Ever Mine

By Eden Ashe

Can a kidnapped fairy and a human find love despite all odds?

Nathan Alexander’s batty aunt has done it again. This time she’s sent him a rare plant he doesn’t want. Imagine his surprise when he finds a kidnapped fairy hidden within its leaves. As a man who heads a non-profit organization for abused women and children, Nathan makes it his mission to help her find her way home.

All her life Katenia was warned about the evilness of humans. Never was that proved more true than when she was kidnapped from her quiet valley home. Thrust into the human world, Katenia must fight her very instincts to trust Nathan if she ever hopes to return to her rightful place…and to her normal thumb-sized fairy form.

But with their lives in danger, finding home…and love…will be a journey worthy of a fairy tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eden Ashe
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781536521498

Book preview

Chapter 1

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"E

xcuse me,

sir, but I’m leaving for the night."

Nathan Alexander glanced up from the file on his desk when his office light switched on. Frustration pounded in his head as he tried to focus on the woman filling up his office doorway, an oddly large silver plant in her sturdy arms. What?

Maggie James, assistant extraordinaire, shifted her considerable size further into the room, her direct look stern enough to make him squirm. While he had no idea how old she was, Nathan was long since over denying she terrified the hell out of him. The woman was built like a linebacker, with not a single soft spot in her physique or personality. She plopped the flowerpot onto his desk.

Nathan was smart enough to keep his eyes on her face when she crossed her arms over her ample bosom. He was a man after all, but the last time his normal reflexes had dropped his gaze for the barest of seconds, he’d been slapped in the back of the head hard enough to make his ears ring.

He had to admit there were days he worked harder than others to remember why he kept her.

You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Mr. Alexander. She let out an annoyed tsking sound, and with a shake of her head, she started around the room, straightening whatever did not meet her OCD tendencies. Considering he hadn’t touched a thing other than his desk and his files since the last time she’d cleaned up, he watched her in vague amusement. You are not a young man anymore.

Nathan pushed his executive chair back, untangling his long frame from his uncomfortable position, and raised his arms in a bone-popping stretch. He was thirty-four. Not exactly an old man. Keep sweet talking me, Ms. James, and you won’t see your next raise for another year.

The battleax didn’t even blink as she came around his desk to start gathering up discarded coffee cups. You make that threat weekly, sir. She tossed the used cups into the trash, then grabbed him by the tie and pulled, bringing him to his feet. You need to shower. You have dinner with Rhiannon in an hour.

That’s tonight? He let out a frustrated sound, and dragged his hand down his face. I’m going to need a drink. Or maybe five.

She nodded, and gave him a shove toward his executive bathroom. Already ordered you an extra strong pot of coffee. It will be here when you get out of the shower. She sent a disdainful, pitying look toward the plants scattered around his lake-sized office in various stages of dead and dying. Poor things. Why your dotty aunt insists on sending them, I will never understand. You don’t appreciate them. Sighing, she plucked the hand-written note out of his newest exotic gift and rested it on his desk. Do not forget to call her before you leave for the night.

He nodded as he shut the bathroom door behind him. He stripped out of the suit he’d had on since sometime around dawn, and since it didn’t look like he was going to have time to work out at the ninth-floor gym, he dropped to the floor and did a quick cycle of one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups.

Because sleeping—or not, depending on what he had coming up—at work was a common thing for him, he had a closet built off the bathroom, with an entire wardrobe in it. Everything he needed was in it from suits, to tuxedos, to workout clothes, to jeans and sweatshirts. The closet was a necessity. It could be days sometimes before he made it back to his penthouse.

He sneered. The penthouse was another necessity. Despite the fact he ran a nonprofit and was expected to forgo a salary, he was expected to not be destitute. And by non-destitute, it meant throwing lavish parties in his home up to the high society standards of his wealthiest donors.

He pulled a suit out of the closet without looking. It could have been ten years old, or it could have been brand new. He never paid attention enough to notice. Maggie made a comment once, when he’d first hired her and put her in charge of the credit card he used solely for his suits, that a few of them were worth more than what she’d made in the last year. He’d come close to drinking himself comatose that night, and she’d never mentioned it again, or allowed him to see a single receipt or statement.

When you’d grown up on a steady diet of stale bread, moldy cheese, and the back of your father’s hand while your mother busted her ass working two back-breaking labor jobs, knowing the price of one suit could have fed her for months was sickening.

Once he was dressed, he shoved his fingers through his damp hair and stepped out of his bathroom. There was a fresh steaming pot of coffee on his desk, next to whatever exotic plant his batty Aunt Mellie had sent him this time.

Not in a hurry to leave, he poured himself a cup of coffee and grabbed the note his aunt had sent. Knowing her, she knew what date it was, and had sent him some kind of supposed-mythical flower to cheer him up. He snorted. It was going to take more than a pretty silver and white plant to get him through this dinner. While he and Rhiannon had broken off the engagement more than two months ago, tonight would have been their wedding night.

Apparently, since he’d been the one to call things off, it translated to him taking her for dinner, while listening to his failures for two hours while stone-cold sober.

Leaning back against the floor-to-ceiling window, with his back to the Chicago skyline, he ripped open the notecard his aunt had sent with the flower.

Nathan,

Some things that are broken were never meant to be whole. And sometimes, taking care of something else puts the pieces back together. Tonight, your life begins again. Take her home with you. Cherish her, and she’ll love you forever.

Don’t screw this one up.

Aunt Mellie

Nathan stared at the handwritten note for a long moment before he let out a frustrated snort, and tossed it into the trash. Great. Aunt Mellie thought his destiny was a plant. Maybe it was time to see about having her mental stability checked out.

He reached over to flick off his desk lamp, and noticed the exotic plant was starting to bloom. His eyes narrowed, he straightened, watching as the long, striking petals unfolded, stretching into the steam of the coffee still sitting next to it. It wasn’t until the flower had completely unfurled that he realized something was inside of it. He turned the lamp back on and leaned forward, squinting as he tried to figure out what he was looking at. It was almost like...

Wings?

This was a first. Sure Aunt Mellie had spiked the note with something to make him hallucinate, Nathan shook his head and reached a finger out, ready to poke whatever was perched in the center to see if it moved, when the thing took flight.

Nathan stumbled back, landing hard in his executive chair as what looked like part butterfly, part dragonfly fluttered directly in front of his face. He blinked rapidly, but the longer he stared, the clearer the image of what fluttered in front of him became.

Christ Jesus, he was looking at a fairy. Not the fat, ugly, terrifying kind from ancient myths, but a tiny, beautiful fairy that couldn’t be as big as his thumb. Silver hair hung in waves down her back and around her wings, while tiny scraps of see-through silver covered the important parts of her ridiculously small body.

He shook his head as she dove toward him suddenly, jabbing him in the nose with her finger. At least he thought it was her finger, it could just as easily have been her fist. Either way, her face was one of pure, mutinous, furious female.

After five years with Rhiannon, it was a look he was quite familiar with.

He started to raise his hand until he saw her flinch away, and he realized how big his hand must seem to her. He lowered it, and just shook his head again, trying to convince himself he was hallucinating. Maybe saying the words would help. You’re not real.

She started chattering at him, her hands flying in emphasis to whatever she was saying almost as quickly as her wings were moving. She finally threw her small hands in the air and distinctively pointed at him, before turning around and pointing at the flower.

I don’t know what you’re trying to say, he finally said, giving up trying to understand her. You would think someone who was clearly a figment of his imagination would have better charade skills. He glanced down at his watch. It doesn’t matter. You’re not real, and I have to go.

Scribbling a note to Maggie to schedule him a check for full neurological workup, he shot the fairy one last look and headed for the door.

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Katenia of the Lillie Valley clenched her fists, tapping her foot on an imaginary floor, before letting out a sound of pure frustration and shot in front of him. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, willing the stubborn beast of a male to understand that she needed to go home. When he ignored her and just side-stepped her, heading for the door again,