An American Cinderella

She gave me a wink and headed out of my office with me staring after her. Hope started to form in my chest. There was a possibility that I could have this done in time to go to the ball.

Granted, I couldn’t take pictures of the documents with her in the office with me, but then I wasn’t taking pictures anyway. Having Jaqui help me didn’t solve all my problems, but it did at least help with one. I wasn’t about to turn that down.

Together, we worked all morning and late into the evening. I focused on scanning rather than Anastasia’s work, but it made the scanning go quicker. With the two of us working, we cleared the floor of boxes in record time. When the end of the day rolled around, I was easily within two days of work to finish the scans.

The ball was looking more and more possible. I stayed late, continuing to work on my projects for as long as I had the energy to do so. I only stopped when Henry called to see how I was doing.

“I got a dress,” I told him. “It’s purple.”

“I can’t wait to see it on you,” he replied. I could hear his smile over the phone. “It really means a lot to me. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this.”

“Me too.” I bit my lip and looked around the room. Should I tell him there was a possibility I might not make it?

“Thank you for coming to this,” he said, drawing my attention back to him. “It’s really important to me that you’re there.”

“Of course. I won’t let you down.” I didn’t know what he had to do to get these tickets, but if they were as rare as everyone claimed they were, he probably had to call in a lot of favors. I wasn’t about to mess everything up because I couldn’t get my work done. Besides, Jaqui’s help had gotten me to where it was doable.

We talked for a few more minutes about everything and nothing. I could hear the smile in his voice and how he slowly relaxed the longer we spoke. I suspected I did the same thing. He made me feel better just by talking to me. Anything felt possible with him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Aria,” he said. I loved the way he said my name.

“See you tomorrow, Henry.”

I sighed and hung up the phone. The room was darker without his voice in it. He made my world brighter just by being in it. Even through the phone.

I tried to get back to work, but I heard a strange noise. It wasn’t the normal creak and hum of the building ventilation or the steps of the night watchman. I frowned, trying to figure out the strange sound.

Finally, it dawned on me that it was my hacked phone. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my purse, my phone was ringing.

I almost didn’t check it. The most likely person calling would be Audrey and she was the absolute last person in the entire world that I wanted to speak to tonight. I’d spoken to her more in the past month than we had in years. It was more conversations than I ever wanted to have with her.

The phone continued to vibrate and hum, making it hard to concentrate on what I was doing. With a sigh, I fished it out of my purse, took it out of the plastic baggie full of cotton balls and pulled the duct tape off the speaker.

Three missed calls. All three of them from Audrey.

I knew she wouldn’t leave a voicemail to tell me what was going on. That would mean leaving evidence of something, and she was always so careful to avoid that.

Holding the phone like it was covered in slime, I hit the call button. I would get no peace until she contacted me and the last thing I wanted was for her to discover my new number.

“Finally,” Audrey said, picking up the phone by the second ring. “For a moment, I thought you had done something to your phone.”

She had to know that I had done something, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge that. The less information she had, the better.

“I had headphones on to work. Is there something you need?”

“Anastasia needs what you have done,” Audrey replied. “The senator is asking for it now.”

Audrey sounded frustrated and I couldn’t help but shake my head. She’d promised the senator’s office that Anastasia would be a decent replacement for me, but we both knew that wasn’t the case. I was actually surprised it had taken them this long to start asking for results.