Cin Wikkid: April Fools For Love (6 page)

She relaxed, eyes closed, and forgot about all of it, lost in the wonder of his stroking hands.

A shift of weight on the cushions roused her as he laid down beside her. She’d fallen asleep. She tried to wake up, to tell him about the drugstore boxes, but her eyelids were so heavy.

“Shh.” He stroked her hair.

At home, she slept lightly from a childhood of the Steps playing nighttime pranks on her. They’d mostly stopped, but only luck had kept her from being caught sneaking out so far. She really needed to get home…she tried to say that.

But somehow, with Rafe’s strong body curved around hers, she felt completely safe.

Just a bit longer.

Sighing, she snuggled in and closed her eyes again. He curled a heavy arm around her, and she fell deeply asleep.

Only to wake to screaming sirens.

Eyes flying open, she jerked up—or tried to. A log lay across her ribs. Other things registered. Her pillowcase was coarser than usual, and the wall in front of her wasn’t her attic plaster, but fabric. She was on a couch…with Rafe. The log was his arm, lifting now as he twisted for something behind him. She turned. He was reaching toward the coffee table.

“It’s your phone.” He stared at it, blinking, yawning as it screamed like a fire engine in his hand.

Synapses in her brain began to trigger, along with panic. “That’s my stepmother’s ring tone. Give it to me!”

“Better not.” He tossed the phone back on the table. “You’re not in any shape to deal with her yet.”

“How would you know what shape I need to be in to deal with her?” Cin tried to reach over him to snatch the phone, but she kept forgetting how big he was, and her hand extended a bare six inches past his ribcage. She waved her fingers as if they would stir drafts and float the phone to her. “You don’t know anything about her. I’ve never talked about her.”

“You haven’t said much, I admit—not in words. But your face when you say her name or talk about home speaks volumes.” He glanced at her, just the jut of his cheekbone and one dark lash visible, a sliver of rich blue between.

For a moment, Cin stopped waving her hand, the heat of embarrassment rising in her. “It’s personal.”

“It always is, with parents. I think the ringing has stopped. Don’t worry, it’ll go to voicemail.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said darkly. “What time is it, anyway?”

He yawned, checking her phone. “Don’t worry. It’s only five-thirty.”

“Five-
thirty?
” She struggled to climb over him off the couch. “I should have had breakfast started. No wonder she’s calling. I have to go.”

“Will I see you tonight?”

“Of course. Probably.” She paused. “Um, my stepmother may be in a mood. Maybe it’s better if you wait for me to contact you, okay?”

“Okay.” He looked like he was going to say more.

“Look, it’ll be fine,” she said, jumping in first as she snagged her bra from the floor and started dressing. “It’ll blow over in a day or two. The Steps all have ball-on-the-brain anyway. It’ll be fine,” she repeated, as if that would convince them both. “Once I’m clear, I’ll message you. Couple of days at most.”

“Speaking of the ball, you really should go—”

“We’ll talk, okay? Once this blows over.” Dressed, she threw on her coat, shouldered her backpack, and ran out, certain she’d escaped the worst the day had to offer.

Until she got home, and her stepmother met her at the door.

“Get up to your room,” Mrs. Wikkid snarled. “There are only two places you’d better be from now on. Home or work. You are grounded.”

“Grounded?” Cin couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m twenty-two—”

“My roof, my rules. Unless you want me to throw you out, you’d better mind me.”

Cin flinched. Her alternatives stood in stark relief in her mind.

Turn around and walk out now, with only the clothes on her back, and she’d be free.

But, two months shy of her degree, a few weeks short of an interview that could set her up for life, she’d put her whole future at risk.

At eighteen, she’d had nowhere to go, and nothing had changed.

Well, one thing had changed.
Rafe.
Maybe she could move in with him for the next two months—or maybe even longer. The thought was a breath of warm air lifting her.

Except they’d fought. He wanted her to marry someone else. Her shoulders sagged.

Besides, there was Ylanda to think about. How could Cin help her stepsister with midnight cram sessions if she was banned from the Wikkid residence? The promise to herself long ago to help Yl graduate had, in the years since, almost grown into a rally cry, the one good thing Cin could make come out of her horrible childhood.

“Fine.” She brushed past her stepmother. “I’m going to take a shower, then head to work.” She stalked downstairs to the basement, where a previous owner had installed a hand shower and curtain surround over the drain.

While she was in the shower her stepmother’s tread sounded on the stairs. Cin braced herself for another lecture or worse, but there was only a click-clicking of heels across the concrete floor to where Cin had left her clothes.

Then Mrs. Wikkid crowed, “Aha! I knew it.” Her heels click-clicked triumphantly away and up the stairs.

When Cin got out the shower, her clothes, which had been a neatly folded stack, were a mess. She dug through the pile, searching more and more frantically, finally having to admit the horrible truth.

Her tablet, her single private way to contact Rafe, was gone.

A chill rumpled her naked body, fear that she’d never see him again.

Chapter Five

Cin crossed off each passing day on her calendar with sharper, harder slashes of her pen. If she’d thought her life was restricted before, it was nothing compared to how she was treated now. Ez drove her to work and picked her up each day, so there was no wandering into the park even if she had had her tablet to use. Work breaks were spent doing Mrs. Wikkid’s suddenly tripled errands. Every second of Cin’s time had to be accounted for, work or home, with not a single moment available for anything else.

Patience is a virtue. Forgiveness is a virtue.

Her mother’s voice echoed softly in her ears, but Cin resented it bitterly. Falling behind on her regular schoolwork, she was losing what edge she had honed on her presentation skills.

And she missed Rafe so much she cried herself to sleep every night.

After that disastrous morning, she’d waited a few nights before trying to sneak out again. When she opened the front door, she discovered that Mrs. Wikkid had installed an alarm system which sang like a glass-shattering soprano. Cin’s ears still rang from that night.

She’d tried to think of alternate ways to contact Rafe. Her stepmother’s eagle eye was on the detail of her cell phone bill, so she tried to sweet-talk her coworkers into lending her their phones. Local kids, they all knew the Widow Wikkid and refused to cross her. “Ez told us you were in big trouble,” one of them said. “No way I want a piece of that.” Even Manny stayed in his office with the door conspicuously shut.

Just a few short months,
she coached herself.
I’ll have my job, and Yl will have her degree. I’ve stuck it out for years. How would I feel if I blew all that hard work simply because I’m missing a guy? Mom would never forgive me.

But after a week, Cin was so desperate for contact with Rafe that she resorted to writing a carefully worded, innocuous, anonymous letter—which her stepmother found and promptly ripped to shreds.

Then he showed up at the sub shop two days later, despite her telling him not to.

Her heart lifted as she watched him approach through the front windows. It soared when he saw her and smiled.

He reached for the door bar—just as Ez pulled up in the car.

If Ez caught even a hint of Cin’s feelings for Rafe—and approaching two weeks without him, she was sure every needy, lustful thought would show in her eyes—Ez would blab to Mrs. Wikkid, and who knew what consequences there’d be?

If Cin had had time to think it through, she might have acted differently, but she didn’t.

She frantically waved Rafe off.

His eyes widened in surprise.

Ez got out of the car and approached. Cin glared at Rafe, jabbing a trembling finger.
Go away.

His face blanched. His hand dropped from the door. Then his eyes narrowed and his body went rigid.

Heart breaking, she could only stand there and watch as he spun and stalked away.

Squeezing back tears, she stripped off her plastic gloves and threw them in the trash. All these years of hiding beneath frumpy clothes and biting back any hint of dissatisfaction, so automatic—until Rafe made her dare to be happy. Made her yearn to tear off her drabs and shine.

Cin’s wretchedness came to a head the afternoon of the Glass Slipper Ball.

As she came downstairs for the late shift at work, her stepmother barred the front door. Mrs. Wikkid pointed an imperious finger. “You’ve got work here. Upstairs. Now.”

“But I can’t.” If Cin took off work, she’d have to skip even the little bit of reading she managed between errands. “Manny needs me.”

“Your sisters need you more. Go help them prepare for the ball.”

That damned ball again. Everybody was obsessed with it, the Steps, Milly, even Rafe, who so inexplicably—so painfully—wanted her to attend. “I’ll have plenty of time to help them when I get home from work.“

“Our girls need every advantage.” She stalked from the door to poke the finger into Cin’s breastbone. “Latest count, they’re competing against three thousand women.”

“Three
thousand?
” What kind of egotistical maniac needed three thousand marriage prospects? “Even at one a minute, that’s fifty hours worth. How will he get through them all in one night?”

“I suppose he has some sort of pre-interview screening, or maybe…hell.
Why aren’t you upstairs making my girls beautiful?
”

“Because it’s stupid!” Cin shouted. “Because even if Ez or Yl marry the jerk, what kind of man starts a relationship with a test? What kind of husband will he make?”

“A rich one,” Mrs. Wikkid roared. “Now get the fuck upstairs!”

Cin stomped upstairs, trying to cool her blood, to remember her mother’s teachings. But for the first time in her life, the hard drum of her heart in her ears drowned out her mother’s voice.

She’d thought the dry run had prepared her for the Steps’ unrealistic expectations. There was only so much cleavage she could engineer for Ez, and there was no way to morph Yl’s plump blonde prettiness into a svelt Egyptian goddess.

But today, the Steps expected flat-out miracles. Worse, Yl had gotten in to the tanning gel and now her naked skin qualified as desert camouflage.

After baths and oils and manicures, Cin managed to get most of Yl’s skin evened out and levered Ez’s breasts into moderate fullness with a really good bra and a few strategic wads of toilet paper. Then she shoehorned them both into their ball gowns.

Which was another set of disasters. At the dry run, Yl’s gold lame wrap had been too tight, and Ez’s floaty green gauze too loose. Cin argued they should take the dresses back and find ones that fit, but Yl had been determined to lose, and Ez to put on, five pounds. They must’ve gotten their wires crossed, because Yl’s lame was now so tight she look like a wad of gold-foil-wrapped chewing gum. At first Ez’s gauze, floating around her thin form, wasn’t a huge disaster. It transformed her bony frame into lithe slenderness—until she added the belt. No amount of floaty gauze could hide the fact that Ez’s waist was basically one vertebra in circumference.

“Maybe not the belt, Ez.” Cin dragged a couple of chairs into the Steps’ bathroom and plugged in the hot rollers.

“Of course I’m wearing the belt.” Ez’s nose kicked higher. “It came with the dress. I’m going to get my money’s worth.”

“Isn’t it about beauty, not money?” Cin considered the sink’s countertop, nearly wall-to-wall makeup, and shook her head. “I can only do one face at a time. You’d better both get something to keep you busy while you wait.”

Ez popped out for her smartphone and settled onto a chair. Yl trundled in reading a magazine, a newspaper tucked under her arm.

“Yl, I have to be honest. I don’t think gold is your best makeup color. You’re so pretty, and pink will bring out the sparkle in your eyes—”

“Look at this.” She shoved the magazine in Cin’s face. “Three thousand eligible women are expected tonight. I can’t be pretty, I have to be beautiful. No more, stunning. You have to make me look
exactly like this.
”

“Okay, okay. I’ll do my best.” As Cin wound Yl’s blonde hair into hot rollers for body, she tried subtlety with Ez. “Are you sure you can dance properly in that belt? Looks like it might cut off your breathing. You wouldn’t want to wheeze while whirling in Prince’s arms.”

“Well…it is a bit tight.” Ez frowned, unhooked the buckle, and pulled off the belt.

Cin released a relieved breath.

After both sisters were in hot rollers, Cin glanced again at the array of makeup products. Each Step had their own brand of prettiness, if they’d only let it shine through. But the sisters wanted to look like their favorite supermodels, and expected Cin to paint them—or cake them—until they achieved that look. She sighed.

Sooner started, sooner finished.

Wrapping a towel around Yl’s shoulders, Cin secured it with an alligator clip. “Close your eyes.” When her stepsister obeyed, she continued, “So I’m curious.” She dotted olive-gold foundation on the peaches-and-cream complexion and blended. “Why do you want to marry Gideon Prince?” She picked up the gold-spangled eyeshadow and swept it on her stepsister’s crease.

“What kind of question is that?” Yl’s eyes fluttered opened in surprise.

Cin stepped back as Yl exchanged a glance with Ez, who just rolled her own eyes and went back to perusing her phone.

Yl’s gaze came back to Cin. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me. Is it because he’s rich?”

Yl pouted. “That’s not the only thing.”

“Though it doesn’t hurt,” Ez murmured without looking up.

“Huh. Okay, hold still.” Cin wet a small brush and carefully applied a line of chocolate brown eyeshadow around Yl’s eyes, then used a bit to darken her pale eyebrows. She considered the three-toned gold blush Yl had bought, checked the model’s picture, and applied the lightest of the three shades in a line from the top of Yl’s ear to mid-cheek, slashing the darkest below it to chisel the illusion of a bony ridge on Yl’s apple-cheeked face.

Rafe wouldn’t need makeup. He has the most extraordinary cheekbones…

Really, why did all these women want Gideon Prince when there were so many more appealing men around, like Rafe? “So Prince is rich. Big deal. Is that enough to marry him?”

“Well…” Yl frowned. “He’s handsome, too.”

“Really handsome,” Ez added.

“The kind of handsome I’d like to lick.” Yl giggled.

Rafe is handsome.
Cin even had licked. She kept her shiver of delight to herself.

“And all that thick, dark hair,” Ez said. “You just know it’s perfect for twining around your fingers.”

Rafe has thick, dark hair,
she thought as she finished with her stepsister’s makeup.
Silky soft. And it smells good, too.

Yl admired her tri-tone cheeks in the mirror. “I really like this blush. Gives me those gaunt-model cheeks the boys love.”

“It is effective,” Cin said. “Let that sit a moment, and then I’ll powder you and do your hair.”

She turned to the makeup Ez had bought to go with her dress. The elder stepsister had selected a single shade of eyeshadow that perfectly matched the green of both her gauze dress and shoes—but it also made Ez’s eyes look bruised.

Cin stifled another sigh. She’d have to sneak some other colors in. “Okay, rich, handsome, fine. But Prince doesn’t seem to be the type to settle down. I heard he only ever dates a woman once. That doesn’t seem husbandly to me.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ez rolled her eyes, forcing Cin to scissor the shadow brush away lest Ez get an eye poked out. “He’s just waiting to meet the right woman.” Ez plucked up a tube shaped like an arrow labeled “I-X-TREME”. “Make sure my eyelashes are really long and spiky. I got special mascara for that.”

“Right. When I’m done with the shadow.” Cin recalled Rafe saying Prince was waiting for the right woman, too. But Milly’s explanation, commitment phobia, made more sense. “What else?”

“He’s tall,” Yl said.

“Five-ten?”

“Six-two,” both Steps said.

Rafe is that tall,
Cin mused, but then her thoughts stuttered in shocked realization.
He’s
exactly
that tall.

“And he has those blue, blue eyes.” A dreamy smile floated onto Ez’s face, the first time Cin had seen such an expression on her haughty stepsister. “Like twin moons.”

“No, darker,” Yl corrected. “Like blueberries.”

Ez’s lids snapped up. “That’s not very poetic. Prince’s eyes aren’t fruit salad. They’re too electric.”

Rafe has electric blue eyes.

Frowning, distracted by the unsettling possibilities churning in her brain, Cin finished Ez’s makeup. She did manage to sneak a bit of Yl’s pale golden powder under Ez’s brow ridge and inner corner of her eyelid, brightening up the ghastly green.

As she listened to the Steps chat about the Prince heir, she thought of Rafe. She didn’t want to go to the ball, really never had. Her only design on
any
Prince was getting the job at Prince Industries.

But Rafe wanted me to go. Why?
Could Rafe be…?

No.

But both were handsome.

Well, sure. Lots of healthy young men are handsome.

Both had dark hair.

Okay, but maybe seventy-five percent of people living in this city have dark hair.

Both were tall—specifically six-foot-two. She’d seen Rafe’s driver’s license once and knew his exact height. That was a little harder to counter. Wasn’t it possible…?

No. Absolutely not.

But the idea gnawed at her. So a half hour later, when the Steps left in a whirl of perfume and excitement, Cin watched them load into a taxi, drumming her fingers against the window sash.

It would explain why Rafe wanted her to compete in the marriage mart ball, if they were the same person.

Doesn’t explain why he’s still going through with it, though. And Prince’s pictures don’t look anything like Rafe.

“True,” she murmured as the cab sped away. Though she’d always found Rafe’s cheekbones familiar somehow. After a heart-pounding five minutes, she peeked outside. No returning taxis.