A Modern Cinderella. Kate Hardy

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      Then a muted doorbell sounded, and the door at the top of the stairs was flung open. ‘Hello? Anybody home? Time to put down the keyboard!’

      Cassidy had a brief glimpse of the frown on Will’s face before she snapped her head around to watch with wide eyes as Angelique appeared. If it wasn’t surprise enough finding out that the woman had a key to Will’s house, there was then a thundering of footsteps and a small blonde-haired ball of energy ran down the stairs, across the wooden floor, and launched itself into Will’s waiting arms.

      ‘Uncle Will!’

      Uncle Will? Cassidy couldn’t help it; her jaw dropped. Not just at the sight of the little girl throwing her small arms around the column of his neck. What really amazed her was Will’s expression as he held her. He was transformed. Gone was the intense, unreadable, pain-in-the-rear Will, and in his place was a man who looked as if he’d just shed five years. Light danced in his eyes, he grinned broadly, and there was the sound of deep, rumbling, happy laughter before he made an exaggerated groan and leaned his head back to look down at her.

      ‘Hey, munchkin.’

      ‘We brought a picnic!’

      ‘Did you, now?’ He lifted his dark brows as he looked in Angelique’s direction, ‘Did I know we were having a picnic?’

      ‘It’s a surprise, silly!’ the little girl informed him.

      ‘Indeed it is,’ he answered dryly.

      Angelique had made it to Cassidy’s side. ‘This is what happens when you two stand me up for dinner. Script or no script, you still have to eat.’

      Will looked up as he bent to set the child on her feet. ‘We have managed to feed ourselves on our own. Ever hear of a little thing called a phone, Angie?’

      ‘Ah, but if we’d phoned ahead it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?’

      ‘Remind me to ask for my key back some time.’

      Cassidy was rapidly putting two and two together. She even found her gaze sliding across to the little girl who was tugging on Will’s jeans to see if she could see any similarities between them. Having had such vivid images of miniature Wills in her mind since she’d arrived in his gorgeous house, she felt the ragged edges of her heart grate painfully at the thought of finding any. She didn’t want Will to have any children she might be forced to look at. The thought of him having them with any woman who wasn’t her was apparently painful enough.

      Which made no sense whatsoever, considering how much she currently disliked him and how close they had been to a major argument not five minutes earlier.

      ‘Uncle Will?’

      He hunched down to look the little girl in the eye; the thoughtfulness of the simple act made Cassidy’s heart hurt all over again. ‘Yes, munchkin, what can I do for you?’

      ‘The picnic’s for the beach.’

      ‘Is it indeed?’

      She nodded enthusiastically. ‘And I brought my swimsuit and my bodyboard.’

      ‘Ah.’ Will pursed his mouth into a thin line and frowned almost comically at her, before taking a deep breath through his nose. ‘We’d better go check the sea is still there, then, hadn’t we?’

      The little girl giggled, and Cassidy found herself smiling at them as Angelique linked their arms at the elbow and lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Sometimes I wonder who has who wrapped around their little finger. I hope you’ve brought a bikini with you?’

      The thought of publicly displaying her body on a Malibu beach next to the goddess that was Angelique Warden made Cassidy want to curl up in a ball and die. That was not happening in this lifetime. Not that she owned a bikini to begin with, but still…

      ‘Will could give you a surfing lesson while he’s helping Lily bodyboard.’

      Cassidy’s gaze shifted sharply and crashed into Will’s as he stood to his full height. Then her troublesome imagination revisited the image she’d had of him emerging from the surf and she swallowed hard. For a moment she even thought she could hear herself making a gulping noise.

      Thick lashes blinked while he stared at her. The intensity returning to his gaze was even fiercer than before. Oh, please, please don’t let now be one of the times when he can read my mind, she silently pleaded. There was only so much humiliation she could take.

      Then he nodded. ‘You’ll need sunscreen. Beach towels are in the laundry room. Angie knows where everything is.’

      Before Cassidy could protest, he turned his attention to Lily. ‘Right, then. While Cass and I get changed, you and your mom can go get this picnic we’ve been promised. Are there cookies?’

      ‘Duh, Uncle Will.’

      Despite many, many, many carefully worded protests, Cassidy found herself on the beach—thankfully in a swimsuit rather than a bikini. Even that was covered by a thigh-length light shirt. Smothered in the highest factor sunscreen she’d packed, she also had the large-brimmed straw hat Angelique had left behind on her last visit to Will’s house on her head. She had the prerequisite sunglasses on, and had bent one knee as artfully as she could manage as she sat on the large blanket beside the bikini-clad Angelique. If people squinted Cassidy reckoned they might look like nineteen-fifties movie star next to modern-day goddess. Hopefully. After all, women had been adored for their hourglass figures back then—which meant, as always, her timing was severely off. Not that it made her feel any more comfortable in her own skin.

      Watching Will playing in the surf with Lily was the worst form of water torture she’d ever been submitted to. It was just plain wrong to be drooling at the sight of him in long swim shorts—bare chest, toned, tanned, gorgeous enough to die for—while he played with a small child. Especially if he was that small child’s father, and she was sitting chatting to the woman he’d made that child with. Cassidy had never had a worse case of the green-eyed monster in all her life.

      ‘Lily adores him.’ Angelique was smiling at them when Cassidy looked her way. ‘He’ll make a great father some day.’

      Cassidy exhaled with relief as quietly as she could manage it. ‘She’s gorgeous.’

      ‘Obviously I think so. But then I’m a tad biased. Do you have kids, Cass?’

      ‘Thirty of them.’ She smiled at Angelique’s expression. ‘I’m a schoolteacher.’

      ‘Ahh. You scared me for a minute.’

      Despite a lingering modicum of jealousy over her relationship with Will, Cassidy found herself warming to Angie. She wasn’t at all the way the tabloids portrayed her. And seeing her obvious love for her daughter humanised her.

      Turning onto her stomach, Angie swung her feet back and forth in the air and studied Cassidy from behind her sunglasses. ‘Did you and Will ever talk about having kids when you were together?’

      It was a very personal question, but by asking it she’d already shown she knew there had been more to their relationship than being scriptwriting duo Ryan and Malone. The thing was, talking about their relationship with someone who might СКАЧАТЬ