This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) by Roberta Latow Read Free Book Online Page B

minutes. Up and down the timbered veranda guests sat in old-fashioned wooden rockers or stood, casually leaning on the porch railings, drinking coffee. They watched some of the guests walk down to the water’s edge, coffee cups in hand; others looked incongruous in their elegant clothes, seated on the sand under the bright afternoon sun, watching the heavy blue waves crash onto the beach.
    “A jealous bitch, Lili,” Rashid murmured. “You’re angry and jealous and it’s not over me or my self-indulgence. You’re envious of your own daughter, because she had eclipsed you, because she has got it all: riches, monetary wealth, real hard currency, all her own. That makes her financially independent, a powerful woman, able to indulge herself in any way she pleases — something you have never had, or been able to do. I don’t know what is most difficult for you. Her inheritance? Her success as one of the world’s top executives, which she has achieved through a superior intelligence and sheer hard work? Or is it that she gave up hiding her sensuality, suppressing her needs and desires, allowed her sexuality to break out of the closet, and it brought her the one thing missing in her life, love? The one thing you have always beaten her at was a one-to-one love relationship with a remarkable man. Now she has even eclipsed you in that, because she has won, forever, the hearts of two remarkable men.
    “Lili, you’re filled with anger because she has achieved success in her own right and is not living in the shadow of greatness as you have had to do all your life. First, your mother, then your husband.”
    Lili glared at Rashid, but remained silent.
    “Don’t you look at me that way, Lili. I repeat, first your mother, then your husband —”
    Lili started to move away, but Rashid was too quick for her. She had one hand on the railing, and he pinned her to it by covering her hand with his own.
    “And now, Mirella,” he went on.
    Two people passed at that moment and congratulated Lilion the most wonderful wedding they had ever attended. What made it worse for Lili was that they were the most select of the Wingfields, and she knew they meant what they said.
    Rashid slowly released the pressure on her hand as the couple walked away, but Lili did not leave his side. While she was trying to compose herself a waiter approached with a tray full of Leonidas white chocolates and a huge box of Jamaican cigars, Rashid turned around, sat on the railing facing Lili, his back to the sea, selected a chocolate and ate it while he chose a cigar.
    The sound of the ocean hitting the beach, and the cry of seagulls following a schooner passing offshore, mingled with the chatter of replete, beautiful people lazing about on the veranda, and made a strange and exotic picture. One that might have been painted with sound as well as pigment. The scene could have been a 1980’s Impressionist painting: a Manet, a Monet, a Cézanne, against a Norman Rockwell background painted by Andrew Wyeth. And, recognizing that aesthetic vision, Lili was calmed somewhat.
    She watched Rashid in silence while a second waiter, having clipped the end of the cigar for Rashid, bent down to him and held a flame to it while Rashid slowly, carefully turned the cigar between his fingers, puffed on it, and lit it evenly. Rashid selected several more chocolates and placed them on a small linen napkin on top of the railing next to him.
    “You are an evil and cruel man, Rashid,” said a now very controlled Lili.
    “Yes, I readily admit that I can be both those things, and more often than not enjoy being evil and cruel. This, however, is not one of those times, Lili. I hope you understand how very serious I am when I tell you that what or how you think of me matters not in the least. Only one thing matters to me today, and that is Mirella, and the new life she began when I walked her down the aisle of that church this morning.
    “If you give her one moment of anxiety, show