catrina, you are absolutely right,” said the councillor eagerly. “You couldn’t have known this, of course, but environmental contamination and deliberate hushing up of its presence is one of my most strongly felt issues, and it’s the most amazing coincidence that I should meet someone like you who shares my concerns.”

He took a moment to mop his brow with a big, plaid handkerchief, as if the fluency of his oratory was exhausting him, then said, “As for the heritage values, of course I wish we, here in the United States, had the sensitivity of you British nobles in that area. Rest assured, however, that this city—as well as you personally, my dear—”

He really did have a very pleasant smile, Cat noted.

“—can count on my influence in council to hold these forces of darkness at bay, and council is going to know that at the very next meeting, because I am not going to hold my cards to my chest any longer. The rezoning in lower Highgate Street is off!”

The music ended at that moment, and a very breathless Councillor Wainwright escorted Cat off the floor and back to the table.

Before he reached it, he was waylaid by his wife Darlene, saying urgently, “Earl? Earl! Grab that waitress. She’s missed our table, and I’m ready for my supper. Those canapes wouldn’t have fed a bird. Earl? Go after her!”

He loped off obediently in the wake of the waitress, almost forgetting about the ice in his eagerness. His wife, evidently not trusting either his persistence about supper or his immunity to any of the beautiful women here tonight, followed him.

Cat turned from the councillor and reached the table, her success glowing in her face and making her smile helplessly.

She’d done it. She had actually done it! Pixie’s home and the other gracious Victorian houses in lower Highgate Street were safe, as were the other families who lived in them. Seven and a half weeks from now, when the vital council meeting was due to take place, sleazy Barry Grindlay would have no more reason to try and con poor, frail, simple-hearted Pixie out of her one and only asset.

Now, if she could only find Jill, tell her the good news and get out of here…

“Pleased about something, Lady Catrina?” said Patrick’s darkly amused voice just a few feet away.

Cat dropped into her seat, knocked hollow by the man once more. Everyone else from this table was dancing or greeting friends, and he sat here alone. His long body was draped in his seat in a lazy sprawl and just one corner of his mouth was lifted in a smile.

Of course she hadn’t forgotten about him. Somehow she suspected she wasn’t going to find it very easy to do that, even after this event was over. His voice, his smile, the feel of his arms around her as they danced, his clever way with words and the searching, half-amused, half-cynical look in his blue eyes were all things that would haunt her, waking and sleeping, for weeks. And there was another quality to him, as well. Or maybe it was a quality in the air between them. Either way, she couldn’t put a name to it.

But at least until a moment ago she had kidded herself that his involvement in her evening was done.

It was instantly apparent that he didn’t agree. When she stammered out something inane about a frightfully pleasant conversation with Councillor Wainwright during the dance, he laughed aloud. It was a complicated sound, more than the simple expression of amusement.

“While there’s no one else around,” he suggested, leaning forward, “let’s be a little more honest about this, shall we?”

“Wh-what do you mean?” she said, although she knew quite well.

“You have about as much right to call yourself Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown as I would have to call myself Prince Patrick of Kalamazoo,” he answered. “Sorry, Lady C, but I’ve blown your cover. I know why you’re really here, and I’m not going to let you get away with it….”

Chapter Three

“Unless,” Patrick continued in a less threatening tone, “you agree to spend the next couple of hours with me.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. He’d already beaten off several ambitious young beauties while “Lady Catrina” was dancing with the councillor.

Beaten off. The expression fitted. They were like mosquitoes. Persistent and annoying, with buzzy little voices and blood-sucking intent. For a moment, the notion of spending time with a gold digger who hadn’t targeted himself was appealing, but that moment soon passed.

To find her briefly fascinating was one thing. To open himself up to having her chase him was something very different.

Because if she was any good as a fortune hunter, she’d soon work out that he was a better target than Wainwright. He’d then have to endure the tedium, and the disappointment of listening to her simper and coo as she tried to draw his interest. Just another mosquito….

“Don’t,” she begged, in answer to his impulsive demand, and he was surprised out of his complacent remorse when he heard the real anguish in her voice.

Also, for mercy’s sake, what was happening to those big brown eyes? Were those actually tears making them glisten?

“Please don’t,” she went on, her voice shaky. “I mean, I assume you’re connected somehow with the council or the zoning authority, or whoever, but…but…Oh, damn, why am I begging?”

She dropped her head so that her mass of gorgeous hair fell forward like an avalanche of silk and screened her emotion-filled face.

“As if begging is going to do any good!” she muttered. “If you’re serious about that bargain of yours, of course I’ll spend two hours with you. To think you’d ruin or spare people’s lives on the basis of some faint interest in my company!”

“Actually, I’m viewing you more as a kind of insect repellent,” he drawled, masking his true reaction to her dramatically changed mood.

“Insect repellent?”

“Here comes another mosquito now.”

“Patrick!” squealed Tiffany de Saint. “Patrick Callahan! It’s been a hundred years!”

She minced up to the table on impossible heels and bent to kiss him, offering a deliberate glimpse of breasts that had been professionally inflated to more than generous size. When she straightened again, Patrick noted that not a hair on her blond head had moved, it was so stiffly styled.

He didn’t know what favor she’d called in to get a ticket this evening, but she certainly wasn’t here on the strength of service to charity, public profile or talent. He only knew her because she’d worked as the personal assistant to Anna Tarrant, a publicity consultant he’d dated for a while. She’d lost that job after sleeping with one too many of Anna’s married clients.

Running into people like Tiffany was one of the things that made Patrick regret the litany of short-lived relationships with interesting women that formed his past. He now found that he knew too many people, and too many of those people he didn’t like.

“Hi, Tiffany,” he said. “Meet Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown.”

He slid an arm around Lady C’s shoulders and saw Tiffany’s face tighten. Her baby-blue eyes narrowed and went as hard as two diamonds above a rectangular smile that she couldn’t sustain.

“Lady Catrina,” she echoed. To her credit, she recognized defeat at once. “I’m just so utterly thrilled to meet you.” Her voice was like damp cardboard. Seconds later, she had moved on.

“See,” he said to Lady C. “Mosquito repellent.”

“Yes, I see,” she answered at once. “But if you think that makes it any better, I—I don’t agree. Just because you have your own agenda. What are you doing? Selling your silence? It’s…it’s…just wrong!”

The phony accent had disappeared completely, replaced by pure, native Philadelphian, and either she hadn’t even noticed or she didn’t care anymore. It appalled Patrick to see how upset she was. Hell, she was shaking! He could see it and feel it, beneath the arm that he still had draped lightly across her shoulder.

“Hey!” he said urgently, straightening and taking his arm away. “Hey, Lady C!”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What should I call you then?”

“Just Cat, okay? No…” She shook her head, quickly changing her mind, and he saw the Wainwrights returning with their steaming supper plates. “Can you stick to Lady Catrina, please, as if you believed me? Please! Or else, if this means anything to you, five of us will lose our home.”

“What?”