Arlene James - Glass Slipper Bride

“What can I get you to drink?”

“Nothing, thanks. I’m not much for alcohol.”

“Me, neither,” she said, opening the door of a tiny refrigerator to reveal rows of canned colas. “But I do like a jolt of cold caffeine on a hot evening.”

“In that case, I’ll have what you’re having.”

She removed two cold cans and popped the tops. “Want a glass?”

“Nope.”

She carried the colas over to the couch and sat down, offering one to him. He took it carefully, avoiding contact with her fingers.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. “You’re easy. I don’t even have to wash a glass.”

“Stays colder in the can,” he said, taking a sip.

She nodded and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Camille’s not here right now, but she’ll be along in just a minute. The TV station’s got her going out to some charity gala tonight, so she had to get a dress.”

He filed that away for future reference and turned the conversation to a subject that had been bothering him since she’d mentioned it. “You said that she took you in after your parents died.”

Jillian nodded. “That’s right. My mom and dad were killed in a boating accident when I was eleven. Camille was only seventeen, but she insisted her mother take me in.”

“I thought Camille was your sister.”

“She is. My half sister, anyway. We had the same father but different mothers.”

“I see.”

Jillian nodded and curled one long leg up beneath the other. Her feet were bare, and he couldn’t help noticing that they were long and slender with high arches, her second toe longer than the first, the nails oval and neatly trimmed. He wondered irrationally if she would appreciate a good foot rub as much as Serena had after a long photo shoot. To block that train of thought, he searched for something else to say and came up with, “It must seem like you’re full sisters if Camille’s mother raised you from the age of eleven.”

“She didn’t,” Jillian said, then she seemed surprised that she’d said it. “I mean, Camille was more a second mother to me than Gerry—that is, Geraldine.” She grimaced and went on. “Don’t misunderstand me. Gerry’s been great. It’s just that my father left her for my mother, who was his secretary at the time, so naturally she doesn’t look on me as another daughter, just her daughter’s half sister.”

Zach lifted a brow at that. “Must’ve been awkward, living with your father’s ex-wife.”

She shrugged. “We’ve gotten used to it over the years.”

“You mean you all still live together?”

“That’s right. Only it’s Camille’s house now. After Gerry’s last husband died she moved in with us.” Jillian leaned forward then and confessed, “There have been three—husbands, I mean—including my father, who was number one.” She sat back. “Anyway, it’s a big house.”

Her background sure made his look pedestrian. His own parents had been married thirty-six years and currently divided their time between Montana in the summer and Texas in the winter. With one older and one younger brother, both married and settled, both cops like their father, he was the closest thing to a black sheep in the Keller family. Even among all the aunts, uncles and cousins there had been few divorces and fewer deaths. He sipped more cola and thought of another question to keep the conversation going.

“Don’t you have any other family?”

Jillian shrugged. “I have an aunt by marriage and a couple of cousins in Wisconsin. My uncle was still living when my father died, but he was disabled, so my aunt really couldn’t take on anything else. My mother was an only child born late and unexpectedly in her parents’ lives. I don’t even remember them. If not for Camille, I’d have been fostered somewhere or sent to an orphanage.”

“So she’s really all you have,” he commented softly.

Jillian nodded. “And I can’t let anything happen to her.”

Just then a door slammed somewhere in the back of the house. Voices and footsteps could be faintly heard, then a shout. “Jilly!”

Jillian got up and went into the hall. “We’re in the living room, Camille.”

“We?”

“Zachary Keller and I.”

A long silence followed and then someone shouted, “Bring him into the bedroom.”

The bedroom? Jillian glanced at Zach and shrugged apologetically. “She’s awfully busy, and she does have this public evening out.”

He got up. “Maybe I should come back another time.”

“Oh, no!” She rushed toward him. “Please at least talk to her.”

He wanted to say no, but he couldn’t quite look into those huge, worried eyes and manage it. He nodded. “If you’re sure she has the time.” He took a long drink of the cola and handed it to her. She carried the half-filled can to the bar and left it on the marble countertop.

“Follow me.”

She hurried out of the room on her slender, bare feet. He took a deep breath and trailed her across the hall and through a formal dining room, glimpsing a kind of den on the way, and out the other hall into a smallish but well-appointed kitchen, which opened onto yet another hall, where she turned right. She went down the hallway to the end and led him through an open door—into utter chaos.

He got a fleeting impression of lavender and pale green, formal draperies, graceful furnishings and plush white carpet, before the frenetic motion of several bodies moving at once enveloped him. A tall, rawboned woman with ink-black hair scraped into a sophisticated roll on the back of her head swept past him toward the bed, trailing a garment on a hanger. A small man with a gray ponytail trotted by carrying a large white leather case, a rat-tail comb stuck into the clump of hair at his nape. A petite, middle-aged blonde with beauty-shop hair and skin that looked as though it had been stretched too tautly against her skull swayed past in an expensive pink suit, barking orders to the room at large.

“Be careful with those silk stockings,” she was saying. “Someone get the beaded handbag and the blue satin shoes. I’ll get the sapphires myself.”

“Did anyone order flowers?” a man wanted to know. “I was told it was taken care of.”

Zach turned his head to find a man in a tuxedo sitting in an armchair beside the bed, calmly thumbing through a magazine.

“I have the flowers,” a female said, coming into the room behind Zach, “and the makeup base.”

“Thank God!” the man with the ponytail exclaimed, practically bowling over Zach in his hurry to take the small bottle of cosmetics from the blue-jeaned newcomer who brushed past them both. The tuxedo didn’t even bother to look up from his magazine.

“Shall I return the rest or keep them on consignment?” the tall woman wanted to know.

“Consignment,” said the middle-aged blonde, carrying a pair of shoes in one hand and a sapphire necklace draped over the other.

“I wish we had time to wash this mess,” the ponytail complained, yanking free the comb.

“Anyone know when the limo arrives?” asked the tuxedo disinterestedly.

Jillian cupped her hands around her mouth. “Camille?”

The pink blonde turned on her. “Do you have to shout, Jilly? Can’t you see your sister’s busy?”

Jillian ignored her. “Camille?”

“I’m not a miracle worker, you know,” the ponytail said, furiously back-combing someone’s hair.

“I could use a cold drink.” said the tuxedo.

“I’ll get it,” said blue jeans, “as soon as I find the evening bag.”

“Camille,?” Jillian said once more above the general hubbub.

They all ignored her, even the pink blonde, who was busy laying out the sapphire necklace and a pair of matching earrings on the bed. Zachary had had enough. He put two fingers into his mouth and let loose a long, shrill whistle that brought the whole room to an instant stop.