Glass Slipper Bride Read online

  “You aren’t going to marry Jillian!”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Arlene James

  ARLENE JAMES

  Letter to Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright

  “You aren’t going to marry Jillian!”

  “Is that so?” Zach muttered dangerously.

  Jillian tried to plead with her sister to keep quiet, but she wouldn’t be stopped. “Jillian told Mother and me that you wouldn’t have her even after she threw herself at you!”

  Humiliated beyond endurance, Jillian groaned. “Camille, please—”

  “You think I didn’t sleep with her because I didn’t want to?” Zach asked incredulously. “Let me tell you, I didn’t sleep with Jillian because I respect her too much. And you have nothing to say about me marrying her. Does she, Jillian?”

  “You don’t have to go through with it,” Jillian replied instead, praying that he’d declare with heartfelt sincerity that he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her.

  Instead, Zach took a deep breath, his eyes full of apology and regret. “You know I wouldn’t insist if it wasn’t the only solution. For now.”

  For now. Jillian blinked back tears and nodded. Only for now.

  Dear Reader,

  The wonder of a Silhouette Romance is that it can touch every woman’s heart Check out this month’s offerings—and prepare to be swept away!

  A woman wild about kids winds up tutoring a single dad in the art of parenthood in Babies, Rattles and Cribs... Oh, My! It’s this month’s BUNDLES OF JOY title from Leanna Wilson. When a Cinderella-esque waitress—complete with wicked stepfamily!—finds herself in danger, she hires a bodyguard whose idea of protection means making her his Glass Slipper Bride, another unforgettable tale from Arlene James. Pair one highly independent woman and one overly protective lawman and what do you have? The prelude to The Marriage Beat, Doreen Roberts’s sparkling new Romance with a HE’S MY HERO cop.

  WRANGLERS & LACE is a theme-based promotion highlighting classic Western stories. July’s offering, Cathleen Galitz’s Wyoming Born & Bred, features an ex-rodeo champion bent on reclaiming his family’s homestead who instead discovers that home is with the stubborn new owner...and her three charming children! A long-lost twin, a runaway bride...and A Gift for the Groom—-don’t miss this conclusion to Sally Carleen’s delightful duo ON THE WAY TO A WEDDING.... And a man-shy single mom takes a chance and follows The Way to a Cowboy’s Heart in this emotional heart-tugger from rising star Teresa Southwick.

  Enjoy this month’s selections, and make sure to drop me a line about why you keep coming back to Romance. We want to fulfill your dreams!

  Happy reading,

  Mary-Theresa Hussey

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

  300 East 42nd Street. 6th Floor

  New York, NY 10017

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  VIRGIN BRIDES GLASS SLIPPER BRIDE

  Arlene James

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  Books by Arlene James

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  *This Side of Heaven

  ARLENE JAMES

  grew up in Oklahoma and has lived all over the South. In 1976 she married “the most romantic man in the world.” The author enjoys traveling with her husband, but writing has always been her chief pastime.

  Dear Reader,

  Don’t you just love to discover some hidden strength or goodness in yourself? It makes one feel a certain careful pride and a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately those discoveries don’t come on soft summer days spent in a hammock with a good book and a tall glass of lemonade. Such self-discovery is always the result of some difficulty in our lives, something we feel helpless to face or change. Such is the case with Jillian Waltham.

  Like most well-rounded adults, Jillian knows herself better than she realizes. She knows that she has talent and that she’s capable of loving selflessly. She even knows what she wants. What she doesn’t realize is that she can make others know those things about her, too, even Zachary Keller, the handsome hero who makes all the girls’ hearts go pitter-patter.

  It’s difficulty and the very real threat of danger that brings a hero into Jillian’s life to begin with, but it’s Jillian herself who provokes him to his very greatest acts of heroism. In doing so, Jillian discovers the depth and value of her true self—and she begins to understand, along with everyone else, that she actually deserves true love as much as, say, Zach Keller.

  I hope you enjoy Jillian’s journey to her true self and her true love as much as I have.

  God bless,

  Chapter One

  Two broad slices of potato bread, lightly toasted and slathered with honey mustard. Mesquite smoked turkey breast, sliced paper thin, and a slab of lean roast beef. Shredded iceberg and butter lettuce. Tomato, lightly salted. No cheese. A relish of white onion, kosher dill and pickled jalapeño pepper. And for the finishing touch, black olives cut into tiny rings and sprinkled liberally over the whole with just a dash of red wine vinegar.

  Jillian pressed the second slice of potato bread carefully over the monstrous sandwich, neatly “diapered” it with waxed paper and a toothpick, 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 s
afely 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 pushed her glasses up on her short, sharp nose and studied him. Suddenly enlightenment softened her face, and she laughed, a light, chiming sound that seemed to make magic. In that instant she wasn’t pretty at all. She was beautiful, breathtakingly so. Zach set his cup down with a muted plunk, hot coffee splashing over the r
im onto the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He shook his hand and rubbed it against his thigh, mesmerized, and suddenly he knew what it was about her that bothered him.

  Serena.

  Jillian Waltham reminded him of Serena.

  He immediately squelched the spurt of emotion that thinking of Serena inevitably brought him. It had been almost five years, and the thought of her senseless death still enraged and pained him. Desperately, he pushed the thought away and tried to listen to Jillian Waltham.

  “It isn’t my boyfriend,” she was saying, leaning forward. “It’s my sister’s.”

  “Sister’s,” he echoed dumbly.

  “Maybe you’ve heard of her, Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News.”

  Camille Waltham. Channel 3 News. Sister. Something familiar swam around the edges of his mind and then suddenly dove into its center. He saw a trim, effervescent, conventionally pretty blonde with smartly styled hair and perfect makeup. The sound of her voice came to him: “This is Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News, thanking you for watching. Because we’re YOUR news station.” Reality snapped into focus. Not Jillian Waltham. Not someone who reminded him of Serena. And not a charity case, thank God. Camille Waltham, newscaster. He opened a drawer and took out a pad and pen. After flipping open the pad, he began to write.