If The Shoe Fits (3 page)

Madeleine hissed. “You needn’t make it sound
so mercenary. The Arts Center holds many charitable events for our
community and—”

“
And will put you in the limelight
and get you invited to all the social events of the year.” Where
she hoped to snag a rich husband. Again
.
“I
know
.”

Madeleine’s bony fingers gripped the pewter
skirt hugging her anorexic hips. “You know, I’d think you’d thank
me for trying to raise our station in this town so that sister of
yours can aspire to be something other than a busboy.”

Bella so wanted to unload on the woman, but
with legal custody of Sophia, Madeleine held all the cards. And the
witch knew it.

Bella was amazed she didn’t have an ulcer from
keeping her mouth shut for the past ten years. If only she’d won
that catering contract, she’d be able to put her money where her
mouth wanted to be.

The grandfather clock chimed and Bella turned
back to the door just as Sophia’s bus pulled up outside.

“
Sophia’s home.” It was all she
needed to say to get Madeleine to leave the foyer. The woman had as
little interaction with Sophia as possible. For all intents and
purposes,
Bella
been Sophia’s guardian while their
stepmother had played at being the put-upon wife whose husband lay
unresponsive in a hospital bed for years.

But suddenly none of it mattered as a tornado
of energy bustled through the door. A tangle of arms, legs,
schoolbags, and long blonde ponytail, all eagerly wrapped
themselves around Bella’s waist.

“
Bella!” the tangle
shrieked.

“
Sprite,” the tangle’s sister
returned. “Welcome home, honey.” She unwound the gangly appendages,
pushing the ponytail out of the face of her ten-year old sister.
“How was school?”

“
It was great! Me and Cara got to
take extra long turns on the swings because Nicoletta got a time
out for pushing Joseph. Then Marco’s mom brought in cupcakes for
his birthday, so I won’t be hungry for dinner. Maybe I’ll just have
dessert.” She looked up, eyes wide.

“
Nice try.” Bella tweaked her
nose. “But if you’re going to eat anything, it’ll be something good
for you rather than more sweets.” She bent down to kiss Sophia’s
cheek. “Besides, you’re sweet enough as it is.”

Bella wrapped her arms around her sister and
hugged her tightly, her last link to their parents. Parents Sophia
didn’t remember. It was up to her to make sure Sophia never lacked
for love since Madeleine had about as much capability in that
department as, well, Cinderella’s stepmother. The woman did love to
play to type. “Want to help me set up for a tea party?” She touched
Sophia’s nose with her own.

“
A real live tea
party?”

“
A real live tea
party.”

“
Okay!” Sophia shrieked and raced
to the kitchen.

“
You
will
keep her under
control while the guests are here.” The order was dictated from the
landing above, accompanied by the tapping of one pointy
Prada.

Bella looked at her stepmother as she rose.
“Don’t worry. Sophia and I will be nowhere near your precious tea
party.”

Or anywhere else around her if only dreams
could come true.

***

“
You’re a miracle worker. How do
you do it?”

Reese smiled at Jake, his business partner, on
the other side of his desk. “I simply pointed out the positive
publicity she’d get for her career as she comes out of
retirement.”

Jake arched an eyebrow. “Sure it didn’t have
anything to do with a dinner invitation, oh royal
prince?”

“
Not you, too, Jake,” Reese tossed
the dossier onto his desk and stood up. “I’d like to think it was
my sparkling wit and charming personality that won her
over.”

“
Well, there’s that I guess, but
I’d put my money on the HRH thing. It always gets their
attention.”

Reese walked to the floor-to-ceiling glass
window overlooking the river. Ever since The Injury, this view had
always soothed him, but even the view couldn’t make the “royal
prince” thing any better.

HRH—Henry Reese Hapsburg Charmant. He shook
his head. His mother, star of stage and screen, had given him one
hell of a moniker. His dad’s, his own, and that of some obscure
long-lost great-great-something-uncle of the famed European royal
family. The press had picked up on it, dubbed him
Prince
Charmant,
and he’d been dealing with the jokes about fairy
tales and lost shoes ever since.

Ironic that he’d actually put Bella’s shoe
back on her foot. He’d made a point of
never
doing that for
any woman just so he
wouldn’t
fuel the stories.

But Bella wasn’t just any
woman.

Reese grimaced. Great. Now
he
was the
one buying into the fairy tale. At thirty-four, he ought to know
better.

He watched a pair of speedboats race down the
smooth-as-glass surface of the river, their wakes splitting the
water like a sharp knife through freshly-baked bread, then stuck
his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Well,
whatever did the trick for her, Bella McIntyre said she’d be able
to make—”

“
Bella?” Jake joined him. “I
thought her name was Belinda McIntyre.” He grinned at Reese in the
window. “Or is Bella a nickname only a select few know
about?”

Hell. He had to get his mind back on the
job—or there’d
be
no job. “No, you’re right, it’s Belinda.”
Reese walked back to his desk and picked up the dossier with the
papers he’d gotten the golfer to sign earlier. “She’s agreed to
participate in Community Hospital’s ‘Auction for Action.’ I got her
to promise nine holes to the winning bid, with full press coverage
from ESPN.”

“
And that came
through...?”

“
An old buddy in the high-ups who
owed me a favor.” Reese set the contract papers down. The auction
was the first big contract Promotional Sports had won. His name and
celebrity status would only carry him so far; he had to deliver. He
was determined to make his mark with the event, so he’d called in
as many favors as he could. “But business is business. ESPN gets an
exclusive, Belinda gets her publicity, the bidder gets the chance
to golf with a pro, Community gets its donations, and the kids in
the foster system get their programs.” He tapped his knuckles on
the stack of paper. “Everyone wins.”

“
And we’ll get our fee and make a
name for ourselves.”

Reese nodded. “As I said, everyone wins.” He
picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser on the file. Everything
was falling in to place with this event. “So what else do we need
to go over?”

“
Well, you need to pull out your
miracle-making stops again. There’s a problem. With Conlon’s
Catering.”

He’d spoken too soon. “What problem? I talked
to Marisa last month. She was good to go for the event.”

Jake slapped a file on his desk. “But did you
know that she and Luke went away together recently?”

“
Don’t tell me.” The pencil
tapping picked up speed. “He dumped her with all the panache he’s
always had.”

Jake didn’t even need to nod. His silence said
it all.

“
Damn it!” Reese threw the pencil
onto the desk and the graphite tip slid across the outside of
Belinda’s folder in an angry black slash.
The Midnight
Maiden
’s top chef would be at his annual culinary conference
during the auction; he
needed
Conlon’s for this event. “I’ve
told him to stay away from my personnel! There aren’t enough women
in the world for him to blow off? Now he’s got to pick someone I
need? God, you’d think he would have
gotten it
after my
fiasco with Devin.”

Reese rubbed the back of his neck, the old
tension headache starting at the thought of that nightmare. Coach’s
daughter had been the one to seek him out. She’d been around pro
sports all of her life, had known the score. Reese had figured he’d
been just another hotshot for her to date.

He winced. That made her sound callous and
shallow, when she really wasn’t. Devin was a nice girl. Too nice in
fact. They’d started dating and she’d started thinking
forever
. He never saw it coming.

The breakup had been horrible. And public. The
team’s owner hadn’t liked the negative publicity. And Coach just
plain hadn’t liked it—to the point where the bad feelings began
affecting their interactions. The fact they won the Super Bowl that
year was due more to the team’s competency than him as a shining
star or to Coach’s management. Reese knew the man had hated him for
“using” his daughter. Not that he had, but perception was
nine-tenths reality.

There’d been talk after the win of either
trading him or letting Coach go. The team couldn’t manage the
tension. However unprecedented it would have been, there were
serious discussions of breaking up the championship-winning
pair.

Reese could never allow that. His talent and
his reputation; they were who he was. He’d refused to be traded to
another team in shame and refused to let Coach leave in the same
manner. So he’d ignored the stories, learned how to evade the
questions, wore his game face 24/7, and toughed it out. But when
he’d ruptured his Achilles tendon the following season, he’d opted
out. Went out on a high note. Blaze of glory. All the banner
stuff.

And then found himself at a loss when it came
to employment. Retirement had always been in the future. It’d taken
him a while to regroup, figure out what he wanted to do with the
rest of his life. Slowly but surely Promotional Sports was panning
out. Yet now his “good buddy” Luke was about to bring it down with
his Casanova crap.

“
That explains why he decided not
to show for our appointment today.” Reese leaned back in his chair
and steepled his fingers. “But how can Marisa do this? It’s
business.”

“
I tried that with her,” said
Jake, “but he must have done a hell of a number on her. Her exact
words were ‘I want nothing to do with anything that weasely maggot
touches.’ I tried to explain that he wasn’t involved with this, but
she wasn’t buying it.” Jake tossed his own pencil onto the file and
sank into one of the chairs in front of the desk. “We’re tainted by
association in her eyes.”

Reese bit back the foul words he wanted to
say. He’d been counting on Conlon’s. “How the hell are we supposed
to find another caterer at this late date—”

Another caterer. Bella. And she’d already bid
on the contract; was she still available?

In more ways than one—

Reese shook his head. It figured. The one
woman to affect him in a long time was one who could make or break
his business.

Chapter Four

Bella opened the glass door to Casteleoni’s
the next morning and ducked as a flour-laden something whirled past
her head, exploding into a vast cloud of white mist when it hit the
front counter.

“
You are a madman!”

Not again.

Bella waved through the powder and closed the
door, then flipped over the OPEN sign and flicked on the dining
area lights. The scent of freshly baked bread and muffins wafted
toward her as Giacomo, a tall toothpick of a man with a dyed black
handlebar mustache, swished angrily from the kitchen, his gangly
arms flying about his head.

When he reached the break in the counter, he
flung back the hinged top and pirouetted through, sputtering, “You
simply
cannot
make spinach-filled donuts. We work hard to
make the name Casteleoni a proud one and you produce this...
this,”—his tongue tripped over itself—”abomination.”

Twirling, he pranced to a booth, shot a look
of pure misery at Bella, then collapsed onto the vinyl-covered
cushion in an exaggerated heap, his long, thin fingers massaging
his temples as he shook his head, muttering to himself.

It was a familiar sight.

A booming voice bellowed from the kitchen.
“Pah!” The superior inflection of disgust spoke volumes. “You! You
know nothing! You are afraid to reach for the heavens, you
provincial, bourgeois peasant!”

Bella winced at the tinny sound of copper pots
clanging against the steel prep table.

“
Only I have the vision, the
desire, the
ability
to reach for the stars while you...” A
rag came sailing through the swinging doors. “You settle for
mediocrity!”

Bella held her breath as the short, rotund
Guiseppe, a ring of graying hair encircling his bald head like a
coronet, strode through the saloon-style doors between the counter
area and the kitchen, turning awkwardly to shovel his girth through
the small space.

“
You!” His stubby finger pointed
at Giac heaped in the booth. “You—go! I cannot work under these
conditions. I will not.” As he squeezed out of the counter, he
flung another flour-covered rag at the foot of the
booth.

He looked at her, red-faced, with his fists
clenched, and his native Italian accent made heavier by emotion.
“It is Giacomo or Guiseppe—not both.”