Page 1 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

CHAPTER ONE

MORGAN STANFIELDHADnever taken seriously the idea that a person could die of embarrassment. But from where she was crouched currently, dressed in nothing but a black lace bodysuit, watching her boyfriend of approximately six months laying another woman down onto the bed, she was sure that she was close.

And that, perhaps, should have been the first clue that it was actually a good thing that Alex was cheating on her. Really, she should’ve known.

She should have known that whatever patience he seemed to have for her desire to wait, he would not defer his own pleasure endlessly. She should have known he didn’t actually love her quite so much.

And Morgan had always wondered why he’d been with her. She had always wondered why Alex was interested in her. She had met him when she was waitressing at a bar near her university, and she had been shocked when he’d approached her. He was tall and beautiful with arresting dark eyes and an easy smile. His Greek accent had sent shivers down her spine.

Morgan had worked for everything that she’d ever received in her life, and she was not working at the bar by the university because she went to the university. It was because she wanted to. Because she was saving up all of her precious money to get herself a better future. And when she’d started dating Alex, that future had suddenly been dropped in her lap. He’d given her the funds to go to school immediately, even though she had protested. He had brought her to family functions, bought her clothes and paid for her to be transported to luxurious affairs, and never once had he pressured her for sex.

Well, now she could see why.

He was getting it elsewhere.

And she was... Devastated.

She was also trapped. Trapped in her boyfriend’s bedroom at his parents’ house, their estate, actually, about to see a whole lot more sex than she’d ever had in her life. And she really thought she might die. She really did. And that was when she turned and saw the door that led out onto the balcony. The alcove she was in was quite separate from the bedroom. These rooms were more like suites, with separate compartments. And she had a feeling that if she crawled over to the door, and worked her way out onto the balcony, she would be able to go unnoticed.

Granted, once she was out there she might be stuck, but she would prefer that to being stuck indoors with a full pornographic scene happening within earshot. She took a breath. She turned and began to crawl across the floor. Literally crawl on her belly. Well, her friends had been right. Men like him were too good to be true, and it could only end in humiliation.

Of course, she hadn’t confessed to her friends that she hadn’t given him her virginity yet.

They thought she was silly being a virgin as it was, much less when she had a gorgeous, rich boyfriend. It was just that she’d seen the way that men had taken advantage of her mother over the years, and she had never wanted to... She had never wanted to lose herself like that. Had never wanted to lose her mind quite to that degree.

That worked out well, didn’t it?

She could finally touch the door. She reached up and prayed that the handle would pull. It did. Easily, and she was able to get it open silently. Staying low, she wiggled through the crack she created in the doorway, then once she was outside, keeping the handle pressed down, reached up and close it as silently as she had opened it to begin with.

She sat crouched on the balcony.

This was stupid. It was absolutely stupid. She had finally thought to...to give herself to him and he was giving himself to someone else. She wondered if his parents had any idea he had a woman here...

She knew who probably did. A dark rage expanded in her chest. Oh, yes, she was sure that there was one person who was well aware that Alex was locked away in his suite with some blond beauty.

His older brother.

The man who hated her most of all.

The man whose name she would not even think. Because he didn’t deserve it.

In her moment of humiliation, acknowledging his existence would be too great a burden to bear.

She looked down below. She was four stories up, and she did not relish the idea of trying to climb down.

Then, she really would be dead ostensibly of humiliation, and that seemed a fate too ignominious to contend with.

She looked across and saw that she was very close to the next balcony. She was trying to remember what the room might be, based on her time spent in the manor. A library, maybe. Or was that on the other side? Honestly, it didn’t much matter. She just needed to look in and see if it was occupied.

She stood up slowly, certain that Alex and his lover would be too occupied to notice if there was movement outside, and looked across the space between the stone railings. Honestly, in any other circumstance, she would have called herself crazy, curled up in a ball and lain there on the floor of the balcony until someone came to rescue her. But, no one was going to rescue her. Not from this, not from the site of her own folly. She would have to rescue herself. There was no rescuing her pride. It was already on the ground. So, she would think nothing about crossing the two spaces. She would have not a care in the world about falling.

“Don’t do that,” she said to herself, “if you fall to the ground you won’t die, it’s grass. You’ll only be maimed. And that’s really only compounding the problem, isn’t it?”

She gritted her teeth, and before she could talk herself out of it, lifted herself up and slung one leg across the railing on her balcony, and over the railing on the next, not quite able to plant her foot on the floor of the next balcony, but feeling somewhat secure that she at least had herself partially there. Then she lifted herself with her arms, and planted the next leg over, rocking forward and pitching herself safely to the ground. Thank God.

She really didn’t want to have to do that again. She looked next door and saw that the room was dim. There was no movement, though, she could not tell quite which room it was. There were bookcases, so perhaps she was right, and it was the library. Her only hope was that the door was also unlocked to this balcony. And it was. She slipped in quickly and quietly, cursing that she had left all of her clothes behind. She moaned. He was going to wonder about the clothes. Later, it was going to be clear someone else had been there. Or maybe he wouldn’t notice. Maybe he would attribute it to some other fling. Or maybe the maid would clean it up before he ever saw them.

It didn’t much matter, because she was never going to see him again. Not him or anyone from this family. For a moment, she felt utterly, desolately sad. Because she had been convinced that... That she’d found a dream.

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