Free The Cinderella Hour by Katherine Stone Page A

had even married Vivian.
    Luke is in love with me, Vivian had told her on the morning
after the Glass Slipper Ball. He has been all along. I like him, Snow, and I truly
care about his future. But no matter how much Luke wants me, there isn’t a
future for us.
    Maybe Luke had changed Vivian’s mind.
    Snow wished Luke well, wanted happiness for the boy she had loved
and the man he had become.
    If he had married Vivian, so be it. What had Vivian ever done
but tell the truth?
    Snow’s churning stomach sent a reminder of her pregnancy with
Luke’s baby. She had been sick during those months of joy, but so hopeful, so
in love.
    Get a grip, she admonished herself. You’re here because you chose
to be.
    And because it had felt right. WCHM had been looking for
something new and different for their evening listeners. The Cinderella Hour would be such a show. The fit was perfect for both Snow and the station—like
slipping a bare foot into a lost glass slipper. She had even found a condo in
the Towers, an eight-flight commute to the station where she would be working.
    It was happenstance that the Harvest Moon Ball was held the
weekend before her debut program, and that it benefited the hospital where Luke
had been saved—happenstance that WCHM decided to parlay into a chance to introduce
her to the CEOs they hoped would vie for advertising time on her show.
    Snow had attended events like this before. From appearance to
attitude, she was a pro. She enjoyed meeting people—in Atlanta. Would meeting
strangers in Chicago be as enjoyable?
    Snow didn’t look like her mother. But somewhere along the
line, the womanly version of Snow Ashley Gable had emerged, a metamorphosis
that drew appreciative smiles from men and faintly frowning ones from women.
The frowns deepened, and the appreciation soared, when Snow spoke. With age,
with womanliness, her voice had become identical to Leigh’s.
    There might be, among the strangers at the Harvest Moon Ball,
husbands who had known Leigh, slept with Leigh, paid enormously for the
pleasure of her company. Their wives might be with them, and they might view
Snow, as they had viewed Leigh, as a threat.
    No ghosts here? Just a ballroom full of them, a city full of
them, including, perhaps, the father Leigh had insisted she must never know . .
.
    Snow hadn’t known, on the night of
the Meadow View Drive inferno, that her own father was alive. She knew only
that the father who had been so cruel to Luke was dead—and that most of Quail
Ridge believed Luke to be Jared’s killer.
    The opinion persisted despite the assessment made by arson
investigator Noah Williams.
    Noah had no preconceived notions about either Jared or Luke
and wouldn’t have let them influence his analysis even if he had.
    The findings, he said, were clear. Jared had set the fire
with murderous intent. Luke, locked in his bedroom, was supposed to perish in
the blaze, or to die when he made a frantic leap to escape it.
    Luke’s sky-high blood alcohol level probably saved his life.
He had fallen as drunks often fell, with so little concern for the consequences
that they managed to miraculously survive.
    Jared’s intoxication, by contrast, had proved lethal. He had fallen
down the stairs during his own escape from the flames. A minor head injury
rendered him unconscious long enough for the smoke to do the rest.
    To say that Noah’s evaluation was unpopular was an
understatement. Even those who accepted it felt constrained to add a heroic
spin. Jared had decided to rid the town of Luke’s menace once and for all. But
being the fine man he was, he couldn’t live with what he had done. After
setting the blaze, he had downed some scotch while awaiting his own fiery
death.
    It was a murder-suicide, or would have been if Luke had died.
As it was, Jared made the ultimate sacrifice for nothing.
    Other townspeople, notably the country club set, believed
Noah was simply wrong. It was understandable. He had recently lost his wife of
fifty