Cinderella Wore Tennis Shoes: A Novella Read Free Page B

Dan’s cheek. “She’s cute,” she said with a nod toward Charlie.
    Dan suddenly became very interested in his glass of water. He was embarrassed again. Charlie wasn’t sure what to make of the quiet man who had rode to her rescue and embarrassed as easily as a schoolboy.
    “I suppose you’d like me to explain about today?” she offered.
    He shook his head in denial. “I don’t expect an explanation.”
    Charlie raked her fingers through her hair. She could still feel the styling gel her mother had insisted on and longed for a shower to rinse away the last reminders of her aborted wedding. “I think I owe you one. I’m not sure how much sense it will make.”
    “Then don’t—”
    Charlie kept right on talking over his protest. “I’ve never been what you’d call a rebel. I go with the flow. When I met Winslow, well, I was flattered that he was interested. And my mother? Well, for the first time in my life, she was proud of me.”
    “Because this Winslow was interested in you?” he asked.
    “I . . . my mother is hard to explain. Actually, I’d have to understand her to explain her, and I don’t. All I know is the more I saw of Winslow, the happier she was. After spending most of my life being ignored, it was”—she paused and searched for the right word—“novel. And I was able to convince myself that she really did care.”
    “But?”
    Before Charlie could answer, Shirl was back with their meals.
    “Here you go, Dan,” Shirl said. She didn’t use a tray and yet managed the two glasses and two plates with flawless ease. “Hope you enjoy, honey,” she said as she plopped their meals down and ran off to the other side of the room where someone was bellowing her name.
    Charlie looked at Dan’s plate, a mirror image of her own. “Your regular is a cheeseburger?”
    “Shake too.”
    She peered in his glass. “Chocolate, not strawberry.”
    He simply nodded and dug in.
    Charlie followed his lead, and after the first bite paused and wiped her mouth. “Oh, my gosh, Dan, this is wonderful.”
    “Save some room for dessert. The pies are out of this world.”
    Charlie slurped her milkshake.
    Toward the end of the meal, his eating slowed. “You didn’t really explain why you were hitchhiking.”
    Charlie popped a fry in her mouth and sighed. “You see, I was supposed to marry Winslow Carter today and bear a bunch of little Carter heirs. I was supposed to be the perfect little wife, docile and obedient. I was supposed to be my mother’s ticket into a world she’d always dreamed about.”
    Those gray eyes held her gaze. “But?”
    “I got cold feet.” No, that wasn’t exactly right, and she tried to explain. “Not exactly cold feet. I finally realized Winslow didn’t love me. He thought he could control me, and control is something that appeals to Winslow almost as much as it does to my mother. And I’ve discovered I don’t really care for being controlled.”
    “So you ran out on him at the last minute?”
    He appeared confused.
    For some reason most adults she talked to eventually appeared confused. Charlie should have been used to it. Words never came out exactly how she wanted. She sometimes thought she talked so much in hopes that at least a percentage of the words would come out right, but for the most part it didn’t seem to help.
    “I know,” she said with a sigh. “It seems dramatic, but I honestly thought I could marry him. I believed my mother and Winslow when they said my reservations were just prewedding jitters. Or maybe I just wanted to believe them because it was easier.
    “But as I looked into his eyes and the whole church was waiting for me to say ‘I do,’ I realized I didn’t, and it wasn’t just cold feet. I didn’t and I never would. So, I said ‘I don’t’ and left.”
    Dan was silent a moment and then said, “Can I ask you something?”
    “Sure.” Charlie was getting the impression that Dan didn’t make a habit of asking questions.
    “It’s not