Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
WE’RE YOUR HAPPY ENDING
M y expression tight, I step fully into the room. Wentworth rushes past me to sit before Owen, who bends and scratches his floppy ears. Despite my defensive stance with the bat, my dog is undisturbed by the three strange men standing in the middle of my living room.
Each man looks at me with a different expression. Owen’s is warm. Lord James is bored, as if he’s already tired of this. Lars doesn’t smile as much as smirk, like this is just a game.
“What do you mean you’re here to help me get my happy ending?” I repeat, curling my fingers a little tighter around the bat’s base as I rest the barrel on my shoulder, prepared to swing fast and hard, if needed. While something inside me recognizes these men, I still don’t trust it, or them.
“Just that…” Owen raises his palms, taking a hesitant step toward me. “We’ve been sent here to help you.”
“Who sent you?” I motion at him with the bat.
His blond eyebrows knit, and he steps back. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? How are you here? How do you even know who I am? How do you know you’re here to help me if you don’t know who sent you?” Each question sprints out of me more high-pitched than the last.
“We just know,” Lord James offers.
I scoff. “You just know?”
He shrugs.
I wave the bat. “How? And how are you so calm?”
Somehow, these three men poofed into existence, and they’re chill about this.
If I found myself in an unfamiliar world, I wouldn’t be all like, Oh, let’s hang out and bake muffins until this woman we’ve never met and are on a mission to help comes home .
I’d be freaking out. Hell, that’s what I’m doing now.
They look between each other as if trying to decide what to say or who should say it.
With a head tilt, Lars gestures to Owen.
He appears to be their unofficial spokesperson, which is wise.
Not only is Owen Sugarville’s de facto statesman, but he’s also the least intimidating of the three men.
He’s the cinnamon roll book boyfriend, after all.
He shifts foot-to-foot before meeting my stare.
“I was in my bakery’s kitchen. Selena left last night, and I was going to bake away my feelings with some pumpkin tarts.
Then suddenly, this image popped into my head of a woman with big brown eyes, the color of warm caramel.
She sat in a black dress, her long dark hair in a messy bun, on the edge of a stone fountain. ”
Realization jolts through me. The description melds with the memory of me perched on the edge of the SPN fountain. I was alone. How did they…
My wish.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
My pulse ticks up, and the splash of the penny after I’d tossed it into the fountain flashes in my mind’s eye.
“Sadness swam in those beautiful—yet dulled—eyes as if the flames of hope flickered to mere embers about to be extinguished,” Lord James adds, his timbre reminiscent of a gentling breeze.
“It was you, rabbit. The vision of the woman we saw was you,” Lars juts his chin at me.
“You all had the same vision?”
“Yeah,” they say in unison.
Eyes blinking, I loosen my grip on the bat. “How did you know it was me?”
One dark brow quirked, Lars waves at me. “Besides that exact woman’s photographs on these walls, and then she– AKA you–w altzes into this apartment, you mean?”
“Yes, smartass.”
A lazy grin kicks across his face. “Look at that; my little rabbit has given me a pet name.”
Lord James tsks . “Now is not the appropriate time for flirtation.”
“The pink crawling up her neck says otherwise, Lord Fancy Pants,” Lars’s deep voice is filled with playful seductiveness.
“Focus, gentlemen.” I clear my throat, hoping to tamp down the flush that is apparently visible and not just inching up my internal temp.
It’s foolish to pretend that the impact these three men have on me doesn’t exist. The flutter in my chest with each of their different gazes locked on me reinforces their seductive power.
Owen’s icy-blue gaze is filled with sweet sincerity.
Lord James’s green eyes are as lush as a clover field with a glint of wicked promise.
Lars’s violet eyes are somehow playful but steady.
Each man’s gaze offers something a little different but tantalizing.
“Help her. Help Georgia find her happy ending,” Lord James says. “It was almost a prayer that one would chant in church. Something inside me commanded me to come to you. To find you. To help you.”
“Who sent you? And how? And why?” I practically whine my questions.
“We don’t know.” He motions between himself and the other men.
“How are you not freaking out about that?”
“I don’t know.” Owen rubs his nape. “Being here, being near you feels like...”
“Like coming back to home base after a hunt,” Lars adds.
Somehow, I get what he’s saying. I created these three men, so it makes sense they’d feel a connection. As surreal as this is, something tugs inside me; I’m tied to these men. Whether it’s because I’m the author of their stories, or for another reason, I don’t know.
“So, you hear a mystery voice telling you to come to me, and you just listen?” I arch one eyebrow.
“Yes,” Lars says.
“Just like that?” I scoff.
“I’d never ignore a cry for help,” he murmurs.
A cry for help? It was less a cry and more a plea, but wasn’t that what I wished for? I wished for my happy ending, and less than twenty-four hours later, these three… poof …just magically appear.
His earnest smile turns wolfish. “It’s like Field of Dreams , only we get you instead of a baseball field.” His voice drops almost unnaturally deeper, causing a tingle to pulse between my legs. “If your happy ending requires a homerun, then I’m ready to play?—”
“Bad dog.” Lord James swats the back of Lars’s head.
“I warned you!” He whirls, his large fists balled and teeth bared.
Lord James steps up, his mouth curled into a sardonic grin. “It may be time to put the dog outside.”
Stepping between them, Owen pushes them apart. “Enough, you two.”
I wag my finger. “Let’s set some rules. No smelling me. No flirting. No sexually propositioning me. No fighting. No derogatory anti-werewolf comments. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Right, fellas ?” Brow puckered, Owen looks between Lars and Lord James, scowls painted across both their faces.
“Of course, my lady.” His expression softens and Lord James places his hand on his chest then offers a quick dip of his head.
“Fine.” Lars crosses his arms over his broad chest, his thick black eyebrows almost kiss in frustration.
Note to self; no more alpha male characters.
Sighing, I rub my temples. While I hope there isn’t an influx of more book characters appearing in my apartment, I should do future Georgia a solid.
My unshakable case of writer’s block may save me from that worry.
There’s no reason to fear fictional characters coming to life if I’m unable to write them.
“S omething told you to come help me. How’d you end up here? You were in Sugarville, the Pacific Northwest, and the English countryside.” I point the bat at each man.
Owen rakes his fingers into his short hair. “I’m not sure. I closed my eyes, said your name, and suddenly I was in your kitchen.”
Lars nods. “Same. One minute I was looking out my window, and the next I’m leaning against your windowsill.”
“I was sitting on the settee in my library and then on yours.” Lord James tips his head toward the pink sofa in the living room.
“We all appeared simultaneously and put what we knew together. After seeing the pictures of you on the walls”—Owen points to the photos of me with my brothers, mom, and Hope that cover the living room walls—“we knew that you’d brought us here.”
His words cause me to stiffen. “I didn’t bring…”
But hadn’t I? The thought steals my protest. The vision that pulled them out of their story and into mine was of me immediately after I’d tossed that penny into the fountain.
“My wish.” I lower the bat to my sides, my lips trembling. “I didn’t mean to…”
These men were mere pages away from their happy endings, and, somehow, I yanked it away from them. All so I could have my own. Doing to them what was done to me.
Guilt causes tears to prick, but I push them back. “I am so sorry,” I whisper, my eyes dropping to my feet.
Lord James steps close, cupping my chin and guiding my gaze to meet his emerald eyes. “None of that, my lady. You did nothing to be remorseful for,” he murmurs, moving his hands to my upper arms, their warmth soothing me.
“I wished for my happy ending and stole yours. You’d said it. You’re here to help me find my happy ending and yours.”
“The two may not be mutually exclusive.” His thumbs knead my biceps, uncoiling the tension-filled muscles.
“Perhaps we should add no touching while staring longingly into Georgia’s eyes to the rules,” Lars snarks.
“Good idea.” With a stuttered breath, I step out of Lord James’s arms, a chill slinking down my spine at the loss of his body heat.
I move to face the window. And away from the way his decadent scent envelopes me with the sense that no matter how unreal this is, it will all be okay as long as I’m in his arms.
That’s how I wrote him… wrote all three of them.
Lord James with his steadying energy below a snobbish exterior.
Lars’s blend of flirty, rough charm folding you into the knowledge that he’ll make you laugh but always protect you.
Then there’s Owen. Just like the pastry his character type is named after he’s sweet and pure comfort no matter what life throws at you.
They’re not real. Even if they stand in front of me, even if I can touch them.
They aren’t flesh and blood. But they are , the thought almost taunts with the promise of three perfect men.
Perfect for someone else. Three someone else’s whose stories are already written.
I won’t have my heart broken by a man in love with someone else… Not again.