His Cinderella Next Door Read online

  He could host a dinner party for at least a dozen people out here! Oscar hosted dinner parties?

  There was a huge sectional sofa, and again it was a surprising pop of lime green on the accent cushions that made it seem like the unexpected would happen here. But the most astonishing piece of furniture was a suspended basket chair. Shaped like a teardrop, it looked something like a bird cage with the door taken off. Inside was a nest, created by a huge cushion in that same shade of lime. It was definitely a snuggle spot for two people!

  Oscar was watching her. She was drawn to the chair.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Georgie jumped up and made himself at home.

  “Try it,” Oscar invited her, setting down his platters and walking over to take hers from her. “Hop in.”

  Molly gave herself over to the chair.

  “Oh,” she said. Georgie shifted to accommodate her. The chair enveloped her, and swung gently. The cat found his way to her tummy. “It’s amazing.”

  Oscar grinned and bowed. “This is what I do. This is my recycling business.”

  “Sorry? I’m not following you.”

  He had a pair of barbecue tongs in his hand. He gestured around—the pagoda, the beautiful furniture inside of it, the chair she was sitting in.

  “I recycle waste into this. My company is called Current Ocean. We started with plastics from the ocean, making small items, like necklaces, bracelets and earrings. But we’ve expanded since. We use a lot of tires now, too. The outdoor furniture has become our major product. It’s all completely weatherproof.”

  “It’s incredible.” No wonder this space was so warm and welcoming. Unlike this inside space, this was pure Oscar. He had created all of it. She loved that he glowed under her approval.

  “Our motto,” Oscar told her, “is making problems into solutions.”

  She almost blurted out that she needed him in her personal life, but what problems did she have? Professionally, her every dream had come true. But personally? She couldn’t seem to stay in one place. She couldn’t seem to sustain a relationship. She sometimes had this secret longing to be girlie: to get her nails done, to wear high heels, to buy a gorgeous dress, and she fought it off as if it were the worst kind of betrayal of everything she had learned growing up.

  He turned and busied himself with the food as she swung gently, watching him, and feeling faintly guilty about it.

  “I’m not used to being a lady of leisure. Do you need help?” she asked, as she watched him fire up the grill.

  “I told you, I’m looking after you tonight. You’ve been traveling all day. Relax. Any preferences for music?”

  “Metal,” she said.

  “What kind of vegetarian listens to metal? Hey, Siri, play my list.”

  Just like that, the space filled with music. The first piece was classical guitar.

  Once she would have known what he listened to. The guitar music was the most pleasant of surprises, and so perfect with the setting.

  After the first few minutes, she allowed herself to enjoy the sense of being looked after. In her pajamas, snuggled up with the cat, watching Oscar work his magic at the grill, Molly let the incredible smells envelop her and listened to the rain patter on the roof mingling with the selection of music that ranged from flute solos to soft rock and pop.

  “Did you drift off?”

  Molly opened her eyes, startled. “I didn’t think so. I was just so relaxed.” She didn’t add it had been a long, long time since she had felt that way. Her life always seemed to hum with a fine tension, with the potential for catastrophe to unfold unexpectedly.

  It was such a treat to experience this kind of serenity.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  “I’ll get up.”

  “No, you won’t. Just shift over. Get rid of the cat.”

  She saw now Oscar had two plates. She tried to push the cat off, but with a miffed expression, he just moved to the bottom of the cushion.

  The chair swung gently as Oscar joined her. It held them both easily, but tightly, touching the full length of their bodies, shoulder to thigh. The feeling of serenity was edged out slightly by the awareness of him—his strength, his scent, his closeness.

  He passed a plate to her. She bit into her hamburger.

  “Ambrosia,” she decided. “And no tomatoes.”

  “Did you think I’d forget you don’t like tomatoes?”

  It was a lovely reminder of just how well they knew each other. She didn’t like tomatoes. He didn’t like pickles. She liked hot sauce. He liked mayo.

  But now, seeing him in his lush surroundings, there was a whole part of him she didn’t know about, and she wanted to fill in the blanks.

  “Tell me more about your business,” she invited him.

  It turned out Oscar had been earning a degree in chemical engineering, but it was a beach holiday in Thailand where he had first started mulling over the idea of turning plastic, harvested from polluted oceans, into usable objects.

  As always, when he talked about science, he became very animated. Over the next years, while still a student, he had tried experiments that succeeded and just as many that failed, but he had finally come up with a formula where he could turn a small amount of plastic into a usable product at a decent price. He had started by making a small necklace.

  But it was when he was approached by a furniture designer that things went big. The designer had connections, and with Oscar’s business background from his family, Current Ocean exploded. Their products were now in demand around the world.

  “I still like being in the lab the best,” he admitted. “And as we’ve grown more successful, I’ve been able to pull back from the parts I don’t like more and more. Cynthia liked the glamorous part of starting an exciting new company: schmoozing, getting invited to important events, but I just didn’t care. It was one of many differences between us.”

  “What happened between you and Cynthia?” Molly realized it was way too personal. Sharing the chair had lulled her into thinking they were best friends, confidants, just as they had been most of their lives. But six years separated them, and a lot of life had passed under the bridge since then.

  He hesitated, and then said, his voice low, “You know how you said the apartment looked like no one lived there?”

  She nodded.

  “The relationship felt the same way. It looked so perfect and felt so...” His voice drifted off. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s a really great person. We’ve remained friends. We just discovered we weren’t right for each other.”

  It was so like Oscar to remain friends with an ex. He was such a decent person. But it sounded as if Cynthia had been, too. Why did Molly want to hate her?

  “I knew she must be a good person,” she said grudgingly. “Ralphie mentioned her sometimes. He liked her.”

  Something tightened marginally around Oscar’s mouth. “That’s enough about me. What happened to your last relationship? A musician, right?”

  “I suck at relationships,” she said, trying to sound breezy, not a hint of finding-someone-else’s-panties-under-her-bed in the tone. “It’s my lifestyle. I’m never around.”

  That had been Werner’s excuse, too. As if it were somehow her fault he had strayed.

  And maybe it had been. Not so much because of lifestyle but because of fear. Fear that she didn’t have what it took to make things work out. That she always held part of herself back because love was, as her father had always said, the biggest pain of all.

  Look at how she had felt when she left Oscar to go to photography school. Bereft. Between leaving him and losing her father in such a short period of time, she hadn’t eaten or slept properly for months. Only the work removed her from the pain, and she had poured herself into it. People thought she had talent, but what she had was a single-minded focus
driven by the need to escape the fact she was so alone in the world.

  “Are you lonely?” he asked her quietly, always able to read her so accurately.

  It was too personal, just like her asking him about Cynthia.

  “I don’t feel lonely when I work—which is almost always—I feel alive.” Sometimes it was the only time she felt fully alive, but she didn’t feel ready to surrender that truth to Oscar.

  “You take some big chances to get those photos,” he said quietly. “Is that what makes you feel alive? The adrenaline rush of surviving?”

  “I like being death-defying,” she said stubbornly. “It’s in my blood.”

  Did she feel Oscar shudder ever so slightly beside her?

  “I hear a but there.”

  Shoot. She’d never been able to hide her truth from him. She tried, anyway. “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He was her best friend. Was he still? It felt like it. She was shocked that she wanted to tell someone.

  “Sometimes I look at a normal couple in the park with a Golden Retriever and a baby on a blanket and I itch to capture that baby with my camera, instead of a pride of lions lunching on a gazelle or a hippo crushing a canoe in his jaws.”

  “So, do that,” he said, as if it were the easiest choice in the world.

  “You know what babies lead to?”

  “Is this a trick question? I know what leads to babies.”

  She could feel herself blush. She gave him a little warning nudge with her fist. There were certain conversations that were not going to be safe for them. What led to babies was going to be one of those.

  “Weddings,” she said, glumly. “Babies lead to weddings.”

  “Um, I think you might have that backward. I thought weddings led to babies. As hopelessly old-fashioned as that makes me.”

  She shot him a look. She loved that about him. That he was hopelessly old-fashioned, a traditional kind of guy. Honorable. Decent.

  “Photography,” she said. “Baby photos lead to wedding photos. I’ve already had several requests. I hate wedding photos.”

  “But you’d like to do baby photos,” he said, too astute, as always.

  She was silent for a long time. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “You’ve always been able to tell me your secrets,” he reminded her.

  “I’ve regretted it, too.”

  “You have not!”

  “Remember the time I told you I had a crush on Vincent Marcello?”

  “We were thirteen!”

  “Aha! So, you do remember.”

  “Okay, yes I do.”

  “And then a week after I confided in you, he asked me if I wanted to go to a movie with him. I always wondered if that was a coincidence.”

  “I don’t recall the details.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Of course not. I might have hinted that if he asked you out, you’d say yes. That wasn’t giving away your secret. It was using something I knew about you to make your dreams come true.”

  “He might have asked me out on his own.”

  “I doubt that. All the guys were scared to ask you out.”

  “How come? My dad?”

  “Well, maybe that, a bit, but mostly you’d beaten them all at arm wrestles.”

  “Anyway, all your efforts did not make my dreams come true,” Molly said. “He turned out not to be a white knight.”

  “Thirteen is a little early to want to be whisked off on a white charger, anyway.”

  “He tried to kiss me in the theater without my permission. I blacked his eye.”

  Oscar chuckled softly. “And sealed your dating fate for the rest of your school years.”

  “I never really believed in that white-knight stuff, anyway.”

  “But you wanted to,” Oscar said softly.

  This was the problem with being with a person who knew you so well, knew you better, sometimes, than you knew yourself. This was the problem with someone knowing your secrets and wanting to help your dreams come true.

  “Well,” Molly said, after an uncomfortable silence between them, “I’m even more jaundiced now than Vincent Marcello left me.”

  “I know,” Oscar said, quietly, his voice threaded through with sympathy. “But there’s been some winners along the way, hasn’t there?”

  “I’m having a nice night. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, let’s get back to your secret, then.”

  She hesitated. “I think I’d like to do more portraits,” she admitted.

  He actually chuckled. “That’s the big secret?”

  But that was only part of it. The other part she would never tell him because she could barely admit it to herself. Seeing families, wanting to photograph them, to capture what they had, seemed to be about some secret yearning in herself. A yearning for belonging. For warmth. For hope. That secret was, well, terrifying.

  The fact that she longed for the thing her father had detested the most—normalcy—felt like some kind of betrayal.

  “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the big secret.”

  “Have to say I don’t get it. Who would pick taking a picture of a baby instead of standing in front of a charging bull elephant, having it blow snot in your face?” he teased her.

  “The elephant snot thing was only once.”

  “It was Ralphie’s favorite story from you,” he told her, with a smile.

  “You don’t get it,” she said dismissively. “I love the challenge of getting a great shot. Anybody with a bubble blower and a teddy bear can get a great shot of a baby.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PROBLEM, OSCAR THOUGHT, with Molly in her pajamas, nestled under his arm, the rain pattering on the pagoda roof, the soft music and the cat at their feet, was not that he didn’t get it.

  The problem was that he got it completely.

  He’d always gotten it.

  This was a part of Molly that she did not show the world. Despite that image she loved—the fearless photographer facing down the charging elephant—Molly yearned for all the things everyone yearned for. Family. Connection. Children.

  But she saw those yearnings as a weakness. As things to be kept secret.

  He got up and got them both a glass of wine, then returned to the chair. It was, as it had always been, just so easy to be with Molly. Their conversation roamed easily between old friends and new interests, current events and the hometown changes.

  But there was a new element there, too. An element he had introduced, six years ago, the last time he had seen her.

  He’d kissed her.

  Thoroughly.

  And it was not the kind of thing a man just put out of his head, especially with her fitting so comfortably against him again now.

  Like they were two pieces of a puzzle made to fit together precisely.

  The chill of the rainy night began to gather around them, but instead of suggesting they go in, he went and got a blanket, and lit the ethanol fireplace. He refilled their wine glasses and came back to the chair.

  He covered them both with the blanket.

  “It reminds me of the old days,” she said, “sitting on the roof outside my bedroom window together. We used to talk until our voices were hoarse. Remember?”

  Of course, he remembered.

  And that’s what they did again now. They talked until their voices were hoarse, and they couldn’t keep their eyes open another second, and then they fell asleep, cocooned from the world, not just by the chair but by each other.

  Her breathing had grown deep and steady, when suddenly she jerked. And then she sat up.

  “Oh, geez,” she said, “I’ve forgotten to check my messages. I’m waiting for a really important call.”

  Oscar felt the disa
ppointment of this moment coming to an end. Of her other world infringing. But he recognized, ultimately, it was for the best.

  “It’s late here, anyway,” he said, getting up from the chair, and reaching out a hand to help her. “I was getting ready to turn in.”

  That wasn’t true. He had been getting ready to stay up all night—or to fall asleep in the big chair with her. Whatever happened.

  But that was over now. Molly let go of his hand as soon as she was out of the chair and scrambled through the rain to the door. The cat gave him a look that said, See? She’s mine, and then jumped off the chair and followed her.

  Oscar gathered the dishes and food, double-checked that the barbecue was off and went into the apartment.

  Molly was sprawled on the couch inside, going through her phone with an intense look on her face. She looked somehow right in his space, bringing it the thing it had never had, and that she had sensed it was lacking right away.

  Life.

  As he watched, the scowl left her face. She beamed down at the screen. The look on her face—anticipation, delight—made him wonder who she had just heard from. Was it a man that brought that look to her face? She had just extradited herself from one of her horrible choices. Surely, she wasn’t already—

  None of his business, he told himself firmly. It was probably work. Work was, by her own admission, the thing that made her feel alive. He was aware he wanted other things to make her feel alive, but that made him look at her lips.

  And recall feeling as alive as he had ever felt. But that was about him. Because whatever she had felt that night they had kissed had been part of what had driven her away.

  Friends. They were just friends. Despite his niggling awareness of her—or maybe because of it—it was his responsibility to keep it that way.

  She looked up at him. The glow from whatever she had seen on that phone still showing on her face.

  “Thank you for a wonderful night, Oscar.” She got up off the couch, came and stood before him, reached up on her tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “I’ve got some stuff I have to look after.”