Wickedly Charming by Kristine Grayson

Author:Kristine Grayson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-07-20T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Charming had a horrible look on his face, as if he expected her to slap him.

What kind of person did he think she was? If she were easily offended, she’d be hiding in a room in the Kingdoms, rather than making her way through the Greater World.

“Good heavens,” she said. “How ridiculous can you get?”

His beautiful blue eyes opened and he leaned away from the table, as if he expected a slap. He wasn’t timid—if he were timid, he wouldn’t have stood up to Bourke—but he was emotionally fragile.

Mellie didn’t know if that was Ella’s fault or the fault of Charming’s father, and at the moment, she didn’t care. She was more intrigued by Charming’s reaction and his idea.

“You’re being politically correct, aren’t you?” Mellie asked.

“Um,” he said, gulping air as he spoke.

“That’s a Greater World thing, isn’t it?” she said.

“Um—”

“I mean, really, what am I supposed to do if I want to change the world and I need help doing it? Enlist only women because it’s a women’s cause?”

“It’s been done before,” he said, then bit his lower lip. He looked very uncomfortable. And vulnerable.

And cute. She had never thought of him as cute before, but he was when he lost that cool façade, a façade that seemed more about hiding shyness than actually being cool.

She tried not to smile. She had riled him. She liked that. Beneath the cool exterior of this man was tamped down passion, passion he seemed afraid of.

“So who would I enlist?” Mellie asked. “Selda? She’s already told me she hates writing. Lavinia? She knows nothing about the Greater World. Snow? She hates my guts. Ella? She—”

Mellie stopped herself before she said something she regretted. She always did that. She let down her guard and she said something stupid.

“It’s okay,” Charming said in a flat tone. “She’s not much of a mother, so how would she be a stepmother?”

His tone was so sad, so wistful, that Mellie reached across the table and caught his hand. She didn’t say anything. After all, he had finished the very sentence that she had been about to say. He often said what was on her mind. He had with Bourke. And even if he didn’t, she liked the way that Charming thought.

She liked him. She liked him so much.

“You said you can write fiction,” she said. “How do you know that?”

He shrugged one shoulder again.

“Charming,” she said. “You can’t make a statement like that without backing it up.”

“I’ve… written a few things,” he said. But that sounded like a lie. Only “lie” was too harsh. It sounded more like a humble misdirection.

“How few?” she asked.

That shoulder went up and down again.

“Charming…”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I wrote a lot when I first came to the Greater World.”

“And put it all in a drawer?” she asked.

“Noooo,” he said.

“What did you do with it?” she asked.

“Sold it,” he whispered.

“To…?”

“Magazines,” he said. “They’re called little magazines. And literary magazines. And some digests.”

“Under what name?” she asked.

“Names,” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes.

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