All Chapters of B & E Ever After: A Hansel and Gretel Story: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

“Son of a bitch,” Hayden hissed under his breath.Turning away from where I was waving Miguel goodbye as he raced off toward his school, I focused on the driver’s side of the car. My sexy chauffeur for the morning scowled at a message he was reading on his phone.Even as pissed as he seemed to be, he looked damn good in his suit. Today, it was a charcoal gray button-up with a black vest and no jacket. And mmm, how had I not known those suit jackets he wore hid such nice, wide shoulders under them?“What’s wrong?” I asked, wiping my hand across my mouth in case I’d been drooling.With a put-upon sigh, Hayden turned his phone to show me the screen as he pulled into traffic and started me toward Preston Estates. “Lana finally has that new assignment for me to make up for the way I failed to keep Kaitlynn from taking another job elsewhere.”“Ah, hell. What’s she making you do this time?” I lowered my gaze to his screen and read the text.MOTHER SATAN: Get the Purses portfolio for me.

After dropping Miguel off at school the next morning, Hayden grew pensive and quiet in his driver’s seat. I couldn’t tell you what was going on in his mind, but my own was swirling. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him and everything that was blooming between us.It was totally the wrong time to start any kind of relationship with him; he was in the middle of trying to save his family’s company, play secret fairy godmother to his stepsister, prove his mother was involved in illegal activities, and set up a shoe line at a prestigious fashion company. There wasn’t time for me in his life. I was just a means to an end, there to help him seek justice.Except he’d flat-out told me he was going to seduce me. Someday. And last night, after we’d picked up our scones and fetched Miguel from Mabel’s apartment, he’d stuck around, eating supper with us, helping my brother with his homework, and listening to Papá talk about the board operator position he’d applied for at the power plant on

Something felt off.It wasn’t the fact that Lana had been particularly disgruntled when she’d come home from work this evening either. That happy little nugget had actually been pretty awesome. It told me Hayden had most likely succeeded in not letting her sabotage Kaitlynn’s and his brother’s portfolio presentation earlier that day.And things didn’t feel off because Papá had messaged me, saying he’d pick up Miguel from school. That was just another awesome detail. I think he was really going to pull himself out of this slump he’d been in since becoming an amputee.I guess I could blame my antsy, restless anxiety on my failure to find any proof to doom Lana. I really wanted to help Hayden with his investigation on his mother. But I hadn’t found anything on any other day I’d worked there, and I hadn’t experienced this lacking something that left me feeling so desolate and unfulfilled now. So that probably wasn’t the source either.I glanced out the window as I put away the last pla

When we finally made our way to my room, Gabby curled into me on the cool mattress and tucked her face under my chin before she stroked her hand up and down my arm.I banded an arm around her shoulders, holding her close, and kissed her hair.This was nice.I’d never felt this complete and satisfied before, as if I was a piece of a puzzle who’d just found its misplaced half.Gabby gave a contented sigh and glanced up at me, smiling lazily. I knew we should probably finish going through everything we’d found at Lana’s earlier. Or I should decide what to do about the Isaac-Brick situation. But for the life of me, I couldn’t muster a single care about any of that shit. I just wanted to keep lying here, looking at Gabriella.“I missed you today,” she murmured, walking her fingers up my bare chest.My eyebrows lifted. “You missed me?”“Yeah, you know, after work,” she went on. “I know getting picked up by you and driven home two days in a row doesn’t in any way qualify as a routine,

“Strange fact,” Hayden panted, slipping his hand over my hair as I began to climb off him, my legs as weak as jelly and heart still racing with a mixture of fear and panic.Because I loved him, I realized. Holy shit, I loved this aggravating pain in the ass. Dazed, I licked my dry lips and mumbled, “What’s that?” hoping he couldn’t tell what I was feeling.“I didn’t much like walking in the door to find my brother in bed with you,” he answered casually, seemingly unaware of the crisis that was happening inside me.But fuck me, I loved a man who drove me crazy, who had insane family issues, who could piss me off like no one else. And, holy hell, I think I liked loving someone who was so messed up.I lifted my face to peer into his eyes. At the moment, he didn’t seem too upset about seeing Brick and me stretched out on the bed together. But he’d also just come so hard he might’ve broken all the blood vessels in his medulla oblongata, preventing him from experiencing anger ever again.