A Happily Ever After of Her Own Read Online Free

words together to make sense. "You understand? Dawn's crack. I'm going back to sleep, and I advise you do the same."
    "I am not sleepy."
    Melinda counted backward from five. Her students tested her patience at times, but never this early. "Maybe you have some kind of Fairy Tale jetlag, but I don't."
    He sat on her bed, and the mattress sank so much she threatened to roll into him. "Come!" He took her wrist, then the other, his touch surprisingly gentle as his callused skin caressed her forearms. All irritation fled at the contact, leaving her in a suspended mode, waiting and wondering where he would put his hands next. Suddenly he went still and whispered, "It's gone."
    She opened her eyes. "Huh?"
    He was staring at her wrist. "Your magic time-telling device." He jumped off the bed and looked around her room. "Someone...the Evil Witch must've stolen it! We need to track her lackeys." He sniffed the air, nostrils flaring. "Yet...there is no sign..."
    Melinda sat up and took her watch from the bedside table. "Here."
    "You took it off...and left it there?" He gaped at her. "What if it had been stolen? Or lost?"
    She rolled her eyes. "Who would steal a ten-dollar watch?"
    He straightened to his most formidable height, his spine so stiff she thought it might just snap under the tension.
    "Excuse me, Miss
Light
foot," he began, "But not everyone is as inept a trespasser as you are--"
    Here we go again.
"My name is Melinda, and I'm not a trespasser--"
    "--and its value is far beyond mere money. My aunt would do anything to acquire it should she become aware of its existence. I checked your house defenses last night. You have no enchanted vines. No illusions, no tricksters...nothing to keep intruders out. As a matter of fact, your home is wide open to anyone regardless of their intentions. When you are given a precious item of magical ability, you must safeguard it with your life. Leaving it there like that while your house lies unguarded--"
    Melinda blocked out Edward's lecture, wishing she had that Micro-Uzi so she could show him she had excellent home defense. When he paused to take a breath, she raised her hand before he could start again. "I don't think there's enough sun for it to work."
    That distracted him. He frowned and examined the watch. "N. E., it reads. North. East. So it is indeed morning." He smiled -- a logic-killing, heart-accelerating, face-heating kind of smile, something that could potentially be quite lethal -- and her brain seemed to freeze.
    You don't poach men. He already has his true love.
    "We must leave immediately," he said.
    Melinda shook herself and sighed. She knew when she had lost. "Fine. Give me half an hour."
    "Half an hour?!" he roared, but his vocal cords weren't as impressive as when he'd been the Beast. A good thing, too. She didn't want to get a hearing aid at the ripe old age of twenty-five.
    "It's the Speedy Melinda Special. The regular's an hour. Take it or leave it."
    *** *** ***
     
    A quick hot shower made her feel better, but not by much. Back in Fairy Tale Land she hadn't slept well on her cell's cold hard floor, and she'd been counting on eight good hours before they started their search. Still, the primary requirement for a pre-school teacher was empathy, and now she empathized with Edward. She would want to get going too if the situation were reversed.
    Edward was pacing in the living room, his movements courtly, precise, elegant, and completely at odds with the shirt and jeans he was wearing. His big hands were clasped behind him; she remembered their delicious warmth when he'd held her arms, and shuddered with an irrational desire to have them on her again.
    Get it together before you make a fool out of yourself.
    That was the smartest thought she'd had since Edward had woken her up. Now if her body would just listen.
    She made a big pot of coffee in her cheery yellow kitchen. The walls glowed in the strengthening sunlight; a basket with grapefruit, apples and a couple of