Fairy Tale Weddings Read Free

tell you.”
    â€œTell me what?” Cindy chuckled at the way her friendbit her bottom lip. “Have you discovered the secret to peace and goodwill for all mankind?”
    As soon as the doors opened, Vanessa grabbed Cindy’s arm and jerked her out of the elevator. “Look at this!” she said, shoving her friend toward a large notice board.
    â€œLook at what?” The only thing she could see was information about some type of party.
    â€œRead it out loud,” Vanessa said impatiently.
    Shrugging, Cindy complied. “The Oakes-Jenning Christmas Ball, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, December 12. Hotel St. Moritz, Grand Ballroom. By invitation only.”
    â€œWell?” Vanessa’s arched her eyebrows devilishly.
    â€œWell, what?” Gradually the answer seeped into Cindy’s perplexed brain. “You’re nuts! You couldn’t possibly mean I should—”
    â€œIt’s the perfect chance to get you two together.”
    â€œBut…” So many objections crowded Cindy’s mind that she couldn’t express them all. The first one to untwist itself from her tongue was the most obvious. “I don’t have an invitation.”
    â€œHey, there are ways—”
    â€œForget it!” Cindy hoped she’d said it with enough force to cancel all further argument. She stepped back into the elevator and waited for Vanessa to join her.
    â€œI’m not going to forget it and neither are you. It’s fate…kismet. I knew it the minute I saw Thorndike Prince’s picture in the paper and so did you, so don’t try to argue with me.”
    â€œI’m not arguing,” Cindy told her calmly. “I simply refuse to discuss it.”
    â€œBut why?”
    Faking a yawn, Cindy brought her hand to her mouth, then glanced conspicuously at her watch.
    â€œAll right, all right, I get the message,” Vanessa said under her breath. “But you aren’t kidding me one bit. You’re dying to attend that Christmas Ball.”
    Was she? Cindy asked herself as the night progressed. Dusting Mr. Prince’s outer office granted her the solitude to think about the magic of a Christmas ball, and she realized her friend was right once again. Cindy had never thought of herself as transparent, but she would gladly have submitted to the taunts of two ugly stepsisters for the chance to attend such a gala event. Only she didn’t have any stepsisters, ugly or not, and she wasn’t Cinderella. But a ball…the Christmas Ball…Nowhere else would she have the opportunity to introduce herself to her prince and be accepted as his equal….
    She ran her feather duster across his secretary’s desk, and for the first time since she’d been hired by the janitorial company, Cindy wondered about the woman who spent so much of her day with Thorndike Prince. Ms. Hillard rarely let anything go to waste. Even discarded pieces of paper were neatly trimmed into scratch pads, stapled together at the top corners. The woman’s theme appeared to be Waste Not, Want Not.
    Cindy spent a bare minimum of time in Mr. Prince’s office. The room required a dusting now and then and an occasional vacuuming, but other than that, it was surprisingly neat, which was something she couldn’t say about the other executives’ quarters. Emptying his garbage, she smiled as she noticed the name The Deli Belly, the delicatessen from which Thorndike ordered his lunch. He was apparently a creature of habit, but then they all were, weren’t they?
    As Cindy moved from one office to the next, she tried to contain her thoughts, but the image of a crystal ball dangling from the ballroom ceiling and the room full of dancing couples kept flitting into her mind. In every image, Cindy and her prince were at the center of the Grand Ballroom, arms entwined around each other.
    â€œWell?” Vanessa said, startling Cindy.
    She recovered quickly. “Well,