The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(41)
Author: Catherine Mann

“Good Lord, no. My brother was a banker. I vow the man probably had sex with his tie on.” Chuckles rumbled through Eugenie until the green facial mask threatened to crack.

Kelly couldn’t help but join in, all the while envying this woman’s ability to keep life light, uncomplicated. Happy.

Eugenie’s face softened beneath her mudpack. “But I loved him.”

“Of course you did.” She never doubted her parents’ love even though their goals for her differed from her own.

“No doubt they’re up there in heaven wincing over the way I brought up their boy.” She rolled her eyes, her hands smoothing wrinkles out of her tangerine caftan. “But I did the best I could. Believe it or not, I even settled down a bit. I was quite the world traveler before.”

“As opposed to now?” Good God, the woman must have been a party animal. Kelly smiled as Peter knelt to dump a fresh capful of crystals into her footbath, then the older woman’s, as well.

Eugenie leaned closer to Kelly. “I was a real hottie, too.”

Peter smiled up from the footbath. “You still are, Miss Eugenie.”

“Why thank you, Peter.” She winked, then waited until he rounded the corner into the back room, before continuing, “He used to have a crush on me, followed me around like a lost puppy. He was all of twenty back then, and I had no inclinations to be his Mrs. Robinson. Besides, I was still nursing a broken heart.”

Kelly definitely didn’t want to talk about broken hearts at the moment. “What’s to stop you now?”

Eugenie’s eyes twinkled with a light identical to the one Ethan used to flash so often. “There’s a risqué streak in you after all. Having an affair with my masseur, who happens to be fifteen years my junior, would certainly rattle the social set.”

“That it would.”

Hair dryers and chatter filled the silence between them.

Kelly watched a woman across the salon whip out a wallet full of pictures and couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What was Ethan like as a child?”

If Eugenie started with matchmaking ideas, no doubt they would be doused soon anyway. And Kelly wanted as many memories as she could store to take with her when she left.

“What was Ethan like as a child? Intense. All motion. Probably hyperactive, slightly dyslexic. A real handful, and most schools didn’t offer much in the way of enlightened compensation for those things back then.”

Kelly churned the new layers to Ethan in her mind. She should have recognized the signs. The way he learned better verbally. Always preferred the computer to the written word. Even the surplus of books on tape in the floorboards of his car.

That the sound of her voice had wrecked his concentration for two years. The heady notion tingled all the way to her wrapped roots.

“Many people at the schools we tried saw him as a troublemaker. But he had the most incredible ability to think outside the box, even then. Yes, his imagination took flight in pranks, but never anything dangerous.”

Kelly couldn’t help but think of how Ethan had orchestrated such an inventive plan for security at the embassy ball. Wrangling a joint operation with the Marines to implement their nonlethal weapons for use in crowds had been inspired. And using Carla Juarez as a liaison so Ethan remained anonymous added to his brilliance. They might well never have to resort to the back-up firepower in place.

Experience counted and Ethan’s had shown on this mission.

Eugenie reached for her crystal wine glass, sipping gingerly before sagging back into the leather massage chair. “One winter, he slipped out and jammed sticks into all the neighborhood’s electric gates so they wouldn’t open. The next morning, dozens of men and women in suits climbed out of their cars in the cold and glared at my house.”

That part of Ethan, she recognized. Kelly could almost see him smirking from the bushes.

“He never confessed his reason for doing it, but I always suspected it was his revenge against the country-club crowd for the way they snubbed their noses at me when I moved back to Virginia. I’d chosen to leave the fold and they were going to make me work to earn their acceptance.”

The image of Ethan as a child shifted to a youthful avenger, the man who’d taken on the world’s injustices. She couldn’t help but wonder how many other times she’d misjudged his bad-boy actions.

Suddenly, she wanted Aunt Eugenie to stop. The reckless Ethan was much easier to resist than this boy-turned-man she was learning about. But Eugenie was a mama-figure on a roll about her child and Kelly didn’t stand a chance of stopping her.

“He never liked school much. Too many rules and constraints. I tried the best prep schools. His tie always found its way onto one of the statues of saints in the garden.”

The grin cracking the crust on Eugenie’s face told Kelly Ethan probably hadn’t been reprimanded too harshly.

“After Ethan’s third expulsion, I gave up on the formalized education route. I soon realized if I wanted any peace, I had to keep him busy. I hired tutors and we traveled. He did better with hands-on learning. So I made life one big field trip. Which suited me fine, since then I could travel without feeling guilty for uprooting a child.”

“It sounds like a wonderful way to grow up.” One she herself would have wanted. How would her own parents have reacted to a rebellious child? Somehow she doubted they could have been as accommodating had she been the one with the learning disability.

“I must not have done too badly because he was accepted into the University of Chicago. He didn’t graduate with honors…not by a long shot. But he finished on time from a prestigious school. He’s grown into a fine man, if I do say so myself.”

Maternal pride radiated from Eugenie over the man Ethan had become. Not the grades. Not even his job. But the person. Kelly loved her parents, yet couldn’t help but hope she would be able to model this woman’s parenting style. Someday.

What kind of father would Ethan make?

Images of him building forts with children in the middle of the sculptured garden filled her mind. Sounds of their laughter echoed.

She shut those thoughts down before they could grow roots in her brain. Kelly peered in the mirror at her alien image covered in plastic wrap and hair solutions for a bracing reality check. “You should be proud.”

“I am.”

“I would imagine it’s a comfort that he decided to stay on here living with you.”

Eugenie peeked out of one eye at Kelly. “Dear, you misunderstand. He chose to let me stay. Everything became his once he turned twenty-one. Up until then, I was simply the executor.”