Rags to Rubies

by Annalisa Russo

  Jared’s brows knitted together in confusion as a chill swept over him. He pounded on the door and then pounded again when no one answered.

  “Hold your horses, bud,” a male voice muttered, opening the door a crack to cautiously eye the stranger glaring at him through the small opening.

  “Who are you?” Jared demanded.

  “Since I live here, I think the better question is who the hell are you?” the man asked, glancing at the metal chain that attached the door to the frame.

  “Where is Grace Hathaway?” Jared asked with a clipped tone.

  “My wife and I bought this place from her. We moved in two days ago.” He started to close the door.

  “No, please,” Jared begged, now contrite and needing information. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Sorry, bud. I have no idea.” The man tried to close the door. “Fer Christ’s sake, man. Tomorrow is Christmas. I’ve got a lot to do.”

  Fear swept over Jared, chilling his blood. He turned sharply in his tracks and ran the distance between Grace’s brownstone and Zia Bruna’s house.

  He pounded on the door, his breath coming out in great ragged puffs, fogging the glass of the sidelights. When he turned and leaned heavily against the door, he realized the futility of his actions. A “For Sale” sign stuck out of the snow in the yard.

  He turned when a woman with two small children all bundled securely against the cold scurried down the sidewalk. Jared recognized her as Grace’s friend.

  “Wait, please wait!” Jared called from the steps.

  The woman hesitated, one arm holding the youngest close to her breast and the other clinging to a mittened hand whose crowning glory of red curls tumbled out of a matching handmade cap. The woman seemed to recognize him and frowned.

  “Hello,” she mumbled, trying to hang onto her squirming daughter. Red curls won and bolted toward Jared, wrapping herself around his knee.

  “Patty! Behave yourself!”

  “She’s fine, really.” Jared smiled hugging the red curls to his leg with one large hand. “I wonder if you could tell me where to find Grace?”

  The woman’s eyes softened. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I was out of the country until yesterday.”

  “Her aunt passed away in late November. Grace left right after the funeral. We were all surprised. No one knows where she went. I’m sure she’ll be back eventually, probably after the holiday. Bruna’s house is still for sale.” She reached out and touched his sleeve. “We all miss her, and Bruna, too. They always treated me like family.”

  Jared thanked the woman for the information. She turned to leave, beckoning the little girl to her side.

  “No, Mommy. I want to stay with Mr. Jared and play in the snow.”

  “All right. Ten minutes. I’ll call for you.”

  Jared sat down on the first step and levered his elbows on his knees. He recognized the depths of his emotion as not mere disappointment but an ache with enough power to double him over.

  And paralyzing fear. Would he ever see her again?

  And bone-deep guilt. He hadn’t been there for her when she lost Zia Bruna, and now she was alone like he used to be. What if he never had the chance to hold her again, to tell her of this love he had discovered within himself? Love because of her. Love to which she held the key.

  He stared at the tiny child lying on her back in the snow and moving her arms and legs in a wide fluttering motion. Up and out, over and over.

  “I know where Graciella is,” the child sang.

  Jared knelt near her. Did the child really know or was she playing a game? He looked at her with wet, hopeful eyes. “Where is she, Patty Cake?”

  “She told me she was going to make snow angels.” Patty smiled and continued the movement, finally rising to show Jared a perfect replica of an angel in the glistening snow.

  “Thank you, Patty Cake, my angel.” His voice was a husky sob as he took the small child in his arms. “Merry Christmas to you,” he said, exchanging a snowy hug with the red-headed imp. Delivering her to her mother, he hurried back to his brownstone.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The pond had frozen over hard. Powdery puffs of snow clusters sifted downward in the silver moonlight, falling through the tall pines to blanket the ground. No sounds were heard save the crunch and scrape of a sliding snow shovel. Grace, with her metal skates tied onto her rubber boots, skated across the ice, clearing a small area for her evening exercise.

  She raised her face to the falling snow and stuck out her tongue, catching a few cold specks. Smiling, she inhaled the peace she’d found in this place of wonderful memories and love shared. A fitting place to bring her unborn child.

  She placed a hand on her abdomen. Looking about her, she let all her senses absorb the serenity of her surroundings. Glistening snowflakes filtered down through the moonlight. An owl hooted softly from its snow-covered perch. Peace settled over her like a warm cloak, protective and calming. What a perfect Christmas Eve, she thought, and closed her eyes, inhaling the crisp, clean, pine-filled scent of the forest.

  Her eyes fluttered open for a moment when she thought she heard a motor noise. Since the cabin sat far from the road, rarely did anyone just happen along. The perfect place to find herself again. For she truly had been lost—for a while.

  And then her thoughts, as they always did in solitude, turned to him. Not in sadness. Thoughts that gave her comfort. She loved him and had given herself to him without regret. No, her child had been conceived in love and would be raised in love. She had given up her gift to Jared and had received a miracle in return.

  She had prayed hard for his return when Bruna died. Being truly alone in the world frightened her. She knew now how he must have felt as a child. Maybe even as an adult.

  To others, perhaps, it seemed she loved foolishly, but she felt the reasons he left had little to do with her and everything to do with him. His mother had left him on a doorstep. Now, as a man grown, he would do the leaving. That way he would never be abandoned again. Oh, outwardly he was cocksure and arrogant, but inside he must believe himself unlovable, else why would the woman who bore him abandon him.

  If she closed her eyes, she could see him.

  At night, he invaded her dreams, teasing her, laughing with her, making love to her with his powerful body, with his unerring skill.

  She would eventually tell him of the child. He had a right, as the father, to know about the babe, but then she would have to make a place for him in her life, for she knew he would never abandon a child of his own making, and right now she didn’t have the strength to deal with him. She needed to fill up.

  Grace skated across the thick ice, thinking how Zia Bruna had always told her that when her prayers were not answered to her satisfaction it was because she could only see to the end of the sidewalk but God could see around the corner. She didn’t know God’s plan but had finally given her future over to His wisdom, and gladness filled her heart with warm thoughts like so many points of light.

  She skated over to the small fire she had started on the bank of the pond. Sitting on a stone bench near the blaze, she removed her mittens, turning her palms toward the warmth.

  Silent night. Holy night. All is right with the world, she thought as she removed her skates and gazed across the frozen pond.

  ****

  Jared took a step back into the shadows of the tall pines and watched her from his position on the hill above the cabin. All the tension that had driven him forward at breakneck speed left his body.

  The tranquil scene before him belonged on a picture postcard. Snow sifted down softly between the pine trees, silent and unbelievably beautiful, and there she was, in the middle of it.

  He would never forget this moment.

  A few members of the tiny town of Allens Grove, Wisconsin, had taken time away from their holiday supper to point him in the right direction to the old cabin, and he was grateful. He would never have found so remote a place on his own
. He smiled now to think how desperate and pathetic he must have sounded to the group of strangers when he blurted out his story.

  They had shown him the entrance to the property, probably out of pity, and the scent of a wood-burning stove had led him the rest of the way.

  His moment of tranquility was soon quelled by his conscience. He yearned to hold her, but now, with Zia Bruna’s death, it was more impossible than ever. He’d hurt her badly, taken her precious gift and run. Abandoned her in her hour of need. How she must hate him.

  Could he fix this? The fear wrapped itself around his chest. He couldn’t bear it if he lost the one person who lit up all the dark empty places inside him. With blinding clarity and bone-deep intensity, he realized that he needed her to love him. The extent of that need almost brought him to his knees, but he could no longer deny it. She belonged with him. Having her in his life, having her love, was all that mattered now.

  ****

  A twig snapped, breaking the silence, and Grace turned toward the sound. She blinked several times. Through the tiny flakes clinging to her lashes, she thought she saw him. She blinked again. He was still there, not twenty feet from her, his black hair sprinkled with white flakes, his hands at his sides.

  Grace frowned, not believing she could simply conjure him up with sweet memories of the one night they’d shared. She rose from the bench and then saw his eyes blink in the firelight. With a sharp breath, she exhaled a puff of vapor.

  Taking one more step toward him, she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again and cocked her head to one side, frowning.

  The snowy phantom took several long strides, taking her up in his strong arms in an embrace so fierce she thought he would crush all the breath from her body. He was real, hard and firm beneath her touch. Returning the embrace by wrapping her arms around his waist, she laid her cheek against the rough wool of his jacket and breathed in his scent.

  Chapter Forty

  “Grace,” he murmured nuzzling her hair. “Graciella, my beautiful treasure.” Jared marveled at his good fortune. She let him touch her! Hold her! He had taken her in his arms and she had allowed it!

  It was enough.

  He didn’t dare force any other intimacies. From her willing response, he thought he could kiss her, but he would not. He would earn back the right to kiss her, to touch her with intimacy, to feel her soft skin and ultimately be within her.

  They stood in silence in the falling snow, caressed by the moonlight, both reflected in the dim light from the fire, the length of their bodies held tightly together, giving warmth to the cold night.

  After a long while, she grasped his hand. “Come,” she said simply, leading him toward the tiny cottage where smoke rose in fragrant tendrils to the stars.

  ****

  Jared struggled with the words he wanted to say, then began with the most simple of words as he closed the wooden door behind him. “I’m sorry, Grace. I’m sorry about Zia Bruna, about everything.” His voice choked with guilt.

  Gesturing toward a chair before the fire, she removed her woolen jacket and muffler and put a kettle on the woodstove. In a short while, she handed him a mug of steaming chocolate and settled in a comfortable chair across from him. The fire crackled brightly, sputtering as the damp wood burned. She hadn’t addressed his apology yet.

  The cabin’s one room was dimly lit with light from the fireplace and a few candles. The soft glow illuminated her beauty, and Jared longed for her.

  He thought she had loved him once, but that seemed an eternity before. Before he had treated her feelings with such callousness. “I have all the words, here, inside me.” He put his hand over his heart. “But I won’t offend you by saying them if you don’t want to hear.”

  She didn’t smile but nodded her acquiescence.

  He continued in a choked voice, “I left you because I didn’t know how to love you, but now I do.” He gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned white. “I love you, Grace. I’ll always love you. After I left, I realized what kept me from telling you was the fear of losing you afterward.”

  Jared knew the next moments would decide his fate, for without her love he would surely perish. In the stillness that followed, Jared could hear his own shallow breathing.

  Then Grace rose and knelt between his legs and took the mug from his hand, placing it on the hearth. She reached up to take his lips in a gentle kiss, then leaned back on her heels. “I think I’ve loved you forever, Jared. Even before I met you. You are the other part of me. I can’t explain it any better than that. Do you understand?”

  Jared nodded, unable to speak, and drew her into his arms. Emotion like a giant wave surged through his body. He had thought he’d lost her forever, and now he held her in his arms and was being given another chance.

  Tears came, salty and cleansing. She stroked him and murmured quiet, soothing words of comfort as he had once done for her. Eventually the tension eased and he grew calm. And then a gentle teasing began, something about bringing a great wild beast to his knees.

  “Seems like you’re the one in that position,” he said finally gathering her up from the floor to his lap as she dabbed away the last of the storm.

  They kissed and touched and conversed about what had transpired in the last two months. Of Bruna’s death. The end had been gentle, she said gratefully. Bruna had relented and gone to the hospital. Grace had a chance to say goodnight and tell her how much she loved her. In the early morning, Grace had been called to the hospital. The staff told her Bruna had requested communion. Later, when they returned with her breakfast, she had passed.

  Then Grace shed the tears that had been kept in check out of fear. Fear of being alone and not being able to stop the flood once it began. But now he was here to help ease the pain and carry the burden with her. He held her until she hiccupped and smiled up at him.

  Then he told her of Venice and his newly found family. All thirty-six of his blond, blue-eyed Venetian relatives. Of his mother’s twin sister and the wonderful heritage he didn’t know existed.

  His mother, Geni—the sound of her name now familiar on his lips—had fallen in love with a young Englishman on his way to America to make his fortune. Loving parents and siblings had begged her not to leave for so uncertain a future, but love won out. She ran off with her young man, leaving only a note begging them to forgive her, promising to be wed first so as not to disgrace her family or herself.

  Surprised by their openness to his tale of being Geni’s son, he was moved by how they took solace in one another when he produced his treasured photograph and news of her probable death. Now that he knew her name, perhaps he could find something about her that would bring all of them to a place of closure.

  Soon laughter replaced the tears they both had shed. Grace giggled at the thought of Jared in line for a title. Thank goodness it would only happen by the demise of several other healthy male cousins.

  Hours passed as they lay in front of the fire, talking as lovers do, sharing secrets, feelings, deeply personal thoughts, each opening themselves to the other, in trust, in compassion, each with thoughts only for the other. A clock struck the midnight hour.

  “Merry Christmas, love,” Jared murmured into her dark tresses as he took her into his arms and kissed her long and passionately. Feeling her respond was the most effective aphrodisiac he could have imagined.

  When he finally released her mouth, Grace looked up at him through half-closed eyes, her lips puffy and glistening from the kisses they shared. “Come,” she said, rising and holding out her hand to him. She flashed him a smile as she led him toward the rustic bed in a corner of the intimate cottage.

  Jared realized he was about to make love with a woman he truly loved. Grace had taken him to her bed before with an urgency brought on by fear and anxiety. She had trusted him with her body, her life. This time he would be making love with her not only to satisfy the craving he had for her but for the simple joy of having her.

  He had fought it,
called it lust, passion, anything but love, but now it was past time to tell her, to show her.

  His body burned from wanting her. After deftly undressing her, he lowered her, naked and unembarrassed, onto the homespun quilt covering the featherbed and began to unbutton his shirt and trousers. Her adoring gaze never left him until he lowered himself along the length of her and kissed her eyes closed.

  “I love to touch you,” he whispered, as his hand searched for the soft weight of her breast. Grace shivered and, catching his hand, pressed it against her breast and arched her body into him. Lowering his head, he took the soft mound into his mouth, his tongue making wet circles around the peak. He caressed and suckled and bit gently one, then the other. Soon she was moaning and lifting her hips to meet the hardness pushing against her thigh.

  She guided his fingers between her legs, and Jared slid one finger inside the warmth and began to stroke her, his thumb across the swelling nub of her pleasure. She writhed under his caress, bending her knees, opening herself to him.

  He parted her thighs with his leg and settled in between, leaning above her on his elbows so he could look at her, his erection poised at the triangle now dewy wet with feminine arousal.

  He feathered kisses on her closed eyelids as he began to enter her. She surprised him by wrapping her legs tightly around his waist. His hand slid beneath her bottom, raising her slightly and allowing a deep and complete penetration. She moaned softly into his shoulder.

  Jared looked down at the beautiful creature beneath him and groaned. He feared the loss of his control before he had brought her the pleasure she craved and deserved. She had given herself completely to him once again, and a fevered emotion swept through his entire body as he moved into her, with her, a rhythm perfectly timed with the ferocious beating of his heart.

  Then they danced upward to the song, all the parts pulsing, soaring to a magical pinnacle together, simultaneously exploding in a thunderous spasm so intense, so exhilarating, so intimate it defied definition.