Greater Than Rubies, a Novella
A Novella
by Hallee Bridgeman
Inspired by the critically acclaimed Jewel Trilogy
Published by
Olivia Kimbrell Press
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Greater Than Rubies, a Novella inspired by the Jewel Trilogy
Copyright © 2012 by Hallee Bridgeman. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the author. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.
Cover Art and graphics by Debi Warford.
Some scripture quotations courtesy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Some scripture quotations courtesy of the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas- Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Woburn Library (Winn Memorial Library) image used with permission. (Woburn Library located at 45 Pleasant Street, Woburn, MA 01801
PUBLISHED BY: Olivia Kimbrell Press
ISBN-13: 978-0615744926 (Olivia Kimbrell Press)
ISBN-10: 0615744923
EBook ISBN: 978-1939603005 (Olivia Kimbrell Press)
Amazon ASIN: B00AV59ANM
Smashwords Edition Text/PDB Special
Special ISBN: 978-1301868896
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters and situations are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
THE JEWEL TRILOGY
he Jewel Trilogy
by Hallee Bridgeman
Book 1: Sapphire Ice, a novel
Greater Than Rubies, a novella inspired by the Jewel Trilogy
Book 2: Emerald Fire, a novel
Book 3: Topaz Heat, a novel
The Jewel Trilogy Anthology, all 3 novels & the novella in one book
Available as eBook or paperback.
Greater Than Rubies: TABLE OF CONTENTS
GREATER THAN RUBIES, A NOVELLA
GTR: COPYRIGHT NOTICE
THE JEWEL TRILOGY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PERSONAL NOTE
DEDICATION
GTR: PROLOGUE
GTR: CHAPTER 1
GTR: CHAPTER 2
GTR: CHAPTER 3
GTR: CHAPTER 4
GTR: CHAPTER 5
GTR: CHAPTER 6
GTR: CHAPTER 7
GTR: CHAPTER 8
GTR: CHAPTER 9
GTR: CHAPTER 10
GTR: CHAPTER 11
GTR: CHAPTER 12
GTR: CHAPTER 13
GTR: CHAPTER 14
GTR: CHAPTER 15
GTR: CHAPTER 16
GTR: CHAPTER 17
GTR: CHAPTER 18
TRANSLATION KEY
EXCERPT: SAPPHIRE ICE
EXCERPT: EMERALD FIRE
EXCERPT: TOPAZ HEAT
THE JEWEL TRILOGY ANTHOLOGY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HALLEE ONLINE
HALLEE’S NEWSLETTER
Greater Than Rubies: PERSONAL NOTE
A note from Hallee Bridgeman…
’M so very happy and honored that you chose to read this novella inspired by The Jewel Trilogy, my critically acclaimed Christian romance anthology.
I pray it blessed you.
Greater Than Rubies is set immediately at the end of Sapphire Ice book 1 of The Jewel Trilogy. It chronicles the engagement and wedding of Robin Bartlett and Tony Viscolli. I have been careful to reintroduce the characters readers originally met in the first book so that this story can stand alone.
I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment online either at Hallee the Homemaker or at Hallee Bridgeman, Novelist. Your feedback inspires me and keeps me writing.
May God richly bless you,
Greater Than Rubies: DEDICATION
For Kaylee Anne …
T fifteen, my daughter, Kaylee, read Sapphire Ice, the first book in The Jewel Trilogy. She fell in love with the book. As she read, she would enthusiastically discuss the characters and what she thought about the story with me. I remember the evening she sat on the couch across from me finishing up the book on her Kindle. I knew she neared the end, and I felt excited anticipation at the prospect of discussing how it all resolved with her.
Suddenly, she sat up and said, “That’s it?!”
I looked up and said, “What do you mean?”
“No wedding?” Kaylee waved her Kindle in the air. “You take me through all that and don’t give me the wedding? I need the wedding, Mom.”
So here it is, my darling daughter. This is my gift to you …
The wedding of Robin Bartlett and Antonio “Tony” Viscolli.
Greater Than Rubies: PROLOGUE
OBIN Bartlett stood barefoot on the white beach with water lapping at her ankles while her toes slowly sank into the sand. The sun beat down hot against her neck, and the wind blew her cotton skirt around her legs. She took the rubber band out of her braid and slowly loosened her long blonde hair, wanting to feel the strands blowing in the Florida breeze.
She felt Tony Viscolli approach before she heard him or saw him. Some radar inside of her perked up and she slowly turned, a smile on her face. The sun reflected off of his jet black hair, and she swore that his olive skin had darkened in just a few hours of sun and sand. He took off his sunglasses and she felt her breath catch at the look in his dark eyes.
Tony stopped in his stride and she could tell that he wanted to simply drink in the sight of her in such a rare happy, relaxed state. After a few heartbeats, her warm, welcoming smile and the sparkle in her sapphire blue eyes beckoned him closer.
“I can’t believe that it’s Christmas Eve,” she said. She ran her hands along her bare arms. Bare arms – in December!” Do we even know what the weather report for Boston is today?”
The second he stood close enough to touch, his arm snaked around her waist. She loved the feel of him against her.” I don’t check the weather there until I have to go back. And I typically avoid going back during the winter months.”
Forgetting everything but the bliss surrounding her heart, Robin asked, “Why?”
Tony squeezed her close before releasing her. “I don’t like to be cold.” He gestured to the mammoth house behind him. “I’m like a bird. I fly south for the winter.”
Robin heard a squealing sound of glee and shielded her eyes to look up at the house and see one of the adopted O’Farrell children diving off of the high dive into the pool. They had come to spend Christmas with Tony and, from what Robin could understand, they accompanied him every year. An older laugh chased the squeal, and Robin saw her sister, Maxine, go flying off of the high dive. Obviously, they were engaged in some sort of game of tag.
“It looks like you typically carry a flock with you.”
Tony grinned. He turned back to look out over the aquamarine water that stretched out beyond his private beach in the Florida Keys. He pulled her closer so that she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder as they watched a sailboat meander along the horizon.
“Do you row here?” She knew he rowed on the river water in Boston as a way to relax.
“Only in my gym.” He rested his head against hers and closed his eyes. “I windsurf here.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“I’ll teach you how tomorrow.” He squeezed her close then pulled away, running the tips of his fingers down her arm until their hands linked. “Wa
nt to take a walk?”
“Sure.” She disengaged her feet from the sand and stepped in line with him. “I am so happy that you invited us here for Christmas. I love it here.”
“I do, too.” He gestured at the water. “God’s design is so perfect. It humbles me when I come here. It’s a place for me to come when I start feeling a little too full of myself, a little too big man on the campus. I come here and I look at this expanse and the gloriousness of perfection and remember that it’s all God, and it’s all about God.”
She stopped and smiled at him. “I love listening to you, especially when you’re talking about God.”
He turned slightly so that he faced her. “What do you like about me speaking?”
Admiring him in his cotton pants and white cotton short sleeved shirt, his skin dark in the sun, his eyes a rich chocolate brown, she felt the rhythm of her heart speed up. She suddenly wanted to kiss him, to keep kissing him, to never have to stop. She felt her tongue dart out, lick suddenly dry lips, as those images started popping up in her mind. “Well,” she said, stepping forward so that she could feel the heat of his body. “I love your voice. And I love your passion. And,” she said, feeling bolder than she had ever felt in her entire life, she reached up and put her hands on his shoulders, “I love the love in your voice when you talk about God.”
He put his hands on her hips. “You like my voice, cara?”
Grinning she leaned forward and ran her lips along his cheek, feeling for the first time ever, a day’s growth of stubble. “Especially when you say words like cara.”
“Oh?” His voice sounded suddenly thick. “You like Italian, eh?”
“Yes.” She skimmed her lips over his cheek, down his chin, and along his other cheek. “Very much so.”
He cupped her face in his hands and pulled her back just far enough to cover her lips with his own. He kissed her, drinking her in, tasting her. She felt as if she might just seep into his very soul. “How about this?” He asked when he finally tore his mouth from hers. His voice rang husky and thick in her ears. “Te amo con tutto il cuore e con l’anima.”
Robin looked into his eyes and saw the seriousness of whatever he was saying. She tried to pick through the words, find something that sounded familiar so that she could translate it. Did he just …?” Say it again, “she demanded.
“Te amo con tutto il cuore e con l’anima.” She started quaking inside of her stomach. His hands moved from her face down her neck until they rested on her shoulders. “I love you, Robin … with all of my heart and soul.”
The quaking left her stomach and radiated out to her limbs. With shaking hands she cupped his cheeks. “Tony,” she said, trying to talk around the huge smile on her face, around the nervous laughter bubbling up in her throat. “I realized I was in love with you the day of your party, but then Craig came and …” she stopped, not wanting to babble incessantly. “Let me try,” she said.
He cupped her hands with his and pulled them off of his face. Keeping one hand gripped in his, he stepped back a bit while her inexperienced tongue fumbled on the words. “Te amo, con tat, no.” she said, then gasped as he slipped the ring on her finger.
“Con tutto il cuore e con l’anima.” He finished for her. Trapping her eyes with his, he slowly descended until one knee rested on the sandy beach. “Marry me, Robin. Make my life complete.”
“I – I –” She couldn’t tear her eyes off the sapphire.
Tony’s face, always so stoic and guarded, could be read by anyone who saw it. He looked at her with naked need and tender hope. “I love you, cara. I don’t think that there was a moment in my life that made me happier than the day that you came to know Christ, the day that you gave your life over to the Lord. If you would do me the honor of being my wife …” He stopped and closed his eyes.
Holding her hand, he ran his thumb over the ring. “Let me love you in every way God commanded a man to love his wife. Let me treasure you, and abide in you, and protect you, and honor you.”
The quaking subsided. Peace flooded over her body, warmed her from the inside out. “Yes,” she said through the tears that fell unencumbered down her cheeks. He stood and their eyes came back to even again. She laughed and grabbed him and hugged him. “Yes, of course. Of course I’ll be your wife.”
He wrapped both of his arms around her and hugged her tightly to him, lifting her up from the sand and spinning them both around until he felt the wet surf beneath his feet. As he gently returned her to earth, his lips found hers and they kissed, standing in the sand with the water swirling at their ankles.
THE END OF SAPPHIRE ICE
Greater Than Rubies: CHAPTER 1
OBIN Bartlett walked into her church’s main fellowship hall and surveyed the crowd. People young and old, fellow congregates, had gathered on that second Sunday afternoon in January to celebrate the engagement of Robin and Antonio “Tony” Viscolli. Everyone brought a covered dish to create a pot luck meal of such amazing amplitude that Robin wondered if the table would bow under the weight.
She could hear the clanging of dishes in the kitchen and started to step in that direction, but Tony slipped his hand into hers and halted her forward progress. She turned and looked at her handsome fiancé in his navy suit, white shirt, and red tie, looking every bit the Italian businessman. He stood barely an inch taller than her almost six feet. She knew she complemented him with her blonde hair and fair skin. This morning she wore a blue sweater dress the color of her eyes, belted at the waist with a silver belt that matched her shoes. No one meeting either one of them would know that they grew up on the streets in the same harsh Boston neighborhood around where this very church stood. “This is your party, cara. Let them bless you. Stay out here and socialize.”
Leaning toward him so that only he could hear her, she whispered, “I’m not very good at that.”
He smiled, a smile that made her heart pitter-patter in her chest and made her fall in love with him all over again. He raised her hand and kissed it just above the ridiculously large oval sapphire and diamond ring on her left hand. “You’ll get better at it. You are positively beautiful and engaging. Everyone is looking forward to visiting with you.”
She had started attending the church just a few months before, but Tony had attended for years. He had entered the church as a desperate, starving teen years before, looking for something to steal and fence. Instead he had heard the Gospel message and ended up dedicating his life to the Creator of the universe.
Tony knew so many people in that room, and Robin knew a select handful. Still, he looked so excited to introduce her around and let her meet the people who mattered the most in his life, she let go of her feelings of insecurity and walked from group to group, table to table, meeting friends and the family members of friends, watching her future husband talk to even the people he didn’t know well with grace and with caring compassion. It was so easy to stand at his side and engage in conversation with everyone. Tony made it easy.
They worked their way through the room to the table of food and filled their plates. Tony, with his gold cufflinks and diamond pinkie ring looked out of place carrying a foam paper plate with a white plastic fork. Robin smiled as she sat in the metal folding chair next to him.
“There is so much food here,” she observed, looking at her plate and thinking she might have overdone it on the little bit here and little bit there strategy. “Everything looks so amazing”
“I love potluck dinners,” he said. “It’s almost like a treasure hunt.”
Robin laughed and laid her hand on top of his, gently squeezing. “That’s a good way to look at it.”
She dug into her food. She’d felt so nervous about today’s party that she’d been unable to eat breakfast that morning. As she finished the impossibly full plate, she eyed the crowded dessert table and wondered if she dared.
Tony saw her glance and winked. “I’ll go get you something. Chocolate?”
Robin leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I
shouldn’t but, yes. Definitely.”
As he walked away, someone gripped her shoulders from behind. Robin turned and found herself in the presence of both of her younger half-sisters, Maxine and Sarah. Maxine had glided up behind her.
“I’m so sorry we’re late,” Maxine said, setting her purse on the seat next to Robin’s. “Sarah’s church service ran way over.”
At twenty-six, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Robin was the oldest of the three half-sisters. Her father had spent her childhood in prison for trafficking cocaine.
Green-eyed Maxine was three years younger than Robin. Her nameless father had been a warm bed on a drunken night for their addicted mother. Only Maxine’s Native American features and straight black hair gave evidence to which of the many one-night-stands had fathered her. Maxine was currently a junior associate at a Boston advertising agency.
Petite Sarah had honey-colored eyes and wild curly auburn hair. Her father had committed suicide when she was just a baby. Robin remembered him as one of the only nice men who had ever come into her childhood life. Now twenty-years-old, Sarah was in her third year of college and her first year of nursing school.
After a horrible night when their mother and the latest boyfriend had fallen victim to murder, a family had adopted Sarah while Robin and Maxine landed in the foster system. The older sisters had no contact with Sarah until her fifteenth birthday. She now lived with Robin and Maxine while her older sister paid for her college education.
Robin eyed her watch. “That’s okay,” she said, “I’m so happy you could make it.”
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