Free A Cinderella Christmas Carol (Suddenly Cinderella) by Hope Tarr

little digging and the frog hanging out inside the pretty boy prince would leap to the surface. Just give her the chance, the access, and she could blow Mannon’s cover—she knew it.
    It was all about the access.
    She pulled at the ends of her waist-length hair, now straightened and colored jet black, and clicked on the pause button to pick up where she’d left off viewing the video.
    Mannon’s deep-timbered Texas drawl blared from her Boston speakers. “Folks, I don’t usually bring up personal stuff on the air, but I’m gonna go ahead and make an exception. Looks like my fifteen-year-old daughter, Samantha, is going to be living with me twenty-four-seven for the foreseeable future, and the plain truth is I’m not much of a cook or a housekeeper…”
    The plain truth. Ha! I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit you on your uptight ass.
    “But what my Sam needs more than any of those things, even more than someone to chauffeur her around—and believe me, that kid’s schedule is packed tighter than the president’s—is a role model, a lady who models the kind of core values we talk about on this show.”
    Macie fought the urge to gag. Poor kid. Sight unseen, she felt an affinity with Mannon’s daughter, whose situation struck her as eerily similar to her own childhood. It hadn’t been easy growing up as a precocious free-spirit. But when you were born to people—trolls—whose idea of parenting meant crushing independent thought at every turn, holding onto your self-worth, not to mention your sanity, was a constant struggle.
    “Last Sunday,” Mannon continued, “I ran an ad in the Washington Times online. ‘Wanted: woman with old-fashioned values to serve as live-in housekeeper, child care provider, and female role model for precocious fifteen-year-old girl. Salary and benefits negotiable; values firm.’ You’d think ad copy like that would make it pretty clear what type of person I’m looking for, and yet would you believe I must have interviewed a dozen applicants this past week, and the last one showed up with green hair and a nose ring?”
    Macie slid a hand over her stomach, feeling the small gold belly button hoop below her cropped body-hugging black angora sweater, and listened on.
    “Okay, that’s enough about my domestic issues. This show is first and foremost about you . If any of you listening out there have a topic you’d like us to address in a future Ross’s Rant, shoot me an e-mail and put ‘Rant’ in the subject header. Again, that’s r-o-s-s at r-o-s-s-m-a-n-n-o-n dot com.”
    Macie stared at the screen, feeling as if steam must be jetting out of her ears. Pretty clever—make that devious —getting his listeners to come up with the content for his upcoming broadcasts. Slacker!
    She had her middle finger pointed to the ceiling when it hit her. Holy shit, it really was all about the access. Mannon had just handed her the proverbial keys to the kingdom.
    Adrenaline pumping, she signed off from the On Top local area network and logged on to her personal account. Typing Mannon’s e-mail address into the Send box took balls, but still, it was the easy part. Crafting a message he would buy was trickier. Sticking to the K.I.S.S. rule, Keep It Simple, Stupid, she pounded out a few simple sentences aimed at balancing the requisite background information with just enough bait. She read it over one last time, clicked Send, and darted a look at the chrome-encased wall clock. 4:28. Two minutes to spare—damn, I’m good.
    She shoved her feet into her Jimmy Choo platform sling-backs, grabbed her iPhone, and shot up from the desk. Stepping out into the neon-lit hallway, she pulled the office door closed behind her. Fairy tales were for kids. Exposing a fake prince for his true frog self—real grownup life didn’t pack more magical mojo than that.
    …
    Watergate Towers, Northwest Washington DC

    “Sam, I’m home.” Ross Mannon stepped inside the condo foyer and pulled the