Virgin Brides Bundle: The Greek's Virgin Bride\The Tycoon's Virgin Bride\The Sheikh's Virgin by Julia James

Author:Julia James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2007-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

TWO days later, a courier delivered a package to Jenessa in Wellspring. She signed for it and went back inside, staring at the package as though it contained a live tarantula. The return address on the top corner was Bryce’s, the handwriting forceful and masculine. Like the man himself, she thought. She hadn’t left anything behind at his house, she knew that. So what could he possibly be sending her?

One way to find out, Jenessa. Open it.

She poured herself a glass of juice, gingerly picked up the package, and went outside to sit under the apple tree. Ripping off the paper and the bubble wrap, she found a video inside, along with a plain piece of folded paper. Opening it up, she found more of the same terse handwriting. I borrowed this from Travis, he’d written. Sit down and watch it, Jenessa. The note was signed, simply, Bryce.

There was no label on the video to indicate its contents. Intensely curious, Jenessa went inside, turned on the TV and inserted the black plastic cartridge. Within moments she was lost to her surroundings.

It was a video of Leonora dancing. A much younger Leonora, strikingly beautiful, strong, flexible and graceful. The music was totally unfamiliar to Jenessa, atonal, its rhythms not always easy to follow; from this unpromising material Leonora had woven patterns of intricate beauty. Some of the video consisted of retakes, in which the same music would play again, and again Leonora would bend to its demands. Improvising, perfecting, struggling to wrest from the notes a truth that would satisfy her.

The unknown editor of the video had chosen not to omit the cost of these performances to the dancer. Leonora’s physical exhaustion, her discouragement and her stubborn determination were all there to be seen.

The final performance was in front of a live audience in Paris ten years ago. As soon as it was finished, Jenessa rewound the tape and watched it again from beginning to end, her eyes intent on the screen. The second time she picked up more detail, the third more again. As the applause died down at the end of the tape after her third watching, she suddenly found herself weeping as though her heart was broken.

This woman was her mother. In her own blood flowed that same struggle to wrest some sort of truth from the intractable stuff of daily life. She understood in her bones Leonora’s discouragement, knew the cost of striving for a perfection that could never be attained.

Her mother might have abandoned her as a baby. But in a very real way Leonora had always lived within her.

But hadn’t she herself, lately, been guilty of giving up? Of dancing to the same pattern over and over again, unable—or unwilling—to break free?

Jenessa swiped the tears from her cheeks, and for a long time sat gazing at the empty screen. Then she made a phone call to Travis.

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