Page 110 of Sliding Into Love
He saw Janna first; she was small enough to slip through gaps in spectators and escape the adults. She raced toward him but skidded to a halt when she was about a yard away, a horrified look on her face.
“Why do you look likethat?” She pointed at his cheeks.
He had forgotten about the eyeblack. It had been Jen’s idea, an intimidation tactic and a last goodbye to the old Hawks all in one.
Ethan squatted down and held his arms out.
“It was to keep the sun out of my eyes.”
Janna squinted up at the night sky.
“But there’s no sun.” She crossed her arms to glare at him, and he had no choice but to laugh. She was like a tiny Ivy, not taking his shit.
“You’re right. It was mostly to look scary to the other team. Do I look scary?”
“Nuh-uh. You look silly. Take it off.” Janna the tyrant, as usual.
“Sure thing. Want to help me?” Ethan scooped her up and pretended to rub his cheek over hers.
“Daddy, nooooo!” she shrieked.
His heart squeezed at the name.
Ivy appeared, and Ethan deposited Janna back on the ground, then stood and scrubbed at his face with the wipe Ivy provided. She bounced on her toes, nearly as excited as Jase. Butnobodywas as excited as Jase, and seeing him jumping up and down and howling in delight transported Ethan back in time. Ethan blinked away the fog of memories and looked up straight into his father’s eyes. Jimmy winked, and Ethan felt a final piece click into place.
Laura's friend Andrew was a tall, thin, bald, bronzed man who had seen the business end of a Botox needle one too many times. He was fidgety, fretful, and had an annoying tendency to spout trivia, but Laura trusted him with her wardrobe, so Ivy would as well.
Ivy now found herself in Laura’s palatial dressing room.I should have expected as much,Ivy thought as she took in a room the size of her entire apartment. Shelves of shoes and bags lined the walls, with racks of clothing organized by style and color on the opposite side. Full-length, silver-framed mirrors reflected her unusually pale face at her beside Laura’s serene one and Andrew’s shiny one. And there were not one, but three chandeliers.
“Just relax and enjoy yourself,” Andrew said. “This is my favorite part!”
But Ivy found relaxing difficult when the man came at her with an armful of dresses and an impossibly high stack of shoe boxes in his other hand. "And of course, we'll schedule a full spa treatment, nails, waxing, hair and makeup, the works." She winced.
Laura, who had joined them in the dressing room, winked at Ivy, toasting silently with her glass of champagne. Ivy tried to disguise a snort as a cough as Andrew unloaded his burdens, deftly shifting the velvet-flocked hangers from his arm to the clothes rack and stacking the shoe boxes beneath.
This was her Cinderella moment, Ivy realized as Andrew clapped his hands together gleefully. She had found her prince, and now she had to go to the ball.
Or wait — was that backward?
Months ago, when Ethan had told her about what she'd jokingly called baseball prom, the idea had sounded fun — dressing up, drinking, dancing. Now that the time for the infamous Lorne Major League Base(Ball), with all proceeds going to local inner-city youth leagues had come, Ivy realized she was unbelievably nervous.
This was her first event as a soon-to-be Fisher, and the name Fisher meant something in baseball land.
Ethan was descended from sports royalty; hell hewassports royalty, having won the World Series, and Ivy was nobody from nowhere who had accidentally wandered into a dynasty. It was a Cinderella story, she thought, taking a long sip from her glass of champagne.
"Just call me CinderIvy," she muttered into the glass, then snorted again, the bubbles burning her nose.
"What was that, dear?" Laura lowered her glass to the marble-topped table between them.
Briefly, Ivy considered making an excuse or flat-out lying. But she knew the guilt would crush her.
"Just call me CinderIvy,” Ivy repeated, sinking into her plush chair. “It's just... it's overwhelming. All of this." Waving around generally at the room, Ivy stared down at the scuffed toes of her sneakers. In stark contrast to the floor, which inexplicably looked like gold spun into carpet, Ivy started to tuck her feet under her bum, but then she realized she'd probably ruin the chair, so she crossed her ankles uncomfortably, trying to avoid Andrew’s bronzed gaze as he flitted about in his search for accessories. “Sometimes… sometimes I don’t feel good enough for Ethan. We come from such different backgrounds. I’m nobody, and he’sEthan Fisher, and his—your—whole family is rich and famous. I just don’t know if I fit in with…this.” Ivy pointed in turn at the lighting and full-length mirrors of the room. “And what if I do or say something to embarrass him at the charity ball? I’ve never been to a charity event, and I can’t remember the order of the silverware, and I’ve never even used silverware with more than two forks and I just—" she trailed off.
“I’m not going to say you don’t come from different worlds, because you do. Very different.”
Despite the softness of Laura’s voice, Ivy’s chest tightened, and her face crumpled, but Laura put up one finger.
“But that’s a good thing. Did you know Jimmy lived in his car before he was signed?”
