Chapter 16
My eyes opened and I rubbed at them as I saw my own familiar bedroom. How was it that some dreams were so real that when you woke it was hard to come to terms with the fact it wasn’t? It didn’t seem right to not wake up in a treehouse with Boone.
It appeared I required some sessions of counselling because I was actually disappointed to find myself in this house. That treehouse home had been amazing. Why wasn’t it real? I felt like stamping my feet in protest.
But given my date and I had shrunk, and then he’d also turned into Fae Boone, who bore a more than passing resemblance to Theo James, I had most definitely, clearly, been fast asleep.
I even preferred the look of Fae Boone to human Boone.
Sighing heavily, I decided to go downstairs and make myself a cuppa.
It was while I was sloshing water in a cup that I realised Boone must have brought me home. Which meant I’d passed out after the cocktails. I was going to have to talk to him about why I’d been drinking because I was not putting my best self forward on these dates and I did really like him.
Not as much as Fae Boone, my mind interrupted.
Great. Was I now going to be disappointed in my real date because he wasn’t an imaginary Brownie?
Suddenly, I was struck by a flashback, recalling the words I’d heard Kim say to Boone at the dating agency: ‘Brownies are an acquired taste’.
My heart clanged in my chest. Shut up. It was not real. Now I was just putting two and two together and coming up with a vivid imagination. Taking my cuppa into the living room, I placed it on the coffee table. Grabbing my phone, I randomly typed Brownie into Google just on the off chance it really meant a male faerie.
Shit. The. Bed.
There was a faerie called a Brownie.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
It attached itself to a home and cleaned it, taking drinks or foodstuffs as a reward.
My mind flashed another memory of a scrawly written, ‘Thank you’.
Had that been Boone?
I felt a bit sick as my stomach roiled. Either I was drinking far too much, or Boone was a male faerie.
But I didn’t feel I could just phone someone up and ask them. I could have called Boone himself, but if he was a perfectly normal human male then that would be the end of him wanting to date me. There was Kim or Max I could check with, but they might throw me off the dating agency books for being downright strange.
Therefore, it looked like I needed to ask Boone to come for a home-cooked meal tonight and set up a trap. Whether tomorrow found me in love or questioning my sanity who could know?
In the meantime, for the sheer hell of it, I carried on googling about the Fae.
* * *
I felt a bit cruel and guilty as I spent the day leaving dirty dishes around. I also wore clothes that I deliberately spilled food and drink down, before changing and dropping the now dirty clothes on the floor. I threw my shoes around the hallway and left tea stains and cup marks on all surfaces. How much of a slob I’d been hit me for six when I realised how much work Boone must have done to clean up. After coming to the conclusion that it was more realistic for a male faerie to have cleaned up than a drunk me, I burst out laughing.
As the doorbell rang, I had one glass of vodka to make my breath smell of it and then I answered the door, hoping that my act of being drunk resembled the real one.
“Hey, Boone. Come on in.”
I saw his face drop with disappointment before a mask came over him. A mask wearing a smile.
“Hi, Zara. You okay?”
I fake swayed a little. “I’m amazing. Come in, come in. I’m sending for pizza because I can’t be arsed with cooking after all. I’ve set up lots of computer games for us to play all night because I know you enjoy it just as much as I do.”
“Sure, sounds good.” Yeah, his cadence said otherwise, flat and monotonous. This poor guy, whether he was human or not, deserved better than he’d been getting.
I watched him as he looked at the state of the house. Going to the sofa, I swept the crap I’d left on it off onto the floor. “Sorry for the mess.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve more on my mind than a few crumbs. Crumbs can be cleaned up.”
Was that a heavy stone sitting in my stomach? I sat down next to him. “What’s up, Boone? What’s wrong?”
“There’s just a little trouble where I live, that’s all?”
“Oh, like what? Noisy neighbours or kids messing about?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s local council stuff. Politics about who’s in charge. I’m just concerned the wrong person will be chosen. I’ll be fine. Ignore me. Right, what game are we playing?”
It was so difficult not to probe further, but I knew drunk me probably wouldn’t have understood a word he said, so I sent for pizza and played video games with him until I decided it was time for me to fake pass out on the sofa.
As I laid there, I heard his heavy sigh. “Oh, Zara. I really liked you. But not only did you not believe, but I can’t date someone with a drinking problem. You said it was an experiment to see if you cleaned, but I think that’s just an excuse, given you’re drinking during the day as well as at night. You need help before you look for a partner. I’ll have to broach the subject with you when you’re sober. It’s such a shame.”
Boone picked me up as if I weighed nothing at all and carried me upstairs, placing me softly on the bed. “Sweet dreams,” he murmured as he laid a soft kiss to my forehead.
He returned downstairs and that was when I heard him begin to tidy up.
He could just be tidying because he’s a nice guy.I told myself.
He’s not a male faerie, don’t be so fucking ridiculous.
I can’t believe you’ve entertained the thought he could be a faerie. You idiot. It’s a warning that it’s time to stop being a slob and start living your life, before you end up completely batshit crazy, walking the streets in your pyjamas and bringing home stray cats.
I left it for ten minutes and then when I heard movement in the kitchen, I carefully snuck downstairs. Well, until I got to the kitchen door where I tripped over my own foot and fell through the doorway, scaring Boone. The real Boone. The small and absolutely stark-naked Fae shimmered and became human Boone again, before rushing over to help me up.
“What are you doing up? Have you hurt yourself? You really need to stop drinking.”
I sat on the floor and looked up at him. “I’m not drunk. Never was. Just wanted to see if I’d been hallucinating or if you really were a male faerie. A Brownie.”
He froze in place, the shimmer flickering like a light bulb with faulty wiring.
“You’re… not drunk. You tricked me?”
“Yup.”
He burst out laughing. “Are you sure you’re not Fae yourself? We’re the bosses of trickery and yet you fooled me.”
“You want to let the glamour drop?”
He hesitated.
“I prefer the real you, Boone.”
“Y-you do?”
“I really do.”
He dropped the glamour and there he was. Human-sized still but now his eyes were more seventy percent dark chocolate, his skin earthier, and he had wavy dark hair. Between my thighs pooled with desire.
“How come you’re not small?” I asked.
A wicked smile bestowed his features, his eyes flickering with want. “I only stay small in my own dell, or on other faerie land. So right now, I’m human-sized.”
“Hmmm. Does that go for all of you?” I waggled my brows.
“Why don’t you find out?”
I didn’t need another invitation. Nor right now, did I want to take in the fact I was dating a male faerie. If I was batshit, I wanted to be fucked senseless before I sought help.
Standing up, I made my way over to Boone. Taking the cloth out of his hand and throwing it into the sink, I said. “Apparently, I have to leave a gift of thank you to my secret helper.”
“That is the custom.” He grinned.
Placing my hand on his belt buckle, I began to open it, pulling it out of the loops. “Well, I’d better follow the way of the Fae. I hear you shouldn’t ever upset a Brownie, or they’ll leave.”
“You’ve been studying the Fae? I thought you’d not believed me,” he asked, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth.
“I did think it was the cocktails, but decided Google couldn’t hurt. I remembered something I overheard Kim saying to you at the dating agency too. About Brownies being an acquired taste.”
“You heard that? What do you think now?”
“I think I’ll have a taste of you and then let you know.”
“About the cocktails and the drinking… is it definitely just connected to my cleaning?”
I nodded. “I barely drink as a rule. It’s just that I had a lot of vodka and coke one night after a disastrous date and woke up the next day to find the house sparkling clean. I thought I’d drunk cleaned. I drank again and the same thing happened. I thought I’d found a new talent.”
Boone burst out laughing.
“Oh, Zara. I was thinking how much I liked you, but that I couldn’t really handle a woman with a drinking problem.”
“Can you handle me without one?”
As he stripped me of my clothes in the kitchen, it turned out he could handle me perfectly fine.