Cinderella's New York Fling

by Cara Colter

  “No, you couldn’t. I realized that when your dad came in and found us. That you weren’t that kind of woman and that you never would be. That you would compromise something integral to you if you tried to be.”

  “Maybe that’s not for you to decide.”

  He sighed. “I felt sick with shame that night. I nearly did something I would have regretted forever. But I want a chance to try again. Only to do it right this time. To see if I can be the kind of man worthy of a woman like you.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “I want to be a man you never have to be afraid to love. Worthy of what you have held out to me. I proposed to JHA and Vivian that we give you a private contract as a consultant. You can do everything you do best—run seminars and training sessions for bookstore owners—but you can still own your bookstore, too. You can go back and forth between New York and here. And I can go back and forth between New York and here. Because I’ve fallen in love with your world.”

  Her world, she told herself firmly. But then he went on.

  “And I am falling for you. Unlike you, I’m afraid as hell of it. But I have a feeling you could teach me the meaning of courage, if I give you the chance.”

  It dawned on her, that’s why he was here.

  They were going to give this thing—this powerful, mysterious force that was blossoming between them—a chance.

  “Because you don’t work for me,” Jamie continued softly, “and I won’t be your boss, I can romance you the way a woman deserves to be romanced. Wooed, as the gals of the Smitten Word called it.

  “I want to be that man, Jessica, the one who takes it slow and woos you and sees if what we have both been feeling over the last few days can go to where I want it to go. Where I hope you want it to go, too.”

  “And where is that?” she whispered.

  “I’m hoping, one day, you’ll be my wife. I’m hoping, soon, I’ll be the guy so in love—so unafraid of love—that I’ll buy the most expensive engagement ring in the store window.”

  It was a pinch-me moment. She began to weep. And then to laugh. And then she wept some more. She had never felt joy as all-consuming as the joy of Jamie finding his way back to her, saying yes to all the possibilities love held out to them.

  And then he was on the couch beside her, and he lifted her into his arms, and cradled her against the solidness of his chest and whispered love songs into her hair.

  This was what she knew in that moment: this was the gift of having the courage to say yes to love. This place, her cottage, her parents, Timber Falls, none of these were home any longer. She did not need them, any longer, to feel the world was safe. And New York would not be home, either.

  Home, that place of ultimate safety, where you were accepted and celebrated for yourself, would be, from this day forward, wherever love led them.

  EPILOGUE

  I READ THE report in front of me with a good deal of pleasure. For a while it seemed as if my attempt to repay Jessica Winton her kindness to me that day in Copenhagen was going to backfire. I got a number of emails from her, snappy in tone, letting me know she was not happy with an old lady meddling in her life.

  She even called me that. An old lady! Imagine.

  “It’s quite funny, isn’t it?” I said to Max. “I thought she was going to be the easy one.”

  Max seemed quite bored with the discussion, and looked longingly at his cookie jar. The doctor has said I have to cut down on his cookies.

  “Half,” I told him, breaking one in two. He nearly took my hand off as he grabbed it and gulped it down. He acted as if he was starving, as if he had been doing doggie obstacle courses, instead of lying on my lap all day.

  I hadn’t planned the romance part of it. Of course, I wouldn’t plan that. A romance is always a complication that, in my experience, life does not need.

  And a romance with that man, the hyphenated name one. Even though I consider myself jaundiced about the topic, the thought of those two together—Jessica and Jamie, as I found out his first name is—pleases me in some way. Some people, maybe even most people, given time, seem to bring out the worst in each other, but somehow I believe those two will beat the odds.

  I think they will bring out the best in each other.

  “I’m getting soft in my old age,” I told Max. I could see from his hopeful expression he thought that meant the other half of the cookie.

  I felt a sudden and completely unexpected longing for the life I had not chosen. Family, that most complicated of things, and children.

  I shook off the thought.

  Family, to me, has always been a source of great pain, not an experience I was eager to repeat once I had escaped my own. The constant worry about the health and welfare of my doggie companions has shown me I didn’t have the constitution to raise a child. The worry would have never stopped. If I’d had a child when I was twenty, that child would be in his or her fifties today, and I bet I would be as worried as the day they were born.

  Maybe I would have had grandchildren, a forlorn voice inside me said wistfully.

  No, I am better off alone. Me, with my gift for seeing so clearly what other people need, should have every confidence I have made the right choices about my own needs.

  Still, I hope the other two young ladies are going to be easier, and not create such a sense of longing in me for the paths I had not taken.

  Aubrey has been sick, poor thing. Not that there’s any good person to get sick, but she’s absolutely the wrong one: so independent and spunky. Her well-meaning brothers probably nearly suffocated her in their clumsy love. Well, hang in there, dear, all the adventures you ever longed for are coming at you soon.

  And Daisy!

  I’ve given Daisy the old house in Italy. She thought what she needed was success, as so many of us do, but I can tell you that it is not what it’s cracked up to be. What she needs most is a place to call home.

  Extravagant some people might say, but I don’t see it that way.

  With no family to leave all this to, why not be extravagant? I could walk down the street and give one-hundred-dollar bills to strangers for a whole week and not even make a dent in my fortune.

  Maybe I’ll do that. Next week. Me and Max.

  But today, I feel ready for a nap. All this meddling, as Jessica so unkindly called it, has left me quite exhausted.

  * * *

  Look out for the next story in A Fairytale Summer! quartet

  Italian Escape with her Fake Fiancé by Sophie Pembroke

  Coming soon!

  And if you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Cara Colter

  Tempted by the Single Dad

  Cinderella’s Prince Under the Mistletoe

  His Convenient Royal Bride

  Snowbound with the Single Dad

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Bound by the Prince’s Baby by Jessica Gilmore.

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  Bound by the Prince’s Baby

  by Jessica Gilmore

  PROLOGUE

  Eight years ago

  THE CAR PURRED to a stop and the driver got out, walking as stiffly as if he were on parade to the rear passenger side and opening the door. Amber Kireyev pulled her hated kilt down to her knees before she grabbed her rucksack and shimmied out of the car under his always watchful gaze.

  ‘Thank you, Boris,’ she said with a smile, but as usual there was no glimmer of a return smile, just a curt nod.

  ‘Princess Vasilisa.’

  ‘Amber,’ she said, as she always did. ‘Call me A
mber.’

  But Boris didn’t acknowledge her words as he stood tall and imposing, waiting for her to walk through the entranceway; he wouldn’t move until he had seen her go into the building and the doors close behind her.

  Amber suppressed a sigh. She knew that most people would consider selling their soul to occupy an apartment in this grand Art Deco building overlooking Central Park, especially a penthouse in one of the two iconic towers, but to her the apartment was more prison than home. Hefting her backpack onto her shoulder, she walked, chin held high, up to the doors and pressed the button for admittance. The doors swung silently and ominously open and, without a backward glance at the sun-filled afternoon, she walked inside.

  The opulent high-ceilinged marble and tile foyer was so familiar to her she barely noticed its glossy splendour, but she did notice the smiling man behind the concierge desk, dapper in his gilt and navy uniform.

  ‘Miss Amber, Happy Birthday to you.’

  ‘Thank you, Hector.’

  ‘Do you have something nice planned to celebrate?’

  Amber tried not to pull a frustrated face. Her fellow pupils at the exclusive girls’ school she attended had all thrown extravagant parties for their eighteenth birthdays, renting out hotel ballrooms or heading off to their Hampton Beach homes for the weekend. Even if they had invited her Amber wouldn’t have been allowed to attend, but they’d stopped asking her years ago. ‘Grandmama said that we might go out for dinner, after my lessons, of course.’ Not even on her eighteenth birthday could Amber skip her dancing or deportment or etiquette lessons.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Hector whispered conspiratorially and, after looking around, he pulled out a large brown envelope from under his desk and held it out to her.

  Amber’s heart began to beat faster as she took in the familiar postmark. ‘Thank you for letting me have it sent to your house.’ Her future lay in that envelope. A future far away from here, far away from her grandmother.

  ‘London?’ Hector asked and she nodded.

  ‘The university prospectus. London is where my parents met and worked, although we lived just outside, in a little village. I always promised myself I would go back as soon as I was old enough. Applying to university is just the first step.’ She slipped the envelope into her backpack. ‘Thank you again.’

  ‘I also have this for you.’ With a flourish he produced a large cupcake, extravagantly iced in silver and white. ‘There’s no candle. The fire alarms, you know. But Maya told me to tell you to make a wish anyway.’

  ‘Oh, Hector.’ Amber hated crying but she could feel hot, heavy tears gathering in her eyes. ‘This is so kind of you and Maya. Give her my love.’

  ‘Come see us again soon; she has a new recipe she wants to teach you.’ Hector cast an anxious look up at the huge clock which dominated the vestibule. ‘Your grandmother will be calling down soon; you’d better go. And Amber? Happy Birthday.’

  The lift—Amber refused to say elevator, clinging onto her English accent and vocabulary as stubbornly as she could—was waiting and she tapped in the code which would take her up to the penthouse, nibbling her cake as the doors slid shut and the lift started its journey.

  The doors opened straight into the penthouse hallway. Usually Amber could barely put a toe onto the parquet floor before her grandmother querulously summoned her to quiz her about her day and criticise her appearance, her posture, her attitude, her ingratitude. Amber steeled herself, ready for the interrogation, the brown envelope, safely stored in her bag, a shield against every poisonous word. But today there was no summons and Amber, half a cake still clutched in her hand, managed to make it to her bedroom undisturbed, slipping her backpack onto the floor, taking out the envelope and concealing it, still unopened, at the back of her wardrobe. She’d look at it later tonight, when her grandmother was asleep.

  Sitting back on her heels, Amber checked to make sure there was no hint of the envelope visible through her clothes and then clambered up, her feet sinking into the deep pile pink carpet. Her whole room was sumptuously decorated in bright pinks and cream which clashed horribly with her auburn hair and made her pale skin look even paler. But she had as little choice in the decor as she did about her schooling, wardrobe and pastimes.

  Wriggling out of the hated blazer and kilt, she slipped on a simple blue dress, brushing out her plaits and tucking her mass of hair into a loose bundle before heading out to find her grandmother. The silence was so unusual that she couldn’t help feeling a little apprehensive. For one moment she wondered if her grandmother had planned a birthday surprise, before pushing the ludicrous idea away. Her grandmother didn’t do either birthdays or surprises.

  Padding along the hallway, she peeped into the small sitting room her grandmother preferred, her curiosity piqued as she heard the low rumble of voices coming from the larger, formal sitting room her grandmother only used for entertaining. The room was light thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows with stunning views over Central Park but stuffed so full of the furniture that had been saved from Belravia during the revolution that it was impossible to find a spot not cluttered with ornate chairs or spindly tables, the walls filled with heavy portraits of scowling ancestors.

  Amber hovered, torn. She hadn’t been officially summoned, but surely her grandmother would expect her to come and greet whichever guest she was entertaining.

  Just a few more months, she told herself. She’d graduate in a couple of months, and by the autumn she’d be in London. She just needed to apply to university and figure out how to pay for it first. She’d saved a couple of thousand dollars from her allowance but that wasn’t going to cover much more than the plane ticket.

  Okay. She would worry about all that later. Time to go in, say hello and act the Princess for as long as she needed to. It was so much easier with escape within smelling distance. And of course, now she was an actual adult, her grandmother’s control over her had come to an end. At last.

  Inhaling, Amber took another step forward, only to halt as her gaze fell on a masculine profile through the part-opened door. A profile she knew all too well: dark hair brushed smoothly back from a high forehead, a distinctly Roman nose flanked by sharp cheekbones hollowing into a firm chin, mouth unsmiling. Amber swallowed. She had spent too many nights dreaming of that mouth. Her heart thumped painfully, her hands damp with remembered embarrassment. What was Tristano Ragrazzi doing here, on her birthday of all days?

  Tristano—or, as he was more commonly known, His Most Excellent Royal Highness Crown Prince Tristano of Elsornia—was Amber’s first crush. Or, if she was being strictly honest, only crush, despite the four-year age gap and the not insignificant fact that on the few occasions they’d met he’d barely deigned to notice that she was alive. This small detail hadn’t stopped a younger Amber weaving an elaborate tale around how he would one day fall in love with her and rescue her from the tower: a tale she had stopped weaving the day she had tripped over one of her grandmother’s many embroidered footstools and spilt a tray of drinks and olives over him—perfect hair, exquisite suit, handsome face and all. Hard as she tried, she had never forgotten his incredulous look of horror, the scathing, contemptuous glance he’d shot her way. She hadn’t seen him since—and that was more than fine with her.

  Amber started to tiptoe backwards—far better to face her grandmother’s wrath than His Highness—when Tristano spoke and, at the sound of her name, she froze again.

  ‘Princess Vasilisa is still very young.’

  ‘Yes,’ her grandmother agreed in her usual icy, cut-glass tones. ‘Which is in your favour. I’ve ensured she’s been kept close; she can be moulded. And of course she has had no opportunity to meet any males. A virgin princess with no scandal attached to her name, excellent academic qualifications, educated in statesmanship and diplomacy is a rare prize and that’s before we consider her dowry. She’s unique and you know it, Tristano. So let’s not play games.’


  It was all Amber could do not to gasp. For her grandmother to be discussing her virginity with anyone was mortifying enough but with his Royal Hotness? Her cheeks felt as if they might burst into flame any moment, and not just with embarrassment, with indignation. She was not some prize sow to be discussed in terms of breeding! She was surprised her grandmother hadn’t mentioned her excellent teeth—unless her dental records had already been discussed!

  ‘Of course, the Belravian fortune,’ a male voice she didn’t recognise cut in. He had a similar accent to Tristano, only far more noticeable: a little Italian, a little Germanic. ‘Is it really worth as much as it was when the country fell?’

  ‘More, thanks to some wise investments as we waited for a Kireyev to sit on the throne once more. But empires have risen and fallen and it’s clear that our country is no more, and with it our throne. So we look to another throne, another country in which to invest our money and our blood. Your throne, your country, Tristano.’

  Silence fell. Was Tristano tempted, disgusted—or indignant that she was being bartered as if she were part of the fortune, not a living, breathing human? Hope for the latter filled her, only to be dashed when he finally spoke.

  ‘But the fact remains, the Princess is still very young.’

  ‘Let’s not be hasty,’ the unknown man said. ‘The Princess may be too young to marry, but there’s no reason not to enter into a formal betrothal. And that’s what we are here to discuss. The papers are right here.’

  The what? She had to be dreaming, surely. Amber barely breathed as she listened.

  ‘I’m her legal guardian,’ her grandmother said. ‘I can sign right here, with the Duke as my witness. All you need to do is sign as well, Tristano, and then I suggest you take Vasilisa back to Elsornia with you. She can spend the next three years finishing her education to your liking and then, when she comes of Belravian age at twenty-one, she will make you a perfect bride. The perfect Queen.’