The Reluctant Cinderella Read online

  Of course, after the meeting, his father insisted on taking everyone to lunch. But Megan was one step ahead of Gregory Banning, Sr. She had reservations at a really good seafood place right on the Hudson a few miles from her office.

  It was after two when his father and the three other executives finally climbed into the stretch limousine and headed back to Manhattan. Greg sent them off without him, explaining that he’d take the train down later, as he had a few more points to go over with Megan.

  He didn’t mention that the “points” in question had nothing at all to do with Design Solutions or the big job Megan and her team had just been hired to accomplish. Why should he? They—especially his father—didn’t need to know.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Megan had called a couple of cabs to get her people back to the office. He took her aside as the others climbed in.

  “Stay. Please. I need to talk to you.”

  She looked flushed, suddenly. And bewildered. A whole other woman from the smart, savvy entrepreneur who’d just sold Banning’s, Inc. on a complete image makeover. “But I didn’t plan to—”

  He cut in—fast—before she could find a way to say no. “You really need to go back inside that terrific restaurant with me.”

  “Um. I do?”

  “You need another cup of coffee. Or maybe a glass of wine.”

  “Oh, no. No wine.” She looked really scared.

  And that made him smile. “Coffee it is, then.”

  “But—”

  “Stay right there. Don’t even move.”

  She actually did what he’d told her to do, stood there on the sidewalk as he paid the two cabbies and sent her employees on their way. Then he took her arm—hours and hours he’d been waiting for the chance to do that, to take her arm, to clasp her hand….

  He took her arm and he turned her and led her back inside, where the hostess gave them a little table tucked away in a corner. It was quiet in the restaurant by then. Nice, in that easy time after lunch ended and before the dinner rush began. The waitress brought them cups and cream and sugar and served them from a silver pot.

  When she left them alone, Megan slanted him a look from under her lashes. “All right,” she said, both breathless and grim. “What?”

  He didn’t know how to begin. Yet surprisingly, when he spoke, he found he sounded sure. And confident. “I think you know.”

  And she did know. She sighed and looked down into her full cup of coffee as if regretting that she would never taste it. Finally, after it seemed to him he had waited forever, she met his eyes again. “Oh, Greg, I don’t think we can. I’m sorry. But Carly’s my friend and I can’t stand to hurt her.”

  “Listen,” he began. When she started to speak, he put up a hand. “Just let me say this. Okay?”

  She swallowed. “All right.”

  “I told you that I was an only child.” He waited for her to nod. When, reluctantly, she did, he forged on. “What I didn’t say is that my parents are…” Damn. What was the word for them? “Cold, maybe. Distant. To everyone—including each other. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen them touch, except in passing. Never a kiss or a hug, no public displays of affection of any kind. Banning is an important name in New York. And my mother was born a Wright—one of the Philadelphia Wrights. Their wedding was the biggest social event of 1972. Over the years, I’ve come to think of what they have together as more of a merger than a marriage.”

  Megan nudged her untouched coffee to the side and rested her forearms on the table. “Your father did seem a little…cool.”

  That made Greg chuckle. “Cool? He almost smiled once during lunch. For my father, that’s big. Huge, even. Trust me. Today, he was as warm and friendly as he gets.”

  She glanced down, briefly, and then looked up again to search his face. “So it was tough for you, is that what you’re saying—as a kid, I mean?”

  “Tough?” He shrugged. “After hearing how it was for you—losing your family at seven, going into foster care—I know I’ve got no room to complain. I had everything.”

  She was shaking her head. Her smile was tender, full of true understanding. “Everything but someone to hug you—and love you.”

  He took a sip of coffee and replaced the cup in the china saucer with care. “I hated our house. So big, so quiet, so expensive and perfect and…empty. I was mostly raised by nurses and nannies. Once a day, in the evening before bed, my mother would stop by the nursery for a visit. She was always dressed for dinner when she came. I wasn’t allowed to touch her, except for a quick peck on her perfectly made-up cheek before she left. I hated that. I hated my life.

  “But I was…well-behaved. I was the heir to Banning’s, Inc. and I did what was expected of me. I got good grades at prep school, went off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for college, where my dad had gone and his dad before him. They have one of the top business programs in the country. I was a senior, planning to stay another two years and go on through the MBA program, when I met Carly.”

  Megan winced. “Carly,” she said too softly. And then she looked away. “Greg. Honestly, there’s no need to go into all this.”

  He spoke quietly, leaning close so no one else would hear. “You think I want to talk about Carly, to…dredge all this up again? Believe me, I don’t. But I think this is the stuff that has to be said.”

  Megan did meet his eyes then. And she sighed. “All right. Go on—you met Carly in college….”

  “She was on full scholarship, a freshman in library science. It was at a fraternity party, the first time I saw her. She’d come with a roommate. She was so beautiful and so…I don’t know. Unspoiled, I guess. We started dating. She was different than any girl I’d known. Sweeter, more…open. Or so I thought.”

  Megan frowned—and jumped to the defense of her friend. “Carly is sweet. She’s one of the nicest people I know.”

  “I agree,” he said, and meant it. After all, it was only the truth. “She’s very sweet—a nice woman. But open? Uh-uh. Carly has secrets. There are…walls she puts up that no one gets through. Or at least, that I never could get through. And take my word for it, I tried. I really believed we would be happy, you know? That we would have a houseful of wonderful, messy, loud, rambunctious kids….”

  He let his voice trail off. The point was to help Megan see what it had been like with Carly, make her understand without making excuses. Mindful of that objective, he tried again. “Once I’d finished school, we moved to Rosewood.” He smiled to himself, remembering. “I love Rosewood. To me, it’s the ideal place to live. I was sure I wanted to settle down there the first time I visited, when Carly and I were house-hunting and went to have a look around.”

  Megan almost smiled. But she was keeping it serious. He watched her quell that smile before it burst wide open. She said, “You love Rosewood?”

  “Yeah. You think that’s strange?”

  “Well, I mean, I agree it’s a great town. Mostly upscale. Good-quality housing. But it’s hardly one-of-a-kind. There are a lot of towns upstate that are very much like it.”

  “I don’t know. Rosewood just says ‘home’ to me. It’s the best kind of place to live, clean and attractive. The streets are safe. The schools are top-notch. It’s a town any man would choose as the place to raise his family.”

  “And that was what you wanted. A family. A big one…”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Carly didn’t want kids?”

  “She said she did. But she kept putting it off—until it was too late. Whenever I mentioned getting started on our family, she would say she wasn’t ready. First, she said the house we bought wasn’t big enough for a family. We bought the house next door, tore our house down and built Carly’s dream house on both lots. Once the house was built, I brought up the idea of kids again. She said she wanted the house to be perfect first….” There. He’d said it. The p word. He repeated it. “Perfect. That was always the main push with her. Carly wanted—needed—for things
to be perfect.”

  “…And you’d already had more than enough perfection to last you a lifetime.”

  He sat back in his chair. “See? You get it. You get it, exactly. Carly wanted it all to be perfect—and I wanted anything but. It was sad, really. The timing was never right for Carly and me. At the end, when it was too late for me, then she started making those ‘let’s have a baby’ noises. And by then, I could only say no, that our marriage was in trouble and we needed to deal with that first—at which point she’d clam right up on me, paste on a bright smile and change the subject. I felt…sympathy for her. Even then. I honestly did. She wanted so badly to please, you know?”

  Megan was nodding, her eyes so soft. “Yeah. I know.”

  “She was always dieting like crazy, to get into her size two designer clothes. She knocked herself out trying to get my mother to like and respect her. I told her that would never happen, that Vanessa Wright Banning didn’t like anybody and only respects people she considers above her on the social scale. But Carly kept trying. She just wouldn’t quit. She took cooking lessons and became a gourmet chef. I’d come home every night to a four-course meal straight out of Bon Apétit magazine—a meal Carly herself would hardly touch. And then there was her family….”

  Megan looked thoughtful. “You know, she’s never mentioned her family to me.”

  “To me, either.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t think I’m following.”

  “I’m saying that to this day, I know pretty much zip about the Aldersons. Carly’s family was always off-limits between us. When I’d ask about them, she’d either change the subject or find some other way to evade the issue. I wanted to get to know them a little, to see the town where she grew up. There was always some reason why we couldn’t go there. I met her mother, Antoinette, once. Can you believe that? Once. At our engagement party. Some family emergency came up and Antoinette couldn’t make it to the wedding. I never had a damn clue what the emergency was, even. Carly just said there was one. No details, no explanations.”

  Megan was quiet for a moment. What was she thinking? He couldn’t tell. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry, Greg.”

  He didn’t feel the least encouraged by her tone. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I wish it had worked out for you and Carly. I truly do.” Megan’s voice was low. And much too careful.

  And suddenly, he felt anger rising. “You know what? Being sorry isn’t going to make everything okay again. I hate that it turned out this way, because I always believed that when I said ‘I do,’ it would mean forever. But Carly and I just weren’t right for each other. We were after completely different things. Our marriage is over. There won’t be any trying again.”

  “I understand.”

  His heart sank. The regret in her eyes told him clearly what was coming. He went ahead and prompted her. “So…?”

  “Greg. I get it. I honestly do. You’re not going back to her. You’re divorced and you’re free to date anyone you want to date.”

  He laid it right out there. “I want to date you.”

  “Well, that won’t happen. Carly thinks of me as a friend. And that means I can’t go out with you.”

  He swore quietly. “You know that’s just crap, don’t you? You think you’re protecting Carly? You’re not. And you’re not helping her, either.”

  Megan said nothing. And Greg got the message: it didn’t matter what he said. She wasn’t going out with him. Period.

  Finally, he muttered, “I guess we should go.” He reached for his cell phone to call them a cab.

  Outside, as they waited for the taxi, Megan was careful not to stand too close to him.

  In the restaurant, it had been so hard for her not to lean across the table, not to get as close to him as she possibly could. She really did love to…just be with him. To watch him as he talked—his crooked, wry smile, those warm brown eyes, the way he would tip his head to the side when he was thinking. More than once, as he told her about his lonely childhood and his failed marriage, she’d had to remind herself not to reach across the table and lay her hand over his.

  Greg turned to her as the cab slid to the curb in front of them. His mouth, usually so quick to smile, was now a bleak line. “One more thing…”

  She didn’t know if she could take any more—not and keep remembering to tell him no. “Oh, Greg…”

  “There’s something I want you to see, okay? In Rosewood. Let me take you there. Please.”

  She reminded herself that she needed to repeat all the things she’d already said—that she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. It was impossible; it wasn’t going to work.

  But his brown eyes were shining and the summer sun struck gold lights in his thick brown hair. And, well, he’d asked her so gently. So very sincerely.

  If she was never going to go out with him, well, what could it hurt to do this one last thing he’d asked of her?

  Not to mention she was curious. What could he have to show her in Rosewood? She dared a smile. “All right. I’d love to see it…whatever it is.”

  His face seemed to light up from within. “Well, okay, then. Let’s get after it.”

  During the ride to Rosewood, they hardly spoke. Megan, who didn’t feel all that chatty herself, looked out her side window at the suburban sprawl and thought about the things Greg had said in the restaurant.

  They pretty much amounted to what Angela had told her last week. Greg and Carly were divorced. The marriage was over for Greg; he was never returning to the McMansion on Danbury Way. Megan’s saying no to him wouldn’t help Carly to get him back—or to get on with her life, for that matter.

  In fact, if Carly finally had to accept that there was another woman in Greg’s life, it might actually end up making it easier for her to move on. From that angle, Megan would be doing her a favor by going out with Greg.

  Yeah, right. Megan seriously doubted that Carly would see it that way.

  When they reached Rosewood, Megan asked the cabbie to drop them at the train station so she could pick up her car. Greg said they were going to Sycamore Street, which was only five blocks from Danbury Way. She sent him a suspicious glance, but he wouldn’t say more, so she started up the car and off they went.

  When she turned onto Sycamore, he pointed at a fine-looking two-story house, redbrick with white shutters, on the west side of the street—a Federal-style colonial, like most of the houses in the neighborhood.

  “Pull into the driveway,” he said.

  The driveway curved around to a side-entry garage. The door began rolling up as they approached it.

  Megan let out a surprised laugh. He showed her the opener he had in his hand. She teased, “Do the owners know you’ve stolen their garage-door opener?”

  “Very funny. Drive on in.”

  She tapped the gas and the car nosed into the empty space. Greg pressed the button on the remote; the wide door rolled down behind them. She turned off the engine. “Who lives here?”

  “No one, at the moment.”

  “This house is yours?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s beautiful—from the outside, at least.”

  “I think so.”

  “Complete with white picket fence and a matched pair of sycamore trees on the front lawn.”

  He looked so pleased with himself. “Don’t forget the white shutters.”

  “I noticed those. And that cute brick walk that leads up to the front steps…”

  “It all just says ‘home’ to me.”

  “Well, yeah—in a totally upstate New York suburban kind of way.”

  “See, that’s exactly what I was going for.”

  “When you bought it, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And when was that?”

  “A week after Carly threw me out.”

  Megan realized she was leaning across the console toward him—as he leaned toward her. An inch or two more and they’d be kissing, for heaven’s sake.

&n
bsp; She bolted up straight and asked just a little too forcefully, “So. Are we going in?”

  He watched her for a moment, his face unreadable, as her heart beat too fast and her breath tangled in her throat. And then, with an easy shrug, he slid the remote in a pocket—and came out with a key. “You bet we are.”

  She waited as he unlocked the door that led inside, and then followed him into a combination laundry room and pantry. A window over the laundry sink looked out on a big backyard.

  Greg took a moment to deal with the alarm, then began randomly opening cabinets. “Nice hardware, don’t you think? And lots of storage space.”

  She played along with him, keeping it teasing and light. “Absolutely. I can’t think of a better laundry room, anywhere.”

  “I knew you’d say that.” He was probably a little bit closer than he should have been. She got a hint of his aftershave—and found it way too tempting.

  She moved back a step and gestured at the twin blank spaces beneath a row of cabinets. “Wouldn’t hurt to get a washer and dryer, though. Hard to do the laundry without them.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “And a personal touch or two, that would be nice. Maybe a few houseplants, a little greenery in the window…”

  “Great idea.” He closed the distance she had just opened. “I’d already thought of the washer and dryer. But the houseplants hadn’t even occurred to me.”

  “And laundry supplies. Those are a must.”

  “Laundry supplies,” he repeated in a musing tone.

  “Detergent, bleach…” She realized she was looking at his mouth. He had a really fine mouth—a slightly fuller lower lip and a kind of pensive curve at the corners…

  “I’ll start a list,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yes. Good. A list…” And once again they were practically touching. Why, if she stretched up tall and moved her head forward a couple of inches, she could press her lips to his.

  But of course, she wasn’t going to do that. She didn’t even know why such a thought had dared to creep into her mind. Twice. First out in the car and now here, in the laundry room.