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Until the day his dad mysteriously disappeared and Heath had been free to start turning his dreams into a reality.
What did Annabella Quinn know about that little boy? How in the world would that goody-two-shoes be able to deal with the episodes Heath still sometimes had, long stretches when he’d shake so badly he couldn’t come out of his office, couldn’t function in the world until Mary convinced him to go back on his medication? Would Annabella know how to calm him down, how to resurrect, time and time again, the strong, virile, magnetic man who knew how to turn everything he touched to gold?
She couldn’t, wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to deal. The first time she woke up to find him trembling in the corner, lost in his violent past, she’d leave him. And he’d end up more broken than he was already.
“Mary, what exactly was in the Christmas candy collection sent out this afternoon?” Heath asked, sticking his head out of his office to where her desk guarded his inner sanctum.
Mary turned to look at him, her smile fading when she saw the same dark circles under his eyes that had been there for the past month, ever since he’d learned that Annabella Quinn had been granted custody of the Procter children and still wouldn’t return his calls or letters.
But it would be all right. He would get over his disappointment in time. He couldn’t really be in love with a woman he’d known less than twenty-four hours. It was irrational and ridiculous, two things Mary couldn’t tolerate.
“Peppermint condoms, gingerbread edibles and a sugar cookie body oil.”
“No mint-chocolate condoms?” he asked, looking down at the paper in his hand in confusion.
“No, you said those tasted like flavored laxatives, sir,” she reminded him, praying that his recent forgetfulness wasn’t a sign of an episode to come.
He hadn’t had one in nearly three years, but then it was almost Christmas and that was always a hard time for them both. It wasn’t easy facing the “family” season when you didn’t have much in the way of family, and what you did have you wished would crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear forever.
Still, they’d always managed to get by together. Their annual Christmas dinner with the other orphans on their staff had come to be one of the highlights of Mary’s year.
“Right. Shitfucks.” Heath ran a frustrated hand through his nearly shoulder length hair. He hadn’t cut it in several months, hadn’t shaved either, until a few days ago when a new security guard wouldn’t let him in the building because he thought he was a homeless man, not the owner of the most successful adult company in the Kingdom.
“That’s an interesting new cuss word, sir.” Mary tried to joke, forcing herself to believe that things would soon return to normal. If she acted as if everything were fine, as if the man she had known her whole life hadn’t changed somehow since he’d come back from the Parish of Deepweeds, he would get better.
He had to get better.
“What?”
“Nothing, sir.” She sighed and felt an all-too-familiar sinking in her stomach.
“I don’t want any calls this afternoon, Mary. Just take a message and I’ll call them back tomorrow.” He shut the door behind him only to open it almost immediately. “Unless it’s a personal call. I’m taking personal calls,” he said, and then disappeared again.
Of course he was taking personal calls. He was still pining for her, still waiting for Bella to call him, to explain why she’d taken so long to make good on the plans they’d made. He still believed that there could be a happy ending to their story.
“He should know better,” Mary whispered to herself as her eyes started to tear behind her sensible glasses. She suddenly began to wonder if maybe she might have made a mistake.
What if she were wrong? There was only the ghost of a chance, but she believed in ghosts, they haunted her every night. What if, in her haste to protect Heath from heartbreak, she was the one responsible for shattering his heart beyond repair?
There was only one way to know for sure.
She held her breath as she dialed the number, hoping that an answering machine or one of the kids would pick up the phone and she’d be spared the experience of having to hear her voice.
No such luck, of course. Not that she was surprised; Mary had never been a lucky woman. Any luck she had, she made herself.
“Incredible Edibles, Annabella speaking.” There was laughter in Annabella’s voice, as if she’d just finished joking with one of her newly adopted children before answering the phone.
She sounded busy, slightly breathless, and happy.
Very happy.
“Sorry, wrong number,” Mary said and hung up quickly, her heart hammering in her ears for several seconds as she struggled to draw breath.
She was right. She’d known she was right. Annabella Quinn was happy, overjoyed with her life without Heath. She wasn’t moping around crying into her chocolate-covered pretzels; she was celebrating the season with her sister and brother. She was rebuilding her candy empire and basking in the affections of a Kingdom that couldn’t wait to eat humble pie and welcome her back as the cultural icon that she was.
Even if she suspected that the package Mary had sent wasn’t really from Heath, Bella didn’t want to risk her reputation by associating with a man from the wrong side of the tracks. Annabella Quinn had everything she wanted right in the palm of her hand and didn’t give a damn about the man who was responsible for giving it all back to her. She’d used Heath for his connections and his ability to pull strings with people who operated outside the boundaries of her cozy little cottage in the woods.
But now that she had the kids and her good rep, she had no more use for him.
