Her Fairy-Tale Life

"Hello. Ma'am, my name is Ravi. I have a delivery for Maggie Harris," he said with a cheerful smile. He held a large plain white box in his arms.

"Just a moment," Maggie closed the door and opened it again without the chain. thinking that the young man looked harmless enough.

"Here you go. Ma'am," he handed her the box and went to walk away.

"Wait. Don't I need to sign something?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," He smiled politely. "Have a good evening."

Confused, she closed the door and locked it, again taking the box into the living room. Opening it, she was hit by the smell of fresh pizza which sat in a foil box; an envelope addressed to her stuck to it, and she opened it with a frown. Maybe Alecks had taken her words about needing to bake or starve to heart.

"I'm sure the hospital food wouldn't have tasted quite so bad if you were there to share it. I'm home now, though, and somehow the pizza already tastes better because I'm sharing it with you. Please call me, or at least answer your phone, Kaeden."

Maggie opened the foil box and found half a margarita pizza and half of a small loaf of garlic bread. She laughed and shook her head, picking up a piece and biting into it. 'Waste not want not,' she thought. It was the nicest thing she had tasted in weeks, and she took another large bite before picking up a smaller box, about the size of a shoebox that was nestled in with the foil box of food. She opened it and found a bear dressed as a world war one pilot with the bomber jacket, leather cap and goggles. Wiping her hands on the napkin thoughtfully provided, she picked it up and held it as she read the small card attached to it. "Talk to me, please, K."

"You," she said to the bear, "I can talk to. Him," she tapped the card, "not so much." She picked up the pizza and took another bite. She knew she should at least thank him for the gifts, even if they were pity gifts for an ugly duckling who just happened to be awake when he crashed his plane. Sitting the bear on the couch beside her, she picked up her phone and turned it on. She saw how many missed called there was when it wouldn't stop buzzing. She read the texts first and then listened to the only message he had left, enjoying the sound of his smooth voice. The phone came to life in her hands, and she stared at it until it stopped, then she turned to the bear sitting beside her.

"I'm sure every other girl he knows falls for his charming ways, but I am not like them. I know who I am and what I am," she said stiffly, as the bear stared back at her with its bright blue eyes. "He probably has a cupboard full of your clones that he ships out to whatever girl he's trying to charm on any given day." She looked at her phone and began to type in a text.

"Thank you for the kind gifts. While appreciated and enjoyed, they were unnecessary. Please stop calling, I am not one of those girls you can charm into whatever it is that you want from me. Goodnight, Kaeden." She hit send and felt good about keeping the emotion she felt out of the text.

"No, not until you explain what happened," came the text response, and her phone began to sing out its soft tune again. Shaking her head she turned it off.

"No means no," she told the bear. She turned the television on and finished the pizza. She hadn't realised how hungry she was. Elena would have lectured her about being a pig and all of the calories. She could hear the high pitched nasally voice of Elena in her mind, "It's no wonder you're so fat," she grimaced at the bear and pulled it onto her lap, enjoying the softness of it.

At nine thirty, an hour after the first delivery, she opened her door, ready to scold Ravi who she had seen through the door crack and found only another box. She looked up and watched Ravi's car disappear down her driveway. Taking the box inside she opened it, finding a dozen small pots of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and another note:

"I forgot to send dessert, and I wasn't sure what flavour was your favourite, so here are some of mine. Could you call and tell me which one is yours? Kaeden."

"First pizza and now ice cream. He obviously realises I don't watch my weight," Maggie rolled her eyes at the bear and took the ice cream into the kitchen to store it in the freezer. She smiled as she found one called hazed and confused and kept it aside while she stored the others. It was only a tiny tub, and she would work it off tomorrow, she told herself, as she took a spoon from the drawer and went back to watch the end of the movie.

At ten thirty she stalked to her door, ready to scream, and reefed it open to find a bunch of balloons filled with helium and weighed down by a small sandbag. She watched as, once again, Ravi's car went back down her driveway, and sighed, opening the card, "It seemed silly to send flowers to a flower farm. Please call me; I need to know what happened to make you change your mind about coming to see me, or even talking to me tonight. Kaeden."

She was mad now. She picked up her phone, turned it on and dialled Kaeden's number. He had answered it before it had even seemed to ring. "Hello?" he said warily.

"You need to stop this. I need some sleep and that poor boy you have driving here and there and everywhere tonight needs sleep too. Not to mention you have been in the hospital, and you need sleep too. The whole world needs sleep, so just go to bed and stop this silliness!" she raged at him.

"It's really good to hear your voice," he said calmly.

"This is becoming creepy, Kaeden. Are you trying to scare me? Are you going to continue stalking me and sending me messages via, well, via whatever Ravi is if I don't return your calls? You get how this looks, right?" she questioned him is a terse tone of voice.

"I'm persistent, but hardly a scary stalker," he said, deflated by the accusation.

"Persistent is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Just because you couldn't get your own way, you decide to torment me? She's a big old fatty, she won't be watching her weight, I'll send her pizza and ice cream. Is that what you thought? How about, she's a big dumb ox, so she won't mind having to get up and answer the goddamn door to a stranger all night when she lives all alone on a farm, with no neighbours nearby. I may be all those things, Kaeden, but I have feelings, okay, so just stop pretending to be nice and charming. Stop flirting with me, because I know it's as ridiculous as everyone else thinks, and for fuck's sake stop calling me!" She let all of her misery from the meeting with her family out in one big barrage of angry words and began to cry. "Goodnight, Kaeden," she said with a wobbly voice into the stunned silence and hung up, turning the phone off.

Chapter 5.

Maggie woke with a start. She'd fallen asleep on the couch with the teddy bear wrapped in her arms. The door banged loudly as if someone was trying to break it down. She ran her fingers through her hair and blinked, trying to get her bearings. The banging started again, and she looked at the bear and knew it was Ravi again. She got up and stalked to the door, prepared to give him a piece of her mind.

"Ravi, I know you are just doing your job," her words were cut off by Kaeden wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his body to kiss her. It wasn't the soft brushing of lips that had been his sleeping beauty kiss when he left in the helicopter. This kiss was a lip bruising, heart-stopping breathtaking kiss that she felt all the way down to her toes and in every nerve ending in her body. When he finally released her, she was dazed and confused. Kaeden kept his arm around her waist as he walked her backwards into the house and closed the door, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Kaeden, you can't just come..." she began, but once again his lips took her words and breath away. "Stop," she said weakly, putting her hands on his chest, even as his arm tightened around her waist. "Kaeden, I signed the paper giving Elena authority to sue you. I didn't want to, but..." she shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"I told you I don't care about that, I never did," he said gently.

"Then why are you here?" she was genuinely confused.

"There's this angel who saved me that I want to get to know better, maybe take out for dinner sometime, who won't return my calls. I know that's hard to believe, right? Me, Kaeden McConnell, one of the country's most eligible bachelors, can't get a date with the woman he wants," Kaeden said in a sad voice. "There goes my reputation."

"You want to date me?" she asked as if he was speaking a foreign language.

"That's usually what happens. You know, boy meets girl, boy likes girl; boy asks girl on a date and girl accepts," he said with the crooked smile that she dreamed about.

"Kaeden, stop teasing me, I've googled you, remember. I am not the type of girl you date. Let me go and I will get you your folio," she said, her rational self taking over again to remember the reason for his being here.

"No, Maggie," he lifted her chin to look into his eyes. "You are not fat or dumb, and if I inadvertently made you feel any of those things I am so very sorry, that was never my intention or what I think at all. If your family makes you feel that way and made you believe that I would, I am even sorrier," he said, leaning down to kiss her again, not the soul wrenching passionate kiss of early, but gentler, deeper and more tender. "You're perfect the way you are. Tall women are my type; half-starved ones are not. I dare you to show me an inch of fat anywhere on your body." He let go of her chin and ran his hand down her side to her hip, keeping one arm still curled around her waist.

"Kaeden, you have to go," Maggie could feel the rational part of her brain sliding away, and she screwed her eyes shut to block out the brilliant blue sincerity that shone from his. "Men like you don't date girls like me. It's ridiculous. You need to go home now. You have a concussion, and you shouldn't be here." Her eyes widened. "You didn't drive here, did you?"

"No," he chuckled at her concern. "Ravi delivered me, and he will be back to pick me up and deliver me home in the morning."

"What? Were you planning on swooping in here with all your charm and expecting me to just invite you into my bed for the night?" She accused.

"As much as I would like that, I'm not physically capable of satisfying a fiery woman like you tonight, or tomorrow night for that matter. I just got out of the hospital and I have no plans to go back in again anytime soon," he chuckled with a wince as his chest protested the use of those muscles.

"You should be resting!" she scolded, concern for his health overriding her sense of propriety. "Come, you can use my bed, it's better than the couch or the lumpy fold out in the spare room."

"Only if you sit and talk to me, tell me what happened with Elena to make you change your mind and get so upset with me," he remained immovable as she tried half-heartedly to squirm out of his arms. "I'm going to get hurt if you keep doing that," he winced.

"Okay, fine, just let me go so I can turn everything off, and we can talk after your lying down," she said, hoping that, once he was horizontal, he would succumb to the sleep he so obviously needed. Kaeden reluctantly released her and she walked around turning off lights and the television before picking the bear up from where he lay on the couch and coming back to where he stood, smiling at the bear in her arms.

"I was hoping you'd like him," Kaeden said. "Have you given him a name?" he asked, as she led him through to the bedroom.

"He had a name when I got him. The tag said Talk to me -K. So I have been talking to him all night and calling him K. He thinks you're an asshole, by the way."

"Well, that hurts," Kaeden said, "When I sent him to the nicest woman I've ever met."

"What can I say, he's protective of me. He didn't like me getting up to answer the door so late at night. He thinks strange men appearing at this farm late at night are probably dangerous, and I have a terrible habit of trusting them. This one weird guy actually crashed his plane here one night," she teased, but never got to finish the sentence as he stopped walking and pulled her into his body to kiss her again.

"You, my angel, are not like any other woman I've ever met," he murmured, holding her close and breathing in the scent of coconuts and something tropical as he buried his face in her neck and hair. "You make me want to go against doctor's orders," he murmured softly in her ear and felt her stiffen. "Luckily for you, though, I don't want to see the return of Nurse Naggard." He climbed onto the bed and stretched out. "So let's talk about what happened this afternoon." He patted the bed beside him.

'Well,' Maggie thought. 'He may as well know the truth. Maybe then he would leave her alone and go back to dating supermodels and the beautiful people more suited to his world.' She took a deep steadying breath and told him everything, how she'd baked because she had so little in the house to offer anyone, how they'd believed incorrectly that she was still in love with Alecks, who had been so cruel to her, how they made her feel ugly and dumb, and how she had signed the document without really having enough time to read it properly.

"He was your step brother, you weren't really related, not by blood, and everyone experiments a little when they're young," he shrugged. "Nothing to be ashamed of there." He said lightly with an uncaring shrug, as if it were no big deal. He was surprised though, and a little angry that Alecks would take advantage of her that way when her father died.

"They make it sound so much worse. Just like with my inheritance that Elena held in trust for me. I got a lawyer from the yellow pages when Elena seemed to be taking forever to give me the farm and the money she held in trust for me. He was useless, but I got the farm eventually and signed off on the mismanagement of my trust fund because at least some of it had gone into the mortgage. She set up a corporation to act as a guarantor for the loan in case I ever defaulted, and the bank finally agreed to let me take over the mortgage and business," she explained. The missing pieces of information from what Wade and Neill had been able to put together in the short amount of time he gave them started clicking into place.

Kaeden didn't have all the pieces yet, and he wasn't even sure if Maggie knew just how underhanded her stepmother was, but Kaeden liked this woman enough to want to help her and make sure her life was more than worrying about keeping her home from the debt collectors. He decided there and then that he was going to help her whether she liked it or not.

"So Elena didn't tell you not to see me or talk to me?" he asked tentatively.

"Hah!" Maggie gave a derisive laugh. "They thought that you would be horrified that I called to make sure you were okay in the hospital. As if a man like you would ever waste their time talking to me. I doubt it would even enter her head that talking to you was possible, let alone seeing, yet here we are." Maggie said as she yawned.

"Lie down, you're tired. I promise I won't try anything tonight," and just to prove it he sat up and pulled off his shirt, exposing the now purple bruising on his chest and abdomen.

"Oh my God! I had no idea! I hope I didn't do that getting you out of the plane?" she was aghast and reached out to touch the bruises as he lay back down. "Is there anything I can do? Do you need aspirin or anything?" She said, quickly remembering herself and pulling her hand back as if scalded.

"You can lie down and rest while we talk," he said with that crooked smile that made her stomach flutter. "Maybe turn the light off, it's hard on my eyes looking up at you like this," he said. "Then, if you fall asleep I don't have to worry about finding the switch."

She turned off the light and climbed into the bed fully clothed, she wasn't so dumb as to fall for all his supposed innocent charm. Kaeden moved, sliding an arm under her shoulders and rolling her toward him so her head rested on the pillow beside his and her body pressed up against his side. He felt her stiffen but not push away and relaxed slightly.

"Maggie, I would like to spend as much time as you will let me talking to you," he said quietly. "It must have been hard growing up in a family like that. After your father passed, I mean. I bet he was wonderful to have raised a daughter like you."

"Tell me about your family," she said, changing the subject with another yawn. "I bet your mum is nice."

"Nice is relative. I think she is most often referred to as a formidable woman. She's like a mama bear, all cuddly warm unless someone touches one of her cubs," Kaeden tried to explain his mother to Maggie. "She wasn't averse to swatting her cubs, either, when we deserve it. I imagine she will come to the city to swat me for crashing the plane."

"Was it the family plane?" she asked in a voice laced with sleep.

"No, it was mine," Kaeden said softly, noting her eyes had closed. He leaned forward to kiss her forehead. "Sleep now, we can talk in the morning."

*****

"Maggie's not here," the distinctly male voice called out as Kaeden inspected the crash site the following morning.

"Yeah, I know," Kaeden said, walking toward the old man. "I was hoping to convince her to spend the day with me."

"She's not one of those good time girls who hops into bed with any fella who offers!" the man said sharply.

"I never thought she was," Kaeden chuckled. "It's one of the things I like about her. She is a special kind of angel."

"That she is, she's like a daughter to me. I'm Bob Nicolls. I was a friend of her father, and I keep an eye on the place for her," he held out his hand.

"Kaeden McConnell, I'm the guy who crashed in the big storm a few days ago," he introduced himself.

"Bad business, that, but you seem better off than the greenhouse," Bob observed.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad, the work on the repairs should start next week, once the insurance assessment is finalised," Kaeden agreed.

"Good, I thought Elena and Alecks would try and hold up the work so she would run out of time and have no choice but to accept the developer's offer. She a piece of work that Elena, could never understand what John saw her in her personally," Bob said conversationally.

"I've offered Maggie help, financially, to get through this quarter, but she won't take it, she just wants the insurance for the repairs. Maybe you can talk some sense into her." Kaeden asked.

She's a stubborn girl, that one," Bob said. He considered Kaeden thoughtfully and decided to tell him the story of how Elena had let this place run into the ground before signing it over to Maggie, and how, through sheer force of will, the stubborn young woman had brought the place back to life and eked out a living for herself here. Kaeden knew the story, but it was interesting to hear it from Bob's perspective instead of listening to the basic facts he had gotten from Neil and Wade.

Kaden had followed him into the greenhouse during the story and had naturally begun helping the man start to clear away some of the debris from the ruined section of the greenhouse as they talked. He found out more about the woman he couldn't get enough of from barely an hour of talking to this one man. The more he discovered about Maggie, the more he wanted to know. He had never met a woman like her. She was kind, caring and innately good. He remembered that, even when she was obviously mad at him, she had worried about his injuries and made sure he was looked after last night. She was strong and resourceful, and she was beautiful, though she didn't know it and her low self-esteem wouldn't let her believe it, even when it was pointed out. He smiled, remembering the way she looked as he rose from the bed this morning with her long hair fanned out over the pillow. It took a great deal of self-restraint for him to walk out of the bedroom and let her sleep.