Shaded Love (TRUST Series Book 5) Read online

  Shaded Love

  Prequel to LOVE PAINTED IN RED

  Cristiane Serruya

  Contents

  Praise for Cristiane Serruya

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  11. A Note From The Author

  Love Painted in Red

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Also by Cristiane Serruya

  About the Author

  Praise for Cristiane Serruya

  “Cristiane Serruya is a master of characterization. The depth of her characters is incredible. The intensity of the relationships will have the reader eagerly turning the pages.” ~ Readers’ Favorite

  “Cristiane Serruya is exceptionally good at what she does.” ~ Dks

  “…you can expect the unexpected.” ~ Musings from an Addicted Reader

  “I liked the way Cristiane develops her story line. It gradually enfolds, gently enthralling the reader and touching heartstrings, captivating we romantics. Read and you will find another Nora Roberts in her heydays.” ~ Jonhaboutime

  “Just when you think you know what is going to happen next, a twist so crazy that you could have never imagined it is thrown your way.” ~ For the Luv of Sanity

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, dialogues, and incidents involving them are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ebook ISBN: 978-1641866453

  © 2017 Cristiane Serruya

  Cover by Renata Fontanive © 2017 Cristiane Serruya

  This book contains an excerpt of Love Painted in Red, a 2016 KindleScout winner, by Cristiane Serruya.

  © 2016 Cristiane Serruya

  Love Painted in Red cover by Renata Fontanive © 2016 Cristiane Serruya

  “To imagine that a person who intrigues us has access to a way of life unknown and all the more attractive for its mystery, to believe that we will begin to live only through the love of that person—what else is this but the birth of great passion?”

  ~ Marcel Proust, From The Mistranslation of Y.K. Karaosmanoglu

  Chapter 1

  England

  Monday, October 31, 1988

  9:00 p.m.

  England

  Monday, October 31, 1988

  9:00 p.m.

  The squeak of the barn door rolling down the metal rail cut through the silence of the night air. It wasn’t as heavy as Eva May remembered, but then again her fondest memories of the barn were from a few years ago.

  “Quiet or we’re going to get caught,” her cousin Brenda said, as she walked past her and went straight to the light switches, flipped one of them on, then lit her cigarette.

  “I think we’re old enough to be in the barn after dark.” Eva pushed the door closed to block the biting cold wind. Still, it slammed against the wall, causing the aging building to moan and creak in protest, mimicking the mood of her heart as she remembered the events of the last few days. She wasn’t really one for adventure. In her eighteen years, she’d lived a very quiet, sheltered life in English small towns.

  “But my father doesn’t know I smoke!” Brenda pulled a beer can from the pocket of her coat and tossed it in Eva’s direction. “Think fast!”

  Eva caught the can and asked, “Is your father going to ground you for smoking and drinking beer?”

  “Not this time.” Brenda laughed and hoisted herself up on the gate separating the barn aisle from the horse stalls, straddling it. “What were we? Sixteen?”

  A rush of memories accompanied the sound of Brenda cracking open her beer can. Eva looked at the can label a moment before putting it on the ground beside her. “Yes, it was when my parents visited London and I stayed with you for a couple of weeks.”

  “Happy Halloween.” Brenda blew out the smoke and raised the can toward her cousin then took a long sip before asking, “Aren’t you going to drink?”

  “Ah, no. I’m on a diet.”

  “You’ve gained quite a few pounds very quickly and you were always so thin.” Her cousin drank from her beer and took another deep drag another from her cigarette, blowing the smoke out in circles. “Was it because of your mother’s passing?”

  “Yes, comfort food, you know?” She had been using this excuse for a few months now, but sooner or later—probably sooner—she would have to reveal that she was not fat but pregnant.

  Brenda let her foot sway back and forth. The heel of her boot occasionally kicked the gate, sounding like a rusty church bell. “I think your father was fine at dinner—still a little sad, but better than last year, don’t you think?”

  Eva hoisted her leg over, and joined her cousin on the gate, facing her. “Yeah, he’s doing better now.”

  Everyone in the family had mourned Eva’s mother, but Eva’s father had become so absorbed in his grief that he had descended into a depression for a few months, not exactly what Eva would have expected from her stoic and stern father. But she had more on her mind right now than that.

  Eva’s gaze dropped to the barn floor. “Do you think Father will bless my choice for a husband?”

  Brenda took another long draw from the cigarette before putting it out on the ledge of the wall behind her and made sure no ember got in the hay below. “You know your dad has taken your mom’s death really hard, but you can’t expect him to accept—”

  “But he proposed! He wants to wed me before Christmas.”

  Brenda was shocked. “Does he expect you to abandon your life here?”

  “What life? All I had been doing before meeting him was mopping my father’s and my tears. I am so happy now with him. Seems like perfect timing to move and start a whole new life.”

  “Eva…are you sure he is the right guy? After all, marriage is forever and we’re so young.”

  “Pretty sure. We’re in love.” Eva sighed. “He’s wonderful, and the sex…amazing.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear.” Brenda giggled and set her beer can on the wall behind her. She then stepped up on the bottom rail of the gate, and gripped the top rail, flexing her body and stretching out her back as she used to do when she was younger.

  “Do not do this swinging thing,” Eva said.

  “What’s wrong with you? We used do this all the time. Are you too old now?”

  “No, I am pregnant,” she blurted.

  Eva’s words made Brenda gape at her and she hoisted herself back, sitting quietly for a moment, because she had no idea what to say. “Seriously?”

  “I’m not fat. I am six months pregnant.” Eva pushed back her loose coat and raised her shirt, showing her belly.

  “Oh my God, Eva!” Brenda put her hand over Eva’s round belly which was wrapped in tight bandages. “Your father will flip.”

  “I can’t imagine why. I’m marrying the man I love, and I already adore this child.” Then something horrible crossed her mind. “I’m not going to give it up for adoption, like our aunt did. Now she weeps everyday about her lost kid. I’m keeping my baby.”

  Brenda looked at her with empathy in her eyes. “Of course you are. But you need to get all
the facts straight before you make such a big decision. Stop avoiding the conversation with your father. Sit down and talk to him.”

  “I know.” Eva nodded, gripping the rail in front of her. “You’re right.”

  “I always try to think that we have a big reset button we can use if we like. It’s time to close the door on all the crap you’ve gone through in the past year and try to face the new one with a bit of hope.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Eva paused and looked up toward the hayloft. “We had so much fun growing up here. Didn’t your brother catch you up in that hayloft with that guy? What was his name? Karl?”

  It was the first time in days Eva had been able to smile and it felt good to set the weight of the world aside, if only for a few minutes.

  “Nah!” Brenda’s giggle sounded child-like to Eva’s ears. “He never caught me with Karl. It was Jason that night.”

  Eva smiled recalling the screams and shouts that had awakened the house and the white buttocks of Brenda’s boyfriend as he ran away from the barn with his trousers in his hands and Brenda’s brother chasing after him. “Seems like a hundred years ago.”

  “If you could go back in time, would you have have been more careful about getting pregnant?”

  She had spent her childhood dreaming of the day she’d become a mother. And then one day, she was no longer just her anymore—the singular person she had always been—there was another human being inside her, growing and eating and kicking, and in some mystically ethereal way, communicating with her.

  “No, I told you I already love my baby.” Despite Eva’s fear about her father’s reaction, she was living a dream. Her fiancé had been so sincere the night he had taken her virginity. And when she told him about her pregnancy, he had picked her up in his arms and spun her around, only to quickly put her back down, worried he would made her sick.

  “What will you do? Not go to college? Be a stay-at-home mom? Work with him? He can’t provide for you as well as your father does.”

  Eva giving herself to her boyfriend had been pure impulse and done solely on emotion—which was never a good way to do things—but she didn’t regret it a single minute. “Don’t say it like that. He’s a good guy.”

  Brenda swung her leg back over the gate, jumped down and reached up to help Eva down. “Did I say he wasn’t?”

  “No. I’m just saying I’m sure I made the right choice. That’s all.” Eva brushed her hands over her skirt and adjusted her coat in a way that covered her belly well.

  Brenda leaned her arm against the wall and peeked into an empty stall. “I’m glad you’re sure. Sometimes I don’t know.”

  “But I know, and that’s what is important.” Eva opened the barn door. “He is not as wealthy as we are, but he has savings enough to keep us well-provided.”

  Brenda turned off the lights. “It’s hard to imagine you with kids of your own. How far along did you say you are?”

  They linked their arms as they used to do when they were kids and walked back to the main house where the adults were gathered. “Six months. Almost seven.”

  She heard Brenda’s footfalls, the moan of the old door, and then the moonlight illuminated the place.

  Eva shrugged. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices my father made for me without even asking if I wanted them, and the ones I want to make for myself.”

  “Sounds like you’ve spent too much time examining the past, and not enough planning for the future, if you ask me,” Brenda said. “Things might have turned out differently if he’d let you stay here with us while he was depressed.”

  “I guess it’s time to go have that talk with Dad.”

  “And if he isn’t understanding?”

  “I’ll drive myself mad thinking about all the what ifs.’” Eva mumbled, crossing her arms in front of her chest. It didn’t stop the questions from rolling through her mind.

  But Brenda was right about one thing, she couldn’t make any decisions before talking to her father.

  Chapter 2

  11:00 p.m.

  Eva entered the back door of the house, biting her lip in apprehension. After her talk with Brenda, she knew she had to tell her father. Her father was her world, along with her new fiancee of course, and she wouldn’t be able to hide this secret much longer anyway. He deserved to know that he was going to be grandfather.

  Maybe, just maybe, it would give him something to look forward to.

  She walked through the kitchen and found her father sitting in front of the tv, kicked back in his favorite Lazyboy chair now that the crowd finally dissipated to their rooms. The scene was achingly familiar, though her mother was still missing from the chair she had favored in the corner. Even though it had been so many months since she died, the house still looked the same, felt the same, and Eva expected at any moment that her mother would walk through the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  Her father had taken her death the hardest, refusing to even talk about it after the first month. Eva had shouldered some of the responsibilities, but knew that she couldn’t do them forever.

  Especially when she found out she was pregnant. Oh how she wished her mother was here now!

  “Hey Dad,” she finally said, crossing the room and sitting in the chair near his. “What are you watching?”

  A tall glass of whisky in his hand, he looked over at her. “The game. Dinner went well tonight, don’t you think?”

  Eva nodded, resting her hands on her stomach, still concealed under her coat. She had thought about just revealing her bump and letting him ask questions, but decided on the surprise maneuver. She had gotten herself into this situation and no matter what her father said, it wasn’t going away. They would have to work through this and he would just have to accept the fact that his daughter was having a child with the man she loved.

  “Eva May, you look more like your mother every day.”

  Eva looked up to find her father staring at her, a faint smile on his face. “I-I see it more now than ever.”

  “Dad,” she sighed, seeing the glimmer of tears in his eyes before he blinked them away. She didn’t like seeing her strong, stoic father with that sad, tearful look in his face. He had always been their rock, the man that nothing could touch, but her mother’s death had nearly destroyed him.

  He shook his head, wiping a hand over his face. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Did you see the stack of college brochures on the table?”

  Eva bit her lip again, a habit she did when she was nervous or worried. Back when everything was right in the world and her mother was alive, they had pored through the colleges and universities, some as far as the states, for the perfect ones that Eva would continue her education. She had dreamed of being a nurse or a teacher, helping others.

  But now that seemed to be just a distant memory, put aside for the baby that was growing in her belly. She wasn’t upset at the fact, but rather excited at how her life had taken such a drastic turn. Her fiancé loved the fact that she was pregnant and Eva couldn’t wait to start their lives together. “I-I haven’t had a chance to pick through them.”

  He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t have much time if you expect to get in before the fall term. Make sure you do that tomorrow.”

  She heard the military style marching order in his voice and nodded, knowing that he would not let it rest until she agreed. “Yes, sir. I will do it tomorrow. Maybe Brenda can help.”

  “Good,” he said, his eyes turning back to the TV. “You girls should go together.”

  Eva held back her laughter, thinking of Brenda at college, with all the boys around for her choosing. Brenda will be in heaven then.

  Her baby kicked suddenly and she started at the assault on her belly, still not used to the fact that she had another human being in her.

  “And it would give you some space.”

  “From what?” Eva asked, shifting in the chair to get comfortable.

  Her father looked over, a frown marrin
g his features. “From him.”

  Eva sighed. There was no question that her father did not like the love of her life. When she had tried to introduce him to her father, he had told them both that they were not going to date and walked away, leaving Eva in shock. She had to admit that he was not what her father probably had envisioned and that his lifestyle was what his father, such a normal man, would call extravagant, exotic, execrating. Eva in turn thought it was exciting and extraordinary. The religious sect he worked in had a program of spiritual evolution based on mental concentration and the search for self-knowledge which should lead to a healthier and more harmonic life.

  Claiming roots as far back as the tenth century, it had lain dormant, reappearing in the fifties, inspired by visions of a Brazilian Shaman who lived in the Brazilian Amazon Forest from where it spread worldwide.

  As soon as they were married, they would live in a free community, where spiritual guidance would keep them all in peace, loving each other.

  Her father told her she was mad and had kicked her secret fiancé out of their house, threatening to denounce him to the police, if he approached Eva again. Her lover had laughed and said the old man could go to the police as much as he wanted, since it was perfectly legal what he did and it was her father who would be prosecuted for prejudice against a recognized faith. Her father’s eyes had gone cold, his posture even more rigid than normal, as if a rod had been thrust into his spine. Without a word, he had pointed Eva to her room.