Fairytale Come Alive (Ghosts and Reincarnation #4)(59)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Her hands stilled and she tilted her head back further to look at him. He could see from the healthy pink in her cheeks that he had her attention.

“No,” he belatedly replied to her demand. “Now, you’ll explain how I deal with seeing my children and myself in those magazines when we’re with you.”

“You won’t,” she returned, her voice still hostile but now also breathy.

“You can promise that?”

“Yes, I can since you won’t be with me.”

Her words felt like a knife twisting in his gut.

She continued before he could react to that as well. “They’ll probably bother you for awhile after I’m gone. Then they’ll lose interest. You just have to learn to ignore it. It gets worse if you react. Trust me.”

He wasn’t listening. His mind was stuck on her telling him he wouldn’t be with her.

And stuck on her telling him she’d be gone.

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said shortly, her tone still that mixture of antagonistic and out of breath.

“When?”

“In a few days.”

“Why?”

Her lips parted and Prentice’s gaze riveted on them.

Therefore he watched them form the words, “Prentice step back.”

His eyes went back to hers. “Elle, answer me.”

She seemed puzzled for a moment then shook her head as if to clear it.

“Because…” She stopped and her gaze slid to the side.

He pushed closer. Her gaze snapped back.

“Sally’s fine,” she answered. “She’s going to be okay. And this isn’t my home, this isn’t my life. I have a home and a life in Chicago. I need to get back.”

He stared at her.

When she spoke again, it was softer and the hostility was gone. “They shouldn’t get used to me.”

“Too late,” Prentice returned, watched as her eyes closed and felt his already heightened anger rising even further. “So this is it?” he asked. “This is what you’re going to do now?”

Her eyes opened again and he saw confusion.

“Pardon?”

“Slide into their lives, light up their worlds, slide out, leave me to deal with their disappointment while you send boxes filled with expensive presents from wherever you are, making certain they’ll be thinking of you even though they’ll never be certain they can have you?”

Her face filled with shock and her mouth opened to speak but she didn’t when his anger boiled over.

He let her go and took a step away.

“All right, Elle, if I can guide them through losing their mother, I can guide them through losing you, repeatedly. At least I have practice with that.”

He regretted his words again when her face assumed an expression like she’d just been struck.

But he was angry enough that he didn’t take them back. Furthermore, they were the f**king truth.

He watched as she rearranged her features but she couldn’t quite hide the hurt.

Then she whispered, “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t leave,” he replied instantly.

Her eyes grew wide.

“You want me to… to… to move here?”

Christ, how had this come about?

But he knew. This came about because this was Elle and every situation with Elle deteriorated to something out of his control.

He glared at her for a long moment before he answered, “No. I don’t want you to move here. But I want you to stay until Sally’s fit again. Until there’s a good time to explain the situation so they know what you are to them and what they can expect.”

“What am I to them?” she asked him, now sounding confused.

He simply stared at her.

She definitely was mad.

When she continued to gaze at him in that baffled way, he enquired with disbelief, “You’re serious?”

“I –”

He tried to gentle his tone when he said, “Think about it, Elle. You lose your mother and, a year later, a glamorous woman who understands your loss floats in the front door baking cakes and telling stories about your Mum and varnishing your fingernails. You lost your Mum, Elle. If you had a woman like that come into your life, what would she be to you?”

Her eyes skittered to the floor; she examined it for awhile before she sighed.

Then she murmured in a voice so soft, he barely heard her, “I really messed this up, didn’t I?”

For some reason her words disturbed him so much his anger immediately evaporated. They were uttered in a way that made it seem she took sole responsibility for everything that befell her, Prentice and his children when practically none of it (but her leaving him the second time) had been in her control.

Before he could stop himself, his hand came to cup her jaw and his thumb stroked her cheek.

At his touch, her gaze went back to him.

“You didn’t mess anything up, Elle,” he replied quietly. “This is bloody life. Life is always messy. Now, we just need to sort it out.”

She nodded, the soft skin of her face moving against his hand, her eyes still confused and tired but they’d grown warm.

Before he did what very much he wanted to do, slide his thumb along her lower lip then put his lips where his thumb had been, he dropped his hand.

“Go to bed and get some sleep. We’ll talk when you’re less tired.”

She nodded, pulled in a breath and with a heavy tone, she whispered, “Prentice, I’m so sorry about the magazine.”

There was more weight to those words than was required. She hadn’t sold the f**king photo to the magazine.

“It isn’t your fault,” he pointed out the obvious.

“I’m the reason –”

His hand came back to her jaw and she stopped speaking.

“It isn’t your fault, Elle,” Prentice repeated firmly.

“Okay,” she replied quickly but not very convincingly and before he could say another word, she said, “Goodnight.”

He watched her whirl, open the door and then disappear.

Prentice stared at the door, feeling a vague sense of unease about that entire scene and not for the obvious reasons one would be uneasy about that scene.

His eyes on the door, he tried to call up what troubled him.

When he failed, he strode back to his glass, grabbed it, went to the cupboard, tagged the bottle of whisky by the neck and took the whole f**king bottle up to his balcony.

* * * * *

Fiona

You should read her journals, Fiona told her husband as she floated with her arse close to the railing of the balcony where he was standing.