Operation Cinderella (2 page)

“That’s not true.”

Frannie was no Mrs. Cleaver, that was for damned sure, but she loved Sam with all her heart. He might disapprove of her travel schedule and crazy work hours—he
did
disapprove—but she was a good mom. And a kid, a girl especially, needed her mother, which was why he hadn’t fought for shared custody, settling instead for seeing Sam during summers and every other holiday.

He drew a deep breath and dropped his voice. “Look, whatever went wrong for Samantha went down in New York, and it’s obvious she sees DC and my apartment as her haven—for now, anyway. Let me get her calmed down, enroll her in school here, and see what happens. Just before you called, she was close to confiding in me. I could
feel
it.”

That last statement had won Francesca over. In the end, they’d agreed he would keep Sam with him, but only until the winter break. In the meantime, he had his work cut out for him. He hadn’t been a full-time parent for years. Hell, he hadn’t been much of a part-time one, either. Still, he’d always thought his relationship with his daughter was pretty solid. Staring at her now, he admitted he’d been kidding himself. Just how well did he really know her? What was she into? Who were her friends? What were her plans for the future, her dreams? Did she even have any? More than the all-black clothing and the tongue stud, it was the dull, dead look in her eyes that had him worrying. Just last summer she’d seemed so bright-eyed, so…happy.

“Why are you looking at me all weird like that?” Sam’s voice snapped him back to the present. “If you have some big-deal thing to say to me, then say it.”

“Okay, I will.” He cleared his throat, steeling himself to deal with the proverbial elephant in the room: the confiscated magazine. Not yet able to go there, he started out with, “First off, I want you to know I’m working on getting someone to help us out around here. You know, keep house and cook and drive you back and forth to school and anywhere else you need to go so you won’t be stuck here when I’m held up at the studio.”
Someone to watch over you when I can’t. Someone, a woman, to help me figure out what the hell’s going on with you before it’s too late.

Her eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that what Mrs. Alvarez does?”

“Well, sort of. But Mrs. A doesn’t drive.” Nor was she young or cool enough for Sam to consider her as anything but an authority figure.

She snapped out of her slouch. “So you fired her!”

Ross stiffened. Why was she so hell-bent on seeing him as some kind of ogre?

Reaching for what was left of his patience, he said, “I did not. Mrs. A asked for a leave of absence to help out with her new grandbaby. I told her she can come back whenever she’s ready.”

It was the truth, though judging from Sam’s face, she wasn’t buying it. Lower lip dropping, she raked a hand through her hair, the nails painted black and bitten to the quick.

“Seeing as we have an extra bedroom nobody’s using, I figured it would be easier if we had someone stay here instead of commuting,” he added.

Whatever he’d said, it set her off like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. “You’re hiring a live-in!” she shouted, eyes blazing. “Is
she
going to search my room, too?”

Finally, the elephant in the room wasn’t only acknowledged but paraded around like a prize pony. “Honey, I wasn’t searching your room. When you didn’t answer my knock this morning, I thought you’d overslept. I didn’t want you to be late for school.”

Late for school, my ass.
He’d been scared shitless she might have done something to hurt herself. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but she’d been acting so depressed and secretive, he hardly knew what to expect. Hearing the shower running in her bathroom, he’d heaved a sigh of relief. She was running late, end of story. He’d turned to go when the
On Top
Magazine
lying open on the nightstand snagged his attention. The article title, “Forget the Fairy Tale: Teen Sex is Fact, Not Fiction” caught his eye, but it was the subtitle that had him seeing red. “Why smart parenting means prepping your daughter with condoms, the Pill…”

Staring at those big bold block letters, Ross had felt like he’d been belted with a thunderbolt from the sky and a sucker punch to the gut all rolled into one terrifying freeze-frame moment. Time seemed to stop. His breathing seemed to stop. Everything seemed to stop, everything except for the fear. Was Sam thinking about having sex or was she already having it? And if she was having it, was she having it with or without protection? Did protection mean condoms or the Pill, both, or neither? If the answer to any of those questions was yes, then clearly he was doing the asking way late, maybe even…too late? Too late—and his baby was just fifteen!

No previous ah-ha moment had ever hit him so hard or hurt so much. Somehow he’d become one of
those
parents—the parents he railed about on his radio show—the ones so selfishly wrapped up in their own lives they didn’t have a clue where or
who
their kid was. Now he was one of them, a lost tribe awash in denial. While he’d been the parental equivalent of Rip Van Winkle, his Sam was being poisoned with toxic cultural messages. The rage ripping through him had required an outlet and there’d been just one place for it to go. He’d picked up the magazine, screwed it into a tight cylinder, and shoved it beneath his arm.

“When I saw that”—
rag, piece of trash—
“publication, I
…
”
—overreacted? Okay, flipped out—
“felt concerned. That’s not the kind of material you should be exposed to at your age.”
Or ever
, he wanted to add, but since he couldn’t protect her indefinitely, he could at least exercise the three years of parental rights he had left under the law.

She folded her arms across her chest like body armor, an age-old symbol of defiance. “That’s my decision.”

He glanced down at her latest “decision,” a gold naval ring, and felt another piece of his soul chip away. “No, honey, I’m afraid it’s not. As long as you’re under eighteen, your mom and I are responsible for you.”

She let out a sharp laugh, the cynicism slashing at his heart. “Funny, Mom never censored my reading. Or my Internet access,” she added, referencing the parental controls he’d activated within hours of her appearance.

Maybe she should have
, he thought, but loyalty and something else, something deeper, held him back from saying so. Frannie had shouldered the main responsibility for raising Sam for a decade. Dissing her decidedly more permissive parenting style when she wasn’t present to defend herself wouldn’t be fair to her or good for Sam.

Instead he said, “As long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules.” Good Lord, he’d gone from old to positively Paleolithic.

She stared back at him, cheeks red and eyes defiant. “Maybe I won’t be ‘under your roof’ for much longer.”

Her lower lip quivered, reminding him of when she’d been little and a skinned knee or broken doll had brought her running to him to make it all better. Back then he’d been her knight in shining armor, her hero to the rescue. If only he could figure out a way to rescue her now.

“Look, Sam, if something’s…
wrong
…there’s nothing you could ever do to make me or your mom stop loving you. Come here, baby.” He stood and stretched his arms out into the empty space between them, willing her to meet him, if only halfway.

“Not this time, Daddy.” Eyes on the verge of overflowing, she turned and ran, bare feet pummeling down the hallway.

Absorbing each retreating thud like a gut punch, he dropped his arms to his sides. The familiar sound of her door slamming sent him folding into the leather desk chair.
Good going, Mannon. Now she
really
hates you.

Scouring a hand over his forehead, he reached into his desk drawer and brought out the magazine.
On Top.
He flipped through, stopping at the cover story. He’d read it several times now, but like a kid picking at a scab, he couldn’t resist another look. Laced with interview quotes, slanted statistics, and colorful sidebar anecdotes, it wasn’t badly written even if its message was crap.
Forget the Fairy Tale
… He shook his head, thinking of another word beginning with
F
and swearing it beneath his breath.

As if it wasn’t confusing enough being a teenager, the media had to put out the message that there was no such thing as Mr. Right, let alone Prince Charming. Apparently the best a young woman could hope for was Mr. Right Now, and parents could expect their daughters to go through several Mr. Right Nows before the age of twenty-one.
Jesus H. Christ!
Teens, both boys and girls, needed to understand that promiscuity brought consequences,
serious
consequences. Condoms were important for sexual safety but they also weren’t infallible. Sometimes they broke—and so did hearts. If Samantha had questions about sex, he’d like to think she’d bring them to him or, better yet, her mother. Instead, it seemed, she’d looked to a magazine for answers—the
wrong
answers.

And just what the hell was wrong with fairy tales anyway? He’d believed in a few of his own…once upon a time.

He tossed the magazine back into the drawer and closed it with a slam. If that was the kind of bullshit Samantha was reading, no wonder she seemed so pessimistic and depressed. The housekeeper ad he’d just rerun had better come through and fast. If not, he’d have to break down and go through a regular employment agency, though he didn’t hold out much hope of finding
her
there, at least not in Washington, DC, because he wasn’t just looking for a child care provider or a housekeeper or a cook, but some magical meshing of all three and more. What—no, make that
who
—he needed was a modern day fairy godmother, a woman not only young enough but also cool enough to connect with a jaded fifteen-year-old who’d spent most of her formative years in Manhattan. If she came with a magic wand, so much the better.

An automated ding drew his attention back to the laptop, where a new e-mail had just landed. Wanting to be done with work for the night, he clicked on the mailbox icon. The subject line, “Sweet and Old-fashioned,” snagged his eye and piqued his curiosity. Another spam message advertising mail-order brides? It was most likely listener e-mail, although most people weren’t that creative with their headers. Still, with time on his hands, he might as well open it.

Dear Dr. Mannon
:

For the past several years I’ve been employed as an au pair in Manhattan to a family with two teenage children. My employers are moving overseas to undertake mission work for their church, and having just learned through your radio program that you are seeking a housekeeper/childcare provider, I’m interested in discussing a possible placement in your home. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Education from the Catholic University of America and will be happy to provide additional references upon request.

P.S. I absolutely *love* your program!

The message was signed
Martha Jane Gray
and included a cell phone number with a Manhattan 212 area code.

Ross dragged a hand through his hair and tried not to get his hopes up, though the woman sounded promising. Hell, she sounded downright perfect. He read the e-mail again just in case he might have taken wishful thinking to the point of dreaming her up. Her bachelor’s degree was in Education. She had experience dealing with teenagers. She lived in New York! The Manhattan address was sure to be a selling point with Sam, who had the attitude that anyone who lived farther out than Jersey City must be some kind of hay-chewing hick.

And to top it off, apparently her current employers were missionaries. That was just the kind of wholesome, positive influence he was looking to bring into his daughter’s life.

Martha Jane Gray. Even her name seemed to carry him back to a kinder, gentler time. Already he was seeing her as some kind of cross between Julie Andrews from
Mary Poppins
and Juliet Mills from
Nanny and the Professor
—solid, serene…
magical.

And yet in a world chock full of nuts, you couldn’t be too careful, especially when bringing somebody into your home. First thing tomorrow he’d check her references, starting with a call to her current employers, the Swansons. One more phone call to her alma mater, Catholic University, and then assuming she came up clean, he’d arrange to bring her down to DC for a face-to-face interview. He’d be sure to have Sam come along as well. No matter how good Miss Gray might look “on paper,” the tipping point would be how she handled herself with Samantha.

Ross reached for the computer’s mouse.
Well, Miss Martha Jane, let’s see what else you have to say for yourself.
Smiling for the first time that day, he clicked on the Reply icon and started typing.

Maybe it wasn’t time to forget the fairy tale, or give up on the dream, just yet.

Chapter Two

Mannon’s e-mail reply landed in Macie’s inbox as she was rushing to her meeting with Starr. Skimming it from her phone, she held back a whoop.
Slam-dunk!
Her frog hadn’t just taken the bait, he’d gobbled it hook and all, asking her to e-mail her resume and references as soon as possible. He’d signed off as
Ross Mannon
, no
Dr.
or
PhD
in the signature line, not that Macie was buying his just-folks humility act for a minute.

Now she had to sell the story to Starr. Walking the hallway to her boss’s office felt a lot like walking the plank of a pirate ship. Other than her assistant editor, Terri, who managed a wobbly smile and a thumbs-up, none of her coworkers looked her in the eye as she passed. By the time she raised her fist to knock on Starr’s closed door, she was primed to gnaw off all ten faux fingernails.

The brushed chrome handle slipped in her slick palm, but she managed to get the door open. Poking her head inside, she said, “You…er, wanted to see me?”

Cynthia Starling, known as Starr, looked up from the pile of layouts spread across her glass-topped desk, a scowl darkening her delicate porcelain features.

“That pulled ad hurt us in a major way. Beauté is one of our biggest accounts, not to mention our oldest. They’ve been with us since day one. Cultivating a new relationship to replace that lost revenue isn’t going to happen overnight. Under the circumstances, it may not happen at all.” She beckoned Macie inside with a toss of her shoulder-length, copper-colored curls.

Heart drumming, Macie pulled the door closed and crossed to the desk on Jell-O legs. She and Starr were friends outside of work but only to a point. Inside the office, her
friend
was all boss—and all business. “I know and I—”

“Sit down and listen up. I’ve spent most of my day upstairs getting my ass chewed out for giving you the go-ahead on that teen birth-control story.”

Macie braced herself.
Here it comes, five years on staff flushed down the friggin’ toilet.

As if reading her thoughts, or maybe just her face, Starr said, “Relax, you still have a job. But any more sponsor calls like that and you’ll be collecting unemployment, and I’ll be right there with you.”

So she was safe—for now. Weak with relief, Macie sank into one of a pair of vintage modern chairs positioned in front of the desk.

Perched on the edge of the cold chrome seat, she moistened her dry lips and prepared to make her pitch. “What would you say if I told you I thought I could pull off a story so high-profile, so hot, that Beauté will be calling us back, begging for space?”

Behind the round wire frames of her John Lennon glasses, Starr’s eyes lit. “Go on.”

Macie pulled her shoulders back from the tall girl slump she still sometimes fell into. “I’m thinking a celebrity profile, only with real teeth to it, an exposé, with a series of shorter outtake pieces to run as blog posts afterward to keep the momentum going. Something like, ‘Ten Reasons Why This Guy Sucks’ with every day’s post building toward the big reveal. We could add a poll, too, really amp up reader engagement.”

Starr cocked a ginger-colored eyebrow. “We’re talking a big name?”

Macie drew a deep breath, readying herself to make her own big reveal. “Ross Mannon.”

Starr’s eyes widened, the black pupils nearly obliterating the aquamarine. “The conservative talking head who’s made this an Extra Strength Tylenol day for me?”

“One and the same.”

Starr eased back into her chair. “What makes you think he’ll talk to you?”

Macie hesitated, then admitted, “Because he…uh…just e-mailed me back.” She quickly rolled out the basics of what she was coming to think of as Operation Cinderella.

Starr took off her glasses and kneaded the bridge of her nose. “And you think that, after turning down a half dozen
Washington Times
reading women, he’s going to open his door to you? I’ve seen your apartment, remember? You’re no Martha Stewart.”

Holding onto her game face, Macie shrugged. “He needs someone to drop off his dry cleaning and chauffeur his kid. How hard can that be? As for the cooking and cleaning, let’s just say I have connections.”

“Connections” came in the form of her college roommate, Stefanie, who lived in DC and owned a successful personal chef business. Good Enuf to Eat catered to dual career couples, delivering high-quality home-cooked meals hot to their doors.

Starr stabbed her expensive fountain pen behind one ear. “How long are we talking?”

Always ask for more than you can hope to get.
Macie swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “Two months ought to do it.”

Starr snorted. “If ‘it’ involves driving
On Top
into the ground and me prematurely gray, then yeah, no problem.” She drummed her fingers on the desktop. “Two weeks. It’s the best I can do.”

“Two weeks is barely enough time to unpack.” Macie studied her own splayed fingers. Assuming Starr gave her the green light, the nail tips and multiple rings would have to go, as would her long hair, naval ring, and all-black wardrobe. “Six weeks including the two weeks of paid vacation I have coming to me. But if you end up running the story, and you will, I’ll expect salary plus expenses.”

Starr didn’t rush to answer, a sign that her will was weakening. “Cocky little shit, aren’t you?” she said after a moment, and Macie knew that those twitching lips meant she was struggling against smiling. “Okay, you get the six weeks, but you make sure to check in every frigging day by e-mail. Terri is a good assistant editor, but she’s not ready to fly solo.”

Adrenaline pumping, Macie shot up from her seat. “I’ll get with Terri ASAP and make sure she has what she needs from me.”

“Unless you’re planning on knocking over an armored truck, see you keep your expenses within reason,” Starr warned.

Turning to go, Macie grinned. “Hey, have you ever known me to be anything but reasonable?” It was a loaded question, and they both knew it.

She had one foot in the hallway when Starr called her back. Wondering if she might be reconsidering, Macie slowly turned around. “Yeah, boss lady?”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Macie hesitated. She was signing up to go undercover, not unlike feminist Gloria Steinem had done in the sixties, donning bunny ears and tail to infiltrate Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Club. Only instead of a good girl playing at being bad, Macie would be a bad girl playing at being good. Could she really pull it off?

Mindful that she had not one but
two
people to convince, Macie concentrated on appearing confident and calm. “If everything goes according to plan, which it will, I’ll have the research wrapped up and the finished story on your desk in four weeks, not six, which leaves Yours Truly with two solid weeks—with pay, thank you very much—to plant my winter-white ass on a patch of beachfront paradise.” Backing out into the hall, she shot Starr a wink.

Screw a fairy godmother and pumpkin-pulling mice. The wheels of Operation Cinderella were already in motion and this coach was set to soar.

.

Going undercover as Mannon’s personal Cinderella would call for an Oscar-worthy acting performance. To prepare for her starring role, Macie needed a major makeover. Fortunately, she was friends with Franc Whiting, an A-list Manhattan stylist. Frankly Franc had opened that summer in TriBeCa, and already getting an appointment with the owner involved a backlog of several months. Her panicked call to Franc’s cell phone—“I need a fairy godfather
fast
”—scored her an after-hours appointment and the promise of a bottle of top-shelf pinot noir.

Hours later, she sat inside the renovated former warehouse facing a gilt-framed salon mirror, her hair hidden beneath the wrap of a fluffy pewter-colored towel. Grayish blue eyes stared back at her, heavily lined with charcoal-colored eye pencil, smudged to give her a smoky, slightly netherworldly look. A little pink around the whites—okay, borderline bloodshot—a sign her partying lifestyle was beginning to show. Naked lips, full thanks to Mother Nature and not collagen, and a dusting of pale powder completed the look she’d spent the past six months perfecting. Now, of course, it would all have to go.

Franc leaned in, his sculpted face joining hers in the mirror. “Courage, love. You’re going to look amazing.”

Macie wasn’t sure why, but she always found his faux British accent incredibly soothing. “You always say that.” Nervous, she fingered the edge of the towel.

The year before, she’d been a spiral-permed redhead with a penchant for eighties retro trash chic. Her current transformation, changing her hair from black to blond, was a grueling process involving stripping the black, bleaching to cover any residual brassiness, and then coloring the hair a wheat blond—the closest match to her natural shade, as far as she remembered. Between applications, she filled Franc in on Operation Cinderella. In a single breath, he’d declared her lunatic, outrageous, and, of course, brilliant.

“Voilà!” He swept away the towel and pale hair slid free.

Macie sucked in her breath, feeling as if she was staring at a stranger. “Wow, that’s quite a…change.” Though blond was her natural color, she’d been dyeing her hair darker for so many years now that she’d as good as forgotten what she used to look like.

Franc sent her a self-assured smile. “What can I say? False modesty isn’t modesty at all and a frickin’ fairy godfather couldn’t have pulled this off in two hours.” Pulling a black comb and scissors from the container of Barbacide solution set atop the black marble-topped counter, he addressed her reflection. “Speaking of fairy tales, don’t you think that bit about your past employers being Christian missionaries might have been…well, a tad over the top?”

“Actually, I think he ate it up.” Leaning back in the black, vinyl-covered chair while Franc gently combed out the tangles, she decided she’d better tell him the rest
before
he started with the scissors. “By the way, you’ll probably be hearing from him soon.”

The comb snared on a strand. Franc snapped up his head. “Why would I?”

Macie bit her bottom lip, wishing her glass of wine were within easier reach. “He asked me to e-mail him my references, and I couldn’t risk giving him some bogus address and then having him find out, so I, er…gave him your and Nathan’s landline.” She cast a look behind to the curtained office where Franc’s accountant and life partner was busy going over the books.

His perfectly plucked brows shot upward. “Nathan and I are supposed to be the Christian missionary couple you’ve been working for?”

She slipped her hand from beneath the smock and patted his bicep. “Relax, Brother Franc, it’s no big deal. Your first name’s the same only spelled with a
K
. All you have to remember is that you have a wife, Nadine, and two teenage kids.”

He struck a pose reminiscent of Nathan Lane in the film version of
The Bird Cage
and batted his eyes. “Really, Macie, we’re not drag queens. Nathan’s falsetto is slightly superior to mine but still not terribly convincing.”

Macie chuckled. “If he insists on talking to the wife, stall. Tell him she’s out at a church bake sale or praying or…something, and then give me a buzz. My assistant editor, Terri, was a theater major at NYU. She can help us out.”

The comb-out complete, he started dividing her hair into sections. “And what about our fictional children? Do the little darlings have names?”

Macie hesitated. “Chloe and, um…Zachary.”

“Zachary, hmm, interesting choice.” Looking ahead into the mirror, she caught him rolling his eyes at the mention of her on-again-off-again boyfriend. For the past two months, they’d been in the “off” phase—barring a few late night booty calls that he’d put out and she’d…answered.

Busted, she sunk down into her seat. “If I get stuck, it’ll be easy to remember.” Bringing the subject back around, she added, “Anyway, the four of you are about to set off for a two-year mission to… How does Belize sound? I know how you hate the winter in New York.”

Running a hand through his mousse-spiked hair, he nodded. “Thoughtful. And who are you, by the way, or are Nathan and I the only ones with aliases?”

She tried out the guileless gaze and Stepford wife smile the good women of her hometown wore on a regular basis. Batting her eyes and stretching her lips to the limit, she drawled, “Why, I’m Martha Jane Gray, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. “You sound terrifyingly authentic.”

She hesitated, and then admitted, “I ought to. I grew up in a tiny town in Indiana called Heavenly.”

“Sounds quite…bucolic.”

She smothered a snort. Heavenly was an egregious misnomer. The town was home to a paper mill and was about as butt ugly as small town America got.

“It’s prime Bible Belt territory. My folks were—are—thumpers from the old school. Living under their roof by their rules was the closest thing to doing time in a dungeon.”

He paused in securing the last of the hair sections with a metal clip. “However did you escape?”

She rolled her shoulders, which suddenly felt as stiff as her neck. “I finally convinced them to give up on me.”

He pulled the clip from a long swathe of hair and slid the comb through, stopping just below chin level. “Here?”

She swallowed hard, held her breath, and nodded. The scissors made their definitive cut, sealing the deal and sending a lock of wet hair sliding down the front of her smock like a tear.

He worked for several minutes in silent concentration. Macie tried to relax as a year’s worth of hair growth fell to the tiled floor. Snipping away, Franc finally said, “I gather your parents don’t approve of your lifestyle?”

She blew out a breath, amazed that after all this time it still hurt so much. “They don’t approve of me period. New York City is just one big Sodom and Gomorrah as far as they’re concerned, not that they’d ever venture out of the Heartland to come and see for themselves.”

“That’s too bad.” He switched on the blow dryer, and she felt the bristles of the big rounded brush moving soothingly against her scalp.