Blazing Bedtime Anthology by Leslie Kelly

Author:Leslie Kelly [Kelly, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488029011
Publisher: Harlequin Blaze
Published: 2017-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

My Dear Penny—

Happy 21st birthday. I wish I could have been there to share this day with you, and so many before it. I love you so much. Please try on your gift and you’ll see how much. It’s belonged to the women of our family for hundreds of years.

With all my love—Mother

Even as sadness stabbed into her at seeing her mother’s handwriting for the first time, she also felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of peace. Because, suddenly, she knew who she was. Where she came from, who her people were.

It was true. All true. Everything Lucas had said.

Although it was beyond belief, she could do nothing except believe. The proof was right here in her hands.

She glanced over at him, saw how still he was, how deep and even his breaths. How dark, dangerous-looking. Fierce. If the rest of the story was true….

No. Don’t even think about that. Not yet, anyway.

It was one thing to have mentally acknowledged the almost animalistic strength of the man, the power, the sexual heat of him that was more potent than any human male she’d ever known. It was another to openly admit he was truly…what he clamed to be.

“Later,” she mumbled. She’d think about it later.

There was something else she had to do first. Her mother had made a request of her. Grasping the crown, she lifted it toward her head. Emotions and fears, thoughts and wishes sped through her, and she already knew, somehow, that from this moment on, she was not going to be the same person, ever again.

She closed her eyes. And lowered the crown into place.

There was a charge of static, a jolt of energy. She almost yanked it back off, but before she could do it, a collage of images poured into her mind. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, focusing on whatever magic was laying out these scenes.

First, a landscape, the grass so green it looked artificial. Here and there, spring flowers grew in scattered clumps—huge tulips and daffodils and some she couldn’t name that were as big as dinner plates and as rich in color as the jewels on the crown.

Then someone came into focus. A small figure, dark-haired, running through the grass, carrying so many flowers she looked ready to fall over. When she did stumble over the hem of her long dress, a man swooped in to grab her and set her on his shoulders, both of them laughing as the blooms rained down on his head.

She knew him immediately, of course. “Dad,” she whispered.

He looked familiar, but not as she remembered him from his final years. Here he was vibrant, strong. Just a young man, untouched by the currents of life that would slowly drain his youth out from under him the way the tides took the sand.

He carried the child closer. Close enough for her to see the nearly black curls, the violet eyes, the slightly up-tilted nose.

She was seeing herself. But not as an impartial observer. It wasn’t like looking at a photograph, or a home movie through the anonymous, impersonal perspective of a camera lens.

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