Manhattan Cinderella-Chapter 8

It should have been one of the happiest days of her life. But standing arranging cupcakes inside the display cabinets of her new store, Erin had never felt worse.
She missed him. Easily remedied if she answered any of the calls he’d made, but enough was enough. It was glaringly obvious she’d ignored her own advice, but the decision to stop dancing with him was the right one. Eventually Nate would stop calling. She wouldn’t blame him. Not when she’d embarrassed him so badly in front of his family that he felt the need to remove her from their company so fast. He could see she didn’t belong there. Dinner at the Van Rothstein’s had snapped her out of the fantasy. When she’d foolishly started to think maybe—
There was a knock at the door and a large man in a suit standing outside. She stepped around the counter.
“Erin Giordano?”
“Yes.”
He held up a package and a clipboard. “I have a delivery for you.”
Reaching up to turn the locks, Erin frowned. Who made a delivery so late at night? The paperwork was from a security firm. “What is this?”
“I can’t hand over the package without a signature.”
“Yes, but what is it?”
The man remained impassive. “You signing for it?”
Five minutes later the door was locked and she was staring at the parcel on the counter as if it might sprout legs. There was only one way to find out.
Wide eyes were staring at the gift dangling from her fingers when her phone rang.
The voice in her ear said, “It’s yours.”
Swinging round, she found Nate standing on the sidewalk outside.
“I can’t accept this,” she whispered.
“Well, that leaves us with a bit of a conundrum. Because I have to give it to you. It’s a family tradition.”
Erin found her voice. “It’s a million-dollar diamond.”
“Did I ever tell you the story that goes with it?”
She shook her head.
“You know it hadn’t been seen in public for years.” When she nodded he took a step closer. “There’s a reason for that. It skipped a generation because my grandmother never approved of my father marrying my mother. He married an even older family name than ours. It was never what you’d call a love match. Not in my grandmother’s eyes, anyway. She was right. Probably why there’s only one of me.”
Erin thought about her two brothers and three sisters and immediately felt how lonely it must have been for him growing up in a huge mansion. It made her ache.
“So the diamond came to me when my grandmother died. I ignored the tradition that goes with it when I allowed it to come out in public that night.”
“I don’t understand.”
Taking a step back, Nate examined the storefront. “Is this the only exit?”
“There’s a fire escape off the kitchen, why?”
“Just checking which direction you might go.” He looked into her eyes as he stepped under the light above the door. “This is the end of the line, Erin. No more running. I mean it.”
She felt emotion clogging her throat. “I can’t keep doing this with you.”
“I’m assuming there’s more to this than the fact that I didn’t kiss you good-night.”
“You knew this was coming.”
“Want to tell me why?”
No. But she knew she had to. “We both know this will never work.”
“Do we?”
Erin swallowed hard and held up her hand, the diamond swinging on the end of its fine chain. “Diamonds and cupcakes, Nate. They don’t exactly go together.”
“Says who?” When she glared at him with wide eyes pleading for understanding, he pushed his free hand into the pocket of his jeans and took another deep breath. “I take it I’m supposed to be the diamond in that analogy?”
Dumb question. But before Erin could point out he wasn’t the kind of man anyone would ever refer to as a cupcake, a flash of realization crossed his eyes. Then a hint of a smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. “This better not be what I think it is.”
Sighing, Erin dropped her arm. “What do you think it is?”
“Some archaic notion about class…”
“It’s got nothing to do with class. Or money. Okay—yes—it does have something to do with money. But not the way you’ve just put it…”
“When you Googled me, how far did you get?”
“I got bored after the fifth page of beautiful women.”
“Did you read anything that wasn’t on the equivalent of a gossip column?”
“Like what?” She looked at him from the corner of her eye.
“Anything about the Van Rothsteins.”
“Stupidly rich, own large chunks of Manhattan, that kind of thing?”
The hint of a smile made it up to his eyes. “Immigrant family, enough mixed blood through the generations to attach us to at least a dozen countries in the world. I think my father felt he was improving the pedigree when he married my mother. We’re mutts. We just happen to be mutts with money.”
That’s how he saw himself? With his fancy education and Ivy League colleges and a family mansion overlooking Central Park and—?
“The way my family treated you last night should have shown you how much better you are than them.”
Erin’s brows wavered.
“I drove straight back to the house and argued with my mother for two hours. It won’t happen again, trust me.”
The determination in his voice made her stare at him in wonder. Dressed in comfortable jeans and a simple gray T-shirt over a long-sleeved white vest, with his short hair slightly mussed and his intense dark-chocolate gaze warming her from the inside out, he was the most devastatingly gorgeous male she’d ever seen. But standing there so quietly confident he suddenly didn’t seem so out of reach to her anymore. She wondered why…
“Know what I think?”
Erin slowly shook her head. She doubted she ever had.
“I think you’re scared. That’s why you’ve been putting obstacles in the way.”
When she sucked in a much-needed breath of air, her lower lip trembled.
Nate’s deep voice lowered. “What happened the night we met—it’s rare. To find something that special and lose it? That’s scary.”
Hot tears began to form against her lower lashes, and when she blinked she jostled the first one free.
“I guess we all go back to basics when it comes down to it.” He watched the tear streaking down her cheek, frowning for a moment before his gaze lifted to tangle with hers again. “Fight or flight. You ran. You’ve been running ever since. And giving yourself a long list of reasons why this could never work.”
“While you fought for it.” Her vision blurred as the realization hit her.
“I couldn’t let you go. Even when I didn’t know why.”
“You know now?”
“I knew the day we made the cake deliveries. You’re there for the happiest days of people’s lives. Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, baby showers. You smiled all day. You know when you smile you light up a room? I always thought that was a cliché…”
“I love that doing what I do let’s me share in those moments. It was Carlotta’s gift to me. She told me happiness can be hard to find, that we should make the most of it where we find it. But when I lost her, I learned how much it hurt to lose someone you love. I used to be braver, I swear I did. But you—”
“Let me in.”
Erin stepped forward and turned the locks. Then they both turned off their phones as he crossed the threshold.
He smiled at her. “About that diamond of yours…”
When she held up her hand, the diamond turned, catching the light as Nate closed the door behind him without breaking eye contact. “Did I mention it’s only worn by Van Rothstein brides?”
Framing her face in his large hands, he used the pads of his thumbs to wipe the last traces of tears from her cheeks. “So the tradition continues…”
What Erin could see in his eyes blurred her vision again. It hadn’t been wrong to kiss him that first night—it felt so right—she’d just run in the wrong direction. Setting her palm firmly over his heart, she smiled back at him. “I never believed in love at first sight. But I think my heart knew who you were.”
“I love you, you know.”
“I know now. I love you, too.” Erin lifted her chin as he lowered his mouth to hers. And they didn’t need words after that.
One day in the future, Erin hoped she could tell their children the story of how they’d met. How the famous Harlequin Diamond had handed a legacy of love through the generations to them and how it had taught her to believe in the possibility of happily ever after in the real world. And she knew she would always start their story the same way.
It was the dance that did it.

THE END