Read Charming, Volume 2 Online
Authors: Jack Heckel
Charming, Volume 2 (21 page)
“You still do not understand,” she said, the anger returning in an instant.
He bowed and spread his hands wide in a gesture of surrender. “Forgive me. I am being pushy, and nobody likes a pushy frog. Please, explain to me your fear. I assure you that there is nothing that is more important waiting for me at the bottom of that well.”
Gwen smiled, but then just as quickly, a shadow of grief passed over her face. She straightened herself. “I may have once been known as Princess Gwendolyn Mostfair, but I lost everything. Even my name. Today I can delude myself that something of what I was still remains, and that there is hope. But if I kiss you, and you remain a frog, then this really is all that is left. This life. This loneliness. I am not sure I would survive.”
Monty nodded gravely. “I see.” He sat down cross-Âlegged next to her. “Let me tell you something, Gwendolyn Mostfair, that I have learned while sitting at the bottom of very cold, very damp, and very lonely wells for the last few dozen years. Many things can be taken away from you in this life. You can lose your riches, your title, even your body”âÂhe gestured to himselfâ “but no one can take away your soul.”
He put a flipper on her hand again. “In your heart, you are a princess, no, you are
the
Princess, the Princess of fairy tale. That is something no one can ever take from you.”
Their eyes met. They gazed at each other as the wind whipped about the top of the hill, and the crickets began their evening song in the field below, and the clouds passed overhead, until, at last, some silent agreement passed between them. She bent down toward him. He spoke as she drew near. “Wait. Gwendolyn, I have a confession to make. I am not a prince, just the son of a . . . farmer. I am sorry I lied to you.”
Gwen laughed softly. “Have you seen where I live, Monty? I don't need a prince. I need a farmer.”
“But I will never be able to give what you once had, Gwendolyn.”
“I do not want what I once had, Monty.”
He leaned forward. She spoke as he drew near. “Is this true love, Monty?”
“What is love, but the selfless need of one person and its answer reflected in another. This may not be full love, but what is there could not be more true. In time, who knows? Is that enough for you, Gwendolyn?”
She closed her eyes. “I am willing to take the chance.”
They kissed, and an electric wind swirled about them. She felt hands, human hands, a man's hands, cupping her face. She let the feeling linger and then, at long last, Princess Gwendolyn Mostfair opened her eyes.
AN END
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JACK HECKEL
's life is an open book. Actually, it's the book you are in all hope holding right now (and if you are not holding it, he would like to tell you it can be purchased from any of your finest purveyors of the written word). Beyond that, Jack aspires to be either a witty, urbane world traveler who lives on his vintage yacht,
The Clever Double Entendre
, or a geographically illiterate professor of literature who spends his nonwriting time restoring an eighteenth-Âcentury lighthouse off a remote part of the Vermont coastline. Whatever you want to believe of him, he is without doubt the author of the Charming novels,
Once Upon a Rhyme
and
Happily Never After
. More than anything, Jack lives for his readers.
www.jackheckel.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HAPPILY NEVER AFTER
. Copyright © 2014 by John Peck and Harry Heckel. All rights reserved under International and Pan-ÂAmerican Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-Âbook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-Âengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperÂCollins e-Âbooks.
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780062359285
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