The Cinderella Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

it?”
    Luke didn’t reply, and in a moment he was gone.
    Later that night, Snow learned the answer to a question she
had never posed aloud.
    The pool beneath Luke’s bedroom was filled with nails
and glass. More glass fell into it that night, as Luke leapt through his window
to escape the flames.

ONE
    Pinewood
Veterinary Clinic
    Meadow
View Drive
    Quail
Ridge , Illinois
    Saturday,
October 29
    5 : 45 p.m.
    Present
day
    “Wow.” Bea Evans, who had been on
the living room couch consulting the television listings for the evening,
sprang to her feet. “You look absolutely positively fabulous.”
    Mira Larken, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, acknowledged this
with a self-deprecating smile. “I look different, Bea.”
    “Absolutely positively fabulous.” The retired school nurse
made a twirling motion with her fingers. When the lilac-gowned Mira complied
with a 360 -degree turn, she added, “From
every angle.”
    “Well. Thanks. Okay, so you know where I’ll be.”
    “The Starlight Ballroom at the Wind Chimes Hotel. I have the
number right here.”
    “I’m also taking my pager.”
    “Why? You would never hear it over the gala sounds.”
    “I’ve set it on vibrate.”
    “Where is it?”
    Mira pointed to the gown’s satin sash. The pager was thin,
the bulge scarcely visible.
    But Bea was having none of it. “Hand that over, Dr. Larken.
If I need you, I’ll find you. Besides, our girl is on the mend.”
    Their girl was a calico cat named Agatha. Thirty-six hours
post-op from the removal of an infected gallbladder, she was doing so well that
Mira hoped to release her at noon tomorrow.
    For the moment, Agatha was indeed theirs. Bea was the best
veterinary assistant Mira had ever known. She was also the best mother.
    Mira’s biological mother, Marielle, was flourishing in Palm Beach. She would have approved, as Bea had, of Mira’s Pearl Moon gown, but for a very
different reason: relief that her fashion-averse daughter was dressed
appropriately for the charity ball.
    To Marielle DuMonde Larken, appearance was all.
    Beatrice Evans didn’t give a hoot about appearance. Her
enthusiasm was purely for Mira. She simply hoped Mira would have a wonderful evening
out on the town.
    Mira hadn’t appreciated what she had been missing in the
mother department until the nurse she had last seen during her school days at
Hilltop Elementary wandered across Meadow View Drive to welcome her—and her
in-home veterinary clinic—to Pinewood.
    That was three months ago. Bea had been mothering her and the
creatures in their care ever since. And Bea was right. Agatha was on the mend.
Besides, if the calico so much as turned a whisker, Bea would be on the case.
    Mira relinquished her pager to Bea’s outstretched hand. “I’m
not sure when I’ll be home.”
    “Whenever Vivian is ready to come home. And not a second
before. Or after.”
    There wasn’t an ounce of criticism in Bea’s remark, or in
Mira’s reply. Facts were facts. “Good point. Unless, of course, Blaine wants to stay until the very end. He might, too, since it’s a hospital event and he’s
in his final days as chief of staff. If so, Vivian will cheerfully agree. She’s
pretty happy doing whatever Blaine wants, as long they’re together.”
    “Do you suppose she’ll ever thank you for introducing her to
the man of her dreams?”
    “No. Nor do I want her to. It was a referral, after all, not
an introduction. And it was barely even that. Blaine already knew she
specialized in family law and was highly regarded by her colleagues. I just
confirmed what he’d essentially concluded on his own, that she would be an
excellent choice for the kind of legal advice he wanted. And matchmaking was
the farthest thing from my mind. I would never have predicted they’d fall in
love, much less within a second of laying eyes on each other.” Mira had not, in
fact, known either of the lovebirds very well—not the once-divorced
fifty-two-year-old psychiatrist or her