Very slowly Lila returned to herself, kissing his shoulder and his hair, touching an ear and his jaw. “I missed you.”
He lifted his head to look at her, clutching her skull. “There is no word for how lost I felt when I left you.” He touched her lips lightly with a finger. “I never knew I would love someone this way.”
Lightening his passionate words with a smile, he eased away from her to pull the quilt over them in the cold room. “I am told I must conserve my strength, but there is no doctor in the world who will prevent me from holding you.”
The movement showed Lila what she had been too swept up in the reunion to notice before—the ugly knot of scar tissue on his chest. She touched it, and a swooning sense of illness filled her belly. “It’s right over your heart,” she said.
“It would have been my heart,” he said solemnly. He pointed to a small, deep indentation. “Except for this.”
Lila looked more closely. The white scar was the elongated shape of the medallion she had given him. She smiled softly. “St. Christopher to the rescue once again.”
“Yes.” He smiled gently, then soberly said, “They did not think I would survive, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“It was a bad wound, through the lungs, nicked the heart. Hassid meant for me to die.” He lifted his eyebrows. “And he nearly succeeded. Even Mustapha thought I would die.”
A wisp of the terrible loneliness she had felt without him wound through her chest, and she took a long breath. “And you? Did you think you would die?”
He moved his hands on her arms, his eyes focused backward. “I don’t remember very much in the beginning. Except that I had promised you I would find you when it was over.” With a gentle hand he brushed her hair over her shoulder and let his palm linger there. “So, you see, you have twice saved my life.”
Overcome with relief, she let her head drop forward to his chest, feeling his life radiate into her mind.
He smoothed her hair gently. “It’s over now.”
“Is it, Samuel? No more calls to mysterious duty?”
“No. Not if you will agree to stay here with me.”
“Just try and get me out,” she said, and sat up, considering. Might as well tell him, she thought. She bit her lip. “After all, it would be nice for the baby to have both parents.”
“What?”
“I wore that chemise because pretty quick I won’t have much of a body to admire.”
He sat up, his black eyes unreadable. He grabbed her arms. “Are you telling me that you are going to have my child?”
Alarmed at his reaction, she simply nodded.
The transformation happened slowly. His eyes widened, softened, blazed. The long lines around his mouth eased, and his lips slowly opened in surprise. But there was no mistaking the expression when it finally formed. He laughed aloud, the sound powerful and rich, if somewhat rusty. “Lila! I thought you could not surprise me anymore!” He grabbed her, hugging her. “This is wonderful!”
Lila touched her chest. “For a minute there I wasn’t sure.”
He pulled back, looking into her face. “We’ll make arrangements to marry right away.” He jumped out of bed, then looked back at her. “Come, get dressed. We must tell Mustapha!”
* * *
Late that evening he took her on a tour of the house and the land surrounding it. As they walked in the gardens surrounding the house, he held her hand. “When I asked you what you wanted to do with your life, you asked me if I had sorted out my own. Do you remember?”
Lila looked at him and nodded.
“While I waited for this body to heal, I had much time to think.” He paused. “I thought of everything I have ever done, all the people I have known, all the work I thought was right for my hands.” He stopped. “Mainly I thought of you, Lila,” he said quietly in his cello tenor, his eyes trained on the neat rows of winter-dry growth before them. “I wondered what life would be best for us to share—what thing would give us both work that we enjoyed.” He glanced at her, a smile beginning to show around his mouth. Gesturing to the plants, he asked, “Do you know what those are?”
“I didn’t know they were anything.”
“They are grapevines.” He surveyed them with an attitude of mastery, the arrogance that now made Lila smile.
“What makes you think I’ll like growing grapes?”
He turned to her. “I will do that.” A puzzled frown flittered over his forehead, then disappeared. “I don’t believe I could not see before, something that ought to have been plain.”
Lila waited, a knowing smile on her lips.
“It was not physics I loved at all. It was the miracle of the light and the rain and the earth together making plump, beautiful fruit that in turn becomes one of the finest things a man can create.” He touched her face, inclining his head a little uncertainly. “I thought you might do well at blending the wine. If you do not enjoy it, at least there is room here for you to find other things that you will like.”
“I was teasing you, Samuel.” She grinned impishly. “I think it’s going to be wonderful to learn this. You can tell me all your grandfather’s stories about wine, and maybe we’ll come up with something completely new.” She glanced at the neatly tied vines in their straight rows. “What about peace, Samuel? You said it was important to work for peace. How can you do that here?”
“By loving you, Lila.” His eyes were somber and clear, no longer haunted or grim. With a hand he gestured to the fields. “By doing work to which I am suited.” He smoothed her hair from her face and kissed her gently.
She frowned, putting her finger on something that had been niggling her since she had first hugged him this afternoon. “Have you stopped smoking?”
Ruefully he lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t bear them now, somehow.” Abruptly he turned and tugged her hand. “Come. You haven’t yet had your surprise.”
Curiously she followed him from the fields, around a small outbuilding. “Close your eyes,” he said.
With a smile she did so. Samuel moved away from her, and she heard a sound like the billowing of a parachute. “All right,” he said, “open them.”
Lila did. There, shining like Samuel’s black eyes, was a replica of the Mercedes he had driven in Seattle. She touched her chest. “Oh, my.” She looked at him. “It broke my heart to see your car destroyed. You worked so hard. It seemed sad.”
“I knew it would.” He smiled. “And I admit, I was rather attached to it myself. It seemed a good thing to begin our life with.”
Lila turned to him, and it seemed that all around them light shimmered and leaped, glowing in pebbles below their feet, gleaming from the fins of the Mercedes, shining in Samuel’s face. In her belly, the child they had made danced in response.
She kissed Samuel. “I never dreamed I would ever be this happy,” she said.
He embraced her. “Nor did I, my love.”
Lila, overcome, clung to him, seeing the future spin out before them, a future filled with grapes and children, a future as miraculous and delightful as the finest of wines.
~~###~~
To my sons,
Ian and Miles.
May the Father of Light fill your cups
as he has filled mine.
BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL
Barbara Samuel (also known as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles, The Lost Recipe for Happiness (written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book How to Bake a Perfect Life was a Target Club pick in 2011.
Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.
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Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gardner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.
You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook. She also blogs regularly at The Lipstick Chronicles.
Visit Barbara on the Web!
www.BarbaraSamuel.com
www.AWriterAfoot.com
www.BarbaraONeal.com
~~~
BONUS MATERIAL
Please enjoy excerpts of some of Barbara's other Books:
Excerpt: Jezebel's Blues
Excerpt: The Last Chance Ranch
Excerpt: A Minute to Smile
Excerpt: Summer's Freedom
Excerpt: In The Midnight Rain
Excerpt: Breaking the Rules
Excerpt: Walk in Beauty
Excerpt: Rainsinger
Additional titles, including those from other genre, are listed at the end of the excerpts or click HERE to jump there.
Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.
JEZEBEL'S
BLUES
(Excerpt)
by
Barbara Samuel
Prologue
It wasn’t a big river. Mainly it ran sleepily and quietly through a sparsely populated stretch of farmland in east Texas. Fishermen angled for the catfish skimming its depths; young boys stripped and skinny-dipped in its pools; lovers picnicked on its banks.
Only a handful of old-timers remembered the old name for the sleepy river — a name murmured in hushed voices as stories were told of her power.
Jezebel.
Not the Jezebel River. Just Jezebel, a name reserved for women of lusty beauty and uncertain virtue. Jezebel.
There had only been one occasion in recent memory when Jezebel had awakened, like an aging courtesan, to remind those around her of the power she could wield. Only one life was lost that night, and as if placated by the sacrifice, Jezebel settled back into her sleep.
But the old-timers knew it was only a matter of time until she awakened once again to flash her eyes and spread her skirts.
Only a matter of time.
* * *
Chapter 1
Not even hell could be so dark. His car headlights poked white fingers into the heavy rain, barely penetrating. The wiper blades sluiced the water away at a furious pace. It wasn’t enough. Only square inches of the windshield were clear at any instant — as soon as the blades slogged away the rain, more fell to blur his vision once again.
He’d slowed to twenty on the back country road and was no longer intimately familiar with the twists of blacktop and the tiny bridges that spanned dozens of creeks. His fingers ached from gripping the steering wheel. He hunched as far forward in his seat as he could go, trying vainly to see.
Storm warnings had been broadcast on the radio, of course. But he’d grown up in these thick woods, amid the floods and endless early-summer rains. He knew the television and radio people were prone to exaggeration. It sold papers and commercial time.
The car slid on the road, its tires unable to keep a grip on the pavement. Eric swore as he fought for control. It made sense to ignore the news people, but he probably ought to have listened to the boy in grease-stained overalls at the gas station twenty miles back.
But there was his pride to consider. Nothing scared him like driving in the rain, in the dark. A night like this had once shattered his life, and he knew instinctively that he would be truly lost if he let the fear overtake him tonight.
Doggedly, he kept driving. A green sign with reflective white letters flashed in front of his lights. The words blurred before Eric could read them, but he knew what the sign said: Gideon, 5 miles. Almost there. With the back of his wrist, he wiped the sweat from his brow. For once in his life, he wished he’d paid attention — he’d have been a whole lot better off staying overnight in a motel in the last town. He sure as hell couldn’t do much for his sister if he drowned out here.
His headlights picked out a wash of water pouring over a bridge just ahead. A new row of sweat beads broke out on his upper lip and he eased his foot from the accelerator. Sucking in his breath, he touched the brake. Easy, he told himself. His weakened fingers, slick with sweat, slid on the hard, plastic steering wheel.
In spite of his care, the car hit the water with a hollow sounding thunk. Easy now. It wasn’t the first creek he’d forded on this nightmarish trip. Every little trickle in the county was brimming over tonight.
But this one had more than bubbled over. Eric saw the nearby pond with which the stream had mated, and the offspring of their union looked like an inland sea. Through the side window of the car, he saw an unbroken span of water reflecting the oddly misplaced light of a farmer’s barn.
The engine spluttered and coughed. Died. He slammed his good hand against the dash. When the car swayed under the force of the water that rose over its fenders, fear squeezed his belly hard. No time to brood.
He reached over the back of the seat, grabbing the heavy canvas backpack that held most of his earthly goods. Next to it was a guitar in a black case. He hesitated, fingers curled around the slim, plastic handle. A shiver of water shook the car.
He let go. It was no good to him anymore, anyway. It took a mighty heave to get the door open and then the water nearly knocked him down. Another flash of adrenaline sizzled over his nerves. Falling rain soaked his head and body in seconds. Shifting the backpack on his shoulders, he sloshed forward, head down. A big, broken tree branch swirled by him on the current.
Scared, man?
Damned right, he answered himself, putting one foot determinedly in front of the other. As he gained the other side of the bridge, the water gradually receded until it just covered the bottoms of his feet.
The little triumph pleased him. Only five miles to Gideon, to his sister, the only person in the world who mattered to him. And she needed him. It was bound to be easier to get to her on foot than in the car. So he ignored the beckoning lights of the farmhouse set back in the heavy trees and pushed onward into the thick, rainy darkness.
He trudged a mile. Two. He lost track. He crossed one stream, sloshing through water up to his knees, and when he got to the other side, he found the stream came with him, up to his ankles.
He thought about going back to the farmhouse, shook his head, and pushed on.
One foot in front of the other. Water obscured the road, making it hard to keep his bearings. He paused once to peer into the darkness, trying to mark familiar spots. There were none.
He reached into his backpack for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and slugged back a considerable mouthful. It warmed his chilled insides, calmed his racing heart. Thus fortified, he replaced the bottle, wiped water from his eyes and started out again. Not far now.
* * *
Celia Moon was making popcorn when the lights suddenly failed. For several hours she’d been trying to resist food — since the rains had set in several days ago, her main activity had been eating. But the pervasive thought of butter and salt and fluffy white corn had proved impossible to resist.
The sudden failure of the lights seemed like a scolding from on high — but not even heaven could make her quit now. There was enough heat left in the electric burner to finish the popping. The butter was already melted and the bowl was ready. If she had to sit alone in the gloomy darkness of the old farmhouse, reading by candlelight, at least she’d have some buttered popcorn to comfort herself with.
Working easily in the dark, she pulled the bowl over as the bubbling sound of exploding kernels slowed, then lifted the heavy pan from the stove and aimed as well as she could. There would doubtless be popcorn strewn
all over the table in the morning, but since she lived alone, what did it really matter?
She did need a light to pour the butter. There were candles in a drawer by the sink and Celia lit one. A piney scent rose from the plump green candle and mixed with the smell of hot popcorn.
The whole elaborate ritual was designed to be a distraction from the endless pattering of the rain on the roof and windows. Endless. “A hurricane caught in a holding pattern over the Gulf,” they had said on the news. Rain was forecast for tomorrow as well.
It was depressing. She’d been stuck inside the house for days, cleaning like a madwoman out of boredom when she should have been planting her first garden. A salad garden to start with, scallions and radishes and lettuce. Collards, maybe. Definitely popcorn. Her grandmother had always grown popcorn, sending big bags of it every fall to Celia in Brussels or Paris or Berlin, wherever her parents’ travels had taken them.
A sudden, urgent pounding on the front door crashed into the rain-framed silence. Celia started, sending butter spilling over the whole table. She scowled at the mess. The knock sounded again, louder this time.
Who in the world would be out on such a night? She headed for the door, shaking her head, then realized she couldn’t see anything without her candle and went back for it. The pounding rattled through the room again.
“I’m coming,” she muttered under her breath. She grabbed a handful of popcorn as she picked up the candle, then ran lightly toward the door, her candle flame bobbing with her steps.
She flung open the door — and nearly flung it just as quickly closed.
The man on the porch was soaking wet. No, not just soaking. Dripping. Awash. Streams flowed from the pack on his shoulders and from his hair. A cut on his lip was bleeding profusely, and he was panting. “I — got — stranded,” he managed to say, and stumbled forward, catching himself on the doorjamb.
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