The Cinderella Project (A Comedy of Love, #1)

by Crowe, Stan

  The urge to use the ladies’ room brought her back to earth. Lindsay made her way around her desk. In a rare, clumsy moment, her foot snagged a teetering pile of boxes. She yelped as a half dozen of them crashed down, spilling their contents all over the floor. She groaned.

  “Well, it’s not as though I was doing anything else right now.” She excused herself to freshen up. She’d deal with the mess in a moment.

  *

  9:30 rolled around before Lindsay declared the disaster “conquered.” She looked at the rearranged stack with satisfaction before turning back to her desk. An unexpected upshot of her little accident was that she had unearthed some of her old high school paraphernalia. Maybe a little mental break would help clear her mind and bring in some fresh ideas. She put her old notebooks aside and went straight for the yearbooks.

  Freshman year. The picture above her name made her shudder. Had her hair really been that ratty? And those freckles? Ugh. As if being strawberry blond hadn’t been bad enough. Then there was the acne. She slammed the book shut.

  Sophomore year. Her family had moved to a different town and gave her a fresh start. The acne was mostly gone by then, but she wasn’t sure if braces made such a good replacement. She’d straightened her hair, but what was with the little poof of bangs on the right side of her head? Why had she been so hideous back when guys were still worth thinking about? She wondered if there was some sort of “reverse plastic surgery” to make a girl look a tad disgusting to keep them away now. No, she still had her dignity, and Mom would never pop to cover a nose job designed to make her look like a toucan.

  She looked through the yearbook signatures she’d gotten from various friends; she was surprised at how few there were. She slightly regretted her plan to skip her ten-year reunion when it came up, but she had her reasons. As she started to close the book, the pages flopped down to reveal the seniors. A face stopped her cold. That lazy, blond hair over those gray-blue eyes that she used to think shined for her. There was that familiar, half grin that never quite left his lips, and seemed to get wider when he saw her. It was almost a shame that she’d scribbled a big, black X over his picture; it was the only one of him she had. No amount of scribbling would ever erase her mental picture of him.

  I’d almost forgotten about him. The lie was comforting. She thoroughly despised Clint Christopherson. She could have forgiven him if he’d merely been a dolt like Daryl. The way Clint had pulled out her heart with a surgeon’s care, so much that she was blinded to its absence, was another thing altogether. It wasn’t until her breakup with her first serious boyfriend—and she didn’t shed one tear over it—did she realize just how much Clint affected her. Granted, that made it easier to be dumped by boyfriends two and three, back in college. Maybe she should be grateful? No. Clint was scum. He deserved a long, slow death after a life of celibacy. At least she had finally woken up to the fact that she could be her own woman.

  Still, she took a long, last look at that markered face before gently closing the yearbook and filing it back in its box. After a moment’s thought, however, she fished it back out, and set it on her desk; it would be fun to look through it tonight just for the memories.

  This has nothing to do with Clint, she told herself.

  What had happened to him, anyway? A moment of hesitation, and then she turned to her computer. No sin in a little curious searching, now, was there? Ten minutes was all she needed to find out that he was still single and still in the Bay Area. Would he even remember her? Would she want him to remember her? No, no. He was a liar; he didn’t deserve her. He’d missed his chance back when she was young and stupid. His loss. She was a big girl now. A big girl with big girl responsibilities.

  She closed the web browser and looked out her window at the street below. Of all those people down there, surely someone needed her services. A case would come her way sooner or later, she was sure. It had to. Otherwise, Mom and Dad would, once again, be right. Lindsay could afford no more Mrs. Ashworths: Lindsay would take whatever case she could get.

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