Operation Cinderella

by Hope Tarr

  Moved, Macie swallowed hard. “Okay. Thanks, guys, I will.”

  She’d given up on fairy-tale love pretty much by the time she’d boxed up her Barbie dolls. As for the legend, it was just that: a story, make-believe. Still, Franc had a point. Once she was in the throes of Operation Cinderella, it would be nice to have something of New York and her friends with her, something to remind her of who she was. A great pair of shoes was a great pair of shoes even if they didn’t make it to any actual balls.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me.” Cocking his head to the cell phone, Ross used his free hand to rinse his coffee mug at the kitchen sink.

  “It’s good to hear your voice, son,” his mother said, as though it had been months since they’d spoken instead of last week. “How are you and Samantha getting along out there in Washington, DC?”

  The way she said “Washington, DC” made the District sound like a foreign country. Then again, to his family back in Paris, Texas, it kind of was.

  Ross hesitated. His folks knew Sam had come to live with him for a while, but that was all. He’d remained deliberately vague on the circumstances of her arrival, even though he suspected his mother wasn’t fooled. “We’re doing…well. I think I may have found a live-in housekeeper,” he added, shifting the conversation to safer ground.

  “That’s wonderful. What’s she like?”

  “She’s…” Opening the dishwasher, he set the used cup on the upper rack. “I haven’t actually met her yet,” he admitted. “I set up a lunch interview with her today. She’s been living in New York, but she’s from a small town in Indiana. She came east to study Education at Catholic University. So far we’ve only spoken on the phone.”

  He’d called Miss Gray at home three nights ago. What had started as a screening had carried into a conversation lasting almost an hour. A TV on in the background had prompted him to ask what movies she liked. As it turned out, they were both crazy about classic films. North by Northwest was one of her favorites, too. She considered Cary Grant the George Clooney of his day and Eva Marie Saint was “simply stunning.” Colorizing original black-and-white films to make them more modern was “almost immoral.” Ross had agreed wholeheartedly.

  Before he’d known it, he was no longer leading an interview. He was engaging in a genuine conversation—and enjoying the hell out of himself. Sure, she’d been nervous at first, but the longer they’d talked the more she’d seemed to relax, revealing glimpses of warmth and intelligence and even humor.

  His mother’s voice drew him back to the moment. “You can tell a lot about a person’s character over the phone. Not everything, but a lot. It’s not always what they say but what they don’t say that’s the most telling,” she added pointedly.

  Closing the dishwasher door with his hip, Ross swallowed hard. Among the things he wasn’t saying was that Sam was seeing a psychologist. Her regular weekly session was scheduled for that morning.

  Sam chose that moment to stomp into the kitchen, a half-finished glass of orange juice in hand. Wearing a too-tight tank top and torn-at-the-knees low-rise jeans, she looked like she belonged on the back of a Hell’s Angels hog, not in the exclusive private school where he’d enrolled her.

  Memo to me: next time pick a school that requires students to wear uniforms.

  She pushed past him to the sink and sloshed the leftover juice down the drain as though it cost pennies and not hard-earned dollars. Catching his eye, she said, “Chill, Daddy, I’ll be ready to get my head shrunk in a few.”

  Ross covered a hand over the cell, hopefully in time to keep his mother from overhearing.

  “Is that my darlin’ grandbaby?” his mom asked, well knowing it was.

  Shit. “Yes, ma’am, it is.” Ross shot Sam a warning look and added, “Unfortunately, she can’t talk right now. She has to go change…immediately.” With his free hand he waved Sam out of the kitchen. “Listen, Mom, I…we’ve gotta run. I’ll call you later, promise.”

  “All right, but you never did tell me her name.”

  “Her…?” Distracted by Sam, Ross took a moment before answering. “Oh, right, sorry. Martha Jane Gray.”

  “Martha Jane,” his mother repeated, as if testing it out. “You don’t hear old-fashioned names like that much anymore. I like the sound of it. I like the sound of her. I have a real good feeling about this young lady.”

  For the first time that morning, Ross felt himself smile. “Me, too, Mom.”

  …

  The Northeast DC restaurant the Dubliner was on North Capitol Street, a few blocks from Union Station. The landmark Irish pub was operating at a low roar when Macie stepped inside, the wood-paneled bar looking very much as it had when she’d come with her college friends to hang out over pitchers of Guinness and bottles of Harp. A quick look around confirmed the lunchtime crowd consisted of the usual suspects, politicians and government workers from nearby Capitol Hill, the men dressed in the DC “uniform” of dark suits or navy blazers and khakis, the women in neutral-colored suits or tailored separates. Similarly dressed in a tailored silk blouse and knee-length knit skirt, Macie walked up to the harried-looking young woman standing behind the hostess stand.

  “Hi, I’m with the Mannon reservation.”

  The girl blew a russet-colored curl out of her eyes and glanced up from the messy stack of menus she’d been straightening. “Your party’s already seated. I’ll take you to the table in a sec, okay?”

  A deep and now familiar baritone answered for her. “That’s all right, Maag, I can take her.”

  Heart doing double time, Macie turned slowly around. Her gaze collided with a pair of impossibly blue eyes, and for a powerful few seconds, her tumbling heart seemed to spiral, then slip. “Dr. Mannon?” she said, finally finding her tongue.

  “Ross.” His deep voice, reminiscent of boots crunching on gravel, sounded slightly different in person than it had on the phone the other night; the telltale Texas intonation lengthening his vowels in a softer, less formal, sexier way. “You must be Miss Gray?”

  Macie nodded, feeling her knees turn to wax—melting wax. “Y-yes, I’m she…I mean me.” Jesus, get a grip.

  After their phone conversation earlier in the week, she’d known she needed to put up a double-walled guard. The guy had been charming—but then she’d prepared herself for that. He was, after all, a media personality. That he was also majorly into classic movies had taken her by complete surprise. North by Northwest was his favorite film, too! Really, seriously! There’d been times during their almost hour-long talk when she’d found herself forgetting she was supposed to be acting out a role and had just been…herself.

  That he was also “prettier” than his publicity picture was so not fair. Wearing a tweed blazer, comfortably worn jeans, and slightly scuffed Western boots, he might have walked out of the pages of an American Eagle Outfitters catalog.

  She opened her mouth to invite him to call her Macie when she remembered where she was and, more importantly, who she was supposed to be. “Martha Jane.” She hesitated, smiled, and stuck out her suddenly shaky hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Holding her gaze, he slid his big hand around hers in a firm but not crushing grip.

  Ma’am. Now there was a word she hadn’t heard in a while, certainly not since the move to Manhattan. She glanced down at their joined hands, hers eclipsed by his broad palm and tapered fingers, and felt a spark somewhere between static electricity and lightning rush from her fingertips to her elbow.

  Shivering, she pulled away and reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting?”

  He shook his head. “Sam and I just got here a couple of minutes ago.”

  “Sam?”

  “My daughter, Samantha.”

  “Oh, yes of course.” Talk about blowing it off the bat.

  “I had to take her out of school for a…doctor’s appointment. Trip down go okay?” he asked, deftly turning the conversation back to her. Ma
ybe her reporter’s instincts were on hyperdrive, but he suddenly seemed on edge.

  “It did, thanks. I love riding the train. It gives me a chance to read.”

  She started to bring up his book, but a tall teenage girl interrupted, sidling to Mannon’s side. “Are we going to order or what? I’m starving.” Hands stuffed into the pockets of her black Ducoti leather biker jacket, Samantha Mannon turned stony eyes on Macie.

  Though they’d just met, Macie sensed the shift in Mannon. He turned toward the girl but not before Macie caught him wince. “Mind your manners, Sam. We have a guest.” Expression shuttering, he looked back to Macie. “Miss Gray, this is my daughter, Samantha.”

  Macie held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Samantha.”

  “Sam,” the kid corrected. Lip curled, she stared down at Macie’s hand as though wondering when she’d last washed it.

  Dropping her arm, Macie admitted the daughter wasn’t at all what she’d expected. With her razor-cut medium brown hair, piercings, and torn-at-the knees jeans, Samantha Mannon looked more like a biker babe than the daughter of one of the country’s leading conservative pundits.

  Expression pained, Mannon gestured to a corner booth in the adjoining dining room. “We’re just over there.” He stepped aside, his hand brushing the small of Macie’s back. The subtle guiding gesture sent her senses seesawing.

  This is going to be a long six weeks, she thought, doing her best to fight the telltale tingling.

  Praying she wouldn’t tangle her feet or trip over a bump in the floor, she wove her way between tables and slipped into the high-backed booth. Samantha, not Mannon, took the seat directly across from her.

  The girl’s black-lined eyes, sharp as drill bits, bore into hers. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Dad comes here every Friday for lunch, twelve o’ clock sharp. You can set your clock by him…except for today. You made us late.”

  “Samantha!” Expression exasperated, Mannon took the seat beside his daughter.

  Deciding she’d better start playing the part of the competent childcare worker sooner rather than later, Macie stepped in. “Actually, Samantha has a point. My train was running late. Where’s Mussolini when you need him?” The Italian dictator’s one positive was that he’d managed to keep the country’s trains running on time—a first. Second to English, history had been Macie’s favorite high school subject—before she’d stopped studying or caring about much of anything beyond getting by.

  The kid’s clueless look confirmed she’d never heard of Mussolini, but Mannon obviously had. He threw back his head and laughed, freeing them all from the tension of the moment and freeing something inside Macie, too. Startled by the sudden sense of well-being washing over her, she skimmed her gaze across his face, taking in the high brow and sculpted cheekbones, the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and the hint of blond stubble on his jaw. That he wasn’t totally clean-shaven as he’d been on the webcast was another surprise—and totally hot.

  He glanced at Samantha, who was making a show of studying her menu. “Sam could use some help with World History—not her strongest subject, as you may have guessed.” He followed the admission with a small, slightly crooked smile that had Macie’s heart skipping beats. Get a grip, Graham!

  “History sucks,” Samantha announced, giving the menu an angry flip.

  Opening her own menu, Macie hid a smile of her own. Do your worst, kid. You might know the rules, but I wrote the book.

  A hassled-looking waitress materialized with a tray of ice waters. “Hi, my name is Michelle.” She set the glasses down and looked to Macie. “May I start you off with a beverage?”

  “An iced tea, please,” Macie answered, hoping she didn’t sound as sad about that as she felt. Back in New York, the only iced tea she drank was Long Island.

  Mannon nodded. “I’ll have the same, thanks.”

  The picture of seriousness, Samantha looked up and said, “I’ll have a rum and Coke.”

  Mannon sighed. “Very funny, Samantha,” he said and then to the waitress, “She’ll have a regular Coke.”

  “A Diet Coke,” Samantha corrected. Spotting her father’s frown, she grudgingly added, “Please.”

  “I can take your order when I bring the drinks or, if you’re ready now…”

  Having spent the better part of her first year in New York supporting herself as a server, Macie recognized the broad hint. “I’m ready if you all are.”

  The menu featured hearty pub fare with several distinctive Irish dishes. Although she’d never been less hungry in her life, she settled on the Dubliner chicken salad, if only because managing a messy sandwich while fielding interview questions seemed too hard. Samantha ordered the house salad and fries, and Mannon the corned beef and cabbage along with a potato skin starter for them to share.

  The waitress tucked the empty tray under her arm and darted away to another table. Macie looked across to Mannon and braced herself for the inevitable grilling to begin.

  She didn’t have long to wait. “I’m curious, Miss Gray, how’d you end up in New York from Indiana?”

  So much for chummy chatting about black-and-white movies. Fortunately, once again, all she needed to do was stick to the truth. “Actually it was from Indiana to Washington, DC, for school, then from there to New York.”

  Mannon nodded. “Right, you majored in Education. How’d you come to pick that field, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  She hadn’t picked it. Her college major had been foisted on her like everything else back then. The only way her parents would agree to foot the part of the tuition bill her partial scholarship hadn’t covered was if she majored in nursing, library science, or education—the sole fields they considered suitable for a young woman now that Home Economics was no longer offered. She’d elected to study Education as the lesser of evils and then signed up for a second major in English, telling her parents it was the subject she wanted to teach; only staying confined inside a classroom was nowhere in her plans.

  Ever since she could remember she’d wanted to be a journalist in the grand muckraking tradition of Upton Sinclair and Woodward and Bernstein, firing off scathing exposes calculated to make the big industry environmental polluters and corporate special interests quiver in their high-end boots. In the meantime, commercial magazine work paid the bills and racked up the bylines.

  She took a drink of water. God but her throat was dry. “My mother taught kindergarten before she married Dad, so I suppose working with kids is sort of in my blood.”

  He rested his folded hands atop the table, and Macie felt her gaze drawn downward. Golden hairs dusted the broad backs, and the interlocked fingers exuded harnessed strength—power. Scarring thickened the flesh over the knuckles. Mannon had once worked with his hands doing hard labor: yet another surprise.

  “Your practicum was in Early Childhood Education and yet in your e-mail you said the family you just got through working for has teenagers.”

  She snapped up her gaze. “Yes, that’s right, although Chloe was in middle school when I started.” Chloe was the name she’d picked for her future daughter back when she’d still believed in real-life Happily Ever Afters. “I’ve found that teens are the age group I enjoy working with the most.”

  He regarded her beneath a slightly raised brow. “Why is that?”

  Damn, why couldn’t she have kept K.I.S.S. sacred? Stalling, she sipped more water. “Well, I suppose because it’s…it’s such a confusing time for kids and yet a magical one, too. Or at least it should be. Watching them transform into young adults and helping them make that transition successfully is something I find really challenging but really rewarding, too.” She thought about tossing in a butterfly analogy but then reminded herself that when it came to lying, less really was more. “And I suppose I have a personal stake, too.”

  “How’s that?” His voice hadn’t raised so much as a decibel and yet she sensed the shift in him, the wariness.

  She answered hones
tly. “My sister, Pam, is a sophomore in high school. If nothing else, I suppose that brings home to me just how hard it is to be a kid these days.”

  She hadn’t seen Pam since her last disastrous trip home for the holidays nearly two years ago. The fireworks she and her folks had raised had made it feel more like the Fourth of July than Christmas. Her dad had accused her of ruining the holiday for everyone by leaving early, but cutting out before the situation got any worse had seemed like the best present she could give all of them, herself included.

  The lump lodging at the back of her throat warned it was time to get a lot less real. “But look at me going on and on when you’re the one who’s literally written the book on the subject.” She reached into her leather bag and pulled out the hardback she’d brought along.

  Raising Sane Kids in an Insane World wasn’t going to put Nora Roberts out of business, but the prose was livelier and better crafted than she’d expected. For an academic, Mannon wasn’t a half bad writer, assuming he hadn’t hired someone to ghost. Regardless, his thinking was all wrong.

  “I finished it on the trip down. I was hoping you might autograph it for me—if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Silent until now, the kid rolled her eyes and hissed, “Suck up,” beneath her breath.

  Ignoring her, Macie slid the book across the table toward Mannon.

  She’d expected him to preen but if anything he looked almost…embarrassed. “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

  He pulled an expensive looking fountain pen from his jacket pocket, along with an eyeglass case, and opened the book to the title page. When he slid on the wire frames, Macie found herself forgetting to breathe. She’d never before thought of glasses as sexy, but on Ross Mannon, they definitely were. The scratching of the pen across the page filled the silence, and Macie was grateful for the time to gather herself. She took another long drink of water, feeling as though she’d just logged in too many minutes in a sauna—dry-mouthed and lightheaded enough to make her glad she was sitting down. When she looked up, she caught the kid smirking. If a fifteen-year-old could see through her it was obvious she was blowing this interview big time.