Hometown Cinderella

Nothing fancy, she judged upon final inspection in the compact mirror, but passable.

Still dreading seeing Cam again today, she nevertheless resigned herself to it, slipped on a peacoat and felt her way to the front door to go out into the cold night, regretting that she’d put this off now that it occurred to her that it was after ten o’clock and he might have gone to bed.

If he had she was just going to freeze to death, she decided. Better that than waking him up.

He hadn’t gone to bed, though. Because once Eden had crossed their joined-at-the-property-line driveways and was walking in front of his house, she could see that not only were his lights still on, he was in his living room. In fact, he was in clear view through the undraped picture window as she climbed the four steps to his front porch.

He’d apparently showered in the time between her ogling him and now. He was dressed in a different pair of sweatpants—gray ones—and another white T-shirt that had long sleeves instead of short. Although the T-shirt didn’t cling to him with the dampness of perspiration, it did fit him tightly enough to prove the chin-ups had been worth it because the knit followed his shoulders, biceps and the expanse of his chest to great effect.

Really great effect…

Inside he was drying his hair with a towel in one hand while using the other to hold the TV listings he was scanning. He didn’t notice Eden’s approach and, once again, she couldn’t refrain from covertly watching him.

It would have been helpful if the good-looking teenage boy hadn’t grown up to be one of the hottest men she’d ever seen. And while it shouldn’t have had any effect on her, it did.

“I’m just tired,” she whispered to herself again.

He’d finished drying his hair and he draped the towel over one shoulder. But running his hands through that wavy hair, finger-combing it back on top, didn’t bolster her resistance because even that haphazard grooming gave him a sexiness that was so potent it came through the glass of the picture window and nearly knocked Eden’s socks off.

Before she could lapse into another transfixed state, she forced herself to march the rest of the distance to his door and ring the bell.

She also made sure to stare straight ahead so she didn’t give any indication that she even knew he was right there in his living room, and as a result she only saw him from the corner of her eye when he peered out the window to see who she was.

Her enthusiasm for being there was not boosted by the epithet she heard him say when he saw her. But she stood her ground, bracing for more of his unpleasantness when he opened the door.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said before he made it any more clear how he felt about her being there. “But I knocked out my power, I don’t know where the breaker box is and I can’t find my flashlight. I thought, since the houses are alike, you might—”

“Know where the box is and have a flashlight,” he finished for her. Sardonically and impatiently, of course.

This was getting old.

“Yes,” she said.

She half expected him to refuse. But after a moment of glaring at her yet again he pushed open his screen door and stepped aside, inviting her in.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“I’ll put on some shoes and get a coat. I’ll have to show you where the box is,” he said begrudgingly, leaving her standing in the entry as he went the six feet to the hallway that led to the bedrooms in her house, too, and disappeared around the corner.

Eden didn’t make herself at home but she did peer from where she was into his living room.

Decorating was not his long suit.

The room was furnished for comfort not for style. There was a large brown leather sofa and matching armchair beside each other, both of them facing the television rather than angled to allow for conversation. In front of the sofa was a coffee table cluttered with what appeared to be the remnants of Cam’s dinner and a few meals before it. But other than a serviceable end table between the couch and chair, one lamp, and a television and stereo system all together on an elaborate entertainment center, there wasn’t a single knickknack or picture on the wall. There also wasn’t one book on the built-in bookshelves and Eden marveled at that fact, thinking that her moving expenses would have been considerably less had she not had boxes and boxes and boxes of books.

“I’d think it would occur to a brain trust like you to ask where something like the breaker box is in a house you’d just bought.”

He’s ba-ack….

Eden turned her head from the direction of the living room, glancing at him again as he rejoined her in the entry wearing running shoes and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and carrying a flashlight the size of a drainpipe.

“You just aren’t going to let up, are you?” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Let up on what?” he asked, pretending not to know what she was referring to.

And that was when Eden decided that they were never going to be able to merely go on from here. That awkward or not, she needed to address the events that had put this thorn in his side and apologize to him if she ever hoped for him to treat her civilly.

“I know I was awful to you when our mothers arranged for me to tutor you in physics—”

“Awful? You spent every session calling me stupid, calling me every other lousy name you could come up with to let me know you thought I was too ignorant to live. I’d say brutal is more what you were to me,” he said as if she’d unleashed something in him.

Eden hid her grimace by dropping her head and rubbing her forehead. “Okay, brutal,” she conceded, embarrassed and wishing he didn’t recall quite so much.

“You said you were amazed an ignoramus like me could even read,” he continued. “That I had no business in a kindergarten class, let alone a physics class. You asked me if you were going to get honorable mention at the bottom of my diploma because I wasn’t able to get it on my own. You—”

“I remember it all,” Eden said to keep him from going on, shoring up her courage to look at him again. “It’s the one thing that I’m mortified I did. I’d never treated anyone that way before and I never have since.”

“Am I supposed to feel special to have been singled out?” he asked.

“No. But it was special circumstances. And it wasn’t the real me and I’m sorry.”

“Who was it, if it wasn’t the real you?”

“It was a person who was out of her league being a sixteen-year-old senior. A person who was the target of what passed for humor with you older, cool people every day—four-eyes, pizza-face, metal-mouth, pumpkinhead, Halloween-hair, geek-bot, nerd-girl—”

“I don’t recall ever calling you any of that. Or even being aware of you until the tutoring.”

“But your friends, your crowd, did—Steve Foster, Greg Simmons, Frankie Franklin—they were the worst. They never gave it a rest. Even though I tried to keep to the shadows, I was still fair game that whole year. And then I came home from school one day—a month before I thought it was going to end—and my mother told me I had to tutor you, of all people.”

“Because I needed a little help. Kind of like you do right now. But I’ll bet you’re not thinking of yourself as dumber than dirt, are you? And I didn’t need the help because I was too dense to learn the stuff any other way,” he said defensively, as if he’d been waiting all these years to get that in. “I’ll grant you that I wasn’t an A student, but I was average. In everything but physics. Plus I hadn’t given it the time I should have when it came to studying. I thought I could take the easy way out. But did you just look at it like that? Not the almighty Eden Perry.”

“Almighty? That’s the last thing I thought I was. I didn’t have a drop of self-confidence or self-esteem and I was going to have to be alone, in a room, one-on-one with one of the popular people. I would have rather poked my own eyes out. I was so sure you were going to ridicule me, that I decided to—” She tried to think of how to temper what she was going to say. But the best she could come up with was, “I decided to cut you off at the knees before you had the chance to do it to me,” she finished quietly.

“A preemptive strike?” he said as if he wasn’t buying it.

“Yes, a preemptive strike,” Eden confirmed anyway. “So I went in and acted as if I thought you were… Well, you know how I acted.”

“I was already embarrassed that my mother was making me be tutored. By a girl. A girl who was two years younger than I was. But I didn’t go in putting you down. And I’d never called you names before, either, so I didn’t have that coming.”

“I know,” she said, a little amazed by just how furious he was.

“And once you saw that I wasn’t going to do it to you, why didn’t you quit doing it to me?”

Eden made another pained, embarrassed face but this time she didn’t hide it. “It was…I don’t know…I guess there was some payback in it for everything I went through the rest of the time even though it wasn’t you doing it. Plus once I’d started, I was afraid if I stopped I’d really be in for it—from you along with the rest of your clique. And that’s sort of how I am, I guess—once I dig in my heels it’s hard for me to change course.”

“So you kept it up until I felt as lousy as you did?”

Maybe he wasn’t only furious with her.

She’d assumed from his reaction to her since their paths had crossed again that he just didn’t like her. And with good cause. She’d never thought that what she’d done all those years ago might have had more impact than that. Somehow all this time she’d believed that that wasn’t possible. Her goads and taunts had been tossed at someone who she’d imagined couldn’t be hurt. But now she wasn’t so sure.

“I didn’t think anything I said would actually affect someone like you. I was a nothing and you were king of the high school world. I’ve hated thinking back on how I spoke to you, but was what I did even worse? Did I…scar you in some way?”

He didn’t like that question. He stood a little straighter, his chiseled chin raised a fraction of an inch before he said, “You left a mark but I wouldn’t call it a scar.”

Eden was concerned that he was lying. That he was covering up just how much she really had injured him, and that thought made what she’d done seem even worse.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I was never proud of what I did—in fact I was so ashamed of it that I’ve never told a single soul, not even my sisters. But I honestly didn’t think it would have any repercussions. I wondered if you’d even remember me today when Luke Walker said you were who I’d be working with.” She paused a moment and then in the name of honesty, added, “Or at least I was hoping you wouldn’t remember me.”

Cam didn’t say anything. He just let his deep blue eyes bore into her and she couldn’t tell what he might be thinking. But she could see now that the same way she still carried the wounds of other people’s words, he carried the wounds of hers and that prompted her to repeat a heartfelt, “I am truly sorry. If I could take it back, I would. And honestly, I knew you weren’t stupid. It was an awful…” She stumbled over the word he’d already found lacking and amended it to, “—a terrible, terrible thing to do and no one should have known that better than me because I was living it every day myself.”

He still didn’t say anything for a while and she wondered if her explanation and apology were too little too late. She wouldn’t have blamed him if that were the case. Certainly if one of her tormentors were standing there saying the same things to her she didn’t think it would make any difference—she still would have disliked them intensely.

But then Cam’s expression seemed to soften slightly—only slightly—and he said, “Metal-mouth, four-eyes, pizza-face, Halloween-hair and what else?”

“Pumpkinhead, geek-bot and nerd-girl, just to name a few.”

“And I got the brunt of you being called all that?”

“You could think of it as taking one for the team,” she suggested carefully, trying a tiny bit of levity to see if he’d respond to it.

And, lo and behold, he did.

He smiled. Only a little. And maybe in spite of himself. But it was a smile nevertheless.

And if he was handsome scowling, it was nothing compared to how good he looked when that face relaxed with amusement.

“Taking one for the team?” he repeated.

“You could factor in that I really was only a scared, insecure kid—not that I’m excusing my behaviour. And that I have regretted it all these years, if that helps any. And really, when all is said and done, can you hate somebody in ducky pants?”

Her second stab at a joke broadened the smile. He glanced down at her pajama pants—brown flannel printed with goofy-looking ducks.

“They’re mallards,” Cam corrected. “And I suppose I’ll think it over while I turn your lights back on.”

It wasn’t overt forgiveness but at that point, Eden decided to take what she could get.

“Thanks,” she said.

Cam nodded toward his front door. “After you.”

Eden went out into the cold again and Cam followed her as she retraced her steps, keeping her fingers crossed that peace might really have been reached between them.

The inside of her house was remarkably cooler than the inside of his and Eden knew she’d made the right choice in asking him for help.

Cam took the lead once the front door was closed behind them, using his flashlight to help navigate around and through packing boxes and debris to get to the basement.

Eden followed, happy not to be going down into the blackness of the basement alone.

The circuit box was under the stairs and one flip of the main breaker set music playing upstairs, letting them know it had worked.

“There’s a light here,” Cam said, pulling a string that turned on a bare bulb under the steps to prove his point.

Eden hadn’t realized until that moment how close they were standing. Or in what position. But they were standing very close in the small space beneath the stairs, and he’d pivoted away from the breaker box to face her.

They were so close that she had to look almost straight up at him, the way she might have tipped her head if they were about to kiss.

Which, of course, they weren’t.

But once more that strange Cam-trance thing happened and she suddenly found herself staring up into his dark eyes, thinking about what it might be like if he did kiss her. If he just leaned down a little and pressed his lips to hers.

Cam Pratt, of all people…

Then it registered that her mind was wandering again and Eden yanked herself out of it, stepping from under the stairs in a hurry.

“I’d better go turn some things off or this is going to trip again,” she said as her exit excuse, dashing up the steps far ahead of Cam.

She had turned off the stereo and some of the lights by the time he reached her, and she could hear the heat switching on.

“I really appreciate this,” she told him as he headed for the front door.

“I keep one of those lights that work on batteries stuck to the wall next to the breaker box down there so when this happens I have that option, too. In case the flashlight isn’t easy to get to for some reason.”

“That’s a fabulous idea,” she said, too effusively because she was overcompensating for calling him stupid all those years ago. She toned it down and added, “Plus I’ll be more careful about how many things I have on at once. But you know how it is when you move—I was going from room to room looking for what I needed in all the boxes so every light was on.”

He merely nodded. There wasn’t anything to say to her ramblings. But he was watching her with those penetrating eyes again as they stood at her door. Eden wasn’t sure what else to say, either.

Cam broke the silence—and the meeting of their eyes—by glancing at her pajama pants again.

“Ducky pants, huh?”

“They were my back-to-the-cold-of-Montana present to myself.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right, you can’t hate somebody in ducky pants.”

This time Eden smiled. “Does that mean I’ve been granted amnesty?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead he raised his gaze to hers once again and gave her a small, forgiving smile. “Yeah, I suppose it does.”

Eden wasn’t sure if she’d been carrying around even more guilt than she’d realized or if it had something to do with how bowled over she’d been by this guy from the start, but the relief she felt was like a huge, heavy weight lifted from her shoulders. And she was far more pleased than seemed warranted, too.

But she decided to simply enjoy it and smiled back at him a second time. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He merely nodded and opened her door to go.

“And thanks again for help with the breaker box,” she called to his back as he walked across her porch.

He didn’t turn around, he just raised the hand that held his flashlight and said, “Anytime.”

And as Eden closed her door to the sight of that man who had so enthralled her already tonight, she was a little shocked at just how tempting it was to turn on every light in the house, hit the microwave start button the way she had earlier and trip the breaker all over again.

Just so she could take him up on that offer and get him back there.

Cam Pratt.

Of all people.

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