The Cinderella List Read Free

clock.”
    “Unfortunately, I think mine ran out of batteries, got unplugged or something. I wish I could find a man who could jump-start it for me.”
    “You probably have Jeremiah Cole to thank for that.”
    Tall, blond, tan, rugged in a surfer sort of way, he’d swept her off her feet the first time they met. She only found out later that he, with his compelling green eyes and smooth words, had a way of sweeping many women off their feet.
    It had been a dreadful time. Marlo had been planning her own fairy-tale wedding—and might even have gone through with it, had she not caught her fiancé and his “other woman” in a cozy tête-à-tête in a downtown hotel restaurant. She knew for sure what it felt like to have a broken heart—one shattered like a piece of brittle glass.
    Marlo despised revisiting that time in her life, but it was impossible to avoid sometimes, especially when someone new expressed a romantic interest in her. The experience had colored every relationship she’d had since, and her views not only about immoral men, but about soulless women who were willing to step into an existing relationship and break it apart.
    “I learned a few things back then, Lucy. It wasn’t all wasted.”
    What she had learned was that men were not to be fully trusted, because they could be comfortably engaged to one woman and dating another. She also learned that no matter how much she cared about someone, she would never pursue him if there was someone else in his life. She learned that the last thing she would ever be was the other woman.
    It was painful even now, months after the breakup. “I thought that we’d be perfect together, and look what a mess that turned out to be. This time I’ll wait for God to handpick someone right for me, and stay out of the selection process.”
    “Admirable,” Lucy said. “It’s going to take an act of God tofind someone for you. I worry that the standards you’ve set for your ideal mate are so high that no one will ever match your qualifications. You’ll regret that Cinderella List of yours.
    “Jake Hammond is a perfect match in the physical looks category. Did you see what happens to his eyes when he smiles? They crinkle up and practically dance with laughter.” Lucy gazed dreamily into the glass-fronted refrigerator, swollen with food they’d transferred from the coolers in the van. “And you could hardly miss the way he fills out a suit. He must lift weights, don’t you think?”
    Marlo thrust a tassle-topped toothpick into a meatball and handed Lucy the tray. “Scram. These go to the table.”
    “If I can’t think about men, I can still imagine living in this house and cooking in this kitchen,” Lucy continued. “The parties we could have. Elegant, sophisticated…crème brûlée at every meal…truffles…caviar…sushi….”
    “Crème brûlée at every meal? I don’t know.” Marlo tapped her finely shaped chin with a fingernail, as if trying to imagine it. Simultaneously, they looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Let’s party.”
    Every time Marlo entered the vast dining and living room areas of the house to refill plates, her eyes scanned the room for Jake. The consummate host, he continually circled the room, speaking to every single guest as he moved. She noticed, however, that there was one guest who received more of Jake’s attention than the rest. An elderly woman with snow-white hair, pink cheeks and miles of wrinkles etching her face made her way slowly across the room, leaning heavily on a burled wood cane. She reminded Marlo of Britain’s Queen Mum. When she approached a group, conversation slowed and those in the group became very deferential, almost obsequious. Only when she left would they start their animated chatter again.
    Jake, however, didn’t show the same reverence for the old woman. Each time he came around to her, their heads bent together, dark and white, and he would whisper something in her ear that made her smile.