Tess Mallory - Circles in Time
Page 38
"A little different from Cinderella, I'd wager," Navarre muttered under his bream.
"Not too different," Kendra whispered back. "I got Prince Charming didn't I?"
"No, just a knight in tarnished armor."
"Story! Story!" Marian cried, abandoning her coloring book and running to throw herself into her mother's lap.
"Yes, I'd like to hear the story as well," Arthur Mackenzie said, pulling his chair closer.
Kendra sought Navarre's gaze over their children's heads and felt anew her love for him. She gave him a tender smile as she rumpled her daughter's hair and laughingly planted a kiss on top of their son's head.
"What's the story about?" Rob asked.
"Who's de story 'bout?" Marian added.
Kendra tossed her long auburn braid back over one shoulder. "It's a very exciting story and it's about Robin and Marian and—"
"We're in your story?" Rob demanded.
"Well, in a way, yes, you're in my story," Kendra said, shooting Navarre a hesitant glance. "I really don't know if—"
"Is you and Daddy in it?" Marian asked.
"Yes, Daddy and I are in it too."
Robin and Marian climbed up into her lap and the little girl snuggled down contentedly while Rob stared curiously up into first her face and then his father's.
"Is it a fairy tale? 'Cause fairy tales are sissy."
"Not this one, laddie," Navarre interjected, finding a chair and pulling it closer to Kendra. "This is a fairy tale that I guarantee you're going to like."
"So how does this fairy tale begin?" Mac asked, his blue eyes as warm and loving as the day he'd sent his favorite niece across the ocean to cover a harmless little story for the Chronicle.
Kendra gave him a grateful smile, then reached over and took Navarre's outstretched hand. "Well, Uncle Mac, how do all fairy tales begin? Once upon a time…"
"Wait, wait!" Marian cried, jumping up and down on her mother's lap. "I know de end of de fairy tale. I know! I know!"
"How does it end, princess?" Navarre laughed, squeezing Kendra's hand and leaning forward to rumple his daughter's tousled hair. The little girl grinned back at him triumphantly.
"A fairy tale always ends like dis—" She poked one finger into the air, accenting each word. "And dey all lived happily after."
"Yes," Kendra whispered to her husband softly, "they certainly did."
Navarre gazed down into Kendra's eyes and for a moment, Mac and the children faded away until it was only the two of them, enclosed in their own private circle of time and love. Across time and space they had found one another, battled the odds, and won. No matter what their futures held, they both knew with a surety that their love for one another would never alter, never perish, never die. The moment passed, and the circle extended once again, this time including them all.
High above the Chronicle building in New York, a flurry of mysterious blue lights flickered and twinkled, tumbling over one another in what to the observing eye would appear to be giddy abandonment. Gradually they slowed, then one by one, almost reluctantly, disappeared.