Authors: Eris Field
No Greater Love
Table of Contents
NO GREATER LOVE
ERIS FIELD
SOUL MATE PUBLISHING
New York
NO GREATER LOVE
Copyright©2015
ERIS FIELD
Cover Design by Ramona Lockwood
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
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Published in the United States of America by
Soul Mate Publishing
P.O. Box 24
Macedon, New York, 14502
ISBN: 978-1-61935-835-5
www.SoulMatePublishing.com
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
No Greater Love
is dedicated to those who give
of themselves to help the refugees of the world—
children, adults, and the elderly—who are fleeing
from conflict, terror, abuse, and losses.
May they be successful in helping their refugees
find the way to new homes, new lives.
Acknowledgements
It is with gratitude and deepest thanks that I wish to acknowledge those who gave so generously of their help in the preparation of
No Greater Love
: my family who listened and responded, the staff of the Roycroft Inn in East Aurora that introduced me to the beguiling charm of their tree house like suites, and friends who shared their family stories of enchanting, Circassian beauties. I am most appreciative of the comments of my fellow romance writers of Western New York Romance Writers and of the faith and hours of hard work of my editor at Soul Mate Publishing, Debby Gilbert.
Chapter 1
The flight from Amsterdam had granted no escape from the fear of what the next two days would reveal, and now, fighting against the ever-present fatigue, Pieter considered the amount of effort it would take to get out of the rental car and into the sprawling, brightly lit store, supposedly the premier liquor store in Western New York.
He could not go empty-handed to see his old friend and mentor. But Carl was more than that. He was the one person in the world who cared for him without reservation, who saw beyond his defects
. Holding on to the hope that the store would have Boomsma Oude Jenever, the golden Dutch gin that Carl loved, Pieter stepped out, drawing the collar of his light raincoat up to ward off as much of the wet March snow as possible.
As he neared the door of the store, Pieter became aware of a tall, slender woman racing toward the store. Her head was down and her long legs, covered in dark pants, closed the distance between them with quick grace. A curly mass of dark-brown hair topped by a saffron-colored knit cap bounced with each step. With automatic courtesy, Pieter stepped aside and held the door open for her to enter, and when she lifted her head to thank him, his breath caught as he registered the beauty of the elongated oval face—the skin as white as Limoges china, large, deep-set dark-brown eyes, long, straight-edged nose, and perfectly chiseled lips.
A Circassian beauty.
For a moment he was too stunned to speak. He had seen paintings of Circassian women—women from Georgia and the Russian Caucuses renowned as the most beautiful women in the world—but had never met one
. What was a woman who, at one time, would have been a sought-after prize for a Sultan’s harem doing in this small town in Western New York?
She had thanked Pieter in English but there had been a hint of an accent. His return “You’re welcome” had sounded awkward to his ears as he followed her through the door and then watched her speed to the side of the store.
The aisles, stocked with wines from every country, seemed endless to Pieter as he stood wearily looking for a sign that said
Gin.
He pushed himself erect and raised a finger to catch the attention of a passing clerk. “Boomsa Oude Jenever, please.” As he waited, Pieter found himself searching the aisles for the woman who had captured his attention as no woman had for a long time. With a sense of disappointment at not seeing her again, he nodded at the elegantly embossed bottle with a songbird holding a juniper berry in its beak that the clerk was showing him. As he reached for his wallet, Pieter heard the soft voice with its intriguing accent from behind him at the checkout counter.
“I called just before I left work and you said you had a bottle of Oude Jenever.”
“Yes, we did but we just sold the last bottle.” The clerk’s gaze drifted in Pieter’s direction. “We don’t get much demand for it.”
As Janan followed the clerk’s gaze, she recognized the tall man who’d held the door for her. The light had been dim then but now she was able to see his face with its broad forehead, deep-set dark-gray eyes, aquiline nose, generous mouth, and firm chin softened by a slight cleft. Now, in the harsh light of the store, the irregular-shaped port-wine birth mark on his left cheek stood out in sharp contrast to the gray cast of his skin. Unable to help himself, Pieter turned and met the lustrous dark eyes of the woman standing behind him. For a moment he saw the expression of a hurt child cross her face and then it changed to that of resignation of one who was no stranger to disappointments.
“We have many other fine imported gins.” The clerk gestured to the back wall. “There is a very nice Scottish gin, Tanqueray. Frank Sinatra’s favorite, they say.”
The woman shook her head and pulled the cap down firmly.
“We have Old Raj from England and Petermans from Belgium.” There was a note of desperation in the clerk’s voice now.
“No, I wanted an imported Dutch gin.”
“We have Vincent Van Gogh gin. It’s a very nice blended Dutch gin.” The clerk added eagerly, “It has a picture of a canal on the front.”
As he paused to separate the American dollars that the check-out clerk had handed him as change from the Euros in his wallet, Pieter could not help a faint shudder that accompanied the thought of Vincent Van Gogh gin with its ten added botanical flavors
. No Dutchman would drink that. No gin needed more than juniper berries to flavor it.
He felt a sense of relief when she shook her head. As he took the bottle from the clerk and slid it into his raincoat pocket, he watched the woman hurry out of the store, the bounce in her step gone. He felt a faint sense of remorse.
Why was it so important to her? Was she buying Dutch gin for her husband? A lover?
He frowned
. Why was the thought of her buying Jenever for another man bothering him?
Suddenly he knew why. There had been no startled look of repulsion when she had seen his face. Throughout his life, he had become so accustomed to that quick reaction to his birthmark when people met him for the first time that he anticipated it and allowed time for them to recover, but he had not seen any distaste or pity reflected in her eyes.
A few hours later, Pieter drove slowly down the narrow street of the old village searching for Carl’s house, but all the houses looked alike—well-kept, vintage bungalows with deep porches stretching across the front and broad welcoming steps. Each house had a walk lined on each side with neatly piled banks of snow. He squinted against the sweep of the windshield wipers in the early dusk, barely able to make out the numbers placed precisely on the right column of each porch. Finally, he parked cautiously in front of one, the only one with a foot or more of snow blocking the walk. He could not make out the face of the woman fiercely throwing snow off the porch steps but he recognized the orange cap slung low over her ears and the tall slim figure—the magnificent creature from the liquor store. He took a few steps from the car and cleared his throat but she did not look in his direction. He raised his voice. “Excuse me. Is this the home of Dr. Carl Ahren?”
She gave a brief nod without looking at him and continued shoveling the steps with quick, angry tosses of the snow to either side.
Shivering from the cold filtering through his raincoat, Pieter tried again. “Do you know if he’s home?”
She leveled a cool look at him and nodded.
Pieter eyed the snow covering the distance from the street where he stood to the porch and shrugged. He was going to have very cold feet.
Suddenly a plastic snow shovel landed in front of him. “It would go better if we both work at it.”
He hesitated for a moment and then picked up the shovel and began to copy her graceful movements—push, lift, throw.
Janan worked quickly as questions flew through her mind.
The man from the liquor store with the aristocratic Dutch accent. Not the Dutch of her adoptive parents. Not the Dutch that Carl spoke. Who was he? Why had he come? Was he another relative come to plague Carl?
She lifted her head just in time to see the man slump silently to the ground.
Dimly aware of something woolly under his head, Pieter was reluctant to open his eyes. He wanted to savor the sensation of absolute peace for a few more moments. Then he felt smooth, cool hands on his face and a body leaning over him.
“Oh good! You’re breathing on your own.”
He dragged his eyelids open to see a beautiful mouth hovering over his. “I could stop,” he whispered.
“You’re not well.” The eyes staring down at him were accusing.
“I know.”
“I asked you to shovel,” she whispered as a stricken look crossed her face.
“I tried.” He felt her collapse on top of him. Strands of silky hair clinging to his chin and tears cold against his neck.
“I could’ve killed you!” she wailed.
“But you didn’t.” His arms came up awkwardly at first and then they settled around her holding her close. He looked up at the gray sky and smiled against a cloud of almond-scented hair. He was holding the most enchanting woman in the world in his arms. He could feel small, firm breasts pressed against him and, in response to the slim knee that was pressed between his legs, he experienced a stirring that he had not felt in a long time.
She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll call for help. You need to be evaluated.”
“I am going to spend all day tomorrow in a hospital being evaluated.” He sat up slowly and picked up the cap that had been under his head. “Thank you,” he said formally, holding the cap out to her and then grasped the hand she held out to him to help him to his feet.