by Ellie Hall
Maggie didn’t want to think about Cinderella.
“I don’t think the palmetto bugs will miss you, but I will.” Haleigh gave her a hug.
“Then go with her,” Nadia said. “Explore Concordia.”
Haleigh shook her head. “I didn’t tell you yet, but I got a studio space in the new artisan building.”
Maggie lit up, excited for her friend.
“I sign the lease on Thursday. The light in there is amazing and—” As Haleigh went on to describe her good news, Maggie felt alone and untethered, just as she always did. Although she was originally from California, she didn’t know where she belonged in the world.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to her parents in months or had it almost been a year? Usually, texting them was better because they were so busy. In fact, for her last birthday, their assistant phoned to wish her well. They were often traveling so they couldn’t connect. Still, she felt the need to do so. She typed up a quick summary of the job opportunity, asking what they thought. Then she deleted it and told them where she was going. No sense in waiting around for a reply—it might take another year. Not that they cared.
Haleigh pulled out some of her latest designs and how she’d showcase them in the studio that was an old factory converted into an upscale mall for artists, craftspeople, and other creatives.
Maggie waited for a reply to the text she’d sent her mother and father. But one didn’t come. Later, she tried calling and left a message.
Still, no reply. No answer.
Not when she went back to her apartment.
Not when she ate dinner.
Not when the sun set.
The next morning, they still hadn’t responded.
She knocked on the door down the hall.
Nadia answered, looking as rested as ever, despite what she exclaimed was another late night with the football player—they’d done a scenic tour in a helicopter to the Florida Keys.
“I’ll take the job,” Maggie said when she got a word in.
A day later, she was packed up and headed for the airport. She knew she’d return to see Haleigh and the studio space, but not when. She pared down her belongings even more since the finishing school provided room and board to its employees.
As she gazed out the window at the plane that taxied toward the gate, a little thrill of excitement replaced the dismay, the feelings of failure, and the sadness that had crowded her mind and heart in the previous days. She was going on an adventure of her own and wouldn’t miss the palmetto bugs either.
“Mommy, mommy.” A little girl’s voice trickled into her thoughts. “It’s Cinderella. I saw her the other day.”
She turned and smiled, slipping into character one last time. “Shh. I’m on a secret trip to...” She thought quickly. “To visit the Princess of Concordia, but I can’t let my sisters know otherwise they’ll be jealous.”
“They’re so wicked,” the little girl whispered. “What will you do while you’re there?”
“I think I’d like to go dress shopping. Do you think I look better in blue or pink?”
“Definitely blue. I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
Maggie wanted to tell her that no, she didn’t, but hope crested inside. Maybe that was about to change.
Her flight was called and she waved goodbye to the little girl, but her words stuck with her. I want to be just like you when I grow up. Who was that? She was grown up and swiftly approaching thirty. She’d had a job a year for the last ten years. She was a woman who owned little more than what she had in her luggage. In the days since she’d fallen in the fountain, she had become an internet meme, a laughing stock. Maybe Concordia didn’t have YouTube. Wishful thinking.
She thought back to her days working at the theme park, and at the funny and meaningful things kids had said to her. But that little girl’s comment was like an arrow, piercing something inside her. Who was she? What did she want to do? How was she a role model?
Almost eight hours later, she still didn’t have an answer, but mountains loomed as the plane descended in Concordia. They were much like the ones she’d imagined when she needed to cool off on that hot Florida day not too long ago.
Before she had a chance to get her bearings and admire her surroundings, her phone beeped. She was late for the meeting at the school—on account of getting the time difference wrong.
She rushed from the airport to a train, briefly taking in how clean everything was with a prominence of golds and blues, from the compartment to the signage. As she hurried to find a taxi that would take her to the school, everyone was friendly, but proper as though they too had attended the finishing school.
The cab wound up a cobblestone driveway to a stone building that looked vaguely like a miniature version of the royal castle set in the mountainside, which also resembled Cinderella’s.
Maggie was tired, her hair was a mess, and her clothes were wrinkled, but the air was fresh, the scenery breathtaking, and for the first time in a long time, she felt like she could breathe a little easier. A strange sensation rippled through her. It was like she knew right down to her bones that she was exactly where she was supposed to be, which was odd since it all happened so unexpectedly and quickly.
She was greeted by a valet and he led her into the school. She smoothed her hair and clothing. The interior of the building was fancy with polished wood, candelabras, and oil paintings. She didn’t quite feel like she fit in given her rough appearance after travel and definitely had never taught etiquette before, but she’d keep this job even if she had to play the role of someone who knew what they were doing.
Katerina, Nadia’s cousin, was in a meeting so instead of being interviewed, trained, or even getting a tour of the building and grounds, she was given a few minutes to freshen up and then sent to a room to wait for her first student.
A folder waited on the table and she discerned she’d be something of a life coach for a wayward football player. The photo of him looked slightly like a mugshot, but that could’ve been because it appeared as if he’d had a broken nose.
She skimmed the file, which included instructions for the meeting, a brief profile, and a few newspaper clippings.
Declan Woods was the celebrity type and appeared to enjoy time in front of the cameras—including his backside, which had made the news in a scandal dubbed moon-gate. She read he was there to clean up his act, in so many words. Immediately, she disliked him. Mostly because he reminded her of everything that she gave up to get away from people who loved the spotlight more than their own daughter.
Laughter echoed from the hall. She braced herself, getting to her feet, and promising herself she’d do whatever necessary to keep her new job. She wouldn’t shrink or let herself be ten years old all over again and in her parents’ shadow. She’d stand tall. She could do this. She’d do it for the little girl she’d met at the airport. To make her proud.
A man with blondish-red hair, and made entirely of muscle, entered the room with squirt guns blazing. He howled like a cowboy from the wild west as he blasted the room and everything in it with water, including Maggie. Where was he on those hot days in costume back in Florida?
Dowsed, Maggie’s first instinct was to shriek, but like Cinderella in character, she forced herself to smile.
Chapter 2
Declan
Declan abruptly silenced his maniacal laughter. “You’re not a dude.”
A woman with strawberry blond hair, peachy skin, and wearing a smile jerked back slightly. “I am not a dude,” she confirmed.
She was an American or had successfully masked any sort of accent. The moment the plane had landed in Concordia, Declan went to scout the city. The locals were nice enough and unlike Wolf, Chase, and Grey, he’d heard of the country. Probably helped that it wasn’t all that far from Ireland, where he’d grown up. He’d never visited Concordia but from time to time he’d encounter a Concordian—they spoke English, but with a distinct accent. Though it was never clear to him why
they’d leave their home country. It was among the wealthiest on the planet, even though it was also among the smallest. It had a timeless yet old-world feel. He instantly loved it. Too bad his trip there wasn’t under different circumstances.
Declan lowered the squirt guns. His new coach wasn’t short, but not tall either. She was fit, but curvy where it counted. Her gaze wouldn’t meet his and her hair hung limply around her face with no thanks to him.
“Ready for your life makeover?” she said, glancing at a folder on a nearby table.
“I don’t need a life makeover.”
Her eyes, still not meeting his, landed on the water pistols.
“I’m, uh, sorry,” he started. “I’m the kind of guy who brings the heat. I figured you’d need to cool off.” The words, ordinarily met with an eager smile from the women he wooed, felt stale in his mouth. Out of place. Lyrics to a song that had grown old. Yet he’d said them anyway. He had to keep up the persona that everyone ate up.
Her eyes flicked to his for a moment and her cheeks burned. “Cool off?” she said and her voice sounded faintly like an echo.
He’d never seen such a beautiful face crumble so fully, so sadly, so terribly. She had a sweet innocence, a girl next door quality, and he felt like the biggest jerk on earth for trampling all over it with his cocky behavior.
“I apologize. I figured the guys would be in here and I don’t know, the teachers would parade in and introduce themselves in some kind of formal way. I was just told to show up at eleven. I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” She smoothed her hair from her face.
He’d seen her before. “Wait, are you—?”
She dipped her head, almost like she stepped into her own shadow as though she knew—and dreaded—that he recognized where he’d seen her before. Was she the person in the viral video he’d seen the day before? Cinderella falling into a fountain with some guy?
“Listen, I’m really sorry. I feel terrible. I truly thought—”
“Apparently, you also thought the rookie player on the Boston Bruisers would be the only person walking into the room when you and the other guys on your team decided to moon him—not expecting the commissioner, his daughter, and others to enter as well.”
“In my defense—wait.” Once more, she gave him pause. “You read the article where we explained what had actually happened?”
Various news outlets had been reporting that the guys had intentionally mooned the commissioner. Ordinarily, he didn’t complain because any press was good press as far as he was concerned, but in that instance, he’d prefer the truth and not end up on probation at a finishing school.
“I read it on the plane and then another in your file with a slightly different story.”
“You believe me?”
She shrugged. “Why would you intentionally jeopardize your job?” Water dripped along the line of her jaw.
He stepped forward to wipe it off, but she shuffled back and did it herself.
“Where’d you fly here from? Sounds like the States.”
“Florida.” Her tone had a sharp form of punctuation at the end like she didn’t want him to ask if she was the princess in the video or for any other personal information.
Declan opted to talk about himself. He was good at that. “Me too. Boston Bruisers.”
“I gathered that.”
“Ireland before. Born and raised up until I was sixteen and then I moved to Boston.”
She nodded. So many of the women he encountered were bubbly, fawned over him, and were interested in doing things other than talking. She was unlike them and seemed tight-lipped and closed-off. Logic suggested it was because she was his coach, but he sensed something deeper.
“Do you want to go clean up?” he offered.
She squared her shoulders and opened the folder. The contents were dry. “No, I’m fine.”
His phone beeped. It was a girl he went out with the weekend before. He ignored it.
“I’m Maggie Byrne. Your new lifestyle coach.” She scanned a piece of paper in the folder like she wasn’t sure where to go from there.
Her eyelashes brushed the smooth crescents of her cheeks. Her forehead creased slightly as though she wasn’t so sure about what she was reading. Wisps of her hair grazed her neck and she brushed one out of the way with slender fingers as the water dripped into her collarbone.
Declan swallowed hard.
His phone beeped again. Another of what Wolf would refer to as booty calls—not that he went beyond kissing the women that pursued him.
There was the public version of Declan and the private one. No one in the United States knew him. He’d left that guy in Ireland. Whether it was proximity or simply a change in the air, he felt a nudge that he’d all but forgotten. It was that first glance sense. The one he’d felt when he’d met Siobhan all those years ago and hadn’t felt for anyone since.
Maggie’s voice floated back to him. “Welcome to Blancbourg Academy d’Etiquette of Concordia.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, by the way she stumbled over those words, that was the first time she’d spoken them and it was slightly adorable.
Maggie drew a deep, shaky breath. Was she nervous or steeling herself? “We teach social skills commonly known as etiquette. This will include in-person interaction, print, and online.”
“Listen, I know why I’m here but explain how this will help me.” Truthfully, he didn’t want her to have to suffer through giving him the spiel. He knew how to be a good lad but often chose not to.
She lifted her chin slightly. “To be quite honest so I get a paycheck on Friday.”
“What?” he asked, taken aback by her candor.
She realized her blunder and recovered. “I meant to answer how it’ll help you. Sorry. It’s my first day.”
“I guess we’re all beginners at some point.” He recalled how it felt when he’d arrived in Boston and got his first job. He stepped closer and tried to force her gaze to meet his.
She stiffened but didn’t look up.
He closed the folder, set it on the table, and then pulled out a chair, immediately assuming a comfortable position because that’s how he rolled. “How about we help each other.”
“What do you mean?” She also sat down.
“How about we come up with a mutually advantageous agreement.”
She tilted her head.
“You give me a glowing review. But you don’t have to actually do anything. You still get paid. I can go do my thing.”
“Your thing being?” A hint of mockery entered her voice as though she’d quickly decided he was an overgrown child.
He shrugged. “Bad boy football star.”
She snorted. “I should probably just do my job. We have to perform an individual evaluation first, regular updates, the midpoint review followed by the final review.”
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to change your mind? We can pretend to be making over my life. I’ll go do my thing. You go sightseeing.” He shrugged.
A long beat passed as though she was entertaining the possibility. It gave him enough time to think about what his thing was. Football, for starters. Training. Hanging with the guys. Showing up at events, getting screen time, and shining in the spotlight. Dating—though that was off the table for the time being. Having a good time. Heck, he could go sightseeing.
However, as the moment stretched between them, he struggled to come up with anything—or anyone—that felt like a true anchor. A person who’d be his ride or die like they used to say when he was a punk teenager—the people who’d do anything for him, who he’d let see the real him. The people who had once tethered him to his life were no longer a part of it. He had the aforementioned stuff he did, but a peculiar thought breached the surface of his mind. Were all the components that made up his persona a way to create distance between himself and what he’d lost? What he never expected to have again? A best friend. Love.
Maggie’s voice picked up where that last thought ende
d. “When you can tell me what your thing is, perhaps I’ll reconsider.”
Declan bit the inside of his lip. Ordinarily, he’d bargain, work his charm to get her to reconsider right then on the spot. Instead, he went along with it. A part of him, however small, was curious about what her life makeover, as she called it, would bring. Maybe he’d find his true thing.
“We’ll have an initial assessment, as I mentioned, followed by a week or so of lessons tailored to what you most need to improve. After that, we’ll move out of the classroom and into the world, so to speak. All the while, I’ll be evaluating you. This will culminate in a task for you to demonstrate that you’ve learned your lesson and will, ahem, keep your pants on.
He chuckled. Despite the unfortunate consequences, moon-gate, as it had come to be called, was the biggest publicity event of the year. Game tickets and merch sales spiked in the last few days. When money was moving in the team’s direction, no one seemed to complain—except the pro ball commissioner. His last name was Starkowsky or Starky for short. Then again, he had been wanting to teach the Bruiser boys a lesson for a while. Declan suspected it had something to do with Chase’s family. His grandfather had been a power player in football—on the field in his youth and then behind the scenes later. Chase didn’t talk a ton about it, but something had happened somewhere in history that colored Starky’s opinion of the winning Boston team. Or it could just have been that they always won. Easy enough to shift that trend if the star players were stashed away at reform school.
Maggie reviewed the contents of her folder and clicked a pen. “Shall we conduct this interview?” she asked.
She was still damp from his foolish prank but held herself with the grace and poise of a princess. Either that or she was just really committed to her job.
She asked him routine questions that he’d answered a million times: name, birthday, and so on. He offered lazy answers because he couldn’t help notice that in addition to the composed princess side, Maggie had a peppy energy just below the surface, biting to get out. It was like she wanted to experience the world, shoot water guns, and moon a bunch of strangers but had repressed that side of herself.
