by Laura Kenyon
Cindy smacked the phone shut and got her first good look at Rapunzel, whom she assumed would look even more gorgeous than ever.
“Woah!” She jumped back. Where Cindy’s face was bland, Rapunzel’s was doused in paint—green eye shadow, fuchsia lips, far too much rogue.
“I think you had enough makeup for both of us,” she said, turning toward the house. “But it’s good to finally see your real hair color.”
Rapunzel wilted a bit and explained that her kidnapper—Grethel—had given her an enchanted cosmetics kit on her fifteenth birthday to curb her boredom. How generous. Cindy never knew what to say when the conversation turned to that witch and the parents who gave her friend up for rampion. As short-sighted as Cindy’s father had been for marrying her stepmother, Rapunzel’s parents were definitely worse.
As they approached Kimberley Epson’s house, the first thing Cindy noticed was that it was cute—aggravatingly cute, with a cream-colored porch swing, roses climbing up to blue shutters, and a stained glass mosaic spelling out “fifty-five” in cursive. Her skin crawled a bit when she saw a boy’s bicycle leaning against the wall.
“So she does have a kid,” Rapunzel shriek-whispered as they slunk up the steps.
“Shh!” Cindy spun around to make sure the street was still empty. The only movement came from an old man with an unbreakable focus on his terrier.
“So what?” Rapunzel backpedaled. “Mothers are just people with a strong gag reflex and a genetic backup plan. Good mothers are a whole different animal. You don’t know she’s a good mother.”
Cindy frowned but appreciated the thought. Either Rapunzel hadn’t made the leap that Aaron could be the father, or she wasn’t rubbing it in. The doorbell chimed loudly inside the house. A minute passed. It chimed again.
Rapunzel clapped her hands together. “I don’t think she’s home.”
“So what do we do?” Cindy’s question hung in the air for a moment. Then Rapunzel leaned down. There was a swift crack and a creak, and the door inched open.
“Hello?” Rapunzel edged over the threshold. “Need your car washed?”
Cindy felt her stomach flip on its side and play dead. “Maybe we should just go.”
But her accomplice had already disappeared into a room with a brick fireplace and a fraying floral couch.
“Aren’t you the one who’s been whining about needing more adventure in your life?” Rapunzel called back. “Here’s your chance.”
“Are you sure no one’s here?”
“No one should ever be here. This place is hideous.”
Cindy stepped inside and sealed the door behind her. The house was dim with lines of dust particles—illuminated by sunlight filtering through worn velvet curtains—floating through the air. In the five steps it took to cross the room, her sneaker crunched two bits of lost cereal and kicked a yo-yo into a peeling corner of wallpaper. Something about Aaron’s mistress living in this mess made her feel a little smug. Evidently, he didn’t care enough to hire a maid for her or fix anything. Maybe he’d never even been here.
“Don’t give me that look,” Rapunzel warned when Cindy found her in the kitchen, rabidly sorting through the liquor cabinet. “This is the number one household hiding spot. After a few others.”
She shook her head and floated past. A narrow hallway led first to a room with a trundle bed and posters of the Carpale Canaries broomball team. Her kids had many of the same images—only theirs had been autographed and personalized during last year’s finals. Again, she felt a twinge of arrogance. She continued past a green bathroom with toothpaste globs dotting the sink, and then crept cautiously through the last doorway at the very end of the hall.
Kimberly’s bedroom smelled of lavender and was the only tidy place in the house—probably because it was the size of Cindy’s closet and practically empty. The few bits of makeup on the dresser looked barely touched, and the pillows were without a single wrinkle. Did she even sleep here? A quick fumble through the medicine cabinet, dresser drawers, even the space beneath the bed, revealed nothing that belonged to her husband. She found a box of letters (none from Aaron), a book about bereavement, and a velvet jewelry pouch.
“Find anything good?”
The voice so startled Cindy that the pouch jerked up with her hand, sending a giant ring rocketing across the room. “Rapunzel!” she yelled, dropping to her knees to retrieve it. “Don’t sneak up on someone when they’re breaking and entering! Geez!”
“We barely broke,” Rapunzel replied with a hiccup. “But we did enter.”
Cindy pressed her cheek into the cold marble floor to look under the bed. Nothing looked back but dust balls and her friend’s feet on the other side.
“What did we lose?” Rapunzel lazily perused the dresser and poked a vase of silk tulips.
“A ring, I think. But—”
A car door slammed a few yards away. Both women pulled straight as flagpoles. They stared at each other with terror as keys jingled against wood and a muffled voice grew louder.
“I know, but tonight’s really tough,” they heard a woman say. Cindy’s heart pounded so hard and so fast she feared it might spin out of control inside her and tumble off its axis.
“It’s her,” Rapunzel whispered, yanking off her heels. “We have to go.”
“But what about—”
“Forget it.” She stabbed the air and pointed toward the window.
Kimberly’s laugh floated closer but stopped somewhere in the hall. “I suppose I can slip out if she’s gone and you really need me. We don’t usually take long.”
Cindy’s cheeks burst into flames. She pressed forward with the intention of rushing for the door, but Rapunzel was faster. Grabbing her arm, she yanked Cindy to the window, slid it open and shoved her—head first—into the bush below.
Seconds later, they were scurrying down the sidewalk looking like the oddest pair of cheerleaders ever.
“You could have broken my neck!” Cindy’s voice was grating. “Why did you do that? Did you hear what she was saying? She was making plans with Aaron! I just know it!”
A quick look over Rapunzel’s shoulder revealed that they were far enough away to take a breather. “Look,” she ordered, waving her arms as she spoke. “Confronting that woman in her house would do nothing but land you on the news and make you look like a nut-job. You want to lose before you even begin?”
Cindy bowed her head. Rapunzel was right. Thank goodness one of them was thinking straight. “I hope she doesn’t wonder about that ring.”
“She probably will. But she’ll just think she misplaced it.”
“Not when she finds it in some ridiculous spot. She’ll be suspicious. But I couldn’t see it anywhere. I—”
Rapunzel flashed a huge chunk of metal under Cindy’s nose. It had a giant red gemstone and was engraved with a cursive “W.’
“You took it?” She looked at it again. “Hey. Why does that look like Belle’s?”
Rapunzel sighed. “Let’s just say I don’t think Aaron’s the only king she’s trying to steal.”
Cindy tried to connect the dots. How did that ring lead to that conclusion? “What aren’t you telling me?”
Rapunzel clapped the trinket safely in her fist and started walking again. “I’m not sure yet. But there’s something more important I found in the kitchen.” She pulled out the top of her blouse and began digging around. “God, I wish my boobs were really still this perky. You could store a phone in here.” Finally, she yanked out a slip of paper and handed it over.
“More paper?” Cindy asked. “Whose name is on it this time?”
“Open it. But first, tell me exactly how long we’re going to look like jailbait.”
Cindy bit her lip and broke what she assumed would be bad news. “Well, Ruby’s spells usually end at midnight, but she said this would fade by eight. Maybe I can call her to—”
“Nope! Eight sounds great. I’ll call Ethan now. He can play professor and I’ll be the naughty cheerleade
r who’ll do anything to bring her grades up … among other things.”
Rapunzel pulled out her phone as Cindy looked to the sky to shake the disturbing image from her head. The clouds had arranged themselves in long, parallel lines. They reminded her of combing Sophie’s hair after a bath. Of course, at nearly double-digits, she didn’t need her mother to do this much anymore. Neither did Katie or Charles. But Gregory was not quite four and hadn’t learned to fend for himself yet. He would pay the greatest price if everything came to light.
Cindy unfolded the paper and felt her knees buckle. In her hands was all the evidence she needed: A check, from her husband to Ms. Kimberly Epson, for $15,000.
Handwritten in the memo line: Always and forever
Chapter Fourteen
RAPUNZEL
“You know. When I told you to hurry that ravishing butt of yours over here, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” said Rapunzel, brooding from the balcony in her lace negligee. Inside the bedroom, Ethan was huddled over her dresser, examining Kimberly Epson’s ring with a tool she’d never seen outside a jewelry store or a suitcase lined with hundred-dollar bills. Evidently, he wasn’t as into teenage cheerleaders as she’d hoped. Perhaps that was a good thing.
“Tell me again why you took this,” he said, removing a pair of spectacles that gave him an extremely enticing professorial look. Rapunzel hoped he’d leave them on all night, or at least until Ruby’s enchantment wore off.
Dropping her champagne flute on the railing, along with her hopes of a seductive evening, Rapunzel schlepped out of the warm twilight air and into the less flattering fluorescent glare of her bedroom. “I told you. She came home, we needed to leave, and I didn’t have time to put it back.”
Ethan made a contemplative noise and nodded slowly. “I see. But you don’t know anything about it?”
“Not a thing. Only that it looks similar to something Belle has.” This, of course, was a lie, but friends don’t go spouting off about other friends’ marital tragedies and magical booty call trinkets. At least not sober. “Why are you so interested anyway? Wait, don’t tell me.” Slinking closer, Rapunzel pressed her palm over his chest and lowered her voice. “You’re the world’s foremost professor of gemology who moonlights as a treasure hunter. That’s how you really got your scars. And you’re here to protect me from the deadly diamond thief who believes this ring leads to a centuries-old fortune.”
Ethan frowned, though Rapunzel only saw his penetrating eyes. “Gemology?”
She kept her disappointment to a flicker and tried again. “Okay. Then you’re the unwilling heir to a massive diamond fortune. Bevel? No wait, I dated him. Magalie? You’ve been surrounded by luxury your entire life but have only ever wanted to be a normal boy.” Ethan flashed a look that seemed part irritation, part warning. It was all the encouragement she needed. “Only now, the jewels are beginning to call to you—as they did with your father and his father before. So you have to choose between love and freedom or power and duty.”
She felt him shudder as her lips brushed his ear and her fingers tickled the baby hairs at the base of his neck. She could practically hear his resistance bending. Then, with a rush of hot breath, Ethan caught Rapunzel’s arm and quickly lifted her entire body up to his chest. She weighed nothing in his arms. She wrapped her legs tightly around his torso as he careened toward the bed.
“What if I was filthy stinking rich?” he asked between kisses. “What if I did have a massive fortune I was running away from? Would it matter?”
Rapunzel bundled up all her reservations and expelled them in a sigh. “Of course it wouldn’t,” she moaned. “As long as you weren’t a prince or an assassin or conman who distracts women with mind-blowing sex and then runs off with their bank accounts.”
Ethan broke away and stared into her eyes. “How do prince and assassin go together?”
Rapunzel shrugged. Answering this would delve into the past she didn’t want to touch. “Just a quirk of mine. I don’t date royals.”
Ethan frowned, then grasped at the other thing she’d said. “Mind-blowing sex, huh?”
She gave a coy shrug. “I didn’t say you did already … just figured you could use a goal.” In the blink of an eye, Rapunzel found herself being lobbed further up the bed, followed immediately by a beaming, tickling, ravenous animal. “Wait!” she shrieked, kicking the air with her legs and giggling like a teenager … which she sort of was at the moment. “Grab those sexy glasses!”
After a half-hour of tumbling, kissing and laughing, Rapunzel rested on top of Ethan’s chest, tracing his pecs with her fingertips and swirling a center tuft of hair. She wondered if he knew he’d blasted her “relationship” record out of the water. She wondered what effect she’d had on his.
“How much longer are you gonna look young enough to be my daughter?” he asked, pulling on the red straps of her negligee.
“You have a daughter?” she joked instantly. It was a flippant response to a silly question, but left her feeling slightly uneasy. His quick chuckle and the ensuing silence churned that feeling into curiosity as Rapunzel contemplated how much she really didn’t know about Ethan after all. Damn Cindy and her irritating questions.
“Why do you ask?” she tried again, smiling provocatively. “Want to savor every moment while you can?”
The slumped look in Ethan’s eyes—a mixture of disappointment and grief—reminded her of Grethel the night she discovered Rapunzel’s plot to run away.
“Actually, I was hoping the spell would end soon,” he said. His tone was flat. “Like I told you before, I’d rather see the real you.”
“As would I,” Rapunzel muttered under her breath. Where had that come from? Damn it, Cindy. She let her gaze linger on the window before moving on. “Just out of curiosity, how did you know about Kimberly Epson?”
“The woman with the tattoos? Because you told me about her the night you were insanely drunk.”
“I know that,” Rapunzel sighed. “But how did you find out her name? How’d you match the two up?”
Ethan shrugged. “I told you, small world. I’ve seen her before and she’s got a memorable mark. Just like if someone asked your friends about an irresistibly handsome man with a scar on his cheek and a balbo, they’d think of me.” He kissed her forehead and rolled onto one side.
Rapunzel followed, propping one ear atop her bent arm. Did she really want to keep pushing and risk scaring him away? After all, this man was passionate, sexy, funny, smart, caring … and she wasn’t exactly an open book herself. But she’d been burned once before. And as a result, she’d destroyed someone who loved her. In all honestly, she didn’t even deserve to be happy.
“Hey, you trust me, right?” She heard the words before realizing they’d come from her.
Sliding off the bed, Ethan wrapped his wrinkled shirt over his shoulders and flashed a smile that failed to conceal his discomfort. “Of course.” She waited for him to ask why she’d say such a thing. “What kind of bum would I be if I didn’t?”
“So just tell me then.”
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever it is you’re trying so hard not to tell me.”
Ethan’s left eyebrow rose, mimicking his lips. “I’m going to use the lav.”
Rapunzel ignored the tumbling sensation in her gut and waved a wrist toward the bathroom. As soon as Ethan shut the door, three taps sounded lightly from the hallway.
“Pun?”
Rapunzel sighed and rolled onto the floor like an exhausted mother answering her child’s midnight cries. She was cinching her bathrobe shut when Belle opened the door—wearing a chic one-shoulder cocktail dress. Rapunzel nearly choked herself off at the waist.
“Well hello gorgeous,” she whistled. “I love the new look. Is this for Penny’s party tomorrow?”
Belle didn’t answer. She didn’t even smirk. “Umm. Hello. Is Rapunzel in?”
The women traded confused expressions for what seemed like five minutes before Rapunzel fin
ally remembered Ruby’s spell. “Oh. It’s me. Thought I’d try a new kind of role-playing,” she lied. Belle didn’t need to know about Aaron, and Donner’s ring could wait until later—after whatever it was that had convinced Belle to put on a decent coat of makeup.
“I’ve got a date,” Belle chirped and did a tiny dance in her heels. Rapunzel recalled Cindy’s daughter doing the same thing when she announced her birthday party would feature mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“A date?” Rapunzel repeated. “Good for you!”
Belle blushed. “I met him in the park. You wouldn’t believe how many people were out there protesting—for me! There were some very clever signs too. I thought ‘Let Belle Reign’ was pretty clever. They wrote “ring” and “reign” so it looked like the same word. You know, like a bell rings. And a queen reigns.” Rapunzel smiled. She hadn’t seen Belle this animated in months. “But anyway, his name’s Edgar. He’s dreamy. And a lawyer. He’s taking me to Chéz Valzi. Plus, it turns out he’s friends with Logan, so we’re gonna meet him and Penny for drinks afterwards at the Beanstalk. You should come with that mystery man I’m just dying to meet.”
Belle’s last syllable lingered in the air for a few moments longer than necessary while Rapunzel tried to gather her wits. Talk about information overload. Had Belle even stopped to breathe? “That mystery man’s actually in the bathroom now,” she said. “I’ll ask him when he gets—”
“He is? Oh gosh! I’ll get out of your way then.” Clearly, Belle was not accustomed to containing this much energy. “I just wanted to borrow those sapphire chandelier earrings of yours. Do you mind?”
“What’s mine is yours,” Rapunzel replied, scooting back from the threshold. “My jewelry box is on the dresser.”
Belle’s dress shimmered like the West River at sunset as she twirled across the room. “This is so great for two reasons,” she chirped, riffling through the jewels and checking herself out in the mirror. “If Donner finds out I’m dating, it might be the final nail that makes him change his ways. But if not and I really like Edgar …”