Wickedly Charming (8 page)

Mellie sat in her third coffee shop of the day. This one was large and crowded, with some kind of jazzy music playing in the background. It had a large counter and efficient baristas, who worked like a well-planned team.

She was becoming a coffee shop connoisseur. The coffee shop closest to the Malibu beach house she had rented had a lot of “aw-shucks-whatever” employees who couldn't seem to make a simple latte.

She could make a simple latte these days. She had bought a laptop—her fourth since she had begun this project—and had started lugging it to coffee shops where—she'd read—writers spent their days, able to concentrate on their work and yet feeling as if the people around them were—what? Companions? Co-workers?

Mellie didn't know, but she was beginning to think they were all more interesting than she was. And here, with all the tables filled by scruffy-looking people tapping contentedly on their laptops (or talking about deal points on the phone—loudly, so everyone else heard), she was beginning to think they were all more successful than she was too.

They were more successful at writing. Or at least, at typing.

She was no longer sure why she was trying this. She had been so inspired by Charming. His solution to her problems seemed so elegant, so simple.

Write a book, he said, as if anyone could do it.

Write a book.

She was trying. At first, it seemed easy. She rented a house in Malibu—writers all lived in Malibu or in New York. She'd set up her computer in her fancy office overlooking the ocean, and for the first week, she reclined on the deck, reading all those books she'd gotten for free at the book fair.

And trying not to feel abandoned by Charming.

Those moments in the book fair had seemed magical. He was so handsome, and he seemed to know everyone. He walked her through the place, her hand tucked in his arm, his other hand occasionally covering hers. Some of his glamour trickled down on her, making her feel beautiful.

People smiled at her. They talked to her. They explained things to her.

They didn't call security guards on her.

If only she hadn't kissed him.

Not that the kiss had been a bad one. He hadn't felt it, of course, but she had—that tingle when their lips touched, that moment of
yes, this is right
. Followed immediately by panic when she realized he hadn't participated, had in fact just stood there, staring at her, waiting for her to get done.

At least, that's how she interpreted it. How many other women had kissed him like that, drawn by his looks, his charm, his amazingly warm personality.

And to his credit, he didn't say anything. Just smiled ruefully, blushed, and tucked her hand in his arm again as if nothing had happened.

For him, nothing had.

For her, her entire perspective had changed. Two husbands—and never had she felt like that during a chaste kiss. She had finally found a man she was completely attracted to, and he viewed her as a mildly crazy woman in need of his help.

She made herself sip her latte and stare at the screen. Around her, conversation echoed. The jazz seemed more mellow than it had a moment before.

She had such dreams, leaving that book fair. Not only would people start taking her seriously, not only would she strike a blow for stepmothers everywhere, but she would be able to spend some time with Charming. They had exchanged email addresses and cell phone numbers, and he had promised to help her write the book, giving her advice and guiding her in what he called “the right direction.”

It didn't matter that he hadn't felt the spark. She would talk to him, and maybe befriend him, and maybe he was the kind of man that valued friendships with women, understood that friendships were the building blocks to a true, long-lasting solid relationship.

And pigs would fly.

Or, rather, pigs would fly here, in the Greater World, since some pigs did fly in the Kingdoms.

Instead, Charming had called her the morning after the book fair, and told her he was leaving immediately for the Kingdoms. She felt betrayed. He had completely destroyed her vision of the future. She'd even said, “I thought we were going to work on the book,” sounding like a needy girl after her first date.

He said, “Something's come up with my girls,” and it took Mellie a moment to realize that he meant his daughters, not all the women who were interested in him.

He promised to be back within the month and, he promised, he would go over her book as soon as he got back. “So,” he admonished her, “get me as much of it as you can.”

He'd sounded like a man who fully intended to work with her on this book. She caught herself before she said anything else negative, asked him if there was anything she could do, and he had said that she needed to be ready to talk with him when he got back.

More than a month had passed.

He hadn't called.

He wasn't going to.

He'd blown her off.

Somewhere in the middle of it, she decided she would write the book anyway. But, while it was easy to read a book, turned out it wasn't so easy to write one.

She only had twenty pages, and she suspected they were twenty crappy pages. Lately, she had been toying with just writing a screenplay. She loved movies. She had loved them long before Disney eviscerated her in his “classic”
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. Even he couldn't put her off movies forever, although that was when she had realized that she needed to fight the perception he had made people form.

Screenplays turned into movies, she was learning, was even harder than the novel form. Still, she had brought a screenwriting program for her latest laptop, and she kept a second screen open with the screenwriting software working. She had a variety of scenes there, more than she had in the novel itself.

She was trying to decide which to work on, screenplay or novel, when her cell phone rang.

She groped for her purse, found the phone, and glanced at the caller ID.

Charming.

He called.

Her breath caught, and her heart started to pound. She was reacting like a lovesick teenager and she didn't care.

Before she could even think, she had put the phone to her ear and said hello.

“Mellie?” His voice was just as rich and warm as she remembered.

“Yes,” she said, sounding breathless even to her own ears.

“It's Charming.”

She didn't want to say
I know
, because then he'd know that she was sounding breathless because of him, so she said, “Oh, hello,” and as the words came out, she realized just how lame they sounded.

“I was wondering how the book is coming,” he said.

“Slower than I want.” She looked around. A few people were watching her surreptitiously, like she watched other people when they were on the phone in the coffee shop, wondering who they were talking to and if the call was important.

This call was important.

“I promised I'd look it over.” He sounded businesslike. She didn't want him to sound businesslike. She wanted him to be interested in her, not in the book.

But she had to remember who she was. She was a wicked stepmother. He was Prince Charming. He was helping her, and he didn't have to.

And he had called—despite the kiss.

“Are you ready for feedback?” he asked.

Yes. No. She wanted feedback immediately. She didn't want feedback at all.

Especially on this dreck.

But if she didn't get feedback, she wouldn't see him.

The man at the next table over was staring at her. She turned toward the wall, decorated with multi-colored mugs, and hunched over.

She wondered if Charming could hear her heart pounding.

“It would be nice to know if I'm going in the right direction,” she said, and realized that was the truth. But she wasn't talking so much about the book as about the whole idea of the book. She wasn't sure she was capable of doing this.

It was the first time she had ever thought herself incapable of anything.

“Do you want to email me some pages?” he said. “Then we could get together to talk, if you'd like.”

She imagined him, reading this drivel on his computer, deciding he didn't want to see her after all.

“It might be easier if you just read it when we get together,” she said.

“I'd like to spend some time on it,” he said.

There wasn't much to spend time on. But she didn't want to say that. She had been a diplomat once, and she finally called on those skills.

“I only have twenty pages I'm even happy with,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Still, that'll take me some time. Why don't you email them along with a few paragraphs about where the novel is heading?”

Where it was heading? If she had to answer that question honestly, she would say this: It was heading off a cliff.

She wasn't going to win the no-email battle. “Okay,” she said. “How's tomorrow? I know this great coffee shop…”

She let her voice trail off. She had practiced the coffee shop line during the first two weeks he was gone because she didn't want to scare him off by inviting him to the house. Men always thought women had designs on them, particularly when the women invited the men home.

So she was going to pretend she didn't have designs. Not that she had unrealistic designs. She wanted to be friends—if she could control that spontaneous urge to kiss him.

“Coffee shop it is,” he said, and asked for directions.

“See you tomorrow then,” he said, sounding awkward and reluctant and not charming at all. Did telephones negate his magic? Was it all in his look and his smile and his eyes?

Wouldn't that be strange if it was.

“Tomorrow,” she said, and hung up before he could.

She tucked the phone back into her purse, her hands shaking. She closed her eyes for a moment. She was giddy as a school girl. She felt young and frivolous and goofy.

And she felt like a fraud.

She wasn't a writer.

He was expecting a novel.

She barely had the beginning of one. If it was fair to call what she had written a novel. If it were fair to call those letters on those digital pages writing.

He made her nervous. No one had made her nervous in more than two hundred years.

She made herself take a deep breath. Time to go home, and get to work.

She sounded calm. That call had only taken two minutes, and yet it felt like a lifetime.

Charming gripped the phone tightly in his right hand and looked out the window of his Mercedes. The school doors—reinforced steel against fake brick—remained firmly closed. School hadn't let out yet. Some of the other parents and the nannies, limo drivers, and au pairs were standing outside their cars talking.

Mellie had sounded calm, as if nothing had happened. She made an appointment with him, nothing more.

She'd probably forgotten the kiss.

She probably was one of those people who spontaneously kissed people who pleased her. Or she hugged them. Or she put her arm around them.

She hadn't looked like a hugger when he met her, but she had been tense. When he helped her, she had probably reverted to type.

And he had imbued that moment with great significance, when it meant no more than a casual thank you.

He would have to adjust his priorities for that meeting. He would have to focus on her book, and nothing else.

Certainly not that kiss.

Inside the school, some kind of bell rang and everyone moved back to their vehicles. He tucked his phone in the breast pocket of his shirt and watched the door.

Children of all ages poured out, wearing the school uniform, black and gray with white shirts and black shoes. A little ornate logo decorated the shoulders of the suit coat, like a glued-on epaulette. The uniforms were ugly, but everyone had to wear them.

The children talked to each other, slowly separating, some walking down the street, others heading to their various vehicles.

He didn't see his daughters.

He got out of the car, his breath catching in his throat. Were they all right? Had something gone wrong?

He was about to pull his phone out of his pocket again to see if he'd missed a call or a text when his oldest daughter peered out the school door.

Imperia was stunning, just like her mother. Blond, blond hair, bright blue eyes, all on a peaches-and-cream complexion that not even bright sunlight could destroy. Even though Imperia was only twelve, she had a way of holding herself that matched her full name. She was imperial and imperious. Haughty, regal, and oh, so majestic.

His eldest daughter always made him feel somewhat inadequate.

Maybe that was why his nickname for her had brought her down a peg, even though it suited her as well. He called her Imp. And she could be impish, but only around the people she loved the most.

Everyone else called her Imi, which he didn't like any more than Imperia. But Imperia was a family name, given to oldest daughters for generations. He didn't have to like it, his father told him. He just had to give the name to his daughter.

Imperia gave the outdoors her most haughty expression, mouth pursed, chin up, eyes blazing, then she softened as she turned toward the door. She extended her right hand, and a smaller hand took it.

Charming hadn't realized he was holding his breath until that moment.

Grace was all right, then.

Grace, all of eight, the accidental child and, if he were honest, his favorite person in all of the worlds he'd ever been in. He and Ella hadn't had much of a relationship by the time she got pregnant with Grace. He would never tell his youngest daughter she was the result of one drunken night after one extremely excruciating ball.

As surprising as she had been, she had never been unwanted. Charming put all of his hopes and dreams into her. Imperia was the female heir, the family baby, but Grace was all his.

Until Ella took both girls away, with his father's blessing.

Charming walked toward the curb. Imperia had warned him to stay away from the school doors (“The kids'll think you're controlling, Dad,” she said, as if that were a bad thing) but he was torn. Something was wrong. He could tell just from Imperia's posture.

Grace stepped out of the school. Her round face was red and tear-streaked. Her white-blond hair was mussed, and her uniform was torn.

He couldn't help himself now. He ran up the sidewalk, only to stop as his eldest daughter glared at him.

She hadn't learned that look from her mother. She had learned that one from her great-grandmother—Charming's grandmother, also named Imperia. That look could freeze anyone in place, even a concerned father heading toward his beloved baby daughter.

Imperia leaned over, whispered to Grace, and then stood up straight. Imperia raised her chin. Grace looked at her, mouth trembling. Imperia elbowed her. Grace took a deep breath—it seemed to hitch going in—and then raised her chin too. The look didn't have any of the haughtiness and grandeur that Imperia's had. But Grace's look had a certain wounded dignity.

Until she saw Charming.

Then she burst into tears and ran down the stairs, slamming into him so hard that he had to put one foot back so that he wouldn't fall over.

“I'm not coming back,” she said. “I'm not, I'm not. They're mean.”

He cupped his hand around her small head and held her close. She was sobbing.

“Mean?” he asked, looking at Imperia.

Imperia's mouth formed a thin line. “They called her names.”

“Did anyone pick on you?” he asked, knowing the answer already.

“Of course not,” Imperia said. “But they seem to dislike Grace.”

He held Grace for a long time. Finally she brought her head back. Her cheek was indented with red marks made by the buttons on his shirt.

“They called me Princess Grace,” she said.

“You are Princess Grace,” he said.

“They said everyone named Princess Grace dies in car accidents. They said the real Princess Grace did.”

He let out a small breath. Of course. This was Los Angeles. Even kids knew who the old movie stars were, and there had been one named Grace Kelly who had married the Prince of Monaco, and twenty years later, died in a serious car accident.

“The car accident part is mean,” he said, “but the rest isn't. Have you ever seen the Princess Grace from the Greater World?”

“No-o.” Grace's voice hitched.

“She was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived,” he said, then kissed the top of her head. “Like you.”

“I'm not a woman, Daddy,” Grace said with a giggle in her voice.

“Not yet,” he said, and thanked whatever gods heard him. He still had his little girl. “Come on to the car, girls. We can talk all the way home.”

“We're going home?” Grace asked, her voice rising.

He heard the hope, and hated it. She meant the Kingdoms. She meant the palace.

“We're going to our new home,” he said.

“Like our new school,” Imperia said, not quite under her breath. “It all sucks.”

The comment made him ache. He wanted to ask her if she thought being with him sucked, but he was afraid of the answer. So he pretended he hadn't heard her.

He led his girls back to the Mercedes, one of the few cars left in the lot, and then slowly, carefully, drove them home, suddenly afraid of car accidents, and losing his little precious princesses all over again.