A Cinderella Seduction

by Karen Booth

  Emma was immensely thankful to be able to walk quietly into the store. Her life plan from now on involved zero red carpets, minimal publicity and avoiding attention whenever possible. Princess Emma was dead now. The media had killed her.

  Up on the executive floor, Emma stepped off the elevator and Lizzie bolted out of her seat, but Emma already knew what she was going to say.

  “I know. I know. They’re waiting for me in Sophie’s office. Did I get a call from anyone at Nora Bradford’s?”

  “No. Not this morning.”

  “Shoot.” Emma was tired of stressing about this. Eden’s had agreed to Nora’s conditions. Why was the paperwork delayed?

  “I’ll put them right through if they call.” Lizzie stepped out from behind her desk. “I’m so sorry about the tabloid story.”

  “Thank you. Me, too.”

  “If it helps at all, it doesn’t make me think less of you. In fact, it makes me like you more. You could have told everyone from the beginning. It would have been fine.”

  “It doesn’t make you look at Eden’s differently? My grandmother? My father?”

  Lizzie grimaced. “Yes. I suppose that left a bad taste behind.”

  Tell me about it. “I’d better go speak with my sisters.” Emma hustled into her office, set down her bag and checked her email. Nothing there from Nora Bradford’s team. As soon as she was done with Mindy and Sophie, she was going to have to make another call.

  She pushed back from her desk and strode into Sophie’s office. “I’m here. Whether you like it or not.”

  She was so over everything right now. All she could think about was getting to Bermuda with Daniel. She so looked forward to forty-eight hours of getting lost in him and shutting out everything else.

  “That’s a terrible attitude,” Mindy said. “But I get it.”

  “It was Sam. Just so you know,” Sophie said by way of interjection. “He fed the story to one of the reporters at the pop-up last night.”

  “Nice. Real nice,” Mindy said. “You’re just a ray of sunshine lately, aren’t you?”

  “She deserves to know the truth. Your boyfriend is a jerk. He’s the reason we’re in this predicament.”

  “He’s no longer my boyfriend, so you can stop referring to him that way. I kicked him out of my apartment this morning.” Mindy chewed on her thumbnail.

  “For good?” Sophie asked.

  “It’s over. Done. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Emma and Sophie looked at each other, silently agreeing that this was a good thing. Mindy didn’t seem too overly broken up over it. Emma took a seat. “I don’t think it’s all Sam’s fault. Daniel slipped and said something about France not being the whole story.”

  “So you both told your boyfriends the story that we promised to keep a secret between the three of us.” Sophie crossed her arms and sat back in her chair, shaking her head. “This makes our whole family look so bad. Both Dad and Gram would be horrified to know that this came out.”

  Emma dug her nails into the heels of her hands. Looking bad was one thing, living an entire life on the receiving end of a family secret was another. Neither Mindy nor Sophie seemed to grasp that. “I don’t know how they would feel about it. I never really knew either of them.” This was still very much the elephant in the room whenever their dad or grandmother came up in conversation. Emma had been robbed of those relationships.

  “Why are you spending so much time worrying about what Dad and Gram would think?” Mindy shot a look at Sophie. “They’re both dead. Why don’t you spend some time thinking about how Emma must feel? She’s the real victim in this.”

  Sophie sat frozen. So did Emma. How could anyone have ever known that Mindy would rush to her defense?

  “It still reflects badly on the family and on the store. It makes us all look horrible,” Sophie said.

  “Of course it does. But we can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle. We can’t undo what’s been done. We have to figure out what our next step is. We have to move on.” Mindy sucked in a deep breath, as if she was getting ready to unleash even more. Perhaps her breakup with Sam had put her that much more on edge. “Emma, you should know that neither Sophie nor I was close to our father. Whatever you’re thinking you lost out on with him, it didn’t exist. He wasn’t around for us, and when he was, we were nothing but a disappointment to him. Especially me.”

  “Mindy...” Sophie started.

  “No. Soph. It’s true. Dad thought girls should only be sweet and quiet, and I was neither of those things. I was serious. I was focused on school and career. He hated every guy I ever dated. He was always needling me to look for good husband material. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Clearly, I haven’t learned much.” Mindy shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. For the first time, Emma saw real pain on her face.

  “He definitely had dysfunctional attitudes about women,” Sophie said. “Gram always fought him on it, but I think it was his way of rebelling against a mother who was just larger than life.”

  “He showed our mom zero respect.” Mindy said, turning to Emma. “He showed your mother no respect. He simply wasn’t a nice person. So you didn’t miss out on anything where he’s concerned. I promise you that. I loved him, but only because he’s my dad. It has nothing to do with any true affection for the man.”

  “I... I had no idea,” Emma said, unsure if this made her feel better or simply made her sad. It certainly made her heart go out to both Sophie and Mindy.

  “If you think about it, Gram gave him his just deserts when she wrote you into the will, Emma,” Mindy continued. “She’d made a promise to keep his secret, but she also made sure that at least part of it came out when she died. But the three of us never promised to be the steward of those lies. And we made a mistake when we tried to do that. It’s even worse that we made up something else.”

  “I felt like it was the best thing for the store,” Sophie said. “We were already struggling, and the second Gram died, all signs were pointing to the store going right along with her.”

  “I know, and I backed you up at the time, but it was a mistake. We covered up Emma’s history, and she’s our sister. We can’t treat each other like this. We have to be a unified front or we’re going to fail. If we care at all about honoring Gram’s legacy, we need to own up to everything that came out and focus on the store. If we can’t be real with people, I have to wonder what we’re doing.”

  Emma wasn’t sure she’d taken a breath at all in the last several minutes. Not only because she’d just been handed a lot of information to unpack, but because she’d had no idea Mindy felt this way about any of it.

  “I thought you hated the store,” Sophie said to Mindy.

  “I don’t hate it. I love the store. I just don’t love the timing. If this had happened five years from now, I might have been more settled with my own business. But that’s not how things happened. And the reality of it is that if it had gone on for five more years, that would have meant all that time Emma would have been living without what was rightly hers.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Sophie said.

  “The thing I figured out this morning, as I was looking at the man I stupidly fell for, is that you two are the only people in the world I can really trust,” Mindy said. “That’s the way it should be. We’re sisters. There is no stronger bond than that. And we have to stick together. No more secrets. We keep everything out in the open.”

  “How does this strike you, Emma?” Sophie asked. “It’s your story that’s all over the papers today. You have to decide which version of your history you want out there. Even if it damages the Eden name, you’re still the one who has to live with it.”

  Several weeks ago, Emma might have been tempted to go on clinging to the lie. It made life easier. But it wasn’t right. She was who she was, and as bizarre a journey as her life had
been thus far, as much as it had caused her pain, she wouldn’t have traded it for anything. “Keeping secrets is too much work. I don’t see any point in hiding any of it anymore.”

  It was quiet in Sophie’s office for a good minute or more, all three of them nodding and thinking. “Okay, then,” Sophie said. “That’s settled. If anyone asks, we say it’s all true.”

  “Did you really live in a house infested with mice?” Mindy asked. “I’m so sorry if that’s the case.”

  “We did have a few mice for a few weeks one winter. It wasn’t a big deal. The neighbor brought her cat over and that was the end of that.” Emma disliked that look of pity on her sisters’ faces, but she was going to have to live with that. She’d likely get that treatment a lot in the coming weeks as people got used to the real version of her past.

  “So what’s the story with Daniel?” Sophie asked. “I mean, I know you guys are having fun, and he’s superhot, but how long can you continue seeing the guy who still wants to open a store that will become our biggest competitor?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything about Stone’s New York. I know he’s still looking at spaces, but nothing has been decided. Maybe nothing will come of it.”

  “I don’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings, and I’m not the person to dole out relationship advice, but in my experience, a man will always pick business first. Always. And with his family in the mix? It doesn’t matter how much he likes you. He will eventually hurt you,” Mindy said.

  “That’s the only reason we said anything to him last night,” Sophie said. “We don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Emma didn’t have much of a stubborn streak, but she was certainly a willful person. She wasn’t willing to give up on her and Daniel yet. She wanted to see if they could beat the odds. Find a way to make it work. “We’re going away tomorrow morning. To Bermuda. For the weekend.”

  “When did this happen?” Mindy leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, seeming more than a little interested.

  “Last night. After the pop-up. He said he wanted to get away from the spotlight and the businesses and spend some time together, just the two of us.”

  “Interesting.” Mindy sat back, crossed her legs and bobbed her foot.

  “What does that mean?” Emma asked.

  Mindy shrugged. “It means it’s interesting. Either he’s being sweet or he’s up to something.”

  “Like what?” Emma asked.

  “Could be lots of things,” Sophie said. “The history between our two families says that anything is possible.”

  Emma refused to believe she was going to end up being a cautionary tale. “I trust him. I’m not worried about it.” That much was true, even when there was a voice in her head telling her that if Stone’s New York happened, the odds were stacked against them. Could they truly ignore the rivalry between the stores? She didn’t know the answer to that. It was like she and Daniel were inching forward in the dark, trying to find answers, while there were so many obstacles lurking in the shadows. She just had to believe in him. That was the only thing that made any sense. He wouldn’t have asked her to get away with him if he didn’t truly care about her.

  “I need to get some work done.” Mindy got up from her chair.

  “Yeah, me, too.” Emma followed her to the door.

  “Hey, Emma,” Sophie said. “I noticed that we still don’t have the Nora Bradford agreement. We have to have it by the end of business today. I want to be able to walk into the office on Monday morning knowing that we have our most important designer signed for the next five years.”

  Emma swallowed hard, but held her head high like the entirely confident businesswoman she was still trying so hard to be. “Don’t worry. You’ll have it.” She ducked out of Sophie’s office and went in the opposite direction from Mindy, muttering to herself, “Even if I have to go over to Nora Bradford’s office and camp out in the lobby all day long.”

  Hours later, Emma finally got the returned call she’d been waiting for. Nora Bradford’s head of operations was on the phone.

  “I’m so glad you called,” Emma said, relief washing over her. “I don’t know if there’s a holdup in your legal department or what, but we still don’t have the signed paperwork on the new licensing agreement. The old one expires on Monday and I think we’d all sleep a lot easier if we had everything in hand today. If we can get it done before five, I can arrange the first payment.”

  “Emma, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a change of direction. We aren’t going to be signing the agreement.”

  “New direction? What in the world are you talking about? I thought this was a done deal.”

  “It was a done deal. But Nora got an offer from a different retailer a few days ago and it was just too good to pass up. They really rolled out the red carpet for us.”

  Emma was about to make a crack about how she had walked the red carpet for Nora Bradford, twice, but she felt like she was going to be sick. “Different retailer?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. We’re going to be working with Stone’s.”

  Eleven

  Emma couldn’t believe the name she’d just heard. “I’m sorry. Did you say Stone’s?”

  “Yes. They’re expanding into New York and the terms were too generous to pass up. Plus, it was probably time to make a change. Nora appreciates everything Eden’s has done for her and we all loved your grandmother, but her passing was the end of an era.”

  An era I never knew. “Is there anything we can do to change your mind?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I believe Stone’s is making the announcement this afternoon. But please tell your sister that Nora is still willing to design her wedding dress.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Like Sophie would want to wear a dress of betrayal on her wedding day. Emma hung up the phone, but she didn’t have even a second to think before Sophie was yelling for her.

  “Emma! Mindy! Get in here!”

  Emma straightened her skirt, her mind a jumble of horrifying thoughts—the worst of which was that there was a very good chance her boyfriend had deceived her. She rushed into the hall. Mindy appeared, and they arrived at Sophie’s door at the same time.

  “What’s going on?” Mindy asked.

  Sophie held her finger to her lips and pointed at the flat screen TV on the wall, tuned to the twenty-four-hour business news channel. Mindy and Emma stepped inside and the three sisters stood shoulder to shoulder as the anchor, a woman who looked to be straight off the runway, spoke. “If you’re just tuning in, we have major news in the retail world today. It appears that the rumors about Stone’s department stores of London moving into New York are true. They seem poised to take down the legendary Eden’s, which has been a fixture in Manhattan since the 1980s. They have also announced an exclusive licensing agreement with fashion designer Nora Bradford, known for her red carpet gowns and wedding dresses.”

  “Holy crap.” Mindy pointed at the screen, then turned to Sophie and Emma. “What the hell, you two? I thought Nora Bradford was a done deal.”

  “I just got off the phone with them,” Emma said. “I don’t know what Stone’s offered them, but it was enough to make them jump ship.”

  “When were you planning to tell us this?” Sophie’s voice was so thin with distress it sounded like it might shatter.

  “I told you. I just got off the phone with them.”

  “No. I mean when were you going to tell us that your boyfriend was screwing us over?”

  Daniel. Everything she’d refused to believe was coming true. “I had no idea. He didn’t say a thing. We tried very hard not to talk about business.”

  Sophie shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “Everything Gram worked so hard for. Down the tubes. It’s all my fault. I’m CEO.”

  Emma didn’t want to think about whose fault this really was. Had Daniel really betrayed h
er like this? She didn’t want to believe it could be true. She pulled Sophie into a hug, and Mindy quickly had her arms around both of them. The three bowed their heads.

  “We’ll get through this,” Mindy said. “We’ll sign another designer even better than Nora. Or we’ll start doing more private label clothing. Or both. Or we really ramp up our plans for the women’s shoe department. There’s always a pivot we can make. Always. And as for Stone’s, maybe this is good. Maybe this is the kick in the butt we need.”

  The anchor was talking again, and the sisters watched. “Reporters spoke to Margaret Stone outside of her London home just minutes ago.”

  “Ms. Stone, what does this mean for your son’s relationship with Emma Stewart, CFO of Eden’s department store?” The reporter jammed the microphone in Daniel’s mother’s face.

  Margaret Stone laughed as if Emma were a bug on someone’s shoe. “Daniel had his fun, but I knew it was over when he let me know last night that our lease was ready to sign. It was never going to last. She’s an Eden, for God’s sake.”

  “Have you talked to your son?”

  She smiled. “I have. He couldn’t be more pleased with today’s developments.”

  Emma truly felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. She staggered back until she had no choice but to plop down on the couch. She stared up at her sisters in utter disbelief. Everything they’d warned her of was coming true. She really was naive when it came to business, and apparently even more so when it came to love. “I don’t know what to say. I’m just floored. By all of this. Am I an idiot for not wanting to believe that Daniel could do this?”

  Mindy looked at her with the pity she’d come to hate so much. “No. Honey. You’re not an idiot. But this is what we worried would happen. When we said we didn’t want you to get hurt, we meant it.”

  Sophie sat on one side of Emma and Mindy sat on the other. “What are you going to do?” Sophie asked.