Table of Contents
Prince Charming and the Little Glass Bra Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About Annette Archer
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PRINCE CHARMING
AND THE LITTLE GLASS BRA
Annette Archer
This story is part of the Steam Books ROMANTICA line of novelettes and novellas, three to five times the length of our normal short stories, with more room for added romance and character development. We hope you enjoy!
Copyright © 2013 Steam Books Erotica & Romance
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
1.
Christina walked the sidewalk of her hometown with her head down, concentrating on a floating spot just in front of her feet. Her long blonde hair had been hastily pulled into a pony tail. She wrung her hands over and over. She had forgotten one thing off the grocery list. Just one.
For Aunt Virginia, that amounted to an unforgiveable sin.
So she had sent Christina back out again, even though it was a school night and she had homework and a test to study for tomorrow. Her aunt didn’t care. You did it right the first time, or you did it over.
An angry tear escaped the corner of her eye and Christina wiped it away. It was her own fault. If she’d paid more attention or been more careful, she would have remembered the stupid can of condensed milk. The fact that she knew Aunt Virginia wouldn’t even use it for a week or better didn’t matter. It had been her responsibility to get it, and she’d failed.
She failed at a lot of things. School, friendships, boyfriends. She had turned eighteen last week, and for his gift on her birthday Peter had broken up with her. In the cafeteria at school. So that had been awesome.
Even her own parents hadn’t wanted her. She was nine when mom and dad had brought her to Aunt Virginia and left her. They said they couldn’t take care of her and wanted a better life for her and all of that crap, but all she had ever really wanted was to be loved by them. By someone.
Aunt Virginia wasn’t big on love. Discipline and hard work was what got you ahead in life, that was what she told Christina, over and over.
She was on Market Street now, seven blocks away from Aunt Virginia’s rented duplex on Fifth Street. She didn’t mind walking. Cloverville was small enough that you could walk to almost anywhere you needed to go so long as you didn’t mind taking an hour or so to get there and back. Christina checked her little plastic watch and chewed on her bottom lip. She really needed to be home studying and doing her homework. Her teachers were starting to get annoyed with her constant excuses—
Christina stopped. She was in front of Baylor’s Dress Shoppe, one of three upscale clothing stores in town. She’d passed by this place at least once every week since she’d been living with Aunt Virginia. They always had displays in the windows, mannequins dressed up in the latest fashions, jeans and shirts and blouses that were things Christina could only dream about. Usually she just passed right by with only a casual glance. She was poor, and she knew what she could afford and what she couldn’t. It was just a hard fact of life.
But today, she stopped. The mannequin right in front by the window had on this light blue dress that was the most amazing thing Christina had ever seen. It was an off-the-shoulder fashion with lacy frills along the low neckline. It went down to the mannequin’s ankles in a graceful fall of fabric.
It was gorgeous.
A curious thought turned into an impulse, and then she was walking through the door of Baylor’s and standing, mesmerized, looking up at the dress. She pictured herself in it, dancing with a man who held her tight and whispered things in her ear.
She didn’t know how long she had been standing there before a woman in a crisp white shirt with a nametag on it came up to her with a smile and jolted her out of her daydream. “Can I help you, sweetie?”
Christina didn’t know what to say. “I…I was looking at that dress,” she stammered.
The clerk took a moment to look Christina up and down, from head to toe, taking in the rips in her jeans and her scuffed up old sneakers and her plain face. Christina was sure she was going to be laughed out of the store.
Instead, the woman smiled, and took her gently by the arm. “Every young woman deserves to know what they would look like in a dress like that. Come with me. I’m sure we have it in your size.”
They were halfway to the back of the store where the changing rooms were when Christina realized what was happening. “Oh,” she said, feeling foolish. “You don’t understand. I don’t have the money—”
“Now, if you can’t buy it today,” the clerk said with a smile and a wink. “We can always put it aside for you. For now, let’s just have a look at you in it. How’s that sound?”
Christina didn’t know what to say. What would Aunt Virginia think? She always said clothes like that were for rich fools who had more money than sense. And she always had some comment ready about how dressing Christina up would be like putting fine clothes on a prize hog.
Her cheeks burned at the thought of it. The anger she suddenly felt at the cruel way her aunt always treated her made up her mind for her. She decided that she would try the dress on, if only to have a memory of how she looked in it ready for the next time Aunt Virginia called her ugly or plain or any of the other awful things she always said about her.
“Okay,” she told the clerk nervously. “I’m a size four. Um. I think.”
The woman looked at her waist again. Christina jumped when the clerk suddenly put her hands on Christina’s hips. “Yes. Size four looks right. Now you go into dressing room one and take off what you’re wearing. I’ll bring you the dress.”
And then she was off, leaving Christina to step into the little cubicle with the door marked “One.” The walls inside were painted purple and hung with mirrors on the three sides. Christina had never seen so much of herself all at once. She couldn’t help but look at herself, with her high cheekbones and deep hazel eyes and her unruly blonde hair, and think that maybe, just maybe, if she had the time and the encouragement—and the money—she could be pretty.
She sighed. No. Aunt Virginia was right. She was just a plain girl about to graduate high school and move on to nothing important.
There was a knock at the door. “Are you ready for it?”
Christina couldn’t help but smile, because today, she was a plain girl about to try on an amazing dress.
She opened the door to take the dress from the clerk then closed it again and locked it. Quickly, she stripped off her sneakers and jeans, and then pulled her shirt up over her head. She stared at herself again, at the picture of a girl just becoming a woman. Was she supposed to take the bra off? Well, duh, she thought at herself. The dress left the shoulders bare. Of course she had to take off her bra.
Even though there was no one to see her as she stood there mostly naked, she blushed harshly and avoided eye contact with the images of herself in the three mirrors. She fumbled with the dress zipper. Carefully she stepped into it, one long leg at a time, and then pulled it up over her arms, and zipped it back up.
She didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Where a poor country girl had stood before, now there was a sophisticated woman in a dress that was to die for.
&nbs
p; She gasped and put her hands over her mouth.
Wow. It was all she could think to say.
Just, wow.
“How are we doing in there?” the clerk asked with another knock.
“Oh. Sorry. I…well, I have it on but I probably should take it off now, right?”
“Nonsense! You have to let us see it.”
“Us?” Christina asked.
“Sure. Me and my co-workers want to see you in it. Come on now!”
Great, Christina thought.
But she went along with it, opening the door timidly and stepping out in her sock feet, modeling the dress for the clerk and two other women who also wearing crisp white shirts and nametags. All three of them smiled or clapped or told her how beautiful she looked. Outside the dressing rooms was another tall standing mirror and she gazed longingly at herself in it, pulling the sides of the dress out a bit and twirling.
She smiled. It didn’t matter what anyone said about her. In that moment, she felt beautiful.
“Well. I must say I’m enjoying what I see so far,” a man’s voice said.
She saw him on her second twirl around. She squeaked and backed up ‘til her rear end bumped into the mirror and nearly sent it toppling over.
He smiled at her as she did. He was tall, and young, and his dark hair was wavy and thick. A lock of it fell across his forehead. Deep crystal blue eyes looked at her in a very appraising way. He was dressed in a red satin shirt and dark grey dress pants and had the kind of good looks that she only ever saw in magazines. Yet here he stood, big as life and smiling at her.
“You look beautiful in that. You should definitely buy it.”
She might have squeaked something again. She wasn’t sure. She made a straight line for the dressing room and as quickly as she could, she took the dress off and hung it up on a hook. Her own clothes gave her more difficulty and as she struggled to get her left sneaker back on she could hear the man talking to the clerks outside the dressing rooms.
“I don’t know her name,” the woman who had found the dress for Christina was saying. “You should ask her.”
“Hm,” the man said. “Brilliant idea. Excuse me, miss?”
She nearly choked. Was he talking to her? Through a changing room door?
“Could I ask you your name?”
Oh, yes. Yes he was talking to her.
“I…I, um,” she stammered.
Then she cleared her throat and yanked her shoelace into a knot with too much force.
“It’s Christina Mason,” she finally got out. Why was she telling this guy her name?
She’d finally been able to put herself back together then and she pushed through the swinging door of the change room, mumbling a thanks to the clerks as she raced for the exit. She thought she heard the guy behind her calling for her to wait. She definitely did not want to wait.
What had just happened? She asked herself that as she started off for the market again. Aunt Virginia would be livid if she took much longer to get home. And all because she’d had to try some dress on in a store that she never should have been in. There was no way she could afford that dress. And yet she had gone in, changed out of her clothes…
She stopped where she was. Embarrassed to the point that she thought she would melt right into the sidewalk, she realized she’d forgotten something back in the changing room.
Her bra.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and after she’d bought the can of condensed milk she raced back to her aunt’s duplex as fast as her feet would take her.
2.
Christina slowly made her way up the walkway that led to the gray two-story duplex that her aunt lived in. Theirs was the left side. The right side was owned by a pair of sisters who were older than dirt and with the personalities to match. Christina had tried to start a conversation with them any number of times, only to have them sniff and walk away or make some comment about how children should be seen and not heard.
School had been brutal today. That test she didn’t study for had been just as hard as she had expected it to be and she was pretty sure she hadn’t passed. Then Mr. Applegate had made her stay after to complete the homework assignment that she was supposed to do last night. After getting home with the can of condensed milk, her aunt had given her the third degree about what had taken her so long and that had turned into a shouting match and then Christina had been made to clean the bathroom until Aunt Virginia was satisfied. Christina didn’t get to bed until after one in the morning.
Now she was trembling inside, expecting her aunt to start in on her again for being kept after school. Some days, life just sucked. On the plus side it was always predictable.
She opened the door on its squeaky hinges and stepped inside to a scene that was definitely not predictable.
Their kitchen was a small space with old white cabinets on the walls and a small refrigerator and a gas stove. The table was a little oval thing with four beat-up wooden chairs around it. Usually she’d find her aunt sitting at the chair that faced the door puffing on a cigarette. She was always there when Christina got home from school, ready to yell at her for doing something wrong or to remind her over and over that she was supposed to come right home after school and never hang out with her friends.
Her aunt was there now, only now she wasn’t alone. The cute guy from last night at the dress shop was there, too. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and jeans.
And he was smiling. So was her aunt. They both looked up at her as she stood there in the doorway.
“Don’t just stand there, Christina!” her aunt said with annoyance. “You’ll let in all the bugs.”
She snubbed a cigarette out in an ashtray already full of butts and waited for Christina to close the door. Then she smiled at her guest again.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Averton. My niece. Not much manners with this one.”
Christina felt heat rising in her cheeks. Leave it to her aunt to know how to make her feel two inches tall. But that wasn’t the only reason she was embarrassed. This guy was an Averton? Everyone in town knew who the Avertons were. They were the richest family in town and as far as Christina knew, always had been.
He stood up from the table, the smile on his face just for her. “I’m sure that’s all right. Hello again.”
Shyly, she nodded and shifted from foot to foot. “Hi.”
“Mister Averton here says he knows you, Christina.” Her aunt was lighting another cigarette. She didn’t look at Christina, but she didn’t have to. The tone of her voice said it all. “I told him that he must be mistaken. I told him that my niece couldn’t possibly have met anyone in a dress shop because I know where my niece is at all times and I certainly didn’t send her into a dress shop to look at clothes that I couldn’t afford. Isn’t that right, Christina?”
“Well, I…” She didn’t know what to say. If she lied, she’d get in trouble. If she told the truth, she’d get in worse trouble. And trouble from Aunt Virginia often meant bruises she had to hide with long-sleeved shirts. Why did this guy have to come to her house?
He saw the look on her face and his expression changed. Suddenly he was looking down at Virginia with a hard gaze that was completely lost on the older woman.
“I must have been mistaken, ma’am. I was sure it was your niece I met yesterday but I see now that it wasn’t. The girl I saw there was pretty, but nowhere near as pretty as your niece.”
Aunt Virginia nearly choked as she laughed at that. “Ha! You need your eyes checked, is what you need. So I take it you don’t want her for the job after all.”
Christina looked from Aunt Virginia to Mister Averton and back again. “Job? What job?”
Her aunt waved away thick cigarette smoke and shook her head. “Don’t matter. You ain’t the one he was looking for. There you go again, ruining every opportunity that we get handed to us. I wish I knew why I let your mother talk me into keeping you here.”
Every word stung just like someone was slapping Chri
stina across her face. She shrank back, holding tighter to her books, and went to head to her bedroom and start her homework before Aunt Virginia could come up with some needless chore that needed doing.
“Hold on, now,” the guy said, his voice strong and compelling. “There’s no reason I wouldn’t consider Christina for what I need.”
She liked the way he said that, liked the way he spoke gently to her and not like she was stupid. She dared to lift her eyes up to his and found that he was looking directly at her. Her heart skipped a beat. Something was happening here, and she was missing it.
“Do you like dogs?” he asked her.
“Sure? I mean, yes, I do.” She had always wanted a dog, actually, but it was one more in a long list of things that she and her aunt couldn’t afford.
“Well. I happen to have a dog. A golden retriever. Beautiful animal. And I’m in need of someone to take care of it. It would be an afterschool and weekends kind of thing. I understand you’re finishing your last year of high school?”
She nodded. How old was this guy, she wondered. He couldn’t be more than a few years older than she was, really, and here he was, offering her a job?
“Good. So what do you say?”
“Uh…” She had missed something. “I don’t understand.”
“Figures,” Aunt Virginia snapped. “Do you need him to write it down for you?”
Averton spoke to Virginia without turning so Christina could see the way his face scrunched up even as his voice remained cheerful. “You know, I’ll bet Christina can speak for herself, especially if someone as smart as you helped raise her, Ms. Virginia.”
Christina had to stifle a smile as her aunt preened under what she thought was a compliment. Christina heard the sarcasm behind the words.
“Christina, I’m looking for someone to babysit my dog.” Averton explained to her. “I’m busy, taking over my father’s company. It’s not really fair to her. I love that dog, but lately I haven’t been able to give her the attention she needs. So. That’s where you come in. I’ll pay you ten dollars an hour over minimum wage. Plus, on the weekends you can stay over at our place. To help with the dog, I mean. We have plenty of room. What do you say?”
Prince Charming and the Little Glass Bra Page 1