The Stepmother: An Everland Ever After Tale by Caroline Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

caring man. A man who read books to his daughter. A man who helped people.
    She still wasn’t sure who she was getting, though.
    It was no wonder he was still asleep. Last night she’d heard him, talking and crying out in his dreams. Calling for someone named Osbourne, warning him. Muttering about “him” being after them. She’d acknowledged his cries only once, when he’d said “No, Witcher, not my princess!” in the most heartbreaking tone. She’d sat up then, thinking to comfort him…but he still slept, and soon she managed to fall back asleep as well.
    What kind of man was haunted by such dreams? A panther, choosing between leaping and running.
    By the time she’d finished her ablutions in the bedroom and returned to the main room, he was awake and helping Zelle fold up the blankets in front of the hearth. He stoked the fire while she took the little girl into the bedroom to use the pot, and was staring at the flames when they returned. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t mentioned his dreams, but the haunted look in his eyes told her that he hadn’t forgotten them.
    She tried to put him out of her mind as she coaxed Zelle over to the table, but it was difficult. When he was asleep, he was almost heartbreakingly handsome. Awake, his stare made her breathless. Not entirely uncomfortable, but not enjoyable either. Her chest tightened and her stomach flopped, and she’d actually looked up her symptoms in one of his books to make sure that she wasn’t actually ill. Why would the way he looked at her—like he couldn’t decide if she was a morsel to devour or a threat to his safety—make her feel so…so jittery?
    When he went into the bedroom, she found herself able to breathe deeply again. She allowed Zelle to climb up on one of the kitchen chairs. The little girl liked to watch her cook, and Meri had promised that she could help with the biscuits this morning. Zelle was practically vibrating with anticipation.
    After three days of being trapped in the house together, they were about to finish the very last of the food. They’d only had the two meals yesterday—although they were filling—to make the bacon stretch, and as Meri scraped the remnants of the lard from the crock onto the pile of flour, she knew that they’d have to go into town today. Luckily, the snow had stopped piling up before it trapped them inside, and what she could see from the window yesterday didn’t look impassable.
    After showing Zelle how to break up the lard with her fingertips while being careful to keep the flour in a neat pile, Meri rolled up the little girl’s sleeves. Her gown was store-bought, already too short for her, and Meri wondered how long ago Jack’s wife had died. He was obviously still learning how to take care of them both—the books were indications of that—but he had to have been alone with her for a while to have to resort to buying dresses from stores and hacking off her hair in the same haphazard style as his own.
    While the little girl worked at the lard—her tiny tongue sticking out from between plump lips as she concentrated—Meri combed her fingers through Zelle’s pale silky hair, trying to gently pull out the tangles. Reaching the little girl’s nape, she frowned. Was it her imagination, or was Zelle’s hair longer than it had been, just a few days ago? Hurriedly, Meri crossed to her knitting and snipped off two lengths of blue ribbon. She parted Zelle’s hair and braided it, tying off two little stumpy tails at the base of the girl’s neck. All the while, she hummed and sang little tunes to Zelle, occasionally tickling her just to hear the sweet little laughter.
    She’d just tied on her own apron to help work the lard into the flour when Jack drifted back into the room. He watched the two of them working, a frown on his disturbingly compelling lips, and those little lines back between his eyes. All the while she showed the girl how to knead the dough, she felt his stare on the spot between her