Read Operation Cinderella Online

Authors: Hope Tarr

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Series, #operation cinderella, #cinderella, #hope tarr, #suddenly cinderella, #New York, #washington DC, #Revenge, #nanny, #opposites attract, #undercover, #indulgence, #Entangled Publishing

Operation Cinderella (5 page)

BOOK: Operation Cinderella
2.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The walk sign flashed on, and they crossed. Samantha flew away from the flagpole and bolted over to her father. “Daddy, there’s a sale on at Express. I really need—”

“Absolutely nothing.” She started to object, but he cut her off with a shake of his head. “Your room’s packed so tight, stuff’s spilling out into the hallway. You clean up that mess and then
maybe
we’ll talk about shopping.”

Samantha sputtered a “so not fair” and stalked off. Watching her head for the ramp leading to the parking deck, Mannon turned to Macie. This time his smile didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “Speaking of nostalgia, would you believe, Miss Gray, that my daughter was once the sweetest child on God’s green earth?”

Macie resisted the urge to reach up and lay a comforting hand on that broad and obviously burdened shoulder. “Weren’t we all, Dr. Mannon?”

.

They caught up with Samantha at Mannon’s white Ford Explorer in an upper tier of the station’s garage. Once they cleared the deck and turned onto Massachusetts Avenue, they made it to the Watergate in less than twenty minutes despite the heavy traffic. Macie had to admit she was impressed, as much by Mannon’s choice of unpretentious vehicle as by his urban driving skills. So far nothing about him was as she’d expected. In light of her mission, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

He swung into his reserved space in the condo’s underground garage, got out to open Macie’s passenger side door, and then led the way to the elevator for his eastside tower apartment.

“Home, sweet home,” he said, opening the condo’s door.

Macie stepped inside the cool, marbled foyer. “This is beautiful,” she said, trying not to gawk. “And what a great location.”

She glimpsed a dining room of gleaming, wide-planked wooden floors and high ceilings offset with crown molding. A sunken great room led off from the eating area. Carpeted in wall-to-wall plush beige, it was furnished with an overstuffed leather sectional sofa, matching chairs, and a glass-topped coffee table. True to Mannon’s word, a huge wall-mounted flat screen TV dominated the living area. Drawn drapes revealed sliding glass doors and, beyond them, a bird’s eye view of the Kennedy Center. Spewing conservative doctrine was some cash cow. The place must have cost a mint.

He tossed the car keys on the hallway table. “I’m still getting used to the feeling of being hemmed in.”

Macie swallowed a snort. Hemmed in! Her six hundred square foot East Village studio walkup could fit comfortably inside his foyer. Rather than say so, she turned to study an abstract landscape, the oil-on-canvas covering most of the far wall. Other than a few framed photos set about, the main rooms were devoid of dust-collecting decorative items, which should make them easier to keep clean.

Mannon called out to Samantha, who’d drifted into the living room, the TV remote already in hand. “I need to talk to Miss Gray—in private.”

Macie looked up and saw Samantha shrug. “Knock yourselves out.” She dropped the remote and stomped toward a hallway. Seconds later a door slammed.

Mannon kneaded the bridge of his nose. His eyes, Macie observed, looked tired as well as a shade lighter than earlier. Once again she was hit by the powerful pull to somehow make things better for him. But making Ross Mannon feel better, no matter how personable and charming and, okay,
hot
he was in person, didn’t come close to aligning with her Operation Cinderella mission.

He gestured her to the sofa. “Have a seat, Miss Gray. Can I get you something—coffee, tea, a Coke?”

A tequila shot, I’m thinking.
The gravity of his tone stripped away her confidence and sent her stomach sinking. Had she overreacted to the ketchup incident or hadn’t she reacted enough? Afterward, had she talked too much or too little? She looked into his eyes and the shadows she saw brought back a montage of her life’s low points since high school, from when she’d repeatedly “failed to live up to her potential” to all the times since when she’d just plain failed.

Standing in the shadow of the oversized painting, she shook her head. “No thank you.”

“Mind if I make some coffee for myself?”

Actually she did mind, she minded a lot. If he was going to give her the thumbs-down, she’d just as soon have it over with so she could get the hell out of there and back to Manhattan where she belonged. But the choice wasn’t hers.

“Go ahead…please.” Dropping her bag, she followed him out to the galley-style kitchen and took a seat on one of the high-backed breakfast bar stools.

He puttered about, opening and closing cabinet drawers, swearing beneath his breath when he couldn’t find the coffee filters. Looking up from the silverware drawer he’d rifled through, he said, “You sure I can’t get you something?”

Antsy with impatience, Macie shook her head. “Dr. Mannon, if you have something to say to me then please just come out and say it.”

“You’re right.” He put down the coffee scoop and faced her. “Above all, I want to apologize for my daughter’s behavior. There’s no excuse for that kind of rudeness.”

Unused to being on the receiving end of a man’s apology, she wasn’t sure how to react. “Sam is obviously going through a difficult time.” Christ, that was just the kind of lame platitude she’d come to hate.

He let out a heavy breath. “I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.” He carried the coffee pot to the sink. Running the tap, he said, “I wouldn’t want this to become common knowledge, but Sam’s living with me because she ran away from her mother’s in Manhattan.”

The revelation tripped Macie’s mind back to the times when
she’d
run away. Two months shy of seventeen, she’d gotten halfway to Chicago when the car ran out of gas and she’d had to stop and refill it using her dad’s credit card. By then her parents had put a tracer on the card, which was how the police had caught up with her and hauled her back home. The next time, she’d made sure to take along what to a sixteen-year-old had seemed like plenty of cash. It wasn’t. She hadn’t made it to Chicago that time, either.

She found herself saying, “When a child runs away, there’s almost always a reason.” Who knew, Samantha’s reason might well be the crux of her juicy tell-all for
On Top
.

He crossed back to the granite counter and poured water into the well of the Mr. Coffee. Measuring out the grounds, he said, “I agree. Unfortunately whenever I try to get her to tell me what went wrong, she freezes up and threatens to run away—textbook emotional blackmail, and, by the way, it’s working.” He punched the switch on the coffeemaker and turned to face her.

Stunned by the raw vulnerability she read on his face, she worked to keep her expression neutral and her sympathy in check. “At least she felt like she could come to you,” she said, hoping to draw him out about his divorce. “She must trust you on some level.”

He dragged a hand through his thick blond hair, and she found herself wondering if it felt as soft as it looked. “Up until a year ago we had a damn good—excuse me—good relationship. Now I just don’t know. The school counselor back in New York seems stumped, too. She recommended Sam see a psychologist. That was the doctor’s appointment we came from earlier.” He punctuated the admission with a shake of his head. “At this point, I feel like Ozzy Osbourne’s a better parent than I am. He may have beheaded bats and urinated on a monument honoring the Alamo’s fallen, but he’s also stayed married to his second wife for three decades and his kids and grandkids worship him. Maybe I should see if he’ll sub for me while I go off and figure out this parenthood stuff.”

She hadn’t expected him to be so heart wrenchingly humble, so scathingly self-honest. Certainly she hadn’t expected him to have an actual sense of humor! The words
complete package
came to mind but she shoved them aside. She couldn’t afford to let herself like Ross Mannon. More than any other foreseeable flaw in her plan, liking this man would seriously mess with her mission—and her mind.

“Dr. Mannon, why are you telling me all this?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Because I want to be upfront with you about what you’re signing up for if you accept this position.”

Heart drumming, she asked, “Are you saying the job is mine if I want it?”

His gaze, disarmingly earnest, met hers. “Yes, Miss Gray, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” One corner of his mouth lifted in the sexy half smile that in the course of the afternoon had come to feel so very familiar. “The question is what do
you
say?”

Her fluttery stomach stilled, her heart lifted. Ross Mannon was hiring her! Operation Cinderella was taking off! Whatever test he’d put her to, she’d apparently passed—with flying colors. With his gaze holding hers, she felt as if the magic wand was being waved, the coach rolling forward. Suddenly life was, if not exactly enchanted, good again for the first time in a very long while.

She smiled and stuck out her hand. “How soon can I start?”

Chapter Four

Macie had returned to New York that evening and gotten directly to work—packing. Once she had, all the moving parts of Operation Cinderella had fallen into place as if by magic. Her assistant editor, Terri, had just split with her roommate and was looking for a short-term place to stay. In exchange for watching her apartment, taking care of Stevie, and keeping her lone plant alive, Macie had handed over the keys rent-free. Even packing, which she’d dreaded, had proven a cinch. Except for her laptop, new clothes, and what she’d come to think of as her red Cinderella slippers, there wasn’t much else she needed to bring.

Saying good-bye to friends was a lot harder. Franc and Nathan had treated her to dinner at her favorite Murray Hill Indian restaurant on her last night in town. She used her morning train as an excuse to make an early night of it, but the truth was she wanted to log in some quality snuggling time with Stevie, AKA Stevie Wonder, before leaving. Since she’d sprung him from the city shelter last year, they’d been pretty much inseparable. A scraggly adult street cat with one eye missing and the other badly infected, he’d been deemed “unadoptable” and slated for euthanasia. Fortunately, the euthanasia tech had called in sick the day Macie had walked by after work. She’d taken one look at Stevie, crawling to the front of his rusted metal cage to butt his little black-and-white head against her hand, and had fallen head-over-heels.

Too bad it wasn’t that easy with men.

Sitting in a coach class Amtrak car bound back for DC, she acknowledged that D Day had arrived. There was nothing left to plan and a hell of a lot yet to do. Lost to her thoughts, the three-and-a-half-hour train trip slipped by.

This time Stefanie met her at the gate. Her dark hair gathered into a thick braid and a baggy sweater and jeans covering her curvy figure, Stef hadn’t changed much since their college days. Obviously the same couldn’t be said for Macie. Stef would have walked past if Macie hadn’t reached out and tapped her on the shoulder.

Staring from behind tortoiseshell framed glasses, Stef said, “Mace? Is that you?”

“In the freakin’ flesh.” Macie let go of her suitcase handle and opened her arms.

They hugged, and suddenly it was as if they were back in college, roomies and best friends forever. Pulling back, Stef gave her a friendly once over. “You look great. The last time I saw you, your hair was…magenta, I think.”

Macie grinned. Being a style chameleon was a point of pride. “What can I say? I like to keep my friends on their toes.”

“Your e-mail said you’re here for six weeks on some kind of undercover assignment. It must be pretty high end to require a personal chef.”

Macie spotted a Starbucks. “How about I buy you a coffee and we can talk about the details?”

Stefanie smiled. Along with sweets, caffeine was her weakness. “Make it a tall mocha with whip and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

A few minutes later, settled in at one of the café tables with her luggage crowded around them, Macie ran down the basics of Operation Cinderella.

Not surprisingly, Stef seemed more than a little shocked. “Okay, let me see if I get this straight. You’re going to move into this guy’s home by pretending to be his housekeeper and then snoop around until you dig up enough dirt to make it newsworthy?”

Macie nodded. “Basically, yes.” Hearing it from her friend’s lips, her mission didn’t sound especially noble.

Stef licked a dab of whipped cream from the corner of her mouth before answering, “Look, Mace, you know I’m the last one to rain on your parade, but how do you plan to pull this off? The last time I visited you in New York, you had a six-pack of Diet Coke and a jar of mayonnaise in your fridge—and the mayo had expired.”

“That’s where you come in.”

“So you need me to be your shadow chef,” Stef said.

Macie nodded. “The building has a service elevator. We just need to smuggle you and the food up without being seen. Mannon e-mailed me a copy of his weekly schedule and from what I can tell he’s a creature of habit. During the week, he’s at work until six, and the kid is enrolled in prep school, plus she’s signed up for a shitload of extracurricular activities that’ll keep her out of the condo. We just need to work out a system where you drop off dinner by, say, four o’clock, and then I warm it up later.”

Stef’s eyes widened. “That’s at least two hours between delivery and serving! It’s really hard to keep meat from drying out, and sauces get lumpy once—”

“Hey, he’s not expecting Emeril, just someone who can cook the basic dishes.”

Stefanie sighed. “But food, even simple food, is so much more than sustenance. Eating is a sensual, social experience. A communion that engages the body and soul…”

Macie sipped her soy latte and let her friend rhapsodize. For Stefanie Stefanopoulos food wasn’t just food. It was passion. Macie had listened to various versions of this lecture for the four college years she and Stef had roomed together. Ordinarily a rule-abiding good girl, Stefanie had smuggled a hot plate and microwave into their dorm room and had used the contraband equipment to create savory snacks from odds-and-ends pilfered from the dining hall or purchased from a nearby convenience store. Now equipped with a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and the finest farm-to-table ingredients, Stef should have been living a gourmet fairy tale—except there was no prince to partake of her fabulous feasts, only her widowed father and his second family: a step-monster and her two surly gremlin girls, all perennially on various dreary diets.

“What about the weekends?” Stef asked.

Macie hesitated. “I’ll have to figure that part out once I’m there, but I’m guessing he probably works a lot, maybe even goes into the office for a few hours. If he were home, he wouldn’t need to hire someone to keep tabs on his kid, would he? And what kid on the planet doesn’t like pizza? Oh, by the way, she’s a vegetarian.”

“Good to know.” Stef eyed her. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No,” Macie admitted, “but that never stopped me before. And this time I have a budget to back me up. I’ll pay you double your regular fee.”

“Thanks, but don’t worry about it. I always end up making too much of everything anyway. Maybe your magazine could make a donation to the homeless shelter where I usually drop off the extra food?”

Macie beamed. She couldn’t vouch for
On Top
but she would make the donation herself. “Consider it done!” Taking down a major conservative pig
and
feeding people. Operation Cinderella was turning into a mission of mercy all around.

“Before I forget…” Stef reached inside her pocket and pulled out a white business card bearing the logo of a dancing broom. “A friend of mine runs a housecleaning service. Her crew does an excellent job and her people are all super trustworthy. Tell her I referred you, and she’ll give you a discount.”

Macie took the card and dropped it inside her bag. “Thanks, Stef, you’re the best. I only have one more question.”

Stef grinned. “Let me guess. What’s for dinner?”

.

Mannon had arranged for Macie to pick up a spare key at the front desk. She made a mental note to have copies made for Stef and the housekeeping service and then headed for the elevator. A uniformed doorman with a broad, pleasant face and white hair took charge of her luggage, steering her toward the resident lift. She tipped him a five, wondering if that was not enough, too much, or just about right. For a while now, she’d fantasized about what it would be like to live in a doorman building. Now that she was, for the next six weeks at least, she felt shy about it.

Mannon’s handwritten note left out on the breakfast bar informed her that he’d be home at seven and that Sam was spending the night at a friend’s house to give her the evening to settle in.
Considerate
, she thought, and then told herself not to get bogged down by the sentiment. In all likelihood he’d made his plans for his convenience, not hers.

She wandered about the condo, running her fingertips over counters and furnishings, imprinting the layout of hallways and rooms, the texture of fabrics and the placement of fixtures in her mind. The rooms were so spacious, the ceilings so high it was hard to believe she was in an apartment at all.

She opened a door and instantly knew she’d stumbled onto Samantha Mannon’s room. It hadn’t been on the other day’s tour and now she saw why. Brimming with typical teenage clutter, it had all the usual adult crazy-makers—an unmade bed, piles of dirty clothes, and a damp bath towel scattered about. The mess didn’t bother Macie, but she supposed she’d have to get on the kid’s case if only for show.

She messaged Stef to let her know she could safely push the dinner delivery as late as six, and then went to her room, an airy, pleasant space she’d glimpsed on her previous visit. The queen-sized iron bed was covered with a simple white duvet, the hardwood floor with a floral print area rug. The white shabby chic dresser and matching night table were devoid of decorative items. Roman shades dressed the double window. The latter looked out onto an interior courtyard, not the city skyline, though of course she was only “the help.” But as far as she was concerned the very best feature of her new accommodations was the en suite full bath. Being undercover was one thing, living with the subject of your investigation twenty-four-seven entirely another. Even Woodward and Bernstein had gotten to go home at night. The prospect of jostling for morning shower time with Samantha Mannon or her father, for that matter, had been worrisome, she admitted now. Bonus: she wouldn’t have to bother running out for a nightlight. She could sleep with the bathroom light on, as she did in her apartment at home.

She hung her clothes in the walk-in closet, laid her folded things in the white dresser, and stowed her shoes, including the boxed vintage red heels, on the closet floor. Lastly she set Stevie’s framed holiday photo with “Santa Paws” on her night table. Tamping down a twinge of homesickness, she decided to relax with a shower.

Staring into the steamed bathroom mirror sometime later, a fluffy white bath towel wrapped about her freshly washed hair, she drew a deep breath. The worst was over. She was here. She’d made it. Now all she had to do was be a good undercover reporter, which in this case meant slipping into the skin of the sweet, old fashioned girl she was pretending to be and staying there for the next six or so weeks. For some, that might seem like a tall order.

For Macie, being someone else was what she did best.


Ross entered the apartment at a quarter to seven, thrumming with a vague yet persistent impatience. Even if he hadn’t stopped to confirm the new arrival with his doorman, the amazing smells wafting from his kitchen announced that he and Sam were no longer living alone. Martha Jane Gray had arrived.

She met him in the living room, looking fresh and pretty in a cool cotton floral print he knew was called a sheath only because his ex was a fashion photographer and a committed clotheshorse.

“You’re home early.”

Her slightly husky tone had him thinking of sex, specifically the aftermath of sex, when bodies were sated and sheets damp and there wasn’t much left to say because it had all been said already—with actions not words. Sex might not be a distant memory exactly, but it had been a while since he’d had a woman in his life. Seeing Miss Gray moving about his home turf as though she lived here, which as of now she did, had him thinking it might be time to get back in the game—with someone closer to his age whom he didn’t employ.

Grateful she couldn’t read minds, he set down his case. “The four o’clock staff meeting that always starts closer to five and never ends before seven was canceled.” He dropped the button fronting his navy blazer, eager to be free of the thing. “How was your trip down?” He was genuinely interested, but also desperate to distract himself from how delectable she looked and smelled and, no doubt, tasted.
Bad Ross, really bad!

“Good, thanks.” She moved toward him, her chin-length hair a glossy blond frame for her face, which wore just the slightest trace of blush and pale pink lipstick. “Allow me,” she said, slipping behind him.

Female hands, light and competent, settled briefly on his shoulders, helping him off with the coat, an old-fashioned civility that hardly anyone practiced anymore. Taken by surprise, Ross tried again not to think about how good she smelled—was that really just soap and shampoo?—or the magic her slender fingers might work on other, more sensitive spots.

She stepped back around to his front, the garment draped over her slender forearm. “Dinner will be ready in a bit. I hope you like pot roast.”

Ross didn’t like pot roast. He loved it. “I didn’t expect you to cook on your first night,” he said despite being pleased that she had. She dismissed the notion with a breezy wave of one slender, subtly manicured hand. “Cooking helps me settle in. I’ll call you when it’s ready if that’s all right?”

Ross nodded. “Great, I’ll be in my study.” He picked up his briefcase and started to leave.

“Shall I make you a drink?” she called after him. “Vodka martini, isn’t it?”

She was either too good to be true or working for that Christmas bonus months in advance. “Uh, that’d be great, thanks,” he said, wondering how she’d discovered his cocktail preference. That for sure wasn’t on his website. He started to add, “With a twist,” then broke off when her voice echoed his. “You psychic or something?” he half joked.

“I wish!” She shot him yet another of those delightfully easy smiles. “But no, I read an article online where you were at some fancy fund-raiser holding a martini and…” Her voice trailed off and she looked down, long lashes sweeping the tops of her very high cheekbones. “I’m acting like a Fan Girl, aren’t I? I may as well admit it, I wrote it down in my day planner. I hope you don’t mind.” She bit on her full bottom lip, a mouth worthy of Angelina Jolie, and Ross felt his throat go dry.

Fan Girl, huh?
In her original e-mail, she’d said she liked his show, but he’d been too caught up in assessing her housekeeper potential to give the compliment much thought. “That’s very conscientious of you,” he said, equal parts flattered and embarrassed.

BOOK: Operation Cinderella
2.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Longest Winter by Harrison Drake
Hereafter by Tara Hudson
Wylde by Jan Irving
Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes
Ex-Rating by Natalie Standiford