Wickedly Charming

by Kristine Grayson

  And she hadn’t cared for him.

  Not like this.

  She wrapped her arm around Charming’s chest, putting her ear against his rib cage. She could hear his heart beating.

  She had fallen in love with him, against all her best efforts. Deeply, irrevocably in love.

  He was going to break her heart, and at this moment, she really didn’t care.

  “Wow,” he said, his hand twined in her hair.

  “Yeah,” she breathed.

  They lay in silence for several minutes, listening to each other breathe. She wanted to say so much—I missed you. I can’t believe you got here.

  I love you.

  But instead, she said, “Thank you for coming here.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, laughter in his voice.

  She flushed, not realizing until just now that she had unintentionally spoken a double entendre.

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” he said, easing himself back just a little. He put a finger under her chin, and raised her head so that she was looking directly at him. “This really upset you.”

  “No.” She shook her head without moving away from his gentle touch against her skin. “I’m not upset at all.”

  “I meant,” he said with a smile, “the interview.”

  “Oh.” Her bad mood suddenly hovered. She sighed. “Yeah. That upset me. LaTisha thinks I committed fraud.”

  “And LaTisha is?”

  “My publicist.”

  “Well,” he said, “publicists are such legal experts.”

  She smiled in spite of herself.

  “What did you tell her?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Except what we agreed on.”

  “And right now, that’s not enough,” he said.

  She nodded, and put her head back on his shoulder. She didn’t want to look at him. She felt tears threaten—and she never cried.

  Why did this make her tear up?

  It only took a moment for the answer to come. He had broken through her defenses. She was more emotional than usual—and so she actually felt how deep her disappointment went.

  For decades, she had worked to repair the image of stepmothers. She had fought the fairy tale, and just as it looked like she was going to win, someone pulled the rug out from underneath her.

  “You didn’t commit fraud,” he said. “We have an agreement between the two of us. If we did anything wrong, it was not informing your publisher.”

  “But it seems like we did something wrong,” she said.

  He sighed. “We probably did. But it’s not something that’ll tank the book or your wonderful publicity work. You have to remember the publisher wants the book to do well as much as we do.”

  “I doubt that,” she muttered into his neck.

  His fingers played with the skin along her rib cage, moving but not quite reaching her breast.

  “We can resolve this, Mellie,” he said. “I promise.”

  Then he kissed her again. She kissed him back. And as he rolled them away from the edge of the bed, as his clever hands found parts of her he had neglected before, she forgot her worries, she forgot her fears.

  She forgot everything but him.

  Chapter 39

  He didn’t know how long he had lost himself in her.

  But when he finally surfaced, sated and pleasantly exhausted, he remembered: The girls.

  It had been so long since he made love with his daughters in the next room that he couldn’t remember the last time.

  Then his stomach growled, and Mellie laughed.

  “Sounds like you need sustenance,” she said.

  “Only if you intend to ravish me again,” he said.

  She smiled. “Of course I do,” she said. “But I think I can wait until you’ve had something to eat.”

  He laughed. It shook his entire body. “I’ll call room service,” he said.

  “Will that wake the girls?” she asked, and he loved her for asking that question.

  “Not if we do it right.” He got out of bed, went to the closet, and pulled out one of the robes. He slipped it on, then grabbed the other and tossed it to her.

  She caught it and rubbed her face against it before slipping it on. That moment of unconscious sensuality caught his eye. She had so many facets—he was only just beginning to see them.

  He belted his robe, then grabbed the phone and pressed the number for room service. He ordered an assortment of pastries, fruits, and cereals as well as some eggs.

  “You were hungry,” she said as he hung up.

  He smiled at her. “The girls will want something to eat when they wake up. I figured we won’t eat all of this, so there will be something left over for them.”

  Mellie tied her robe and slipped off the bed, her expression serious again. “Why are the girls traveling with you? I thought they were in school.”

  He sighed. He didn’t want to discuss this, but it was a perfectly normal question. In fact, it was a sensible, concerned question.

  But Mellie had enough on her plate. She didn’t need his burdens too.

  She walked over to him and, from the back, slipped her arms around his waist.

  “I won’t break,” she said as if she could read his thoughts. “And I’m smart enough to figure out that you wouldn’t pull the girls from school unless something went seriously wrong. Did the bullying come back?”

  “No,” he said. “You solved that.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to tell the girls what to do without you,” he said. “You helped more than you could know.”

  He couldn’t see her face. She pressed it against his back for a brief moment, then let her arms drop. She walked around in front of him, and pulled open the bedroom door.

  “We’ll need to be able to hear room service,” she said.

  “I told them to knock softly,” he said before remembering she had overheard his side of the conversation.

  He glanced at the clock. They told him to expect them in twenty minutes. He figured five had gone by already.

  “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay,” she said, in a tone that sounded almost convincing.

  He sighed, then closed the bedroom door. He didn’t want any chance of the girls overhearing this.

  He lowered his voice, and told Mellie about his encounter with Ella. When he got to the parchment and what it did, Mellie’s face paled.

  “Ella wanted to annul her relationship with her children?” Mellie whispered, as if she understood his unwillingness to speak that too loudly.

  He nodded.

  “Did she know what a dangerous spell that is?”

  He swallowed hard. “I’d like to believe she had no idea.”

  Mellie bit her lower lip. Clearly she disagreed with him. “That’s why you went to the Kingdoms. To get rid of the document.”

  “And to get a protection spell on us. No one connected to Ella can get near us.”

  “Good,” Mellie said.

  He opened the door. The girls’ room was still dark. He wanted to go check, to make sure they were both sound asleep.

  “Go,” Mellie said. “I’ll wait.”

  He glanced at her. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “If I were you, I’d want to check on them right now,” she said.

  He smiled, then headed across the living room. He stopped at the girls’ room and peered inside, waiting until his eyes adjusted to the dark.

  Both girls slept, curled against each other. He could hear their soft rhythmic breathing.

  But he couldn’t help himself. He went inside the room, and adjusted the covers, not because they needed adjusting, but because he wanted to make absolutely certain the girls were all right.

  When he had reassured himself, he stepped quietly out of the room, then made a detour to the main door. He braced it open slightly. That might discourage the room service attendant from kno
cking.

  But he couldn’t leave the now open door. He was too nervous.

  He hovered there until the service elevator dinged. He peered out the door and watched as a room service waiter wheeled the heavily laden cart toward the room.

  Charming held the door open. As the waiter came close, Charming put a finger to his lips.

  The waiter nodded. Charming helped him inside, then added an elaborate tip, and signed the ticket.

  The waiter left without saying a word.

  Charming locked the door after him.

  Mellie stood in the doorway of the master bedroom. Charming beckoned her. She walked over as he took the lids off the two plates of scrambled eggs. He added silverware, then nodded toward the bedroom. She smiled, got a glass of water, and took the plate into the room as he grabbed some napkins.

  Then he went in, not closing the door entirely.

  Mellie sat on the sofa near the windows. She looked fetching and vulnerable in that bathrobe. It was much too big for her. She curled her legs on the sofa, and leaned against the arm rest.

  “What happened to you today was really serious,” she said so quietly he had to strain to hear her. “I’m sorry I bothered you with my very small problem.”

  “It’s not small,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “Not as important as your daughters,” she said.

  Her words warmed him. He sat down in the armchair so that he could see out the open door. He wanted to know if his daughters got up.

  “I needed to keep them out of LA for a while,” he said. “This worked perfectly.”

  Suddenly it felt as if there was an awkwardness between them. He balanced his plate on his knees and took her hand.

  “I’m happy to be here,” he said. “What happened to you is our problem, not yours.”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s mine, Charming.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s ours. We’ll solve it. And here’s how I think we can do it.”

  Chapter 40

  Charming’s plan was deceptively simple, so simple that Mellie didn’t think it would work. But she didn’t have a better one, not even after the few short hours of sleep she got after leaving Charming.

  She had fallen in love with him. And, it seemed, he cared for her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have come to Boston in the middle of one of the greatest crises of his own life.

  If she still had magic, she would have added her own protective spell to the one he had gotten in the Kingdoms. But she had used up her magic long ago, and she wasn’t sure it would ever return.

  For the first time in a long time, the lack of magic bothered her. She wanted to protect him and his daughters. She wanted to make sure no one harmed them again.

  Not that she could understand how a woman would want to deny her own children. She knew other women who had wanted to do the same thing, women who hadn’t understood what motherhood entailed, didn’t plan for the work and the difficulties along with the great love.

  Or the handful of women who, for whatever reason, never really felt love for their children. Mellie always wondered if those women could feel any love at all for anyone other than themselves.

  Sadly, she had a hunch Ella belonged in that category.

  And it was clear how much Ella’s actions had hurt Charming. He was worried for his girls and heartbroken that someone wanted to wish them away.

  Sometimes—often—magic was more of a curse than a blessing.

  Mellie knew that, which was why she usually didn’t miss hers. She hadn’t even missed it after the Gotcha! interview. But this, this made her want something she hadn’t had in a long, long time.

  She got up feeling more refreshed than she should have, given how little sleep she had gotten. She felt like a beautiful woman again for the first time in years, and she felt cherished.

  She also felt just a little tender, which made her smile. It had been a long time since she had cared about someone enough to make love—and that was some lovemaking.

  The best of her life.

  Mellie packed her carry-on and brought it to the lobby. Then she took her laptop to the business center and printed out the agreement she had with Charming, folding it, and putting it in her purse.

  She met LaTisha in the lobby, and together, they left for an early morning flight to New York.

  LaTisha was quiet and sullen. She looked a little hung over.

  Mellie didn’t say anything to her about the publicity or the turn the tour had taken. The only thing they discussed was the timing of the meeting at the publishing house. When Mellie had the exact hour, she texted Charming.

  Then she settled in for the short trip to a city where she had expected to be welcomed as a successful author.

  Her expectations had now been shattered, the interviews with all the big-name hosts about to be canceled.

  And she found that she cared a lot less than she thought she would. Her reputation didn’t matter nearly as much as it had even a few days before.

  Charming had made her feel good about herself. He had made her feel important.

  He had made her feel loved.

  And that made more of a difference than she had ever imagined it would.

  Chapter 41

  Charming had forgotten the benefits of staying at an upscale hotel. The concierge knew someone who could open a nearby department store early, so that Charming and the girls could get some clothes for this trip.

  In these days of megamalls, Charming hadn’t realized there were still department stores. Then he took the girls into this one and realized it wasn’t what he remembered department stores to be.

  This was an upscale name-brand store, something the average shopper couldn’t easily afford.

  He could afford it, but he didn’t like shopping at these places, even when the clerks fawned all over him, as they were doing here. They expected to make some money—since they worked on commission—and they would, but not as much as they had hoped.

  The store had clearly been in its location for a long time. It was made of brick, the kind he never saw on the West Coast. The interior smelled like cologne, disinfectant, and plastic. The men’s department covered half of an entire floor.

  The girls sighed when he went to the men’s department first, but there was method to his madness. He knew his suit would need a bit of tailoring, and he knew a store like this could do it on the spot.

  As he looked at the suits, his phone rang. He looked at the display and saw that the caller was Gussie. His stomach clenched. News, then, of some kind or another.

  He held up a finger, like the mogul he was pretending to be, and walked out of menswear into men’s shoes. The area smelled like leather. The shoes on display glinted in the fluorescent lighting.

  The girls followed him, but he shook his head.

  “I need a minute alone,” he said to them.

  Imperia frowned. Grace bit her upper lip.

  “Find me something to wear,” he said. “I trust you.”

  At least, he hoped he did. When the girls were out of earshot, he answered the phone.

  “Hey, Gus,” he said.

  “My,” she said, her voice sounding so close it seemed like she was sitting next to him. “You’re even starting to talk like you’re from the Greater World.”

  He almost said, I am, but decided that would derail the conversation.

  “You have news?” he asked.

  “Tracked down Ella,” Gussie said. “Which wasn’t easy. You know she’s made friends with Snow White, right?”

  “I hadn’t realized,” he said.

  “Yeah, Ella’s the one who gave Snow your book, and Ella’s the one who told everyone that you wrote it. Your father’s not happy, by the way. He says writing is for monks and eunuchs and is worse than being a merchant.”

  Charming looked at his girls. He hoped he would never be the kind of father to them that his father was to him.

  “Clearly, my father and I disagree,” Charming said. “How did Ella
hook up with Snow?”

  “We’re still trying to figure that out. Something to do with fairy godmothers, we think.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “That investigator I told you about,” Gussie said. “We have some theories, but no proof.”

  “Okay,” Charming said. “So what’s the headline?”

  “You do talk like them,” Gussie said.

  Across the aisle Grace held up a grape-colored suit, and pointed at it, meeting his gaze. Charming did everything he could not to wince. Instead he shook his head with a rueful smile.

  “The ‘headline,’ as you so quaintly put it,” Gussie said, “is that Ella is not your problem any longer.”

  He sat up straight, his heart pounding. “How can that be?” he asked, afraid she had died or something.

  “She’s moved out of the Third Kingdom,” Gussie said. “She’s starting over in the Sixth Kingdom, and not calling herself Ella anymore. In fact, she tells people she never married and is childless.”

  He sighed. He wasn’t going to tell his girls that either. “That’s fast. She just left the Greater World yesterday.”

  Although it felt like a week ago to him.

  “She was going back to the Sixth Kingdom. She’d been staying there since she abandoned the girls. You, by the way, didn’t tell me she had abandoned the girls. I had to find that out on my own.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Eh.” Gussie made a dismissive noise, more interested in her news. “Apparently someone told Ella she could make her lies about being single and childless come true. But you thwarted that. She’s not going to try anything, Charming. She wants nothing to do with any of us.”

  He hunched over and said as softly as he could, “Would you bet the lives of my girls on that?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Gussie said. “You have my protective spell, and I had a few other spells placed around the three of you for good measure. You’ll be fine. All of you. Of course, the upshot of the spells is that Ella can’t contact any of you, ever, but I figure if she wants to, she’ll talk to Mother.”

  Mother, in Gussie’s case, being Lavinia. And the chances of Ella talking to Lavinia were pretty slim.