His Cinderella Next Door

by Cara Colter

  “It’s an outdoor party, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you say that color is?” he asked, carefully, focusing on the dress and not her frown.

  “Beige? Leaning toward rusty brown?”

  “I was going to suggest cat puke. Remember when you found Georgie in that hay barn?”

  “He was so skinny,” she said, smiling despite herself. “And scared.”

  “It took you a week to lure him out of hiding with cat food. And then, once he started eating, he wouldn’t stop. He ate and ate and ate and then...that color. All over my shoes.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m putting it back, even though it’s a perfectly respectable color that would go with anything.”

  “Except a party. Ralphie loved it when you wore bright colors,” Oscar reminded her.

  Suddenly, she remembered what all this was for. Had he figured out the party wasn’t a birthday party at all, but a celebration to remember Ralphie? Was that why he’d mentioned his brother?

  She looked at him closely. She didn’t think so, but it changed the texture of the shopping trip, and erased her reluctance. It suddenly didn’t feel as if they were in a high-end store, where she didn’t belong. It felt as if that other world, the one they had shared, swam around her and held her up.

  “Okay, okay, for Ralphie.” It was truer than he knew. She chose the brightest colored dress off the rack and held it up for his inspection.

  “That’s better,” he said. He called for Barbara, who must have been hovering close by. “We’re ready for the fitting room.”

  “I’ve only picked two dresses,” Molly said.

  “Three, if you include the cat puke one.”

  “But I put it back.”

  “Clearly that’s enough. I’ll pick the rest.”

  “You’re being very bossy.”

  “Because it’s evident this is a topic you know nothing about. That’s why you invited me, remember? I know. It’s the blind leading the blind, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

  Molly would have liked to complain, but she snapped her mouth shut. It was hard to argue with that. And it was a weakness, but she was just a little bit curious what Truck would think looked good on her.

  “Think of it like princess boot camp,” he suggested mildly.

  “I’ve always been a better pirate!”

  “You’ve always been a great pirate,” he agreed, the affection rough in his voice, “but it’s good to experiment.”

  “This from the guy who once blew up his mother’s basement experimenting.”

  He ignored her and made his way along the rack of dresses. How was it possible he looked so darn comfortable sorting through the racks? It did a funny thing to her heart, seeing that strong confident guy so intent on picking just the right thing for her.

  Far more intent than she was herself!

  “You are so lucky,” Barbara said, acting like her new best friend, now that she had caught a whiff of a sale. “How many men want to shop with their girlfriends? How enjoyable for you!”

  She opened her mouth to say she wasn’t his girlfriend, but Barbara tucked her in a fitting room and shut the door.

  It was, after all, literally true. Molly was a girl and she was Oscar’s friend. And the saleslady was right. Why not just enjoy this? A treat. A break from her ordinary life. An opportunity to explore a side of herself that she didn’t let out very often. An opportunity to be cared about. Looked after. And then she would surprise him with her gift—a tribute to Ralphie—before she left.

  “Especially a man like him,” Barbara cooed, through the door. “On the ooh-la-la scale, I’d say he’s a perfect ten.”

  Molly thought of Oscar, the perfect ten, going through the racks, that look of intense concentration on his face she knew so well from when he was conducting science experiments. He’d already admitted that’s what this was to him, some kind of experiment.

  And that’s what she should treat it as, too. An experiment. A new kind of adventure. Fun. Allowing herself to be pampered a little bit. To indulge that inner girl that she’d always been a little bit curious about. And wary of.

  If there was anyone she could trust with this experiment, it was him, who genuinely thought she looked great when she didn’t dress up at all.

  Princess boot camp.

  Good grief. The very thought brought a giggle to her lips. And Molly Bentwell, pirate, did not giggle!

  By the time Oscar arrived in the mirrored area outside the fitting rooms, Molly had on the navy dress. It was a narrow shirtdress style and she was looking at it, over her shoulder, in the full-length mirror. She noticed he seemed to have quite a few dresses draped over his arms.

  “I don’t want to be here all day,” she warned him.

  He hung his choices on a hook outside the door of the only fitting room that was obviously occupied.

  “Why? You have better things to do?”

  “Ah, you know, ships to plunder, booty to be captured.”

  Something in his expression shifted ever so slightly at the word booty. She suddenly remembered it had several meanings that had nothing to do with pirates.

  “We’ve already decided you’re good enough at being a pirate. This is princess camp.”

  “Just a sec, I’ll flounce and look pretty.” She did her best to flounce. She blinked her eyes at him.

  Oscar made a face. “A bit of work to do there. That dress looks great on you, but it’s not what I would call a party dress. It failed the flouncing test.”

  She considered that a mark in its favor, even for a party dress. “I think it’s flattering. It makes me look very slender.”

  “You are slender. You’d have to fill your pockets with potatoes to not look slender. It looks like a guy’s shirt. Against all odds, you’ve found the Crockett and Davey line of dresses. In Elite. The only time a woman should be wearing a guy’s shirt—”

  He stopped, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “No, do tell,” she purred, enjoying his discomfort. But then she thought of that. Of what it would feel like to be wearing his shirt, and what circumstances that might happen in. She changed the subject. Rapidly.

  “The color is nice.”

  “I thought we agreed something to go with your toenails.”

  Had they agreed to that? She thought that was a bit of an overstatement. Still, she liked the way he looked at her toes, and remembered he’d called them cute. “It’s silly to match a dress to toenails.”

  “Let’s be frivolous,” he suggested.

  “You couldn’t be frivolous if your life depended on it.”

  “Your bra strap is showing.”

  She tried to wrench it under the dress.

  “That won’t work. It’s too wide. It’s the wrong thing for that dress. Probably for any dress.”

  Molly felt her face getting very hot. “I invited you to help me find a dress, not discuss my underwear.”

  “If you had spinach stuck to your front tooth, I’d tell you. That’s what friends do.”

  “My bra is like spinach stuck to my front tooth?”

  “Figuratively,” he said, and then laughed that Oscar laugh that made her love him, even when he was being annoying. “Figuratively? Get it? We’re talking about your figure—”

  “Okay, I got it,” she said, faking far more irritability than she felt. “It’s not funny if you have to explain it.”

  “Okay, let me explain this—your bra strap is showing, because it’s too wide for that neckline.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “Is that, like, a running bra?”

  “It’s like a none-of-your-business bra.”

  Undeterred, he leaned in and squinted at her bra strap. For an electrifying moment, Molly thought he was going to touch it. But no, he stepped back.

  “It looks like something a
woman weight lifter would wear at the Olympics.”

  Despite her protest, despite the fact the new electrical element was there, Molly found herself loving this interchange, bickering back and forth with Oscar. What a remarkable thing it was to have a friend who could be so honest with you, and who you could be so honest with.

  Well, maybe not totally honest. She didn’t really want him to know that the mere thought of his hand brushing her shoulder caused an electrical current to pulse through her.

  “Barbara, can you...” He looked around. “Oh, never mind. I’ll find one myself.”

  “Find one what yourself?” she squeaked.

  “A bra. For you.”

  “You are not going to get a bra for me!”

  “I am.”

  “It’s not manly.”

  “I’m secure enough in my masculinity to handle it.”

  That was true. Oscar seemed a man so certain of himself that nothing could rattle him.

  “You don’t even know my size.” Molly realized this was a bit of a retreat from a flat-out no.

  He did, too. He grinned wickedly at her. “I bet I can guess.”

  “I bet you can’t.”

  “You’re on. Winner buys lunch.”

  She scowled at him, though she felt like laughing at the thought of her absent-minded scientist, Truck, sorting through women’s underwear.

  “Okay, since it’s an outdoor party and the wind might come up, grab me some pantaloons, too.” She might as well make the surrender complete. Did that mean she thought someone was going to see them?

  “Pirates wear pantaloons. Princesses wear...”

  “Ha! You have no idea what princesses wear.”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “I’m a man up for a challenge.”

  Truck wasn’t, Molly realized, a little breathlessly, that absent-minded scientist anymore. He was a man who looked like he might know his way around women’s underthings, which was a new and rather frightening light to see him in.

  Frightening and thrilling, the two things hard for her to separate, as always. She bet he was good at kissing. Really good at it. Not that awkward boy who had comforted her, with his lips, shortly after her father’s funeral.

  Even then, it had been a wonder. To taste him in that way. To add that dimension to all the other dimensions of their relationship. She could have fallen toward that, what she had tasted on his lips that night, and it would have been like falling through a night sky, studded with stars.

  Her eyes found his lips.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, quietly. “Because either you still have pomegranate stains on your face, or you’re blushing.”

  “I’m thinking about bras,” she told him. “A topic I am not accustomed to discussing with members of the opposite sex. But since we are having this unfortunate discussion, no underwires!”

  From inside the change room came the clear ping of an incoming message on her phone.

  “Could you turn that thing off?” he asked, annoyed.

  It was hard to annoy Oscar, but it was also proving very hard to plan an event on short notice.

  “I can’t, sorry. I, uh...have something going on.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “Are you going to tell him you’re shopping for pretty dresses and underthings with a man?”

  “Tell who that?”

  “Whoever’s texting you.”

  “It’s probably work-related.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Molly squinted at him. Was Oscar jealous? Of course, he wasn’t. He was just annoyed at her lack of techy etiquette.

  “I can clearly see you don’t need an underwire.”

  She folded her arms over the part of herself he could clearly see. It was his turn to blush ever so slightly.

  “And no lace.”

  “Come on. It’s pretty. Every princess should—”

  “No. It’s scratchy. And no—”

  He took a step toward her. He looked down at her in a way that increased that breathless sensation. “That’s enough rules, Mollie-Ollie. Trust me.”

  When he used that old nickname, a familiar little smile tickled across his lips. Had that smile ever made her want to kiss him before? Had it ever made her think of falling through a night sky, studded with stars?

  That’s what was making this dangerous! It wasn’t two kids catching lightning bugs in jars on a hot summer night.

  It was two adults discussing something only intimate partners should be discussing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I’LL PROBABLY REGRET trusting you with my lingerie choices,” Molly muttered in an attempt to hide the hard hammering of her heart from him.

  “I bet you won’t,” Oscar said, his voice a bone-melting growl.

  Molly went back into the fitting room. She looked in the full-length mirror. There was nothing wrong with this dress! It went fine with her coloring. It was a good practical dress. One that could take you to meet a new client, or out for a drink. It might be okay on a short flight, or to do a really tame photo shoot.

  He was right, though. It wasn’t any kind of a party dress. Suddenly, seeing it through his eyes, she saw it was boring, just like he’d said, and she couldn’t wait to get it off. And once she had it off, she looked at her underwear with a newly critical eye, too.

  She suddenly couldn’t wait to cover that up. She put on her second choice for a dress. It was horrible. She had picked it only for the bright colors, but it was a two-layered dress. It consisted of a straight white sheath in a flimsy fabric she thought might be chiffon. The sheath was circled with layers of polka-dot-patterned ruffles, the polka dots all different sizes and every color of the rainbow. It seemed a bit like a child’s party dress. She was going to take it back off, but decided it would be way more fun to pretend she liked it for Oscar.

  Molly came back out of the fitting room just as he was coming back, his hands—unselfconsciously—full of frilly things. Frilly things in light pinks and sweet lavenders, brilliant whites and jet-blacks. She should have mentioned she liked only two colors for underwear, white and black.

  She could feel a blush rising in her cheeks, again.

  Oscar saw her like that? Like a woman who could wear those kinds of things?

  “Look at this dress,” she gushed. “Isn’t it great?”

  He skidded to a halt in front of her. “I like it.”

  “What?” She looked at him closely. Was he pranking her prank? “This is possibly the worst dress I’ve ever seen.”

  “It matches the toenails.”

  She squinted down at her feet. “I don’t think it does. I think it may have every color on the spectrum, except that one.”

  “It’s got a lot of movement,” he said, approvingly.

  She put her hands over her head and did a little hula move, her hips swiveling, the dress swishing around her. “I think it might be moving because it’s possessed. By the ugliness demon.”

  “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. But I think it’s fun and perfect for a party.”

  “Ralphie would have loved the colors,” she said softly, surprised by how suddenly serious she felt.

  She realized, too late, maybe she had touched a tender spot, the one he didn’t want touched.

  But Oscar cocked his head and looked at it a different way. He smiled. “You’re right. He would have. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone would have placed Ralphie—or me—in charge of wardrobe selection.”

  She swung around playfully, in a circle, and the dress floated and flicked in the air around her.

  His smile deepened. “You know, I think maybe you were right. The dress is horrible, and yet you carry it with a certain panache that makes me like it.”

  She spun around again, and the dress swirled around her, its abundance of ruffles rising and
falling like feathers on a bird.

  “That definitely would have been Ralphie’s choice,” Oscar said. He went quiet for a moment and gave his head a bit of a shake.

  “What?”

  “You know, today I’ve mentioned him several times, and I just realized, I haven’t felt as if I would fall to my knees with grief.”

  “Truck,” she said softly, “remember those overalls he loved so much? They drove your mother to distraction. She couldn’t wait for them to wear out.”

  “I seem to remember, as soon as they did fall apart, you bought him another pair.”

  “Part of why your mother hated me.”

  “My mother didn’t hate you,” he said.

  Oh, Truck, you have no idea.

  “It’s true, she didn’t get you. Or your dad. You both thumbed your noses at the very convention she had adhered to so religiously her whole life. It threatened her.”

  Molly had never thought of his mother in that light. Mrs. Clark was so cool and so contained. Threatened by her? Not as scornful of her as she had appeared, but threatened?

  “I think, after Ralphie was born, her sense that she could control the world was snatched from her. It made her redouble her efforts.”

  She heard both sympathy—and the faintest aggravation—in his voice.

  “Your dad—and you—challenged her view of the world. I think she was afraid I would like your world better than hers.”

  Threatened that Molly would draw her son away from her world? It presented that long-ago conversation in a different light.

  “Did you?” she whispered.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  That simple statement changed everything. And so did the wisps of smoke and spiderwebs that he held in his hands. He thrust them at her. He was actually blushing, which was totally endearing. “One of these will fit. And then I win the bet.”

  “If they are all different sizes here, you’re guessing. You didn’t really win the bet,” she said triumphantly as she turned away from him.

  “Here, wait, let me move these.” He took the armload of dresses he’d hung outside the fitting room door and put them inside. He brushed against her and her every nerve felt as if it stood on end.

  Had Oscar felt it, too? That electrifying jolt? Because he stopped, looked at her, then quickly backed out of the tiny space and closed the door behind him.