Page 11 of Cinderella's Secret Baby

The management had frowned on servers fraternizing with customers, but they didn’t forbid it. Even so, Amelia usually kept things simple. She knew players when she saw them. She’d been involved with one already, and it hadn’t ended well. A pair of men in upscale golf clothes with gold watches and aviator sunglasses werenotlooking for love. Besides, while one of them had a sexy French accent and a slow, lazy smile, the other was contained and remote and intimidating. Amelia had learned to gravitate toward golden retriever types, not men with energy that was brooding and coiled and dangerous.

“They probably have wives to get home to,” Amelia had said, even as reluctant interest had been unfurling inside her.

“Don’t you recognize them? That’s Hunter Waverly. Wave-Com? And Remy Sylvain. Can-Carib airlines. I would do anything for a private flight to Turks and Caicos.” Cheryl had waggled her brows.

Cheryl would do anything for a laugh and a pleasant roll in the hay. She had broken up with a long-term boyfriend and was determined to sow her oats before settling down again.

Amelia was the opposite. Her one serious relationship had left her wary and suffering a crisis of confidence. She’d been mad at men and had been hanging on to her virginity with stubborn defiance that had begun to feel like martyrdom—especially when an order took her past the men’s table on the patio and she caught Hunter checking out her legs.

In that moment, she had seemed to walk from a gloomy fog into a bright, verdant day. A sharp sensation had pierced her, like a hunger pang, but lower. Her skin had warmed, and her heart had been in her throat that she had caught his interest.

It’s only one drink. That was another thing she had allowed herself to believe. One drink was harmless. She hadn’t already been in bed with him, mentally, before she’d given him her name.

Which was what made the whole thing so cringey. That’s why she’d been glad to never see him again. He hadn’t even had to seduce her. With nearly no effort at all, she had offered herself up. Here. Take me. Take myvirginity.

Do you need money?

She would have buried her face in her hands, but Peyton began to whimper.

“You’re okay, baby. It won’t be long,” she murmured and set her hand on Peyton’s round belly.

It didn’t work. Nothing did.

As Peyton worked herself up, Hunter stopped speaking to send them a distracted frown. “Is she okay?”

“She doesn’t like long car rides.” Amelia shrugged, defensive, but also passive-aggressively smug that Peyton was turning into a pill. Babies fussed. Figuring out why and solving it was Parenting 101. If he couldn’t handle that, he should walk away from the gig right now.

“It might get loud here,” he said to his minions. “See what you can get done. I’ll check in when I get to the apartment.” He ended his call.

Amelia tried to coax Peyton to take the pacifier, which she never took, but this time she sucked long enough for Amelia to ask, “Are you, um, still getting married?”

“You didn’t notice the marquise-shaped dent in my face?”

She had forgotten he had that talent for arid remarks. She bit her lip, refusing to be amused. Or blamed. Or relieved.

Peyton spat out her pacifier and began to wail. Amelia gathered her patience and tried again, but Peyton turned her head in rejection.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Hunter asked.

“With this as my profile?” She waved at the growing tantrum Peyton was staging. “They’re lined up out the door. Why?” Amelia barely heard him over their daughter, but a blush of hopefulness rose across her chest.

“Because this mess is big enough with just the two of you.”

And that was the real reason she hadn’t told him about Peyton. He didn’t want either of them.

“No.” She ignored the scorch in her throat that strained her voice, compelled to defend her daughter. “The two ofus—” Amelia pointed between herself and Hunter “—made her. And she is not a mess. My life is not where I thought it would be, either, you know.”

She might have pulled off that moment of righteousness if she didn’t look like a carton of eggs dropped on the sidewalk and their daughter hadn’t drowned her out by arriving at full nuclear meltdown.

“Is there something I can do?” Hunter asked impassively.

“No,” she mumbled, wanting to fold over Peyton and cry just as hard.

Because this was a mess. It was a giant awful mess, and she couldn’t help feeling it was all her fault.

CHAPTER FOUR

“STILLTHINKBRINGINGus here was a good idea?” Amelia taunted under her breath as she unclipped the car seat and allowed Hunter to lift it out the other side.

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