Glass Slipper Bride. Arlene James
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wrapped it a second time and slipped it into the brown paper sack printed with the words Downtown Deli. To the sandwich in the sack she added a small bag of barbecue potato chips, a shiny red delicious apple and a single piece of dark-mint chocolate, which he would eat first instead of last. The lunch safely packed, she poured a large container of strong black coffee, capped it with a lid and placed both lunch sack and coffee container in a cardboard punch-out tray. Now it was time to look to herself.
She washed her hands at the far sink, removed her smudged white apron, smoothed the straight skirt of her pale-gray uniform, pushed her glasses farther up on her nose and patted the headband with the white paper decoration that declared her a Downtown Deli Delight and held back her wispy, caramel-colored hair. She sighed, knowing exactly what she looked like. At five feet ten inches and 130 pounds, she was a gangly, awkward excuse for a woman, with waiflike pale-blue eyes twice the normal size dominating a pointy face more suited to a gnome than a female. Ah, well, Zachary Keller, of Threat Management, Inc., wasn’t likely to notice the first thing about her.
She doubted that in the seven weeks since she’d come to work here behind the counter of the deli in his office building he had noticed her even once, despite the fact that she’d built him the same sandwich at least a dozen times. Now she needed his help. She was about to pass from the cipher behind the counter to supplicant and then intermediary. Soon, she suspected, she would be dismissed altogether. The important thing was to engage his interest on Camille’s behalf, and she could do that. She could.
So what if her knees went weak every time she saw him? Every tall, hunky, dark-haired, green-eyed, chiseled-faced man did that to her. If she couldn’t exactly remember any others, that signified nothing. They hadn’t noticed her, either, she was sure. Camille was the one who got noticed, petite, pretty, blond, successful Camille, the Camille who was all the family she had, her much admired, much loved elder sister.
Jillian waved at the counter manager and received his permission to leave in the nod of his balding head. Carrying the cardboard tray, she slid from behind the deli cooler and walked across the tiny dining space toward the bank of elevators across the lobby. Tess, one of her co-workers, paused while wiping down the hubcap-sized glass top of a tiny wrought-iron table recently vacated by two secretaries taking a late coffee break and called out encouragement.
“You go, girl! Get that good-looking man in your corner!”
Jilly laughed and held up crossed fingers. Every female in the building had a crush on the man. His quick smile, enigmatic green eyes and extremely fit, muscular build were the stuff of fantasies, but according to his secretary, Lois—fifty-something, divorced, pragmatic, efficient and talkative—he didn’t date much. Some of the girls suspected a deep emotional wound, perhaps even a broken heart.
Jillian stepped into the elevator and punched the seventh-floor button.
At the rap of his secretary’s knuckles upon his office door, Zach looked up from the notes from which he was dictating, switched off the recorder and cleared his throat before assuming “the position” by leaning back in his chair and propping one cowboy-booted foot negligently on the corner of his desk. “Yeah?”
The door swung open, and Lois’s long, thin face, piled high with too-dark hair, appeared. “Lunch!” she announced brightly.
Zach launched a normally straight eyebrow into an expressive arch as he sat upright and glanced at the black onyx face of his watch. “Bit early, isn’t it?”
As often happened, Lois wasn’t paying the least attention. Instead, she stood gesticulating at someone out of sight. Resignedly, Zach leaned back once more and lifted both legs to prop them on the corner of his desk, then crossed them at the ankles. Hands folded complacently over his belt buckle, he admired his reddish-brown, round-toed, full-quill ostrich boots and the stiff crease in his dark jeans for a moment, quite sure that whatever was up would soon be forthcoming. Sure enough, a tall, slender woman in a tacky, ill-fitting, gray-and-white uniform and large square glasses appeared in the doorway, holding a cardboard tray. He recognized the bag wedged into one end of the tray, and his mouth watered. The woman took a moment to place—behind the deli counter. She was a lot taller than he’d realized and willow thin, with an interesting, piquant face almost obscured by those huge, hideous glasses. He’d always figured that she was nearsighted, because her eyes could not possibly be that big; they must be distorted by the lenses.
“I didn’t order lunch today,” he said, pleasant but dismissive.
Her small, plump, bow-shaped mouth trembled slightly above her delicately pointed chin. “I know,” she admitted breathlessly. “It’s a bribe.”
He almost laughed, but the seriousness of her expression somehow quelled the impulse. “Policemen can be bribed,” he pointed out, “but I’m not a cop any longer, Miss—?” He made it a question.
Lois took over then, saying, “Waltham. It’s Jillian Waltham. Jilly, this is my boss, Zachary Keller. Jilly has a problem, Boss, just the sort you manage best. I promised her you’d help.”
So that was it, another charity case. For some reason, that irritated him when it never had before. He turned away no one who really needed his help—women, usually, whose mates battered and berated them. Most of his paying clients were celebrities of some sort who needed protection or just “buffering,” someone to stand between them and the public. Occasionally, if business was slow, he worked standard security for corporations and organizations, seminars, private banquets and such, but he much preferred helping individual clients remove themselves from danger and dead-end lives. And yet, for some reason, he didn’t want to deal with this woman. He didn’t want to, but he would.
Zach dropped his feet and leaned forward, reaching for the bag with a smile on his face, as if to say he’d save the world for a Downtown Deli sandwich. “Have a seat, Jillian Waltham, and tell me how I can help you.”
She handed over the tray and practically collapsed into the small armchair opposite his desk. “I know I should have made an appointment, but I was afraid it would be weeks before you could see me.”
.Business was good, but not that good. Thankfully. He waved away the statement with one hand while unfolding the top of the bag with the other. “No problem. We try to be accommodating.”
“It’s just the way you always order it,” she said helpfully, meaning the sandwich.
He shot her a look and moved on to the coffee, lifting the container from the tray and carefully removing the lid before tossing it into the trash basket under his desk. Settling back into his chair once more, he sipped the strong black brew and contemplated the woman opposite him. He was surprised to find that behind those hideous glasses and beneath that laughable headband was an arrestingly pretty face. It was almost elfin. In fact, if her ears were pointed she’d look just like the drawing of a fairy princess in his nephew’s book of fairy tales. And, by golly, those enormous eyes were just that. Upon closer inspection, he rather doubted that she really even needed those glasses and their seemingly flat lenses. For some reason that irritated, too. What was she hiding from? Who was she hiding from? Or was it something more sinister?
Zach had learned from sad experience that the more controlling, abusive husbands and boyfriends typically belittled the very objects of their desire to the point of self-hatred. It was as if such men could not bear for the world to see what attracted them. Women so beleaguered tended to see themselves as unattractive, humpy, even ugly, and to present themselves accordingly. He wondered who had convinced Jillian Waltham that she was unattractive.
“Are you married?” he asked, taking a peek at her bare ring finger.
She seemed surprised by the question. “Ah, no.”
“Ever been married?”
She frowned. “No.”
“It’s a boyfriend, then,” he surmised authoritatively, “someone who tells you that you don’t deserve him and then won’t let go. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”
She