Cinderella Busted (The Cinderella Romances #1)

by Petie McCarty

  According to Delia, Rhett had gone on a rampage, called Lily a liar, and ordered her and the deliveryman with her off his property. He’d ranted long after the two had left, and Delia couldn’t calm him down. She said he’d started drinking, and that part did worry Garrett.

  Rhett never had more than drink or two, always said he didn’t want his judgment impaired. More like he intended to go back to work in the middle of the night was the reason. The man spent way too much time at work, which was one reason Garrett was so glad Rhett had met Lily. Garrett was usually oblivious about such things, but even he could tell Rhett had fallen hard, which probably explained the fiasco this afternoon.

  What a mess.

  Eventually, Rhett had thrown Delia out, too, and therein lay the rub, at least for Delia. She had ordered Garrett to call as soon as Rhett was okay, so she could come back and comfort him.

  “Like that would ever happen,” he muttered grimly.

  Garrett had his own ideas about the afternoon fiasco and had a strong hunch Delia had planned the whole thing. How had she known Lily Foster owned Bloom & Grow, and why didn’t Garrett know? Geez, he’d been at the nursery a half-dozen times and never noticed Lily. He would have remembered a woman that beautiful. Of course, the redhead Tammy usually escorted him on the grounds.

  And why hadn’t Lily just told Rhett she worked at the nursery? Rhett wouldn’t have cared. The man was no snob, far from it. He only maintained his aloof, aristocratic, and sinfully wealthy aura as a shield from the press. And women.

  He sighed deeply and rested his head against the steering wheel.

  Rhett has fixed me a dozen times over the years. Let me fix him, just this once. I think he might really be broken this time.

  Garrett got out and made his way to the front door. He breathed a sigh of relief to find the door unlocked. He pushed through and past the foyer. The kitchen down the front hall was dark, save for a single nightlight deep within. The upstairs halls ventured no lights either.

  He caught the unmistakable clink of ice cubes in a glass and followed the sound. No lamps were lit in the great room, but enough moonlight had penetrated the French doors and skylights to illuminate shapes, including the head that rested against the back of a chair and the long legs stretched out in front.

  The ice cubes rattled again, and an arm rose briefly to salute with the errant glass of cubes. “Are you going to sit down or just hover back there and stare?” Rhett growled from the bowels of the overstuffed chair.

  Rhett’s words came out slurred, and Garrett knew he had his work cut out for him. He moved past the occupied chair and strode to the enormous wet bar across the room, flicking on the small bar lamp on the counter.

  “Mind if I have a drink, too? Looks like you’re way ahead of me.”

  “Actually, I do mind. What do you want? And what are you doing in my house?”

  Garrett ignored him and fixed a scotch rocks. “Delia called me after you threw her out. She’s really worried about you, and frankly, so am I.”

  “She’ll get over it. So will you.”

  “Question is, will you?”

  The arm came up again and cubes rattled. “How’d you get in?”

  “The front door. You left it unlocked.”

  “Maybe I was asleep. Did you think of that?”

  “Right.”

  “Well now that you’re here, make yourself useful and get me another drink.” He held out his now empty glass.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? You’re going to feel like hell in the morning.”

  “You let me worry about that. Get me a damn drink or get lost.”

  Garrett retrieved the glass and went back to the bar. He considered adding water to the scotch, but that would only make the grizzly bear mad. Garrett was here to help, so he carried the drink back, handed the glass to Rhett, and took a seat.

  “Want to tell me what happened?” he asked.

  “No,” Rhett said angrily.

  “Delia says she bought you some plants for a gift.”

  Rhett snorted in disgust. “Which reminds me, landscaper. Call someone to come get the damn things. I don’t want them in my house.”

  “So, Lily works at the nursery.”

  Rhett reared up and scowled at him. “Damn you for not telling me!”

  For a split second, Garrett thought Rhett would take a poke at him. That would be a first. In all their years as friends, Rhett had never taken a swing at him though he’d given Rhett plenty of reason on occasion, especially when they were younger. This looked bad, real bad.

  “Look, I didn’t know either. Hearing that surprised the hell out of me, too.”

  Rhett glared at him for a moment and then sank back in the chair again.

  “Did Lily know this was your house?” Garrett asked.

  “You mean did the liar know?”

  “Okay, did the liar know? Had she ever been here?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t know it was my house. After we left Delia’s party, we snuck through my yard to get to the beach.” The arm came up quickly, and the cubes rattled hard.

  “Why didn’t you just take her through the house?”

  Rhett’s head turned, and his eyes narrowed. “One can’t be too careful, you know?”

  “Oh, I get it. You didn’t want her to know how rich you were, so you didn’t tell her you lived here. Have I got that right?”

  “I thought she was different,” Rhett mumbled, so low Garrett could hardly hear him, “but she’s just like all the others. She’s only after my money. At least, she made a game of it.”

  “So, you’ll find someone else. You always do.”

  “No!” he roared and came half out of his chair.

  “Take it easy.” Garrett let the silence draw out to calm Rhett down and sampled his own drink. Lord knew he needed the scotch tonight.

  “I just wanted someone to want me for me,” Rhett muttered. “Was that so much to ask?”

  “Not at all, but being rich is who you are. You can’t change that.” He cleared his throat. “Well, you could, but I hope you don’t.”

  This time the silence seemed to stretch for an eternity. Rhett slouched so deep in the overstuffed chair Garrett feared he’d passed out or fallen asleep, except for the fact the glass remained upright.

  “Remember Gloria Conover back at Princeton?” the slurred voice sounded from deep in the chair.

  “The girl you were madly in lust with during our freshman year? The only girl you ever dated for long in college? Of course, I remember.” Garrett took another hit of his scotch. “I was homesick for my grandfather's ranch, and you, my new dorm roommate, were never there to keep me company. You were always out with Gloria. I always wondered why you dumped her. She was hot if my memory serves me correctly.”

  “It does, and she was. Except she dumped me.”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “Damn near made me leave school. I thought maybe I loved her, young fool that I was.” The cubes rattled hard again.

  “So what happened?”

  “I let Gloria think I was at Princeton like everyone else, bought and all paid for by someone back home. And one Friday night, near the end of the semester, she and her friend Kersey Weldon wandered into the pizza parlor where I bussed tables and washed dishes. At first, she just looked shocked when she saw me, and then the two of them laughed and pointed at my apron. As they were going out the door, Gloria said, ‘At least you screwed like a rich boy. I couldn’t tell.’”

  Garrett winced. “What made you think of her?”

  “A year ago, I ran into her at a charity event in Palm Beach.”

  “I didn’t know she lived down here.”

  “Well, we got to talking that night, and she apologized for dum
ping me at Princeton, something about being young and foolish. Said she’d learned her lesson, married badly and for money. I had her checked out. She got enough money in her settlement, I figured she didn’t need mine. One thing led to another, and I convinced myself the old spark might still be alive.”

  Garrett hated hearing all this personal stuff and would hate it more in the morning when Rhett realized he had confessed all this. The man kept everything to himself. The only tidbits Garrett had ever heard had come at the few times in Rhett’s life when he’d gotten drunk.

  Rhett held out his glass. “Another drink, barkeep.”

  This time, Garrett gladly refilled the drink in the hope Rhett wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. Common sense took hold and stopped him before he handed the drink over. “Come on, Rhett, no more. You’ve had enough.”

  “I’m not driving, and I haven’t had nearly enough.”

  Still Garrett didn’t carry the glass back to him.

  “Do you want to hear the end of my tale or not.”

  He needed to hear this if he was going to figure out how to help Rhett. He grabbed the glass off the counter, added water to it this time, and brought it back.

  “All right, finish it. Your story, not your drink. You better make that one last. I’m not fixing you another.”

  Rhett already had the glass up and the cubes rattling. “It’s better with some water.”

  Garrett rolled his eyes.

  “A few weeks passed, and I felt like that college freshman again on my way to falling in love. Gloria and I attended another charity cocktail party and ran into her friend, Kersey Weldon.”

  “Those two are together here, too?”

  Rhett nodded. “Gloria went off to powder her nose or something, and Kersey came over to visit. She’d had a little too much to drink and told me how glad she was Gloria and I had hooked up again. ‘Gloria has the hots for you,’ she said.”

  Garrett waited what seemed an interminable length of time for Rhett to continue.

  “Then Kersey laughed and said, ‘Gloria is such a scream. She told me you always were a good lay, and now that you can afford her, she thought she’d let you have her.’” He took a long slug of the watered-down scotch. “Imagine. She’d let me have her.”

  Damnation.

  “You know what I always thought of those two little bitches,” Garrett said angrily. “You had a date planned with Lily tonight. Where were you going to take her?”

  Changing the subject was all he could think of to get Rhett’s mind off that witch Gloria Conover or whoever the hell she was now. He intended to strangle the woman if he ever ran into her.

  “The liar could have picked anywhere she wanted for dinner tonight,” Rhett slurred. “I’d have taken her to Atlanta or Miami for dinner if she wanted.” He took another pull on his scotch. “And she picked Jetty’s.”

  Garrett’s head snapped up. “That doesn’t sound like someone after your money, Rhett.” He paused a moment and waited for the fallout. Getting only silence, he added hopefully, “And you’ve been different since you met Lily, happier than I’ve ever seen you.”

  “She lied to me.” He raised agonized eyes to stare at Garrett. “It was all a scam to get me to fall for her, and she was only after my money. She lied just like Gloria.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding.”

  “Women are all after my money. You said yourself you didn’t know how that nursery of hers stayed afloat, charging such low prices.”

  “What I told you was the nursery was eccentric and looked for the right buyers for their material, people who would care for the landscaping like they did.”

  Rhett waved him off. “Do you know the liar can’t even afford her own place? She lives in a little house at the nursery.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I had her checked out.”

  “In the last few hours? By whom?”

  “I’m a wealthy man, my friend, and I have people at my disposal at all hours. She’s a fake and a liar. And I thought she was—” He took a good hard slug of scotch, drained the glass, then wiped his hand across his mouth and stared at the floor at his feet.

  “You thought she was what?”

  “Innocent,” Rhett said softly.

  “Well, then why are you—”

  “Pure!” he snarled at Garrett. “Don’t you get it?”

  Garrett put up both hands. “I get it. I get it.”

  Rhett stared out through the glassed terrace doors for several minutes. “Do you know when I asked her to go to New York, she had to stop and think about it.” He stabbed finger at Garrett. “Now that was good acting. I had to promise her her own room. Can you believe that? And she actually used the extra room.” He shook his head. “I must be slipping.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Me neither.”

  Garrett stifled a smile.

  “I could tell when I kissed her, she hadn’t . . . Or she wasn’t very good at . . . Or it had been forever . . .” The ice cubes rattled as he waved his hand. “She was just too timid.”

  He turned his head and stared at Garrett. “They can’t fake timid, can they?”

  Garrett shook his head. “No, not timid. Too easy to tell.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Rhett said, slurring more now.

  Garrett hoped the end was in sight.

  “You have one job tomorrow, and that’s to get all these damn plants the hell out of my house.” Rhett set his glass on the end table and settled back in the chair. Moments later, he snored softly.

  Garrett got up to lock the French doors, but the sight on the terrace made him pause in disbelief.

  He opened the center doors and stepped outside. Plants lay strewn all over the terrace, potting soil spewed across the tiles. The twisted and broken shapes of a half-dozen palms lay in the bottom of the pool, illuminated by the underwater lights, and vermiculite floated on the water’s surface.

  “Holy hell,” he muttered under his breath. This was worse than he ever dreamed. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to fix this.

  Stepping back inside, he locked the doors and took the glasses back to the bar. One thing was for certain—there was more to this supposed charade than met the eye. Garrett had only seen Rhett drunk two other times, once in college and again a year ago, and now he knew why.

  Rhett wasn’t asking too much. He deserved to have someone love him after the childhood he’d suffered with that no good uncle of his. But no woman could have convinced Rhett Buchanan of her innocence unless . . .

  He straightened and headed for the front door. He had two jobs tomorrow: Get rid of these plants and straighten out this mess between Lily and Rhett. He locked the front door and closed it behind him. Tonight left him certain of one thing. Rhett Buchanan was head over heels in love with Lily Foster, and come hell or high water, Garrett intended to get them back together.

  He finally had a chance to pay back his debts.

  The mess at Rhett’s mansion took half the next morning to clean up, but Garrett understood why Rhett had asked him to handle the situation. Rhett didn’t want anyone to know he’d lost his temper so badly there was collateral damage, and he damn sure didn’t want to be here when Bloom & Grow came to pick up their plants.

  Unlike other billionaires, Rhett didn’t keep a butler or permanent house staff underfoot. He said he’d taken care of himself his whole life, and he didn’t intend to stop now. His one concession was a housekeeper he brought in three days a week to clean and leave him a hot meal if he was in town. Ancient Edna Burkhart fit that bill perfectly though she shook her head when she let Garrett in that morning.

  “He’s not himself, Garrett,” she said simply. “I’m worried about him.”

  G
arrett agreed and knew she wouldn’t say a word to anyone.

  Edna had a soft spot for Rhett who’d stopped one day on the turnpike to help her. She’d had a flat tire and no cell phone, and no one to come help her. Out of work and getting by on unemployment, Edna supported three grandchildren left behind when her daughter ran off with a drug addict. She was returning from yet another unsuccessful employment interview when the tire blew and left her on the side of the turnpike.

  Rhett took her and her wounded tire to a repair shop, got the tire fixed, and brought her back to her car. During their adventure, Rhett had hired Edna and agreed to pay her more for three days of cleaning than she could get on any other job for a whole week. He’d said she needed time to spend with those grandkids of hers. That was six years ago.

  Edna would be with him until she retired, though Garrett had doubts she would ever retire, and he knew that would be just fine with Rhett.

  Garrett called his office to say he wouldn’t be in until after lunch. His secretary hadn’t asked any questions. Rhett had forced four assistant VPs on Garrett in recent years, so Garrett had the freedom to wander off on tangents during projects, whenever the mood struck, and leave the daily operations to his assistant VPs. Today turned into a tangent day.

  He’d called Tammy as soon as he arrived at Rhett’s mansion and asked her to send someone for the plants. She had volunteered and said she’d bring a driver and meet him at the house at ten. She hadn’t questioned his request. She must have talked to Lily.

  Had Tammy been in on this scam? Was it even the scam Rhett had thought? Or had Lily been caught up in a series of events not of her own making?

  Garrett liked this Lily Foster. He hoped she wasn’t too upset, but that was a pretty weak possibility. No woman liked being thrown out of a residence, or anywhere else for that matter, especially by the guy she happened to be dating. If Lily and Rhett could actually be considered dating, seeing as how they had only met a little over a week earlier. But if Rhett’s recent moods and attitudes were any indication, the two had certainly been a couple for that short while.