by Nichole Van
“As well they should.”
“Additionally, you are a kind son to your mother. You send her and your stepfather funds when you are able. You visit regularly. Your four older sisters dote upon you, and you are godfather to at least one of each of their children. You are a tremendous favorite with all of your nieces and nephews. All of this speaks highly to the kind of husband and father you would be.”
After her disastrous betrothal to Lord Linwood last year, Belle was determined to not make the same error twice. She learned from her mistakes. Her mother and uncle would not browbeat her into accepting one of their suitors again.
If nothing else, eighty thousand pounds should purchase—negotiate—her a kindhearted husband of her own choice.
Lord Blake shuffled his feet. “I-I really am at a loss for words, Miss Heartstone. I am trying to decide if I should be flattered or utterly appalled.”
Belle sucked in a deep breath, her mouth as dry as the Sahara.
Stay strong. Argue your case.
She pasted a strained smile on her face. “Might I suggest siding with flattery, my lord?”
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Intertwine
House of Oak Book 1
James and Emme’s story and the first book in the House of Oak series.
Intertwine
House of Oak Book 1
The obsession began on June 12, 2008 around 11:23 A.M.
Though secretly Emme Wilde considered it more of a ‘spiritual connection’ than an actual full-blown neurosis.
Of course, her brother, Marc, her mother and a series of therapists all begged to disagree.
Thankfully her best friend, Jasmine, regularly validated the connection and considered herself to be Emme’s guide through this divinely mystical union of predestined souls (her words, not Emme’s). Marc asserted that Jasmine was not so much a guide as an incense-addled enabler (again, his words, not Emme’s). Emme was just grateful that anyone considered the whole affair normal—even if it was only Jasmine’s loose sense of ‘normal.’
Jasmine always insisted Emme come with her to estate sales, and this one outside Portland, Oregon proved no exception. Though Jasmine contended this particular estate sale would be significant for Emme, rambling on about circles colliding in the vast cosmic ocean creating necessary links between lives—blah, blah. All typical Jasmine-speak.
Emme brushed it off, assuming that Jasmine really just wanted someone to organize the trip: plan the best route to avoid traffic, find a quirky restaurant for lunch, entertain her on the long drive from Seattle.
At the estate sale, Emme roamed through the stifling tents, touching the cool wood of old furniture, the air heavy with that mix of dust, moth balls and disuse that marks aged things. Jasmine predictably disappeared into a corner piled with antique quilts, hunting yet again for that elusive log cabin design with black centers instead of the traditional red.
But Emme drifted deeper, something pulling her farther and farther into the debris of lives past and spent. To the trace of human passing, like fingerprints left in the paint of a pioneer cupboard door. Stark and clear.
Usually Emme would have stopped to listen to the stories around her, the history grad student in her analyzing each detail. Yet that day she didn’t. She just wandered, looking for something. Something specific.
If only she could remember what.
Skirting around a low settee in a back corner, Emme first saw the antique trunk. A typical mid-nineteenth century traveling chest, solid with mellow aged wood. It did not call attention to itself. But it stood apart somehow, almost as if the air were a little lighter around it.
She first opened the lid out of curiosity, expecting the trunk to be empty. Instead, she found it full. Carefully shifting old books and papers, Emme found nothing of real interest.
Until she reached the bottom right corner.
There she found a small object tucked inside a brittle cotton handkerchief. Gently unwrapping the aged fabric, she pulled out an oval locket. Untouched and expectant.
Filigree covered the front, its gilt frame still bright and untarnished, as if nearly new.
Emme turned the locket over, feeling its heft in her hand, the metal cool against her palm. It hummed with an almost electric pulse. How long had the locket lain wrapped in the trunk?
Transparent crystal partially covered the back. Under the crystal, two locks of hair were woven into an intricate pattern—one bright and fair, the other a dark chocolate brown. Gilded on top of the crystal, two initials nestled together into a stylized gold symbol.
She touched the initials, trying to make them out. One was clearly an F. But she puzzled over the other for a moment, tracing the design with her eyes. And then she saw it. Emme sucked in a sharp breath. An E. The other initial was an E.
She opened the locket, hearing the small pop of the catch.
A gasp.
Her hands tingled.
A sizzling shock started at the back of her neck and then spread.
Him.
There are moments in life that sear into the soul. Brief glimpses of some larger force. When so many threads collapse into one. Coalesce into a single truth.
Seeing him for the first time was one of those moments.
He gazed intently out from within the right side of the locket: blond, blue-eyed, chiseled with a mouth hinting at shared laughter. Emme’s historian mind quickly dated his blue-green, high collared jacket and crisp, white shirt and neckcloth to the mid-Regency era, probably around 1812, give or take a year.
Emme continued to look at the man—well, stare actually. His golden hair finger-combed and deliciously disheveled. Broad shoulders angled slightly toward the viewer. Perhaps his face a shade too long and his nose a little too sharp for true beauty. But striking. Handsome even.
Looking expectant, as if he had been waiting for her.
Emme would forever remember the jolt of it.
Surprise and recognition.
She knew him. Had known him.
Somehow, somewhere, in some place.
He felt agonizingly familiar. That phantom part of her she had never realized was lost.
The sensation wasn’t quite deja vu.
More like memory.
Like suddenly finding that vital thing you didn’t realize had been misplaced. Like coming up, gasping for air, after nearly drowning and seeing the world bright and sparkling and new.
She stood mesmerized by him until Jasmine joined her.
“Oooh, you found him.” The hushed respect in her voice was remarkable. This was Jasmine after all.
Emme nodded mutely.
“Your circles are so closely intertwined. Amazing.”
Jasmine turned the locket in Emme’s hand.
“What does this inscription say?” she asked.
Emme hadn’t noticed the engraved words on the inside left of the locket case. But now she read them. Her sudden sharp inhalation seared, painfully clenching.
Oh. Oh!
The words reverberated through her soul, shattering and profound.
Emme didn’t recall much more of that day—Jasmine purchasing the locket or even the little restaurant where they ate lunch. Instead, she only remembered the endless blur of passing trees on the drive home, the inscription echoing over and over:
To E
throughout all time
heart of my soul
your F
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Gladly Beyond
The Brothers Maledetti Romances
Follow the lives of three Italian brothers as they find romance in beautiful Florence.
Gladly Beyond
Book One of the Brother’s Maldetti Romance series
Prologue
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
—O
scar Wilde—
History would call him il Conte del Maldetto—the Damned Earl.
His descendants would call him ‘that damned idiot.’
For his part, Giovanni D’Angelo simply called himself desperate:
Desperate to preserve his family.
Desperate to win at any cost.
Desperate enough to seek a forbidden solution.
On a dark moonless night in 1294 A.D., Giovanni slipped through the eastern gate of San Gimignano, past the gurgling fonti and into the woods beyond. Silently making his way to the camp of the zingari—the gypsies.
Giovanni begged the old gypsy woman—la zingara—to grant his request: the gift of Sight. To see, hear, feel what had been . . . what would come. An unholy boon from her pagan gods.
“Knowledge. It is double-edged.” The zingara tried to explain in her broken Italian, firelight skimming her face. “You are sure?”
“Sì.” He nodded, eager and bright-eyed.
Giovanni did not understand her words. Not then.
The wrinkled zingara took her payment and performed the required ritual. Made the necessary sacrifice. Bestowed her gift on Giovanni and his heirs . . . forever.
Giovanni was reborn. Like birds on the wind, whisperings reached his ears. Tales of what his enemies had done, fleeting glimpses of the future.
With his newfound talents, Giovanni saved his family, outmaneuvered his opponents, crushed his rivals.
But all too soon, whispering evolved into vivid immersion. Giovanni constantly pivoted round, tracking invisible things—the past and future swirling about him.
The voices destroyed him in the end.
Not the sights nor the feelings.
No.
It was the never-ending noise.
Giovanni threw himself off the church bell tower at the age of forty-one. Raving mad.
Twenty-five years later, his son was found swinging from the southern city gate, foam and blood dripping from his mouth.
A generation after that, his grandson strapped himself to the front of a newly-invented cannon and lit the fuse.
And so it went. Relentless.
The gift passed from first-born son to first-born son. Each D’Angelo heir dying, usually by his own hand, before his thirty-fifth year. The gypsy’s gift splintering the mind.
The family tried to remove the gift from their bloodline, but later zingari knew nothing of the original power used—the secret lost to history.
It continued for seven hundred years. Until a more modern age arrived.
Another first-born D’Angelo sired a child.
But in the very instant of conception—that breathless moment when life combines and sparks anew—the unforeseen happened.
Life infused . . . not once.
But twice.
And then . . . split in half again.
Fracturing. Shattering.
Forever altering what had been.
One
Florence, Italy
2015
Claire Raythorn
I’ve always thought Italian cities are like guys I knew in college:
Rome—the hot frat boy I was dying to go out with (and I did, and it was awesome). But, turns out, everyone dated Rome.
Naples—Rome’s frat house roommate. The guy on no sleep and his tenth can of Red Bull. No one messed with him cause he knew people who knew people . . . catch my drift . . .
Venice—the dreamily gorgeous philosophy major. Brilliantly eccentric but exotic enough that no one quite knew what to make of him.
Milan—the second-year MBA student who was big on power-ties and power-lunches. Basically, the organized guy who held everyone else together.
And then there was Florence.
Firenze, to those who knew him.
Quiet and unassuming. When we first met, I wondered what all the fuss was about.
But Firenze . . . he was a subtle seducer. If I asked, he could talk for hours about art and history. But, generally, Firenze simply listened. Peaceful. Steady. Ready to shoulder my sorrows.
Firenze is the guy I never got out of my system.
Truth.
I took a sip of my hotel coffee and studied the huge Piazza della Signoria around me.
Classic Firenze.
Stately buildings squished around the perimeter, arched green shutters pushed open, looking out like so many eyes. Across from me, golden April sunlight cheerily danced across the ancient stone of the town hall—the Palazzo Vecchio. (Thirteenth century. Crenelated clock tower.)
Though still early, people filled the piazza. Retired couples nose-deep in Frommers. Rowdy school kids waiting in line for the Uffizi museum. African street vendors offering selfie-sticks for purchase. A line of Japanese tourists cut through, their guide holding a red umbrella aloft like a war banner.
My Grandma Adelaide had loved this city to distraction.
I did too.
In my mind’s eye, I could still see Grammy giggling with excitement over being in Florence for the first time. I had been fourteen then, convinced I would have her with me forever.
Grandmas are stodgy and old, she would say. Grammys are awards. Guess which one I am?
I blinked, biting hard on my bottom lip.
Why is death like this? It’s not enough to face loss once.
No. You have to bury your loved one over and over. Confront each place where she still feels so vibrantly alive.
I hadn’t known to mentally prepare myself for this pain before leaving my hotel today. To anticipate the pounding waves of raw grief. Grammy’s death was still new, and I was a novice to this form of sorrow. I had yet to learn its valleys and cliffs, its ebb and flow . . .
I had simply thought to enjoy a leisurely stroll through downtown Florence, become reacquainted with my long-time-no-see boyfriend city. Let Firenze soothe away my nerves before my hopefully career-resuscitating meeting in an hour.
But, of course, I couldn’t escape my problems so easily.
Instead of comfort, Florence had ripped the Band-Aid off my heartache.
I stared at the Palazzo Vecchio, memories swamping me. Grammy had marched over to its massive front doors and pretended to swoon in front of Michelangelo’s David. (Replica. Victorian.) And then she had snagged some poor guy to take a photo of us both, waving our arms like idiots. Looking as if we could embrace the whole world.
It was a talisman, that photo. I took a copy of it with me everywhere. A reminder that, at one point, I had been thoroughly loved just as I was.
Something I needed, now more than ever. What with the harassing texts at all hours and that scathing, mega-viral video. All due to Pierce, my former fiancé, who I was going to see this morning for the first time since becoming spectacularly dis-engaged.
For the record, Grammy had never liked Pierce.
I drained the last of my coffee and tossed the empty cup in a nearby garbage can. Checked the time on my phone. Just under an hour before my potentially life altering meeting.
Suddenly, my neck prickled with awareness. That jungle-sense of being invisibly watched. My nerves flared to high alert.
Please. Not today. Not now.
Carefully, I turned in a circle. Looking for the tell-tale glare of a camera lens aimed my way. People talking and pointing.
What I saw instead was a wrinkled gypsy woman, staring intently. Ragged loose skirt, head scarf, wooden cane. Completely anachronistic.
We locked eyes. Her dark gaze drilled me, wispy strands of gray hair escaping to flutter in the slight wind.
My breath hitched. I instinctively wrapped a firm hand around my purse, pulling it tight against my body. I had seen too many tourists robbed over the years.
“It begins again,” the gypsy called in heavily accented English. She regarded me with unnerving directness.
I blinked.
“It will repeat.” She smiled, maniacal and toothless. “Ripetere.”
What?!
The gypsy lady winked and waved a gnarled hand m
y way. Before I could react, she turned and hobbled off, swallowed up by a group of Indian tourists.
Okay.
That was . . . weird.
Somewhere on the scale between ‘Beware the Ides of March’ and a movie trailer for Borat.
I stood, frozen. Still clutching my bag across my chest. I thawed my spine enough to scan the people around me, half expecting another gypsy to make a grab for my purse.
Nothing.
I swallowed. Told the pulse in my throat to settle down.
My parents—Lisabet and my step-dad, John-Baptista—are flamboyant installation artists and former stars of their own reality TV show on IFC. (Canceled after one season. Producers said they were too ‘nutty.’ I repeat: My parents were deemed too crazy for reality TV.)
Basically, weird and out-there have always been par for the course in my life. So an old gypsy lady yelling nonsense at me in the middle of Florence?
Usually, I would just file that under ‘quirky.’
But given the hell of the last six months, it was hard to brush things off anymore.
Courage isn’t a lack of fear, Grammy had always said. It’s hefting Fear onto your back and trudging forward into the dark.
I was so tired of Fear.
I would live my life.
To that end, I lifted my chin and walked farther into the sun-drenched piazza. One more scan for gypsies. Seeing nothing unusual, I pulled out my phone. Framed my face. And took a selfie.
Me. The Palazzo Vecchio. Michelangelo’s David.
Just to be clear, I’m not usually into selfies. I find them a bit fratgirl-narcissistic.
Grammy, on the other hand, had loved them. I’ve decided selfies move from vain to awesome once you’re over fifty.
Today, selfies in our boyfriend-city felt like a fitting homage to my grandmother.
Some people build memorials or start charitable foundations to commemorate a loved one.
I take selfies.
Phone in hand, I walked across the Piazza della Signoria and onto Via dei Cerchi heading toward the Duomo. The medieval streets closed in, buildings rising four and five stories above me.