Kristen Ashley: Fairytale Come Alive

Her colleagues had been in a good mood, having been out for drinks, and they were loud and happy, asking Isabella to join them some time, any time .

They trotted on their merry way and her father stared daggers at them.

Then he’d turned to his daughter.

“You will not join those ridiculous people for a drink. For God’s sake, every last one of them was publicly inebriated. How crass,” her father had snapped.

“They’re just having fun,” Isabella, very unwisely, had stated quietly.

Her father halted, turned, and leaned into her threateningly (and not unusually) and Isabella could actually feel Fergus and Annie get tense.

“Are you contradicting me?” Carver Austin asked in a lethal voice that didn’t threaten punishment if her answer was incorrect, it promised it.

“Of course not,” Isabella whispered back immediately, feeling her face getting pale right before she felt the blood rush painfully into it.

“I didn’t think so,” her father replied, looked at Annie, giving her a head-to-toe, and then to Fergus. “Firm hand, good man. Doesn’t matter how old they are.”

Then he’d walked into the restaurant, arrogantly expecting them to follow.

“I think –” Fergus started, his voice sounding weirdly strangled.

Annie cut him off. “Dad, I told you about this.”

“It’s okay, Mr. McFadden,” Isabella had leapt to her father’s defense. “Honestly. He just a little –”

“Don’t say another word, Bella,” Fergus clipped and Isabella’s mouth snapped shut, mainly because he hadn’t called her “Bella” since that last summer (and no one called her “Elle” except Prentice, not in her life and she loved it when he called her that too). “Not another word.” Fergus’s eyes went to where they last saw her father, he muttered, “Christ,” under his breath and then he ushered the two women in, his arms protectively held around both of them.

As humiliating as that scene had been, Isabella was glad that Fergus didn’t hate her anymore. She’d always liked him a good deal. He was lovely, a wonderful man, a doting father, something, at least from afar, Isabella could definitely appreciate.

She was also glad he’d won his battle over cancer.

And lastly, she would be happy to see him again.

At least there was one thing to look forward to.

“Look at that house!” Mikey cried from beside her, craning his neck and moving around in the backseat, trying to get a look at the house as they rode at a crawl next to it. “It’s something out of a movie!”

“Or a modern day fairytale,” Isabella teased, Mikey looked at her and smiled a beautiful, gleaming, happy smile.

She smiled back but it felt funny on her face.

With great exuberance, Mikey vaulted out of his door.

Isabella took a deep breath and, with far less enthusiasm (in fact, none at all), she exited hers.

Fiona

Prentice Cameron stood staring out the window at the sleek limousine, watching as the effeminate man bounded out one side and continuing to watch as the beautiful, elegant woman sedately exited the other.

If Fiona Cameron had breath, she would be holding it.

She stood, ghost-like (because she was a ghost) and invisible, behind her husband and watched over his broad shoulder as his first love nodded at the driver regally then looked up at the house, her stunning face blank and cold.

God, Fiona hated her.

Years ago, Prentice had caught Fiona studying a picture of Isabella Austin Evangelista in a glossy magazine.

The picture was amazing.

She’d been wearing a dress that had to cost as much as Fiona’s entire wardrobe. She was walking, her gait wide, the slit up the front of her dress exposing thin, shapely legs, and she had on a pair of stylish, strappy, high-heeled shoes.

No one could walk in those dainty, death-defying shoes with grace except fucking Isabella Austin Evangelista. She could probably run in them, dance in them, play netball in them, the bitch.

In the photo, Isabella held a beaded clutch in one hand and the other hand was lifted, holding the thick fall of her (fake, fake, fake ) streaked honey-and-white-blonde fringe to the side of her temple, her eyes to the ground.

Her cheeks shimmered. Her dark brows were arched perfectly (which had to be the work of what Fiona was certain was a top-notch brow-shaper person at a posh salon). And, lastly, her lips were glossed in a way that it looked like da Vinci himself had held the lip brush to her lips.

Fiona was so engrossed in the picture, she hadn’t heard Prentice approach and didn’t know he was there until she felt his lips at her neck.

“Doesn’t hold a candle to you,” he whispered in her ear.

Even as she felt a shiver at his words, she laughed and shook the picture in front of him, trying not to be embarrassed at being caught ogling his famous, beautiful ex in a magazine.

“Right.”

His eyes had moved to the photo for barely long enough to take it in before they came back to her.

“She’s too thin,” Prentice had said.

Fiona shook her head and repeated, “Right.”

“She wears way too much makeup.”

Fiona grinned and repeated again, “Right.”

Prentice’s face hardened but his eyes got warm as they looked into hers. “She’s deceitful, untrustworthy, snobbish, thoughtless and a complete bitch.”

That Fiona couldn’t contradict.

She knew exactly what Isabella had done to Prentice, exactly . He’d told her everything.

And Fiona also knew that Isabella had not deigned to come back when her friend had been fighting for her life in hospital.

Therefore Fiona knew that Isabella Austin Evangelista was all those things.

And more.

And none of them were good.

Before she could say another word, Prentice had kissed her. Then he’d taken her to bed.

She’d never ogled a picture of his ex again.

Ah, she thought, good times.

“Prentice?” Dougal called from the doorway and Prentice turned from the window.

Fiona stayed staring out of it.

The man with Isabella rounded the car, staring up at the house with his mouth open and his eyes wide. Isabella gave him a smile that looked like butter-wouldn’t-melt and linked her arm in his.

She was wearing classy, high-heeled black boots, a cranberry-colored wool skirt that hit her at her knees and fit her like a second skin and a matching jacket that had stylish detailing at the pockets and the lapels. She had on a satin blouse in a color one shade darker than the cranberry suit and it came all the way up to her neck, circling her throat in elegant gathers. Her hair was bunched back in soft but stylish twists that led to a complicated chignon at her nape, the hairstyle so sophisticated there was no way she did it herself. The back of the suit was even nicer than the front, the skirt falling in row of knife-sharp kick pleats at the back of her knees, the same from the waist of the jacket down to the top of her arse.

Fiona let her ghostly lip curl at the idea that Isabella Evangelista had a stylist do her hair, she wore a fancy, posh suit (of all things) and rode in a limousine to a tiny, Scottish fishing village.

What a daft cow.

“You okay?” Dougal asked, entering the room and closing the door behind him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Prentice asked.

Dougal’s eyes went to the window and Prentice burst out laughing.

“I’m hardly pining for Isabella Austin,” Prentice said, laughter still in his voice and if Fiona had breath, she would have let it out.

“This can’t be easy for you, mate,” Dougal said softly and Fiona remembered (as she often did) why she liked Dougal so damned much.