Wickedly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  He was too tired to pretend to be anything other than what he was.

  Dave the bookseller, who was meeting a woman he barely knew to talk about a terrible book he had told her to write, a woman he was attracted to, a woman who would probably balk when she learned that in the past month he had become a full-time single father to two rather lost little girls.

  He paid for his drink, then walked over to the table, and made himself smile as he sat down.

  “Mellie,” he said, using his warmest voice.

  He was pouring on the charm—he knew it, and he wished he wasn’t. But he didn’t see any other way to do this.

  “It sucks, doesn’t it?” she said, putting the same emphasis on the word “sucks” that Imperia had used the day before. Was that something girls got taught when they came to the Greater World? Or did they just feel free enough to use the word here, when they wouldn’t have used the word at home?

  Mellie opened the door. But he wasn’t going to walk through it. After all, she had worked on this project for a month. And he really didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He wanted her to kiss him again.

  She probably wouldn’t, even if he was particularly gentle about this book. He had to keep reminding himself that their one kiss was not really a kiss at all.

  It had been a spontaneous thank you, one she probably forgot in an instant.

  He needed to charm her. He needed to take the attention off that damn book. He needed her to realize that he liked her.

  “You’re looking particularly beautiful today,” he said with a smile.

  She smiled in return, but the smile was reluctant, as if she couldn’t help it. The smile made her seem young and vulnerable.

  “How are you?” he asked. “Well, I’m fine. Gee, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. Is everything working out well for you?”

  Her smile grew and became sincere. She clearly understood what he was doing, and it made her eyes twinkle.

  “How are you, Charming?” she said. “Or do I call you Dave here?”

  She didn’t put that snide emphasis on the name, and he appreciated that.

  “No one notices Dave,” he said. Usually he liked that. Just not with her.

  “Everyone notices Dave,” she said. “You should’ve seen the look that the barista gave you as you came through the door.”

  He flushed. Mellie had been watching him, then, from the moment he arrived.

  “Yes,” she said, “I saw you come in. And I saw you hesitate. Is it that you don’t want to see me or you don’t want to tell me about the book?”

  She wasn’t going to let it go. He had hoped they might have a few minutes of flirting before he had to talk about the book.

  Although, if he was really honest with himself, he would say that he never wanted to talk about the book.

  She shrugged one delicate shoulder in response to his silence. “I don’t mean to push you. I’m just the kind of person who likes to get the bad news out of the way first.”

  He bit his lower lip. They had a moment—just a moment—before he had to sound like a jerk. He could lie to her, he supposed, but he wouldn’t feel right about that either.

  After all, she really wanted to change her image—rather, the image of Evil Stepmothers—and he had come up with the perfect way to do it.

  Just not the perfect writer.

  “And you,” she said, “are clearly the kind of person who doesn’t like dealing with bad news at all.”

  She got that in one. Ella had accused him of going passively through life, letting things happen to him. While that wasn’t completely accurate, it took a lot for him to demand something he wanted, at least for himself.

  “Look,” Mellie said. “You can go if you want. I release you from your promise, if that’s what it takes. I know that you were just being kind at the book fair.”

  Charming looked at her. She had a pleasant expression, but a slight frown creased her brow. She believed that? She believed he was just being kind?

  Hadn’t she figured out how much she attracted him?

  He sighed. Probably not. When he had been surprised by that kiss, he had probably communicated disinterest. Even though he hadn’t meant to.

  “I’m sorry,” he said before he could stop himself. “It’s already been a rough day.”

  “And I’m about to make it rougher,” she said with compassion.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m just tired. I yelled at someone this morning, and I don’t do that very well.”

  Now her pencil thin eyebrows went up. “You yelled at me at the book fair. Have you met someone else who tried to ban books?”

  He smiled in spite of himself. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Then what was it like?” she asked.

  He shook his head. She didn’t need to hear about his personal woes. He grabbed the folder and opened it.

  “How about we talk about the book instead?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking at the pages before him with trepidation. “How about it? It’ll be such fun.”

  And he could tell, just from the tone of her voice, that no matter what he said, he would disappoint her.

  He hated disappointing anyone.

  But he had no choice here.

  Because she was right: her twenty pages really did suck.

  Chapter 13

  Charming hadn’t seemed this distant, not even at the book fair when he was yelling at her. Then Mellie had felt a connection. Maybe it had only been because they were both from the Kingdoms, or maybe it had been because they both felt a little out of place. But they had seemed like similar people.

  Even if he was handsome and charming and obviously beloved, and she was the scourge of the Earth.

  Now, however, he didn’t seem to want to be with her. He was charming, but it had a fakeness to it—or maybe the kind of charming that he delivered to everyone else.

  That was it. He was charming to everyone else.

  At the book fair, he had been honest with her.

  He wasn’t going to be honest now.

  Although there was that moment, when he told her about his rough day. She had actually seen pain in his eyes.

  What could cause a man like him pain?

  She wasn’t sure how to ask him. Or if she should ask him.

  He wanted to divert the conversation from him to her book. She’d let him tell her about how horrible it all was, then she would offer to buy him another coffee, and let him talk about his own life.

  People did talk to her, and tell her their woes. She knew how to listen. It was one of her best skills.

  He looked like he needed a shoulder. She’d provide it—and, she promised herself, she wouldn’t scare him off by kissing him.

  “I’m ready,” she said. She folded her hands on the cool cover of her laptop, and braced herself for the bad news.

  “Do you read for pleasure?” he asked.

  Read for pleasure? She blinked at him. Read what for pleasure?

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  He had smoothed his hands over the manuscript. She couldn’t see if he had made any markings on it. “People read books for enjoyment. Do you?”

  But she could tell from his tone that he already knew the answer. She didn’t. It hadn’t even occurred to her.

  She supposed she knew that people read for pleasure. After all, why would all the various books exist? But she hadn’t really thought about it, any more than she had thought about those games and comic books that seemed all over the Greater World culture now. She didn’t even shop for pleasure, although she had a greater understanding of that than she did of reading.

  “Sometimes I enjoy what I read,” she said, wanting to give him the answer he wanted.

  He smiled. The smile was as gentle as his tone, and very sad. “That’s good. But reading for pleasure is something else, something you do because you enjoy it, not because you enjoy it when someone else tells you to do it.”

  “Like you,
” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, as if she were a particularly good student.

  “Then, no, I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t read for pleasure.”

  He nodded and looked down.

  “That’s a problem, isn’t it?” she said.

  He continued nodding. He didn’t meet her gaze.

  She glanced at all the other people staring at their laptops. Were those people all online? Or were they all writing?

  And if they were writing, did that mean that they liked reading for pleasure?

  “Are my pages that bad?” she asked.

  Charming ran a hand over the lower half of his face. Then he sighed. His gaze met hers, and she was struck again by how handsome he was. His glasses didn’t magnify his eyes, like so many people’s glasses did. Instead, they accented the startling blue.

  Her cheeks warmed. She wanted him to think well of her, and she had blown even that by trying something she had no business trying.

  “It’s not so much that the pages are bad,” he said, and she could tell just from the words he chose that he was lying. “It’s the proposal you wrote.”

  “Proposal?” she asked.

  “The part telling me what the rest of the book would be like,” he said. “Books, novels, they all tell stories. You have no story here.”

  “I said that people would learn they were wrong about stepmothers, and my heroine would have a good life,” Mellie said.

  “But ‘people’ aren’t who the story is about. The story is about Mally—which, I’m sorry, is a name you’ll have to change—and she doesn’t change. She just educates people as to who she is, and then they like her, and that’s the end.”

  Mellie frowned. Her heart was pounding. She really didn’t understand any of this stuff. “So?”

  “Characters change, Mellie,” he said. “Because people change. You’ve changed over your lifetime, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. In some ways she had. In other ways, she felt like the same person she had always been.

  “I certainly have changed.” He glanced at the door—because he wanted to escape? “I’m not even the same person I was a month ago.”

  Uh-oh. He’d met a woman who didn’t want him here. Mellie could understand that. No woman would want to share this man.

  “How have you changed?” she asked and braced herself for an I’m-in-love-it’s-great saga.

  His face seemed to collapse in on itself. He suddenly looked nothing like Prince Charming, and everything like Dave the bookseller—a middle-aged, overburdened man who wasn’t getting enough sleep.

  “You don’t want to hear this,” he said.

  “Oh, but I do,” she said, and she did, because she suddenly realized she was wrong. It wasn’t about another woman. Something had happened to him. Something that bothered him.

  The something he had mentioned that was “rough.” The something she had thought she would have to pry out of him.

  Apparently, she didn’t have to pry. Apparently, he wanted—make that needed—to talk.

  “You just want me to tell you about me so that I don’t talk about your book any more,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I want to know. What’s changed?”

  He looked at her again, and this time, she saw the man from the book fair. He wasn’t distant. He wasn’t trying to charm her. He had returned to his eyes.

  He flipped the manuscript pages, as if he didn’t even realize what he was doing, and said, “My wife abandoned my daughters.”

  Chapter 14

  That wasn’t how he meant to say it. He had meant to say something innocuous like I have my daughters with me right now or My living situation had changed or I’m going to be a single parent for a while.

  Not My wife abandoned my daughters.

  “What?” Mellie asked. She looked shocked.

  So did the doughy guy the next table over, who had been watching them all along. Charming glared at him and the man bent his head and started typing on his laptop again.

  “I mean,” Charming said, trying to repair the verbal damage a little, “she’s not my wife anymore, but—”

  “Are they all right?” Mellie asked. There was concern in her voice and in her eyes. She meant it, and that made his breath catch.

  She actually cared about his daughters, whom she hadn’t met.

  No one had asked that before, at least not as the first question. They always asked about him—how was he doing?—not about his girls.

  “Ella didn’t hurt them or anything,” he said. “I mean, she didn’t literally abandon them, leaving them alone at the house or anything. She dropped them with my parents, and then told me that she didn’t want them anymore.”

  Again, blunter than he had planned. Blunt in a way he never was. He didn’t use the diplomatic phrase. He had told the truth.

  What was it about this woman that made him want to tell the truth?

  “Did she tell the girls that?” Mellie asked with concern.

  He nodded and glared at the doughy man who was still watching them. Charming wanted to slam the doughy man’s laptop down on his fingers. Charming was angry. Good heavens, he hadn’t realized how angry he truly was until this very moment.

  How dare Ella tell his girls that they were unwanted?

  “How old are they?” Mellie asked.

  Charming looked at her, saw fury in her green eyes. If Ella came in here right now, Mellie would go after her, yelling with that passion he had seen at the book fair.

  She was angry—not for him, but for his girls.

  And she didn’t even know them.

  “Twelve and eight,” he said.

  “That’s the worst time for girls,” Mellie said. “Twelve, not eight. Your twelve-year-old needs her mother right now. She needs to learn how to be a woman. Your ex isn’t giving her a good example right now.”

  Then Mellie clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said through her fingers. “It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

  He reached over and hooked his fingers through hers, bringing her hand down. He thought he remembered how soft her skin was. But he had forgotten. He had forgotten how wonderful it was to touch her.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re the only person who has said what I’ve been thinking.”

  “I mean, how selfish can a woman get?” Mellie said, then looked like she wanted to clamp her hand over her mouth all over again.

  He twined his fingers through hers. He should let go of her hand. That would be best, letting go of her hand. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. That simple touch was holding him up, calming him.

  And she wasn’t pulling away.

  “I suppose they’re still with your parents?” she asked.

  “Good heavens, no,” he said. “That would be worse than leaving them alone.”

  Again, honesty. He never would have said such a thing about his parents—at least not in the Kingdoms.

  “I brought my daughters here,” he said.

  He tried not to look at their clasped hands, but he couldn’t help himself. Her fingers were long and slender, the nails coated with a red polish that matched her lips.

  Even her hands were lovely.

  He wanted to put his other hand over hers, but he didn’t let himself.

  He didn’t want to scare her off.

  “Your daughters are here? In the Greater World?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I brought them here a few weeks ago. We’ve been trying to get settled. But it’s not working.”

  “I should say not,” Mellie said. “Not only do they have to deal with their mother’s perfidy, they have to deal with a new life in a new culture.”

  “I’ve brought them here to visit before,” he said, feeling worried. “Did I do something wrong?”

  He shouldn’t have asked that. He never asked that. Princes weren’t allowed to ask that. Royalty was always right.
>
  If his father had heard that question, he’d be screaming right now.

  Charming suppressed a shudder. His father would think all of this terrible—the coffee shop, the school, Charming’s hand holding the hand of a woman who was an actual adult, and not some nubile eighteen-year-old suitable for breeding.

  “Under the circumstances, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Mellie said. “It’s probably better for your daughters here. They don’t have to deal with the whole inheritance thing, and I assume the whole family is back in the Kingdoms…?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s probably for the best too.”

  Had she met his family? Probably. People went between Kingdoms all the time.

  Her hand held his, her fingers wrapped loosely around his, her thumb rubbing gently against his forefinger. That simple movement made his heart beat faster.

  What was wrong with him? Was he so lonely that he found a soft and compassionate touch erotic?

  He made himself concentrate on the conversation.

  “I enrolled the girls in the best school,” he said, “and already people are picking on Grace.”

  “That’s the oldest?” Mellie asked.

  “The youngest.” His voice broke, just a little.

  “Your favorite,” Mellie said.

  “You’re not supposed to have favorites,” he said, and realized that was honest too. He had just said yes in the only way he could.

  Poor Imperia. Her mother had abandoned her, her father loved her sister better, and she was about to hit puberty in a strange world.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I’ve never raised children before.”

  “I have,” Mellie said.

  He must have given her a startled look because she added, rather defensively, “I don’t just mean Snow and her brother. I had my own children with my first husband and you never hear about them. They’re doing just fine and they gave me grandchildren, and they’re here in the Greater World and are quite successful. Snow was nearly grown when I met her. And I didn’t do everything right there. But I do know children and I like them and I like to spend time with them.”