Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 76915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Papa, we should just go. There is a doctor in Switzerland I read about…” I started again, but he waved me off.
“Too much money.”
“We could sell the shop.”
“What will I leave behind for you but the shop?”
“I want you healthy, not this place,” I argued, gesturing to the beautiful little shop. I did love it, and the modest apartment we shared upstairs, but not more than my father. Not more than his life.
“Well, it is yours whether you want it or not.”
“Then my violin. I don’t need to play.”
“Bite your tongue,” my father said, giving me a lethal glare. I knew he took pride in my playing, though he never said as much. He had always pushed me to practice and celebrated my accomplishments. But my playing did not mean more than his life.
“I can find a cheaper one.”
“Again, that is not an option.”
“Why not, papa? If I am hired by the symphony next year then they will give me an instrument.”
“If you audition with an inferior instrument, your abilities might not be apparent.”
I sighed deeply. There was no arguing with him. My kindly father would have been better suited to the law, or teaching philosophy than to running a candy shop. He was a sweet, gentle man, but his grasp of language was intimidating.
He was very, very smart.
Why he hadn’t tried for more was beyond me. I suspected it had much to do with my mother, and later, with me. My mother’s family had owned this shop. When they married, he had wanted to take her far away. But her own parents’ had been elderly and infirm, living upstairs in what later became my parents bedroom. By the time they were gone, she was with child.
After that, I don’t think he could bear to leave what memories of her that he had left. My parents love story was epic. He had loved her from the moment he saw her. My father remained devoted, loving, and faithful to the woman he adored, even in death.
It kind of made the foolish boys and men who asked me out seem like children. So far, I had yet to say yes to any of them. I was not easily impressed.
Not with such a tragic and romantic example of what love could be.
Besides, with schoolwork, chores, and practice, who had time? I may have graduated from school recently but the list of daily, weekly, and monthly chores were growing. Not to mention preparing for my upcoming audition. As my father did less, I did more and more to pick up the slack.
All without letting him know I was doing it.
I felt my father stiffen before he spoke, his voice a rough and urgent whisper.
“Get in the back. Now.”
“What? Why, papa?”
“They’re here.”
He did not need to say who. I knew. I hurried to the back, passing just behind the swinging doors, still swaying behind me. I clapped my hand over my mouth as softly spoken words were exchanged. Then I pressed my ear against the door to listen.
And tumbled straight onto a pair of shiny black loafers.
Chapter 3
Anton
“What the–”
I stared down at the ground. An urchin with dark hair was at my feet. On my feet, to be precise. She tilted her head back to look up at me and my heart stopped. It literally stopped.
An angel was staring up at me. Dark hair framed a face of indescribable beauty and purity. Huge crystal blue eyes pierced me, looking directly into my soul. Her perfect pink lips parted, revealing white teeth. Her skin was like porcelain, but finer. High cheekbones, a mischievous looking upturned nose, and a stubborn chin completed the picture.
But it was her eyes that captured me. Eyes that were… afraid, I realized after my initial shock started to fade.
Something inside me cracked open.
An urge to protect, conquer, and devour washed over me like a wave, changing me completely. Changing me forever. I’d never felt anything other than a bit of lust when looking at a woman before. In that moment, I felt everything.
Unfortunately for me, the beauty at my feet was barely more than a child. A teen, perhaps, just starting to ripen into womanhood. Sixteen at most. And far too young for me. I would be waiting years for her to be of age.
She blinked. Her father started speaking rapidly, apologizing for his daughter.
Daughter? His daughter was not a child, I realized with profound relief. I remembered how old I was when his wife had been pregnant and rapidly did the math in my brain.
She was twenty or twenty-one. Young. But definitely a woman.
I reached down to help her stand. She stared at me for a moment before taking my hand. A shock went through my body at the contact. From the look on her perfect, unimaginably lovely face, she felt it, too, I would have bet my life on it. But that was nothing compared to what I felt when she stood and I could see her.