Mistletoe Cinderella

Good question. Chloe pushed aside some plain tissue paper and got a glimpse of deep red. The silky material slipped through her fingers like water.

“Whoa,” Natalie said, looking over her shoulder. “Now that’s a dress.”

Chloe held it up, stunned. Her aunt had seen this and thought of her? Perhaps Jane had been under the influence of a mai tai at the time. The so-called sleeves were wide, off-the-shoulder bands, hardly more than straps; the skirt, while the same color, was a different material. It fell in gauzy, staggered layers to form a handkerchief hem. Even at its longest point, the skirt would barely reach her knees.

“Try it on,” Natalie urged. “That’s what she would have wanted.”

“I’m not convinced it’s my size,” Chloe said. The hours she did on the treadmill to improve her lung capacity kept her trim, but the skirt looked brazenly insubstantial. And the draped neckline—which wouldn’t come anywhere near as high as her neck—didn’t seem big enough to hold in generous C cups.

Natalie rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I asked you to show up for dinner at the Dixieland Diner wearing it. It’s just us.”

“All right, all right.” Chloe took the dress back to her room without further protest. She shrugged out of her clothes and eyed the red fabric. Here goes nothing.

Not only did the dress fit, it looked as though it had been magically tailored to her body. Surprised, she turned in front of the mirror, enjoying the way the fabric moved. When Vonda had said she could see some of Aunt Jane in her, Chloe had dismissed it as a well-meaning fib. Now though…

“This is not a Chloe dress,” she told her reflection. It was beguiling, just for this moment, to see herself as someone else, someone—

“I’m going out of my mind with curiosity,” Natalie complained from the other room.

“Come take a look,” Chloe called, doing mental inventory of her closet. What kind of shoes did one wear with an outfit like this? She doubted canvas sneakers would cut it.

From the doorway, Natalie reiterated her earlier assessment. “Whoa.” Then she grinned. “We have so found your outfit for the reunion.”

“Natalie—”

“Explain to me why you won’t go,” the blonde demanded, her hands on her hips.

Because high school had represented some of the most abysmal times in Chloe’s sheltered life. In elementary school, she’d been mostly invisible, the girl who sat quietly in class and read storybooks through recess; she’d never minded. The only child of a couple who hadn’t expected to be blessed with a baby, as well as being born premature and battling respiratory developmental delays as a kid, Chloe had received tons of attention at home. Not being the center of everyone’s focus at school had been a relief.

Her teachers liked her well enough and she made good grades. Maybe she hadn’t been invited to a lot of roller-skating and swimming parties, but she wasn’t that coordinated anyway. She’d buried herself in descriptions of faraway places and made lots of fictional friends.

Then came her teenage years. As a freshman, she’d had a significant growth spurt, and was suddenly several inches taller and filling out her blouses much differently. Also, there were far more extracurricular activities offered in high school. Teachers were no longer content to inconspicuously give her A’s—they asked her to peer tutor and courted her publicly for events like the Academic Decathlon. Although her parents’ official policy was that Chloe couldn’t date until she was sixteen, they’d allowed her to go to the fall homecoming dance sophomore year and meet a boy from her geometry class there.

That dance had been a fiasco. Chloe had been nervous, awkward within her changing body and with the sudden attention of classmates who’d previously ignored her. Her date had grazed her breast at the punch table—which she realized in hindsight had been an accident—but she’d jerked away violently enough to send Candy Beemis, a popular brunette, sideways into three dozen filled and waiting cups. Candy went on to cocaptain the varsity cheerleading squad, so one would think she could forgive a less socially adept person an awkward moment.

One would be wrong.

Instead, Candy and her A-list entourage targeted Chloe for snide comments. What Chloe had hated most wasn’t that they cracked jokes at her expense, but her own inability to quip back or at least to shrug it off. She froze every time, her throat tightening as her cheeks heated. Natalie, annoyed with Candy’s pettiness and exasperated by Chloe’s tendency to react like a deer in the headlights, had claimed that Candy was jealous. Chloe couldn’t imagine what kind of insane person would have been jealous of her in high school.

And now Nat wants me to willingly relive all those superfun glory days?

Chloe sighed. “Our former classmates fall into two groups. Those who had no clue who I was and those who ragged me about who I was.”

“A-hem.”

“Not counting you,” Chloe amended. “You are a true friend.”

Although it had been Natalie’s idea senior year to give Chloe highlights, neither girl knowing that Chloe’s dark brown hair had natural red undertones. The proposed blond touches intended to make Chloe glamorous had become clownish orange streaks that sent Candy and others into fits of giggles. Fairy godmothers were supposed to transform pumpkins for you, not give you pumpkin-colored hair.

“You’re a successful self-employed woman who can seriously work that slinky red number you’re wearing,” Natalie said. “Don’t you want to stick it to everyone who heckled you by showing up and looking hot?”

She hated to think she was insecure enough to need that kind of validation. “Stick it to them? It’s been ten years. I don’t care that much about anyone’s opinion. Especially at seventy-five dollars a ticket.”

“Well, that includes a sit-down dinner and dessert buffet. Don’t forget the great band. And it goes without saying that the floral arrangements will be phenomenal.” Natalie smiled beseechingly. “Come on! There have to be some people from our graduating class you want to see.”

“Most of the people I care about still live here in Mistletoe.”

Natalie’s blue eyes took on a wicked gleam, but she ducked her gaze, making a point of studying her French manicure.

“What?” Chloe demanded. “What ace do you think you have up your sleeve?”

“I got an unexpected RSVP today. From Dylan Echols.”

Dylan? An all-too-clear picture of his sexy grin and deep green eyes flashed through Chloe’s mind. “He’s really coming home?”

After college, the former Mistletoe High baseball star had become a local celebrity when he worked his way through the “farm system,” pitching two and a half seasons in the minors before being called up to play for the Atlanta Braves. As far as Chloe knew, he’d been back in Mistletoe only once, for his father’s funeral this past January. That had to have been a dark period for him, coming on the heels of a highly publicized early retirement. He’d torn a rotator cuff last season. After surgery, time off and physical therapy, he’d attempted to return but it was clear his pitching arm would never be the same. Just when Dylan had, according to sports journalists, “hit his stride,” his dreams of becoming the next Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux were snatched away.

“I’ll bet Dylan would love that dress,” Natalie added. “You could really wow him. A little red lipstick, we could do something special with your hair…”

“I prefer my usual gloss,” Chloe said. Natalie had given her a gift certificate two birthdays ago for a fancy cosmetics Web site, and she’d developed a fondness for their line of high-end flavored glosses. “Remember what happened the last time you got big ideas about my hair?”

Natalie had the grace to blush. “Well, maybe someone at the salon could help you with it this time.”

“Yes, but why? What’s the point of spending three hours trying to convince a guy who doesn’t remember me that I’m someone I’m not?”

While Chloe had adored Dylan from the back of civics class, he’d given no sign of reciprocating the sentiment, which would have first required him to notice her existence. He’d been preoccupied with either baseball or whichever girl he’d been dating that week. Dylan Echols was the kind of guy who’d held court in high school, a student-body Prince Charming who made peers and teachers alike laugh during discussion and led his baseball team to state championship.

“Are you sure you know who you are?” Natalie asked skeptically. “Jane saw that there was a lot more to you than just a quiet straight-A student. I do, too.”

Chloe remembered the way she’d felt at the memorial service, the vague sense of having let down Jane. I could be more, couldn’t I? Suddenly she found it difficult to recall why she was so set against going to the reunion. After all, it was just one night. Seventy-five dollars wouldn’t break the bank.

Still, she worried about Natalie’s plans for the evening getting too grandiose. “I’ll go. But stop imagining some movie where the formerly mousy heroine shows up, impresses everyone with her poise and scintillating conversation and wins her man. Get real. Dylan’s only going to be here for the weekend, and he doesn’t even know me.”

Natalie smiled, undeterred. “Then we’ll have to find the perfect opportunity for you to introduce yourself.”

Chapter Two

Dylan Echols muttered a word under his breath that network censors would definitely frown on. Since the broadcast had just gone to commercial, however, he felt free to express his irritation.

And Grady Medlock, seated behind the anchor desk, was free to snicker. “The scores may not be as important as world politics,” Grady said, “but viewers still expect you to get them right.”

Dylan didn’t bother responding. The newscaster had been insufferable ever since Dylan was hired, and had become even more so since Liza Finnell—the object of Grady’s unrequited affections—had hinted at the station’s spring picnic last month that she was attracted to the newest addition to the Channel Six team. Dylan had ducked her interest by politely reminding her that he was seeing someone.

At the time, anyway.

As of Friday’s e-mail, his brief relationship with Heidi was over. Dylan wasn’t sure what bothered him the most: that she’d jilted him for a Braves first baseman he himself had introduced her to, that she’d jilted him via an impersonal e-mail or that he’d only recognized in hindsight that she’d used him as a stepping stone to better-paid guys who were still in The Show.

Dumb. Much like the mistake he’d just made in his broadcast.