Dear Readers: Back at the Mega Bretania, the elevator's whisking Cloe to the fancy rooftop restaurant for her dinner date...

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Scene 6: Sweet

A.D. 2015

Her heart was downstairs in the lobby, her soul awaited on the rooftop, and her mind… her mind? What mind? That had apparently been lost some time ago.

If any of her senses were intact, there was no way that she would be experiencing any of this now. Going to meet the main character of her soul’s most precious creation—a fantastically fictional prince—firsthand. In person. In the flesh. For real? Yes, for real, and apparently for dinner at a fancy restaurant on the roof of this hotel.

Just after having stumbled into the marble statue, in this same hotel. The man who stirred a million lifetimes’ worth of feelings in her silly heart. By some stroke of serendipity, their two souls had collided twice in one month. On the other side of the world, this time around.

Well, then again, the man was married, Cloe reminded herself. Of course he was, to a Barbie-doll-beautiful blonde. At least that was a stark dose of reality, amidst what otherwise had to be a dream. Hammering home into her heart the fact that she had to forget about Mr. Campion, forever and completely. Even and especially when she knew she never could.

The golden-paneled elevator chimed upon arrival, doors sliding open slowly to remind her where she was. At this rate, she would not have been surprised if she’d been elevated straight into the stratosphere. Willy Wonka style or whatever.

What a willy-nilly, wonky whirlwind her world had become…

“…reservation?” chirped a hostess with a delicate Greek accent.

Cloe had only caught the last word of whatever the woman had asked. Luckily, that seemed enough to comprehend the question. Her boggled mind started to cobble together an answer. “I…”

And then her gaze caught two new moons, looking her way from a table nearby: the ebon orbs of Eldor’s eyes.

She gulped. Her train of thought derailed upon the instant.

The hostess cocked her head. “Are you meeting someone…?”

Cloe nodded quickly. “Yes. Thanks,” was all she could manage to utter, without making more of a fool of herself. She strode, with every ounce of confidence that she could summon, across the restaurant, toward the prince who had no place existing on this earth.

Damn—he looked even more otherworldly, by the sultry glow of table candles elegantly ensconced in frosted glass. By the Athenian evening, bathing him in the gold of a soon-to-set sun and the silver of oncoming stars. Somehow, this one man seemed to absorb and reflect all that glamorous light all at once. Leaving none to spare for anyone else in sight. A shame, thought Cloe as she settled in her seat—she could use some flattering lighting for herself right about now.

He smiled, as she sat down. “You came,” he declared.

In more ways than one, at the sight of him. She screened the smutty thought behind a prim and proper smile. “Did you doubt I would?”

“Yes.”

Her heart skipped a few hundred beats.“Well, I doubt that…”

“Why?” he asked, the tilt of his head suggesting sincere curiosity. Even though that was of course impossible. Wasn’t it obvious? Him being him, in all his glory, and her in all her lack thereof?

Cloe blinked. “Because I figure you’ve looked in a mirror before.”

He laughed a silent laugh, eyes lowered for a second, then upraised to meet her dazzled gaze. “You’re very sweet.”

Sweet mother of Zeus, if this man complimented her again, in any way, she swore she would implode…

“I really did, though,” he maintained. “I had thought you might have better things to do.”

A gasp of a giggle burst past her lips. “Better?”

His head dipped in a steady nod. “You said you’re in Greece to write, yes? For a travel guide?”

A busboy came by to ask whether they would like sparkling or still. Eldor motioned to her to decide; she could tell that the gesture was genuine. What a gentleman. Too bad restaurants in Greece never served water for free—as the previous year’s travel-writer had advised her earlier—so Cloe couldn’t choose tap, to spare him the expense on this sure-to-be-first-and-last date.

“Still, please,” she requested. Plenty of bubbles were already buzzing all over her insides, besides.

Eldor stared patiently at her as soon as she’d chosen the water. So apparently he really was interested in her answers to his questions about her summer job. She couldn’t quite make sense of that, but she supposed that it would be more graceful to answer them anyhow.

“Yeah. I’m here for a couple of months, to research and review hotels, hostels, tourist attractions, and all of that good stuff.” All of that good stuff? Eloquent, much? Graceful had gone down the drain…

“That sounds awesome,” he commented. The ‘awesome’ rolled adorably off of his epic lips, since a prince from a fantasy storybook typically wouldn’t use a word like that. “And restaurants too, I hope?”

She smiled. “Yep. Though I don’t think I can feature this place in the guidebook,” she admitted, glancing out across the sea of crisp white tablecloths and sparkling wineglasses, some of their vintage contents probably costing more than her entire summer budget. “We write mostly for backpackers and broke students, much like myself.”

“Oh, I see—well, I do hope this isn’t a waste of your time, then…”

Thank goodness she’d already swallowed her first sip of water, or else she’d have spluttered it out across the table onto his flawless face. “You can’t be serious, saying things like that…”

His dark eyes deepened, just a bit. Which made them even more ridiculously radiant. “I wouldn’t joke about the value of your time.”

That was exactly what Prince Eldor of her book would say, to a plain wench with self-esteem issues. Cloe bit her lip, to hold back against blurting out something like: How the hell did you leap off the pages of my trilogy and come to life on earth? And once you did, why the hell would you spend any second of that life on earth with me?

She was saved by the waiter who swept in to take their order. Cloe opted for the first thing she found on the menu that she could pronounce without stuttering. Some sort of pasta dish, which she happily noticed was the cheapest of the entrées. Eldor’s selection sounded meaty and manly and sophisticated. Just like his fine-ass self.

“Vegetarian?” he inquired as the waiter left, apparently having noticed that she’d chosen one of the few non-carnivorous items.

Cloe shook her head. “No, but I do tend to like vegetarian food. Carbs and cheese are my main food groups… those, and sugar.” She had surprised and scared herself a little bit, with this level of casual honesty that did not exactly help to put her classiest foot forward.

Eldor smiled. “Got a sweet tooth? Then we’ll have to get dessert.”

Seriously? He was extending the duration of the date, when she was carrying herself like such an awkward idiot? She had to give him a way out, if he was trying to be nice. “Oh, we don’t… have to do anything…”

“I’d like to. If you would,” he answered without hesitation.

And she went into cardiac arrest.

She then noticed the woman at the table beside them: a skinny thing with strawberry blonde hair, which she was twirling like a madwoman around a spindly finger while shamelessly gawping at the ebon-eyed studmuffin. She clearly came from money, judging by her jewelry—well, either came from money, or was doing a fine job of draining it from someone. Most likely the poor guy with a premature potbelly seated across from her. Cloe could hardly blame the woman for wondering how Eldor’s washboard might compare to that paunch.

Eldor, for his part, seemed to have had enough of the unabashed ogles. He finally turned to look at the stranger, with a stern and sober glare that made it quite clear how uninterested he was. She was instantly shamed into refocusing on her own rotund date.

“So,” he sighed, gaze fixed on Cloe once again, “I’ve told you my name—care to share yours?”

She hadn’t even realized that it hadn’t yet come up. “Cloe. No ‘h’,” she replied. As if he needed to know how it was spelled…

He cocked his head, hotly. He most likely could not do anything un-hotly. “I’ve always liked unconventional spellings of names.”

Ugh. Every line of his was straight out of a script. She had to wonder whether she was an unwitting walk-on in a soap opera right now. Well, walk-ons weren’t supposed to speak… seemed like she’d screwed that up by opening her mouth, too many times tonight.

No harm in screwing up further. She had to carry on the conversation somehow, she supposed. “Well, you’ve quite the unusual name yourself. I don’t think ‘Eldor’ shows up in baby name books…” she quipped, in a sad attempt at humor or flirtation or whatever.

Cloe decided against mentioning the parallel with the name of her fictional character; that might make her sound crazier than she probably already seemed. So she opted for a more innocuous question. “May I ask how your parents came up with it?”

He set down the water he’d been drinking, swallowing it slowly. “They didn’t,” he stated. “I… chose it for myself, as a child.”

Well, that was intriguing… but something in his tone stopped her from probing further. Somehow, she could just tell that it would be a conversation for another time. Or that it would have been, in the alternate reality in which they had subsequent dates.

So she just nodded and smiled. “Nice choice.”

He returned the smile warmly. “Why, thank you, Cloe.”

His utterance of her name set off some cannons in her soul, but she survived. And she continued to survive, throughout the evening, even when he spoke her name a few more times. Even when his virtuous smile soaked up all the starlight in the sky and should’ve made her blind. Even when he asked her things and told her things that she had never thought a man would ever say to her, in all her life—things about her past, her future hopes, her thoughts and passions, every little thing that mattered, everything that made her… her. He seemed to care. Just why, she wasn’t sure. Either he cared, or he was putting on the most breathtakingly believable show on earth.

Then at one point, she saw him squirm. Shift in his seat the slightest bit. But she had seen it.

At the sight, the show was shattered, in her mind. “Oh…”

Eldor shook his head. “No worries; it’s nothing. My phone has just been vibrating every two seconds this past hour…”

“Ah! Then by all means—” Cloe motioned for him to take the call.

“Hell, no,” he refused with a ravishing smirk. “There’s a reason I shut off the ringtone. Vibrate is usually easier to ignore, but not at this rate—I’ll just have to turn it off. I’m yours for now.”

Oh holy Hades, those last four words were just too much. She couldn’t handle it. “Please, I insist,” she urged him, scooting back in her seat, lifting the napkin from her lap. “It’s probably important if the calls are coming in so often. Besides, I have to use the ladies’ room.” She didn’t. But she wouldn’t be the reason that he missed something important.

Eldor blinked as she stood up and started to leave. “Okay. Well… can I get your number?”

What the fuck? Had he really just asked that? She stopped in her tracks and stared at him for a second. Those weren’t the usual words to ask someone who was just heading to the bathroom.

She could feel the strawberry blonde woman staring at them, too. Shocked and disgusted that the handsomest man in the world would show interest in such a homely, unremarkable girl.

Eldor didn’t even notice, didn’t even care what silent complaints the sickened stranger had to make. His lip curved into a smile, one that somehow made his awkward question seem as if it had been perfectly suave. “In case you don’t come back,” he explained. “You seem a bit… uncertain about all of this. I wouldn’t blame you. But I’d still want to text you afterward, just to say that I had a wonderful time.”

Oh, wowwww. This guy took swoon-worthy Prince Charming to a whole new level. He seemed even more perfect right now than the hero she’d written, and she hadn’t thought that such a thing was possible. Cloe blinked and gave her digits, hoping that her befuddled brain hadn’t accidentally blurted out 123-456-7890 or something.

In the polished marble restroom, she stood at the vanity and stared blankly at her reflection, for what might have been seconds or centuries. She couldn’t tell time anymore. Hell, she couldn’t tell anything. Her bright chestnut eyes met themselves in the mirror, wondering whether this was the same image that Eldor saw across the table. And if so, what the hell he saw in her—evidently, whatever it was, no other guy had ever seen it, in her lifetime up till now.

Ever since adolescence, Cloe had always considered herself decent-looking enough to deserve some sort of love life. And looks weren’t everything, of course—she’d always tried to be a decent person inside out: fun, friendly, sweet, and such. Whether she succeeded in those efforts was another matter, but at least she always tried. As for sweet, Eldor himself had remarked that she was—surely that signified something. And she was accomplished: smart and successful, so far in her life, by society’s conventional standards.

Why hadn’t any of that ever counted for anything? Why had she never had one kiss, one date, let alone one real relationship, all through her life up to the age of twenty-one? She had always thought that she should’ve had some semblance of a love life…

But not this sort of love life. Not a date like this. As she opened the door to reenter the restaurant, Cloe silently scolded herself for even deeming it a date—in spite of everything tonight, she still couldn’t believe that it truly was. Surely Charliese had hired this guy or something. To assume her hero’s name and sweep her off her feet.

But what purpose could Miss Primor possibly have? And how long would the charade go on…?

The string of questions in her mind abruptly died as she approached the table.

He was gone.

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Any thoughts about Cloe & Eldor's first date?  ^.^

... Or about his disappearance?  o.o

Next scene we'll stick around in the Mega Bretania, hopping over to the Campions' honeymoon suite - for our first glimpse into Ryder & Lacey's married life! :P

And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)