Broken Dove (Fantasyland 4)

I didn’t go gently enough.

I knew this when his eyes blanked, his face turned to stone and he asked, “And your choices are vast?”

Oh boy.

Now I was getting mad.

“Apollo—”

“So vast, it requires great blocks of alone time to consider all your options?”

“What I’m saying is—”

“And those options include options that are better than what I give to you and could give to you”—he swept out an arm then leaned into me— “if you’d bloody move in.”

“You don’t understand me—” I started but didn’t finish.

“No, I don’t,” he clipped. “We’ve established that.”

“What I mean is,” I snapped. “You don’t understand me and mostly, right now, you don’t because you won’t let me bloody finish.”

He clamped his mouth shut, crossed his arms on his chest and scowled at me.

But when he did, I was so angry and all he’d said started crashing into my brain (because he was right, my choices weren’t vast, in fact, they were practically non-existent), I couldn’t get my head together enough to say a word.

“So.” He threw out a hand and invited, “Speak.”

“I need a second,” I bit out.

“I don’t have a second, Madeleine. I have a meeting with my secretary that should have started ten minutes ago.”

Unfortunately, that led me straight into bitchy.

“Well, I apologize for being a drain on your time and taking you away from your schedule. If you’re that busy, please don’t let me keep you. I mean, we’re just discussing our future.”

“According to you, my dove, we don’t have a future.”

“That’s not what I said,” I hissed.

“Oh yes,” he whispered. “It is.”

Seriously?

“Apollo—”

He was not whispering when he said, “If you can manage it without attacking anyone, see yourself home. I’ll give your apologies to the children that you couldn’t make dinner tonight. I’ll also not be joining you later this evening. However, this will serve to give you alone time to make important decisions about your future. And when you do, please share them with me so I can make some about mine as well.”

With that, he turned on his boot and walked away, not realizing he left me gutted.

Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care, seeing as he was the one who’d gutted me.

Chapter Seventeen

Huzzah!

I sat in the front room of the dower house, my crossed arms draped over the back of a couch, head down, cheek resting on them, staring at the light snow falling outside.

It really was pretty. Like a movie, so perfect it was unbelievable.

And that sucked.

For the first time since I’d been there, I wanted to go back to my world.

It had been four days since Apollo and I fought. And I had not seen him or heard from him in all that time. I hadn’t even seen any of the guys.

Apparently, Apollo got the boys in our fight. Not surprising but it made things feel worse than they already did.

And I was getting the sense from not seeing him that things were pretty bad.

In other words, it had not been a good four days.

At first, I was pissed at Apollo and how he’d behaved like an arrogant ass who got what he wanted and when he didn’t, he threw a macho man hissy fit. I was also pissed at him because, although I’d been anxious at the time, I missed dinner with the kids and that hurt. Because he was right, they seemed to like meeting me (and I definitely liked meeting them, if you didn’t count the part where I made a fool of myself). So, since the hard part was done, I wanted the second less-hard part to happen and I wanted that bad.

Then, of course, seeing as he was an arrogant ass but he was also Apollo and I liked him, as one day wore into two, I started to miss him.

Now, on day four, I knew where I stood.

Therefore, I knew I needed to make a plan.

That was, figure out what to do with my life in this world.

A life without Apollo and his kids in it.

The problem was, I had no clue what to do with that life.

See, I really didn’t want to be a prostitute. Even if they were revered in this world, I still thought that would suck.

And I couldn’t be a ladies maid. I knew this because I couldn’t do hair and had no clue how to iron clothes in this world.

A barmaid seemed kind of fun, but they didn’t exactly wear nice clothes or hang with the best crowds and Lord knew, with my allure for trouble, it would find me and bars were where trouble often started seeing as alcohol was imbibed in them.

I could probably work in a kitchen since I knew how to cook but we could just say that baking those cookies was a pain in the ass. It was worth it in the end, but they didn’t have measuring cups in this world. Or ovens that had temperature controls. I could go on. Those cookies were touch and go from the start and I considered it a miracle they worked out okay.

I considered the option of starting my own business. They didn’t have pizza in this world and everyone liked pizza. They liked it more when it was delivered to their house and the only thing they had to do was eat it and throw away the box. But, alas, I didn’t figure pizza would stay warm being delivered in a sleigh. And starting my own business would require money, which I didn’t have.

In other words, there really weren’t a lot of opportunities that I’d seen for women in this world. In my world, I could get by. Sure, I would have to go back on the run. But before I took off, I stole a bucketload of Apollo’s money that I’d stashed in safe places all over, so I didn’t actually have to make a living.

Just run.

And hide.

But I couldn’t get back to my world.

So I had a medieval history degree and department store experience in a world that was kind of living its medieval history and had no department stores.

I was f**ked.

Apollo was right, my options were not vast. I really only had one.

Marry him.

And honestly, when he wasn’t being an arrogant ass, that was far from a bad choice. He came with a great house, cute kids and a pack of good friends, not to mention kickass clothes.

He also came with tender looks, interesting conversation, laughter, the ability to make me feel cherished and unbelievably great sex.

But now, I didn’t have any of that because he was making it clear he didn’t want me anymore.

Yes, I was f**ked.

I sighed and it was a big one.

The one bit of good news in the last four days was that I started my period. So I wasn’t pregnant.