One

Her secret was safe, Lily Miller reminded herself again as she stared past the sea of mourners to the casket. A crack of thunder sounded overhead and clouds darkened the Eastwick skyline, causing the mid-May temperatures to dip below the fifty-degree mark.

"Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust," the minister began.

Tears welled in Lily's eyes and she reached into her coat pocket to retrieve a tissue. Dabbing at her eyes, she thought of the woman she had come to mourn—Lucinda "Bunny" Baldwin, the darling of Eastwick, Connecticut, society, the editor of the titillating Eastwick Social Diary and the woman who, oddly enough, had been her friend. How was it possible that she was dead, the victim of a heart attack at age fifty-two?

Lily thought back to the last time she had seen Bunny—only two days ago. She had been so vibrant, all excited about some juicy new tidbit of gossip that, no doubt, would have appeared in one of her upcoming issues of the Diary.

"We commend the soul of our sister, Lucinda, to You, Lord," the minister continued.

Guilt tugged at Lily as she remembered Bunny's knowing looks during the past few months. It had been because of those knowing looks that Lily had tried to avoid crossing paths with the other woman for weeks now. But two days ago her luck had run out. Bunny had arrived early for the Eastwick Cares board meeting and she had been unable to avoid her any longer. When Bunny had started to question her about the night of the black-and-white ball, she'd realized that Bunny had figured out the truth, that she knew her secret. Lily had even feared that it was her secret that Bunny planned to expose in the pages of the Diary. She had been prepared to beg Bunny not to say or print anything, only she'd never gotten the chance. The other board members of Eastwick Cares had begun to arrive and she'd been forced to leave or risk being seen by Jack Cartwright. Yet, as she'd hurried away, she had wished for some way to ensure Bunny's silence—at least until she could decide what to do.

Be careful what you wish for.

The old adage popped into Lily's head. She had gotten her wish. She had wanted Bunny's silence and now she had it. Her secret was safe. But at what cost? Overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, Lily squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

"May she live on in Your presence, O Lord," the minister prayed.

Opening her eyes, Lily focused her attention once again on the minister and the service being conducted at the front of the gravesite. "In Your mercy and love, forgive whatever sins she may have committed…"

Lily shifted her gaze to the woman standing to the minister's right, quietly crying into her handkerchief. She recognized her immediately—Abby Talbot, Bunny's daughter. She noted the tall, intense-looking man with his arm around Abby and assumed it was Abby's husband, Luke. She had never met the man, but according to Bunny he traveled a great deal, something that had bothered Bunny. Lily studied Abby. Though she had met her only once, she had liked the other woman. In truth, she had been taken aback by the pretty blond socialite's warmth. She hadn't expected someone of Abby Talbot's social standing to be so welcoming to someone who lacked not only money and a pedigree, but any family whatsoever. Yet, Abby had treated her as an equal. A wave of compassion engulfed Lily as she witnessed the young woman's grief. She'd known from Bunny's comments that the two of them had been close. She couldn't even begin to imagine Abby's pain at losing her mother so suddenly.

Thinking of Abby's loss brought home her own. She had lost a friend. While she and Bunny might not have been bosom buddies, and while she had never understood the older woman's penchant for gossip, the two of them had been friends. And that friendship had been born out of their shared desire to help the underprivileged. Bunny had been fervent in her support of Eastwick Cares with both her time and her money.

But she hadn't limited her generosity to those who fell under the umbrella of the non-profit agency on whose board she served. No, Bunny had extended that generosity to Lily. She had treated her with kindness, and not just as an employee of Eastwick Cares. In many ways, she'd treated her almost like a daughter or, at the very least, a special friend. No one else had ever come closer to making Lily feel like a fairytale princess. Certainly not when she'd been a child shuffling in and out of the foster-care system. Then again, she hadn't exactly believed in fairy tales, Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. By the age of six, she had learned that life wasn't anything like the fairy tales. And while most of the families who took her in were kind, she wasn't a part of their family. She didn't belong. She never had. It was a lesson she'd learned quickly. As a result, she had never expected things like fancy clothes or party dresses. Those were for dreamers and silly young girls. She had never been either of those things.

But for some inexplicable reason Bunny Baldwin had been determined to have the grown-up Lily Miller experience the fantasy she'd never known as a girl—attending a party all dressed up in a beautiful gown and feeling as though she belonged. Bunny hadn't chosen just any party. She'd chosen Eastwick Cares' major fund-raiser—the black-and-white ball.

As if it had been only yesterday, Lily's thoughts drifted back to that day last December when Bunny had marched into her office and proclaimed that she had to attend the ball. All Lily's protests had fallen on deaf ears. Bunny had insisted that her employment as a counselor for the agency required she be there to assist at the event. That had obviously been one of Bunny's white lies—as Lily had discovered within ten minutes of her arrival at the ball. For some reason, Bunny Baldwin had cast herself in the role of fairy godmother to Lily's Cinderella. It was the only explanation for the society doyenne tricking her into attending the event and even presenting her with an elegant gown to wear. Oh, Bunny had claimed the dress was something that she'd found in the back of her closet. But she had recognized the quality of the beautiful black gown, Lily admitted, though it wasn't until she was in the powder room the evening of the ball that she had learned from one of the other women that the gown she was wearing was a vintage Dior.

Copyright © 2006 by Harlequin Books S.A.