The Reluctant Cinderella. Christine Rimmer

Too wonderful….”

      “Is that bad?”

      She couldn’t help laughing. “Not in the least.”

      He leaned a little closer across the snowy white tablecloth. “You are amazing. You know that?”

      A curl of alarm tightened inside her. She ordered it gone. He wasn’t putting a move on her. No way. It was just a compliment. No big deal. “People from the neighborhood are always surprised when I happen to run into them during working hours.”

      “On Danbury Way you always seemed so…”

      She laughed again. “I believe the word you’re looking for is shy? Or maybe bland? Or just plain dumpy…”

      He pretended to look injured. “Did I say that?”

      “You didn’t have to—and I confess, okay? In the neighborhood I do like to, er, play it low-key.”

      He sipped from his wine. “Why?”

      “Habit, I guess. And, oh, I don’t know. Everyone at home sees me a certain way. And I don’t disillusion them.”

      “But if it’s not the real you…”

      It seemed so natural to lean toward him, to brush the back of his hand with light fingers, to enjoy the lazy, pleasured feel of that brief touch. “But it is the real me.”

      He frowned, though his eyes had a teasing light in them. “Then who is it I’m sitting across from right now?”

      She shrugged. “This is me, too.”

      “Ah,” he said, but he still looked doubtful.

      She explained further. “They’re both me. I guess this is more the new me—and at home, I’m pretty much the old me. If that makes any sense.”

      “I’ll take the new you.”

      Before she could come up with a suitably lighthearted reply, the waiter appeared.

      After they ordered, Greg asked how she’d come to live over her sister’s garage. She explained about wanting to put everything she had into starting up her company. “That was three years ago,” she said. “And Angela and her ex, Jerome, were calling it quits. My moving into the apartment at her house worked out for everyone. Angela and the kids can use the extra money I pay in rent, and I get a nice, reasonably priced place to live. I can zip back from Poughkeepsie at four most days and stay with the kids after school until Ange gets home from work. Then, if I have anything that won’t wait, I hop the train and head back to the office to put in a few hours in the evening.”

      And why was she telling him all this? As if it mattered in the least to Greg Banning how she and Angela juggled child care and the necessity of bringing home a paycheck.

      He remarked in a tone that said he really was interested, “Sounds like a tight schedule.”

      “It is. For both Angela and me. But we manage….”

      “You’re smiling. I think you love your sister a lot.”

      “Yeah. I do. She’s my best friend.”

      “Any other sisters? Brothers?”

      “Nope. Just the two of us—in fact, I was adopted into the Schumacher family when I was eleven and Angela was thirteen….” It had been a very tough time, those first years after her parents died. Megan had been bounced from one foster home to the next.

      “Your birth parents?”

      Was this getting just a little too personal? Probably. But then again, none of it was any deep, dark secret. “I was seven when they died. We went on a family vacation in the Bahamas—my parents, my brother and me. Mom and Dad rented a boat and took us out on the ocean. A sudden storm blew in. The boat capsized. I survived by catching a piece of driftwood and holding on until help finally came. My parents and my little brother…not so lucky. They said it was a miracle that I lived through it, that they even found me….”

      Funny. After all these years, it still got to her, to remember the ones she’d lost so long ago. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear her mother’s warm laughter, see her father’s loving smile. She’d adored her bratty brother, Ethan, even though he could be so annoying.

      Not much remained to her of the day she had lost them. She recalled that the sun had been shining when they set out. The sky had darkened. And after that, she had only a series of vague, awful impressions of clinging to that bit of driftwood in an endless, choppy sea, calling for her mother, her father and Ethan until her throat was too raw to make a sound….

      Greg’s big, warm hand settled over hers on the white tablecloth. She looked down at it—tanned, dusted with golden hair, strong and capable looking. It felt really good, to have him touching her.

      Much, much too good…

      She eased her hand away, picked up her wineglass and knocked back a giant-size gulp.

      Greg’s dark eyes held sympathy and understanding. “What a horrible thing to happen—to anyone. But especially to a little girl.”

      She beamed him a determined smile. “Well. I got through it. And eventually, the Schumachers adopted me. Angela and I hit it off from the first. And then, three years later, our parents divorced. It was pretty bad, especially for Angela, who’d had just about the perfect childhood up till then.”

      And come on. Megan had said way more than enough about herself and her childhood. “What about you?” She was reasonably sure he had no siblings, but she asked anyway. “Brothers? Sisters?”

      He was shaking his head. “I’m an only. I grew up in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. Big rooms in that brownstone. And high ceilings. Kind of empty, really. And very, very quiet.”

      She sipped more wine. “Your parents still live there?”

      “Yes, they do.”

      “You wanted brothers, didn’t you? You wouldn’t even have minded a sister or two.”

      “Yeah. I wanted a houseful of brothers and sisters. Didn’t happen, though. Truthfully, for my mother, one child was more than enough.”

      Vanessa. That was his mother’s name. Megan knew this because Carly had told her. Carly said Vanessa was tall and slim and very sophisticated. And difficult to please. “Greg’s mother never did like me much,” Carly claimed. “Not that she’s happy about Greg wanting a divorce. Vanessa doesn’t believe in divorce, so she’s on my side for once. But it’s not for my sake or anything. It’s just the principle of the thing, you know? She’s always made it painfully clear that she would have preferred if Greg had married some rich Yankee woman from Vassar or Bryn Mawr, instead of me….”

      The waiter appeared with a pair of calamari salads. He set the plates before them, poured them each more wine and then was gone.

      Megan picked up her salad fork and popped a bite into her mouth. She wasn’t a big squid fan as a rule, but the salad was wonderful. She chewed and swallowed, thinking about Carly, feeling just a little bit guilty about the way things were going here. This was a business lunch, and nothing more. But somehow, it was a business lunch that felt way too much like a date.

      They both concentrated on the fabulous food for a moment or two, in a shared silence that was surprisingly companionable. Megan sipped from her water glass and decided a change of subject—away from the personal and more toward the professional—was in order.

      She suggested, “We haven’t set a date and time for our next meeting.”

      He sent her a look, one that heated her midsection and curled her toes in her best pair of shoes. “We aren’t finished with this one yet.”

      She toasted him with her wineglass. “I like to plan ahead.” And she took another sip, though she knew she shouldn’t. She was on her second glass and the world was looking a little bit soft around the edges. Plus