by P. J. Fox
Belle shook her head. “He’s overstating his case.”
Ash dropped Billy, coming over to Belle and helping her to her feet. Turning her head, he examined her jaw. There’d be a bruise, she could tell, but the pain was already fading.
He…he called me a whore,” Belle said quietly.
Ash turned, his eyes fixed on Billy’s. “Would you like to call me a whore?”
“No.” Billy shook his head. “No, sir.”
Without another word, Billy turned and fled.
Belle watched him go. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “One minute he was telling me how much he loved me and what a terrible mistake he’d made in letting me go and the next he was hitting me.” She shook her head in wonder at his sudden transformation.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure,” Ash said, “that neither does he. Men like him…never do. They act on each and every whim that passes through their little brains, however foolish, and then apologize later.”
“I did slap him,” Belle said.
“Then he deserved to be slapped.”
That he had.
“I’d end my own life before I’d harm a hair on your head.”
She leaned against him. “I know.”
“Indeed, it’s taking all of my considerable self control not to go after that wanker right now. I’ve heard, however, that American prisons are quite unpleasant.”
“That, and you can’t leave me.”
They continued to watch Billy’s fleeing figure, now quite small. Well, he could run and run. He didn’t have as many friends in this town as he thought he did. And Donna would get over the loss of her not-quite-golden boy. She did, after all, have Frank to console her. Belle smiled slightly. She wondered when her mother and Frank would get married.
“I will never leave you,” Ash said.
NINETY-NINE
Instead of returning to the funeral, they walked along the beach. There was a set of steps cut into the cliffs, that led down. During a storm they’d be murder—no pun intended—but right now they were lovely. Lovely and private, just like the ribbon of sand stretching before them. And if anyone should fall to their deaths, well, they were in the right place.
Belle didn’t think her father would mind that she’d missed the end of his funeral. He wasn’t there, anyway. He’d gone on to something better and, in her own way, so had she. Perhaps they could appreciate each other’s journeys, now, as the strange little man had said.
Who was he?
She’d never know.
She told Ash about Billy: about how he’d lied to her, and made her feel like she was a terrible person for withholding all that, in his mind, women were apparently good for. Ironic, since giving it up apparently made her a whore. And Ash had listened, without judgment.
And now they were walking in silence.
“My life…it’s so different from yours.”
“How so?”
She gestured. “This. This place. I come from…Ash, you come from a palace. I come from a double wide. Billy Meyers thinks he’ll make some woman a great catch, because she won’t have to work. So he can put her up on a pedestal.”
Billy’s expectations for what made a man a good husband were so different from hers. They didn’t, evidently, include treating a woman with respect. The way Ash treated her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ash said. “Where either of us is from. We’re going to make a new life, together. Our life. Where we can do whatever we want.”
“That sounds good.”
She’d taken her shoes off and was carrying them in one hand, enjoying the long-missed sensation of sand between her toes. Her other hand was firmly in Ash’s. Beyond them, seagulls arced and dived. A halo around the sun promised rain later, but for now the world was perfect.
“Do you want to go back to India?” she asked.
“To visit or to live?”
“Either.”
“I don’t know.” He turned. “Would you like that?”
“I’d like to be wherever you are. And…I hear there are elephants. I’d like to see elephants.”
He smiled slightly. “That can be arranged.”
“And your father.”
“My father is a bit of an elephant.”
“He sounds delightful.”
“Perhaps.” Ash was quiet for a long time. “I’ve come to realize, I think, that he’s as flawed as I am. Differently flawed, perhaps—or perhaps not. But flawed. As we all are. I grew up expecting him to be mighty. Strong. Perfect. A man I could look up to. When he failed to be that man….” Ash shook his head. “But the ironic thing is, I think he came closest to being that man after he met Stephanie.”
“I’d like to meet her, too.”
“She’d love to meet you.”
Belle understood what Ash was saying: that the events of the past few days and, indeed, of the past few months had brought him to forgiveness also. That in finding his own happiness, he’d finally realized that he could allow his father his. That each of them had a life to lead and were now free to leave it. Free…as they’d always been.
But when had Ash realized that he was free?
When had Belle?
She squeezed his hand.
“We can help your mother out, if you want. There’s no reason for her to have to work, if she doesn’t want to.”
“Oh, she’d love that. She can tell everyone about her son in law the prince.”
“Oh, what fun.”
“You’ll have to buy a turban,” Belle teased.
“We can dress Alec up as the genie.”
“He’d love that.”
“I think I do want to get married in India,” he said.
“Wonderful! But you’ll have to fly my mother out.”
“And Frank.”
“Yes. I suppose we have to include Frank.” She wondered if Frank had ever had Indian food. She wondered, too, which custom he’d find most horrifying. Then again, he might surprise them all and love the experience. Particularly the part where the bride’s family was given gifts. And he might actually like the food.
Donna, on the other hand….
Ash stopped. “You changed me,” he said. “You made me want to be a better man.”
“You changed me, too.” He’d made her happy.
She thought then, as she’d think again later, that theirs had been a romance of words and that words had transformed them both. From those first sparring matches to this quiet sharing, they’d always been able to pick each other apart as no one else had. To get to the root of each others’ psyches. He’d grown, and she’d grown, through interchanges where they’d each revealed the core of themselves. A core that had, somehow and at some point, fused into a single core. A single heart. A single mind. A single soul.
There was a line in the Ramayana that she’d heard repeated, to be happy always is something difficult to achieve. That is to say, happiness and sorrow must alternate in one’s life and there cannot be uninterrupted happiness alone.
A concept that, at that precise moment, she found hard to fathom.
It didn’t seem possible that she could ever be unhappy now.
She’d found her happily ever after.
Yes, difficult times would come. She knew that. No life could be without sorrow, in or out of the storybooks. Even fairy tales had death, and loss. Misunderstandings, and other hardships. And, despite what Charlotte might think, Belle wasn’t looking to escape real life. Not truly. She wanted to live her fairytale, but she wanted to live it in the real world.
With a real man.
With this real man, faults and all.
Change was inevitable. Good change and bad. So much change had already come, both good and bad, that she was still processing it all. Still adjusting to seeing herself as Belle, the artist. Belle, the submissive. Belle, the woman who’d run away from home.
She knew, though, that—whatever happened—she’d never face that change alone.
&
nbsp; One heart, one mind, one soul.
One destiny.
THE BEGINNING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P.J. Fox published her first story when she was ten. Between then and the present moment, she detoured to, in no particular order, earn several degrees (including a law degree), bore everyone she knew with lectures about medieval history, get married, and start a family. She realized, ultimately, that she had to make a go of this writing thing because nothing else would ever make her happy.
Please visit her at her website, www.pjfoxwrites.com.