Fairytale Come Alive

Prologue The Destruction

Prentice

“You’re a fisherman,” Carver Austin said, his voice filled with derision, even his lip was curled.

Prentice Cameron could not believe this bloke.

His eyes moved from Austin to Elle.

The minute he’d walked into Fergus McFadden’s home in answer to Elle’s father’s summons and laid eyes on Elle, Prentice knew something was wrong.

She wasn’t wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Her lustrous, light brown hair wasn’t falling free down her back or pulled to the top of her head in a haphazard knot. Her hazel eyes weren’t shining with mischief or humor or happiness.

Instead, her usually thick, wavy hair was smoothed back in a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck and falling in a long sleek column down her back. Not a wild, riotous wave in sight.

Prentice loved her soft, beautiful, unruly hair; he thought it defined her perfectly.

She was also, he had noticed immediately, wearing makeup, which she never did because she didn’t need it.

Lastly, she was wearing a sophisticated light blue dress which, Prentice had to admit, looked sweet on her but he also noted its obvious style and expense.

He knew she was rich but she never acted it, nor did she dress the part.

Never as in never.

And Elle was usually chatty and energetic. Unbelievably chatty and energetic. It was difficult to keep her focused and in one place. Even when they were drinking at a pub, she shifted on her stool and chattered away. It was as if she had so much energy, if she didn’t fidget and talk to release some of it, she would explode. Prentice was often forced to haul her into his body and pin her to his side or kiss her to shut her up, neither of which he minded in the slightest.

Now, she seemed frozen. Not as if today’s shift from the unusually hot weather they were having to gray and drizzling had caused her to have a chill. It was as if she was frozen from the inside. She’d barely said a word since he’d arrived and she hadn’t fidgeted once.

In fact, she’d hardly looked at him at all.

“Elle, are you all right?” Prentice asked and her eyes, which were studying the carpet, flitted to his briefly then slid away.

“Perfectly fine,” she replied, her voice strong, cultured, controlled, a voice that he’d never heard before.

Elle was an open, friendly person, everything about her screamed it. The last two summers she spent in the village, she’d charmed every soul there with her nearly pathological sociability. By the end of her first summer, she knew every man, woman and child and their pets and they all adored her (even the pets).

But most especially Prentice.

Now, she sounded like an entirely different person.

Prentice’s vague sense of alarm intensified.

“Elle,” he repeated, preparing to move toward her. She was seated in an armchair. He was standing, facing off against her father who, from the very beginning of this meeting made no bones about the fact he didn’t like the idea of a lowly Scottish fisherman marrying his wealthy, educated daughter.

Before he could move, however, Austin spoke.

“Isabella has had a change of heart about your proposal.”

As Prentice’s eyes were still on Elle, he saw her body give a small jolt before he watched her fingers curl into tight fists in her lap.

Prentice’s alarm turned to anger.

His gaze moved back to Austin.

“That’s surprising,” now Prentice’s voice was filled with derision, “Elle seemed pretty excited about it when I put the ring on her finger.”

This was not a lie. She’d been so excited, she’d tackled him with such force they’d both fallen to the floor which, at first, considering she’d knocked the wind out of him, he thought was disadvantageous. Then, as he got his breath back and realized she was kissing and touching every inch of him she could get her hands and mouth on, and they were horizontal, Prentice saw the advantages of the situation.

Austin interrupted Prentice’s train of thought. “Isabella and I are leaving today, going back to Chicago. She’ll finish her senior year at Northwestern and she won’t return.”

Prentice glared at him. No, he could not believe this bloke.

“It’s my understanding her plans have changed,” Prentice replied.

“I’m quite certain you’ll eventually be happy with a woman who has not accomplished a higher education, however, my daughter –” Austin went on.

Prentice cut him off. “No, I’ll be quite happy with whatever Elle wants to do. And she’s decided she’ll finish uni but, after she graduates, she’ll come back here.”

Austin smiled a humorless, condescending smile. “And what, for the sake of curiosity, could she possibly do here?”

Prentice’s anger escalated.

He’d been born in his village, as had his father and mother and their parents and their parents, for as far back as anyone could remember. It wasn’t cosmopolitan by a long shot but it had charm and it was filled with good people who looked out for each other.

Furthermore, Elle loved it there. He knew that not only because she acted like she loved it but because she’d told him she loved it, about ten thousand times.

Prentice didn’t like anything about this discussion and he was beginning to like it even less.

“We’re in Scotland, not the wilds Nairobi,” Prentice returned. “We have trains. We even have cars. She can do whatever she wants.”

“It would be quite a commute to any worthwhile employment,” Austin retorted disdainfully.

“That depends on your definition of ‘worthwhile’,” Prentice shot back.

Austin rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms on his chest.

“It does, indeed,” he replied as if he’d made a point.

Prentice was done.

He looked back at Elle.

She was again studying the carpet.

“You want to jump in here, baby?” Prentice asked softly and he felt Austin’s mood shift dangerously at his tone and, likely, his endearment.

Prentice ignored it.

Her eyes lifted to his.

Prentice felt a chill slide through him when her gaze locked on his.

She stood, slowly, lithely, the graceful way she moved was one of the things that first attracted Prentice to her. Even her incessant fidgeting looked like a beautiful dance.

She walked the four feet to where he stood in front of the fireplace and stopped not far but also not close.

She tipped her head back to look at him.

“This was a mistake,” she said in that cultured, controlled voice.

Prentice thought she was not wrong.

He’d spent every moment he could with her for two summers. When she was back at home at uni, they talked on the phone as often as they could, considering the time difference and the expense (which wasn’t often enough for either of them). She wrote him letters and he did the same. She sent him packages filled with cookies she’d baked (at first these had arrived in crumbles and she’d made it her mission to find a way to get them to him with the cookies intact, eventually wrapping each cookie, dozens of them, tightly in cling film) and mad, ridiculous gifts she’d pick up here and there that she told him he “had to have” because they reminded her of him. Prentice had seven Northwestern t-shirts and three sweatshirts and even a pair of sweatpants that had a small Northwestern insignia on the hip.

It was safe to say Elle thought of him often.

They had, essentially, been “together” for fifteen months, unfortunately only six of those being in the same location.

In all that time, she rarely talked about her family but, of course, after he proposed, she’d said it was time he meet her father.

She didn’t seem excited about this, she seemed worried and Prentice put it down to normal, everyday nerves. Her mother died when she was young and she had no siblings. He assumed she and her father had formed a necessary bond because of this but any father would be cautious about the man to whom he was giving his daughter.

However now he understood her nerves were caused by something entirely different.

“Yes, baby,” Prentice took a step toward her, “this was definitely a mistake.”

Something flashed in her eyes, something he couldn’t read, before they froze again.

Then she lifted her hand and put her fingers to his ring.

It wasn’t much, he couldn’t afford much. He’d taken three years after school working on his father’s fishing boats and saving so he could afford university. Finally, he went, reading to be an architect. His mother told him, since he was a kid, he never drew anything but houses and buildings and when he wasn’t drawing, he was building with anything he could get his hands on. He built massive structures in the garden, in trees, in the lounge. It drove his mother daft since half the time he was nicking whatever he could, even to the point of dismantling furniture (and their shed), so he’d have building materials.

He went back to the boats in the summers because he needed the money.

The ring he’d given Elle wasn’t what he wanted to give her, neither was it what she deserved, it was what he could afford. He’d vowed to himself (although he hadn’t told her) that he’d eventually replace it with something that suited her, something bigger, shinier and worth the moon.

He’d been shocked when she’d loved the ring, tears filling her eyes as she examined it after they’d finished their horizontal celebration on the floor.

Her hand close to her face, her eyes glittering with tears, she’d whispered, “It’s absolutely perfect, Pren. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Now she was sliding it off her finger.

Prentice felt his gut twist as the alarm returned, sharp and vicious.

“Elle.”

“This was a mistake. I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still strong, controlled. “I got caught up in the whole…” she hesitated and, with his ring between her thumb and forefinger, she twirled her hand between them in a dismissive way, “Scotland thing.”

The gut twist tore upwards, slicing through his innards.

Who was this girl?

“The whole ‘Scotland thing’?” Prentice repeated, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, American girls have a thing for boys with accents,” she replied calmly as if her words weren’t a verbal knife thrust to his heart.

“You have got to be fucking joking,” Prentice hissed.

And if she was, it wasn’t fucking funny.

“Mind your language around my daughter,” Austin warned but Prentice didn’t even look at him.

His eyes stayed locked on Elle.

“We need to talk,” he demanded. “Alone.”

“I see no reason to draw this out, Prentice. As I explained, I made a mistake.”

He took a step closer. She took a step back.

He stopped.

She’d never retreated from him.

Never.

Even when they were arguing, which happened often. Elle could be annoyingly if adorably stubborn.

“Don’t you see?” Elle asked. “This was a lark. Annie and me –”

Prentice’s body jerked. “Don’t you fucking tell me Annie and Dougal –”

Her best friend Annie had hooked up with his best friend Dougal the same night he and Elle met. They’d been just as inseparable and had fallen just as deeply in love.

Quickly, she shook her head in a frantic way that was far more Elle than anything he’d encountered that morning and he watched panic flash through her eyes before she hid it.

“No, no… Annie and Dougal are something else,” she said swiftly and firmly.

“But you and I are a lark?” Prentice asked, his voice ugly and dangerous in a way it had never sounded before and it surprised even him.

“Well… yes,” she replied then continued. “I took it too far. Got caught up in it. I’m so sorry, Prentice.”

She rarely called him Prentice and he didn’t like it, especially not now.

She called him Pren. She was the only one in his life that did so and he liked it when she did.

And furthermore, she didn’t look sorry.

She didn’t look anything.

She didn’t look even a little bit like the girl who tore into town with her crazy antics, her abandoned laughter, her outgoing, fun-loving American cheerfulness, stealing his, and everyone’s, hearts.

She looked like a girl he wouldn’t glance at twice.

And she acted like a girl he’d detest.

He couldn’t believe he’d been so deceived.

“We need to talk,” he repeated.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied.

He got close and she stood her ground. He tipped his chin down and stared in her eyes.

They were cold.

“Something’s happened.”

“Yes, my father arrived and gave me a wakeup call,” she threw her hands out to her sides. “This isn’t my life. I wouldn’t be happy here. Honestly, Prentice, the idea is ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Prentice felt like shaking her.

He also felt like picking her up and carrying her away from Fergus McFadden’s posh house and Elle’s despicable father and doing everything in his power to bring back his Elle.

He didn’t do either.

“I don’t know what he said to you –” Prentice started.

She interrupted, “He gave me a few home truths.”

“And they were?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Prentice lost control of his temper and shouted, “It fucking well does!”

Austin materialized at their side. “Calm down, son.”

Prentice turned only his head to Austin. “Don’t call me son.”

“Prentice, really, don’t make a scene,” Elle put in sounding, if he could believe his ears, bored.

Prentice turned back to Elle. “We weren’t a lark.”

“Prentice –”

It was his turn to interrupt and his voice held an edge of steel coated with a sheen of deep emotion which, as much as he hated showing the weakness, he couldn’t quite control. “At least for me it wasn’t a lark.”

He wasn’t sure but he could have sworn Elle flinched.

He decided he was wrong when she calmly held his ring up between them.

Prentice didn’t take it.

Instead, he said, “When you’re away from him and you realize this is madness, you find me, you call me, you write me, I don’t give a fuck what you do.” He leaned into her and took her head in both hands feeling her body go solid when he moved an inch away from her face. His voice dipped low when he continued, “I’ll be pissed off, baby, and I’ll make you work for it. But I love you enough to get over it and take you back. I promise you that.”

“Prentice –” she said softly but he cut her off in the way he always stopped her from chattering.

He touched his mouth to hers.

Without a choice, as usual, Elle went quiet.

Prentice pulled away and looked into her eyes.

“I’ve had a good life; you know that,” he whispered, “Even so, you’re the best thing that’s been in it.”

He watched, up close, as she slowly closed her eyes, emotion washing over her face making her radiant.

That was his Elle.

Whatever this was, he’d made it through.

Thank Christ.

He kissed her forehead, let her go and, without a backward glance at her, or her father, Prentice walked away.