Cursed Opal (The Cardinal Winds) by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

Author:Kathryn Ann Kingsley [Kingsley, Kathryn Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Published: 2021-01-11T18:30:00+00:00

16

Opal couldn’t stop smiling. It took every ounce of her willpower not to peek inside the four boxes that were piled into the trunk of the car. One of them held a surprise. A surprise for her.

She couldn’t remember the last time anyone gave her a gift—well, a real one, anyway. Not some fancy dress from a client just so they could pay to take it off her. It might have been from her brother on her last birthday before he had died. He had given her flowers. She had them pressed and dried, and she kept them for as long as she could. Unfortunately, when she went into hospice, she was told there wasn’t anything she could bring with her. And what would she do with a book full of pressed flowers, anyway? With the onset of her disease went all the memorabilia from her past life.

It was all right. She didn’t put much stock in physical trinkets. It was the memories that mattered. Besides, she loved flowers. They might be temporary, they might be a bit silly and utterly pointless, but they were still a sweet gesture.

Maybe that was why she had a bouquet sitting on the passenger side of the front bench. It was gloriously sappy, not to mention wonderfully backward to give a man a bouquet of flowers. The idea of it made her snicker.

Hugo would blush, he would stammer, and he’d look so sweet when he did it. That was the other reason she wanted to give Hugo, the mighty Cardinal of the West Wind, a bouquet of flowers. Because he’d love them. He would get that sad, sweet look of disbelief that he gave her whenever she was kind to him.

She had to force herself not to speed back to the estate. It was dark out already—the sun set so early this time of year—and she didn’t want to miss a turn in the road. That would just be her luck to crash the car and die with a surprise gift in her trunk.

A gift from Hugo Finch.

And he cared about her.

She didn’t doubt him. She didn’t think the man was a good enough actor to fake lying about stealing a cookie, let alone his feelings. And it was wonderfully mutual. She was infatuated with the man. She ran the significant risk of it becoming something more serious.

Even if their time was going to end someday soon. She would not let him die alone.

He had given her a new life. She would spend as much of it with him as she could.

When she pulled up to the house, she was so distracted by her whirling and happy thoughts that she made it three steps from the car before she noticed the manservants hadn’t come out to greet her. They always insisted on opening the door for her, gathering the packages, and taking the keys to go park the automobile in the garage.

It probably also had something to do with the fact that she never came back without a box of sweets for them and the rest of the staff.

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