The Fairy Tales Collection (3 page)

“What?”  Belle’s heart knocked in her chest. 
“Is it – is it the Saxby’s?”

“I don’t think so,” Rowan said.  “I was
driving by the place on my way to work last week and there was some guy
gardening in the back yard.  I didn’t get a very good glimpse at him but he was
huge.  I mean, he was the biggest guy I’ve ever seen.”

Belle sank back against the seat.  It
couldn’t be Bennett.  Her memory of exactly what he looked like had gotten a
little fuzzy over the years, but he had been much shorter and skinnier than
her.  She closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated, trying to bring forth
the memory of his face.  An image of his eyes, the warm colour of dark
chocolate, was all she could conjure and she sighed and opened her eyes.

“I saw your dad working on the roof,” Rowan
said hesitantly.

Belle groaned under her breath.  “It must
be a stranger living there.  No one in town will hire him anymore.”

“He looked sober...mostly,” Rowan said.

“He probably wasn’t.  He never is,” Belle
said.

“I gotta get back to work before douchebag
over there has a heart attack,” Rowan said.  She blew a kiss to the both of
them before heading back to the bar. 

“Belle?”  Ella reached across the table and
touched her hand.  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Belle smiled a little.  Ella always could
read her like a book.  “I lost my job today.”

“What?  You’re kidding me?”

She shook her head.  “No, they did budget
cutbacks and there wasn’t enough for two full-time employees.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Yeah, me too.  We’re barely making ends
meet as it is.  I’m going to end up living with my father forever at this
rate.”

Ella squeezed her hand.  “I could ask my
stepmother to hire you at the cleaning company.”

“Thanks, Ella, I appreciate it.”

“Mind you, then you’d have to deal with her
and my stepsisters and that’s not exactly a picnic in the park,” she grimaced. 
“God, those three – they drive me crazy.”

She grinned at Belle.  “Of course, misery
loves company so I’d love it if you worked with me.”

Belle laughed.  “Can I think about it?  I
was actually thinking maybe it was time I got the hell out of this town.”

“What?  You can’t leave me!”  Ella said. 
“What would I do without you, Belle?  Besides, you love this town.”

“I do,” Belle said softly.  “Plus I can’t
really leave my dad, can I?”

Ella squeezed her hand again.  “Your dad is
a grown man, Belle.  You can’t take care of him forever.”

“I know,” Belle said.  “But if I left and
something happened to him…”

She trailed off and Ella gave her a
sympathetic look.  “It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“Maybe not,” Belle said before picking up
her glass of wine.  She drained nearly all of it in one large swallow.  “Dad’s
been off drinking for the last week.  I don’t even know where he is right now. 
Probably holed up in some motel somewhere so I won’t yell at him.  I guess I
know where he got the money this time.  God, I hope he at least finished the
job before he disappeared.”

She finished her wine and smiled at Ella. 
“I’ll get back to you on the job thing, okay?”

Ella nodded.  “I know cleaning other
people’s houses isn’t the greatest job but – “

“A job’s a job,” Belle said.

She touched the rose’s soft petals again as
an image of a dark-haired boy flickered through her head.

* * *

“It’s about time you left that mansion of
yours.”  Duncan clapped Bennett hard on the back and grinned at him.  “You
know, for a bear shifter you spend a ridiculous amount of time gardening.  It’s
not exactly manly.”

“Keep your voice down.”  Bennett glanced
around them.  The street was mostly empty but Duncan’s voice was loud.

Duncan laughed.  “Please, the humans only
hear what they want to hear.”

They walked quickly down the street, their
large bodies taking up most of the sidewalk.

“It’s good to have you back, Bennett.  I’ve
missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Duncan.”

It was true.  He had only spoken to Duncan
a handful of times in the eighteen years he’d been gone, but in the two weeks
he had been back it hadn’t taken long for them to pick up the threads of their
boyhood friendship.

“Now tell me why you’ve come back.”

Bennett frowned at him.  “I told you,
Duncan.  The only reason I left was because my father forced me to.  When I
found out in his will that he had never sold our home here, I decided to
return.”

“So you returned for the house?”  Duncan
said skeptically.  “No offense, man, but it’s not that great of a house.”

“It’s my childhood home,” Bennett said.  “I
have fond memories of it.”

“Yeah, but it’s falling apart around your
ears.”

He shrugged.  “It can be fixed.”

“Is that why you hired that drunk to fix the
roof?”

Bennett scowled.  “That drunk has a name.”

“Yeah, he does but it doesn’t explain why
you hired him.  Shit, you’ll be lucky if the guy doesn’t show up drunk, fall
off your roof and break his neck.”

“He hasn’t shown up for work in a week,” Bennett
admitted.  “I paid him up front and – “

“You what?  Man, that was your second
mistake.  Old man Vale is off drinking himself stupid with your money.  You
know that, right?”

Bennett nodded.  “I know.”

“So why the hell did you pay him before he
finished the job?”

Bennett just shrugged and Duncan cocked his
eyebrow at him.  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with who his daughter is,
would it?”

“No,” Bennett said.  He could feel a flush
rising up his neck and he pulled at the collar of his jacket as Duncan grinned.

“Course not.  Have you seen her yet?”

“No, why would I?”

“You’ve sent her flowers every year for
eighteen years.  Why wouldn’t you try and see her?”  Duncan said.

Bennett groaned inwardly.  Earlier in the
week, Duncan had stopped by for beers and after one too many he had confessed
his secret.

“Wait until you see her.  Miss Mirabelle
Vale has filled out nicely in the last eighteen years.  Really nicely.”

Duncan held his hands out in front of his
chest and Bennett growled at him.  “Don’t talk about her that way, Duncan.”

Duncan didn’t reply and Bennett glanced
quickly at him.  “I’m not going to be seeing her.  She hates me, I know she
does.  I almost got her killed.”

“Well, you might have a point there,”
Duncan said thoughtfully.  “It’s not just the cougar attack thing either.  She
insisted for years that you turned into a bear and the whole town thinks
she’s,” he held his hand to his head and made a twirling motion, “completely
cuckoo.”

Bennett groaned and Duncan patted his
shoulder.  “Don’t worry about it, man.  She’ll probably still be nice to you. 
She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

“I have no interest in seeing her.  I send
her a flower every year as a way to say I’m sorry.”

“Of course you do.  Besides, you wouldn’t
have a chance with her anyway.  She’s been dating – “

Anger roared through him and his bear rose
to the surface, snarling and growling and ready to do battle with whatever
idiot dared lay hands on what belonged to him.  He grabbed Duncan by the
collar.  “Who?  Who is she dating?”

“Whoa, slow down there, big guy.  I’m just
kidding.  She’s not dating anyone – that I know of.”

Breathing harshly, Bennett growled at the
lion shifter.  Duncan’s eyes flashed from blue to yellow and he made an
answering growl before yanking free of Bennett’s grip.  “No interest in her, my
ass.  What?  You telling me the big bad bear has been saving himself all these
years for his childhood love that he met precisely once?”

Bennett growled again.  “Of course not. 
I’m not in love with her.”

They walked silently down the street as Bennett
sighed inwardly.  He wasn’t in love with Mirabelle.  He wasn’t.  It was just –
ever since he had stepped foot in his hometown, his mild obsession with the
girl he had met once had grown until she was all he could think about.  From
the moment he had arrived his bear had been nearly uncontrollable in its
insistence that he find her.  He had thought about her often over the last
eighteen years but now…

He sighed again and Duncan glanced at him. 
“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.  Listen, I think I’m going to
take a raincheck on – “

“Nope, not a chance.  We’re going for a
drink.  It’s not healthy to stay cooped up in that big old mansion of yours. 
Why did you move back if you’re just going to hide away in your house?”

Duncan tugged open the door to Gaston’s Bar
and Grill and grinned at Bennett.  “After you.”

“I’m just going to the ladies’ room.  I’ll
be right back.”  Ella slid out of the booth before Belle could tell her she was
thinking of leaving.

She sighed and traced the rim of her empty
wine glass.  She was sorely tempted to have another but living with an
alcoholic had made her hypersensitive to drinking.  No way was she ending up
like her father.  Rowan appeared and set a glass of water down before taking
her wine glass.  Belle smiled gratefully at her as the small, graceful redhead
disappeared into the crowd.

It was busy for a Thursday night, Belle
thought.  Mind you, she didn’t normally stay this late at the bar, not when she
had work the next day.

That’s not a problem anymore.

She dropped her head into her hands.  She
was unemployed and jobs were hard to come by in their small town.  She would
end up working for Ella’s bitch of a stepmother just because she didn’t have
the balls to leave the town she grew up in.  She loved her father but living
with him was destroying her.  Ella was right.  He was an adult and not her
responsibility.  She rubbed wearily at her forehead and tried to ignore the
rising babble of conversation around her.  She had almost succeeded when Ella’s
sharp scream had her sliding out of the booth and bolting toward the bathrooms.

* * *

Ella slipped past the crowd of men hovering
around the hallway to the bathrooms.  A drunk woman, her lipstick smeared
across her face, gave her a bleary grin and Ella neatly sidestepped her when
she staggered on her feet.  She hurried forward, glancing behind her to make
sure the woman wasn’t going to fall on her face.  She grunted in surprise when
she ran face-first into a hard, warm wall of flesh.

Rough hands gripped her upper arms and she
stared up at the man in front of her.  A groan of dismay escaped her lips and
the man’s smile widened into a predatory grin as he looked her up and down.

“Good evening, Ms. Cinders.”

“Mr. Gillis,” she said stiffly.

“You’re looking lovely.”  He was still
holding her arms and she yanked herself out of his grip, nearly tripping over
her own feet in the process.

“Thank you.  You’re looking,” she paused
and glanced at his broad chest in the tight dark red t-shirt, “very clean.”

He laughed and she flinched when he reached
out and brushed a lock of her blonde hair back from her face.  “Why so twitchy,
Ms. Cinders?”

“I don’t like having my hair pulled,” she
snapped.

“Please, are you still angry for what I did
in grade school?  I didn’t think you were the type to hold a grudge.”

“You know nothing about me,” she said.

“I know your hair is very soft,” he said. 
“I know you used to wear it in two delightfully adorable braids.  I miss those
braids.”

“Yes, well perhaps if I hadn’t had those
braids pulled every single day, I wouldn’t have stopped braiding my hair.”

“Would it help if I apologized for pulling
your hair when I was nine and you were seven?”  He asked with a twinkle in his
light blue eyes.

She glared at him.  “You make it sound like
you did it once.  It was every day for an entire school year.”

“Are you angry about the braid pulling or
angry because of the day I found you – “

“Be quiet!”  She hissed at him.  “God, just
shut up for once in your life, Duncan Gillis!”

She tried to dodge around him and squeaked
in alarm when he pressed her up against the wall of the hallway.  He placed his
hands on either side of her head, trapping her.  She had to force her
traitorous body not to breach the thin space between their bodies.

“I think it’s time we put this decades-old
feud behind us.  Don’t you, Ella?”  His warm breath on her face, the sound of
his velvet voice saying her given name made her pussy quiver and she pressed
her thighs together to try and ease the sudden ache between them.

“Perhaps you would forgive me if I gave you
the opportunity to tug something on my body,” he said with a wicked grin.

Her mouth dropped open as her gaze fell to
his crotch.  Shamefully, she could almost see herself reaching into his pants,
taking his cock into her hand and stroking it until he moaned.

“Naughty girl,” he said in a low voice.  “I
know what you’re thinking.”

She blushed, her pale skin turning the same
bright red as his t-shirt and his grin widened.  Embarrassed by her reaction to
him, she shoved at his hard chest.  He grunted in surprise and stepped back as
she glared at him.

“Get lost, pervert!  I wouldn’t touch any
part of you with a ten-foot pole.”  She walked into the bathroom without
looking at him.

She spent nearly five minutes in the
washroom, waiting for her hot face to cool down and her stomach to stop
churning with an odd combination of anxiety and desire.  She hated Duncan
Gillis, she reminded herself.  She would always hate him and it didn’t matter
that the little blond-haired boy who had spent an entire year tormenting her
had grown into a golden-haired, hard-bodied, sinfully gorgeous specimen of a
man.  She hated him.

She took a deep breath and stepped out of
the bathroom and into the hallway.  Duncan was gone but she groaned under her
breath at the man who was hovering just outside the door.

“Hello, Ella.”

“Marty,” she said coolly.  “What are you
doing here?”

“I just wanted to talk to you for a
minute.”

“I’m not interested.”

She stepped around him, ignoring the niggle
of fear in her belly when she saw his friends blocking the far end of the
hall.  “Get out of my way.”

“Ella, just wait.  You can’t avoid me
forever.”

“Yes, I can,” she snapped.  “Tell your
boyfriends to move.”

Marty made a harsh noise of frustration and
she spun around and glared at him when his hand touched her back.

“Don’t touch me.  Ever.  Do you
understand?”

“Just let me explain, okay?  I miss you,
Ella.  I miss you so much – “

“You miss me?”  She said.  “Maybe you
should give Ana a call.”

Marty flinched before scowling at her.  “Your
stepsister came on to me, okay?  She was flirting with me for weeks.”

“You just couldn’t resist, huh?”  Ella
snapped. 

“I made a mistake.  You gonna punish me
forever?  You know you still love me.  Hell, I still love you and, sweetheart,
you’re not gonna do much better than me.  Not with the weight you keep
gaining.”

“Fuck you, Marty!”  Ella snarled.  She
turned and stormed toward his friends as he made a harsh noise of frustration.

“We ain’t done talkin’, Ella.”

“Like hell we aren’t.  Tell your friends to
get out of my way or I’ll scream.”

She crossed her arms over her ample chest
and glared at the men blocking her way.  They glanced over her head at Marty
and when she felt his meaty hand wrap around her arm, she screamed shrilly.

He cursed and pushed her up against the
wall before clamping his hand over her mouth.  “Jesus, Ella, why do you have to
be such a drama queen?  All I want to do is talk for one goddamn minute and you
owe me the courtesy of – “

There was an angry roar and Marty’s eyes widened
as his friends were shoved aside and the blond-haired man stalked into the
hallway.  His hand tightened briefly on her mouth and then Duncan was ripping Marty
away from her and throwing him against the wall.  He squeezed his hand around
Marty’s throat and Ella watched wide-eyed as he growled deep in his throat.

“You dare to touch what is mine?”

Marty, his face going a bright red, clawed
at Duncan’s hand.

“Duncan!  Look out!”  Ella’s thin scream
came too late and she watched in horror as Marty’s friends jumped on him.  They
knocked him to the floor and fell on him as Marty staggered away from the wall
and grabbed her arm.  She slapped him across the face and he made a hoarse
shout of pain as Belle, her large chest heaving beneath her sensible cardigan, bolted
into the hallway.

“Ella!  Ella, are you okay?” 

“Belle!”

“Son of a bitch!”  Belle cried and Ella
cringed when, without hesitating, her best friend jumped on Marty.  Her
considerable weight drove him to the floor and she punched him in the face.  He
shouted in surprise before shoving her off of him.  Belle hit the floor, her
head bouncing off the hard tile and her glasses flying off her face.  Ella screamed
again as Marty clambered to his knees.  Breathing heavily, he touched his
bleeding nose and snarled, “You stupid bitch!”

He balled his hand into a fist and Ella,
her legs shaking madly, latched onto his arm and raked her nails down his hairy
forearm.  He howled with pain and shoved her back into the wall with his other
arm before raising his fist again.  Before he could drive it into Belle’s face,
a large hand gripped his wrist. 

Marty stared up at the bear of a man
standing beside him.  “Let go of me, man.  Let go of me right now or so help me
God, I’ll – “

The man, his face serene, twisted his hand
and Ella flinched when Marty’s wrist broke with a sharp crack.  He screamed in
agony and the man grabbed him by his hair and flung him from Belle with an easy
strength.

Belle, her head ringing, squinted at the
man leaning over her.  He put his large hands around her waist and lifted her
from the floor as easily as a child.  He set her on her feet and wrapped one
heavily-muscled arm around her generous waist.

He cupped her face as she tipped her head
back as far as it would go and stared up at him.  His eyes, the familiar colour
of dark chocolate, stared anxiously at her.

“Are you hurt?”  He asked.

“You,” Belle whispered.  “It’s really you.”

“Are you hurt?”  He asked again as there
was a low roar of anger behind them.

She shook her head and he gently pushed her
next to Ella before turning and lifting two of the men from the squirming pile
of bodies on the floor next to him.  He shoved them down the hallway before
shouting, “Leave now!”

They turned and ran as Duncan, blood
pouring from his lip, knocked the final man off of him and leaped to his feet.
He kicked the man in the ribs and he squealed once before grabbing his side and
curling into a ball.  Duncan pushed his way past Bennett and grabbed Marty’s
arm.  He hauled him to his feet and shoved him back against the wall.

“If you touch her again, I will kill you. 
Do you understand?”

Marty whimpered in pain and Duncan shook
him roughly.  “Do you understand?”

“Yes!”  Marty screamed as tears and snot
dripped down his face.

Duncan gave him a look of disgust as Bennett
said, “Let him go, Duncan.”

He released the man, wiping his hands on
his jeans as Marty staggered down the hallway and disappeared.  Kevin and one
of the bouncers were standing at the end of the hallway and Bennett raised one
dark eyebrow at them.

“Everything’s fine.”

“You need to leave,” Kevin said with a
nervous glance at his companion.  “Or Gaston’s gonna call the cops.”

Bennett cocked his head at him.  “Kevin,
isn’t that right?”

“Yeah,” Kevin replied.  “Do I know you?”

Bennett gave him a hard grin and Kevin took
a step back, his eyes widening.  “Do I know you, buddy?”

“I was your punching bag for a brief period
of time when we were children,” Bennett said before stepping closer.  “For you
and your gang of friends.”

Kevin backed away.  “That – that was a long
time ago.”

Bennett studied him silently before
cracking his knuckles.  “Indeed.  It was good to see you again, Kevin.”

“Y-you too,” Kevin whispered.

“Tell your boss we’ll be leaving in a
moment,” Bennett said as Duncan stalked angrily back and forth in the hallway.

“You need to leave right now,” the bouncer
said before swallowing thickly.

“Give us a minute,” Bennett growled.

Kevin grabbed the bouncer’s arm.  “It-it’s
fine, Mickey.  Give them a minute.”

They turned and scurried out of the hallway
and Belle snorted soft laughter before shouting, “Thanks for your help,
assholes!” 

She slung her arm around Ella.  “Are you
okay, honey?”

Rowan rushed into the hallway.  “What the
hell just happened?”  She put her arm around Ella from the other side and
stared at the pacing Duncan.

Ella didn’t reply and Belle squinted at her
best friend.  She was staring at Duncan and the two of them watched as he
curled his hands into fists before hitting the wall.

“Calm yourself, Duncan,” Bennett said
quietly.

“Calm myself?”  Duncan snarled at him
before wiping the blood from his mouth.  His jaw was covered in a thick golden
scruff and Belle felt more than heard Ella’s gasp when his gaze fell on them. 
Duncan’s eyes were a glowing dark yellow and she squeezed Ella reassuringly as
Duncan made an actual growl.