Fortune's Cinderella

by Templeton, Karen

  “Christina, stop!”

  Since it wasn’t like she could exactly run down the curved staircase, she halted at the top, one hand clutching the wooden bannister. “Please don’t say that sounded worse than it was. And don’t touch me!”

  She sensed Scott take a step back. Sensed, too, that he was not a happy camper right now. “Yeah, that was pretty bad. I’m also sure it’s a knee-jerk reaction, because I’m resigning, moving away. He’s upset, but he’ll get over it. Besides, it’s what I think about you that matters, not what my father thinks—”

  “He called me a gold digger!” she said, wheeling on him, the déjà vu making her dizzy. “Or as good as. How on earth could we possibly have a relationship when your father clearly hates me?”

  “He doesn’t even know you—”

  “Didn’t stop him from judging me, did it? And I told you not to touch me!” she said when he grabbed her shoulders and yanked her to his chest.

  “Tough,” Scott said into her hair. “Look, I’m none too pleased with him, either, at the moment. But please believe me—” He relaxed his hold to set her back, his gaze caressing hers. “Whatever you heard, it’s highly uncharacteristic. When he does get to know you, he’ll love you as much as I do—”

  His phone buzzed. “See, that’s probably Dad right now, calling back to apologize…oh.” Frowning, he brought up the text message, then looked at Christina, all the color drained from his face.

  “That was Wendy. She’s in labor. And she can’t get hold of Marcos.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Twenty minutes later they pulled into Wendy’s driveway, the worry tensing Scott’s face twisting Christina inside out. There’d been no time to get her home first, which seemed to bother Scott a lot more than it did Christina, who’d switched into crisis mode the moment she’d heard.

  “Wen?” he called out the instant they were through the door. “Where are you, sweetheart?”

  “In our b-bedroom!”

  Scott roared down the short hallway, Christina right behind him. Wendy was lying on her left side on top of the covers, her arm protectively curled around her bulging middle.

  “There was some sort of supply crisis at the restaurant,” she whispered. “M-Marcos had to make a quick trip up to New Braunfels, I wasn’t doing this when he l-left! And I didn’t call him right away because I thought it was gas or something at first—”

  “Shh, shh, shh…” Scott sat on the edge of the bed, stroking her hair away from her tear-streaked face and making a lump rise in Christina’s throat. “Did you call your doctor?”

  “What d-do you think? S-she said to d-drink a couple g-glasses of water and lie on m-my left side to see if the c-contractions stopped. It’s been more almost an hour and they h-haven’t.”

  Scott stood. “What’s her number? We can meet her at the hospital.”

  “It’s on the refrigerator. But she said—”

  “I don’t give a damn what she said. I’m not about to take any chances with you. Or my niece. And I’ll call Marcos while I’m at it. He can meet us there, too.”

  After Scott left in search of the number, Christina awkwardly lowered herself to her knees to fold her hand around the young woman’s, willing herself to stay in the moment. To not give in to the fear. The memories. Wendy gave her a shaky sigh.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Christina returned her smile. “Me, too. Did your water break?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then this is probably just a very scary false alarm—”

  “Ohmigosh!” Turning over Christina’s left hand, Wendy’s eyes flashed to hers. “What’s this? Did Scott propose?”

  Damn. With everything else going on, she’d forgotten about the ring. “It’s…no. Not quite.” Christina shoved her hair behind her ear and tried to remove her hand from Wendy’s viselike grip. “It’s more like…a promise ring.”

  Wendy angled Christina’s hand to get a better look. If nothing else, at least it distracted Wendy from her own plight. “That must’ve been some promise.”

  You have no idea, Christina thought as Scott returned. “Okay, it would be quicker for me to get you there than to wait for the EMTs, so let’s get cracking. Do you have a bag or something?”

  “It’s so early I hadn’t p-packed one yet…oh!”

  At her scrunched face—although more in fear than pain, Christina surmised—Scott scooped his sister into his arms, only to let out a curse. “Crap—I can’t take you in the Mustang!”

  “There’s a minivan in your neighbor’s driveway,” Christina said, hustling out of the room as fast as the stupid cast would let her. “Maybe they’ll let us borrow it!”

  The pleasant, middle-aged woman who answered the door was more than happy to oblige, handing over the keys before her husband could even lever himself off the recliner behind her.

  “Oh, my goodness, that sweet girl! You tell her Morton and me’ll keep her in our prayers, you hear?”

  “Got ’em!” she called to Scott seconds later, who swiftly carted Wendy across the yard, gently settling her into the van’s middle seat. A minute later, they were off.

  “Hurry,” Wendy whispered behind them.

  “You got it, honey,” Scott said, gunning the poor minivan probably faster than it had ever gone before.

  Scott dropped into the waiting room chair, exhausted but still tingling from the previous hour’s excitement. Marcos had gotten there not five minutes after they did, the same time as Wendy’s doctor. After her exam Wendy had been admitted and was being given medication to stop the labor. If it took, she could probably go back home tomorrow, although she’d be on strict bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy—no muffin baking!—which ought to make his always-on-the-go sister even more nuts.

  If it didn’t, he thought with an anxious spasm, Dr. Curtiss assured him they had an excellent neonatal unit, that MaryAnne would get the best care possible.

  Returning from the ladies’ room, Christina sat beside him, her makeup-free face pale in the ghastly artificial light. Scott reached for her hand, holding on tight in an attempt to pick up where they’d left off when Wendy’s frantic text had come through.

  Her eyes briefly cut to his before, blushing, she looked down to brush nonexistent lint off her lap. “They’re going to be fine, Scott.”

  He frowned slightly, wondering if she’d deliberately misinterpreted the gesture. Then he exhaled. “Wendy was a preemie, too. Six weeks early. Scared us all half to death.”

  “I can imagine,” Christina said after a moment. “Then again, she certainly didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects from it, right?”

  One side of his mouth tilted. “Physically, no. Although there’s a reason she was spoiled to death.”

  “I don’t think she’s spoiled at all.”

  “You didn’t know her back then. Whatever she wanted, she got. Or made everyone miserable until she did.” He looked over; Christina’s eyes were still lowered. “You did good back there. Keeping Wendy from losing it. Not to mention me.”

  Slipping her hand out of his, she sort of laughed. “Oh, yeah, I’m just a regular rock,” she said, twisting the ring around and around on her finger, like Gumbo trying to make himself comfortable on his bed. “Long as it’s somebody else’s drama.”

  “Hey. You okay?” When she lifted bewildered eyes to his, he said, “We kind of left things…unfinished. Back at the house.”

  “Oh. Right.” Her nostrils flared when she blew out a breath. “It’s not that. Well, not entirely. It’s…being here. It brings back memories.”

  “From after the tornado?”

  “No. From—”

  “She’s asleep,” Marcos said, coming up behind them and sinking into the chair catty-corner to Christina, the li
ngering concern in his eyes duking it out with the relief evident in his relaxed posture. “So far the meds seem to be working, she hasn’t had a contraction for an hour. But she’s already three centimeters dilated and 50 percent effaced, which the doctor said is unusual for a first-timer this early in pregnancy.”

  “So…what does that mean?” Scott asked.

  “That they’re going to keep her for a few days instead of sending her back home tomorrow. Just to be sure.” Then he gave them a weary smile. “Thanks for everything, but you guys don’t have to stick around.”

  “She’s my sister, believe me I don’t mind—”

  “I know you don’t,” Marcos said, getting to his feet. “But hopefully she’s going to stay asleep for a while now and keep that baby inside. So please. Go.”

  Scott stood as well, holding out a hand to help Christina up. “You call me, though, if anything changes?”

  “You got it.”

  However, he waited until they were in the van and out of the hospital parking lot before he said, “So what were you saying before Marcos showed up? About being in the hospital bringing up memories?”

  Her gaze fixed straight ahead, Christina forked her fingers through her bangs, then folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment Scott thought she was going to clam up again. Before he could call her on it, however, she said, very quietly, “Seven years ago, I was in that maternity wing. Only, that time, there was nothing anybody could do.”

  Scott’s breath caught in his throat. “You lost a baby?”

  “I wasn’t as far along as Wendy. Only four months. But, yes.”

  “Damn, honey…being around Wendy—”

  “And you can stop that right now. For one thing, you didn’t know. And for another, it’s not like I can avoid pregnant women for the rest of my life. Besides, I’ve always believed God puts us where He needs us to be. And that we don’t always get a vote in the matter. This wasn’t about me, it was about Wendy and MaryAnne.”

  “Well, now it is about you.” Scott’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

  “For what it’s worth, I was going to earlier, only Wendy called and somehow that didn’t seem like the right time for a stroll down memory lane.”

  “When has it ever been?”

  He sensed her eyes cut to his profile, then back to the taillights a hundred feet in front of them. “You said it didn’t matter.”

  “As to how I feel about you? No. But it’s obviously coloring how you feel about me.” He gave her a brief, hard look. “In which case, yeah. It matters. Because whether you want to admit it or not…it’s holding you back.”

  “I know,” she whispered, then sighed out a breathy laugh. “It’s like…my head’s that closet crammed to the gills with all that stuff you simply do not want to deal with. Which is kinda funny, when I think about it, considering how much I detest clutter of any kind…”

  She did that raking her thumbnail across her bottom teeth thing for a moment…then, with a sigh, finally yanked open that closet door.

  They’d been high school sweethearts from their sophomore year on, she said quietly, steadily, as Scott drove, focusing on the headlights piercing the darkness in front of them. Chris and Chris, joined at the hip, homecoming king and queen. The perfect couple who never had a single fight.

  Even though he came from money and she didn’t.

  “Not that it made a lick of difference to us,” Christina said as a sick knowing-where-this-was-going feeling shuddered through Scott. “Or so I’d convinced myself—but his folks weren’t exactly thrilled. Especially since Christopher was their only child, and they had Big Plans for him. Which did not include little ol’ me. So I guess we had that whole Romeo and Juliet thing going on. Although that story didn’t end too well, either, did it?”

  Scott hesitated, then said, “Since you’re still here, I take it there was no poison involved?”

  “Not the kind you drink, no. But thoughts can be a kind of poison, too. Even if it takes a long time to take effect. In any case, right after graduation we eloped, because it was rebellious and romantic and proved we were adults who could make our own decisions. Only then he brought me home—his home, I mean—as his wife and all hell broke loose.”

  “I take it his folks didn’t come around?”

  Her laugh sounded raw. “You might say. His father pointed at me like I was a stray dog who’d followed Chris home and said, ‘You’re old enough to marry that piece of white trash, then you’re damn well old enough to pay your own bills.’”

  “Crap,” Scott said softly, realizing. “Then my father—”

  “Yeah, that was definitely one of those déjà vu things. At the time, however, I was still caught up in the dream and determined to make it work. We were both working crappy jobs, but the plan was he’d go to college and get his degree, then I could get mine. Except…” She paused. “Except then I got pregnant. And Chris freaked. Told me no way could we deal with a baby right then, that I had to get…to get rid of it. And…I told him I would.”

  “Damn, honey…”

  “Oh, I had no intention of going through with it. But I would’ve said almost anything to get him to stop yelling at me. To buy me some time. Lord, Scott, I was scared out of my gourd. Yeah, he’d begun to snap at me now and then, but I chalked it up to his being tired all the time. That night, though…it was pretty bad. But by that point, I couldn’t give up. Couldn’t let on I was in over my head, that my mother had been right all along—”

  “About what?”

  “That I had no business being with somebody like him. That he’d get tired of me eventually, realize he’d made a mistake. Same as my daddy had done, apparently. Because, you see, he’d come from money, too. So the last thing I wanted was to hear her I told you so. Not that I had clue one what I was going to do, but I guess I hoped once the shock wore off Chris would adjust to the idea. Because we were a team, right? As we had always been. Only…”

  Crossing her arms, she snorted. “Here’s what I didn’t realize until much later—while I was all about the romance, apparently Chris’s primary goal was to piss off his parents. So he married me.” She shrugged. “Why it never occurred to him they’d cut him off, I do not know. But they did. And…I guess he felt pretty trapped.”

  Scott glanced at her. “By what? And please don’t say ‘me.’”

  “By circumstances, then.”

  “Of his own making.”

  “True, but…we did have some good times, Scott. I swear. A lot of good times.”

  “As long as things were easy?”

  Her shoulders bumped again. “As long as he got his way. Then again, maybe I was expecting too much of him—”

  “Don’t defend him, Christina. Or make excuses. He was your husband, for crying out loud.”

  Several beats passed before she said, “In theory, yes.” A long breath hissed from her lungs. “In any case, suddenly I was four months gone, no closer to knowing what I was going to do than I had been when that little plus sign showed itself…right about the time Chris pulled his head out of his butt long enough to realize my body was changing. We had another fight. A big one. He grabbed his keys and stormed out of our second-floor apartment, yelling that that I’d broken my promise and that he should’ve listened to his parents, should’ve…” She shook her head, her hand fisting in her lap. “I ran after him. But my heel caught on one of the steps and I fell.”

  Even though he already knew the outcome, Scott felt his heart turn over. “And Chris?”

  Christina tucked her hair behind her ear. “To give him some credit, when I screamed he turned back, looking scared out of his wits. He called 911, stayed with me the whole time. And even though I was devastated about the baby, I truly thought he’d had his come-to-Je
sus moment, that we’d be fine.

  “But we weren’t. Not by a long shot. He refused to let me talk about my feelings, acting like it’d never happened…” She shook her head, then sighed. “Eventually I had to admit that our relationship had miscarried long before the baby. Especially since…since I realized I couldn’t stay married to somebody I no longer respected. And I h-hated him for what he’d asked me to do.”

  Scott’s jaw hurt from the effort to not say what he was really thinking, what he’d be sorely tempted to do if the little weasel ever crossed his path. Instead he said, “Why wouldn’t you?” and she shrugged again.

  “We got a no-fault divorce a few months later. At least, it was called no-fault.”

  “It sure wasn’t yours.”

  “I didn’t shoulder the entire blame, of course not. But…” They pulled up in front of her apartment, but she didn’t seem in any hurry to get out of the car. Instead, she shifted enough to face him, her forehead pinched.

  “My mother and I have issues aplenty, God knows, but in this case she was right. I should have known better. Heck, I’ve always prided myself on being a realist, even as a kid. But I was so, I don’t know…flattered, I suppose, when Chris picked me. Out of all the girls in school. Me. He seemed so confident. So in charge. Like he could make anything he wanted to happen. And it wiped common sense clean out of my head. Because when the chips were down we were obviously looking at life through different lenses. And all the wanting in the world for things to be different wasn’t going to change that.”

  Dread swamped him even before she started to twist the ring off her finger.

  “Christina—”

  “I can’t accept this, Scott. No matter how much I want to, or how much I love you. And I do love you, you’ve gotta believe that. But that doesn’t change the fact that you and I, we look at life through different lenses, too. We can’t help it,” she said when he started to protest, “it’s just the way things are. So, here—”