The Cinderella Rules

by Donna Kauffman

  Dear Prince Charming

  Coming in Summer 2004

  Trust. A key element in successful relationships

  is honesty. Namely, being able to detect when your

  significant other isn’t practicing it.

  —Eric Jermaine, aka Dear Prince Charming

  chapter 1

  No. You can’t be serious.” Valerie Wagner put down her salad fork and dabbed a linen napkin at the corners of her mouth, careful not to smudge L’Oreal’s #101 Beige Toscane lipstick. At nine dollars a tube, she figured it should at least last through lunch. She was worth it, but only up to a point.

  “I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “I must have misunderstood you. Because I could have sworn you just told me that you’re—”

  “Gay.”

  No. This was not happening to her. She hadn’t pissed anybody off, stepped on any toes, or done anything wrong. This time, anyway. Her karma was finally on an upswing. Mercury wasn’t in retrograde. Life was actually beginning to make sense. At thirty, she deserved to have her life finally make some sense. Didn’t she? Come on!

  But, no. Eric Jermaine, the wildly popular Dear Prince Charming advice columnist and bestselling author, known to women all over the planet as proof positive that understanding, nurturing men did indeed exist; the same gorgeous, suave man she’d wheeled and dealed into signing a seven-figure contract that guaranteed they’d both be making rent for the near and distant future, the man on whom her hard-won career now rested . . . was the very same man presently sitting across from her, insisting he was more than just a guy deeply in touch with his feminine side.

  His beautiful features were the picture of abject apology as he reached across the table to take her hand. Strong, comforting, sincere. “Yes, I did,” he said, his blue eyes so heterosexually piercing, his deep voice so reassuringly masculine and calm. “I thought I could go through with this, Val. I thought this was the only way to get my life back. Hell, to get a life at all. But now that it’s here, I can’t do it. I can’t screw you over like that.”

  “Except . . . you are.” The ruination of her finest moment, her one triumph, hit like the proverbial ton of bricks. Valerie slumped back in her chair. “Prince Charming . . . is gay,” she intoned. “The man who proved a guy exists who is actually interested in women as human beings first, and sex objects second . . . is gay.” She hung her head. “Like we shouldn’t have seen that coming.”

  “Valerie—”

  She held up a hand, staving off the inevitable for at least one more brief moment. Trying to digest both a tofu salad and the end of the world as she knew it was going to take her a little more time. “Gay,” she said again. As if repeating it would somehow negate the absolute horror of the situation. Not that she didn’t adore gay men. They were the ones she turned to for an honest answer to two of life’s most burning questions: “Does this tight skirt make my ass look J. Lo curvy or like the rear end of a truck squeezed into spandex tubing?” And “What can I cook for my date that looks fabulous, tastes like heaven, guarantees me at least thirty minutes of foreplay . . . and doesn’t actually require, you know, cooking?”

  Her gay acquaintances, however, weren’t the ones who had signed a seven-figure contract, guaranteeing a successful magazine launch and sealing her career. They weren’t the ones who’d agreed to take their infamously anonymous selves public for the very first time as cover boy and brand-new spokesperson for Glass Slipper, Inc. Eleven years spent dreaming of a job in the glamour industry, and another eight bouncing around fashion magazine publishing as everything from mail-room clerk to accessory stylist, she’d finally accomplished something worthy. Something to build a long-term career on. Fashion. If only she’d realized that was really a four-letter word early on, she could have saved herself decades of grief.

  Eric sighed. “I know this comes as a shock to you.”

  “Shock? To me?” She let out a caustic laugh that Roseanne would have been proud of, one that, despite their discreet seating, had turned several heads. This wasn’t L.A., where public scenes were looked upon as bonus entertainment. Nor was it Chicago, Boston, Dallas, or Miami. She knew. She’d worked at various magazines in all of them. National publications, trade publications. Fashion, gossip, and women’s interest publications. She’d been in editorial departments, gophered for fashion executives, slaved for buyers. She’d tried marketing and even sales. None of them had been a good fit. Publicist was a new field. And, frankly, her last shot.

  “I’d say this is more than a shock,” she finally said. “This is a freaking disaster. With a capital freaking.”

  Just when she thought she’d finally found her calling, too. She remembered the day she’d gotten the call from Mercedes Browning, co-owner of Glass Slipper, Inc., the D.C.-based company renowned for performing what they called “life makeovers.” She knew from the first day on the job that she’d finally found her niche in the fashion world she’d dreamed of being a part of since opening her first Vogue at age nine and thinking, “Hmm, spiky hair and raccoon eye makeup, there’s an interesting trend.”

  Her fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Spagney, hadn’t agreed. Valerie had been sent home with strict instructions to never scare the other students like that again. Privately, Valerie had always thought Ms. Spagney herself could use spiky bangs. It would have done much to hide the deep grooves that came from too many years of frowning down at young, independent thinkers like herself.

  But she’d been objective enough to see that maybe makeup artist and hairstylist weren’t her strengths. So she’d stared down at her flat chest and thought . . . Hmm. Maybe she was runway bound. Valerie had been the only girl in her sixth-grade class secretly thrilled to not need a training bra. After all, she’d never walk the runways in Milan if she had boobies. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten about the height clause. By seventeen, even in wobbly four-inch heels and hair gelled to within an inch of its life, she barely flirted with the five-eight mark. Much less the five-ten she knew from her slavish devotion to W was the barest of industry standards.

  Cruelly, the now-welcome boobies never had appeared.

  Undeterred, she’d resolutely turned to design. If she wasn’t made to model fashion, by damn she’d create it. Which would have been great, except that stick figures sporting triangle-shaped outfits weren’t exactly going to win her any scholarships. And yet she’d hung in there, thinking she’d go for a degree in fashion merchandising and work for an upscale chain as a buyer. She envisioned trips to Paris, London, Milan. So what if the mere act of balancing her checkbook was a struggle akin to formulating algebraic equations? It wasn’t like she was going to be spending her own money.

  Then, in her senior year of high school, the brokerage firm her father worked for transferred him to Chicago. She’d gotten a summer job with Madame magazine—for full-figured girls, not call-girl employers—though as switchboard operator she’d heard every hooker joke and pimp pun during the endless prank calls she’d fielded. She hadn’t minded.

  She’d found her people.

  Obviously she’d just misinterpreted the gospel according to Elle. It wasn’t what was on those glossy pages that mattered. It was the glossy pages themselves. Fashion magazines, the force that drove the industry, decided what was hip and what was hopelessly last year. . . . That was her true calling, her primary function, her niche.

  Now, ten years, no degree, and dozens of primary—and secondary—functions later, she was down to her last niche.

  At the moment it was looking more like a gaping maw.

  “Valerie? I wish you’d let me explain where I’m coming from. I’m sure we can come to some acceptable agreement.”

  Agreement. She jerked out of her despondent reverie. They already had an agreement. In fact, they had a signed contract.

  She smiled. “You know, there is a little matter of possible contract fraud here, Eric. Unless you’re prepared to buy your way back out of this deal.” She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table, enjoying the w
ay Eric blanched. Hey, it wasn’t fair that she should be the only one to suffer. “Your advance was, what, mid six figures? And that was what? Five, almost six weeks ago? I hope you haven’t been out shopping.”

  Looking deeply concerned now, Eric folded his arms on the table. “I’m sure we can make this work if you’ll only—”

  “Are you saying you’re still willing to be Glass Slipper’s spokesperson? Willing to come out of hiding . . . without, you know, coming all the way out? You’ve kept it a secret this long, after all. And trust me, no woman alive will look at you and not be more than willing to believe the fantasy.”

  He resolutely shook his head. “I can’t live a lie any longer.”

  “Do you think your legions of readers will just accept that the man of their collective dreams, the man who made them hope that one day their prince would come riding up . . . the man they put up as the example of all they wish their man to be, to their husbands and boyfriends . . . is playing for the other team? You’d become a joke overnight. Your credibility shot. It’d be one thing if you’d built your reputation on your real self, but you didn’t. Your whole appeal is predicated on the fact that you know what women really want.”

  “But I do know what women want.”

  She gave him an arch look. “You just don’t have any interest in actually delivering it to any of them.”

  “That doesn’t mean my insights aren’t dead-on. In fact, maybe they are precisely because of my sexual orientation.”

  “Then why didn’t you just come out as our gay guidance counselor from the very beginning?”

  Eric’s broad shoulders slumped a little. “You have to understand how it started. I’ve always known I was gay. But I always had to hide it—I was captain of the football team in high school and college, for Chrissake! I had a lot of girlfriends, for show . . . but I finally had to move across the country, to San Francisco, to meet anyone.”

  “Looking for your people,” Val murmured, thinking of her own odyssey.

  “Something like that,” he said dryly. “And finally I started meeting men. And I hadn’t the first clue how to react. You see, I’d spent so long with women as my closest companions, being their confidant, well, I knew all about what women wanted . . . and not the first thing about what a man would.”

  Val just looked at him. He was really sincere. In fact, he seemed downright perplexed. It should have been funny, or at the very least ironic. That the man who’d successfully guided thousands of women to satisfying relationships with men couldn’t guide himself into one. Instead it made her heart ache, just a little, for him. Dammit. “Don’t you think, bottom-lining it, it’s pretty much the same?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Before I could do anything about it, my mom’s health went into serious decline and I came back home to take care of her. My dad died when I was in grade school. I was all she had. My mom’s health had always been shaky, so I’d taken care of her pretty much all my life.”

  She liked him. Dammit. Even the whole momma’s boy thing seemed somehow sexy on him. Really, really unfair. “Couldn’t she have moved west with you?”

  “Her friends were here. Her whole life had been spent here. It seemed cruel to take her away from all that. I knew she didn’t have long. I got a job locally, nothing that really intrigued me, but it was a steady paycheck and allowed me time to care for her. I always figured I’d head back west, you know . . . after.

  “Anyway, it was during that time that I got an email from a friend of mine from college, a woman friend. She was always talking about this group of women online that she chatted with regularly, they sort of all moaned about the dearth of good men, about meeting guys online, comparing notes, that kind of thing. This was five or six years ago, when online dating was still more scary than acceptable. But she got me to drop in, say hi. I know she was thinking she was going to hook me up with someone. She knew about my situation with my mom—”

  “But not about your deep dark secret, I take it.”

  He shook his head. “That didn’t matter to me. I was up for the friendship. And the great thing was, I didn’t have to leave home to find stimulating conversation, laughter, fun. Even if it was all anonymous. In fact, it was the anonymity that I most loved. It was freeing, not demanding. It was exactly what I needed.”

  “And?”

  “And that was where Dear Prince Charming evolved. Whitney knew me, but none of the other women did. She’d introduced me as the prince among men she’d let get away. As a joke, I initially signed on with the screen name Prince Charming, just to tweak her, but, I don’t know, it caught on. I was just P.C. No one knew who I really was.” He sighed a little, smiling now. “We talked a lot about male-female relationships and I ended up, as the default male, giving them advice. Who knows why, but my advice sort of caught on.” He grinned. “Deflowering—so to speak—the accepted standards of various mating rituals. I think they liked my sense of humor, and I guess some of the things I said made sense to them. Someone joked about me doing an advice column for women. The Real Prince Charming. It was a joke, but after a while, I thought . . . why not?”

  “So you started the online advice column as a joke?”

  “No. No, I took it very seriously. But I don’t think I ever saw it going anywhere. It was just, I don’t know, fun. My life wasn’t very fun at that time. I enjoyed the camaraderie. I had no idea it would take off like it did. I did some local radio call-in shows and I guess I sort of became a local celebrity. When the Washington Post offered a print column, I was shocked. Thrilled. Stunned. Fifteen months later, it was in syndication and I had a two-book deal with a major publishing house.”

  “And yet you remained anonymous that whole time. You’re drop-dead good-looking and every woman in America and abroad is drooling over this secret prince—”

  He gazed directly at her. “My mom passed away right around the time the Post picked up my column. I sold the house, bought a place in Adams Morgan, figured I’d keep the column anonymous, keep my name out of the public eye, in hopes I could finally get a private life.”

  Valerie tensed. “And did you? Are you telling me you have a boyfriend waiting in the wings I should know about?”

  The self-deprecating laugh didn’t erase the slightly haunted look in his eyes. “I wish. I became a victim of my own success. My anonymity had actually pushed my career further, faster. Speculation on who I was fueled talk, talk fueled book sales. It also fueled the tabloids. I was being hunted, or ‘Prince Charming’ was. I had recurring nightmares of the Globe sporting horribly lit photos of me taken at some gay leather bar on their front page.” He shuddered. “I thought it would settle down at some point, that I could start going out socially. But then that meant either lying to the person I was seeing . . . or risking telling the truth, which would’ve destroyed my career.”

  Valerie shoved her salad plate aside. “So, that brings us to now. Why did you take our offer to go public with your name and face?”

  He hung his head now, then finally swore and lifted his gaze to hers. So damn earnest, those incredible blue eyes. “I decided late last year I couldn’t do it any longer. It was eating me up. I had money, a fabulous lifestyle. I could do anything I wanted. And yet . . .”

  “You couldn’t fall in love,” she said quietly.

  “Exactly. The trade wasn’t worth it any longer. I was prepared to give it all up and just go quietly away.”

  “Instead you sign a deal for seven figures and agree to launch a national magazine by being its cover model. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to tie the logic together for me.”

  His face colored, but to his credit, he didn’t look away. “I’ve been making pretty decent money for a while. I won’t lie. I’ve enjoyed it. Every penny. And then some.”

  Realization dawned. “You’re in debt.”

  He held his thumb and forefinger close together, smiled sheepishly. “A little.”

  She mimicked his hand gesture. “A little?”

  He moved his
fingers farther apart. “Okay, a lot. I would’ve signed another book deal, but you came along with your offer instead. Book publishing is a long-drawn-out endeavor. This deal with you meant I could be done with all of this that much sooner. And, well, get paid sooner, frankly.”

  “You’re contractually obligated to be our spokesperson for six months, with an option for a year extension. That’s still a chunk of time.”

  “I figured those duties were going to dramatically decrease once I came out.”

  “And you’d be fodder for everyone from Jay Leno to Howard Stern for months.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see any other way. Not really. And . . . I guess, I don’t know, I had some vague idea that by being up-front, giving my side of the story first, I might be like the famous actor who admits to drug use, or the athlete who admits to some wrongdoing and publicly repents his misdeeds.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to smile, much less laugh.

  “And here I thought it was my amazing people skills that won you over. You were my biggest coup, you know. It was like hitting the lottery first time out of the gate. My biggest fear was what I was going to do for an encore.” The urge to smile faded. “Suddenly encores are the least of my problems.” Val took a swig of white wine, wishing she’d gone for the Cosmopolitan after all. “Did you honestly think we’d keep to the monetary terms of the contract when you screwed us?”

  His smile was fleeting. “I have very good lawyers. That contract is binding. As long as I hold up my end of the deal, which I was fully prepared to do. Technically, I wasn’t in breach. My sexual orientation was never questioned. And any damage the magazine or Glass Slipper, Incorporated, might have incurred when it became public knowledge would not be my responsibility.”

  Valerie sank back in her seat. “You bitch.”

  He grinned then, wide and honest. “You know, it’s the oddest thing, but I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  Valerie couldn’t help it. She laughed. Gallows humor probably. “So.” She lifted her hands, let them drop in her lap. “You had us cold. Why the sudden turnaround?”