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“Twelve for you, my beautiful,” he’d told her.
She carefully lowered her nose to each of the beautiful red buds and inhaled their scent, but then she stopped at one. He couldn’t help but grin.
“Oh, no, Cole. I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, stroking one of the roses. “But the florist gave you a fake one.”
“What? He did?” Cole feigned innocent.
“Yes, but it’s okay. Maybe he ran out of long stemmed red roses and only had eleven so he gave you a fake one. But our love is real, so it doesn’t matter,” she’d said.
“Read the card, beautiful,” he’d told her in his low sexy voice.
“Okay,” she said and when she did, she cried. The card read, “I’ll love you until the last rose in this bouquet dies.” Of course, one of them would never die. She collapsed into his arms that night, overcome with emotion, and later they’d made sweet love all over again and had vowed to always be together.
Cole could feel his erection springing to attention at the sweet memory of her. God, he missed Hope. And that wonderful thing she did with her lips over his body. He enjoyed pleasuring her the same way, caressing every sensuous curve of her heavenly figure. He loved the soft fullness of her lips and the beautiful sound she made when she came for him. His mind relived the velvet warmth of her sweet kiss and her generous curves on her body when he made love to her again and again. He admired her in every way. She’d projected an energy and sexiness that undeniably attracted him. She made his blood course through his veins like an awakened river. When she broke off with him and skipped town, he felt an inexplicable void.
Cole’s trip down memory lane was interrupted by his brother Leo. “Earth to Cole, come in, Cole,” Leo said, holding a cordless phone in one hand.
“Sorry, I must’ve been daydreaming,” Cole confessed.
“I can tell. You’ve got a call, bro. It’s long distance from Lendovia. You might want to take it in the study, away from all the loud music.”
“Lendovia?” Cole’s heart raced. Hope Morgan was from Lendovia. Did she go back? Or was it her father calling again? Her father and she were estranged since she’d left Lendovia six years earlier. She’d refused to talk to her dad or to let him know what was going on, even though he’d paid her fare to come to Canada to study. He told her he wanted her to stay away from a troublesome young man and start a new life. Lendovia was in the middle of a civil war in their Mediterranean country. Apparently, the young man was from a rival state. Cole always wondered if Hope never forgot the guy she’d left behind. When he’d encouraged her to speak with her father, she’d flat out refused. Hope was evasive of the man. Cole was tempted to go digging around in her background but decided against it at the time to respect her privacy. But he wished he’d done that now. She’d only texted him to let him know she was leaving Canada to head to the States after leaving the Belmont Corp, but she was fine. That was over three years ago.
“Okay,” Cole said, then he took the phone with him out into the corridor. He then walked down the hall towards the study.
“Season’s greetings,” Cole said into the phone.
“Cole Belmont, good to hear your voice again. Season’s greetings to you, too.”
“Julius Morgan. Nice to hear your voice after all these years.” Cole tried to remain courteous.
“Well, we can cease with the pleasantries,” Julius said, getting to the point. “Cole, I’m truly sorry to hear about your father’s diagnosis. I do hope and pray that he’ll respond well to treatment and recover.”
Cole swallowed hard, trying not to get emotional. “Same here,” he said.
“I think it’s wonderful that you boys are giving him appreciation dinners every chance you get. What a brilliant idea.”
“Thank you.” Cole waited patiently, knowing Julius didn’t usually engage in small talk.
Julius Morgan was a political and often ruthless businessman in Lendovia and a very powerful one, yet he had strange ways. He often bought people and authority figures in that country, according to rumors. He had fifteen children with different wives—as was accepted in his culture, and he’d shipped his daughter Hope to Canada in hopes that she’d keep away from her boyfriend at the time who was part of a rival state in their warring homeland. He knew full well how men like Julius treated their daughters who “dishonored” the family in any way, yet the man seemed caring enough to want to give his daughter the best he could by sending her away to Canada and paying her college tuition while keeping an eye on her from abroad.
“I haven’t seen or heard from Hope in years and she isn’t returning my letters.”
“Just now you’re realizing this, Julius?”
“Well, the truth is, I haven’t tried to reach her recently. She usually sends me text messages to let me know she is all right, but I haven’t heard from her in ages.”
Cole swallowed hard. God, he hoped she was all right. He would have to get Brandon’s agency on it soon then. But he didn’t want to alarm her father.
“Hope, as you know, is no longer working with Belmont Hotels, Mr. Morgan. I haven’t heard from her in the last three years. But I’m sure she’s all right.” Or he’d make sure about it.
“How can you be sure?”
“She sent me a text a while back saying she was moving to Texas.”
“I see,” he said, sounding less hopeful. “As you know, my country is having trouble with getting visas to visit Canada but I will try to reach there sometime soon when I get travel arrangements sorted out through the embassy.”
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”
“I hope so.”
Cole ended the call without mentioning he had hoped to ask his permission to marry Hope three and a half years ago, but that was until Hope up and left him, leaving a hole in his heart filled with many unanswered questions.
Chapter 2
One week later…
Hope Morgan was a bundle of nerves.
She could not believe she was back in Belmont. It was early in December. It had been well over a couple of months since she’d moved back. Thanks to her best friend, Jewel, whom she’d met in college and who loaned her money recently, she was able to get a used car and pay the first month’s rent on a place. That was before Jewel’s husband lost his job. Jewel was a stay-at-home mom so currently Jewel and her husband were in a bad spot, living out of a room rented in someone’s house.
They were all college grads, so what the heck was happening to the economy? Hope even tried to get a job at a fast food joint to make ends meet until a job in her field became available, but she was told she was overqualified. God, she wished she had enough money to rent a proper place, not a crappy excuse for an apartment like the one she had now though she counted her blessings that she was not on the street. Her landlord was a real character always snooping through her things when she wasn’t home.
“What are you doing going through my stuff?” she’d once confronted him when she caught him in her closet.
“I have a right to inspect your place,” he’d told her.
“Not without notice. And you certainly have no right snooping around in my personal business.”
“You’re late with your rent,” he’d said.
How on earth did she get this way in her life? Hope thought she’d planned everything out the right way. Go to college. Get a degree. Get a job. Get a life. But things weren’t as simple, were they? Especially when you had no one in your family to help you. Her father was out of the question, and sadly when her mother passed away from breast cancer, Hope felt as if she had no one else to turn to in this world. Things must get better, she encouraged herself.
I will not feel sorry for myself. I can do this. As long as there’s life, there’s hope, right?
She reminded herself of that famous saying by Confucius: "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
She never thought she’d ever return to Belmont. Not in a million years—even if she lived that long. What would people think of her now? Did they know her secret? How long was she going to keep running? What would her life become?
Besides, Texas never quite worked out for her. Hope moved there a few years prior to find work and had used the assumed name Brenda Leslie, but that didn’t pan out. Someone at the firm she’d worked for recognized her. She’d been let go from her contract almost immediately. Of course, they never admitted the real reason to her face. Did they ever? They just scrutinized her every move and if she was a minute late coming into work because of traffic, she’d be documented for that. Never mind if everyone else was an hour late. When a company wanted to get rid of you, they’d use your human weakness against you while ignoring other employees’ weaknesses. They’d magnify your faults and ignore your strengths. They’d even blame you for everything that went wrong in the office. It was hell living under that pressure.
No matter how sweet Hope tried to be to everyone, they simply didn’t like her. The truth was, she was doing a great job, but they’d found out…about her past.
