A Modern Cinderella. Kate Hardy

she couldn’t allow herself to enjoy those moments. Not properly. Not when she was living in a fantasy world on borrowed time. One day soon she would have to walk away from Will’s life and try to find one of her own. One more fulfilling than the one she’d been living. Because if she’d been happy in the life she had she wouldn’t have been so quick to leave it behind, would she?

      ‘Cass?’ The thumb stilled, and the impossibly gentle use of her name made her realise she’d dropped her gaze to the beating pulse at the base of his neck.

      She looked back up. ‘Sorry. Drifted off for a minute. I’ve got a tendency to do that too.’

      ‘I remember.’ He said it with just enough softness in his voice to suggest he remembered it with a degree of affection. Darn it.

      When she made another attempt at freeing her hand he let her. So she folded her fingers into her palm and let her arm drop to her side as he leaned back, his expression changing to the unreadable blankness she hated so much,

      ‘It’s okay, I’ve got my answer.’ Lifting a glass of juice, he pushed to his feet and turned towards the open door. ‘We’d better get back to it then.’

       CHAPTER SIX

      WITHOUT any idea why she felt compelled to correct his assumption, Cassidy found herself on her feet, matching glass in hand, and following him into the kitchen. ‘Wait, Will. You’re wrong. You didn’t get an answer.’

      Turning in the middle of the room, he lifted his chin and looked at her with hooded eyes.

      Which left her squirming inwardly as she tried to find the words to explain it to him without giving too much away.

      ‘I’ m not…That is it’s not that I’m not…’ She puffed her cheeks out in exasperation, and avoided his gaze by glancing at random points around the room. ‘I guess I just—’ A deep breath and a grimace, and then she silently said to heck with it and took a run at it. ‘I feel a bit—lost, I suppose. You and me? We’re not the same. This living together under the same roof—’ One of her hands flailed in the air in front of her body, towards him. ‘Well, we’re not the same…’

      ‘You already said that.’

      Cassidy scowled at his calm tone, and the fact that her gaze shifted to meet his and discovered what looked like a glint of amusement only made her feel more stupid than she already did.

      She sighed heavily. ‘This is your life, Will, not mine. I’m just a visitor here. But this script…it’s important…it means a lot. I don’t want to mess it up.’

      When there was silence it drew her gaze back to him again, then he took a shallow breath and asked, ‘Why is it so important?’

      Now, there was a question with a loaded answer.

      Her hesitation brought him a step closer, his hand reaching out to set his glass on the nearest counter top. ‘I get the not wanting to mess up part. Everyone feels that way when they work on a script. Or on any kind of a project that means something to them. There was a time you wanted to succeed in this business as much as I did…’

      Cassidy smiled wryly. ‘Apparently not quite as much as you did…’

      The low words were enough to tug on the edges of his mouth. ‘Okay. Fair enough. We had different motivations but the same goal—at least I thought we did. Maybe I was wrong about that?’

      If she had, she’d have left everything behind to go with him to California. That was what he was intimating, wasn’t it? Yes, Will had been driven for different reasons from Cassidy. But the goal had been a dream they’d shared. What had broken them apart had been Cassidy’s starry-eyed romanticism over the life they would have together weighed against Will’s need to be successful enough to prove to all those people who had thought him worthless that they’d been spectacularly wrong in their assessment. Cassidy had believed they would achieve their dreams together. Will had left her behind and done it on his own. But she’d let him go, hadn’t she?

      Will took another step closer. ‘Why is it so important, Cass?’

      She took a deep breath, while warily watching to see how close he planned on getting. ‘We bombed last time, Will. You remember how bad that felt as well as I do…’

      ‘Oh, sweetheart, I’ve bombed a few times since then—trust me. It’s par for the course out here.’

      The use of the drawled ‘sweetheart’ made her cock a recriminating brow at him, but she let it slide when she saw the light in his eyes. ‘But you’re a success, Will. Look around you—this house, your company, the awards you’ve won—you’ve made it. I’m a schoolteacher. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s one of the most honourable professions on the planet—but it wasn’t something I’d planned on doing for the rest of my life.’ Any more than living on her own had been. ‘The last script I cowrote with you is the only thing I have on my movie-writing CV. The script for a movie that bombed at the box office and gave movie reviewers globally the excuse to ramp the venom volume up to high—remember? I ended on a failure. A very public failure. I don’t want another one. Seriously, I don’t think I could take it…and…And I’m babbling again, aren’t I?’

      ‘Like a brook.’ He smiled indulgently.

      Another step forward brought him to within reaching distance. But instead of offering her the kind of comforting hug she desperately needed and dreaded at the same time, he lifted his hands and pushed them deep into the pockets of his jeans—meaning the only way a hug would happen was if she reached for him.

      But that wasn’t going to happen, was it? No matter how much she sorely needed to be held—just held—for long enough not to feel as if she had somehow detached herself from her fellow human beings. Now that she thought about it, it was probably the same fear that brought tears of emotion to her eyes when small arms would hug so tightly around her neck on the last day of term…

      ‘It was a success in the long haul, Cass. Or we wouldn’t be here. You need to remember that. Sometimes the road to success has its twists and turns. That’s all.’

      She managed a somewhat shaky smile and a roll of her eyes at her continuing inability to listen to reason or appreciate thoughtfulness without the need to cry. ‘I’d just rather skip the hobnailed boots stomping all over my self-confidence this time round, if that’s all right with you.’

      The green of Will’s eyes softened and warmed. ‘Welcome to Hollywood.’

      Cassidy laughed softly, then stared at him in wonder. ‘How do you do it?’

      ‘Thick skin.’ He shrugged.

      ‘Is there a store nearby where I can pick one of those up?’

      ‘’Fraid not. It’s something you acquire over time. Wouldn’t suit you, anyway.’

      Sighing heavily, she nodded. ‘I’d be willing to try it out for a while.’

      Whether it was something he saw in her eyes, or something he knew instinctively she needed—as he so often had once upon a time—Will pulled his hands out of his pockets and closed the gap between them. He reached for her with a rumbled, ‘Come here, Malone.’

      Oh, great. Now she was welling up the way she did with the kids. Only this time it was bittersweet for different reasons. Even as Will drew her close to the wall of his chest and circled her with his arms, she felt the deep-seated sensation of coming home after a long, long time in exile. She hadn’t realised how homesick she’d been for him until he was holding her and she had her arms around his lean waist. The scent of clean laundry and pure Will surrounded her, but she breathed it deeper anyway. When one of the large hands on her back gently rubbed to soothe her she had to fight the need to sob uncontrollably. But not just because it was a hug when she so desperately needed a