A/N: This is my attempt at a modernization of Jane Austen's masterpiece, Persuasion. I hope you enjoy it. I do not own the plot and I've adapted most of the characters' names to suit modern society. Jane was much more brilliant than I will ever be. The title was inspired by an Audrey Hepburn quotation: "My own life has been much more than a fairy tale. I've had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties I've gone through, I've always gotten a prize at the end." Anna will be narrating much of the story except on the rare occasion when Alex inserts his nose.

Title: Much More Than a Fairy Tale

Author: Lia06

Summary: At the age of 19, Anna Eliot refused Alex Wentworth's marriage proposal. Eight years later, he's back in her life and she's not sure she knows what to do about anything anymore.

"My own life has been much more than a fairy tale. I've had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties I've gone through, I've always gotten a prize at the end." –Audrey Hepburn

Prologue: Dream as if you'll live forever…

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow." –James Dean

My mother died when I was twelve. But before she died, she told me that if I was ever in any need of motherly advice to ask Sarah Russell, my godmother and my mother's best friend. Mom trusted Sarah implicitly and she told me that she wanted us to do the same. But my then fourteen-year-old sister, Liz, disliked Sarah because my sister wanted to be the next Julia Roberts but Sarah was one of those actresses who were perfectly content to remain on stage and never even contemplate a jump to the silver screen. And ten-year-old Maya was too wrapped up in her own grief and sorrow to even consider the possibility of anyone as a surrogate mother or as a mother-figure. So I became the only Eliot girl who would ever even think of asking Sarah Russell for help. In fact, by the time I was 18, I trusted Sarah and her advice above all of my friends who were my own age. Was this a little weird? Yes, it was really weird and it was probably a little twisted especially considering that this is the woman who told me to break up with the love of my life and the most amazing guy I've ever met because he was "too poor and anyways, Anna, you're far too young to know if he's The One or not. Just grow up and you'll meet someone who will be better for you."

So at the age of nineteen, I broke up with Alexander James Wentworth, who was gorgeous, amazingly intelligent, a real gentleman, and someone who was definitely not the wealthiest person ever born. But he was a good guy. Alex and I met in Intro to Psychology our freshman year at the UC-Berkley. I noticed him because he had this amazing dark brown hair. He noticed me because I was the only girl who wasn't sitting there drooling over him and his amazing hair. And why wasn't I drooling over his amazing hair? That would be because I was too busy paying attention to the class. I was a bookworm and a Good Girl; I always did what I was supposed to do. If my father or one of my sisters asked me to do something, I did it because I always put other people's happiness above my own. I liked to make other people happy as much as I could. I'd always been a bit of a people pleaser as a child but after my mom died, I really went overboard. I just put myself second and put other people's needs and wants first.

Alex noticed this about me almost immediately and I can't stay that he approved of this particular "personality quirk." He kept telling me that I was a person and I needed to look out for myself. "It's all well and good to be selfless and help others but you have to make sure that you don't kill yourself along the way. You have to take time to treat yourself and enjoy life."

As usual, I ignored him because, like most people, I don't enjoy having my faults pointed out to me. I knew I wasn't perfect but I tried to be as good as possible. I liked making people happy. So we worked with each other's quirks and he did help me start to do some things that I wanted to do. For example, I started college wanting to be a doctor but I quickly changed my major to what I really wanted out of life. Since I was five years old, I'd known that I wanted to be a teacher. But I knew I'd make more money and would be able to do more good for my family if I became a doctor. My family needed money and I was determined to help them out in that area as much as possible. But Alex was right; I was born to be an elementary school teacher and I'd have died as a doctor. So I changed my major and set myself up for a life without medical malpractice suits. My father was broken-hearted because it would look so good on his resume if people saw that he had a doctor for a daughter. But once I graduated and started teaching in an intercity school district in Los Angeles, he realized that it would look good for him to admit that his daughter was teaching to preserve and protect the future of American education.

This brings me to my family. My dad is Wally Eliot; his full name is Walter Jameson Eliot but he prefers Wally because it makes him feel "youthful and vibrant," as he once told a magazine reporter who was writing a profile on my father's "fascinating career." Maybe you've heard of him; you might have seen one of his movies. When he was younger, my dad was the star of at least a dozen romantic comedies. He also attempted westerns and action flicks but he just couldn't pull those types of roles off. Even now, at the age of 65, he's still in movies, but mostly of the made-for-TV or straight-to-video/DVD variety. But he still thinks he's one of the greatest actors ever born. He keeps all of his acting awards on our mantel. In some houses, you'll see pictures of the people who live there, but not in our house; in house, you'll simply find a million reminders of my father's glory days. He also seems to believe that he is still a prime candidate for People's "Sexiest Man Alive" despite the fact that he's about thirty years older than the average recipient of that title. He lives in a world of delusions, a castle in the air of his own making.

My mother, Charlotte Elizabeth Radcliffe-Eliot, died of ovarian cancer fifteen years ago, in 1993. I was twelve and it broke my heart. I really don't have very much in common with my father; I'm more reserved and my mother was the only person in our family I was really close to or to whom I could really relate. My mother was a writer; she dappled in screenplays but her real love was for books. She always wrote about strong women who determined their own fates and didn't let the men in their lives control every aspect of their lives. Her heroines always had great careers but very full personal lives as well. I think a lot of her books, especially her later books, were back-handed insults of my dad and the life they had together. Her life was dictated by his and she hated it. She hated that if he was in Prague on a movie shoot, she couldn't just run off on a promotional tour for her latest book because someone had to stay with her daughters and raise them. In fact, I'm almost positive that if she'd lived, she would have divorced him after my younger sister, Maya, graduated from high school. Of course, Maya was about ten when Mom died, so she would have been married to Dad for another eight years. But that's neither here nor there, since she is dead, unfortunately. Mom never had much say in her own life despite her extremely successful literary career. She was born the daughter of Winston and Elizabeth Radcliffe of Boston and was raised in the world of high society. At the age of twenty-two, she married my father who was young, handsome, and knew how to manipulate words. A year and a half later, she gave birth to her first child and published her first book two months after that. Her life as Wally Eliot's wife was settled by Elizabeth's birth and her book, Fortune and Truth, made her an overnight literary success. She wrote ten more books before dying at the age of thirty-seven. Liz once joked that our mother had learned the lesson of James Dean; if you want to live forever, die young.

I also have two sisters; I'm the middle child, which Alex always said accounted for some of the weirdness in my relationship with my family. In all honesty, I think Alex blamed my family, especially my dad and my sister, Liz, for a lot of my personality quirks. Liz is my older sister; her full name is Elizabeth Rose Eliot and she's named after my grandmother Radcliffe, a very proper woman of Boston high society. Liz is not cut from the same cloth as Grandmother Radcliffe however much she might try to act like a lady of high society. Liz wants to be an actress; she's convinced that she's going to be the next Julia Roberts. The problem is that my sister is twenty-nine and it's hard to be the next Julia Roberts when you're twenty-nine. She's been in a few made for TV movies and every now and then she'll get a bit part in some movie or TV show; but she's never going to be the kind of celebrity she wants to be. Liz has long straight blonde hair, but the only thing that's natural about that look is the fact that it's long. Her blue eyes are natural, which I guess is usually pretty obvious; it's possible to change your eye color with contact but if you're going for the America's Sweetheart look, it's easier to keep her baby blues the way God gave them to you.

My younger sister has accomplished a bit more with life than Liz has. Maya Regina Eliot-Musgrove married Kevin Charles Musgrove at the age of 21 and was now the mother of two little boys named Joshua and Anthony. The thing you have to understand about Maya is that she was sent off to a boarding school in Switzerland about three weeks after Mom died and wasn't recalled home until the age of 18, at which point she started studying English literature and drama at UCLA. She was caught between a desire to follow in our father's footsteps or perhaps become an author like our mother. But then we met Kevin Musgrove at a charity event that Dad had dragged his daughters to so for the photo opportunity. The event was to raise awareness and funding for ovarian cancer, which is a cause that all of us really do support. But Dad had to make sure that there would be photos of the four of us floating around the world with the caption "Wally Eliot makes an appearance at the Third Annual Dinner for Ovarian Cancer Awareness with his three daughters, Elizabeth, Anna, and Maya. Wally's wife, renowned writer Charlotte Radcliffe-Eliot, died in 1992 of ovarian cancer." Well, the photos made their way around various magazines and newspapers and Dad was thrilled. And we met Kevin; Kevin and I went out on three dates, but in the end we decided not to pursue a relationship because he was convinced that there was another guy who I hadn't gotten over yet. Shortly thereafter, he started dating Maya and they got married in 2003. Joshua was born in 2004 and Anthony was born two years later. And I have to admit that my nephews are real lights in my life.

I've hinted at this a bit already but I'll be blunt about it; my dad has no clue how to manage money. He and Liz spend money like it is water but the thing is that they're starting to run low on that oh-so-precious commodity of life. My dad's lawyer and financial advisor, Tom Shepherd, has tried to explain to them that they simply cannot afford to keep spending money like they do and they need to find a way to either start saving money or make money. Unfortunately, they ignored him for so long that by April of 2008, Tom demanded that they move out of my dad's enormous estate in Malibu and find someplace less expensive to live. His concern was in part due to the fact that his recently divorced daughter, Penny Shepherd-Clay, and her two children had moved in with Wally and Liz, but were living there completely free of charge because Penny was Liz's new best friend. Tom knew that my family could not afford this expense, but he was having trouble getting through to the actors in the family.

So one Saturday in April, Tom arranged an "intervention" of sorts during which he, Sarah Russell, and I met with my dad and sister to "explain things to them," as Tom put it. Wally and Liz resisted us as far as they could, but when Sarah flat-out told them that they would lose the house if they didn't willingly give it up and find someplace else to live, they finally agreed to look for an apartment somewhere less expensive. Tom was going to help them find the apartment while Sarah and I found someone to rent Kellynch, my dad's estate, for a few years while they stabilized their finances. Furthermore, we explained to them that if Penny and her offspring were going to continue to live with them, Penny needed to start contributing towards basic household expenses. My mom had taken care of financial matters when she was alive, and after her death, Sarah and Tom had taken care of the family. When I graduated from college and got my own job, I got my own apartment closer to the school where I worked and asked Tom and Sarah to teach me how to manage my own finances. Five years later, and I was an independent woman with a solid stock portfolio and almost no social life.

But at least I was financially stable. How many twenty-seven-year-olds who teach first grade can claim that? But I'd invested my money wisely and spent carefully; I'd have a nice nest egg to retire on some day in the far distant future. Alex wouldn't be happy with me if he knew how I was living my life. He'd probably tease me into next week about it. He always said that I was too cautious about life and I needed to take more risks. But I always resisted him; maybe that's why I let him slip through my fingers. Maybe that's why I hold all men at an arm's length; I'm afraid of taking risks and going outside my comfort zone. Maybe I should see a therapist about this. I had a professor in college tell me once that based on what she knew of my family's history, she thought we all might benefit from some psychological counseling. She was probably right, but we'd never do it. We weren't that close as a family or that interested in maintaining any sense of family to actually open up our souls to anyone outside of our family. Wally and Liz needed each other and I made an effort to see them out of a sense of duty to Mom, but they didn't see the importance of maintaining relationships with Maya or me for anything other than social reasons. Maya wasn't very close to anyone in the family after the whole business of being shipped off to boarding school at the age of ten. But for some reason, she'd decided that she liked me and wanted to keep me around in her life. I think it had something to do with the fact that I could actually get along with Kevin and his family. And I could handle her children. I spent much of my free time at Kevin and Maya's house playing with my young nephews or at Kevin's parents' house spending time with his family. Not that I minded; the Musgroves are a warm, welcoming family. In fact, once the school year ended and Wally and Liz had moved, I was going to spend a few weeks with Maya and her family.

Three weeks after our "intervention," Wally and Liz moved to New York City to live in an apartment a friend of Wally's had given them a lead on. As it happened, Wally was starting production on a new movie called Christmas Dreams in July, and production was taking place in NYC, so everything was working out perfectly for him. Liz was going to be shooting a couple of commercials and I was pretty sure she and Penny would find plenty of people to shop and party with. Wally would keep busy with work and criticizing the people around him. Yes, I do call my dad "Wally." I've never had much of a father-daughter relationship with him and when I was fourteen or fifteen, we mutually decided that it would be easier for him if Liz and I just called him "Wally" because he didn't like being called "Dad." Apparently "Dad" makes him feel old, but he's more comfortable with his daughters calling him Wally. Whatever…he tells everyone including Josh and Tony, his grandsons, to call him Wally. I think he just doesn't want to age or at least, he doesn't want to admit that he's getting older.

A week after Wally and Liz moved Sarah and I found someone to rent the house from us. Kellynch's new residents were Admiral Harrison Croft, a recently retired naval officer, and his wife Sophia. Apparently, Sophia Croft was a writer; I'd only heard of one of her books, I'd read Under a Distant Moon and it was a pretty good book. It was a story about two people who loved each other but were separated by distance and their families' differing ideas of what love is. In all honesty, it reminded me of my mom in a lot of ways; I think that was mostly because Sophia Croft had a very blunt way of stating things, like my mom. The book also reminded me of Alex Wentworth because the male hero of the story lived in Greece and Alex was half-Greek. He'd actually lived in Greece for a while when he was younger because his mom was born there and wanted to give her children the opportunity to experience her native country.

We were leaving most of the furniture in the house and all of the books were staying there except the ones I wanted. Wally and Liz had taken all their movies but they didn't care about the books, not even the ones Mom had written. I had copies of all her books, so I didn't take them from the house, but it was still sad to leave them behind for strangers. As I walked out of the house the day before the Crofts moved in, a book sitting on the coffee table caught my eye; it was Mom's last book, Flight of Dreams. I picked the book up and opened it. The book was dedicated to "My darling Anna Clarissa, I named the heroine after you. Just remember what James Dean said." And underneath that was the quotation "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow." As I put the book down, I realized that message was a challenge from my mother. She'd died just before Flight of Dreams was published, but that quotation had been her motto throughout her life, especially when she was dying. And I'd been ignoring that message and avoiding risks and dreams for the past fifteen years because I was afraid.

I went home and packed my bags to go stay with my sister for a few weeks. The hypochondriac Maya was sick again and wanted me to take care of her and her family while she was sick. I was just looking forward to using her swimming pool and playing with my nephews. And then, I was going to reread Flight of Dreams and figure out if I could find a way to finally embrace my mother's legacy and overcome my fears.

A/N: Please review and let me know what you think I hope you like it.