Chapter Four

“Okay, so remember, high energy, lots of enthusiasm, big smiles. This is your chance to strut your stuff, to pimp your product, to sell both yourself and the show.”

Lined up at the back of the set by number and gender, Greg was pretty sure he and his fellow contestants had the drill down, but he supposed it didn’t hurt for Amber to reinforce it. If nothing else, listening to her cheerlead helped him take the occasional break from kicking himself.

Had he really signed himself up to spend the next eight weeks filming Project Cinderella with Medusa St. James? She had to have been a last-minute addition to the program. It was the only explanation. If he’d so much as suspected she was in any way involved with the show, he would have withdrawn his submission. Immediately.

He forced his focus back to his immediate task: getting himself down the red carpet and up on stage. Just three short Pepto-Bismol-pink-carpeted steps above audience level, it loomed as daunting as Mount Everest.

Amber had said the event was more or less open to anyone with a press pass and, looking around to the reporter-packed pit, Greg saw she hadn’t exaggerated. Members of the media sported press badges and carried shoulder-mounted cameras showing logos from all the major entertainment media outlets—the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, People and Us magazines, GQ, MTV News, TMZ, and even hard news outlets like The Associated Press and CNN.

As the sixth and final contestant, Greg would be the last to be interviewed, which gave him plenty of time to be nervous, really nervous. The present press junket would be broadcast by media outlets across the country and quite possibly internationally, too.

A hush rolled over the room. Onstage the show’s executive producer stepped out, flanked by the celebrity coaches including…Medusa. She’d changed clothes. Her current outfit was a soft pastel green two-piece pantsuit that clung to her slender figure in all the right places.

Breaking the line, Brittany maneuvered her way to his side. “Nervous, huh?” she whispered.

He really wished she’d stop reinforcing such negative thoughts. “I’m doing…okay. What about you?” Maybe it was his imagination, but he didn’t recall her looking quite that mussed.

“Hanging in there, I guess. I mean we’ve got to, right?” She smiled, showing her crooked front teeth coated in what must be the salad she’d had for lunch.

He hesitated and then pointed to his own teeth. “Brittany, you have some—”

“Thanks, I know,” she said, cutting him off. “The people in makeup told me to leave it alone.”

He reached to touch his widened center part, his hair dampened and gelled almost as if the makeup artist had meant for it to look unwashed, greasy, and suddenly he understood. “They’re trying to make us look bad.”

She nodded, her hair teased into tangles. “They’re going for a contrast effect. The worse we look now for the before shots, the better we’ll look in the after ones.”

Incredulous, Greg asked, “And you’re okay with that?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I want to win. Don’t you?”

He ran a hand through his hair, belatedly remembering the gel, wishing he’d kept a few of those napkins from lunch. “Yeah, sure.”

He did want to win but not for the ordinary reasons, namely money and fame. Unlike the other contestants, he already possessed plenty of both. No, he’d come on Project Cinderella for one reason: he was done with losing at love. If changing his “luck” with women meant making himself over, he was willing to suck it up and endure whatever sacrifices the transformation would take.

Applause drew his attention back to the stage. Francesca St. James stepped up to the microphone stand, opening with a zinger—edible fashion as the next big thing? The shock value of her suggestion had the audience eating out of her hand, which was of course what she’d intended.

“But seriously,” she continued, her perfectly modulated voice hitting the mic receiver just so, “fashion is ever evolving. For those of us in the industry, the core challenge is to keep every season evergreen. Perhaps on this program we shall take a page from Lady Gaga’s book and experiment with combining fashion and food—only fresh foods, of course,” she added gamely, and Greg had the sudden urge to wipe away her smug smile—with his mouth.

“Are you saying we might see Project Cinderella contestants wearing meat dresses?” one reporter asked.

She flashed him a smile. “Why limit it to dresses, darling? You wouldn’t have our Cinderella men go naked, now would you?”

A tsunami of applause ripped through the room. Annoying though her perfection was, Greg couldn’t help but admire her, too. Witty and smart, charming and funny, Francesca was acing the press conference—and owning the stage. She could teach his PR people a thing or two. Under other circumstances, he might have tried to hire her away.

But these were not “other circumstances.” Within the four walls of Stage Eighteen, he wasn’t Gregory Knickerbocker, tech founder and CEO, but one of several ugly ducklings hoping to be turned into swans. On Amber’s cue, each of his fellow contestants took their solo walk down the red carpet. One by one they ascended the stage, posed before the backdrop banner, and then took their turn at the mic fielding questions. The latter ranged from thoughtful—“Jonas, do you think your active outdoor lifestyle will give you any kind of edge in the competition?”—to rude—“Brittany, whassup with the chompers?”

Then it was Greg’s turn. He started toward the stage, feeling as if the red runner was sucking at his soles. Surrounding him was the flash and pop of cameras, people pressing in on all sides. For the first time since stepping off the bus, his confidence flagged. National TV—what the hell had he been thinking? He was a master of the game, a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. He bolstered himself by thinking of all the people rooting for him: his dad, his sister and her family, Brian, and well, pretty much his whole product development team. And then there were the one hundred women who’d dumped him. That even one of his Ms. Wrongs might catch him on TV and take a moment to regret her callousness was too sweet a reward to pass on.

He reached the pink steps. Above him, most of the contestants wore frozen faces as though they’d just come from a Botox party. Brittany’s salad smile was cemented in place but her eyes looked watery. The remark about her teeth must have hit her hard. He focused instead on the producers and contest coaches, including Medusa. As it had a year ago in his office, her cool confidence struck him as pompous. But he had no room in his head for negativity now. This wasn’t her moment or anyone else’s.

It was his.

He stepped off the top step and onto the stage. Walking over to the banner and standing in front of it while they took pictures of him was the hard part, or so he told himself. Relieved when it was over, he took his place behind the mic stand, bracketed by the show runner, Jerry, to his right—and Medusa to his left.

Determined not to fail in front of her, he drew a deep breath and faced out onto the audience. “Good afternoon. I’m Gregory Knickerbocker, but I’m guessing you probably know that. Anyway, how’s, uh…everyone doing?”

In the pit below, the reporters queued up to the mic stand, the flow managed by a Ryan Seacrest look-alike whom Greg understood to be the show’s emcee. From the front of the line, a young guy called, “Greg, you’re a software developer turned CEO with a bunch of top-100 apps under your belt and now a hot new social networking site that went public at the end of last year. What effect will your tech background have on your performance on Project Cinderella?”

Squinting through the blinding brightness, Greg made out the guy’s badge. “Well, Bob, I’ve been self-employed since college, or middle school if you count the paper route, so taking orders from fairy…from the coaches probably isn’t going to come all that easily to me. But I’m going to give it my one-hundred-percent-plus personal best.” He shot Francesca a fast glance, wondering what she thought of that, but her composed features told him nothing.

“What’s the deal with the shirt?” the next reporter asked.

Greg glanced down. “Red is supposed to be the color of attraction—at least that’s what all the feng shui books say. I thought I’d get an early start.”

The joke won him a few chuckles. Not exactly the adulation Francesca St. James had sourced, but it was a start.

“Not the color, the quote: ‘I’m on a horse’?”

“It’s a tagline for Old Spice,” he replied, wondering what the big deal was. “I bought it off their website.”

Giggles greeted the admission. The lights were becoming seriously warm. Perspiration prickled the back of his neck.

“You wear Old Spice? How’s that been working for you?”

He hesitated, thinking of the one hundred rejections he’d already logged in. “Not so great, I guess.”

Another rumble erupted. Next to him, Francesca cringed. A die-hard “popular girl,” she was probably worried his nerd vibe might rub off.

“So, do you think the scent is some kind of…aphrodisiac?” another reporter asked.

Greg steeled himself. People, the so-called cool kids, had been poking fun at him since elementary school. Having Knickerbocker as a last name had made that pretty inevitable. The computer lab had served as his sanctuary, especially at recess. His mother had consoled him by saying that what didn’t kill you made you stronger. She’d been right. If it hadn’t been for all those hours logged in at the lab feeding his passion for innovation, he wouldn’t have gone on to develop his first app—or to launch Cloud Flyer. The company’s name had come from his childhood wish to climb up to the sky and fly away on a silver-lined cloud.

Still, every drop of moisture seemed to drain from his mouth. “It’s not so much the scent but what it stands for.”

A sea of amused faces greeted that statement. A pretty Latina reporter with the Los Angeles Times lowered her glossy mouth to the mic and asked, “What does it mean to you?”

Greg shifted feet and admitted, “Well, the official product slogan is ‘Believe in your smellf.’”

The room roared, and this time the laughter was definitely at his expense. The LA Times reporter stepped away from the stand, clutching her sides. The cameraman with her laughed so hard he nearly dropped his shoulder-mounted Sony.

Blood rushed to his face, roared inside his ears. His dad and his sister and her husband and maybe even their boys, not to mention Brian and the other devs, would all be watching. If he couldn’t make those people proud, the least he could do was not embarrass them. The prospect of his twin nephews getting teased or worse, over something he’d said for the sake of reality TV, poked at a raw spot deep inside him.

He cut a sideways glance to Francesca, trying to read her reaction. Cucumber-cool, she covered her hand over the mic and tilted her head to whisper, “Pretend they’re in their birthday suits.”

“Excuse me?”

“Visualize the reporters naked. It helps.”

“Thanks,” he whispered back, wondering why she would help him.

He forced his focus back out to the press pit. His imagination wouldn’t take him to full nudity, not on such short notice, but he could manage swimwear. The buxom blonde from TMZ now stood in an itsy-bitsy polka-dot bikini. Her thighs seemed to be made of cottage cheese and her belly button was an outie. The sneering CNN cameraman had on a pair of baggy laser-stripe swim trunks and a heart-shaped tattoo that read “Mom,” stuck smack in the center of his white fish belly. The mean Latina from the LA Times now had a snorkel muzzling her. She wore diving fins as well—and not much else.

“Greg, tell us what made you enter as a contestant on Project Cinderella? I mean you’re a rich, successful guy. It’s not like you’re hurting for money—or media exposure.”

Finally, a considered question. Still, Greg hesitated, weighing his words, wanting them to be as pristine and parsimonious as the code he still took pride in crafting. “I hope someday soon I’ll meet my perfect someone, and when I do I hope she’ll see me not as another entrepreneur or tech CEO but as her Prince Charming, a man who’s not afraid to take a chance, put himself out there and slay whatever dragons come, not for fortune or fame but for love.”

The room quieted. The TMZ blonde reached up to dash what might well be a tear from her eye. The Latina lost her sneer.

Gaining confidence, he added, “I’m a big ABBA fan and like their song says, I want to be someone’s Waterloo, the complete and final point of surrender for one very special woman.”

Greg sent Francesca St. James another sidelong stare. The confident, in-control game face she’d kept up until now had slipped, revealing a look of raw vulnerability. More than vulnerability, Greg would bet his controlling interest in his company that the emotion playing out on her stunning face was…yearning. But no, that couldn’t be. With looks like hers, she must go through lovers like facial tissue.

The executive producer, Jerry, pushed forward to the mic. “Folks, thank you all for turning out today to support the show. Before we break up the party, I have a very special announcement to make.”

Relieved to have the focus shifted from him, Greg wondered what Jerry had in store for them.

“As you’ll see below, there are six slipper chairs down there and only five fairy god-mentors on stage.”

Greg had noticed that earlier.

“Allow me to announce my sixth and final coach, a Georgia peach as sweet and style-savvy as they come, fashion photographer Deidre Dupree.”

A gasp sounded, not only throughout the room but from beside him. Swiveling in its direction, Greg found himself staring into Francesca St. James’s burning eyes—and the agape circle of her wide-open mouth.

…

“The devil does indeed wear Prada,” Francesca mused aloud a few minutes later, staring down Deidre in the holding area that served as a green room. A beverage cart had replaced the buffet tables, and Deidre was making full use of it, already on her second glass of chardonnay.

The older woman nodded, clearly savoring her role in ruining Francesca’s day. “It’s good to see you, too, Fran. Freddie sends his best.”

A cross between Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly and Disney’s Cruella de Vil, Deidre favored short white-blond hair, Chanel-red lips, and young male arm candy—of which Freddie had been the latest.

Francesca took a sip of her Pellegrino, willing her racing heart to slow. Saddled with Gregory Knickerbocker and Deidre Dupree for a solid eight weeks, her forty thousand dollars an episode scarcely seemed sufficient. Likely she’d need every penny of it for therapy to recover from the stress.

“Does he now?” It was bad enough that she’d sacrificed her relationship with Samantha for the sot, but having him rebound to Deidre of all people was an especially bitter pill to swallow.

Dee nodded. “We four should all get together for dinner once we’re back in New York—oh sorry, I meant to say three. You’re all alone now since Sam moved in with her daddy, isn’t that right?”

Francesca’s hand fisted about her cup. She’d always known Dee for a bitch, ever since she’d seen her slap an assistant behind the scenes, but throwing Sam in her face set a new record for viciousness.

“I suppose I should be flattered that you follow my life so closely,” Francesca remarked, taking another sip of the sparkling water.

Casting Francesca a considering look, Dee drank more wine. “Well, I just hope and pray we can set aside any…unpleasantness and work together, because I’m pleased as punch to be a coach on Project Cinderella.”

Francesca could feel her gaze narrowing to pinpoints. “Exactly what is it you’ll be contributing to the program?” she asked in as measured a voice as she could muster.

Deidre’s heavily made-up eyes widened. “Why, sugar plum, didn’t you hear? We’re going to colead the shopping and photo shoots segments.”

Colead? As soon as Deidre departed, she meant to seek out Jerry and give him a bloody piece of her mind.

As if bored already, Deidre took a look about the bare-bones room where the other coaches and contestants had assembled. “Remind me again who the nerd is?”

Deidre jerked her double chin to where Greg hung out talking to Franc and Cindy, his track pants bagging about the knees. He had an open bag of potato chips in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. She turned back to Deidre. “I believe you mean Gregory Knickerbocker.”

The name seemed to pique Deidre’s interest. “The billionaire tech CEO? Isn’t he the one whose photograph you never could get?”

Francesca gritted her teeth. Fashion photography could be a small world. Certainly it had never seemed more so than now. “Yes, what of it?”

“He’s cuter than I’d expected, though kinda on the spindly side. That beefcake shot might be tough going.”

“As they say, one can never be too rich or too thin,” Francesca shot back, looking pointedly down to Dee’s thickening middle.

Dee pursed her collagen-plump lips. “You think he’s got any shot at winning?”

Francesca lifted her chin. “He does—provided I’m the one to photograph him.”

Dee drew back as if taking her measure. “Is that so?”

“It is.”

Dee’s approach to photography was old-school. She relied heavily on artificial lighting and staged backdrops and props. Francesca preferred shooting outdoors. Even when she shot in the studio, she used natural light whenever possible. Dee’s fashion photos were all about erasing her subject’s individuality until they appeared scarcely more than mannequins, while Francesca strove to accentuate who her subjects were as people. Be they runway models or A-list celebrities, she always focused on the eyes—and bringing out what might be going on behind them. Thinking of Gregory Knickerbocker’s eyes, of how she’d as good as drowned in their cerulean-blue depths the first unfortunate time they’d met, it struck her that shooting him might be intrinsically satisfying. After all, their photo session was more than a year overdue.

Deidre’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “Careful, sugar, someone just might call you on that bragging.”

Francesca was entering dangerous waters, but suddenly she was too caught up to care. “Meaning you?”

Dee cocked one perfectly waxed brow, no small feat given how much Botox she’d had. “Care to make a friendly wager between colleagues?”

Dangerous waters indeed. “What sort of wager?’

“If Knickerbocker tanks, you give up your front-row seat at winter Fashion Week to me—permanently.”

The Fashion Week seat was a hefty whit to wager. Francesca had paid her dues to earn the prestigious placement. The proximity to the catwalk was essential to maintaining the high-caliber event coverage her clients expected.

Despite her boast, Greg’s winning was in no way assured. With his sleek shoulder-length ebony hair, flashing dark eyes, and athleticism born of an active outdoor lifestyle, Jonas White Eagle was serious competition. Beneath all the flannel and Gore-Tex lay the looks of a romance cover model. Any halfway decent photographer could capture him at his best—even Dee.

She hesitated. “I’ll need to give it a think.”

To have a serious shot at winning, Gregory Knickerbocker would require extra help off the set—and lots of it. Her expertise as a top photographer wasn’t going to suffice. Unfortunately like the fairy godmother in Cinderella, her “magic” had a curfew as well as a jurisdiction. According to the contract she’d signed, a coach’s interaction with any contestant must end the moment the day’s filming wrapped. There was to be no coach-contestant fraternization off set—none. Being caught breaking the rule was punishable by immediate termination and forfeiture of all fees. It was a great deal to risk, especially given her reason for joining the show in the first place—Sam.

Dee finished her wine and set the glass aside. “You do that, sugar. Me, I’m out of here and off to a Zumba class. With all the white truffles and foie gras I’m devouring these days, I have to work out twice as hard.”

That did it!

Francesca might not be the world’s best mother, she might not be able to locate let alone hold on to a decent man, but by God, she was the better photographer—the bloody best. Staring into her enemy’s eyes, suddenly she really, really needed to win.

“Hold on, not so fast. If Mr. Knickerbocker wins—or shall I say when he wins—what are you prepared to part with?” she asked.

Dee obviously hadn’t given much thought to losing. She paused to consider. “What would you want?”

“Beyond your badly dyed head on a platter, you mean?”

Dee glared.

Francesca thought for a moment. She didn’t really see the point in going for Fashion Week seats—she had the same excellent ones for all Fashion Weeks in Paris, Milan, and New York. No, if she were going to put her job and Greg’s contestant status on the line, the prize must be something supremely good.

We four should all get together for dinner once we’re back in New York. Dee’s taunt came back to her and with it an idea for revenge that promised to be savory and sweet—very sweet. “Dinner. I want dinner.”

Deidre sent her a startled look. “Freddie didn’t exaggerate, then. You really don’t do more than boil water, do you?”

That her former lover was sufficiently déclassé to talk about her to his new inamorata felt like the final straw—not for Freddie himself, the ruddy lout, but for what he represented: her bungled relationship with Sam.

“Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern?” Deidre rattled off the list of top Manhattan restaurants. “Hell, I’ll even spring for the French Laundry if you want to stop off at Napa before you head back.”

The mention of the five-star restaurant would have a lesser foodie than Francesca salivating, and yet she wasn’t remotely tempted. “That’s very…generous of you, Deidre, but I have a much more…intimate venue in mind.”

Deidre arched a pencil-darkened brow. “How intimate?”

“A private chef’s dinner for four served in my apartment with Frederick in my kitchen—and you waiting my table.” Starr and Matt, Francesca, and hopefully Samantha would make a merry dinner party indeed. Starr’s flair for sarcasm and biting one-liners would come in especially handily.

Deidre’s mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am. So what’s it to be? Do we or do we not have an understanding?” Francesca held out her hand.

Deidre hesitated and then took it, her talon-like fingernails biting into Francesca’s flesh. “Deal.”

“Splendid,” Francesca said. Breaking hands, she could scarcely wait to zip into the loo and wash hers.

Deidre turned to go. “Better feed your boy some Wheaties, Fran. He’s going to need them—and a whole heap of luck.”

Watching her walk off, Francesca bit her lip. What the bloody hell did I just do?

Guffaws drew her eye back to Mr. Knickerbocker. Unaware of her devil’s deal, he kept up his animated conversation with Franc and her assistant. Whatever joke he’d just made must be droll indeed. Cindy and Franc leaned upon each other to keep from falling down laughing. Mr. Knickerbocker joined them, his square-jawed profile softening, his keen eyes alight. Seeing him so utterly at ease, she found it hard to fathom that he was the same heartless trickster who’d tossed her from his office a year ago. For a wistful few seconds, she regretted not joining them earlier. Instead she’d dallied with Dee—and been baited into accepting a dodgy wager. But there was no going back now. Withdrawing was simply out of the question. Sipping her water, she hardened her heart—and firmed her resolve. Gregory Knickerbocker had better cooperate with her this time.

More than cooperate, he had bloody well better win.