The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

4.6 - Sweet

Dear Readers: Back at the Mega Bretania, the elevator's whisking Cloe to the fancy rooftop restaurant for her dinner date...

______________________

Scene 6: Sweet

A.D. 2015

Her heart was downstairs in the lobby, her soul awaited on the rooftop, and her mind… her mind? What mind? That had apparently been lost some time ago.

If any of her senses were intact, there was no way that she would be experiencing any of this now. Going to meet the main character of her soul’s most precious creation—a fantastically fictional prince—firsthand. In person. In the flesh. For real? Yes, for real, and apparently for dinner at a fancy restaurant on the roof of this hotel.

Just after having stumbled into the marble statue, in this same hotel. The man who stirred a million lifetimes’ worth of feelings in her silly heart. By some stroke of serendipity, their two souls had collided twice in one month. On the other side of the world, this time around.

Well, then again, the man was married, Cloe reminded herself. Of course he was, to a Barbie-doll-beautiful blonde. At least that was a stark dose of reality, amidst what otherwise had to be a dream. Hammering home into her heart the fact that she had to forget about Mr. Campion, forever and completely. Even and especially when she knew she never could.

The golden-paneled elevator chimed upon arrival, doors sliding open slowly to remind her where she was. At this rate, she would not have been surprised if she’d been elevated straight into the stratosphere. Willy Wonka style or whatever.

What a willy-nilly, wonky whirlwind her world had become…

“…reservation?” chirped a hostess with a delicate Greek accent.

Cloe had only caught the last word of whatever the woman had asked. Luckily, that seemed enough to comprehend the question. Her boggled mind started to cobble together an answer. “I…”

And then her gaze caught two new moons, looking her way from a table nearby: the ebon orbs of Eldor’s eyes.

She gulped. Her train of thought derailed upon the instant.

The hostess cocked her head. “Are you meeting someone…?”

Cloe nodded quickly. “Yes. Thanks,” was all she could manage to utter, without making more of a fool of herself. She strode, with every ounce of confidence that she could summon, across the restaurant, toward the prince who had no place existing on this earth.

Damn—he looked even more otherworldly, by the sultry glow of table candles elegantly ensconced in frosted glass. By the Athenian evening, bathing him in the gold of a soon-to-set sun and the silver of oncoming stars. Somehow, this one man seemed to absorb and reflect all that glamorous light all at once. Leaving none to spare for anyone else in sight. A shame, thought Cloe as she settled in her seat—she could use some flattering lighting for herself right about now.

He smiled, as she sat down. “You came,” he declared.

In more ways than one, at the sight of him. She screened the smutty thought behind a prim and proper smile. “Did you doubt I would?”

“Yes.”

Her heart skipped a few hundred beats.“Well, I doubt that…”

“Why?” he asked, the tilt of his head suggesting sincere curiosity. Even though that was of course impossible. Wasn’t it obvious? Him being him, in all his glory, and her in all her lack thereof?