Broken Crown

by Susan Ward

  Epilogue

  Chrissie’s Journal

  I never thought I would get to write this in my journal. Alan and I have made it through our first year of marriage. Even with how badly it started, the highlights and the lowlights, we’re both here. In the now. I think we both want to be here, clear and in the now.

  An unpredictable journey in every way. But I don’t think we could have gotten here any other way, not really. If I had told Alan that Kaley was his, back when we were young, when Alan was the Alan of those days and I was the me of that time, we would have ended forever then.

  And us ending would have been a tragic thing. We would both have missed so much and I would not have been able to gather the things along our journey so I would have them to share with Alan today.

  It is how we have always loved, watching each other’s back and never testing an end. I took what he could give. He accepted the limits of what I could be. He slugged through the years of my need to wait until I was in a place where I could dare the possibility of him. Perhaps I’ve been unfair and dishonest.

  Alan loves me anyway.

  Perhaps this is love: loving within the limits of our limited beings; seeing possibilities even in mere tokens and the tears; forgiving what others consider the unforgiveable, but hell, they don’t know what we can forgive because they don’t know what Alan and I have shared; being with someone who gets that; and loving them still in the comfortable quiet of loving where you are no longer young and have lived.

  ~The End~

  Continue the Parker Family Saga with the next generation, Kaley Stanton The Girl of Sand & Fog. For all my current and future releases visit my website:

  http://susanwardbooks.com

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  Enjoy one of my current contemporary romance releases:

  The Girl on the Half Shell

  The Girl of Tokens and Tears

  The Girl of Diamonds and Rust

  The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet

  The Signature

  Rewind

  One Last Kiss

  One More Kiss

  One Long Kiss

  One Forever Kiss(Releasing Fall 2015)

  Or enjoy one of my historical romance releases:

  When the Perfect Comes

  Face to Face

  Love’s Patient Fury

  Love me Forever: Releasing Summer of 2015

  PREVIEW THE GIRL OF SAND & FOG

  Oh shit, silence. I don’t like the way Mr. Jamison is staring at me at all.

  He leans over his desk, scribbling frantically on the dreaded pink sheet. He holds it up to me and points to the door. “Principal’s office now, Miss Stanton! If you can’t be respectful of the opinions shared in class then keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t criticize each other’s ideology. Not in this class. We encourage open and respectful dialogue.”

  I gather my things, feeling the heavy stares and smirks of the silent room, and strangely I realize that I am even more irritated since I haven’t been booted from class for the British vulgarity, but for showing disrespect for liberal politics.

  I snatch the pink slip and smile, but then again, what should I have expected? I mean really. I’m in an affluent city in Southern California.

  I shove the door open a little too hard, not giving a shit and not even provoking comment from Mr. Jamison. I must have really rocked his world and I think I’ve finally found where intolerable conduct goes over the line with my teachers. Any language that isn’t politically correct speak crosses the line and will be dealt with. No one even seemed to notice that I’d call the girl a “twat.” It’s not on the description of my infraction, and the twat comment is where I would have started listing my crimes and offenses.

  I show the pink slip to the office secretary and am instructed to sit down on the waiting room sofa outside the principal’s office. After five minutes, the door opens and in meanders a boy, pink slip in hand, who is directed by pointed finger to the seat across from me.

  He drops heavily on the bench facing me and says nothing. He closes his eyes and crosses his arms.

  There is something strangely familiar about the guy, but I chalk that up to probably having passed him in the hallways. He isn’t exactly cute, but he isn’t exactly unattractive either. He is interesting, quite a unique specimen at Pacific Palisades Academy. He has that guy’s guy intensity that radiates an air of not giving a shit, though somehow in a strangely intelligent way, and I am surprised to find it mildly thrilling.

  He is taller than me, a good thing since I rarely find guys of adequate height for my five-foot-ten-inch frame, and he has a lean, nicely muscled body like a surfer, a slightly worldly aura somehow accomplished by his clothes that are more European style than American, and the most penetrating green eyes I’ve ever seen.

  Interesting. I can’t tell what he is, since he’s such a hodgepodge of mismatching things that it is impossible to identify the group he falls in with at school.

  I sit there staring at him, fiddling with the pink detention slip, and when the office secretary leaves, those green eyes open and he asks, “You’re Kaley Stanton, aren’t you?”

  Shit, not this again. And it’s such a disappointment because there was a slight prick of interest before he spoke and his voice—well, I never expected that—but it made the hairs on my body stand up.

  “Oh, fuck me!” I snap, letting loose my fallback response, the knee-jerk reaction that comes from perfect strangers knowing my name.

  “Not on the first detention.”

  That is the first quick comeback I’ve heard in two months here. I try hard not to smile and can’t stop myself. Arching a brow, I counter, “I’ll probably be here next week. Maybe you can fuck me then.”

  Those green eyes sharpen on my face. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  I tense. Why would he think I’d recognize him? “No. Should I?”

  The guy shrugs. “What landed you in here?”

  “Fomenting political insurrection. You?”

  “Jerking off in the gym.”

  It is hard to tell if he is serious or just trying to shock me. Masturbation is a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation at PP Academy. PP Academy…I laugh, stare at him hard and say, “I’m glad you didn’t offer to shake my hand.”

  The boy doesn’t smile and I bite my lip to stop my laughter.

  “You look and sound just like your dad. Sans accent, of course,” he says in a heavy, all-knowing way, irritating me and sounding as though he’s irritated by his own discovery.

  OK, it’s time to stop this now. The boy is messing with me, but unfortunately I’m a little off-kilter from my bizarre internal response to him and whatever it was I heard in his voice when he made that annoying assumption on my parentage.

  I snap, “How would you know?”

  “I just saw him a month ago in Munich,” he replies casually, twirling his own pink paper around his finger.

  “Did you really? Do you have a psychic hotline? Do you speak with the dead as well as see them? My dad has been dead over ten years.”

  The guy shrugs again, leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. “You’re funnier than Alan Manzone. He’s a real prick these days.”

  Before I can stop myself, yet again I respond to his baiting. “Alan Manzone is a prick every day.”

  The boy just shakes his head. “No, he’s actually a really cool guy.”

  “He’s a narcissistic asshole.”

  “You really hate him, don’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably,” he says. “Do you want to get out of here? If we stay, Williams will keep us until after six cleaning the bleachers. We won’t get in trouble, you know. No one wants to deal with my mother so they won’t call her. I don’t think they’ll call Chrissie either. I never stay for detention. Do you want to get out
of here?”

  I stare up at him apprehensively. Who is this guy? He says everything with such an air of knowing unenthusiasm. Debating with myself over whether to leave with him, I ask, “If you don’t stay why were you on the bench?”

  “I saw you leaving class with the pink slip.”

  That pleases me more than I want to be. Direct and honest in a no-bullshit type of way. Another rarity at PP Academy.

  I give him the stare. “You know, you could have just said ‘hi’ to me in the halls. You didn’t have to be a stalker about the whole thing.”

  “Sure, I could have. But meeting on the detention bench makes a more interesting story, don’t you think?”

  “Interesting for who?”

  “My mom and dad, who by the way, think that I am gay.”

  That level of honesty wrapped in self-confidence is too appealing. I don’t want to get close to any guy, something tells me especially not this guy, but somehow I feel myself being drawn to him.

  I sink farther back into my seat. “And are you gay?”

  “Hell no. I just like to fuck with my dad.”

  Enjoy Chrissie and Alan’s story from the beginning with The Girl on the Half Shell, The Half Shell Series Book One:

  The room is so quiet it is deafening.

  I find Alan on his bed, casually reclined against a stack of pillows, dressed only in flannel pajama bottoms, and reading—of all things—the Wall Street Journal. There is a fire lit, the silver candlesticks flicker with flame, the bedcovers invitingly turned down as if in preparation for some sort of romantic scene. But he is focused on the Journal.

  He doesn’t look at me and I feel stupid hovering by his door, so I start to wander around the bedroom, trying to still my frantic pulse. It’s a good thing that it’s an interesting room, otherwise my deliberate study would seem silly.

  Even Alan’s bedroom is something I find weird and demands a certain amount of mental analysis. It looks like something from a nineteenth century English manor, elegant to the point of being almost a touch prissy. There’s an antique mahogany king-sized bed facing the fireplace; floral wingback chairs with pillows positioned before the hearth; and high-tech conveniences camouflaged in antique furniture. There’s a Monet on the wall; tall, polished sterling silver candlesticks; crystal; and fine, leather-bound, first edition books of classic literature. I sink down before a small, mahogany table where I find a stack of newspaper: Barons; the New York Times; the Washington Post; and the Daily Telegraph.

  The warmth of the fire surrounds me like a caress, but I am quaking like a leaf. I wasn’t sure what Alan expected after he walked out of the kitchen. It would have been logical to assume that I would leave. But he knew I’d follow him. I don’t know why he’s ignoring me now. I look at the lit candlesticks—he wanted me to follow him.

  I bite my lower lip and stare at my knotted fingers. I stayed alone in the kitchen for what seemed like ages, and now that I’ve done exactly what he expected me to do, nothing.

  I struggle for something to say to break the silence. “You do have seven bedrooms. I counted them twice. But there are seven only if I include yours.”

  He folds the Journal, tosses it on the table and fixes those penetrating, mesmerizing eyes on me. “Is this the room you want?” he asks, his voice gentle. “I meant it when I said you could have any room. It doesn’t have to be my room for you to stay.”

  Does he not want me in his room? A ragged breath forces its way from deep in my lungs. “Do you want me to go?” I murmur.

  “Of course not. I want you here.” His voice is husky and his eyes are wandering in a leisurely hold that is tender and oddly comforting.

  Or Enjoy Rewind A Perfect Forever Novella.

  He doesn’t laugh. Instead, his gaze sharpens on my face. “I am being nice, Kaley. I came to you. I got tired of waiting.”

  What? Did I just hear what I think I heard?

  Before I can respond, he says, “How’s your afternoon looking? Do you have time to take off and come see something with me?”

  My afternoon? There is something. I’m sure of that, but I suddenly can’t remember a single thing.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to show you where I’ve been living. What I’ve been doing. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  Interesting? Why would I find it interesting?

  “So do you think you can cut out for a few hours?” he asks, watching me expectantly.

  I focus my gaze on the table, wondering if I should go, wondering why I debate this, and what the heck I have on the calendar that I can’t remember. God this is weird, familiar and distant at once, and I haven’t a clue what I should do here.

  I stare at his hand, so close to mine, on the table. Whoever thought it would be so uncomfortable not to touch a guy? It doesn’t feel natural, this space we hold between us, spiced with the kind of talk people have who know each other intimately. What would he do if I touched him?

  His fingers cover mine and he gives me a friendly squeeze. The feel of him runs through my body with remembered sweetness.

  Suddenly, nothing in my life is as important as spending the afternoon with Bobby, and for the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel like a disjointed collection of uncomfortably fitting parts. I feel at ease inside myself being with Bobby.

  I stop trying to access my mental calendar and smile up at Bobby. “I’ve got as much time as you need.”

  Bobby chuckles and his hand slips back from me. He rises and tosses some bills on the table. “Just a few hours, Kaley. I’ll have you back before the end of the day.”

  I rise from my chair and think not if I figure out fast how not to blow this.

  Or enjoy the first novel in the Perfect Forever Novels: The Signature. Available Now. Please enjoy the following excerpt from The Signature:

  She became aware all at once how utterly delightful it felt to be here with him, alone on the quay, with the erotic nearness of his body.

  She closed her eyes. “Listen to the quiet. There are times when I lie here and it feels like there is no one else in the world.”

  “No one else in the world? Would that be a good thing?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “No. But the illusion is grand, don’t you think?” she whispered.

  Krystal turned her head to the side, lifting her lids to find Devon’s gaze sparkling as he studied her. He shook his head lazily. “No. The illusion wouldn’t be grand at all. It would mean I wasn’t here with you.”

  It all changed at once, yet again, and so quickly that Krystal couldn’t stop it. The ticklish feeling stirred in her limbs. Devon’s words, as well as the closeness of their bodies, should have sent her into active retreat, and instead she felt herself wanting to curl into him. What would it feel like if he kissed me? Would I still feel this delicious inside? Or would that old panic and fear return?

  Laughing softly, Devon said, “I’m not used to relaxing. Can you tell?”

  “I wasn’t used to it before Coos Bay either. There is a different pace of life here. At first I thought there was no sound. That’s how quiet it seemed to me. Then I realized that there is music, beautiful music in this quiet.”

  After a long pause, he murmured, “You’ll have to bring me here every Saturday until I learn to hear music in the quiet.”

  Krystal smiled. “Once you hear the music it’s perfect.”

  “It’s perfect now to me.” His voice was a husky, sensual whisper.

  He was on his side facing her. When had that happened? An inadvertent thrill ran through her flesh, and she could see it in his eyes—the supplication, the want, and an unexplainable reluctance to indulge either.

  Devon was no longer smiling, his eyes had become brighter and more diffuse. His fingertips started to trace her face with such exquisite lightness that her insides shook. For the first time in a very long time, she felt completely a woman, and wanting.

  Was it possible? Had she finally healed internally as her flesh h
ad done so long ago? Was she finally past the legacy of Nick? Was what she was now feeling real? Should she seek the answer with Devon? Or was it better to leave it unexplored?

  “You are a very beautiful woman,” he whispered.

  She watched with sleepy movements as his mouth lowered to her. It came first as a touch on her cheek, feather soft between the play of his fingers. Her breath caught, followed by a pleasant quickening of her pulse. She was unprepared for the sweetness of his lips and the rushing sensations that ran through her body. His thumb traced the lines of her mouth as his kiss moved sweetly, gently there.

  His breath became rapid in a way that matched her own, and his mouth grew fuller and more searching. The fingertips curving her chin were like a gentle embrace, but their mouths were eager and demanding. Flashes of desire rocketed through her powerfully. Urgency sang through her flesh, a forgotten melody, now in vibrant notes. She found herself wanting to twist into him. Reality begged her to twist back.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Ward is a native of Santa Barbara, California, where she currently lives in a house on the side of a mountain, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She doesn’t believe she makes sense anywhere except near the sea. She attended the University of California Santa Barbara and earned a degree in Business Administration from California State University Sacramento. She works as a Government Relations Consultant, focusing on issues of air quality and global warming. The mother of grown daughters, she lives a quiet life with her husband and her dog, Emma. She can be found most often walking at Hendry’s Beach, where she writes most of her storylines in her head while watching Emma play in the surf.