Ever After (5 page)

“Arabella! Wait!” I grabbed her arm, bringing her to a stop but releasing her when the wounded look in her eyes cut me to the core. I put my hands on my hips, staring at my feet as I debated what to say, not willing to look her in the face, afraid that if I met the eyes I adored, I'd lose myself in them.

I'd never stopped loving her, had never stopped thinking about her. As ridiculous as it seemed, some part of me had always held out hope that she'd somehow miraculously return. And here she was, right before me. She said she didn't know what had happened to her, what had kept her away ... And I wanted to believe it. My long-broken heart whispered bitter words, telling me to walk away and never look back, that that part of my life was over.

But it was a lie. That part of my life would never be over. She'd filled my heart in a way no woman ever had or would again. And I wasn't about to piss on that by turning her away when she clearly needed me.

“What trouble are y'in?” I asked, forcing my voice to be gentle.

“It's my concern,” she said with a sniff, making me feel like an irredeemable jackass for bringing her to tears. “I didn't come here to beg you to help me or to drag you into my mess. I just ... I just wanted to see you again. I dream of you, of us, every night, Gideon. When I close my eyes, your face is all I see. I know you don't believe me, but I
did
love you—I still do. I always will.”

I felt my chest tighten at her words, wanting so desperately to believe her. I risked raising my gaze to hers, gauging her sincerity. To my surprise, she actually seemed to be telling the truth.

Damn me to hell, but I was gonna fall for her all over again. Even though I was furious and hurting and knew with certainty that I was bound for heartache again, I was powerless to stop it. But she didn't have to know that. And I'd make sure she didn't. I'd managed to keep my emotions in check all these years, had learned to maintain the stoic silence that was required of my servitude to the king. I never imagined I'd need those skills to guard my heart. And when she left again—as she'd already admitted she would—I'd at least be able to maintain my dignity.

In the meantime, I couldn't abandon her now any more than I could the day we'd met. What nobility remained a part of me forbade it. I'd be a friend to her. Just a friend. I owed it to what we'd once shared to at least try to accept that whatever had happened to her, whatever mysterious force had kept her from coming to me, she was here
now
. And she needed my help.

I smoothed my hand down her arm, drawing her closer, shoving aside all my feelings of anger and betrayal to focus on quieting the fear I saw in her eyes, on being the friend she needed me to be at this moment. “Tell me what's happened to you, lass. Let me help you. I'll talk to my king. I'll do whatever I can. You know I will. Just tell me what you've done.”

The look she gave me was agonized, torn. Finally, she nodded and slipped her hand into mine, little sparks of desire firing off in my blood at the touch of her skin. “Let me show you.”

T
he “warehouse” to which Arabella directed me when we returned to Chicago was not a warehouse at all, but an abandoned theater, which, from the thick layer of dust that covered the seats and clung to the rotting grand drape hanging cockeyed above the stage, had been abandoned for quite some time. Random stage props were scattered about the building, along with chairs, lamps, tables, scraps of wood, racks of clothing, and rows of shoes from pretty much every possible era. There were stacks of bottles, dozens of hatboxes, shelves filled with a stunning variety of antique trinkets and baubles.

“You've been living here?” I asked, curious how she would find such a place habitable. The stench of mildew made my nose itch, and I sneezed twice before I added, “Where did all this stuff come from?”

She shrugged and strolled toward the steps leading up to the stage. “Here and there. Most of it was here already, but I've brought it out into the open to take an inventory.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Inventory? Why do you care about cast-off props from a washed-up theater?”

She paused when she reached the stage and spread her arms, gesturing toward the vast collection. “Because these aren't all just props, Gideon. Many of them are relics.
Tale
relics. I've hidden them among the junk to avoid detection.”

When I gaped at her, she snatched up an ancient-looking oil lamp and tossed it to me. The moment it hit my open palms, I could feel the magic infused in the metal. My nerve endings tingled and a barrage of images flashed through my thoughts, telling the entire story of the fabled lamp in three seconds flat. My gaze snapped up to hers. “This is Al Addin's lamp. The one that held his genie.”

She nodded and picked up a shepherd's horn. “Little Boy Blue's horn.” Next was a small red hooded cape. “Little Red's riding hood from when she was a child.”

Now understanding the import of the collection she'd amassed, I turned a slow circle, surveying all the items again. “Where the hell did you get all this?” I breathed. “I didn't think anything came over with us. How're all these relics in the Here and Now?”

She jogged down the steps. “I have no idea. Someone has been either sending them here from Make Believe or drawing them in to the Here and Now. And they're from the entire timeline of Tale history, Gideon. Some are ancient. Others are only decades old.”

“How did you even discover them?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“That morning at the falls, the item I liberated—”

“Stole.”

Her mouth hitched up at one corner, giving me the saucy, mischievous smile that had first won my heart. “Semantics.”

I grinned in spite of myself. “You were saying?”

“I had in my possession an item that had been given to my mother to keep as a memento of my father after he died. It was one of several of his possessions that were returned to her after he was killed. Just days later, soldiers came and looted our home, taking the items, hiding them by dispersing them far and wide. Just a few weeks before that morning at the falls, I learned that at least one of the treasures—a magical helm—was held by the fairy king. And I decided to get it back.”

“What happened to it when you fell?” I asked.

She shook her head. “When I came to, it was gone, along with everything else I had. I was lying on a riverbank, completely naked, all my possessions gone.”

A vision of her naked in the moonlight intruded upon my thoughts, a remembrance of our last night together. Heat flooded my body, and I turned away to hide certain other effects, hoping she didn't notice when I covertly shifted to make myself a little more comfortable.

“I searched everywhere in Make Believe,” she continued. “But there was no sign of it. Until I came here. I found the first relic by accident when I was doing a job in Rome—”

This brought me back around. “Rome?”

“Which made me start looking for other things, just out of curiosity, mind, but the more I looked the more I found. And two weeks ago, my informant discovered the helm was
right here
in Chicago. I mean to get it back.”

“What the hell were you doing in Rome?” I demanded, remembering I'd heard about a trip my ol' pal Merlin had taken there just last year. With a lady friend.

She shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it over the back of one of the seats. “Jewelry heist. There was a shipment of diamonds—” She broke off suddenly, her eyes going wide with excitement. “Do you want to see it?”

I frowned, confused. “The diamond shipment?”

She waved away my words with a laugh. “No, not the diamonds! I sold those
ages
ago.” She grimaced when she saw the look on my face. “You don't really want to know this, do you?” She sighed. “I had to make a living once I came over, Gideon. I couldn't expect Merlin to keep letting me freeload off of him.”

I strode toward her, closing the gap between us in just a few steps. “You could've come to me,” I insisted. “You
should've
come to me instead of relying on that egomaniacal bastard.”

She tilted her head to one side, her brows drawn together in a pained expression. “Oh, Gideon . . . Don't you think I wanted to?” She rested her hand on my chest for a moment, an explanation hovering on her lips. I could feel her indecision, her desire to
protect
me, of all things. “Please, can we not argue any more about the past? Can we just hang on to the present?”

If I hadn't been able to feel the agony and regret she was experiencing because of the time we'd lost, I don't know that I could've forgiven her. But the ache at the center of her chest was making it hard for her to breathe; the weight of her remorse was so substantial she was crumbling beneath it. How could I not rescue her from such torment?

I took her face in my hands and pressed a lingering kiss to her brow, then rested my forehead against hers for a moment. When I pulled back and peered down at her beloved face, she was smiling again, the twinkle of excitement that was so contagious shining in her eyes once more.

“C'mon,” she said, taking my hand. “I want to show you the first relic I found, the one that has helped me locate all the others.”

I followed dutifully, my curiosity admittedly aroused. She took me to what must've once been a dressing room for the actors but had been converted into a bedroom, although aside from a bed there was little that made it so. The thought of her sleeping alone in this musty, rotting building night after night made my chest tight with sorrow. Of course, she hadn't been alone, had she? She'd been with Merlin. And he'd done a piss-poor job of looking after her, that was for damned sure. What kind of man let a woman stay in a place like this?

I clenched my fists at my sides. “That son of a bitch.”

“What's that, love?” she called over her shoulder as she dragged aside several plastic storage containers packed full of books to get to a beat-up chest of drawers that was missing two of its four porcelain knobs. “Didn't catch that.”

“Nothing,” I muttered, stepping in to take over with the books. Through the clear plastic I could see quite an assortment of titles at a glance, most of them classic stories, fairytale anthologies, books on myths and legends. She'd been doing her homework.

When the books were finally moved aside and stacked out of the way, she pried open one of the drawers with a missing knob and rooted through a neatly folded stack of satiny undergarments. Feeling my cock growing hard again, I averted my eyes and tried to focus on a libido-dampening nineteenth-century painting of a bucolic landscape that hung on the wall.

Except instead of the effect I'd hoped, the painting brought to mind the number of times we'd tumbled to the ground in an intimate tangle in just such golden fields, our desire for one another too strong to deny until we could reach the cottage I'd built for us to share. Even as I stood there, I could once more feel the heat of the sun upon my skin as we lay naked together, our arms and legs entwined, basking in what I'd thought to be a perfect happiness.

How wrong I'd been.

“Gideon?”

I tore my eyes away from the painting and met her questioning gaze for a long moment. My God, I wanted to take her in my arms just then, prove that I could be everything she wanted, everything she needed. I wanted to whisper my love in her ear, hear her call my name in rapture. But I swallowed hard and pushed away such thoughts as she took a step toward me, cradling in her hands a beautifully crafted silver hand mirror.

“Here it is,” she said, her voice thick with barely contained excitement as she held out her hands for me to take the mirror.

I took hold of the handle and held it up, startled to see my own reflection dissolve into a churning haze of mist and smoke. Then another face began to take form. One I didn't recognize.

“Bella,
dolcezza,
” came the heavily accented voice of the dark-haired man now visible in the mirror, “you really have
the
worst timing. The
contessa
was just about to do her little dance in front of the mirror again, and—
Dio mio!
You are not my little Bella.”

“Clearly,” I replied, sending a confused glance Arabella's way, mildly irritated to see her grinning. “I'm Gideon, representative of the fairy king.”

Arabella came to my side, slipping her arm around my waist and turning her body into mine as she peered into the mirror. I stiffened at her closeness, her honeysuckle scent wafting to me as her hair fell over her shoulder.

“
Buongiorno,
Fabrizio,” she greeted. “I was just telling my friend how I found you.”

The man in the mirror eyed me suspiciously. “A friend, you say? Well then, I will reserve judgment for the moment. But I will tell you truthfully, Bella, his hair is
far
too red for my liking. You would do better with a brunet,
dolcezza.
” He wagged his eyebrows at her with a grin that was more charming than I liked.

She laughed softly. “And I suppose you know just the brunet for me, do you?”

Fabrizio drew himself up proudly—well, as much as the confines of the mirror would allow. “I tell you, if I were out of this mirror, I would make love to you every night. You would never want for the ...
Come si dice . . . ?
Ah, yes—the
multiple orgasms.
”

“Hey, hey,
hey,
” I interrupted, my angry tone making Arabella's cheeks flush when she cast a furtive glance my way. “That's
not
a problem, pal.”

Fabrizio shrugged as if he sincerely doubted the veracity of my claim. “I have not seen our Bella take a lover since she found me, but I tell you—she deserves a real man—not an ignorant brute who does not know how to please his woman.
This
I know.”

I felt my rage building, not sure which pissed me off more—his referring to Arabella as if he had some claim on her, or his implication that I'd be unable to please her. I had half a mind to throw her down on the bed and prove just how much pleasure I could give her. But instead, I jabbed a finger at the mirror. “Now, y'listen t'me, you little—”

Arabella pried the mirror from my grasp with a grin and held it against her chest. “You have to forgive Fabrizio,” she whispered. “He hasn't been with a woman since he was trapped in this mirror. It makes him a little ... petulant.”

“Petulant?” I repeated. “He's a self-important prat.”

“I heard that,” came a muffled voice. “But do keep on talking. I quite enjoy being buried in Bella's cleavage. . . .”

Arabella laughed and pulled the mirror away from her chest, wagging a finger at the man in the mirror. “Aren't you a cheeky one today? Behave yourself, or I'll have to put you back in the drawer.”

Fabrizio sighed and rolled his eyes. “You wound me,
dolcezza.
Truly, your words are like the arrows in my heart.”

“Don't tempt her,” I warned. “Her aim's legendary.”

Arabella turned her face up to mine to offer me a grateful grin. For a long moment, our gazes locked together in a tense silence. My arm went around her, pulling her even closer until her body was pressed flat against mine. I could feel her heart thundering in her breast, echoed by my own. Her lips parted in a little gasp and her fingers tentatively came up to caress my cheek.

“Your eyes,” she murmured. “All that time ... How did I never notice the way they change?”

“It only happens when I'm reading the emotions of others,” I explained, my voice growing deeper as I took her in, “discovering their desire before they even know it themselves.”

I could not just see the heat and need that was building inside her, I could
feel
it. Most likely because I shared it. Her hand moved to the back of my neck, gently urging me down to her mouth. Lost in her eyes, in the feel of her, the scent of her, I only vaguely realized that I was bending forward, far too willing to comply.

“Ahem,” Fabrizio coughed, making us both start guiltily. “If you would like to be alone . . .”

I took a step out of Arabella's arms, feeling suddenly cold. “No, that's not necessary.” I chanced a glance at Arabella. “Why did you show me this mirror?”

She couldn't have hidden her disappointment had she tried. It was written all over her aura, making me feel like a stubborn ass for selfishly wanting to protect my heart from further damage.

She rallied quickly, though, taking a deep breath and shaking off the tension between us. “This is not just any mirror—”

“This is true,” Fabrizio chimed in, with a shrug. “I am quite remarkable, as you can see.”

“What I mean is this is
Snow White's
mirror,” Arabella said with a reproving look at Fabrizio. “Fabrizio is able to move in between any and all reflective surfaces—mirrors, windows, chrome ... It doesn't matter. He's the most valuable recon I could possibly wish for.”