Runaway Cinderella Read online

  Daniel chuckled. “And the inference is that I have a miserable time because people don’t like me.”

  Rob flushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Cate allowed a naughty smile to dawn. “If the shoe fits…”

  “Thank you, Caty.” Daniel toasted her. “Maybe we should stick to a safer topic, like politics?”

  They did so through the main course, cheerfully arguing over the tax and welfare systems.

  “And the government doesn’t invest enough in higher education.” Caty’s face was flushed. “It’s a crime. Education is an essential investment in the future.”

  “Hey, pax.” Rob laughed and waved his white serviette in surrender.

  Abruptly she recalled where she was. “Sorry.” She had been arguing with both Rob and Daniel, and only now realised Amie had fallen silent.

  “I didn’t mind,” Daniel said. “I like to see you passionate.”

  She was grateful her cheeks were already flushed. She shook her head and turned to Amie. “Sorry I got carried away. I never even asked what the seasoning was on the new potatoes.”

  Amie threw her serviette onto the table. “You don’t have to talk down to me.”

  “I wasn’t.” But she had chosen a topic she’d thought would interest Amie more than politics.

  “You were. You’re like Rob. You think I’m stupid.” She stormed out of the restaurant, leaving Cate blinking.

  “Rob?” She looked to her brother for an explanation.

  “Sorry, sis. You copped the backlash meant for me. If you’ll excuse me, I drove Amie here. I’d better catch up with her.” He dropped a quick kiss on her cheek and hurried out.

  He left Cate bewildered, but with her worst fears confirmed.

  Chapter Three

  “Amie’s unhappy.” Cate stared at the empty doorway through which first Amie, and then, Rob had vanished. From high school she remembered Amie as confident and outgoing, the last person to take offence at anything a friend said, or to imagine herself excluded.

  Did the wild swing in her mood from initial exuberance to tears mean Amie regretted her engagement to Rob? A happily engaged girl didn’t accuse her fiancé of thinking her stupid. Nor did Rob’s exasperation suggest a devoted lover.

  “Should we go after her?”

  “Amie—despite her display of bad manners just now—is an adult. She has to sort out her own problems. So does Rob.” Daniel picked up a menu. “What would you like for dessert?”

  “Dessert? Daniel, your sister’s just run out in tears. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  It bothered Cate, and not because of the other diners’ humming curiosity.

  “Rob went after her, and I’m not so insensitive as to intrude on their private quarrel or their reconciliation. Amie does tend to get wound up. Now, would you like dessert?” Very clearly, he didn’t want to discuss Amie or her behaviour.

  “No.”

  He closed the dessert menu. “Then I suspect you don’t want coffee either. Shall we leave?”

  “Please.” She felt choked with shock at Amie’s unexpected accusation of condescension mingled with renewed worry that her dad had manoeuvred Rob’s engagement. If only Daniel would see the situation as she did. If he could be convinced of Amie’s unhappiness, surely he would help Cate to unravel this tangle and minimise the hurt for everyone involved.

  She looked up at him as he held her chair. A trick of the restaurant’s subdued discreet lighting showed his eyes darkened with concern.

  “I’m sorry Amie spoiled your evening.” His hand rested lightly at her elbow as they threaded their way through the tables.

  “I wanted to know the truth.”

  His hand tightened. “Amie’s temper tantrum wasn’t proof of anything except immaturity. Certainly not proof of a relationship breakdown.”

  “Daniel, you must have felt the tension between Rob and Amie.” She appealed to him.

  “Real life isn’t a fairy-tale with a guaranteed happy ever after. Amie and Rob have to work out their changing relationship.”

  He stopped at the front desk.

  She walked on a few steps, putting some space between them. She could agree with him to some extent. Most couples did benefit from premarital counselling, but the tension between Rob and Amie seemed more than commitment jitters. Were they both feeling trapped?

  She studied Daniel as he spoke with the maître de.

  Rob had already paid the restaurant bill. Daniel added a substantial tip to the jar, then took her arm again.

  “Maybe Rob and Amie are still out front,” she said.

  “I hope not.” Daniel met her reproachful look. “Joining in another couple’s squabbles helps no one.”

  “Maybe not.” But she worried about Rob and about Amie.

  They were gone when she and Daniel stepped outside.

  Cate sighed, and he put an arm around her as they waited for the car to be brought around. The night was cool. She shivered and tucked herself closer to him. She might resent his attitude, but his strength was reassuring amid the evening’s battering emotions.

  The valet drove up with the Ferrari.

  “In you hop.” Daniel had to have felt her shiver. “We’ll be home in a minute, and then you can have a brandy to warm up.”

  “I don’t like brandy.”

  “You’ve had a shock. You think Amie’s behaviour proves all your suspicions about her and Rob’s engagement, and although you came racing to Perth determined to find Machiavellian manipulation by your dad and me, you didn’t really expect it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She straightened in her seat. “Why else would I drop everything to fly home?”

  “I think you came home,” he stressed the word. “Hoping to patch up your relationship with your dad.”

  She inhaled angrily. “I came home to protect Rob, and tonight, I saw I was right to do so.”

  Daniel shook his head in silent disagreement.

  Her hands fisted. “If I wanted to talk to Dad, I wouldn’t hide behind Rob.”

  “Maybe not consciously, but subconsciously all our motives are tangled.”

  “Spare me the psychobabble.”

  “All right.” He swung into the penthouse car park and killed the engine. He turned to her. “If you want the unvarnished truth: stay out of Amie and Rob’s business, and deal with your own issues.”

  She scrambled out of the car, slammed the door and stalked to the lift.

  Silently, he followed and set the lift in motion.

  She tapped her foot and stared at the control panel, defying herself to feel hurt at his harshness. The lift button pinged and the doors opened.

  Daniel opened the penthouse door. “Now would you like a brandy?” His tone held humour and sympathy.

  She hesitated just inside the door. She was hurt, angry and on her dignity. She’d been tempted to rely on his strength, and he’d pulled it away from her.

  He dropped his keys on the hall table. “I know you’re angry with me and think I have no right to judge you or anyone. I’d be a worse friend if I let you endanger your relationship with your brother by interfering between him and Amie. And I want us to be friends.”

  “Friends?” She considered the idea. She had friends, but none, other than Sister Lucy, would have challenged her so directly. “There’s no reason we should be friends.”

  “No?” His smile twisted. “Think about it, Cate, while I pour the brandy.”

  Did he mean he believed Amie and Rob would marry, and therefore, they’d be related? Or was it more personal?

  He dropped his jacket over a chair in passing and loosened his tie on the way to the discreet built-in bar.

  She observed the evidence of a man at home and comfortable in his own skin, comfortable with her presence in his life. And how did she feel? She registered a protest. “I don’t drink brandy.”

  “Tonight, you will. Treat it as medicine. And don’t tell me about mixing drinks; you barely touched
your champagne.”

  They had all been abstemious at dinner, celebrating cautiously, or—as Cate thought with hindsight—not celebrating at all. Suddenly she was tired, with no energy left to fight.

  “Okay.” She slipped off her shoes and curled up on the leather sofa.

  He poured their brandies and sat beside her.

  The balloon glass with its tiny puddle of brandy in the base felt surprisingly comfortable to hold. She cupped it with two hands, warming the liqueur in the approved fashion.

  Daniel held his glass loosely in one hand, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The posture drew his trousers tight across powerful thighs.

  She took a cautious sip of brandy and looked away. The lights of the city were reflected in the river, and the scene looked charming and distant from the penthouse. She tasted the fire of brandy on her tongue, and let her thoughts slip away.

  “When my dad died I was twenty five.”

  She turned. She knew his family’s history from her friendship with Amie, but the note in his voice was unexpected and difficult to identify.

  He shifted, hooking one knee up so his body angled towards her and he sat crossways on the sofa. “I never respected him. As a kid, I’d loved the sense of fun he brought with him. Amie inherited her enthusiasm from Dad. But as I grew older, I saw Mum couldn’t rely on him. No one could.” He swirled the brandy in his glass, then sipped it.

  “Grandad, Dad’s dad, was the opposite. It was like he was carved out of granite, and everything he did turned out successfully. He was the one who started the mining company. He was rambling around north west Australia when the iron ore discoveries were made, and Grandad staked out mining leases and raised sufficient capital to get started. His was one of the astonishing success stories—from younger son with no place on the family cattle station, to mining mogul.”

  Cate filled the small silence. “It would have been hard for your dad to measure up.”

  “He tried.” Daniel stared into his brandy. “He ran the family company to the edge of bankruptcy, trying. We didn’t find out how close disaster was until Dad died. The stress and his failure undoubtedly killed him. He had a heart attack.” Daniel’s chest heaved in a huge sigh. “Mum was devastated. She never stopped loving him, no matter what foolish things he did.”

  Cate put her empty glass down and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Love like that is a reason to get married.” A better reason than whatever caused the tension between Rob and Amie. A lifelong love should be treasured.

  Daniel agreed in his own way. “Love is awfully hard to kill. I knew Dad’s weaknesses and I spent years cleaning up his disasters, making the future secure for Mum and Amie and everyone who depended on the company, but I still love the memory of him. He was fallible, but he was my dad.”

  Carefully, he untucked Cate from her defensive tangle and pulled her into his arms.

  She felt the warmth of his chest at her back, the strength of the arms holding her, and the gentle weight of his cheek against her hair.

  “We have to love our families as they are, warts and all.”

  “Even when they break our hearts?” she whispered.

  His arms tightened around her. “Is that how you felt when your dad organised for you to marry me?”

  “Angry, disbelieving, betrayed. I couldn’t believe Dad could change into such a stereotypical Sicilian patriarch and order me to marry you. He told me it was for my own good and that if I loved him I would do this.”

  “Emotional blackmail.”

  “Yeah.” Her sigh shifted her breasts against his arms. She noticed peripherally, but her attention was on old and still painful emotions. “I told Dad that if he loved me, he wouldn’t shuffle me off on a stranger. I asked him if I didn’t have a right to follow my own dreams, my own heart. I was as emotional as an eighteen year old can be.”

  “What did he say?”

  Her short laugh was sad. “He said I was too young to understand. When I couldn’t get through to him, I ran away.”

  “That took courage.”

  “More than I thought I had. It was only desperation that got me out of the house. Dad said if I left, I could never come back.”

  Daniel swore in shock.

  She wriggled around so she faced him. She tried to explain. “Dad’s a proud man, and he never thought I’d actually defy him.”

  His hand ran restlessly along her back. “What did Rob do while this was going on?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Rob’s easy-going. He did try to get Dad to see sense, but Dad wouldn’t listen.”

  “Did Rob help you run away?”

  “No. I didn’t want Dad blaming Rob. Besides, Rob tried to make me see that marrying you wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She half-smiled. “Rob suggested you’d be so busy working, I’d be free to do what I wanted.” That was Rob, always looking to make the best of a bad situation, without rocking the boat.

  “No way.”

  Her smile became real. “I didn’t think so either. I knew you for a tyrant from the first time I saw you.”

  “A tyrant? I thought I was a rat?”

  She laughed that he’d heard her muttered insults at the airport, and smoothed his shirt with one hand, then unthinkingly, snuggled closer.

  “Am I a tyrant?”

  “You always seemed older brother bossy with Amie.” Then she sobered. “I was young, remember, Daniel. I didn’t understand how hard you were fighting to save your company or to protect your mum and Amie. I didn’t suspect your devastation with your dad’s death. At least when my mum died I could miss her whole-heartedly. There were no lurking resentments, only grief that she’d gone. You were so much older, and stressed. To me you were unapproachable.”

  “And now?”

  “Since I’m currently falling asleep in your arms, I doubt an argument of unapproachability would hold water.”

  “Probably not.” He lifted her so she sat fully in his lap. “Are you falling asleep?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Cate, do you understand what a temptation you are to me?”

  But emotional exhaustion had crept up on her, and she was beyond understanding anything more. “No.”

  He groaned and rested his forehead against hers. His breath was warm with brandy.

  She tilted back her head, and her lips slid and found Daniel’s. Drowsily, she kissed him, enjoying the flavour and hard silkiness of his lips.

  Three, four heartbeats passed, then he kissed her back. Hunger, passion and tenderness melded in a breath-taking manner.

  Blissfully floating, she fell into the kiss.

  Daniel edged her scoop-necked dress down her shoulder. “You’re not wearing a bra.”

  “The strap would have shown. Doesn’t matter. No one noticed.”

  But he was noticing now. A coral pink tip riveted his attention.

  She followed his gaze. A small part of her brain was shocked at her brazenness, but mostly she felt a drifting satisfaction at his interest. She took his hand and placed it on her breast.

  “Caty.” Colour burnt his cheekbones. “You’re half asleep.”

  “Mmm. Dreaming lovely dreams.” She moved slightly, and his hand tightened on her breast. “Good.”

  “I promised you’d be safe with me.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “No.”

  But she was, because at that moment, Cate fell asleep.

  She woke in the morning to find herself in bed, but still wearing her dress. She didn’t have a hangover, but she was confused. Why had she worn her dress to bed?

  Memory filtered back. First a lazy feeling of pleasure, and then, a shock of recollection.

  Cate pulled the bed clothes over her head. Had she really encouraged Daniel to touch her, and then, fallen asleep? He, at least, had been a gentleman, both resisting her advances and putting her to bed fully clothed. But she—What does he think of me?

  Would he be offended? No. Dani
el’s sense of self was too secure to be insulted by a sleepy non-rejection. But would he expect her to carry on from where she’d dropped off?

  No, again. He’d promised she would be safe with him. He wouldn’t seduce a guest in his apartment.

  So, why did she feel disappointed?

  Because Daniel had been kind, and in doing so, had opened a long-closed door to emotional closeness, which in turn had seduced her into wanting physical closeness, a natural continuation of intimacy.

  He’d cared enough to challenge her on her reasons for returning to Perth. He was wrong. She hadn’t returned to the city hoping for a reconciliation with her dad, but she did miss him—even if her dad’s attempt to marry her off had felt like betrayal. Daniel had recognised how important a sense of family and belonging was to her. More than that, having challenged her, he’d trusted her with his own ambivalent feelings regarding his dad.

  She remembered those old feelings vividly. At eighteen she’d been quietly confident and eager to embrace life. Her dad’s decision to marry her off had been a slap to that confidence. Her self-esteem had plummeted.

  “Thank God for Sister Lucy.” The African nun had recognised Cate’s hurt and lovingly rebuilt her sense of self. She’d given Cate tasks and responsibilities that stretched and strengthened her, and the children’s love and confidence had renewed her. Instead of sinking into being less than her potential, she’d been challenged and encouraged to grow. When she’d returned to Australia, Rob had seen the difference. He’d said their mum would have been proud of her.

  Rob! Cate sat up and threw back the bed clothes.

  There was definitely something wrong between Rob and Amie. If they were as fundamentally different as they appeared, then there was no way they had freely chosen each other. Maybe Daniel hadn’t manipulated Amie into the marriage, but Cate’s dad had a history of it.

  Something would have to be done, beginning with an honest discussion with Rob. Whatever he decided he wanted in life, she would help him one hundred percent to achieve it.

  But first she had to face Daniel.

  Embarrassment, eagerness and trepidation mixed wildly and sent a shiver down her spine. Cate took it as a warning. Being foolish last night could be forgiven. Opening herself to wanting Daniel would plant the seeds of her own devastation. His strength and competence threatened her independence, and she had to be strong and self-reliant. She would never again let herself be vulnerable, through love, to manipulation. She’d learnt that lesson at eighteen.