Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection Read online

  He couldn’t believe how much of a hole it had left in his life, a gaping wound that even a kind, motherly stepmother would have had a hard time filling. But adding Vivian to his life had been less like putting a band-aid on a bleeding artery, and more like taking a chainsaw to a limb or two. He hadn’t realized how much he had longed for someone who would be gentle with him, someone who would attempt to fill that horrible gap.

  Until he met his maternal grandmother.

  “You’ll have to go diving with me instead of just snorkeling.” Andrew took a seat next to Gretel on a chaise chair, handing her some sort of drink with an umbrella in it.

  “I don’t know how to dive.” She sipped the fruity concoction, settling herself in her own chaise, soaking up the sun. Her creamy skin was already turning pink.

  “Gretel, you should put on more sunscreen,” Hans warned, inwardly groaning at the situation he had created when Andrew offered to spread the creamy lotion on his sister’s pale skin. She accepted his help willingly enough—too willingly, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. There had been plenty of boyfriends in Gretel’s life, and Hans had been part of many a plot to get Gretel out of the house on a date their stepmother didn’t know about. So why did Andrew bother him so much?

  “Oh, I can teach you how to dive,” Andrew assured her, his big hands smoothing lotion down Gretel’s slender back and waist. She was leaning forward, looking back at him through a curtain of long, red hair. “You can see so much more wildlife—minke whales, sea turtles, unicorn fish, thresher sharks—”

  “Sharks!” Gretel exclaimed, her spine straightening.

  Andrew chuckled. “You’d be safe with me.”

  “The water is so warm.” Gretel began lathering sunscreen over her long legs and Hans watched Andrew’s hungry gaze follow his sister’s massaging hands. “It’s like bath water. So amazing.”

  “Wait until tonight,” Hans interrupted, going over to his sister’s chaise and sitting down at the end by her feet. “We’ll have a light show.”

  Gretel frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Noctiluca Scintillans,” he replied, grinning at the way her nose wrinkled in confusion.

  “The whatsis?” Andrew inquired, looking none too happy about Hans’s intrusion.

  “Noctiluca Scintillans,” he said again. “They’re a bioluminescent species of dinoflagellate.”

  Gretel sighed. “Can you speak English?”

  “It’s also called sea sparkle,” Hans explained. “They’re little organisms in the water that light up whenever they sense a threat or a predator coming near. I saw them last night—couldn’t sleep. A boat this size moving through the water leaves a trail of light for miles.”

  “Really?” Gretel perked up.

  “Oh, sea sparkle.” Andrew rolled his eyes at Hans’s technical explanation. “Yeah, you’ll like it, Gret.”

  “Isn’t my grandson brilliant?” The sound of his grandmother’s voice made Hans look up in her direction as she came out onto the deck. She was an old woman, probably in her late-seventies, but she moved with a grace he had recognized almost immediately as his mother’s. She had the same warm smile and hands and he couldn’t help softening toward her, in spite of his initial wariness. She smiled down at him, ruffling his wet hair. “You’re going to be a brilliant scientist.”

  “He is a brilliant scientist,” Gretel insisted, and Hans noticed that wary, speculative look in his sister’s eyes. She hadn’t taken to their grandmother the way he had, but he knew she would come around in time. How could resist the woman’s sweet smiles and kindness?

  “Aw, girls, don’t fight over me.” Hans grinned, moving to pull a chair over for their grandmother before her bodyguard could do it. She had two of them—Andrew was just one. The other was an even bigger, broader fellow named, of all things, Double, a nickname used in lieu of a real name everyone, including Double, had probably forgotten. When Gretel had asked him, “Why Double?” he’d rubbed a big hand over the top of his dark crew cut thoughtfully before answering, “Probably because it rhymes with trouble.”

  Double stepped back and let Hans help his grandmother into her chair, making sure she got settled before taking one of his own.

  “You kids look like you’re having fun,” his grandmother noted, accepting the bottled water that Double brought for her. Andrew seemed to have other duties, including more of the day to day runnings of the big yacht, but Double stayed by his grandmother’s side, always a step behind her, waiting, a lurking shadow.

  “It’s okay I guess.” Gretel leaned back in her chaise, putting on a pair of sunglasses to hide her eyes. “But I’m a little homesick.”

  Hans gave her a pointed look, knowing better, and Gretel backpedaled some, explaining, “I mean, I miss my father.”

  “But Andrew has been showing you around the yacht, hasn’t he?” Their grandmother smiled, her gaze falling onto her young assistant. “He’s a very entertaining gentleman.”

  “Everyone’s been very sweet.” Gretel shrugged, closing her eyes and leaning back, a way to excuse herself from the conversation. Hans felt angry and a little embarrassed at her attitude. Why was she being so ungrateful? That wasn’t the sister he knew.

  Hans tried to make up for it. “So grandmother, Drew was telling us that you’re the largest candy heiress in the world.”

  The old woman nodded, sipping her water and smoothing the seam on her dark slacks. “It’s true. There are a few other candy conglomerates that have merged over the years and threatened to surpass us, but it’s hard to compete with our numbers. If Willy Wonka really existed, we’d crush him.”

  Hans laughed at her vernacular, at the thought of this sweet, old woman crushing anyone.

  “We started mostly as a good, dark chocolate company based here in Australia actually,” their grandmother went on, shading her eyes and then accepting the small umbrella that Double opened up and placed in her hands. “My father expanded the market into Europe and even Asia, before taking on the biggest prize of all—America.”

  She leaned toward him, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Americans are candy whores, you know. It’s true—much more gourmand than gourmet. They like it sweet and simple. The sweeter the better. They turned their noses up at the true delicacies we produced. We didn’t hit it big in America until we started really selling sugar.”

  “What do you mean?” Hans asked.

  “Americans drown their sorrows in sweetness. They numb their pain with it. They dissolve their sorrows in it. People believe the world’s worst addictive substances are illegal, but it isn’t true. The cigarette companies were sued for putting a known addictive substance into their product, but no one touches us.” She laughed, her eyes bright. “Sugar is the true white powder of the masses.”

  “And you’re profiting from it?” Gretel frowned at her grandmother, inserting herself into the conversation.

  “Someone has to.” Their grandmother shrugged. “We still make our delicacies, of course, but our largest demand is for Big Sugar. Still, even as large as our empire is now, I believe my father couldn’t have foreseen our biggest seller. In the end, most of our profits will probably come from our actual sugar cane crops.”

  Hans looked at her, surprised. “You actually grow the sugar cane you use?”

  “Of course. We’ve genetically modified it over the years to grow bigger—and, of course, sweeter.” She laughed. “But now…well, we’re on the verge of something that will make sugar cane so high in demand it will push our profits into the stratosphere.”

  Gretel lowered her sunglasses so their grandmother could see the disapproval in her eyes. “This isn’t enough for you?”

  Their grandmother looked at her fondly. “I just want to have something to leave my heirs, so they can pass the family business on to their children, the way my father did to me.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t pass it on to our mother first.” Gretel stood, grabbing her towel. “Dr
ew, would you like to get some lunch?”

  “Sure.” He took her by the elbow and they sailed by, Gretel ignoring the look Hans was giving her as she passed.

  “She’ll come around.” Their grandmother sighed, looking hopefully after her granddaughter. “Hans, I have something I’d like to show you. Would you come with me?”

  He followed her, and Double followed both of them. The main deck of the yacht, actually the middle deck, contained all of their sleeping suites, a dining room where they ate dinner together, a huge room with a bar and a dance floor that Hans assumed was for parties, as well as the captain’s suite, just behind the wheelhouse. His grandmother had invited him to the upper deck where her private suite was planked in deep mahogany, the floors a thick, white Italian marble. The whole suite looked out onto the ocean with large bay windows, and it contained an office, Jacuzzi and sauna, home-gym and even a private kitchen.

  But Hans had yet to be below-deck, which is where they were headed now. His grandmother was agile for her age, her walk brisk down the narrow hallways. Down here was the main kitchen and pantry, the crews’ quarters, the laundry room, the main workings of the big boat. Hans was curious, looking around as they passed and his grandmother pointed out the lower deck’s features.

  “I had this made especially for you, Hans.” She stopped at a door with a small square window at the top, but he couldn’t see anything through it, pulling out a key from her slacks. Glancing over her shoulder at Double as she unlocked it, she murmured to him, “Wait outside for us please.”

  Hans followed her, surprised by her order, because Double followed her everywhere, even sleeping in a small cabin at the front of her private quarters. Andrew had his own suite somewhere on the main deck down the hall from his own.

  “What…is this?” Hans asked as his grandmother flipped on a light overhead. The room was small but adequate and outfitted with more scientific equipment than he could have wished for in his wildest dreams.

  “It’s your laboratory.” His grandmother smiled at his jaw-dropping, eye-popping response. “Of course, it isn’t come free, exactly.”

  Hans surveyed the little lab, his mind boggling at the cost invested. “What do you mean?”

  “I have a project I’d like you to work on for me,” his grandmother admitted. “If you’re interested.”

  He looked at her, curious. “What’s that?”

  “Did you know that sugar cane can be used as a renewable energy source?” she asked, watching him inspect the microscope closest to him.

  “Sure. It’s one of the cleanest burning possibilities to create bioethanol, far above white rice or even corn,” he replied, impressed by the microscope’s magnitude. It made the one Gretel had gotten him look like a child’s toy. “It’s one of the only truly renewable energy sources, because even the waste from fermenting it makes its own biofuel. Potentially, it could reduce gas emissions by seventy-five to ninety-five percent, at least compared to fossil fuels.”

  “That’s right. You are such a smart boy.” She patted his cheek, her palm as soft as tissue against his skin. “The only problem with sugar cane is the fermenting process…”

  “Right.” He nodded. He’d taken several environmental science courses already, as it was a particular interest of his. “They use genetically engineered organisms, don’t they? But they’ve only figured out how to ferment some of the carbon sugars, not all of them. It slows things down a lot, I imagine.”

  “Exactly.” She looked so proud of him it made him blush. “If we could genetically engineer an organism that would ferment all, or nearly all, of the carbon sugar glucose in sugar cane, we could increase production by 50% or more.”

  Hans gave a low whistle. “That would push sugar cane into the no-brainer category for use as the number one biofuel worldwide.”

  “Yes. Yes, it would,” his grandmother agreed quietly. “Would you like to be the scientist who proved that to the world?”

  His mouth felt dry when he responded. “What do you mean?”

  “We have something close,” she admitted, lowering her voice, although the door was closed behind them and Double was waiting in the hallway. “Very close. But our scientists have run into a wall. You’re such a smart boy… I was hoping maybe you could take a look at our research for me?”

  Hans stared as she pulled out a thick tome, reams of paper, from under the lab counter. He was practically salivating at the thought. How could he possibly resist such an opportunity?

  “Sure, I can take a look,” he said, trying to sound casual but feeling far more eager than he was willing to admit.

  * * * *

  Gretel ducked back into the laundry room, hearing someone coming down the hallway. She knew Hans was down here somewhere and she was determined to find him. He’d been coming down to the lower level for over a week instead of staying topside with her, snorkeling and swimming and sunning on the yacht’s deck. He kept begging off, saying he was tired or didn’t feel well, but she wasn’t buying it. He felt fine—he was just up to something.

  She heard voices, a man and a woman talking. “It’s up here, I think.”

  Her grandmother had invited a boatload—literally—of people on board for an informal party. They were docked off the coast of Rockhampton somewhere, getting supplies, according to Drew. Gretel smiled in the darkness, a slow heat spreading through her at the thought of her grandmother’s personal assistant and bodyguard.

  After all, he was the biggest reason she’d agreed to the trip in the first place, she admitted to herself. She had found that talking to her “grandmother”—it was still hard to call the woman by that name or even think of her in that capacity—had brought her no answers and only more questions, but her stepmother and even her father had insisted that the two of them go on this little cruise with her, in spite of Gretel’s misgivings.

  Her intuition about the whole thing being a very bad idea had been so strong, she was nearly ready to stand up to them all, when Drew walked into the room and silenced her, at least externally. The man who had rescued her from the cold had turned out to be her grandmother’s right hand man, and he would be going on the cruise with them to Australia. With that information revealed, Gretel had then found herself in quite a quandary.

  It was his quick smile and that damned dimple that had done her in, she realized, waiting for the sound of the drunk couple to fade down the hallway before pulling open the laundry room door and slipping back into the corridor. There was something about him that made her knees weak and her tummy tighten every time they were in the same room. He’d been a fun companion, amusing and knowledgeable and attentive. And he’d kept her safely at arm’s length so far, in spite of her varied and many attempts to get closer. Much closer.

  She followed the curve of the hall to the right, finding the door without a label. It had a small window at the top but it was dark inside. This was where her brother had been running off to, working on some “project.” But what, exactly, was he working on? She tried the knob but the door was locked. Damnit. Gretel cupped her hands and peered through them into the window.

  “Well, there you are!” The sound of Drew’s voice startled her and she actually screamed, jumping away from the door, her hand raised to the level of her heart. “You’re missing all the fun.”

  “I got…lost,” she said, breathless, as he approached. God he looked good, wearing tan slacks and a button-down navy shirt, the color almost matching his eyes. He was a button-down kind of guy, clean-cut and handsome, but not in the breathtaking kind of way that might have made him really stand out in a crowd. It was his smile that did that, the one that he was giving her now, a little naughty and mischievous, like he wanted nothing more than to find some trouble to get into. The problem was, so far, his intentions hadn’t lived up to his smile.

  “It’s a big boat.” He laughed, taking her hand and leading her back the way he’d come. “Come on, let’s get back to the party.”

  They climbed the stairs to the main
, or middle, deck, finding themselves in the corridor that led to both of their suites.

  “I’m a little warm.” Gretel slowed as they reached her room, pulling out a key card. The suite doors locked the same way hotel doors did, with key cards that slid into slots. “I think I’m going to change.”

  Andrew hesitated. “Do you want me to wait?”

  “Why don’t you come in?” She smiled over her shoulder at him, taking a deep breath and pushing open her door.

  “All right.” He followed her, shutting the door behind him.

  “Have a seat,” she called, grabbing a dress off the rack and heading into the bathroom. Of course, there was nowhere to sit but the bed, which was big enough for four people and covered in some sort of down duvet. She still hadn’t gotten used to the luxury of this place, the breathtaking view, usually a vast expanse of ocean, out her window every morning.

  “Sheesh, and I thought my suite was nice,” he muttered. “You’ve got your own bar?”

  “I’m not twenty-one,” Gretel reminded him, and then cursed herself for doing so as she slipped her jeans down her hips. She’d left the bathroom door a little open so she could hear him and vice versa.

  “Actually, the drinking age in Australia is eighteen,” Drew called. “Mind if I indulge?”

  “Help yourself.” She undressed quickly, deciding to take her bra off as well as the sundress was strapless and didn’t lend itself to wearing one. She turned on the light, kicking her discarded clothes into a corner, before slipping the soft, flower-print dress over her head, pulling a long curtain of red hair out from underneath and giving it a quick combing before she was satisfied.

  “Did you find…” She trailed off as she came out of the bathroom, seeing Drew sitting with a drink in his hand, only she wasn’t really seeing him—she was seeing his reflection in the mirror across from the bed. With the bathroom door cracked open, he could have seen everything, and from the look on his face, he most assuredly had.