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  “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.

  “But I do. We do,” Mary said, staring out at the fifty-plus employees that made Melt Me Enterprises more than a business. They were family, scrappers who stuck together and made their way to the top on nothing but hard work and the refusal to stay down in the gutter where the world wanted them.

  She owed it to them as much as to herself to stick with the original plan. She’d done what she had to do to get Annabella Quinn out of the picture, now she just had to wait for Heath to come to his senses.

  He would, she was sure of it.

  It was only a matter of time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Two and a half months later

  Bella

  If there was one time of the year even crazier than Christmas for the Incredible Edible Quinn Candy Company, it was Valentine’s Day.

  Considering Bella had spent most of the time before her thirty-first birthday avoiding men and relationships like the plague, it had never been her favorite holiday. This year—when she should have finally been able to enjoy flirting, dating and maybe even finding a guy with whom she’d like to share a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates—she was more miserable than ever.

  It stunk, especially since she had so much to be thankful for.

  “Bella, guess what happened today!” Gretel shouted as she burst through the elevator doors that led into their new loft apartment in the city. “Emmy and Beth let me sit at their table and told me that my hair was the prettiest hair in the entire third grade!”

  Bella hadn’t been able to stay in the cottage after the package came from Heath. She’d understood what he’d been telling her with the three-inch thick medical file and the hastily scribbled note confessing he was ill and had even ended the life of someone who had wronged him.

  What she couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t bothered to tell her in person why they couldn’t have a future together. Not speaking with him and honoring his request not to accept any phone calls or letters that might come from him after the package arrived had been…unspeakably hard. Her cottage had become haunted with memories of their time there, and by whatever spirit had lured them together for that one night of passion.

  Literally haunted in the second case, by a very unpleasant demon spirit.

  The damn thing kept showing up for weeks after Heath left, whispering in Bella’s ear, doing its best to jade her to men, love, and the world in general, until she’d finally called the village exorcist in for some spring cleaning right before their big move. The small, dark-haired man had been thrilled to get the job, insisting he’d been certain the Quinn family was plagued by a Bitterness demon for years.

  Annabella had just been glad he was capable of ridding her of the thing.

  The horrible little beast had caused enough trouble for her family, and it was long past time to put an end to its evil mischief. Bella didn’t need its help to make amazing candy any more than she needed a cane to walk. Her great-great-whatever-grandmother might have been insecure about her skills—and bartered her offspring into a curse to become a better baker—but Bella most certainly was not.

  It had been a nasty few days as the demon clung on, fighting destruction, but they’d finally put it to rest. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to hate the pathetic creature. The spirit hadn’t sent that package, Heath had, in what she supposed was his way of explaining why he never wanted to hear from her again.

  “Do you think I have the prettiest hair in third grade, Bella?” Gretel asked, bringing Bella’s thoughts back to the present.

  “Of course you have the prettiest hair, it’s exactly like mine,” Bella teased, pretending good spirits as she tossed her hair around her shoulders and smiled.

  It was really amazing how much she and her half sister resembled each other, though Gretel seemed to have taken after her mother with regards to her physical build. She was still one of the most petite girls her age, despite Bella’s valiant efforts to put some meat on her tiny bones.

  “Are you two going to start talking girl stuff? If so, I’m going to my room.” Hansel heaved a put-upon sigh, though she could see the smile tugging at his lips. He loved both of his sisters, even if he did complain about the trials of being the only man in a house full of women.

  “No, no girl stuff, but I could use some taste-testers if you two are in the mood.” Bella motioned to the coconut truffles cooling on wax paper in the center of the island in the open kitchen.

  “Blah!” Gretel, who for some strange reason hated sweets, wrinkled her nose at the truffles and ran to her room to change out of her school uniform, calling ov
er her shoulder, “Can we have pizza?”

  “We had pizza two nights ago. I made curried rice.” Bella still found it hard to believe her own kin dreaded her cooking when every friend she had said they would pay good money to eat a Bella-cooked meal on a regular basis.

  “I want Chinese,” Hansel said.

  “No, pizza!” Gretel shouted.

  “You’re going to turn into a pizza. I know you had it at school yesterday,” Hansel teased as he threw his book bag on the couch.

  “Listen, you two. I know that after a lifetime in the Deepweeds all this city takeout is very exciting, but it’s bad for you. Loaded with sodium and—”

  “Saturated fat,” the two kids echoed together.

  “Wow, you have my lectures memorized already.” Bella suddenly wanted to cry for no good reason. They weren’t trying to be mean. They were the sweetest kids she knew, and she knew a lot of kids. She was just sensitive.

  Very sensitive and riding a wave of hormones that had her acting nuttier than one of her Christmas fruitcakes.

  “I’ll consider takeout,” Bella sighed. “But will one of you please try my truffles? I can’t have any more caffeine today, doctor’s orders.”

  “I will,” Hansel said, his face lighting up at the possibility of having his coveted moo goo gai pan for supper.

  Bella couldn’t help but laugh as he made a great show of bravely forcing himself to take a still-gooey truffle, pop it in his mouth whole and chew thoughtfully for nearly a minute before swallowing. The change in him was remarkable, even more so than Gretel. He was a new kid. Still quiet and reserved, but making friends at his school and growing happier and more relaxed every day.

  He still had bad dreams, but Bella didn’t mind sitting up with him when he was scared. She was up half the night herself—cooking, knitting, cleaning the house— anything to avoid sleeping and dreaming about Heath’s golden eyes.

  “Exquisite,” he pronounced after he swallowed and wiped the edges of his mouth like one of the butlers they’d seen at the Castle where they’d been invited for Christmas dinner.

  The kids had loved that, of course, feeling as fancy as the royals themselves. Bella had practically slept through the entire affair, so tired from the move and the emotional upheaval of the past year that not even a trip to the castle could banish her exhaustion. Meeting the Queen had been nice, however. She seemed like a decent—though not necessarily the most clever—girl who would do her best to take care of the Kingdom.

  “Just lovely,” Hansel continued, still affecting a regal manner.

  “Do you really mean that?” Bella asked. “I need honest opinions, you know. Our rep is riding on every piece of candy.”

  “Our rep is safe with the truffles,” Hansel confirmed with a thumbs up.

  “Good.” Bella nodded in satisfaction. “We did an entire coffeehouse truffle line for Valentine’s Day and it’s been so popular that we’re doing an Easter truffle line as well. These go into production tomorrow.”

  “Now that they have the Hansel seal of approval.”

  “Of course.” Bella began clearing up the mess from her test batch. It was hard not tasting everything herself, but with as much candy and chocolate as she made on a daily basis, she just couldn’t taste it all anymore. Too much caffeine and sugar was bad for the baby.

  Strangely enough, the end result of her forced abstinence from the sweet stuff had been a weight loss of ten pounds. So here she was, four months pregnant and thinner than she’d been before.

  She had a slightly thicker waist, but all of her old skirts still fit and no one who hadn’t been told suspected the truth. Only Hansel, Gretel and her personal assistant, Mia, who she’d hired to help her through the period of fatigue and morning sickness at the beginning of her pregnancy, had any idea that she was nearly halfway through growing an entirely new person.

  She liked it that way. Mostly. Except when she cried about it at night, wishing she could share this experience with one certain person. The one person who had told her in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t be trusted with her heart or the job of being a father to the baby he had no clue would be born the middle of next summer.

  “What are you doing tonight for Valentine’s Day?” Gretel asked, coming out of her room in her favorite pink pajamas, alleged to be exact replicas of the ones Queen Cindy wore to bed every night.

  Bella was going to have to talk with Gretel about idolizing a woman who seemed to have cotton candy between her ears, but that could wait for a little while. Maybe Gretel would grow out of her “I want to be a Princess” phase.

  “I don’t have any plans.” Bella loaded the last of the dishes into her new high-powered dish washer. Moving out of the cottage had a lot of upsides other than escaping evil spirits—modern kitchen appliances being at the top of her personal list.

  “You don’t have any plans for Valentine’s Day?” Gretel asked, looking completely horrified. “But I thought that—”

  “Gretel will you just give it a rest?” Hansel snapped. “You are so stupid sometimes.”

  “Hansel, don’t use words like ‘stupid’ with your sister. Or with anyone else for that matter,” Bella said gently, understanding that he was only trying to spare her feelings.

  He was way too perceptive for a barely teenaged boy.

  “I’m sorry, Hansel.” Gretel looked like she wanted to say something else, but bit her lip instead.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Bella said, moving to give Gretel a hug.

  “I’m the jerk.” Hansel sighed, a dramatic chest-heave that actually made her smile.

  “Geez! Nobody’s a jerk.” Bella laughed. “I should have plans for Valentine’s Day. We should make plans. Do you guys want to go out for pizza and Chinese and then see a movie or something?”

  “No!” They both shouted at the same time, giving Bella her first clue that they were up to something.

  If only they’d left a few other clues earlier, maybe she would have been able to stop them.

  “What have you done?” Bella asked, knowing the second she said the words that they were some of the stupidest she’d ever uttered.

  She knew what they’d done, or rather who they’d contacted. They’d been hinting that she should call Heath since they moved to Kingdom City, into a building not two miles away from the Melt Me Enterprises’ warehouse and production center.

  “Hansel did it,” Gretel said, her eyes growing wide and fearful.

  “Gretel, calm down. Hansel, spill it.” Bella put her hands on her hips and tried to look tough, calm, and in control, despite the fact that her heart and stomach were in a race to see which could be the first to leap out of her throat.

  “He really loves you,” Hansel said with his ultra serious, “I’m a man” face that broke her heart, making her ache for the childhood he’d never had. “I called him yesterday and I don't regret it. It's time for you two to make up and be happy together. Now Gretel and I are going out for dinner.”

  “You are not going out into the streets of Kingdom City by yourselves. No way! I don’t care what you have planned.” Bella forgot her panic for a moment. She sometimes had to play “mean mommy” with her siblings, no matter how much she loved them.

  Hell, because she loved them. No matter how much she would like to be nice all the time, raising kids wasn’t always a “nice” job.

  “I’m thirteen. I can take care of us.”

  Bella narrowed her eyes. “Hansel Proctor, don’t you dare walk out that—”

  “But I knew you’d say that,” he said with a sigh, “so Mia is meeting us at the pizza parlor downstairs.”

  “Mia’s in on this?” Bella asked.

  “I am!” Mia was panting as she pushed open the door to the stairs that led up to the loft. “But I decided not to meet you guys downstairs. I saw a certain somebody and I think he might be on the way up as we speak.”

  “But I didn’t buzz anyone in,” Bella said, dizzy.


  This couldn’t be happening. It was so wonderfully terrible that she was going to throw up the marshmallow truffle she’d sneaked earlier in the afternoon.

  “I might have let him in with my key.” Mia’s freckled face blushed a bright red before she shooed Hansel and Gretel down the stairs in front of her.

  “But Gretel’s in her pajamas!” Bella wailed, her mind refusing to focus on her bigger problems.

  “We’re going to a pajama party showing of The Littlest Princess after pizza,” Mia said.

  “Hansel too?” Bella asked, shocked.

  “He’d do anything for true love,” Mia said with a smile.

  “Except wear pink pajamas,” Hansel called from down the stairwell before Mia’s head disappeared, leaving Bella alone in the apartment with nothing but the sound of the all-too rapidly approaching elevator to keep her company.

  She suddenly found it even harder to catch her breath.

  He was here. He was going to be in this room in less than twenty-five seconds.

  Why in the world he had come, and how much did he know about her “delicate condition?” What if Hansel had told him about the baby and he was angry with her? What if he’d come here to tell her that he was going to sue for partial custody? What would she do? What would she say?

  Or what if this had nothing to do with the baby? What if he really loved her like Hansel had said? What if he was coming to tell her that he’d made a mistake and he wanted to be with her? What would she do when he’d told her himself that he wasn’t well? Was she weak enough to risk her new family’s well being for the man she couldn’t keep out of her thoughts?

  Bella supposed the onslaught of questions was too much for her mind to handle. Or maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or the chocolate deprivation, or maybe she just hyperventilated.

  Whatever the cause, she started seeing stars before the elevator door swung open and nausea followed soon after. Before she could see if Heath looked as delicious as he had the first time they’d met, she had to make a run for the bathroom.