Mistletoe Cinderella

me.”

Once they were off the phone, Dylan called the school to verify that practice time hadn’t changed and to make sure Coach Asbury didn’t mind the audience.

“Hell, no. You boys feel free to come down on the field and give pointers. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to autograph baseballs for the kids?”

Dylan winced. “Maybe next time. I think we’ll keep it low-key and incognito today.”

He arrived in the bleachers wearing shades and a scruffy cap pulled down over his forehead.

Nick smirked at him. “No one told me we were wearing spy gear. I would have brought my trench coat and fake mustache.”

“I wanted to observe without being blatant about it,” Dylan admitted. The boys down on the field had just begun their warm-up exercises.

“Does this have anything to do with Coach B. informing anyone who will listen that you’re his natural successor?”

“Tell me he’s not,” Dylan implored.

“Only if you don’t mind me lying to your face.”

“No thanks, I’ve had quite enough of that lately,” he grumbled. Witnessing Nick’s transparent curiosity, Dylan engaged in a brief mental debate and decided he might as well get someone else’s take on the situation. After all, Chloe had a confidant. Turnabout is fair play. “You remember my asking about Chloe Malcolm?”

“Yeah, she caught your eye at the reunion.”

“More than caught my eye. We talked for a while. I may have even kissed her.”

“You’re not sure?” Nick drawled.

“I was trying to give you the pertinent information but still be a gentleman about it.”

“Sorry, just having fun. Continue.”

“During the course of our conversation, she lied to me about who she was. I had to resort to skimming through reunion literature just to figure out who the hell I’d had up in my hotel room!”

“Hotel room?” Nick gave a fierce shake of his head. “You can’t be talking about Chloe Malcolm. None of this sounds like her.”

“She called herself C.J. and told me she was an interior decorator. Unless she has an identical twin you forgot to mention?”

“No, she’s an only child.”

“Yeah, that’s what her friend Natalie said, too.” Dylan glared out at the baseball diamond, but barely processed what he was watching. “They’re both in on it.”

“‘In on it’?” Nick echoed. “Chloe and Natalie Young? You make it sound like they deliberately set you up.”

No. In retrospect Dylan caught the small hesitations that he’d overlooked the night of the reunion. “I don’t think it was premeditated. I’m the one who mistook Chloe for Candy Beemis. She went along with it and then some, embellishing along the way.” When he thought of her standing in the kitchen listing the five elements of feng shui as if she were the expert she claimed to be, he wanted to shake her.

Or at least kiss her senseless.

“You thought she was Candy Beemis?” Nick’s jaw dropped. “How the hell could you confuse a sweet kid-Chloe- for that she-wolf?”

Sweet kid? “She’s the same age we are,” Dylan pointed out. “And not to disillusion you, but-”

“Did you actually call her Candy?” Nick clarified. “That had to sting. I know I temporarily lost my wits and dated Candy-I mean, come on, have you seen her? I was young and at the mercy of my hormones-but the girl has a vicious streak. Chloe always brought out the worst in her. It’s not the reason she gave publicly, but I think Candy dumped me because I had the gall to suggest she lay off the jokes at Chloe’s expense.”

So Dylan had come along at the high school reunion, where Chloe might have been feeling vulnerable over the way people had treated her in the past, and immediately mistaken her for someone who’d made her teen years a living hell? Awkward. But she should have just corrected me like a normal person! His blunder didn’t excuse her inventing a persona and perpetrating an elaborate hoax.

“What on earth did Chloe say when you asked her about all this?” Nick demanded.

Dylan’s mouth twisted. “It’s more complicated than that. When I asked if she went by Candy or Candace, she told me it was C.J. now and she led me to believe she was an interior decorator. So…I hired her.”

“I’ve never heard that she does any decorating on the side,” Nick argued, looking confused. “She works with computers.”

“I know! But she doesn’t know that I know.”

“Dude, you’re making my head hurt.”

Welcome to my world. “Maybe she’s bipolar. Maybe she’s using me to live out some kind of fantasy.” Although it wasn’t the kind of fantasy he would have hoped. “All I can tell you is that she’s gone to great lengths to pull one over on me. I don’t want to just tell her the jig is up. I want her to admit what she’s done and apologize.” Soon, he fervently hoped.

Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had to be the one to set things right, but once she did, maybe they could see each other for real. Have that dinner they’d missed the night of the reunion, exchange more of those kisses that might lead-

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to confront her? Or to walk away entirely? You can’t actually let her decorate your place.”

Then this probably wasn’t the time to mention that Dylan was supposed to see her later to discuss swatches and furniture. “She took the check of her own free will,” he defended himself, “passing herself off as a licensed decorator.”

Despite Nick’s logical suggestion, Dylan didn’t think he could simply walk away. Though she had only reentered his life a week and a half ago, Chloe had made quite an impact. The lust he’d felt when he first saw her, the anger when he’d learned who she really was-or wasn’t-the compassion he’d felt when she talked about her aunt and the admiration when she mentioned her asthma, trying to pretend casually that didn’t bother her anymore. He knew how tough it was to be a kid when you felt different from everyone else around you. Just about everyone Dylan knew had expressed some sort of condolence that he’d lost his ball career, but Chloe was different, the way she’d reached out to him at his condo. She’d made comforting him seem hot rather than pitying. The former was extremely preferable.

“I just can’t wrap my mind around this,” Nick said. “Chloe and Natalie lying and scheming? It’s like finding out Bambi and Thumper are beating up the other forest animals for their lunch money.”

“Life’s not an animated fairy tale.” Dylan’s storybook ending would have involved a long career and a Cy Young Award. And what about his mother, married to an emotional bully and struggling with the regret thirty years later? Dylan was smart enough to accept reality rather than butt his head against it.

So why, whenever he thought of Chloe and the sweetness of her kiss, did he allow himself to imagine a happily-ever-after?

Chapter Ten

“I tumbled into the photography thing,” Rachel bubbled, looking adorably round and almost too big for the precarious folding chair in the back room of the print shop. “I can’t remember-pregnant-woman brain-what do you call happy accidents?”

“Serendipity?” Chloe offered.

Rachel snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Pictures were a hobby, but then when the chamber of commerce approached me about doing a series for them, other opportunities presented themselves. It’s been a slow trickle. Nothing close to what you’d call a full-time job, but that’s not what I want after the baby comes, anyway. Just a supplemental income with flexible hours after I abandon poor May. But even for that, I think a Web site is a