The Cinderella Mission by Catherine Mann

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    Judas-freaking-priest. He was already more frustrated than a sixteen-year-old-boy watching cheerleader tryouts. Thank you very much, Aunt Eugenie and Peter.
    Ethan led his aunt into the privacy of the supply room, all the while trying his damnedest to stifle fantasies of Kellywearing a heated blush and nothing else. He shut the door. “How’s it going with Kelly?”
    Eugenie strolled from shelf to shelf, her fingers trailing over stacks of bleached towels and industrial-sized jugs of antibacterial hand soap. “You tell me. How do you think she looks?”
    That loaded question held more firepower than his 9mm. “The clothes look…nice.”
    Understatement of the year. Every day, Kelly sported a new adjustment, minor alterations that sent his head spinning.
    Pierced ears one day, with tiny pearls drawing attention to delicate skin he’d never noticed before. Another day, the arms of her sweater tied around her waist, leaving a silky shirt out there for him to see and want to touch. But the white robe was his favorite, hands-down. Or hands-on would sure as hell be nice.
    Aunt Eugenie was a serious masochist.
    “I’d like to introduce her around a bit, give her some familiar faces for the night of the gala.” Eugenie adjusted the sash on her kimono without looking at him. “Nothing fancy. Just some friends of yours around the pool.”
    Ethan leaned back against the refrigerator stocked with sports drinks. “You remember this isn’t real, don’t you?”
    “Of course. A dinner will smooth her way at the ball since she’ll know more people.”
    “So you think she’ll be ready?”
    “Tomorrow we have an appointment with the hair-dresser.”
    Panic kicked him at the thought of all that magnificent hair on the floor. “You’re not going to cut it?”
    A Cheshire-cat smile creased her round face. “No.”
    The woman knew him too well. Damned good thing she wasn’t the enemy or his ARIES status would have been busted long ago.
    Something he wouldn’t let happen, especially not now. He wanted that information on his parents.
    “What really happened the day my parents died?” The question fell out of his mouth.
    His aunt blinked, just once, but enough to surprise him with how a single question had shaken her.
    She turned to the shelf of bottled oils and nudged them in line. “What do you mean?”
    “It was an open-and-shut case, right?” He waited, not that she seemed inclined to offer anything up before she had those bottles in regimental order. “My au pair sold me out to kidnappers. The actual attempt went to hell when my father tried to evade the car chasing us and my parents died.”
    Long-ago echoes pounded through his memory, sounds of crunching metal, screaming tires. The burn of the seat belt digging into his waist as the car slung to the side. The betrayal of seeing his au pair, Iona, watching from the car beside.
    Finally, Eugenie faced him, eyes sheened with tears now as they had been when she’d picked him up in Switzerland after the accident thirty years ago. “Thank God the authorities had already been alerted so we didn’t lose you, too.”
    “How did they know to come?” Ethan shot straight for the hole in the story that had niggled at him through a sleepless night. “There wouldn’t have been a ransom request yet.”
    She didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Didn’t answer, not right away. Not more than four or five seconds passed, but more than enough to make Ethan wonder.
    Then his aunt patted his face. “Your parents were late with a promised call. I was worried, so I called the authorities.”
    “That makes sense.” So why the hesitation?
    “Of course it does, since that’s what happened. Why all the questions now after so long?” She tucked her trembling hands into her robe pockets.
    Those shaking hands shut him down faster than any angeror frustration. This woman had been through enough grief for two lifetimes.
    “No reason.” He slung an arm around her shoulders and dropped