Prologue

Clara did not believe in true love. Ever since her parents' messy divorce, Clara's beautiful dreams of happily-ever-after had drifted out the window. When she was little, she used to spend hours daydreaming and reading books about Knights in Shining Armor and Damsels in Distress. Her mother used to tell her stories every night about the fairies that lived in their garden. These fairy tales ran rampant through her imagination until one day when Clara's father, a stiff, businessman with a logical, down-to-earth mind, said to her, "There are no such things as Fairies!" After that exclamation, Clara ran to her room, sobbing, refusing to come out for several hours. However that was only the beginning. Her father, George, hated the way that her mother, Melanie, had raised little Clara.

"She will never be able to face reality because of all the stupid fairy tales you tell her every night!" Her father yelled at Melanie one night.

"I read fairy tales every night during my childhood, and look how I turned out!" Melanie cried back accusingly.

"An impractical, unrealistic, idealistic, naïve dreamer!" George responded, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her with every word, before roughly throwing her from him.

"Well at least I have an imagination, Mr. Pragmatist!" She exclaimed, poking him forcefully in the chest.

This type of argument lasted for months before they finally gave up, and filed for a divorce. The split was ugly: neither could agree or even compromise on settlement or custody, and it was a full 5 months and $25,000 in fees later before the divorce was actually signed. During this time, Clara's perfect view of the world faded, leaving her cynical and pessimistic. The fairy tales were packed into a box and placed out of sight, and the dolls were given away or thrown out. During her teenage years, Clara's approach to life lost its romantic tendencies. Although a very pretty girl, with shoulder-length light brown hair with a natural curl and bright blue eyes, grays and blacks filled her wardrobe. Her empty bookcases were filled with textbooks and depressing literature. William Faulkner and J.D. Salinger were featured prominently on her shelves, and an anthology of E.A. Poe lay on her bedside table. While she became a very good student and was very successful academically, she was rarely ever happy. After her mother died when she was 15 and she went to live with her father for the rest of high school, Clara made few friends and rarely spent time doing anything other than study. All her hard work had gotten her into Yale, where she attained a Master's Degree in Legal Studies. After graduating, she got a job as a legal assistant in Boston, and it was there that her tumultuous story began.

~0~

Nathaniel did not have time for love. Champion of one-night-stands, with a trail of broken hearts in his wake, Nathaniel was far too preoccupied with keeping his social standing far above everyone else to waste his time on love. He had no real love of his parents. His mother was a prominent socialite with no time for her son, but time enough to visit the spa every other day. His father could not care less. It was common knowledge to everyone, even his wife and son, that the time he spent in his office of Newport Publishing was not spent diligently working through mounds of paperwork. No, Charles Newport did not have time for his son either, so Nathaniel was left to grow up on his own, and as a dashing 26-year-old, it was likely that he would follow directly in the footsteps of his father. Nathaniel had attended Harvard—purely because of a donation from his father to the school—but he spent the entirety of his four years of wasting his father's money on sex, drugs and rock and roll. By the end of his sojourn at Harvard, Nathaniel had a rather large tab at the local bar and was well known across the town as a heartbreaker. His father, of course, funded all of Nathaniel's escapades, proud of the snippets of gossip that he heard every so often about his carefree son. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, he though with satisfaction. When Nathaniel graduated from college, he left the states to spend two years abroad with his two best friends: scotch and a well-padded wallet. Upon returning to Boston, headquarters of Newport Advertising, he was given a prominent job in his father's business, and left to squander his father's fortune. Nathaniel hired a diligent secretary to do all his work, and thus was able to spend the entirety of his time however he liked. He spent very little time in his office, but it was in this office at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, where our story truly begins…

Hope you liked it! Please R&R and I'll love you forever...

A-N