Love Everlasting
Love Everlasting
Tracey Alvarez
Icon Publishing
Copyright © 2019 by Tracey Alvarez
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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ISBN
Kindle: 978-0-473-48149-0
Epub: 978-0-473-48148-3
Cover Art by Sunset Rose Books
https://www.sunsetrosebooks.com
Created with Vellum
For Amber.
For Gail.
For Jaanine.
For Verity.
For Jo.
For all the Wonder Women fighting the good fight for their Happy Ever Afters.
You rock.
Contents
Welcome to New Zealand!
Also by Tracey Alvarez
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Connect with me
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Welcome to New Zealand!
Land of Lord of the Rings and the All Blacks rugby team, breathtaking landscapes, and laid-back friendly people who refer to ourselves as ‘Kiwis.’ I hope you’ll enjoy your visit with me as we travel to the subtropical Far North of New Zealand. This area of the North Island is close to my heart, as is the Maori culture.
So, kia ora and happy reading!
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Also by Tracey Alvarez
Stewart Island Series
Book 1 In Too Deep (Piper & West) FREE
Book 2 Melting Into You (Kezia & Ben)
Book 3 Ready To Burn (Shaye & Del)
Book 4 Christmas With You (Carly & Kip)
Book 5 My Forever Valentine (Short Stories)
Book 6 Playing For Fun (Holly & Ford)
Book 7 Drawing Me In (Bree & Harley)
Book 7.5 Kissing The Bride (Shaye & Del Wedding Story)
Book 8 Saying I Do (MacKenna & Joe)
Book 9 Home For Christmas
Book 10 Bending The Rules (Tilly & Noah)
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Bounty Bay Series
Book 1 Hide Your Heart (Lauren & Nate)
Book 2 Know Your Heart (Savannah & Glen)
Book 3 Teach Your Heart (Gracie & Owen)
Book 4 Mend Your Heart (Natalie & Isaac)
Book 5 Break Your Heart (Vanessa & Sam)
Book 6 Tame Your Heart (Tui & Kyle)
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Single Titles
Quake
Beneath The Christmas Stars
Love Everlasting (connected to the Stewart Island Series)
Chapter 1
Darby Livingston gazed dreamily into Prince Charming’s eyes and tried to project small and dainty. Appearing small and dainty was a mission in itself at five feet ten, even though she wore ballet flats and subtly bent her knees beneath the dress she’d chosen especially for today. But a girl had to do what she had to do to win herself a prince when the world was full of frogs.
Prince Charming extended his hand in a graceful sweep toward her. “Beautiful lady, can I dance with you?”
May, Darby corrected silently. May I dance with you.
But one glimpse of his straight white teeth as his mouth curved into an inviting smile had her tongue twisted in knots and butterflies exploding in her stomach. That smile—holy hell—he was smiling, really smiling, at her! The little girl who believed in fairy tales living inside the twenty-eight-year-old skin of a woman who kinda didn’t anymore hugged herself in glee.
Prince Charming’s head angled to the side, his smile still locked in place while one of his perfectly shaped eyebrows rose.
Oh, right. And…action!
Darby stepped forward and slipped her hand into his. Proud of herself for not showing an outward reaction to the feel of his rough, warm palm under her fingertips, she said, “My prince, I would be honored.”
His upper lip twitched and little scrunch lines appeared on his nose, his gaze sliding away down hers to their linked hands. Darby froze when her brain caught up with the panicked signals her fingertips were sending. A little siren went off in her head, accompanied by flashing text that said “Sweaty Hand Alert” in neon lights. Crap. And her fingers weren’t the only parts of her growing hot and damp—and not in the good way one might expect when you touched the hand of your crush. Her cheeks flushed hot, and the first prickle of tears stung the corner of her eyes.
Darby folded into the curtsy she’d practiced a hundred times at home in front of her mirror. Only Prince Charming chose that particular moment to release his steadying grip on her hand and wipe it down the leg of his jeans.
Cue chain reaction of instant shock, loss of balance, tangling legs, and Darby’s bum meet stage floor. She wasn’t sure what hurt more: the unyielding wood meeting her tailbone—which, okay, was well-padded—or the burst of laughter abruptly cut off from the front row of Invercargill’s community theater. She sat stunned, tailbone throbbing, making a useless wish that the southernmost city of New Zealand would suddenly develop a giant sinkhole and suck the little one-hundred-seat theater down into the depths.
Taking into account that falling on her ass wasn’t the greatest humiliation life had heaped on her in the past few years, Darby scrambled to her feet.
Prince Charming, who’d pulled a folded script from his back pocket and was riffling through the pages, didn’t acknowledge her so she turned and walked downstage.
“Whoops,” she said, brushing invisible dust off her ass because she simply didn’t know what the hell to do with her sweaty hands. “Shall I try that again, guys?”
Sally, the self-appointed director of their acting troupe of thirty up-to-date paid members, looked up from her clipboard, pen halting mid-scribble. She crossed her legs and leaned toward Darby, pursing her blood-red lips. “Sweetie, we’ve seen everything we need to see in your audition. What do you think, Hugh?”
Hugh King, aka Prince Charming, had been cast without audition when the movers and shakers among the theater group had decided to put on a production of Cinderella in seven weeks’ time. He slanted a glance at Darby. With cool dismissal in every line of his buff-but-only-five-foot-eight frame, Hugh ran his musician’s fingers through his artfully tousled hair and sighed.
“You’re not right for the Cinderella role, Darcy,” he said in his smooth-as-melted-treacle voice that never failed to glue her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “For the character, you’re just too…much.” He waved the pages of the script in her direction, as if he were encompassing everything that was too much about her.
From her pixie-cut reddish-brown hair to the girlie pink dress instead of her usual jeans or vet-nurse scrubs, and the too-muchness of a woman with her fair share of curves. Slappi
ng her hands on two of those curves, Darby narrowed her eyes. “It’s Darby. Like roller derby but spelled with an a.”
Hugh’s eyebrows did that adorable scrunchy thing they did when he didn’t understand something, then they smoothed. “Sorry, Dar-bee. What I meant was you’d probably be better suited as Ugly Stepsister Two. That’s a role someone with your natural talent could really sink her teeth into.”
He moved closer to her and gave her shoulder a quick rub, as if she were a magic lamp ready to give him anything he wished for, just because it was him asking. He smiled at her again, and dammit, her heart gave a little skip. She had to bite her lip to prevent herself from squeaking, “Bite me, Hugh. Bite me real goood!”
“Brilliant suggestion,” Sally called from the first row. “Let’s switch to the trying-on-the-glass-slipper scene. Hugh, can you read the part of the footman? Darby, be a good sport and read for Prunella, Ugly Stepsister Two.”
Sally’s tone was patronisingly sweet, implying Darby was a world-class diva about to storm offstage at the suggestion, instead of just a woman who loved the challenge of pushing herself out of her comfort zone onto the stage and the camaraderie and warmth of being part of something she believed in.
Because she had to be part of this production. Even if it meant a nonspeaking role or settling for the voluntary position of wardrobe mistress.
Darby forced a smile onto her face. “Sure. Let’s do it.” She crossed to the edge of the stage and retrieved a chair, brought it back to the center, and sat. “I haven’t memorized Prunella’s lines,” she said to Sally.
Sally waved a dismissing hand. “Improvise, sweetie. Channel desperate single woman trying to worm her way into Prince Charming’s heart and failing miserably, and go from there.”
Right. A role Darby could fill with her eyes closed, being that today was the first time Prince Hugh Charming had actually seen her in the six months since she’d joined the group. She totally got where Prunella was coming from. She crossed her legs and peeled off one of her ballet flats, tossing the shoe on the floor by Hugh’s feet.
He stooped and picked up her shoe. Without grimacing. Even though her foot might have also been a little on the sweaty side.
Yeah, he’s seen you all right, Darbs. Seen you falling on your backside, and felt your sweaty hands, a snide little voice in her head reminded as Hugh knelt in front of her. The snide little voice, which she’d nicknamed Cee-Bee, shut up when Darby mentally flipped her off.
“That, lowly footman, is my glass slipper.” She extended her bare foot, wiggling her freshly pedicured pink-painted toes at Hugh. “Slide it right on there, sunshine.”
Hugh slipped the toe of the shoe over her ballerina-pointed toes and tried to cram the rest of her foot into it, but damp feet and supple leather provided too much friction. Hugh’s jaw bunched, and he tugged again, her foot bouncing up and down as the leather remained uncooperative. Hey, wasn’t the whole premise that Cinders lost a teeny-tiny impractical shoe which only fit her and no other woman in the land? So unless they were going with the gory Brothers Grimm version of chopping off toes, the shoe-trying session wasn’t meant to be a cakewalk.
Darby straightened her spine and shot the most imperious stare she knew how to give down her nose—the one she saved for Duke when he’d found something particularly stinky to coat his fur in. Improvise, Sally said. Well, she was gonna own Ugly Stepsister Two.
“That slipper was made for my foot the same way the prince’s bubble butt was made for his silk breeches. Now, make it work.”
Darby shoved her foot up at the same instant Hugh pulled down. His fingers slipped on the shoe’s heel, and Darby’s toes became leather-tipped missiles connecting with the underside of his chin. She heard the distinct click of his teeth snapping together before he toppled sideways, sprawling on the floor in an ungainly heap.
“Crap—my bad!” Darby leaped up to render assistance to the swearing, moaning Prince Charming, aka Hugh, while whistles and claps exploded around the theater like gunshots.
“Bravo,” Sally hollered.
Hugh waved aside Darby’s outstretched hand and staggered to his feet. She cringed inwardly, but instead of dying a painful death from a you idiot glare, he grinned at her.
“You’ve got a hell of a kick, girl,” he said, running examining fingers along the perfect line of his jaw down to the adorable cleft in his chin.
“Sorry. Guess you wouldn’t want to run into me in a dark alley.”
“Oh, I dunno.” Another flash of his white-on-white-tooth smile. He walked upstage to face Sally. “You’ve just found your Ugly Stepsister Two. Dar-bee”—he turned back briefly to her with a yeah, babe, I remembered your name wink—“has to do that shoe gag in the play. It’ll bloody slay the audience.”
Sally scribbled something on her clipboard. “Brilliant, Hugh. You’ve such an instinct for that sort of thing. Prunella is yours if you want it, Darby.”
“I do,” Darby said.
And before she could cause any more damage to Prince Charming, such as accidentally hip-checking him off the stage or kneeing him in his family jewels, she hurriedly exited stage right.
“She’s a shoo-in.” Darby slouched in the theater’s back row, her crossed ankles propped up on the seat in front. “Look at how dainty she is.”
On stage, Claudia St. James, in a pretty floral-printed dress, rose out of a perfect curtsy and spun butterfly-graceful into Prince Charming’s arms. She looked as delicate as spun sugar and the approximate size of a pixie. Someone backstage hit a button and classical music soared out of the sound system. Claudia and Hugh waited the appropriate number of beats before swinging into a simple waltz. The same one that Darby had practiced for weeks and never got the chance to demonstrate earlier.
“Little Miss Freaking Perfect.”
Darby rolled her head to where Kaitlyn Walker, her one good friend in the theater group, sat beside her.
“Hope she chewed Tic Tacs after lunch today or I swear it’ll be Hugh passed out on the stage floor from her onion breath,” Kaitlyn added, ever loyal to a fault.
“She’s not that bad.”
“I know, damn her eyes.”
Claudia’s musical giggle drifted up to them. It’d be far easier to hate Claudia if she were a prize bitch. So, so much easier.
“We suck at being mean girls.” Darby’s mouth twisted as, below them, Hugh picked Claudia up and spun her in a circle before lowering her gently to her feet.
“Five years of high school should cure most women of bitchytosis,” Kaitlyn said. “And by the way, I thought your audition was stellar. Men never seem to see what’s right under their noses.”
She didn’t need to say more. Kaitlyn guessed a couple of months ago that Darby had a teeny-tiny thing for Hugh.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Darby said. “Like what you did last Friday night.”
Kaitlyn leaned back, kicking her boot-covered feet onto the chair back next to Darby’s. “We had a party—an infestation-of-head-lice party.”
“Ewww. Nasty.”
“Picture me and two eight-year-olds with stinky wet hair parked in front of the TV while I took turns combing dead insects from a bored Thomas and a weeping Lily, accompanied by the millionth viewing of Frozen.” Kaitlyn folded her arms and shot Darby a beat that mock glare. “Please tell me you went out and painted Invercargill red?”
“If by painting the town red you mean staying home with my crazy-cat-lady starter kit, eating Thai takeaways, and binge-watching reruns of Project Runway. Duke adores Tim Gunn, and Maddie the loopy Siamese hisses every time Heidi is onscreen. It’s très entertaining.”
“It’s très weird.” Kaitlyn chuckled. “But speaking of Project Runway, I have a brilliant idea to help you out, involuntary wardrobe mistress.”
“You’re a goddess.”
“You mean I’m a fairy godmother.”
Two weeks ago at a special meeting of the Invercargill community theater members, the three founders ann
ounced they’d accepted Darby’s suggestion for the spring production. Cinderella would open at the end of October with three evening shows and a matinee performance. Everyone in the group was expected to help with set dressing, lighting, sound, publicity, makeup—which Kaitlyn was in charge of—and wardrobe. Darby, as the newest member of the group and also the only one with any actual sewing experience, had found herself in charge of sourcing Cinderella-esque costumes.
“You’re totally my fairy godmother,” Darby said. “Unless your brilliant plan involves me using two years of high-school-level sewing classes to try and sew numerous gowns on my tiny second-hand sewing machine.”
“Ye of little faith.” Kaitlyn crossed her ankles. “Do you know Next Stop, Vegas in town?”
“The bridal boutique?”
“Yuh-huh. You’ve heard me talk about my friend MacKenna Jones, the designer who owns it—”
“Omigod, you’ve convinced MacKenna to help us out?” Darby dropped her feet off the chair in front and sat up straight. “That’s amazing!”
She hadn’t met MacKenna, but the woman’s reputation and the to-die-for gowns displayed in her boutique’s windows spoke for themselves.
“Not quite,” Kaitlyn said. “She’s living on Stewart Island with her doctor hubby. They tied the knot in February. But the next best thing to MacKenna is Reid Hudson who used to be her top machinist.”
“Used to be?”
“He does more of the wedding planning side of the business now, but the man is super-talented. Just say the word and I’ll send him a text to see if we can meet him and beg, borrow, or blackmail him for his mad costume-making skills.”