The Perfect Plan
Jack
MOSTLY AS GUARD, JACK STOOD on the steps of his ancestral home beside the relatively attractive, definitely pale woman who stood at his side but she still appeared to be shrinking away.
“My PA will contact you,” Jack stated. “Her name is Olive Mayfair. When she does, you’ll need to give her the number on an account that’s in your name only. Once you do, she’ll deposit money into it. It will be enough that you can comfortably set up a new life in a place of your choosing. However, if you’re with him, in contact with him or if this account also bears his name, you’ll be on your own.”
“I won’t leave him,” she muttered to the steps.
“That’s your choice,” he replied. “It’s the wrong one but it’s yours.”
She was silent.
Jack turned his eyes to the lane, willing the taxi to come down it.
That was when he heard the whispered, “He’ll come after me.”
Jack looked back at her. “He won’t.”
She pulled in breath and he actually noted the effort it took her to lift her chin but she didn’t catch his eyes.
His heart clenched when her gaze came to rest on his shoulder and she declared in a soft voice, “He will.”
“Trust me,” Jack stated firmly. “He . . . will . . . not.”
Her head jerked at his tone, her eyes flashed to his then she looked away.
Jack turned his gaze back to the lane and waited.
“Tell your Olive person to call.” He heard her mutter and Jack sighed with relief he felt for a woman he didn’t know, a woman who had harmed his Belle but still a woman who was broken.
“I will.”
“And tell . . . tell . . .” she hesitated then said quietly, “tell Belle that I didn’t . . . I’d had enough . . . last night, I wasn’t exactly my—”
Jack looked down at her. “If there’s anyone on this earth who understands your behavior of last night, it’s Belle. Don’t worry. Heal and live your life. But I will say do it elsewhere. I will give you money to start a new life but that’s it. There will be no more. Further, I never wish to see you again. And you will not like the consequences if you ever see Belle again.”
She nodded immediately.
Jack sighed again, turned his head and finally, thank God, he saw the taxi coming down the lane.
Softly, he said, “You will heal. She did.”
“She found a good man.”
“She found her strength and it did indeed come from love but not simply mine. If you’re smart enough to surround yourself with people who care about you, genuinely and healthily, you’ll do the same.”
He looked down at her to see her eyes on his face.
“I’ll try,” she whispered.
“Good,” Jack whispered back.
She pulled her lips between her teeth but still, even with that, the ends curled up in a small smile before she quickly looked away and Jack watched her run to the taxi, throw open the door and fold inside.
He watched the taxi drive away.
And after it was gone he realized he didn’t ask her name.
He turned and walked up the steps as he looked up them noting that Lila was standing at the top, arms crossed on her chest, head turned, eyes aimed at the now-empty lane.
When he arrived at the top, he stopped close to her and her head tipped back so she could catch his gaze.
“You’re a kind man, Jack Bennett,” she said quietly.
“She’s been living enough of a nightmare. I saw no need to add to it,” Jack replied.
“As I said,” Lila began, “you’re a kind man, Jack Bennett.”
“My thanks, Lila,” he muttered, feeling his lips twitch, and he threw out an arm to the door for her to precede him.
She didn’t move.
Instead, she informed him, “I came out to watch, of course, but I also came out to tell you that beyond those doors lies drama.”
Slowly, Jack closed his eyes.
He opened them and asked a question he didn’t want to ask, “And that would be?”
“Yasmin,” she answered.
“Again, that would be?”
Lila grinned. “Yasmin of the, she’s come to the realization after the events of last night that Quincy is the love of her life and she doesn’t want to let him go, so the first thing she did this morning was inform him of this fact to which he told her to go jump in a lake variety of drama.”
“Fucking hell,” Jack muttered, his eyes moving to the door.
“It’s full blown and she has Cassandra, Joy and Rachel in attendance in the morning room so, advice, avoid that room,” Lila told him.
“So noted,” Jack replied.
“Personally,” she went on in a conversational way that made Jack look at her, “I’m considering finding Miles and sending him in to comfort her. I’ve heard he’s at the stables. That’s my next stop. What do you think of that idea?”
“I think that if Quincy Delacourt is too stupid not to forgive a good woman who did something misguided and emotional because of demons she’s grappling with that he should help her to fight and not leave her on her own to fight them, then he deserves to lose that good woman,” Jack answered then finished, “And that, Lila, is what I think.”
“I’m in complete agreement,” Lila stated through a smile, her eyes dancing.
“Do you think I can go and find my fiancée now?” Jack asked politely.
It was Lila who threw her hand out toward the door this time and offered, “Have at it.”
“Thank you,” Jack muttered and headed to the door.
“See you at lunch,” she returned and headed down the steps.
Jack didn’t bother to tell her she wouldn’t.
It was Sunday. He was on his way to find Belle, gather his dogs, load them all into his car and head to her cottage in St. Ives. This was after he found Olive and told her to clear his schedule for the next week. Her head might explode but after it did, she’d pull herself together and do it.
He was two feet from the door and deciding to ask Olive to clear two weeks when it was pulled open and Angus raced out, eyes wild, kilt swaying madly around his knees.
“Ghosts in Leeds!” he boomed. “Nasty beasties! Must dash!”
Then he darted down the steps to his beat-up white van in the drive.
Jack watched over his shoulder as Angus’s white van coughed to life, reversed on a trail of exhaust smoke that gave testimony to the fact that Angus didn’t waste precious ghost hunting time by bothering with MOTs, and finally he watched the van speed down the lane.
He did this noting that Angus McPherson never said good-bye. And he did this thinking this was likely because Angus McPherson might leave but he was never gone for long enough to make the unpleasantness of a farewell worth it.
Jack strode through the door Angus left open, closed it behind him and had taken four steps into the hall before Jensen prowled in, spied him and instantly started in.
“Dude! The party last night, a bust. And if you think I’m puttin’ on another monkey suit, think again. Not . . . gonna . . . happen. Once in my life was enough and I did that when I married Belle’s momma. Against my will, I did it again last night, and seriously, Jack, I relive another last night, I wanna be wearin’ my ol’ standbys. Jeans and a tee.” He came to a stop at Jack and announced, “So, tonight, engagement party take two. And I’m takin’ care of the whole thing. And there won’t be a bowtie or a high heel anywhere near this fuckin’ place for my shindig.”
“Belle and I are leaving in approximately half an hour and we won’t return for two weeks,” Jack replied and Jensen swayed back, his eyes getting big.
“Two weeks?”
“Maybe three,” Jack stated.
“Dude,” Jensen muttered.
“After that, when we return, by all means, throw a party. Do whatever you wish. The only thing you can’t do is invite people around with whom Belle isn’t completely comfortable.”
Jensen threw his hands up in the air, shouting, “Right on!”
Jack shook his head but grinned doing it.
Jensen took in his grin, dropped his hands but socked Jack in one arm and declared, “You’re all right, Jack.”
“I find your acceptance somewhat disquieting, Jensen,” Jack shared honestly but, as expected, Jensen took no offense.
Instead, he burst out laughing, turned and shouted to a woman who was nowhere near, “Rachel! Baby! Party!” And he strode swiftly from the hall.
But in the wrong direction.
Jack didn’t inform him of this.
He moved through the hall but only managed to get five more steps in before Mickey Dempsey, who was descending the stairs, captured his attention.
Jack stopped, crossed his arms on his chest and waited.
Dempsey approached him and stopped three feet away.
“Called a taxi,” he announced. “It’ll be here in a minute.”
“Safe journey back to London,” Jack replied and Dempsey nodded.
“You’ll tell Belle good-bye?” Dempsey asked and Jack noted he only wished his farewell was known to Belle, not any of the others currently under his roof.
“Of course,” Jack muttered.
At that Dempsey strangely whispered, “Killing me, mate.”
“Pardon” Jack asked.
“This is the story of the century. Fuck, the millennium.”
“Dempsey, do you honestly believe, even if you could write it, that anyone would believe it?”
Dempsey grinned. “No way in hell. Probably why all the shit that Scot spouted last night over whisky never made the papers. It happens, no one says shit because, if they did, anyone listening would think they’re round the bend.”
“Precisely,” Jack agreed.
“Still pissed off I missed all the action. The end was good but the rest of it sounded phenomenal.”
“As an onlooker, perhaps. As a participant, trust me, it wasn’t that fun.”
Dempsey grinned again.
Jack held his eyes and said quietly, “Your assistance is appreciated.”
“First, you paid me. Second, I didn’t help much.”
“You helped and it was appreciated,” Jack reiterated.
Dempsey’s gaze stayed locked to Jack’s and he nodded.
“Good-bye, Mickey,” Jack said.
“Cheers, Jack,” Dempsey replied then Jack turned and watched Dempsey walk across the entryway and out the door.
When he closed it behind him, he turned and caught Olive striding down the hall toward him.
“Good,” he called, “I don’t have to find you.”
“Oh Lord, I don’t like the look on your face,” she observed.
She was going to like what he was going to say a whole lot less.
“I need you to clear my schedule for two weeks,” he told her and her eyes bugged out. “For the week after that, maybe two, make it light in case plans change and Belle and I remain on holiday.”
“Jack Bennett,” she started, “are you telling me, on a Sunday at eleven o’clock in the morning, to clear your schedule for a holiday you’ve given me exactly six working hours on a non-working day to clear?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
She looked to the ceiling but told Jack, “You’ll be the death of me.”
“Cut the drama, Olive, you’d be bored stiff if I didn’t hand you a challenge and do it with frequency and increasing difficulty.”
Her eyes snapped back to his face. “Yes, but you aren’t supposed to know that.”
He ignored her statement and ordered, “Clear my schedule.”
“For two weeks?”
“Make it a month, just to be on the safe side.”
“Death of me,” she muttered.
Jack ignored that too, grinned at her then went in search of Belle.
It took him some time but he eventually found her in the eastern-most turret, leaning a shoulder against the wall by the window, her eyes aimed to the view of the Cornish cliffs and sea.
He approached her on quiet feet thus she jumped and her eyes shot to his when he got close.
“Hey, honey,” she whispered and Jack moved in.
Rounding her, he fitted his front to her back and wrapped his arms around her, one at her chest, one at her ribs. He pulled her close and turned his eyes to the window.
It was late autumn. The air was chill. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The deep blue of the sea and bright blue of sky was unobstructed except for the rich browns and vibrant greens of the rocky cliffs and their grassy knolls that made up what Jack, with some experience through his wide travels, felt was the most beautiful coastline on the planet.
“Why are you up here, poppet?” Jack asked quietly after she settled into him.
“I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “I miss Myrtle and Lewis, I guess.”
“You want to be near,” he surmised and she shrugged. “Love, they’re home,” he reminded her.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Finally home, Belle.”
He felt her chest expand with her breath, she let it go and nodded. Then she fully relaxed into him, her hands gliding along his arms to hold him where he was holding her, her head falling back to rest against his collarbone but the uninjured side pressed lightly into his neck as she kept her gaze trained out the window.
After they stood close for a while, she queried, “So, what’s happening down there?”
“Yasmin is having a drama in the morning room. She’s decided she wants Quincy back, she told him and his response was that he’s refused to take her back.”
He heard her swift intake of breath and her hands convulsed on his arms but he kept talking.
“Lila is off to the stables likely on the ruse of working but definitely with the intent of matchmaking. Miles, she reports to me, is there. And Miles, she explained to me, is the person she intends to send in to comfort Yasmin.”
“Oh my goodness gracious,” she breathed and Jack smiled.
He also continued.
“There are ghosts in Leeds, nasty ones, and Angus and his white van are currently to the rescue.”
Her body started shaking gently and he knew she was laughing silently.
He couldn’t hear it but it certainly felt good.
“And last,” he carried on, “your father is planning his version of our engagement party for when we return in three weeks from wherever it is we’re going. We’ll start at your cottage and I don’t know where we’ll end. Perhaps Australia. And perhaps we’ll extend our time away to a month.”
She turned in his arms and raised shining, happy gray eyes to his.
“A month?”
“Maybe two,” he muttered, lost in her eyes in which there was no storm. Just amusement.
And happiness.
And seeing it, Jack decided, he’d be happy to be lost in those gray eyes for a lifetime.
Though, this was a decision he’d made ages ago.
Approximately a millisecond after he first saw them.
“If we’re gone two months, we can’t get married next month,” she reminded him and he grinned.
“Right, then, a month away, come back, get married then go on our honeymoon,” Jack declared, and a giggle burst from Belle even as she pressed closer and wound her arms around him.
“That sounds like the perfect plan,” she whispered, coming up on her toes.
“Bloody right it does,” Jack agreed, dipping his head to hers.
“Love you, Jack,” she whispered when his lips hit hers.
“And I you, poppet,” he whispered back.
Then in the place over two hundred years before, the ghost of a terrified, newly dead, young boy witnessed the murder of his mother, a man in love kissed the woman who loved him back as the sun shone on Chy An Als Point.
Lachlan
Through the misty dark, Lachlan McPherson walked to the house he left too early the night before.
He was hoping she was home.
Emma.
Except during obvious times when he had to think of other things, like driving like a lunatic and not killing himself or holding a struggling Belle-slash-Brenna so she wouldn’t topple over the cliff in her drive for vengeance, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else.
Anything.
But Emma.
This was unusual.
Never, not once in his twenty-nine years, had a woman preyed on his mind.
And Lachlan McPherson had had a variety of women who could do it.
It was just that none of them did.
Be careful, he heard her words in his head said in that sweet whisper, the like he’d never encountered before, as he moved up her front path deciding, if she wasn’t home, he’d go to the pub he’d found her in and ask after her.
One way or another, he’d find her.
Absolutely.
He stopped dead at the door.
It was ajar.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
He looked to the left, to the right and up.
The house was dark.
Then his neck grew tense and his eyes narrowed when he sensed it.
Putting his hand to the door, slowly, he pushed it open.
Slower still, he walked into the dark house.
Even in the shadows he could see it was in disarray. It looked as if an almighty battle had been fought throughout the front rooms. And a sense of deep unease stole through him as he saw the dark splatters in the shadowed rooms that looked disturbingly like blood.
He stopped dead in the entry, his gaze slicing to the hall where he saw the large, brawny male ghost hovering and smiling.
“You want ’er,” its eerie disembodied voice sounded all around then for some reason the ghost lifted its forefinger to its nose before dropping it, leaning jeeringly forward and hissing, “Catch me if you can!”
With that it disappeared.
Lach stared down the empty hall.
Then he pulled out his phone, engaged it, slid his thumb on the screen and tapped it.
He put it to his ear.
“Seriously, Lach, what the fuck?” his sister said in his ear.
Lach stared down the hall.
He smelled her perfume, his gut lurched and his heart squeezed.
“I need you,” he replied.
Belle
Loved Up in Holy Matrimony.
Europe lost its most eligible bachelor this week when James Bennett married Belle Abbot-now-Bennett, The Tiny Dynamo.
The ceremony was small, family and close friends only. Surprisingly, no details were leaked but eye witnesses outside noted that Miles Bennett, James’s brother and once a competitor for his now wife’s affections was seen entering and exiting the Registry Office, and on his arm was the stunning, recently divorced socialite Yasmin Delacourt who was wearing a very attractive but very large hat.
Photographers were able to catch this photo of the pair exiting the Registry Office this past Saturday after the short ceremony was complete.
Although the couple is known to be on their honeymoon, details of where that is are unknown. Spokespeople at Bennett’s conglomerate have shared only that the couple will be away for some time, this on the heels of their disappearance of the month prior to their wedding.
Calvin Cole, Belle Bennett’s estranged ex-husband, was unattainable for comment and it is thought he’s left the country.
Lila Cavendish, renowned artist and the new Mrs. Bennett’s grandmother, was at the ceremony and will be unveiling her highly anticipated Cornwall series next month in a small gallery in St. Ives.
When asked if the couple will settle in London or Cornwall, Mr. Bennett’s spokespeople simply but confusingly answered, “But of course.”
Clearly, evidence is suggesting intriguing, handsome James Bennett and his beautiful, mysterious new wife intend to keep going as they have throughout their stormy courtship, quiet and private.
Belle’s eyes drifted from the article to the photo they were able to get.
It was mostly of her mom and dad’s back, Dad’s head turned, his profile laughing. But through them you could see Belle, her hair pulled up in a soft, feminine updo threaded with strings of tiny pearls, her head tipped back, a big smile on her face and that smile was aimed at Jack.
Jack’s handsome head was tipped down, his grin aimed at Belle.
She remembered that moment.
It was the best in her life.
And since then, they kept getting better.
And because of this, every day, several times a day, Belle Bennett thanked her lucky stars.
Suddenly, the magazine was pulled from her hand and tossed to the floor. She was pulled from the bed and found herself back in it, but atop Jack’s body.
“Stop reading that rubbish,” he muttered, lifting a hand to smooth the hair back at one side of her head.
“There was a good picture of you,” she protested.
“Really?” he asked.
“Jack, every picture of you is a good picture,” she told him and watched him grin.
She took in a breath.
Then, too casually, she wondered aloud, “I wonder if our child will be photogenic.”
Jack’s arms got tight around her and his grin faded from his face but his eyes grew intense on hers.
“Pardon?” he whispered.
“You know, when we were away the first time, how we decided—?”
Jack cut her off and asked in a low, rumbly voice, “Belle, are you carrying my child?”
Belle answered immediately and she did it in a soft, breathy voice, “Yes.”
Half a second later, she found herself on her back, her husband on top of her.
Beside the bed, Baron and Gretl settled in on a jingle of dog tags.
And out the window, winter rain fell soft on Cornwall.
~ THE END ~
Discover the Fantasyland Series
It begins with Wildest Dreams.
Seoafin “Finnie” Wilde was taught by her parents that life was meant to be lived, every breath was a treasure and to seek every adventure she could find. And she learns this lesson the hard way when they perish in a plane crash when she’s fifteen. But she never forgets and when she discovers there is a parallel universe where every person has a twin, she finds a witch who can send her there so she can see her parents again and have the adventure of a lifetime.
But nearly upon arrival in the Winter Wonderland of Lunwyn, she realizes she’s been played by her twin of the alternate universe and shortly finds herself walking down the aisle to be wed to The Drakkar.
Instantly thrown into inauspicious circumstances, with years of practice (she did, of course, survive that elephant stampede–if she could do that, she can do anything), Finnie bests the challenges and digs into her adventure. But as Frey Drakkar discovers the woman who is his new wife is not Princess Sjofn, a woman he dislikes (intensely) but instead his Finnie, a free-spirit with a thirst for venture just like him (not to mention she is his destiny), without her knowledge he orders his new bride bound to his frozen world, everlasting.
Turn the page to read the first chapter now!