by Mary Hughes
No. Not Rafe at all. Although…
She frowned, peering closer. From jaw to cheekbone, Rafe’s face was boy-next-door round compared to Prince’s gaunt-model cheeks, as Yl called them. Not to mention Rafe had those identifying scars.
But the cheekbones themselves… the shape of his eyes, of his lips…those were Rafe’s lips, eyes, and cheekbones.
“No way,” she breathed.
Seeing what I want to see? She started looking up facts. Four percent of adult men in America were six-foot-two or over.
Pfft. That’s about thirty thousand in a city this size.
But Rafe not only was six-two, he was born April first, turning twenty-four today. How many of those six-foot-two men shared both Gideon Prince’s age and his April Fools’ birthday?
Heart whooshing in her ears, she sank onto Yl’s makeup chair, her mind working overtime. Her gaze landed on her stepsister’s discarded newspaper, bearing a full-color photo of Prince.
Those electrifying eyes. Only one man she knew had eyes like that, so blue they defined the color.
With trembling hands, she took the newspaper. Her stomach flipped with premonition as she folded the picture in half, just below his nose.
She stopped breathing.
The padded cheeks, no, but that was Rafe’s strong jaw line.
He could fake round cheeks with pads. But surely not the scars…? Oh. Oh no.
She might not have thought of it if she hadn’t just spent hours using make up to disguise Swiss Miss Yl to be an Egyptian queen. Hands shaking so hard the paper crackled, she folded the newspaper the other way, exposing only the left side of his face. Pad out Rafe’s cheeks and add fake scars…
Prince was an exact duplicate for Rafe.
Shock hit her system. Then another, bigger shock hit.
He was going to choose his bride tonight.
She leaped to her feet. She had to talk to him. Had to stop him.
Why? If he really cares about me, why isn’t he stopping it?
No. She was done listening to the little voice of doubt. She’d find out why when she talked to him.
After two weeks, she’d finally make contact again. Heart pounding in her ears, she took the tablet and pulled up her messenger system. Rafe’s chat head showed, but no green dot glowed comfortingly beside it.
Rafe wasn’t online.
Suppressing panic, she tried email. Three messages from Tax-Accounting-Tutor.
The first was simple. Need to talk about class work. New vital information. Please contact asap.
Not signed, but she knew it was Rafe. He’d have been worried when she hadn’t texted him in a few days as promised. No doubt this was his attempt at communicating without arousing her stepmother’s suspicion. What would he have thought when Cin didn’t answer? Her stomach churned at the possibilities, most of them bad.
The second email was dated the day he showed up at the shop. Must discuss upcoming opportunity. Time sensitive. New information regarding gclass work. Will attempt to contact.
The “gclass” work was supposed to look like a typo for class work, but Rafe simply wouldn’t make a mistake like that. He meant glass. Glass Slipper Ball.
The implications burned.
His third message was short.
Contact failed. Must go through with original plan. Last chance. Please.
Her chest filled with dry ice. She choked back a sob. This confirmed for her that Rafe was Prince, but more—it meant he was going through with the marriage-mart of a ball.
He was going to marry a stranger.
A raging storm triggered inside her, anger, fear, near-despair. She paced the small bathroom as if it was a cage. She had to talk him out of it. Tell him exactly how she felt.
Find out if he felt the same way—if he’d give up Gideon Prince and become Rafe Montoya for good.
With her.
But he was choosing his bride at midnight. Marrying her by the end of the day.
She had to talk to him now.
I have to go to the ball.
Her legs seized up, her steps faltered. Smudged and baggy Cinderella among the rich and pampered? No. There had to be another way.
She could phone him. Sure, her stepmother would flay her alive when she found out, but what choice did she have?
Cin pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed Rafe’s number. It went straight to voicemail.
Had he turned his phone off? God, did that mean he was at the ball already, picking his bride?
Damn it. Unless she wanted Rafe to marry another woman, she had to find him in person, tonight.
She had to go to the Glass Slipper Ball.
She stopped, gazing at herself in the mirror. Her. With her chopped hair and thrift shop wardrobe, showing up at the door to the fancy Prince Ball? She was no social butterfly, so far from high society she’d probably get vertigo standing on his front stoop.
Her heart hammered at the very idea. Years of effacing, erasing herself because of the Steps’ jealousy kicked in. Don’t make waves. Don’t do anything to call attention. They’d turn her away for sure.
“Fuck that.” To fight for a future with Rafe, to fight for them, she’d have to figure out a way in.
She threw herself into Ez’s chair and tried to think. How did the Steps do it? Dress, makeup, shoes, perfume…stink. With the Prince estate at the edge of town, if she walked, she’d arrive smelling like the “before” of a deodorant commercial. Even if she managed the outward appearance of a woman with snoots full of money, how would she get there?
Start with what you can solve. Her old graduation outfit, a tweed skirt and puffy-sleeved blouse, still fit. Makeup was easy—there was a whole array here. The Steps would never miss a bit of powder and blush.
Am I really going to do this?
Lifting her gaze from the counter, she studied her reflection in the mirror and tried to give herself an honest appraisal.
She could almost hear Ez’s jet-engine whine. “No way! A sandwich girl trying to pass as rich-man marriage material? You’re insane.”
She had to agree.
So, I’m just giving up? Giving Rafe up without a fight?
No, but she might as well wish for a Fairy Godmother to turn a pumpkin into a coach and a dress fashioned by a mouse…
Damn. A mouse, or a costumer Maus.
She fumbled out her phone and called Milly. “I’ve changed my mind, and I’m desperate,” she said without preamble. “I want to go to the ball. But I need a dress, and I don’t know if I can make it in time to be considered, not to mention the fact that I can’t walk to the Prince mansion and get my dress dirty and myself sweaty—”
“Breathe. Relax.” Milly’s tone was soothing, but a hint of laugh sparkled underneath. “I’m already here. There’s a line of prospects snaking through the entire house. They’re going pretty fast—there’s some sort of preapproval protocol—but they’re also going alphabetically. It’ll be hours before they get to Wikkid.”
“Thank heavens. Since you’re there, tell me I can use my high school graduation outfit—”
“You cannot. This is not a pleated wool skirt sort of affair. Look, the dress stores are probably closed by now, but there’s a whole costume rack at the high school my little sister can raid, and my brother does some sort of taxi-like gig.”
“Taxi-like?” Cin asked, but Milly was on a roll.
“Mike will bring you a dress and heels then take you to the ball. Jump in the shower. By the time you’ve done your hair and got your makeup on he’ll be there. I’ll be waiting at the doors here to give you a bit of protection from the hoity-toitys.”
“Doors, plural?” Cin squeaked, but Milly had already hung up.
After a quick shower with the Steps’ expensive body wash and shampoo, stomach full of twerking butterflies, she wrapped herself in an old cotton robe and put up her hair in a chignon. She was applying a mix of gold and brown eyeshadow when she heard a knock at the door. “Just a minute!” She ran to Ez�
�s second-story bedroom window and peered out.
Parked under the streetlight was a nineteen-forties humpbacked automobile painted bright orange. Cin’s heart thumped. A pumpkin coach, but in her mind it had looked more elegant than the real thing.
She ran downstairs to fling open the door to Milly’s brother, a round little man with wide cheeks, a long, narrow nose, and sparse whiskers that made his surname of Maus strangely fitting.
“Hi, Mike. Milly said you have a taxi?”
“Ride-share.” He beamed at her. “Almost exactly like a taxi, but with an app.”
She considered the old behemoth at the curb. “Does that car even run?”
“Of course Bessy runs. She’s a De Luxe, with a V8 engine and everything. Cost me thirteen K, but worth every penny. Ninety HP. Hey, Bessy got me and your dress here, didn’t she?” He held up a hanger dripping flounces. “This was the only one left in what Milly said was your size.”
Cin stared at the thing, a birthday cake of a gown with hoop skirt, flounces, bows, rosettes, and more flounces. “I-I can’t go in that. The ball is filled with the cream of society. That looks like a Tijuana Brass album cover. They’ll never let me in.”
Mike shrugged. “It’s April first, isn’t it? Just go in and yell April Fools. They’ll let you in.”
* * *
Stuffed in the backseat of Bessy the Pumpkinmobile, her antebellum skirt popping into her face with each bump in the road like an over-sensitive mousetrap, Cin nonetheless felt a surge of excitement. Not because she was going to the event of the year.
But because after two long, dry weeks, she would see Rafe again.
She tried to temper her excitement with a bit of reality. Rafe was also Gideon Prince, which meant he’d misled her about who he was—misled everyone at the technical college. She wondered why he’d lived that way, as a scarred tutor with a simple student apartment. Why he’d never told her he was the Prince heir.
But her pumping adrenaline and her excitement crowded out her doubts. As she had before meeting him, she filled in the gaps with what she wanted to believe, but this time she told herself she knew him now. She had reason to believe her private fairytale—that Rafe had lived as the tutor because he wanted to. He wanted to be a plain, simple man, to be someone she, Cin, could be with.
A big pop startled her, followed by a high squealing sound, like metal fingernails against slate. She hammered down her skirt to see if Mike was okay.
He was, but through the front windshield she could see black smoke billowing from the hood.
Her impromptu chauffeur turned up the radio and continued to drive.
“Um, Mike,” she ventured. “What’s that smoke?”
“Nothing,” he said cheerfully. “Well, nothing that a few decibels of heavy metal music won’t fix.” As smoke continued to pour out, accompanied by a few tongues of orange flame, he amended, “Probably nothing.”
But even he couldn’t keep driving when, with a clang-clang-clunk, the engine died. The taxi coasted to a stop.
Cin hoped this wasn’t an omen of things to come. She dug in her small, puffy purse, the old-fashioned kind that dangled from a wrist loop, for her phone. Looked like she was going to have to walk after all. “I’ll pay for the tow truck.” Somehow. “Do you have a preferred company?”
“Nah, don’t bother. It’s just the carburetor gunked up. Or the choke. Whatever, I’ll clean it out, and we’ll be off in no time. Five minutes, tops.”
Five minutes turned into ten, and ten into twenty. After half an hour, Cin called Milly. “Don’t wait for me. I don’t know when I’ll arrive.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hang on a moment.” Milly’s voice muffled. “No, it’s Cin. She’s been delayed.” There was a masculine murmur before Milly came back on the line. “Do you need help?”
“Mike says he can fix it in five minutes.”
She laughed. “Mike always says that. But he always fixes it, eventually. Thanks for calling. John was getting tired of standing outside shivering.”
“You met a man? Good for you. Although, waiting outside would be a good excuse for him to gain Milly-points by giving you his coat.”
“He did. Which is why he’s shivering instead of me.”
“Ah. Well, good.”
Cin signed off and tucked the phone in her purse. At that moment, the engine roared to life. She thought about calling Milly back, but decided against it. Her friend had a chance at some happiness tonight. She didn’t want to spoil that. Surely, she could brave one small front door by herself?
I have confidence. I have confidence. She repeated the mantra as the taxi turned up the drive to the mansion.
I have…crap.
One small door, she could brave. But, too late, she remembered Milly had said doors, plural—and even that wouldn’t have prepared her.
Gideon Prince’s mansion—palace was more accurate for such an immense abode—didn’t have a single stoop and one small door. It didn’t even have a stoop and two small doors.
No, the Prince entrance was a pair of monolithic slabs as tall as most houses. Worse, they could only be reached by mountaineering an Alps of concrete stairs.
Physical impediments, bad enough. But what dumped acid in her veins and followed it with a lit match was the uniformed staff. Proper, gloved men opened the door of each arriving vehicle for ladies to emerge. A matched set of tall-and-snooty staff guarded the monolithic entrance like a pair of cold war checkpoint guards. She wondered if there was a hidden gun turret.
What if there was a secret rich-bitch handshake? The Steps’ taunting sandwich-girl rang in her head, dumping doubt in her already churning blood.
Her fight for Rafe might be over before it even started. Her stomach flipped painfully.
The orange car crept forward. One judgmental gauntlet at a time, she coached herself. Cars and cabs were still arriving, most bearing expensive European badges. Maybe she could see how the women before her handled themselves.
When the car ahead of the pumpkinmobile stopped, the uniformed man bent to open the door and extended his hand.
Gloved fingers curved like delicately sipping swans into the man’s hand. A dainty foot appeared through the vehicle’s opening. Cin nibbled at bare fingernails, seeing she’d already missed one important bit of kit.
The beauty emerged, unfolding gracefully, naturally, like a bud opening. Her escort, the driver, relinquished the car to parking staff and came around to offer his arm to the lady. She floated up the terrifying steps like a fairy.
All without any obvious effort at all.
Cin swallowed bile. Aside from seeing the woman didn’t tip, and that she’d waited for the attendant to open the door, that had been no help whatsoever. Cin didn’t have an escort to sweep her up those stairs.
The Pumpkinmobile rolled into position. Her turn.
Cin scooted forward on the seat, preparing to extend her foot as daintily as possible.
The door opened. She scooted the last inch—and her hoop skirt popped up and punched her in the nose. Pow.
Nose smarting, she wrestled the skirt down to see the attendant standing there, staring at her in disgust. Strike one against her. Heart pounding in time with her throbbing nose, she forced herself to extend her bare hand in what she hoped was an elegant gesture.
Cin waited, but the man just continued to scowl. Stings, the beginning of nervous sweat, prickled her skin. Wrangling the hoops one-handed, she tried to exit the car gracefully herself.
Unfold like a flower, unfold like a flower…
She got one high heel on the pavement and started to unfold…but the heel, which had all the surface area of a needle, slipped out from under her.
Her leg bent in a way not intended by nature, and she stumbled out of the car. Trying to find her balance, she lost hold of the hoops, and her skirt inflated to full-size, becoming a flounced, antebellum cork to the bottle of the door opening. She was stuck. Cheeks burning, Cin grabbed the door frame with both hands and pushed as
hard as she could—finally popping out.
The staff guy helped her then, but only by virtue of the fact that he was in the way. She flew into him, tangling knees and elbows. Almost immediately, something shoved her away—him or her skirt hoops, she couldn’t tell—a mite too hard, sending her flying back against the side of the taxi.
A moment passed, her panted breaths loud in her ears, a strange warning feeling in her belly, as when a rubber band is cocked and stretched, but not yet released. She could even almost hear the high-pitched twang of the hypothetical band…
Uh-oh. Not hypothetical, and not rubber. Her skirt hoops were compressing behind her.
She opened her mouth to warn the attendant who, huffing and shooting her dark glares, had staggered to his feet, tugging his uniform into place.
“Watch—” The hoops sprang back to form, rebounding her from the side of the car. She managed to twist at the last minute, avoiding smashing into the man a second time, but as she did, she caught sight of something swinging in her original direction…her puffy purse. “—out.”
The bag caught him in the solar plexus. For such a small thing, it packed quite a wallop.
The man woofed air and folded as if he’d been hit by an anvil.
Cin staggered, stammering her apologies—until his head came up, his glower like a black thunderstorm, forked lightning in his eyes.
“April Fools,” she cried brightly, and dashed—wobbled fast—past him.
“Hey, you! Wait.”
She zipped around the attendant, barely avoiding his reaching hand. Her skirt didn’t quite zip with her. She stumbled, almost caught herself and stumbled again. Floundering, she managed to trip the whole way up the staircase, her path thankfully largely empty.
But at the top, a rotund woman dripping diamonds slowly shepherded her two virgin-white-debutante-decked daughters toward the entrance doors.
Cin lurched into the lady and toppled all three like dominoes.
A matched pair of doormen caught the daughters, but their mother wasn’t so lucky. The woman went sprawling to the ground, Cin falling atop her. Thankfully, Cin’s spring-steel skirt hoops bounced her back like an inflatable punching bag.