Cindy and the Prom King
Page 14
“Yes, I guess I do. The reason I left the dance was …”
“I know that. I heard the message on your phone. Who was that? Is your mother all right?”
“She’s fine. She was never sick. It was just someone who wanted to play a joke on me.”
“Not a funny joke,” he said soberly.
“No.”
“I will never understand Americans. You, for example.”
“I’m easy to understand,” she said, turning to face him.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “You covered your beautiful red hair for the dance.” He wound a long red curl around his finger to admire it with a smile and half-closed eyes. Either he did have jet lag or it was just his usual sleepy, sexy look. “Why?”
“To look like Marie Antoinette. I thought it worked. I thought no one knew who I was.”
“I knew. I knew always it was you. No one else talks to me like you do. No one else makes me smile. No one else helps me understand this country and the language and the people who live here.”
He leaned forward and looked deep into her eyes for a long moment. A look so intense it made her toes curl. Then he drew his eyebrows together.
“What I don’t know is whether you are my best friend or my girlfriend?”
Cindy stared into his dark eyes with their flecks of green, searching for the right answer. She’d had best friends in the past. She’d have more in the future. But she’d never been anyone’s girlfriend.
“Maybe this will help to decide.” He leaned forward and kissed Cindy on the lips. His mouth was warm and he tasted dark and delicious. Her lips trembled. Her heart pounded. The least she could do was to kiss him back. Her first kiss. Her first boyfriend. Forever? Who knew? For now? For sure.
After a long, magical moment, Marco broke the kiss. He brushed a curl from Cindy’s cheek.
“I am forgetting. My nonna sends you a message. She wishes you to visit us in Bellagio next summer. If you are free.”
Cindy swallowed hard. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to thank him and his grandmother. But the words stuck in her throat, happy tears filled her eyes and all she could do was nod her head.
Then she realized that although she was free, the airfare wasn’t. Never mind, she’d worry about that later. She’d have a bake sale. Whatever. Think about it. All this and Bellagio too.
The End
Book Two in the Manderley Prep series:
CAN’T BUY ME LOVE
“’It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’”
Victoria Lee read the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities over for the fourth time before it penetrated her tired brain. For her it was the best of times, considering her parents had finally left that morning. After spending two weeks with her at their suburban San Francisco McMansion, they were on their way back to Hong Kong.
On the other hand it was also the worst of times. Second semester of her junior year at Manderley Prep, the school where the progeny of Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers went, if they could pass the stringent entrance exam or if their parents donated a new stadium or at least a new state-of-the-art theater. Her old friends were left far behind, she had a huge Dickens novel to read, and not much of a new social life in California.
Instead of reading any further, Victoria got out her case of cedarwood colored pencils and sketched the outline of a dress on a blank page in her notebook…
“Homework already? The semester hasn’t even started.”
It was Cindy, her best friend at Manderley – her only friend really—who’d joined her on the second floor of the T.J. Ransom Memorial Library.…..
“When you were Miss Junior Hong Kong, you must have had guys falling all over you so you could have your pick,” Cindy said.
“Yes, but they were all either dorky or too smooth. Besides, my mother was always watching me like a peregrine falcon.”
“Isn’t that an endangered species?”
“So’s my mother….
Her plan is for me to marry well like she did. Well means smart and rich, of course. And to remain a virgin until my wedding night like she did. She made me practice looking down my nose at guys who would come on to me. She told me to act like I had an invisible shield around me. Like I’m too good for them….I told her I couldn’t promise anything.”