Trish Wylie - The Bachelor's Cinderella

Her heart stopped pounding. It melted. She barely managed a nod. “Thank you,” she said.

Etienne shook his head and gave her a crooked smile. “It’s just the way business goes,” he said, even though she knew that wasn’t true. “Now, weren’t we on the verge of going out to have fun?”

“I think I might have promised you something like that.”

That was how, just a few hours later, Meg found herself standing under The Bean in Millennium Park.

“It’s an odd nickname for something with a name as beautiful as Cloud Gate,” Etienne conceded of the highly reflective steel sculpture that did bear a striking resemblance to a bean. “But it’s a very beautiful and imposing structure. Look at us, Meg. Look what all that work is doing to our bodies,” he teased, as they stared at their distorted images in the sculpture.

She bopped him on the arm. “Etienne, you promised to transform me into a gorgeous woman, not this hideous creature I see here. What have you done to me, you evil man?” she teased.

A group of teenage tourists standing nearby gave the two of them a strange look, and Etienne held out his hands in mock surrender. “She’s been working much too hard,” he told them, and Meg couldn’t help laughing. “Her mind is going.”

“Maybe she’s a little crazy, but your woman has some fine legs,” a boy in the group said.

Etienne chuckled. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said.

“They think we’re strange,” Meg told him as the two of them moved on through the park.

“And involved,” Etienne pointed out.

Instantly Meg sobered. She didn’t want him to think that she was growing too attached to him. She didn’t want to grow too attached to him. “Well, at least we know that we’re just business partners.”

“And friends,” he reminded her.

“Yes. And this friend still has more to show you.” It was Thursday and there would be a concert at the Pritzker Pavilion later, but it hadn’t started yet, so they walked over to the Crown Fountain, two huge structures connected by a reflecting pool and projecting the everchanging images of over one thousand Chicago residents. “The kids love it when an image opens its mouth and water flows out. It’s pretty cool. Come on.” And without another word, Meg took off her shoes, held them in one hand and walked out into the reflecting pool.

Etienne shook his head and followed suit. “When you told me you were going to take me sightseeing, I was picturing something more dignified.”

“Museums?”

“Maybe.”

“Theater?”

“Of course.”

“No dancing in the fountain?”

“Not a chance. That’s not sightseeing.”

“What is it?”

He laughed. “It’s just plain fun, Meg. This was just what I needed. This letting loose.”

The two of them joined in with the kids and a few other adults. Etienne took Meg’s hand and led her into a romping polka, their feet kicking up water. “It’s the only dance I do well,” she explained. “It’s wild and fast and I can lead and no one seems to notice.”

A few minutes later, somewhere in the distance, the concert started up, the majestic and imposing strains of “Respighi’s Pines of Rome” echoing throughout the park. The music was beautiful, but Meg’s eyelids were beginning to droop.

Etienne led her out of the fountain, made her sit on a bench and reached out for her foot.

“What are you doing?” she asked, instantly awake.

“I’m putting your shoes on.”

“I can do that.”

“Too late. I already did,” he said, deftly cupping her foot in his palm and sliding her shoe on. There was something so intimate about the gesture that Meg felt a tingling running from the sole of her foot all the way up through her body. And then he did it again, with the other shoe.

All traces of tiredness had fled by now.

“Come on, Meg,” he said as he put his own shoes back on. “I’m taking you home.”

“There were more things I wanted to show you,” she said. “Navy Pier. The giant Ferris wheel. The cruises on the lake.”

“Another day,” he said. “You’re tired.”

But somehow she knew that there wouldn’t be another day. She had started attending functions, talking up the company. Orders were starting to trickle in. The wheels of Fieldman’s were picking up speed, and soon she and Etienne would be headed to Paris for one last push at an entirely different set of potential customers. And once the expo in Paris was over…Etienne was over, too.

“Another day,” she agreed.

When she opened her apartment door, the phone was ringing. “Go ahead,” Etienne said and she moved to answer it. When she returned he was standing in the middle of her apartment. Lightning was flirting with him shamelessly, standing on the couch next to him and rubbing up against him.

“I thought you had a cat,” he said.

“I do.”

“No. I can hear another meow from somewhere.” He gestured with his head.

Meg shrugged. “The other cats are Pride and Prejudice.” She nodded toward the other room. “They were supposed to simply be foster cats, but they’re a pair and difficult to place. They’re shy. Eventually, they’ll come out.” She went about the business of putting food out, talking soothingly to each cat as she fed them.

“And all three cats get along?” Etienne asked.

“They’re my family. Family members do not fight other family members. If I can prevent it,” she added.

Etienne chuckled. “Are there others?”

“For today, this is it. But it’s an unpredictable family and is subject to unexpected growth at any time. The local shelter contacts me now and then when they need help saving an animal and they think I can be of use.”

“And you once said that you wanted a child.”

Despite the fact that it was Etienne himself who had dropped this conversational nugget in, the room felt as if the temperature had changed. Etienne had been playing along with Lightning and rubbing her head as she purred and leaned against him shamelessly. Now he stopped, his fingers stilling.

“You told me that you were unlikely to get married. How do you plan to get one? A child, I mean.”

She looked directly into his eyes. “I don’t know yet. I needed to have a stable position before I tried adopting…or maybe I’ll go to a sperm bank.”

“So…there won’t be a father?”

“No. No father.”

Because men had not treated her well, he was sure. In the silence that followed her announcement, the slow burn of anger slid through Etienne.

He still hadn’t replied to her comment, and Meg picked up the small ginger colored cat that had wandered into the room, nuzzled it and began to pet the animal. “I’ll be a good mother,” she said, as if promising herself and him that. “I’ll care.”

“I have no doubt of that.”

“You don’t approve.”

“It’s not that at all. It isn’t my business to approve or disapprove. I just…You should have help.” Etienne studied her attention to the cat. He watched as her fingers threaded through the little cat’s fur and then as the third cat, a small ball of black fur, demanded his turn.

“I’ll manage,” she said. And she could just as easily have added, I always do. But she didn’t say those words.

“I suspect you’ll do better than manage,” he told her. He glanced at the cats. “Pride and Prejudice?” he asked as she put the little black cat down and soothingly spoke to the pair as they went on their way.

She shrugged. “It’s my favorite book.”

“I see. So, of course you’d name two cats after it just as you’d name a cat who never jumps and barely even blinks Lightning.”

“Of course. I have a unique naming system. It’s called the impulse system,” she said with a small smile, but when she had bent over to release the cat, her hair had snagged on her lips. Without thought, Etienne stepped forward and brushed it away. His fingertips touched her mouth.