Cinderella in the Spotlight

Rowan Harper loved the little fishing village of Rumbelow on the Cornish coast for many reasons—but most of all she loved it because nobody looked at her.

All her life, people had been staring at her. When she was a child, it was because she was standing next to her identical twin Willow, and people couldn’t help but try to find a non-existent difference between them. Later, once they hit their teens, it was because they were familiar from billboards and advertising campaigns that seemed to be everywhere, all the time.

Willow said people stared because they were beautiful. Rowan felt that they stared because they were different. Strange. Wrong, even.

Their mother said they should just be grateful that people looked at all, and they’d miss the attention when it was gone—but Rowan knew that was only because she missed it, having given up her modelling career to manage theirs instead, when they were just kids.

But here in Rumbelow nobody stared at Rowan, because there were so many other beautiful things to look at. The arc of the harbour as the sun went down. The tiny boats, bobbing on the shimmering waves. The pretty painted houses along the edge of the sea, and the rambling cottages that continued behind it, fanning off the cobblestone streets with their antique shops and coffee houses.

It was the picture-perfect Cornish village, and Rowan had loved it so much the moment she’d set eyes on it that she’d bought the first cottage she’d found and refused to leave.

That had been six years ago.

In those six years, she’d grown accustomed to the rhythms of the place. The spring festivals and summer regattas. The autumn fires and the special pie they had to eat. The Boxing Day swim in the freezing-cold sea. The local folk club playing and singing the same songs they’d played for decades—longer, maybe hundreds of years. Sea shanties and folk tunes that were older than Rowan’s thatched roof stone cottage.

This morning, as she swung a straw bag filled with treats from the local bakery over her shoulder and headed back towards the cottage, the only people who noticed her at all were the locals she saw every day, who waved politely.

Despite the community feel of the village, nobody asked too many questions here. If anyone had realised who she was—or who she had been—they never said. In Rumbelow, your life started the moment you arrived in the village, as if nothing that had come before could have ever been important.

Rowan loved that.

She took the last turn past the church, out onto the side street that led down the hill to her cottage, right on the outskirts of the village, humming happily to herself. The sun was high in the sky, if not entirely warm this early in the season, and it sparkled on the ripples of the waves as they crested below against the stony beach. This far along, the harbour had given way to a more natural appearance, and Rowan could see right across to the cliffs and the twinkling sails of the boats out at sea.

She smiled to herself, and waved to her nearest neighbour, Gwyn, as he jogged past her towards the town. Gwyn lived all the way around the curve of the harbour in the old converted lifeboat station that was now a luxury seafront property. He frowned and did a double-take before waving back, which confused her.

Until she turned through the gate onto her own garden path…

And stopped.

Because there, on her doorstep, was someone worth staring at.

Someone she hadn’t seen in person in six years.

Someone who looked just like her.

*

‘What are you doing here?’ Rowan whispered harshly as she fumbled for her keys. The last thing she needed was someone seeing her and her identical twin standing together on the doorstep and putting two and two together.

Not that they looked exactly identical right now. Oh, they both still had the same long blonde hair, wide blue eyes and slender figure—although Rowan admitted the pastries might have caused a small fluctuation there, but she usually offset that with long walks on the cliffs.

But Willow was chicly dressed in wide-legged beige trousers and leather boots, topped with a simple black sweater and a tan leather jacket. Her hair flowed glossily down her back, her manicure was simple but perfect, and even her make-up was flawless.

Rowan was in a turquoise and pink maxi skirt, a white T-shirt and a hoodie, her hair was scraped back into a messy bun, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a manicure, and all her make-up had dried up and gone in the bin.

No, maybe not so identical right now.

Finally, she managed to get the door open and turned to Willow to usher her inside. ‘Come on, come on. Before someone sees you.’

Oh, she hoped that Gwyn hadn’t lingered too long on his run down the street. Or that he hadn’t noticed the strangely familiar woman standing on Rowan’s doorstep for the last…

‘How long have you been here?’ Rowan asked as she slammed the door behind them.

Willow’s eyebrows arched in surprise at the question. ‘In England or on your doorstep?’

There was a slight Transatlantic twang to her sister’s voice that she’d only heard on the phone before. A consequence of living in New York for so long, Rowan supposed.

‘Both.’

Willow placed her large tote bag on the floor beside the telephone table, and Rowan saw her sister frown at the old-fashioned rotary dial phone that sat there. Phone signal was notoriously patchy in the area, so having a landline just made sense—not that anyone really had the number. Which was why she’d figured she might as well have a phone she liked to look at, since it never rang.

‘I arrived in England last night,’ Willow said, straightening up again. ‘I stayed at a hotel near Heathrow, then got a car to bring me down here this morning. I’d been standing on your doorstep for about ten minutes when you arrived. I did try to call, but…’

She gave the rotary dial phone another dubious look.

‘Cell signal can be unreliable here.’ Rowan carried her own bag down the darkened hall into the brighter kitchen at the back of the cottage, looking out over her higgledy-piggledy garden, then emptied it out onto the kitchen table. ‘Croissant?’

Willow looked nauseous at just the idea of carbs, so Rowan grabbed a plate and bit into one herself. No time for jam and butter this morning. She needed comfort food, stat.

‘So. Going to tell me why you’re here?’ Rowan dropped into the wooden chair she’d found at a second-hand shop and painted lavender, to match the plants growing just outside her window. She nodded at the other chair—another thrifted wooden chair in a different style, painted sage-green, and Willow cautiously sat too.

‘I need your help,’ Willow said.

Rowan reached for another croissant. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

Willow had never needed her help. Not once.

As kids, Willow had been the ringleader, the one who decided what they were doing and where. And when Rowan couldn’t keep up, Willow had made everyone else wait for her. When their mother was worried that Rowan had put on a few pounds and instigated a starvation diet, Willow was the one who sneaked her enough calories to keep going.

When Mum had yelled and screamed at Rowan for not wanting success enough, for being a failure, Willow had calmly stood between them and told her to stop.

When Rowan had started having panic attacks before runway shows, Willow had been the one to practice breathing techniques with her, and run interference so that no one else found out. When Rowan had fainted under the lights on a camera shoot once, Willow had literally caught her when she fell.

And when Rowan had wanted to leave, Willow had supported her. More than that, she’d helped her move her own money away from their mother’s control, then booked her the damn aeroplane ticket.

They might not have seen each other in person for six years, but they’d stayed in touch via email and videophone. And Willow was the only person in the world who knew where Rowan had gone when she’d dropped off the radar.

Most importantly, Willow had always, always helped her when she needed it.

Which meant that Rowan knew there was no way she could turn her sister away now.

‘What do you need?’ Rowan asked, and hoped against hope it wasn’t something she wasn’t able to give.

 ***

Eli rapped his knuckles against the wood of his brother’s office door, avoiding the frosted glass pane that read Ben O’Donnell CEO in a particularly intimidating font.

Refusing to be intimidated, Eli stuck his head around the door. ‘Got a minute?’

Ben was on the phone as usual, so he just nodded and waved a pen towards the chair opposite his desk. Eli dropped into it and waited.

Since his brother was still making vague noncommittal noises to whoever was on the other end of the phone call, Eli took a moment to study the office. It had a lot of memories, that room. Not so much since Ben became CEO of O’Donnell Industries two years ago—he’d only visited a handful of times, and never for long.

But when their father had ruled the roost…

After their mother left, Eli had spent a lot of time doing his homework at the second assistant’s desk outside the room, because at thirteen he was far too old for a nanny, but his father also didn’t trust him at home. Ben, at sixteen, had more often been with his friends—or, as far as their father was concerned, involved in school activities. But sometimes he’d come to the company headquarters building in Manhattan too, and been ushered into the inner sanctum of their father’s private office to be initiated in the secrets of how to be a CEO.

At least, that was what Eli had assumed was happening. He was never allowed in to find out.

Growing up, people always told Eli how important his father was, how much his work mattered. People said the same thing about Ben now.

But those same people had also told Eli he was imagining it when he’d worried that his father treated Ben differently to him—loved Ben more than him. His father had said so too, telling him not to be so oversensitive.

He knew now, of course, how right he’d been. As he’d grown up, those same people had stopped trying to keep the whispers from his ears. The ones that said, ‘Doesn’t he look more like his godfather than his father?’

They’d still told him he was making it up, though, if he complained about being shut out of his father’s office—of his life.

So had Ben, come to that.

Pushing the memories away, Eli got to his feet and strode across the office to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Manhattan skyline. No wonder his father had spent more time here than at home, with a view like that.

Not that the view from the family apartment on the Upper East Side was something to be sniffed at either. Even Eli had to admit it had been a wrench to leave that.

‘Right. We’ll circle back to that on Monday,’ Ben said, and Eli guessed his call was coming to an end.

He turned back to head for his designated chair, but couldn’t help but look at his brother’s desk as he went.

His father had kept it completely clear, excepting only the framed family photo that sat on one corner—a photo that had been removed after Eli’s mother left, and replaced with a staged portrait of Ben and Eli instead. Because whatever his father thought in private, in public he would never do anything at all to suggest that Eli wasn’t his son.

And if he wasn’t…well, both his parents had now taken that secret to their graves, hadn’t they?

Anyway, it seemed that Ben had continued his father’s clear desk tradition. There, in the corner, the only decoration was a framed photo of Ben and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Willow, at some awards ceremony or another.

Ben was in a tuxedo, and Willow looked impossibly slender and glamorous in a golden gown, her long blonde hair cascading down her back, her famous smile on show. It looked more like a picture in a magazine than a personal shot. Maybe it was, originally.

In his less charitable moments, Eli worried that Ben was more like their father than he was comfortable with.

He wondered too how serious Ben was about Willow—or if he just liked having one of the world’s most beautiful women on his arm when the cameras came out. Ben and Willow had been together—sporadically—for a couple of years now, but Eli had never even met her, only seen them together on TV, or in magazines.

He’d seen other women, though, at Ben’s flat, or at parties. He’d always assumed that was during the ‘off’ periods of their relationship, but he’d never asked. He wasn’t completely sure he’d like the answer.

Eli pushed the thoughts away. Ben was his brother, after all. He was rich, handsome, charming, and could probably have any woman at the click of his fingers, if he really wanted. If he’d chosen Willow, it had to be for a reason, and Eli had to respect that.

Ben hung up the phone at last and, following the direction of Eli’s gaze, turned the photo face down.

Ah. Off-again, then.

‘Things not good with Willow at the moment?’ He settled back into his chair and slouched down to rest his elbows on the arms, steepling his fingers in front of him. What Ben called his ‘therapist pose’, although none of the therapists Eli had ever spoken to had used it.

‘I got tired of all the demands, you know? Called time on it for now.’ Ben leaned back in his own high-backed, top-of-the-range, ergonomic leather desk chair, silhouetted against the Manhattan skyline behind him. He looked relaxed, confident—and still Eli was pretty sure he was lying. Which meant Willow had probably left him, and he didn’t want to admit it. It would diminish his reputation, or whatever.

In some ways, he really was just like their father.

Eli had asked his father once why he didn’t turn his desk around so he could enjoy the view while he was working. His father had told him that if he was working, he wasn’t looking at the view.

He’d asked Ben the same thing when he’d moved in. Ben had simply said it was more intimidating this way.

Eli hadn’t been satisfied with either of the answers. If it had been his office, he’d have turned the damn desk around.

But it wasn’t. It never would be. Because their father had left executive control of the company, lock, stock and barrel, to Ben. Not that Eli had been left destitute—far from it. Mack O’Donnell would never let it be said he hadn’t been generous to his sons—or let anyone suspect he didn’t believe Eli to be his biological child. No, Eli might not have got day-to-day control of the company, but he was still technically on the board, even if he never made it to meetings, and he had a share of the family fortune. Eli’s father had ensured he’d never have to work a day in his life, if he didn’t want to.

But he did want to. So he’d made his own way instead.

Which was what had brought him to his brother’s office in the first place.

‘So if you don’t have to escort Willow to any glamorous events this weekend, does that mean you’ll have time to look at that file I gave you? The one about the gala sponsorship?’

‘Ah, sorry, Eli. I wanted to, really.’ Ben flashed him an apologetic smile that didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. ‘But I promised a certain glamorous redhead that I’d take her out on the boat this weekend instead. She only makes one demand of me…and you can probably guess what that is.’ He barked a laugh.

Eli forced a smile. If Ben was taking another woman out publicly so soon, that was more evidence he was lying about what was going on with Willow. Overcompensating.

‘Perhaps you can take a look before you go,’ he suggested. ‘Do you have the file here? We could go through it together. Then I really need to take it back with me…’ There was sensitive information in that file—information he wouldn’t have normally let leave the locked filing cabinet in his office, or the firewall protected data cloud Launch used. But if showing Ben all the details got him interested enough to sponsor the gala event they were setting up that spring—the biggest event his non-profit ran in a year, and bigger this year than ever before—it was worth the risk.

‘Uh, I think I left it at Willow’s apartment, actually,’ Ben said.

Okay. Maybe not worth the risk.

‘Ben, I told you that file had sensitive information in it.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s not exactly unfamiliar territory to me,’ his brother replied. ‘I guess it just slipped my mind. You have no idea how much there is to do as CEO of this company.’

No, because Dad never let me find out.

That was an unfair thought. It wasn’t Ben’s fault that Eli’s parentage was doubtful, and their father had cut him out as a result.

‘I know how much running a company can take,’ he said instead, working hard to make it sound easy and relaxed. He knew Ben didn’t consider Eli’s own business ventures in the same league as his own—probably because they weren’t. ‘And to keep mine going, I really need to get that file back.’ And if you’re not going to sponsor my event, find someone else who will. Fast. ‘Can you ask Willow for it?’

Ben yanked open his desk drawer and pulled out a key, handing it across the desk to Eli. ‘She’s out of town, apparently. But you can go grab it yourself. I’ll text you the address and the door code. I left it on the counter, I think.’

Eli hesitated before taking the key. He’d never even met Willow, and the most recent information he had about her was that she’d dumped his brother. Invading her apartment in her absence felt wrong, even if it was to retrieve an important file.

‘You’re sure she won’t mind?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I’ll shoot her a text and warn her you’ll be going, if you like.’

Eli reached for the key. ‘That would be great. Have fun on the boat this weekend.’

He turned and left the office, feeling the weight lift from his shoulders the way it always did when he escaped that room.

He had work to do.

 ***

Rowan made tea as Willow talked, because it helped to have something to do with her hands. When she’d lived in America, it had been all coffee, all the time—black and strong and sometimes the only thing she’d consume all day.

Back in Britain, she’d retrained her tastebuds to love the calming, soothing taste of tea.

Even tea wasn’t up to this challenge, though.

‘You’re pregnant?’ Rowan plonked one of the mugs of tea down in front of her twin. ‘How did that happen?’

It was a mark of how serious the situation was that Willow didn’t even make a joke about the birds and the bees, or how long it must have been for Rowan if she didn’t remember. Rowan almost wished she would. It would make this less…weird.

‘It certainly wasn’t planned, I can tell you that.’ Willow sighed and reached for her mug, blowing slightly over the surface so steam snaked up towards the ceiling.

‘Who’s the father? Does he know?’ That was the next proper question to ask, wasn’t it?

‘Ben, of course.’ Willow frowned at her across the kitchen table. ‘What did you think?’

‘Sorry. I just…’ She’d never met Ben, of course, but she’d seen plenty of photos of the two of them online or in magazines, appearing at glamorous events or holidaying in exotic places. And Willow had mentioned him often when they’d spoken on the phone, or in her emails and texts. ‘I guess I figured that if the father was your long-term boyfriend you’d be talking to him instead of me.’

That made Willow wince and look away towards the window.

Hmm. Definitely something her sister hadn’t been telling her in those phone calls, then.

‘Things with Ben and me…it’s not what I’d call a stable relationship environment. Or anything a kid should be involved in.’ Willow’s words were flat, unemotional. But Rowan read a world of meaning behind them.

‘Does he hurt you? Physically or emotionally? Because you do not have to go back to him—’

‘It’s not like that.’ Willow sighed. ‘He’s… I mean, we’re…’

‘You’re really convincing me here, Will.’

Willow huffed a laugh and looked down at her tea again. ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s just…the world thinks we’re some fairy tale romance, right? The supermodel and the CEO, living our perfect glamorous life together, madly in love.’

‘And it’s not really like that?’ Rowan asked softly. She’d never seen her sister look vulnerable this way before. Usually, she was the one who was falling apart, and Willow was the one holding her up.

Maybe it was about time they tried things the other way around for a change. She certainly owed her.

‘You know, some days I’m not sure we even like each other,’ Willow admitted. ‘Right from the start…we were together because it was good for our images, our careers. We look great next to each other, and the papers like to talk about us a lot, and that was kind of what we both needed. We could fake the rest.’

‘You faked being in love with your boyfriend?’ Okay, that definitely sounded like the sort of thing that only happened in the bad romcom movies that Rowan usually watched when she couldn’t sleep on stormy nights.

‘Not…intentionally.’ Willow sighed again. Was all this heavy breathing good for the baby? Rowan didn’t know.

Maybe she’d have to learn.

‘Okay, tell me the whole story.’

The whole story took another pot of tea and several croissants, but basically boiled down to this.

Willow and Ben had met at some society party and realised that they were just the sort of person the other had been looking for. In Willow’s case, Ben was successful in his own right so not intimidated by her success, he was rich enough that she knew he wasn’t after her money, and they had a lot of the same friends so would inevitably end up at the same events.

In Ben’s case, Willow was recognised by the world at large as being beautiful, and that seemed to be enough for him.

They went out on a date and got photographed by the paparazzi. So they went out on another one, and people started talking about them.

‘And now it’s two years later, and we’ve never really had a conversation about our future, or our feelings, or if we even like each other beyond spending time in the public eye together and having someone there to have sex with whenever we want to scratch that itch.’

‘Do you want to?’ Rowan asked. ‘I mean, do you want to tell him about the baby? See if the two of you can be a real family together?’

It was something neither of the sisters had ever known. Their father had been out of the picture almost before they were born, and their mother hadn’t exactly been mum of the year. She’d always been more interested in how much money they could make her than who they were inside.

Maybe that was how Willow had fallen into such a transactional relationship with Ben.

‘I…’ Willow looked up and met Rowan’s gaze, swallowing hard. ‘It sounds awful, but I don’t think I do. This is the man I spent the last two years of my life with, sort of. But I know—like, deep down, heart knowledge—that he’d be the wrong partner for me in this. That we wouldn’t be happy—and neither would our child.’

Well. That was stark enough.

‘You still need to tell him, though,’ Rowan pointed out. ‘Especially if… Wait. I skipped ahead a step. Do you know what you want to do? Do you want to keep the baby?’

Because if she didn’t, why had Willow flown across a whole ocean to tell her about it?

Willow nodded. ‘I do. It might be crazy, because what about my career and my figure and my life, and I don’t have any support in New York, but I guess I can hire that? I don’t know. All I know is that I want to be a mom—a better one than ours was. I want to raise this baby right. And yes, I know I have to tell Ben. I just… I need to figure some things out first, about how this is all going to work.’

‘I can get that.’ Finally, something about Willow’s arrival here was making sense. She needed a place to hide, to think, to feel safe.

Rowan knew better than anyone how good Rumbelow was for that.

‘I just know if I talk to Ben before I’ve made some decisions about everything…he’ll take over. He’ll want things all his own way and I won’t be sure enough of anything to fight him on it.’

And in that one sentence, Willow had told her more about her relationship with Ben than in the rambling story that took two pots of tea.

Rowan reached across the table and grabbed her twin’s hand. ‘You can stay here as long as you like,’ she told her fiercely. ‘We’ll figure this all out so you can go back with a plan and do this the way you need to.’

Ben would want to have input, of course, but Rowan wasn’t going to let him steamroller over Willow’s wishes either.

Willow’s face relaxed into a small smile. ‘Thank you. I hoped… That will really help.’

‘Of course. You’re my sister. I’ll always be here for you.’ Especially given how many times Willow had been there for her.

Rowan got to her feet to put the kettle on one last time, and grab her planner so they could start thinking through the essentials—like doctors’ check-ups and whether she actually owned any sheets for the spare room.

But Willow stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm. ‘Actually, there was one more thing I needed. It’s a lot to ask, but…’

‘Anything.’

‘I need you to go to New York and pretend to be me. So Ben doesn’t get suspicious. I need you to be Willow Harper, supermodel, for a few weeks.’