Page 37 of One Night with Cinderella

He nodded. “And then she proceeded to wake up the entire household and go on a ten-minute tirade about respect, decorum, decent women and gentlemen, and how none of those things were to be found in the Cress family home that night.”

“But Lucas missed the speech,” she pointed out.

“That was about three in the morning,” Gabe said, picking up the bottle of wine to refill both their glasses. “We all heard it again at breakfast when he returned.”

“Three?” Monica asked with a wince.

“You think the new housekeeper heard all the ruckus?” he asked.

“Absolutely. The vents carry plenty of juicy details,” she advised him with a playful wink.

She thought of Chef Jillian’s note and started to share it with him but refrained, keeping that and other endless secrets she held about the family. First, she felt it wasn’t her place. Second, she’d signed an NDA. Third, she felt it would only make the strained nature of the family much worse.

Like the surveillance reports I saw in the Cresses’ bedroom.

“Sometimes I forget you...”

She arched a brow as his words trailed off. “That I was the family’s maid?” she offered. “Trust me, I haven’t.”

He set his glass and fork down as he sat back in his chair to look across the table at her. “Do you regret it?”

“Working for a living? Never,” she asserted, claiming her pride in her work as a maid.

Bzzzzzz.

Monica used the hand not clutching her glass to turn her phone over on the table where it sat. She recognized the number. Bobbie Barnett.

Answer it.

“Damn,” she swore.

“What’s wrong?”

She shifted her gaze over to Gabe. “Two weeks ago, I hired a private investigator to find the identity of my mother,” she admitted, feeling her heart pound with the force of a sledgehammer. “That’s her calling.”

Bzzzzzz.

His eyes locked on the phone. “Answer it,” he said, as he shifted his gaze back to hers.

Strengthened by his presence, she picked up the phone and answered the call as she pushed back her chair before rising. “Hello,” she said, moving across the kitchen and living room of the open area to reach the window showcasing Manhattan at night.

As she listened to the PI, the emotion in her eyes shifted in the glass’s reflection, moving from fear and slight excitement to shock. Grief. Sadness. And finally they went dull as she felt a chill race over her form.

Monica closed her eyes and released short gasps as her hand tightly gripped the phone.

“Ms. Darby? Are you still there?” Bobbie said.

Monica nodded, but then remembered the woman could not see her. “Yes,” she said, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears.

“I just emailed my report to you, and please let me know if there’s anything I can help you with in the future.”

Anger rose quickly. Irrationally. She knew it and clung to it because anything was better than yet another disappointment. “Crappy time to strike up new business, isn’t it?” she asked, her tone clipped and rigid.

“Ms. Darby, I meant no harm and I am so sorry for your loss,” she said, her voice soft.

Loss? Losses was more like it.

Monica ended the call and let the phone carelessly drop to the floor as she allowed the full weight and meaning of her mother’s death just a year ago settle around her. Engulf her. Take her back to a time when loss was common. It all just seemed cruel. And when tears dared to well up and pain radiated across her chest, Monica used a trick from childhood to go numb. Not feel. Not let her emotions weaken her.

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