Free Fairy Tale Weddings by Debbie Macomber

more. “The night was everything I dreamed, but don’t you see? I was playing a role…I was glamorous and sophisticated and someone totally different from the Cindy you see now. The show closed, the part’s cancelled and I’ve gone back to being just plain me—Cindy Territo, janitorial worker, part-time student.”
    â€œAnd Cindy Territo, woman in love.”
    â€œStop it, Vanessa!” she cried and whirled around to face her friend. “Adults don’t fall in love after one night. Not true love—it just doesn’t happen!”
    Vanessa crossed her arms and leaned against the side of Thorne’s rosewood desk. “That’s not what I hear.”
    Cindy snorted softly. “What you’re talking about isn’t love…it’s infatuation. It wasn’t like that with Thorne and me. I don’t think I can explain or define it—I’ve never felt anything like this with any other man.”
    â€œAnd yet you’re convinced it can’t be love?” Vanessa taunted.
    â€œIt’s impossible,” she insisted, although she didn’t believe it. “I don’t want to talk about him or that night again. I—we have to put it out of our minds.” She reached for Thorne’s wastebasket and unceremoniously emptied it inside her cart. When she saw the contents her eyes widened. “Vanessa, look.” She picked up a discarded aspirin box and another for a cold remedy. “Thorne’s sick.”
    â€œHe must’ve gone through a whole box of tissues.”
    â€œOh, no.” Cindy sagged into his chair, lovingly stroking the arm as though it were his fevered brow. She longed to be with him. “The night of the ball,” she began, her voicestrained with regret, “when we went into the park, he gave me his coat so I wouldn’t catch cold.”
    â€œAt a price, it seems.”
    Cindy’s face went pale, and she gazed distractedly at her friend before turning her head and closing her eyes. “It’s all my fault. Christmas is only a few days away…. Oh, dear, I did this to him.”
    â€œWhat do you plan to do about it?”
    â€œWhat can I do?” If Cindy was miserable before, it was nothing compared to the guilt she suffered now, knowing her prince was ill because of her. He’d grown chilled, which had made him vulnerable to the viruses so abundant this time of year.
    â€œMake some chicken soup and take it to him,” Vanessa suggested.
    Cindy’s eyes widened. “I couldn’t.”
    â€œThis is the same woman who sauntered up to Thorndike Prince and announced he was a disappointment to her?”
    â€œOne and the same,” Cindy muttered.
    Vanessa shook her head. “You could’ve fooled me.”
    If anybody was a fool, Cindy determined the following afternoon, she was the one. She’d spent the morning chopping vegetables into precise, even pieces and adding them to a steaming pot of chicken broth and stewing chicken while her aunt made a batch of homemade noodles.
    â€œMaybe I should have Tony deliver it for me,” Cindy said, eyeing her aunt speculatively.
    â€œTony and Maria are going to a movie, and you can bet that your prince isn’t going to hand over that comb to my son without getting information out of him.” The way shewas regarding Cindy implied that Thorne would use fair means or foul to find out whatever he could.
    â€œThorne wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Cindy defended him righteously, and from the smile that lit up the older woman’s face, Cindy realized she’d fallen neatly into her aunt’s trap.
    â€œThen you shouldn’t have any qualms about visiting him. It’s not Tony or anyone else he wants to see—it’s you.”
    Cindy raised questioning eyes to her. “I’m not convinced he does want to see me.”
    â€œHe kept the comb, didn’t he?”
    â€œYes, but that