The Reluctant Cinderella

So instead of a lawn party upstate or a four-day weekend in the Hamptons, Greg had opted for the temporary quiet of the city and the pile of work always waiting on his desk. He’d given his personal assistant the day off, had a clear calendar and didn’t expect to be disturbed.

But then, at eleven, his phone buzzed. Surprised, he checked the display: the security desk down in the lobby. Was the building on fire?

Frowning, he punched the talk button. “Greg Banning.”

“Mr. Banning, Megan Schumacher is here to see you.”

Megan Schumacher? Who the hell was…?

Then he remembered. Damn. Carly had called him two weeks ago and asked him to interview Angela Schumacher’s sister. He’d agreed, and had gently gotten rid of Carly. And then promptly forgotten all about it. Which was why the appointment—for today, at eleven—had never made it to his calendar.

Greg scoured his brain. Megan Schumacher…

The woman lived over the Angela’s garage, didn’t she? And she was in…?

Graphic design. Yeah. According to Carly, she owned a small company, the name of which escaped him. Carly had asked him to consider using Megan’s little company for Banning’s design work.

Greg just hadn’t been able to tell her no. He felt bad for Carly. He honestly did. He felt bad and he felt guilty—which was why he’d made sure she got a nice, fat divorce settlement and why he couldn’t refuse her when she asked him to interview her friend from the neighborhood.

Greg straightened his tie and shook his head. What a damn waste of time—both his and the poor Schumacher girl’s. Banning’s already had the services of a top-notch graphic design firm at their disposal. It was a firm Banning’s had been using for over twenty years, a firm that invariably delivered a quality product on time and within budget.

So there was zero chance he would hire Megan Schumacher. And that meant all he could do right now was smile and make nice and let the poor thing down gently.

“Thanks. Send her up.” He punched the line to the receptionist’s desk. “Jennifer, Megan Schumacher is coming up to see me. Show her the way to my office.”

“Of course, Mr. Banning.”

Greg hung up and went back to the flow chart he’d been studying. A few minutes later, Jennifer spoke from beyond his wide-open door.

“Mr. Banning, Ms. Schumacher is here….”

Greg clicked the program shut and glanced up. The sexiest woman he’d ever seen was standing in the doorway. Greg blinked. “Uh. Thanks, Jennifer. That’s all.” The receptionist left them.

And the incredible woman in the doorway greeted him with a glowing, dimpled smile. “Greg. How’ve you been?”

Simple question. But somehow, he’d temporarily forgotten how to speak.

Superlatives scrolled through his stunned brain: amazing. Outstanding. Exceptional…

Not pretty, really. Better than pretty.

She was full-figured in a hot-pink jacket and skirt, an outfit that hugged her generous curves. She wore one of those camisole things under the jacket; he spotted a tempting hint of black lace that matched her sleek black high-heeled shoes. Her blond hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders.

Could this possibly be Angela Schumacher’s nondescript little sister?

Evidently.

He couldn’t believe it. He remembered Megan Schumacher—or rather, he didn’t remember her. To be brutally honest about it, all he could recall of her was a general, fuzzy impression of someone shy and plain and slightly overweight.

But this woman…

She literally sparkled with energy and life and…well, there was that word again: sex.

He really needed to stop thinking about sex.

Greg was a conservative man. He kept his flirtations away from the office, never mixed business with pleasure, had never gotten near another woman while he was married to Carly.

But right then, in the first five seconds after this new, astonishing Megan Schumacher entered his office, all of his fine principles flew right out the window. He wanted her. Damned if he didn’t. He wanted her bad.

And he’d been sitting there gaping at her like a teenage kid with his first big-time crush. He jumped to his feet. “Megan. It’s great to see you.”

She dimpled at him again. “Admit it. You barely remembered me. And I can see it in your eyes. You promised Carly you’d give me this meeting—and then you instantly forgot all about it.”

Ouch. She’d nailed him.

No point in denying it. “Okay, you got me,” he confessed as he stepped out from behind his big glass desk and crossed to meet her. She carried a large, soft briefcase and a hefty portfolio. He took the portfolio from her with his left hand and extended his right. “But now you’re here and so am I. And I can’t wait to hear all about what Design Solutions can do for Banning’s.”

She sent him a conspiratorial glance, one that hinted she thought he was laying it on a little thick. But all she said was, “Good. Because Design Solutions has a lot to offer you.” Her perfume tempted him—flowers, plus something slightly tart. And more than the flowers and the tartness, she smelled of…

Peaches. Damned if she didn’t smell like a sweet, ripe peach. Her hand was soft and smooth and cool. He liked the feel of it cradled in his. Liked it a lot.

He had to remind himself to let go. “Your company is relatively new, isn’t it?”

She nodded firmly. “Design Solutions is three years old and growing by leaps and bounds. I have two graphic artists on staff, a Web expert, an office manager, a clerk-receptionist and an intern who helps out wherever we need him. I’m looking at bringing in another artist and possibly even a second designer at the first of the year.” She gestured with one of those soft hands. “Just put the portfolio down anywhere.” With the tips of her fingers, she brushed the back of one of the two chairs that faced his desk. He wished those fingers were brushing him. “Sit here, beside me. I’ll boot up my laptop and we can get started…”

Sitting beside her.

Excellent idea. He took the chair she’d indicated and propped her portfolio up on the floor between them, then he sat back and watched as she took a laptop the size of Cleveland from her fat briefcase and opened the thing on the outer edge of his desk.

“I’ll show you some of the work we’ve done.” She sent him another of those captivating smiles as the big screen glowed to life. “Then I want to give you a basic idea of the many ways Design Solutions can bolster and expand on the Banning’s brand. Finally, we’ll take a look at a few things in the portfolio. It’s always good, I think, to get a sense of textures and colors, to see firsthand how the print work is going to translate. We can do so much online and with computer programs now, but sometimes digital images simply aren’t the same as holding the finished product in your hands….”

“Excellent,” he said as she started bringing up examples of work her company had done. Each one was different from the last, and each was terrific—clear and well-organized, with colors that popped and graphics that jumped right off the screen.

As she began explaining how she would work her own particular magic on Banning’s image, Greg realized he was interested—and not only in the lush, peach-scented Ms. Schumacher herself.

Her ideas for Banning’s were fresh and exciting. And Greg had been thinking lately that the company needed an upgrade on the image front. Their trademark black-and-red graphics had once seemed sophisticated and dramatic.

Now, though, gazing at the images Megan had prepared for him, the plain black-and-red seemed a little bit tired, didn’t it? A little bit old.

“We don’t want to go with different colors,” Megan suggested. “We don’t want to lose your brand recognition. We just want to…update your look a little. Instead of midnight black, we’ll make it just a tiny bit silvery. So the black has a certain…luster. No?”

He was nodding. She continued, “And we’ll go from that slightly blue red to an even brighter, more aggressive true red….”

“I like it.”

She glanced at him. That dimpled smiled bloomed and her green eyes danced. “I kind of figured you would.”

She spoke of launching a print campaign to make sure all of Banning’s customers were aware of the fresh styles they carried now. They needed, she said, to showcase the new clothing lines they’d recently introduced, the ones that targeted a younger, trendier consumer. She took apart Bannings.com, said the pages were too slow to load, and navigation could be simpler. Her Web guy, she promised, was a genius. He could get with Banning’s Web people and help them streamline the site while they worked on the various image-brand issues.

Greg listened and nodded, asked a few questions and liked the answers he got, all the while planning how he was going to get to know her better.

It might not be easy. She was direct and cheerful and friendly. But she wasn’t coming on to him. Not in the least.

Still, she had to feel it, didn’t she? The heat of attraction? She was only behaving appropriately, hiding her personal interest in him, keeping it strictly business, right?

Or was interest on her part no more than wishful thinking on his?

He just plain couldn’t believe that he’d once lived on the same street with her and never even noticed her. She was not the kind of woman a normal, red-blooded man easily forgot.

She wrapped up her presentation, and by then he was totally sold. He would have Design Solutions revamp the image of Banning’s department stores.

But there were more steps to take before he could tell her she had it locked up. Greg’s father, Gregory, Sr., chairman of the board of Banning’s, Inc., would have to be convinced, as would a couple of the vice presidents. Greg had no doubt that Megan and her team would cinch it with the rest of them, but he wasn’t telling her that. No way. If he told her, she might just smile that stunning, dimpled smile, say “Thank you very much,” and leave.

“I want to hear more,” he said, as she zipped up her portfolio. “It’s almost one. Are you hungry?”

For the first time since she’d strolled so confidently through his office door, she looked doubtful. A slight frown formed between her smooth brows. She cleared her throat. “Well, I…” The words trailed off.

He jumped right in before she could find a way to say no. “Let me take you to lunch. You like Italian? I know a great little Italian place up on Lexington at 33rd. The food is terrific and the service is, too.”

For a moment—barely a split second—he thought she looked…what? Shocked? Wary? Slightly frantic?

But before he could decide what the look might mean, it vanished. She flashed him another of those incredible smiles of hers. “Why not?” she said. “Lunch it is.”

Megan was having the time of her life.

She had so aced her presentation. Soon, there would be more meetings with more executives. She and her team would need to get right on a formal Flash presentation—one that would blow them all away.

Oh, yeah. She would get the Banning’s account, she just knew it. And now here she was, sitting next to Greg on gorgeous, glove-soft black leather in a company limo.

Greg had insisted on the limo, so she could stash her big portfolio and heavy briefcase in the trunk and forget about them while they were in the restaurant. Megan enjoyed a limo ride as much as the next girl. What was not to like?

She leaned on the padded armrest and gazed out the smoked-glass window at semideserted Manhattan streets. “I love New York on days like this.”

“You mean when everyone else is gone for the holiday?”

“Exactly.” She turned to Greg, met those velvety brown eyes of his and told herself that the thrill that shimmered through her every time she looked at him didn’t mean a thing. “It’s so…peaceful. For a change.”

“Your offices are in Poughkeepsie, you said?”

She nodded. “Close to home and economical. You live here in the city now, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a loft apartment right on Broadway, two and a half blocks up from the office.”

“Convenient.”

“That’s what I tell myself….” He had a great voice. Deep. Smooth as melted chocolate. But did he sound kind of…wistful?

She thought of Carly, wondered as she’d wondered more than once in the past months just what had gone wrong there—two beautiful people with everything going for them. Two nice people. Really, their breakup made no sense.

Megan dared to suggest, “You sound…I don’t know. As if you’re not happy living in the city.”

His warm gaze cooled just a little. “I’m happy. Perfectly. And here we are….” The limo rolled to a stop in front of the restaurant and the driver got out and opened the door for them.

“Thank you, Jerry.” Greg pressed some bills into the driver’s palm. “We’ll be awhile. I’ll call for you when we’re ready to go.”

“Good enough, Mr. Banning.” Jerry tipped his chauffeur’s cap and got back behind the wheel.

After the heat of the summer day, the restaurant was cool and dim and inviting. The hostess called Greg by name and took them to a corner table. Even with half of Manhattan out of town, the place was almost full. “Must be popular,” Megan said to Greg once the hostess had left them.

“It is. Deservedly so.” The wine steward appeared. He and Greg conferred briefly. The steward nodded and left, reappearing a moment later with bottle of chenin blanc. There was pouring and tasting. Finally, the wine guy left. Greg held up his glass. “To Design Solutions. Much success.”

Oh, well. One glass wouldn’t hurt. And she was pretty much finished working for the day, anyway. She touched her glass to his. “To success.” She sipped. The wine was excellent. “Umm. Wonderful. Too wonderful….”

“Is that bad?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Not in the least.”

He leaned a little closer across the snowy white tablecloth. “You are amazing. You know that?”

A curl of alarm tightened inside her. She ordered it gone. He wasn’t putting a move on her. No way. It was just a compliment. No big deal. “People from the neighborhood are always surprised when I happen to run into them during working hours.”

“On Danbury Way you always seemed so…”

She laughed again. “I believe the word you’re looking for is shy? Or maybe bland? Or just plain dumpy…”

He pretended to look injured. “Did I say that?”

“You didn’t have to—and I confess, okay? In the neighborhood I do like to, er, play it low-key.”

He sipped from his wine. “Why?”

“Habit, I guess. And, oh, I don’t know. Everyone at home sees me a certain way. And I don’t disillusion them.”

“But if it’s not the real you…”

It seemed so natural to lean toward him, to brush the back of his hand with light fingers, to enjoy the lazy, pleasured feel of that brief touch. “But it is the real me.”

He frowned, though his eyes had a teasing light in them. “Then who is it I’m sitting across from right now?”

She shrugged. “This is me, too.”

“Ah,” he said, but he still looked doubtful.

She explained further. “They’re both me. I guess this is more the new me—and at home, I’m pretty much the old me. If that makes any sense.”

“I’ll take the new you.”

Before she could come up with a suitably lighthearted reply, the waiter appeared.

After they ordered, Greg asked how she’d come to live over her sister’s garage. She explained about wanting to put everything she had into starting up her company. “That was three years ago,” she said. “And Angela and her ex, Jerome, were calling it quits. My moving into the apartment at her house worked out for everyone. Angela and the kids can use the extra money I pay in rent, and I get a nice, reasonably priced place to live. I can zip back from Poughkeepsie at four most days and stay with the kids after school until Ange gets home from work. Then, if I have anything that won’t wait, I hop the train and head back to the office to put in a few hours in the evening.”

And why was she telling him all this? As if it mattered in the least to Greg Banning how she and Angela juggled child care and the necessity of bringing home a paycheck.

He remarked in a tone that said he really was interested, “Sounds like a tight schedule.”

“It is. For both Angela and me. But we manage….”

“You’re smiling. I think you love your sister a lot.”

“Yeah. I do. She’s my best friend.”

“Any other sisters? Brothers?”

“Nope. Just the two of us—in fact, I was adopted into the Schumacher family when I was eleven and Angela was thirteen….” It had been a very tough time, those first years after her parents died. Megan had been bounced from one foster home to the next.

“Your birth parents?”

Was this getting just a little too personal? Probably. But then again, none of it was any deep, dark secret. “I was seven when they died. We went on a family vacation in the Bahamas—my parents, my brother and me. Mom and Dad rented a boat and took us out on the ocean. A sudden storm blew in. The boat capsized. I survived by catching a piece of driftwood and holding on until help finally came. My parents and my little brother…not so lucky. They said it was a miracle that I lived through it, that they even found me….”

Funny. After all these years, it still got to her, to remember the ones she’d lost so long ago. If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear her mother’s warm laughter, see her father’s loving smile. She’d adored her bratty brother, Ethan, even though he could be so annoying.

Not much remained to her of the day she had lost them. She recalled that the sun had been shining when they set out. The sky had darkened. And after that, she had only a series of vague, awful impressions of clinging to that bit of driftwood in an endless, choppy sea, calling for her mother, her father and Ethan until her throat was too raw to make a sound….

Greg’s big, warm hand settled over hers on the white tablecloth. She looked down at it—tanned, dusted with golden hair, strong and capable looking. It felt really good, to have him touching her.

Much, much too good…

She eased her hand away, picked up her wineglass and knocked back a giant-size gulp.

Greg’s dark eyes held sympathy and understanding. “What a horrible thing to happen—to anyone. But especially to a little girl.”

She beamed him a determined smile. “Well. I got through it. And eventually, the Schumachers adopted me. Angela and I hit it off from the first. And then, three years later, our parents divorced. It was pretty bad, especially for Angela, who’d had just about the perfect childhood up till then.”

And come on. Megan had said way more than enough about herself and her childhood. “What about you?” She was reasonably sure he had no siblings, but she asked anyway. “Brothers? Sisters?”

He was shaking his head. “I’m an only. I grew up in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. Big rooms in that brownstone. And high ceilings. Kind of empty, really. And very, very quiet.”

She sipped more wine. “Your parents still live there?”

“Yes, they do.”

“You wanted brothers, didn’t you? You wouldn’t even have minded a sister or two.”

“Yeah. I wanted a houseful of brothers and sisters. Didn’t happen, though. Truthfully, for my mother, one child was more than enough.”

Vanessa. That was his mother’s name. Megan knew this because Carly had told her. Carly said Vanessa was tall and slim and very sophisticated. And difficult to please. “Greg’s mother never did like me much,” Carly claimed. “Not that she’s happy about Greg wanting a divorce. Vanessa doesn’t believe in divorce, so she’s on my side for once. But it’s not for my sake or anything. It’s just the principle of the thing, you know? She’s always made it painfully clear that she would have preferred if Greg had married some rich Yankee woman from Vassar or Bryn Mawr, instead of me….”

The waiter appeared with a pair of calamari salads. He set the plates before them, poured them each more wine and then was gone.

Megan picked up her salad fork and popped a bite into her mouth. She wasn’t a big squid fan as a rule, but the salad was wonderful. She chewed and swallowed, thinking about Carly, feeling just a little bit guilty about the way things were going here. This was a business lunch, and nothing more. But somehow, it was a business lunch that felt way too much like a date.

They both concentrated on the fabulous food for a moment or two, in a shared silence that was surprisingly companionable. Megan sipped from her water glass and decided a change of subject—away from the personal and more toward the professional—was in order.

She suggested, “We haven’t set a date and time for our next meeting.”

He sent her a look, one that heated her midsection and curled her toes in her best pair of shoes. “We aren’t finished with this one yet.”

She toasted him with her wineglass. “I like to plan ahead.” And she took another sip, though she knew she shouldn’t. She was on her second glass and the world was looking a little bit soft around the edges. Plus she was smiling way too much. That always happened when she drank more than one glass of anything with alcohol in it. She became a smiling fool.

Greg took a sip, too. “Okay. Tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

Firmly, she set down her glass. “A formal presentation. With my entire team there—and anyone from Banning’s who you think should be in on the final decision.”

“That sounds like the next step to me.”

“I’d love it if you and your people would come up to Poughkeepsie for the presentation.”

“You want it on your turf.”

“I do.” She was grinning again. Much too widely. But somehow, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—make herself stop. “Would that work for you?”

“When?”

“A week from today. Say, 10:00 a.m.?”

“That’s quick.”

“We’re not only good, we’re efficient.”

“I like efficiency.” His eyes said there were other things he liked, things that had nothing to do with updating Banning’s brand.

She remembered her objective. “So…?”

He nodded. “Next Monday at ten in your offices. That should work. I’ll need to check with the others, confirm that they can make it.”

“I’ll have my assistant call your assistant, just to firm things up.”

Those dark eyes gleamed. “You mean to make certain the date and time get on my calendar.”

She shrugged. Eloquently. “Well. There’s that, too.”

“I won’t forget. Not this time. How could I? After all, it’s an appointment with you.”

An appointment with you….

His tone was personal. And so was that gleam in his eyes. Megan knew she should say something, should make it clear right then and there that, for Carly’s sake, she could never allow anything personal to go on between them. At the very least, she should sit up straight, stop leaning toward him across the table, stop smiling into those beautiful eyes of his.

But she said nothing. And she went on smiling, went on leaning eagerly toward him, went on wishing with every fiber of her being that he wasn’t Carly Alderson’s ex.

Chapter Three

Greg wanted to stay in that restaurant forever, to sit across from Megan and stare into those clear green eyes, to listen to that slightly husky voice of hers and try to make her laugh. She had the best damn laugh, free and full-throated.

But after she refused dessert and finished her coffee, well, he could see that she thought it was time to go. He called Jerry and paid the bill and they went out into the glaring brightness of the afternoon.

“Take the limo,” Greg said.

She looked adorably bewildered, those round, soft cheeks slightly flushed, and confusion in her eyes. “But there’s no point. I can catch the train right here at—”

“You’re not taking the train. Jerry will take you home to Rosewood—or on up to Poughkeepsie, if that’s where you’re headed from here.”

“Oh, I couldn’t….”

He caught her hand. Heat sizzled up his arm. “Yes, you could.”