Cinderella For A Night

“The look of an innocent.” He reached up and touched her cheek. “I can’t remember the last time I met someone like you, Princess Cynthia. I can’t decide if you’re Cinderella or the Princess of Nowhere. What happens at midnight? Do you disappear and leave me with only your shoe?”

She didn’t know how to answer. His fingers were a light caress that she felt all the way down to her toes curling in her new shoes. Goose bumps erupted on her arms and her breath caught in her throat. She and Jonathan were playing a very grown-up game and she didn’t have enough experience to understand the rules. If there were any rules. Maybe people made them up as they went along.

“I don’t have to disappear,” she whispered. Heat flared on her cheeks and she ducked her head to hide her blush.

He swore. “Don’t do that,” he told her even as he took her hand and led her into an alcove of the ballroom. One minute they were in the middle of the crowd, the next they were in a private paradise, tucked between a row of plants and a curtained wall.

“Don’t do what?”

“Blush. If you blush it means I can’t do what I want.”

She risked glancing at him. “What do you want to do?”

She asked the question with no expectation of an answer, but as soon as the words fell from her lips, she knew exactly what he wanted to do…or she had a pretty good idea.

“Find out what innocence tastes like,” he said, and gently cupped her face. Then he lowered his head and brushed his mouth against her lips.

She hadn’t been sure what to expect. If someone had asked her to guess about Jonathan Steele’s kissing technique, she would have said that the man probably took what he wanted. But this wasn’t like that at all. His touch was gentle, tender, almost asking, as if he wanted to be sure that she was fully aware of what was going on and that she liked it.

What was there not to like, she thought hazily as tiny explosions seemed to go off inside her entire body. Fire rushed through her, as if every inch of her had just had a close encounter with a major heat source. His fingers branded her, his lips teased and she knew that if she died this very moment, it would be with the knowledge that she’d experienced something incredibly perfect.

They weren’t touching anywhere but their mouths. Yet it was as if he pressed into her. She sensed his nearness and it was an intoxicating presence. His lips moved against hers…slowly, lightly but with a thoroughness that left every millimeter of her mouth caressed and aroused. His breath fanned her face. She thought briefly of opening her eyes, but her eyelids were too heavy. Besides, she didn’t want to destroy the perfection of the kiss.

He turned his head slightly, then brushed his tongue against her lower lip. She shivered and parted for him. For a man who had all the world offered and who was probably used to taking what he wanted, he entered her with a reverence that almost brought tears to her eyes.

The first touch of his tongue against hers nearly drove her to her knees. Passion exploded—a passion she’d never experienced before. Her throat was too tight for her to speak coherently, but a small sound of pleasure escaped. Perhaps he’d been waiting for that, or perhaps it was simply luck on her part. Either way, he dropped his hands to her waist and pulled her hard against him. Then he plunged his tongue fully into her mouth and claimed her.

Cynthia leaned against him because she couldn’t stand on her own. She couldn’t breathe or think or act. She could only feel the glory that was Jonathan as he continued to kiss her. She could only kiss him back and know that whatever else happened in her life, she would always have this night and the magic of his kiss. There had been other kisses before, other boys or men, but comparing their attentions to his was to compare a glass of water with the wonders of an ocean.

“Who are you?” he breathed against her mouth. “What are you doing to me?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly and opened her eyes to look at him.

She had a brief impression of barely controlled passion and a desire that made her tremble with both anticipation and fear. Then there was a loud crack and all the lights went out in the ballroom.

Chapter 2

“Well, hell,” Jonathan said, staring into complete blackness. The interruption had been ill timed, to say the least. Or maybe it had been for the best. After all what had started out as a simple friendly kiss had turned into something much more. Something passionate and intriguing. Given the chance, he would have been very pleased to do a whole lot more than just kiss the mysterious Cynthia. That despite the obvious innocence in her eyes and the blushes staining her cheeks.

“What do you think happened?” Cynthia asked, her voice almost a whisper. “The hotel is new. Maybe this big charity event was more than the circuits could handle.”

“Possibly,” he said, but he was doubtful. Not that he could come up with a better explanation. Most of his blood was well south of his brain—a condition brought on by Cynthia’s breasts still pressed firmly against his chest—which meant he wasn’t thinking straight.

“It could be another blackout,” she offered, referring to the thirty-six-hour blackout that had kept the city in chaos three years ago.

But Jonathan didn’t respond. Something, more feeling than proof, whispered in the back of his mind. Suddenly he knew with a certainty that he couldn’t explain that this blackout was very different from the one Cynthia mentioned. This one had a more sinister cause and he would bet most of his considerable fortune that David was somehow involved.

He stared at the woman he held, but he couldn’t make out any of her features in the darkness. “Stay here,” he told her. “Guests are going to panic and if you leave the alcove you could be trampled.”

“But you’re going to brave the madding crowd?” she asked.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said by way of explanation. He wasn’t about to go into detail on the subject of his brother.

“Okay. I’ll stay here.”

He squeezed her upper arms, then pushed through the wall of plants that hid the entrance of the alcove. Already he could hear the increased volume of conversation as worried guests wondered what to do. Across the ballroom, a woman shrieked.

Using instinct and a faint light in the distance, Jonathan made his way along the perimeter of the ballroom. As he moved, he brushed against bodies and nearly tumbled over a tray perched precariously on a rickety stand.

A sense of urgency filled him, forcing him to walk faster and faster toward the flickering light. As he approached he realized he’d been drawn to the back of the ballroom, not the entrance that led into the hotel foyer. The flickering was caused by a door banging in the stiff evening breeze. Jonathan reached to push it open when the sharp sound of gunfire stopped him dead in his tracks.

He waited, counting three shots. Behind him, several people in the crowd screamed. He sensed a general surge of movement away from the danger and had a brief hope that Cynthia had stayed in the alcove. She would be a hell of a lot safer there than trying to fight her way out of the dark ballroom. He waited several more seconds until he thought it might be clear, then he stepped out into the parking lot behind the hotel.

His first thought was that there were too many lights and he slipped into a shadow by the door. So the power outage was localized to the hotel, or maybe just the ballroom. There were probably a hundred cars parked out here. Trees lined the edge of the parking lot. He sensed more than saw several flickers of movement. A tightness in his gut gave him a bad feeling about the entire situation and he couldn’t get rid of the impression that somehow David was involved. Was the blackout a distraction for whomever was going to kill Jonathan? He shook his head. David would want to be far away before anything happened to his half brother.

“So what am I doing out here?” he muttered to himself.

Good question. He didn’t have any way to protect himself against whoever had the gun. Nor was he a police officer with any kind of training. He was rarely impulsive and this unplanned action could get him dead very quickly. Still he stayed where he was, trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

He didn’t have to wait long. A car door banged closed at the far end of the parking lot and he heard the rumble of an engine, followed by a squeal of tires as the vehicle sped away. Closer to him, he heard a man swearing loudly.

“If anyone can hear me, call 9–1-1,” he yelled. “There are two injured people here. I’ve got to go after the shooter.”

Jonathan moved toward the voice. Before he’d gone more than twenty feet, a second car took off into the night. But Jonathan didn’t spare it a glance. Instead he looked down and saw two people sprawled out on the tarmac. Two tall, dark-haired people. A man and a woman.

His gut tightened even more and before he got close he knew what he would find. He shifted and light fell across the bodies. He recognized them both. David and Lisa. Lying still. Too still.

“You all right?” Detective Jack Stryker asked Jonathan a couple of hours later.

Jonathan looked at the detective and shrugged. “Under the circumstances? I’ve been better.”

Stryker, a tall man in his mid-thirties, nodded sympathetically. “I know this isn’t easy. It was one thing when you found out David was embezzling from the company, but threatening to kill you makes it a whole different story.”

Jonathan didn’t respond. All he could think of to ask was if Stryker had a brother and did they get along. Which was crazy. Other people’s families didn’t matter to him. He had a half brother who had just threatened to kill him. Now that half brother was in a hospital somewhere, or already dead. He had the brief thought that he should insist that the detective take him over to the hospital to stand vigil or something, but he was still too numb to feel any sense of urgency.

If David was still alive, what was he, Jonathan, supposed to say to him? “I forgive you?” Would David give a damn about that? Jonathan doubted it. Besides, he wasn’t sure he was willing to forgive. Not the death threat nor the stealing. Certainly not the lifetime of squandering every opportunity.

Stryker’s cell phone rang. The detective answered it. Jonathan waited, leaning back in his chair and rubbing a steady pain by his temples. At least the lights had come on about an hour before. The room the two of them occupied was small and windowless. Probably a business conference center at the hotel. There was a long table in the center of the room and a dozen chairs pulled up around it. The serviceable carpet was a medium shade of gray. Still new enough not to be stained or flat in patches.

Carpet, Jonathan thought to himself. I’m thinking about carpet. What the hell is wrong with me?

But he knew the answer to that. If he didn’t think about carpet, he might think about his brother again. About what David had done or wanted to do. About a threat of murder that was probably a whole lot more than a threat. About how things had gotten so screwed up and how he didn’t have a clue as to how to fix them.

“What time?” Stryker asked.

An edge in the detective’s tone alerted Jonathan. He turned in his seat until he faced the blond man leaning against the edge of the table. Stryker’s face tightened.

“I see. All right.” He paused. “Yeah. I’ll tell him.”