Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

Like a child with no thought to the devastation of her words, she carelessly compared him to his greatest nemesis while simultaneously tearing at the new, dangerous and delicate thing that beat in his chest, the thing that wanted to please her.

He smiled, though the expression felt as dry and brittle as a barking cough. “Certainly,” he said. He kept his voice firm and cool, though for the life of him, he could not recall words cutting his mouth so sharply on the way out.

He had trusted her. Trusted her to keep her word, to go along with his crazy idea, and the sting he felt at her betrayal was stronger than anything he’d felt since discovering his father’s suicide or his mother’s cancer, or even what he’d felt as he held Yancy as he’d died. When she’d given herself to him, she’d agreed, she’d taken his hand and he’d dared to hope.

She had given him her body, and he’d mistaken it for something more, trusting the breaking of her vow to speak for her. Replaying the events, it was obvious trusting was where he had gone wrong. Who knew better than he that even the most reliable constants could abandon you when you most needed them?

He didn’t know what he was doing anymore. That much was clear. He couldn’t trust people—not with his thoughts, not with his emotions and certainly not with his hopes and dreams. Trust was a luxury of the privileged, and even then, only few.

But he would not take back his words. He’d meant what he said when he told her he didn’t force women. When one made it a policy to only speak the truth, there was nothing to ever take back.

Once again he looked out over the Mediterranean, squinting against the bright sun shining on the bright white sand and bright cerulean sea, the wheels of his crystalline mind turning.

Following the shoreline, observing the palm trees swaying gently in the breeze that were rooted atop small grassy dunes dotting the swaths of almost antiseptically white sand, it occurred to him that she might be right.

Perhaps he was like her father, as ravenously hungry and driven by greed. He had everything and more that a hard-scrapping poor boy could dream of, and he had the strength and resilience he would have been denied had the silver spoon he was born with not been ripped from his mouth.

Recognizing it did nothing to soothe the roar inside, but it underscored Helene’s point.

He was used to the abyss, had grown comfortable with its unceasing demand for nothing less than the total annihilation of his enemies.

It wasn’t her black hole to bear. Was even, his conscience warned as it threaded its way to the surface of his mind to remind him, wrong to ask of her.

To insist that a daughter—rebellious or not—actively plot to destroy her father. How far away from Dominic d’Tierrza was that, really?

The fact that he didn’t have an answer for the question didn’t sit well with him.

Nor had it settled any better later, after he’d shut down Yancy Grove and led her back to the dock.

He boarded the Ibrahim behind her and prepared for the journey. He showed her her accommodations, and this time, she took him up on the offer, pleading tiredness.

He didn’t comment that she had woken from her nap more vibrant and bright than he’d ever seen her. There was no need to call her out on it when he was the one she was running away from. Besides, as glorious as her moonglow remained, her light had begun to fade. Faint circles edged her eyes and her shoulders slumped as she’d thanked him for the room and closed the door.

It would take approximately twelve hours to return to Cyrano from Yancy Grove. They had plenty of fuel and ample supplies—he believed in being prepared, though he had not planned to return to Cyrano so soon. Strange, how he had not set foot on the island in over thirty years and now was readying to return for the second time in less than thirty-six hours.

His last trip had had a very specific purpose and, by proxy, had an extremely firm time limit. This time he had neither constraint, and yet the journey was colored with an air of finality. His grand revenge, his life-long quest, his quest for the holy grail, had concluded, if not exactly to his specifications.

And what did he have to show for it?

Twelve hours of silent questioning and one more sunrise later, he spotted land. Having joined him at the helm, Helene watched quietly as Cyrano grew larger on the horizon.

When she spoke, the first time since he’d left her at her cabin door, she said, “So we’re going through Andros?”

Something old and seismic shifted across his heart, a feeling so deep and timeless he could no more interpret it than shifting sands. He gave a brief nod. “We’re going through Andros.”

Muffling the motor, they stealthily approached Andros’s sleepy port.

Andros was too small to be bustling, but was an important specialty port due to its deep waters. More charming than even Calla, Andros was like nowhere else on earth.

Drake steered them through the latticed network of limestone caves quietly, tucking into a shadowed cove with familiar ease. It was not the first time he’d returned to Andros since his family’s exile.

Located on the rainy side of Cyrano, Andros grew lush forested hillsides and verdant farms. The western-most edge of Cyrano’s “Great Green Spot,” a phenomenal patch of agricultural territory responsible for growing the bulk of the food produced on the island, Andros was a small, productive duchy that generated dependable and respectable income, had little to no trouble and the happiest citizens in all of Cyrano...according to a popular magazine survey.

Helene had been its steward for the past two years, and in that time, he knew, she had dutifully cared for it.

But it was Drake’s stolen home, the cozy hills welcoming him, speaking to him through his