Wickedly Charming (18 page)

She moved her hand over some books.

“No time,” he lied. “I have to meet the girls.”

He was halfway out the door when he remembered it was a school day and it wasn't even lunchtime yet.

Mellie would know that he lied. But he couldn't change that now.

He had to leave.

He was too nervous to stay.

And they both knew it.

Mellie had never seen Charming so flustered. She had thought of him as unflappable. A man who got angry, yes, but a man who could remain in control of that anger.

But he had been nervous with her. Nervous and worried and uncharacteristically insecure. No wonder he wanted her to do the publicity on the novel: If anyone criticized his writing in public, he would probably faint dead away. And she thought he got too upset when someone criticized the books he
read
. How would he be on the books he'd written?

She already knew the answer to that. He would be a disaster.

She took the manuscript back to the Malibu beach house, made herself some iced tea, and went onto the balcony overlooking the ocean. The day was warm, the breeze light, the sun sparkling on the water. The beach was empty. Since it was the middle of the week, most people were either working or hadn't come to their vacation homes. Kids were in school.

She felt like she had the beach to herself.

She needed the privacy because, if she was honest, this novel scared her.

She was glad Charming had given her an out. Now that she held the manuscript in her hand, she no longer wanted to do this project. She didn't even want to look at it.

Evil
, indeed.

Just like
Wicked
, which had been a novel she hadn't even enjoyed. (Although she did like the music from the Broadway show. In fact, the Broadway show made her cry.)

But a Broadway show, a movie, a series of books like Gregory Maguire had done with
Wicked
, that would change her image. That would change the image of stepmothers forever.

She spread out on a lounge chair, put on sunglasses, and opened the box, picking up the offending cover page and turning it quickly so that she wouldn't see her name with that offending word.

From the beginning of the book, she felt discombobulated. She and Charming had plotted a basic romance. In fact, they had stolen the plot from some successful novel—something she hadn't read and could now no longer remember.

But she remembered the plot: a beautiful but misunderstood woman marries a man whom she thinks loves her, raises his children, and gets accused of magically hurting them. She hasn't, of course, and must defend her misunderstood self. He leaves her (or dies—she couldn't remember that part either) and she falls in love with the perfect man who helps her and the children and the world understand what a wonderful and misunderstood person she really is.

But this book didn't go that way at all. It actually started in the Kingdoms, told by another stepmother—Lavinia, with a made-up name (Laverne, of all things. Who did he think he was fooling?)—who talks about what fairy tales really are: Tales of Misunderstood (or Twisted) Love.

That very idea caught Mellie's attention. The Laverne character explained it—everyone in fairy tales is searching for something spectacular, something important, often finding love and forsaking it.

But no one notes the love of a mother for her children
, says Laverne. That's missing in the fairy tale.

And the love of a stepmother for her children is, of course, never mentioned at all.

As Mellie read, she felt more and more uneasy. Charming was writing her story. Her life story, narrated by Laverne, the surviving member of the friendship.

And the novel wasn't a romance at all. There wasn't even a sympathetic male character until her first husband appeared a third of the way into the novel. Her father was horrible (and he was; she made no bones about that), and her brothers disowned her, forcing her into her first marriage.

Charming got all of that right. He got her emotions right too. It was as if he had crawled inside her mind and plucked out her memories, writing them onto the page—more beautifully than she ever could, of course.

Because that was the other thing: The language here was utterly lovely. Rich and full, the descriptive passages so vivid that she could smell the flowers and see the cracks in the palace walls.

She almost stopped after the first section to call Charming and find out if he really and truly could read minds.

But then he would know how uncomfortable he made her, and they would have another of those awkward conversations.

Instead, she kept reading, engrossed in her own life as told by a man she had met just a year before.

He caught it: the sense of loss when her first husband died, the need for security, the way that she couldn't rely on her now-grown children (because that wasn't fair to them or to her). He showed how her second marriage had been a partnership—she was in charge of the children, he in charge of their well-being, something he had provided for, even after his death.

And Charming showed spectacularly the prejudice against second wives, against women in general in the Kingdom, how they were mocked and hated and considered inferior.

She wondered if some of this hadn't come from his sympathy for Ella—after all, she had been mocked and hated and considered inferior—but that didn't explain all of it.

Ella, after all, angered him, and bewildered him.

And there was none of that in this novel. No bewilderment at a woman's behavior, and no anger at her behavior either.

Although there was anger—a lot of it.

Many of Mellie's rants made it to the page, word for word.

And they fit.

They actually fit.

The attempted murder of Snow, the false accusation, the defense that Mellie had gotten from her own children and her stepson Raymond, all made it into the book.

And so was Mellie's rescue of Snow. Hidden, difficult, the way she had to use her magic for weeks, just to keep Snow alive. And how it felt to have that magic slowly burn out, to have it fade, and the fear she felt that she might not be able to keep Snow alive after all.

The relief when Snow's handsome prince showed up, and then the worry when Mellie realized what kind of man he really was.

Charming managed to follow Mellie's life
and
the fairy tale, forcing the stepmother to leave when Snow's Prince Charming took over the castle and became King. Snow's Prince Charming, who didn't play real well in this book—a dark, evil, necrophiliac buffoon, whom the “evil” stepmother (whose name was Malinda—
that
wouldn't fool anyone) had repeatedly warned Snow about, only to get told by her rather naïve, pigheaded stepdaughter that she didn't know anything about men and she was just jealous.

Anyone reading the novel knew that Snow was heading for disaster with that man, and knew that the stepmother was right trying to stop it.

At the end, the stepmother gets banished from the Kingdoms, and leaves, misunderstood, saddened, unhappy, a symbol of all that has gone wrong in a world once lovely and magical.

The novel made Mellie cry.

She wasn't sure if it made her cry because it was about her life, because it was somewhat accurate, or if it actually had power all its own.

One thing she did know: No one would want to read the damn thing. No one would want to cry at the end of a novel.

It was a beautifully written embarrassment, one she certainly couldn't have out there under her own name. What would people think of her? They would know everything about her, from her young and somewhat unrequited love for her first husband to her businesslike relationship with her second.

They would also know how much she loved Snow and Raymond, and how sad she became when the relationship with Snow fell apart.

The accusations, the lies—all of it on the page, for everyone to see.

It didn't matter that the stepmother character in the book was, as Laverne said, the only one whose love was truly pure. No one would see that.

They would see what an idiot she was, how dumb she had been, how much she had believed in the true fairy tale—that love could conquer all.

It was dark when Mellie finally put the lid back on the box. Lights from the houses nearby fell on the beach. The ocean shushed beneath her, a soothing sound.

But it didn't really soothe her. It just made her uncomfortable.

Charming made her uncomfortable.

He had seen all of that, everything about her, all of her secrets, her deepest fears, and her greatest needs.

Then he had titled the book
Evil
.

He had defeated her, just like Prince Charmings always did to evil stepmothers, in a way that she couldn't really admit to him, in a way that she had never once thought possible.

He had completely and utterly, absolutely and thoroughly, broken what some had called her nonexistent heart.

When Charming got home from the coffee shop, he found an email from Sheldon McArthur—lower case, in a hurry, cryptic:
you might need an agent.

Charming sat in the sunlight pouring in from the windows in his lovely home office and stared at the computer screen. No matter how hard he studied the email, it did not change.

It said that he might need an agent, and that was all, except for Shelly's virtual signature and his store's address and phone number. By the time Charming got to the email, the store was closed. He got the voice mail. He could have called Shelly at home, but he didn't want to disturb his old friend.

Although he should have.

He had no idea what was behind Shelly's email, although he found out the next day, as the offers for
Evil
started pouring in.

Apparently, Shelly had shared the manuscript with a few editor friends, all of whom wanted the book
now
.

Which made Charming nervous. He hadn't heard from Mellie. He had no idea what she thought of the book. He didn't know if her silence meant she hadn't gotten around to reading it yet or if she completely absolutely and utterly hated it.

He suspected the latter, but he knew he was already nervous about the project, and no real judge of his own work.

All he knew was that he had tried to write a
Twilight
kind of novel, and it had seemed silly to him. So he tossed out that draft and started again. And this time he wrote a story about life in the Kingdoms, and he used Mellie's life to build a kind of truth.

She had to have hated it.

But they were going to have to discuss it.

He printed out all the emails marked “Offer” from the various editors, rerecorded the voice mails onto his cell phone, and then he called Mellie.

“We need to talk,” he said when he got her voice mail for the fifteenth time.

Yep, she hated the book.

No doubt about it.

***

Mellie got Charming's voice mail. She also saw all the missed calls.

She just couldn't bring herself to return them.

Nor could she bring herself to leave him a message at all.

Still, that didn't explain how she found herself in his neighborhood early the next afternoon. She had lunch at a restaurant she'd always wanted to go to—one he had mentioned on the phone in fact during their calls about the book, a restaurant very close to his house.

And after she finished a delicious lunch—at least, she hoped it was delicious; she hardly tasted it—she found herself driving down the street that he lived on.

“On the Street Where You Live”—one of those Broadway musical songs. Of course, sung by the guy in
My Fair Lady
who
didn't
get the girl. That was probably a sign. Because Charming was the pretty one in this relationship, and Mellie wasn't ever going to “get” him. Especially since he was clearly so ambivalent about her.

Mellie sighed. And looked, following the addresses. The neighborhood was—oh, she hated to think it—charming. And Charming's house, appropriate, a two-story mock Tudor with faux rock and mullioned windows.

Lovely, lovely house, with a handsome, handsome man standing on the stoop, looking stunned to see her vehicle.

Of course, she couldn't just drive by now. She had to stop.

So she did.

She wanted to stay in the car and have him come to her, but that wasn't right. Instead, she forced herself out. The sidewalk leading to the house wasn't really a sidewalk at all. It was a cobblestone path, beautifully designed to fit into the lovely garden that was blooming with seasonal flowers.

The air smelled sweet—some kind of flowering California plant that she couldn't recognize. There were no tulips here, no daisies, no plants that needed cold to go dormant in the winter. Just plants that could handle the warm winters and the even hotter summers.

She ran a hand through her hair. She was focusing on flowers because she couldn't bear to think about anything else.

“Mellie?” Charming said as if he couldn't believe she was actually there.

She swallowed hard and hoped her voice would sound calm when she spoke.

“I got your messages,” she said. “What could be so urgent?”

He hadn't moved from the stoop. He looked a bit mussed—his at-home clothes, instead of his in-public clothes—khaki pants that looked well worn, a polo shirt with a rip along the sleeve. Even his hair was tussled, as if he hadn't combed it yet that day.

The look made him seem less formidable, more boyish.

“Um,” he said, sounding as nervous as he had at their last meeting. “I—um—well, once you might have thought it was good news.”

“What?” she asked.

“Come on inside,” he said. “Have you had lunch?”

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded, as if he had expected it. He opened the door, and waited for her, like a perfect gentleman.

She tottered along the walk, her heels catching in the uneven stone. She had hated cobblestone in the Kingdoms and she hated it here. It was an affectation, even if it did look good with the garden and the mock Tudor house.

He smiled at her as she stepped past him into the darkened interior. She tried to ignore that smile. It was one from his arsenal of lethal smiles—warm and welcoming and insecure all at the same time.

As she walked past him, she realized he wasn't wearing shoes, that he was completely barefoot. With her wearing heels and him barefoot, he wasn't that much taller than she was. The look suited him more than she wanted it to.

He put his hand on her back as he guided her through the door. His palm was warm through her shirt, making her breathless.

He was so casual in his touching, so comfortable with the motions of politeness. Like that kiss on the hand, the one she had found so very erotic.

And she didn't want to think erotic thoughts about Charming because she might turn around and kiss him. Really kiss him, not like she had at the book fair, but full on, shove the man against the wall kissing, the kind that might lead to clothes getting ripped, and parts getting caressed and—

She made herself stop. She couldn't think of that.

She didn't dare.

“Nice house,” she said, and meant it.

The interior smelled faintly of a young girl's perfume mixed with a stronger scent of garlic. The entry was neat, but not too neat. Shoes were pushed haphazardly against the wall, the front closet door was slightly open, and someone had left a stack of books on the stairs leading up to the second floor.

Charming led Mellie into the kitchen. A woman she didn't recognize was browning some meat. That was where the smell of garlic came from. Some chopped onions sat on the sideboard along with some glistening tomatoes.

The woman was heavyset, with soft, careworn features. She wore a blue T-shirt and faded blue jeans. She was barefoot too.

Charming introduced her, but Mellie missed her name. His housekeeper, and the person who kept him honest, he said. Mellie wasn't sure what that meant.

He got a lime cooler from the fridge and offered her one. She shook her head. She wasn't going to stay very long.

Then he led her to the back patio. The patio was also made up of cobblestone. A glass table with matching chairs stood in the center. The glass was perfect because it showcased the riot of flowers back here. Even underneath the table itself, flowers bloomed in a circular planter around the base.

Mellie sat, but he didn't. He walked to the edge of the cobblestone patio and looked out over his backyard, showing off that perfect back again. How could she be so attracted to a man's back?

She made herself look away.

“I know you don't like the book,” he said. “You don't have to tell me about it. Your silence says it all.”

“Charming,” she said, then let her voice trail off. She really had nothing to say about the book. She couldn't tell him how disconcerted she felt that he had seen her clearly. And she couldn't tell him how much it had hurt her because then she would have to explain why, and she didn't want to.

She no longer wanted to be vulnerable in front of this man.

“But we have a problem,” he said. “When I gave the book to you, I also gave it to my friend Sheldon McArthur, who is a book dealer and knows a lot about literature.”

Her cheeks heated. She bit her lower lip. She wanted to excoriate him for letting someone else read the book, but she didn't want to start yelling now.

If she started yelling now, she might never ever stop.

“I thought, you know, that if you liked it, we had to make sure that it was an okay novel before we marketed it, and since neither of us were experts…” Charming shrugged. He was still facing the garden.

She was glad for a moment that she couldn't see his face. Or, rather, that he couldn't see hers.

“Anyway,” he said, “Shelly liked the book, and he gave it to a few people—”

“He what?” she asked.

“He does that,” Charming said. “I didn't know that he did that, but he's done it with some now-famous mystery writers. He uses his connections to make sure the book has a hearing.”

Mellie's heart pounded. Other people had read this book? She was going to die of embarrassment.

She closed her eyes. And part of her heard her own thoughts: she sounded like a teenager. Worse, she sounded like an inconsistent teenager, one who could protest a book fair but not let people see her life story.

As written by Prince Charming.

“So far,” Charming said softly, “I've gotten six offers on the book.”

“What? You have?” She opened her eyes.

He had turned around slightly, so that he could see her face. She could see his. It was filled with trepidation and regret.

“They seem to think I'm your agent,” he said. “Shelly sent the manuscript, and put them in touch with me, but my name isn't on the document. Just yours.”

“Offers?” she asked.

He nodded. “Better than anything I could have hoped for. The kind of offers you wanted. The kind you needed to get the attention we initially talked about.”

“But the book is
sad
,” she said. “It doesn't have a happy ending.”

His smile was rueful. “I know. They're calling it women's fiction. One editor said it might start a trend of stepmother lit. They say the market is huge, given all the second marriages and blended families in this country. Everyone has a stepmother or knows someone who does.”

Mellie's heart was pounding. “What does this mean?”

“It means we could have an auction,” he said. “It means that whoever buys the book will want to send you on tour and have you do publicity, and will promote the book as the definitive stepmother story. And—I hate to tell you this—they all seem to love the title.”

“The title is horrible,” she said, then stopped herself. She almost told him the whole book was horrible.

“I know,” he said and made his way over to the table. “I was going to turn it all down, but it didn't seem right without consulting you. So I've told you. Now all I have to do is email them with a thanks but no-thanks.”

She swallowed hard. She hadn't expected this. She hadn't expected any of this. Initially she had thought about the talks and the tours, the publicity and the promotion, just as a way to get her message across. But even all that got lost in her efforts to write the book.

And she had been so relieved when Charming took that over.

Until she saw the book of course.

Then again, she'd been trying for years to get a hearing on the mistreatment of stepmothers in fairy tales. Not just years. Decades.

He was right: she would have been happy about this a month ago. Hell, a week ago, before she had read the book.

But now the book was a reality, and it wasn't quite her reality (but it was close—too close for comfort, in fact. But who would know that, outside of the Kingdoms? And how would it get to the Kingdoms, except for Charming?)

“Let me see the offers,” she said.

He grabbed a folder off a nearby chair. Inside were printed out emails—six of them—with the word “Offer” emblazoned across the top.

“I have voice mails too,” he said. “Some people left messages.”

She glanced at him. “They did?”

He nodded. “A lot of messages. These editors are afraid they'll miss out. They really think you have the next best thing here.”

“You have the next best thing,” Mellie said. “You wrote the book.”

“Using your words,” he said softly.

Her cheeks heated. She spread the papers on the glass table top. Offer after offer after offer. He had arranged them from the smallest—if you wanted to call six figures small—to the largest, which made her gasp.

Not that she needed the money. But she had no idea there was so much money in publishing, particularly for a book like this.

“The money is just representative,” he said. “I've been talking to some writer friends. They tell me that these are advances, and they indicate how much push a publisher is willing to put behind a book. These advances mean that a publisher would try to make this book a national—maybe even an international—bestseller.”

Mellie looked up at him. He had wiped his face of all expression—probably deliberately—and he was just watching her.

Then he leaned forward, and moved some pages.

“Here's what I think is interesting,” he said and tapped the middle of one of the sheets. “It's an advertising and promotion plan, something they tell me is really, really unusual at this stage. But the publisher's really afraid that they'll lose out to someone else, so they're letting us know everything they plan for the book. See? You'd go all over the country on a whirlwind tour. There'd be appearances on
The Today Show
, on
Regis and Kelly
, and they'd even try for a special
Oprah
segment, although they are really clear they can't guarantee that.”