The music stopped just then, and she stepped back, then gave a slight curtsy. “Cinderella knew only one prince,” she said lightly. “If she’d known a few more, she might have been more wary. Thank you very much for the dance, Mr. Foxx.”
“Oh, no,” he said, catching one of her hands and tucking it into the crook of his arm. “We aren’t finished yet.”
As he led her toward one of the garden paths, she protested, “You can’t leave the dance floor. You’re the host.”
“I’ve done my duty. Now I plan to enjoy myself with a Cinderella who doesn’t believe in princes.”
Amanda was more than a little surprised, but she made no attempt to escape him. It appeared that she had indeed caught Ryder Foxx’s interest—but not in the way that Sam and Les had hoped for. Of course, they hadn’t expected Amanda’s own bitterness to filter through Cinderella’s masquerade.
At that moment, for the first time, Amanda decided simply to enjoy the evening…to be the innocent, trusting maiden she was supposed to be. Every woman should have the chance to be Cinderella for one night, she thought somewhat wistfully. Yes, every woman deserved the chance to possess a starry-eyed faith in princes and love and happy endings. What was wrong with that for just one night?
So, quite without being conscious of its existence, Amanda allowed the chip on her shoulder to fall away. She was Cinderella, walking beside a tall, dark, and handsome prince through a moonlit garden on a magic night when impossible things were possible.
“You’re very quiet,” he said as they strolled down the neat path of the formal garden.
“Now I’ve lost my wits,” she murmured, and felt a dim astonishment at the shyness she heard in her voice. Shy? Amanda Wilderman?
They had reached the center of the garden, where wrought iron benches ringed a trilevel stone fountain. The gentle splash of the water was soothing, and the music from the dance floor no more than a soft counterpoint.
Amanda sat down, grateful to be off her feet; the custom-made shoes were comfortable, certainly, but since she usually scorned high heels, they were still a trial. She was too conscious of Ryder’s closeness as he sat down beside her.
“Tell me who you are,” he said quietly.
She looked at him. The moonlight stole color, but his face was revealed clearly, even starkly, by the light. It was a lean face, handsome by any standards: a wide, intelligent brow, high cheekbones, firm jaw. His striking pale gray eyes were colorless in the moonlight, but the unusual vividness of them still was obvious.
Amanda drew a short breath. “Tonight I’m Cinderella,” she said.
“Who will you be tomorrow?”
“Someone else.” She hesitated, then said, “That doesn’t matter.”
“But—”
“Please. I don’t want it to matter.”
“So you are hiding behind the mask?”
Amanda laughed softly. “Of course. I crashed the party.”
It was a reasonable explanation. The guest list for this event had been decidedly exclusive. And it wouldn’t be the first time that a gate-crasher had taken advantage of a masquerade.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he promised solemnly.
“A true gentleman. Thank you.”
“If you remove your mask, that is.”
She laughed again. “I take back the first part; gentlemen don’t resort to blackmail.”
“Don’t let the costume fool you,” he said. “I’m no gentleman.” He captured one of her hands and held it against his thigh firmly. It trembled in his grasp, and the impulse to remove her mask himself died before he could make the attempt. His free hand had half lifted toward her, but he slowly lowered it again.
Hearing her soft sigh of relief, he said, “You wouldn’t have stopped me.”
“No. Either you believe in the magic or you don’t.”
“And you do?”
“Tonight I do.”
After a long moment he said slowly, “All right. But promise me you won’t leave at midnight.”
Amanda hesitated, but he had left her an out. She wasn’t going to leave at midnight. She was going to leave before. If, that is, she decided to finish her role the way it was written. So she gave him her word. “I won’t leave at midnight.” And before his keen brain could begin examining that for a loophole, she added dryly, “The coach won’t turn into a pumpkin, the horses into mice—or my gown into rags.”
“Your fairy godmother must believe in overtime.”
“She has a union.”
—
To her surprise, Amanda thoroughly enjoyed the next couple of hours. Ryder Foxx was a charming man with a highly developed sense of humor, and was willing—at least until midnight—to accept his role in a modern fairy tale. They walked in the garden and talked, discovering that they shared a number of opinions and beliefs as well as a quick wit and a somewhat ironic way of looking at the world around them.
They also disagreed amiably on a number of topics, which was another step in getting to know each other.
“Snails,” Ryder said when the subject of culinary preferences came up.
“Yuk,” Amanda said.
“You should try them.”
“I have. That’s why I said yuk.”
He chuckled. “Grasshoppers?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve—”
“No. I just wondered if you had.”
In an aggrieved tone she said, “If I don’t like snails, what makes you think I’d like bugs?”
“Not even covered in chocolate?”
“Not even covered in gold.”
“That,” he said gravely, “seems to take care of gourmet delights. Shall we move on?”
“Please.”
“Well, then, let’s hear your opinion on the state of the world.”
“I’ll tell if you’ll tell,” she said in a teasing tone.
He laughed again. “I get the feeling we agree. The world’s going to hell, but with a little luck won’t get there until the sun goes nova.”
“That about sums it up. And if you want another pocket summation, I’m for space exploration, rainy days, fewer taxes, baby animals of all kinds, good books, museums, flowers left in gardens instead of stuck into vases, old movies, spicy food, and the poetry of Keats.”
“And what are you against?”
“Snails and bugs being termed edible.”
“I got that the first time,” he said reprovingly, and the hand lightly holding her arm slipped down to warmly grasp her hand. “What else are you against?”
Amanda couldn’t quite recapture her light tone. “Oh…music with words I can’t understand. Cruelty. A social security system running out of money. Hunting anything that can’t shoot back. Cheating at solitaire. War. People who don’t signal before they turn.”
His hand tightened on hers. “And princes?”
She was very conscious of the man walking beside her, aware that something was happening between them. It was unexpected, and she couldn’t quite define it. She felt uncertain, a little breathless, oddly excited.
“No,” she said finally. “I’m not against princes. I just don’t believe in them. How can you be against something that doesn’t exist?”
“You have to believe,” he said slowly. “Somewhere inside you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
She drew a breath. “But I’m not myself tonight. I’m somebody else. And she believes in princes.”
For a long silent moment Ryder walked beside her, wondering why her denial affected him so strongly. He grew curious then about who had destroyed her illusions so thoroughly, and why the very thought of someone doing that to her made anger rise in him. He felt oddly that she was somehow unreal herself, that she was wearing more than a mask as a disguise. And when he spoke at last, he was surprised at the words that emerged.
“Does she believe in love?”
“I suppose she does.” Her voice was low, curiously tentative. “I suppose she has to. She’s a…a piece of a story
about love and princes. What else has she got to believe in? It’s all she is.”
He stopped walking suddenly and turned to face her, his hands lifting to her shoulders. “What if I want her to be more than that?” he asked quietly. “What if I need her to be a flesh and blood woman?”
Amanda had been the focus of a man’s charm before, but it had been many years since she had been able to accept that charm at face value. Her illusions had begun crumbling before she had left her teens, when her first serious relationship had ended badly, and the years after that had done nothing to shore up fragile ideals.
She had tried not to become cynical, but had finally come to the conclusion that either she’d had enormous misfortune in the men she met, or else it truly was impossible to encounter one solitary individual who had no interest in her money.
Amanda Wilderman didn’t believe in princes.
And yet here was a prince. A handsome, humorous, charming man who kept her on her toes with his sharp intelligence. And he hadn’t the faintest idea who she was.
But then something happened that she hadn’t anticipated. A very simple and natural thing, given a man and a woman virtually alone together in a moonlit garden. And now she didn’t know how to answer his question.
“I warned you I wasn’t a gentleman,” he murmured.
Amanda might have anticipated the kiss, natural under the circumstances. But her reaction to it went far beyond anything she could have predicted. She’d been kissed before, and by some “gentlemen” for whom the art was their stock-in-trade; but she had never felt anything like what she felt when Ryder kissed her.
His lips were hard, warm; there was no attempt to gently seduce or charmingly sway. He was no supplicant. He kissed her as if she were his for the taking, as if there were no need for preliminaries between them.
A wave of pure raw heat swept over Amanda, as if she’d stepped out of a cool room to stand under the blazing sun of a hot summer day. It was a shock at first and her hands lifted to push at his shoulders. But before she could even try to escape, a second wave of pleasure shuddered through her. She was hardly aware of a soft sound purring in the back of her throat, and didn’t realize that she had moved until she felt the heavy silk of his hair under her fingers and the hard strength of his arms around her.
Those sensations gave her the willpower—albeit, just barely enough—to push herself back from him and try to turn away. But he refused to release her completely, drawing her against him and holding her firmly.
“Let me go,” she ordered him huskily, staring down at the arms around her waist. She could feel the hard strength of his body at her back, and fought desperately to ignore the weakness of her own.
He kissed the nape of her neck, and said somewhat thickly, “It must be the moonlight. Do you think that’s it, Cinderella? Moon madness?”
“Definitely,” she managed to say with a shaky laugh. Then she caught sight of the luminous dial of his watch, and a chill chased the last of the cobwebs from her mind.
Eleven-thirty.
Where had the time gone? Until that moment she had half made up her mind to end the farce at midnight. But she couldn’t. When her mask came off, everything would change. Her own guard would go back up, because, of course, Ryder would change once he knew who she was. The unburdened pleasure of strangers would be gone.
She couldn’t see it end, not like that.
“Now I know how the prince felt,” Ryder said. “I could get obsessed about you.”
Amanda felt a pang, and recognized it somewhat ruefully for what it was. She hadn’t expected it to be painful to have awakened interest in a man from behind the anonymity of a mask.
“You’ve let the moonlight go to your head,” she said. “And so have I.”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“I guess not.” This time Amanda managed to pull completely away from him. It was time; she had to leave while she still had the willpower for it. But how could she distract him? She took a few steps to a handy bench and sat down, adding in a light tone, “You’ve also forgotten your manners.”
“Have I? In what way?”
“You haven’t offered me champagne,” she said reprovingly.
He stood gazing down at her for a moment, then said, “More evidence of moon madness. Would you care for a glass of champagne, milady?”
“Very much. Thank you.”
“And will you wait here for me?”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave.” She wasn’t lying, after all, she reassured herself. She had promised not to leave at midnight. And she wouldn’t.
“Good enough. I’ll be right back.”
Amanda sat perfectly still until he was lost to sight on the other side of the shrubbery. A glance around was enough for her to orient herself, and she offered silent thanks that she was familiar with the garden. She picked a path that would take her around the makeshift ballroom as quickly as possible, then removed the glass shoes, snatched up her skirts, and ran.
She held the shoes tightly in one hand, unwilling to drop them despite Samantha’s gentle request to the contrary. Her only other thought was to get away as soon as possible, and she took a shortcut through the Brewster house that led straight to the front door, racing past a number of startled servants.
Some of them had been en route to the ballroom with their hands full of various things. Amanda heard at least one crash from behind her and winced, but didn’t stop.
She burst out the front door and caught a glimpse of the white limo waiting at the bottom of the steps. But before she could make good her escape, a very large and very old gentleman dressed all in white, like a Kentucky colonel, crossed her path.
They tangled unaccountably, and Amanda felt one of the shoes slip from her grasp.
“I am sorry,” the old gentleman said in a gentle, apologetic baritone. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, of course not,” she replied distractedly, then caught the sounds of approaching footsteps hurrying in her wake. Where was the shoe? Her skirt was so full she couldn’t see—
“Oh, hell,” Amanda muttered, and fled. She raced down the steps and dove headfirst through the open door of the waiting limo.
—
The old gentleman, large, bulky, smilingly benign, chuckled softly as he gazed down at the delicate glass slipper.
“Now, then,” he murmured to himself.
And with a speed and silence astonishing for a man of his size and age, he faded back into the shadows.
Chapter 2
“I see you dropped it,” Samantha said.
Amanda sat up and stared at her cousins. They looked very solemn. No doubt, if she could have brought herself to look at the driver—who had lost no time in closing the door, getting behind the wheel, and driving away from the house—he would have looked solemn as well.
Amanda felt like an utter fool.
She didn’t try to pick herself up from the floorboard. The position, she thought, was eminently suitable. She tossed the remaining shoe into Samantha’s lap. “Here. If I ever see that thing again, I won’t be responsible for what happens to it. Understand?”
Samantha certainly did understand, and swiftly hid the shoe away in her voluminous shoulder bag. “Didn’t you enjoy the ball?” she asked guilelessly.
Gritting her teeth, Amanda said, “Oh, of course. I even danced with your prince. Which means that all debts are now paid in full.”
“But what happened?” Leslie asked.
“I dropped the damned shoe because somebody ran into me,” Amanda muttered.
“That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
“Nothing happened,” Amanda said. “I went, he saw, we danced. End of story.”
Leslie was about to demand more details, but Samantha elbowed her surreptitiously and said in a soothing tone, “All right, Manda. All debts paid. But at least tell us if you had a good time.”
After a moment Amanda said, “I enjoyed it very much. It was interesting to be somebody
else.” Then she cleared her throat strongly. “I don’t know what possessed me to run like that. I should have just stayed and taken off the mask.” She took it off then and frowned at it. “Anyway, it’s over now, and that’s that.”
“Of course,” Sam said.
—
A couple of hours later Leslie crept into her sister’s room, and found Sam sprawled out on her bed wearing an overlarge football jersey and a grimace.
“In case I haven’t mentioned it before,” Leslie said, “stop kicking and elbowing me!”
“Then stop blurting out things when you shouldn’t,” her sister returned, unrepentant.
“I’ll admit that it would have been a mistake to tell Manda that Ryder Foxx actually prefers redheads, but there was no reason for you to elbow me in the car.”
“Manda didn’t want to answer your questions, couldn’t you see that? It was best to let it drop. For the time being, that is.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Samantha grunted abstractedly, then said, “This is going to be more difficult than I thought.”
“Why? You said that if Manda left the party still masked, it’d be a good sign.”
“Yeah—and she dropped the shoe, which is another good sign.”
“She said somebody ran into her.”
Samantha gave her sister a superior look. “She wouldn’t have dropped it if she hadn’t wanted to. That was just an excuse. Trust me.”
Leslie did trust Samantha. “Okay. So why is it going to be more difficult than you thought?”
Chewing on her thumbnail, Sam said, “Because Manda’s so convinced that no man could possibly love her for herself. I hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about it.”
“Ryder Foxx doesn’t know who she is,” Leslie said.
In a suddenly practical manner Samantha said, “Yes, but I doubt he fell in love with her at the party; that would be just a bit too much to hope for. I’m sure he was intrigued, and he’ll probably try to find out who bought the shoes and where the costume came from, but that isn’t enough.”
“I think it’s too much,” Les said with some feeling. “If he finds out we were behind this whole thing—”