Nora Roberts - Calhoun Women 04 - Suzanna's Surrender.pdf - Nora Roberts - sinderella

Suzanna’s Surrender, by Nora Roberts

The Calhouns # 4

Summary:

Suzanna Calhoun and her sisters simply HAD to find the priceless emeralds hidden somewhere in their ancestral home.

The jewels were the key to the deadly mystery that had threatened them for so long. And for Suzanna they were

something more - her link to a man whose past was tangled with hers in ways she was only beginning to understand.

Holt Bradford had loved Suzanna for more years than he cared to remember, loved the laughing girl she'd been and the

gentle, fragile woman she'd become. He'd never once told her what was in his heart, but now he had no choice...He had

to protect her from the shadows swirling around her, and he had to make her his at last.

Prologue

Bar Harbor, 1965

The moment I saw her, my life was changed. More than fifty years have passed

since that moment, and I'm an old man whose hair has turned white, whose body

has grown frail. Yet my memories are full of color and strength.

Since my heart attack, I am to rest every day. So I have come back here to the

island—her island-where it all began for me. It has changed, as I have. The great

fire in '47 destroyed much. New buildings, new people have come. Cars crowd the

streets without the charm of the jingling carriages. But I am lucky to be able to see

it as it was, and as it is.

My son is a man now, a good one who chose to make his living from the sea. We

have never understood each other, but have dealt together well enough. He has a

quiet, lovely wife and a son of his own. The boy, young Holt, brings me a special

kind of joy. Perhaps it is because I can see myself in him so clearly. The

impatience, the fire, the passions that were once mine. Perhaps he, too, will feel

too much, want too much. Yet I can't be sorry for it. If I could tell him one thing, it

would be to grab hold of life and take.

My life has been full, and I'm grateful for the years I had with Margaret. I was no

longer young when she became my wife. What we shared was not a blaze, but the

quiet warmth of a banked fire. She brought me comfort, and I hope I gave her

happiness. She's been gone for nearly ten years, and my memories of her are

sweet.

Yet it is the memory of another woman that haunts me. This memory is so painfully

clear, so complete. No amount of time could dull it. The years have not faded my

image of her, nor have they altered by a single degree the desperate love I felt. Yes,

feel still — will always feel though she is lost to me.

Perhaps now that I have brushed so close to death, I can open myself to it again,

let myself remember what I have never been able to forget. Once it was. too

painful, and I lost the pain in a bottle. Finding no comfort there, I at last buried

my misery in my work. Painting again, I traveled. But always, always, was pulled

back here where I had once begun to live. Where I know I will one day die.

A man loves that way only once, and only if he is fortunate. For me, it was Bianca.

It has always been Bianca.

It was June, the summer of 1912, before the Great War ripped the world apart.

The summer of peace and beauty, of art and poetry, when the village of Bar

Harbor opened itself to the wealthy and gave refuge to artists.

She came to the cliffs where I worked, her hand holding that of a child. I turned

from my canvas, the brush still in my hand, the mood of the sea and the painting

still on me. There she was, slender and lovely, the sunset hair swept up off her

neck. The wind tugged at it, and at the skirts of the pale blue frock she wore. Her

eyes were the color of the sea I was so frantically trying to recreate on canvas.

They watched me, curious, wary. She had the pale and luminous skin of the Irish.

The moment I saw her, I knew I had to paint her. And I think I knew, as we,stood

in the wind, that I would have to love her.

She apologized for interrupting my work. The faint and musical lilt of Ireland was

in the soft, polite voice. The child now in her arms was her son. She was Bianca

Calhoun, another man's wife. Her summer home was on the ridge above. The

Towers, the elaborate castle Fergus Calhoun had built. Even though I had only

been on Mount Desert Island a short time, I had heard of Calhoun, and his home.

Indeed I had admired the arrogant and fanciful lines of it, the turrets and peaks,

the towers and parapets.

Such a place suited the woman who stood before me. She had a timeless beauty, a

quiet steadiness, a graciousness that could never be taught, and banked passions

simmering in her large green eyes. Yes, I was already in love, but then it was only

with her beauty. As an artist, I wanted to interpret that beauty in my own way,

with paint or pencils. Perhaps I frightened her by staring so intently. But the

child, his name was Ethan, was fearless and friendly. She looked so young, so

untouched, that it was difficult to believe the child was hers, and that she had two

more besides.

She didn 't stay long that day, but took her son and went home to her husband. I

watched her walk through the wild roses, the sun in her hair.

I couldn't paint the sea anymore that day. Her face had already begun to haunt

me.

Chapter One

She wasn't looking forward to this. It had to be done, of course. Suzanna dragged a

fifty-pound bag of mulch over to her pickup, then muscled it into the bed. That small

physical task wasn't the problem. In fact, she was pleased to be able to make the

delivery her second stop on her way home.

It was the first stop she wished she could avoid. But for Suzanna Calhoun Dumont,

duty could never be avoided.

She'd promised her family that she would speak to Holt Bradford, and Suzanna kept

her promises. Or tried to, she thought, and wiped a forearm over her sweaty brow.

But damn it, she was tired. She'd put in a full day in Southwest Harbor, landscaping

a new house, and she had a full schedule the next day. That wasn't taking into

account that her sister Amanda was getting married in little more than a week, or that

The Towers was mass confusion in preparation for the wedding and with the

remodeling of the west wing. It didn't even begin to deal with the fact that she had

two energetic children at home who would want, and deserved, their mother's time

and attention that evening. Or the paperwork that was piling up on her desk—or the

fact that one of her part-time employees had quit just that morning.

Well, she'd wanted to start a business, Suzanna reminded herself. And she'd done it.

She glanced back at her shop, locked for the night with the display of summer

blooms in the window, at the greenhouse just behind the main building. It belonged

to her—and the bank, she thought with a little smile—every pansy, petunia and

peony. She'd proven she wasn't the incompetent failure her ex-husband had told her

she was. Over and over again.

She had two beautiful children, a family who loved her and a

landscaping-and-gardening business that was holding its own. She didn't even

suppose Bax's claim that she was dull could apply now. Not when she was in the

middle of an adventure that had started eighty years before.

There certainly wasn't anything mundane about searching for a priceless emerald

necklace, or being dogged by international jewel thieves who would stop at nothing

to get their hands on her great-grandmother Bianca's legacy.

Not that she'd been much more than a supporting player so far, Suzanna mused as

she climbed into the truck. It had been her sister C.C. who had started it by falling in

love with Trenton St. James III, of the St. James Hotels. It had been his idea to turn

part of the financially plagued family home into a luxury retreat. In doing so, the old

legend of the Calhoun emeralds had leaked to the ever-eager press and had set off a

chain reaction that had run a course from the absurd to the dangerous.

It had been Amanda who had nearly been killed when the desperate and obsessed

thief going by the name of William Livingston had stolen family papers he'd hoped

would lead him to the lost emeralds. And it had been her sister Lilah who had had

her life threatened during the latest attempt.

In the week that had passed since that night, the police hadn't turned up a trace of

Livingston, or his latest known alias, Ellis Caufield.

It was odd, she thought as she joined the stream of traffic, how The Towers and the

lost emeralds had affected the entire family. The Towers had brought C.C. and Trent

together. Then Sloan O'Riley had come to design the retreat and had fallen in love

with Amanda. The shy history professor, Max Quarter-main, had lost his heart to

Suzanna's free-spirited sister, Lilah, and both of them had nearly been killed. Again,

because of the emeralds.

There were times Suzanna wished they could forget about the necklace that had

belonged to her great-grandmother. But she knew, as they all knew, that the necklace

Bianca had hidden away before her death was meant to be found.

So they continued, following up every lead, exploring every dusty path. Now it was

her turn. During his research, Max had uncovered the name of the artist Bianca had

loved.

It was a story that never failed to make Suzanna wistful, but it was just her bad luck

that the connection with the artist led to his grandson.

Holt Bradford. She sighed a little as she drove through the traffic-jammed streets of

the village. She couldn't claim to know him well—wasn't sure anyone could. But she

remembered him as a teenager. Surly, bad tempered and aloof. Of course, girls had

been attracted by his go-to-hell attitude. The attraction helped along, no doubt, by

the dark, brooding looks and angry gray eyes.

Odd she should remember the color of his eyes, she mused. But then again, the one

time she had seen them up close and personal he'd all but burned her alive with them.

He'd probably forgotten the altercation, she assured herself. She hoped so.

Altercations made her shaky and sweaty, and she'd had enough of them in her

marriage to last a lifetime. Certainly Holt wouldn't still hold a grudge—it had been

more than ten years. After all, he hadn't been hurt very much when he'd taken a

header off his motorcycle. And it had been his fault, she thought, setting her chin.

She'd had the right of way.

In any case, she had promised Lilah she would talk to him. Any connection with

Bianca's lost emeralds had to be followed up. As Christian Bradford's grandson.

Holt might have heard stories.

Since he'd come back to Bar Harbor a few months before, he had taken up

residence in the same cottage his grandfather had lived in during his romance with

Bianca. Suzanna was Irish enough to believe in fate. There was a Bradford in the

cottage and Calhouns in The Towers. Surely between them, they could find the

answers to the mystery that had haunted both families for generations.

The cottage was on the water, sheltered by two lovely old willows. The simple

wooden structure made her think of a doll's house, and she thought it a shame that

no one had cared enough to plant flowers. The grass was freshly mowed, but her

professional eye noted that there were patches that needed reseeding, and the whole

business could use a good dose of fertilizer.

Nora Roberts - Calhoun Women 04 - Suzanna's Surrender.pdf

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