Read Online Cursed by Love by Jacie Floyd - Free Book Online Page A

have heard of Jebediah .
He was a financier with grandiose ideas. They say he made and lost three
fortunes before he was thirty-five. But rich or poor, he hobnobbed with all the
important players of the day.”
    Moly snapped her fingers. “A flamboyant
speculator along the lines of Diamond Jim Brady, right?”
    “That’s what they say.” And it explained
a lot about the subsequent line of Shaws —spectacular
losses, minus Jebediah’s spectacular successes, but
big dreamers everyone. Except for Gabe. Soul-sucking reality was challenging
enough for him.
    She ticked through the generations on
her fingers. “Your grandfather, his father named Jonas, and his grandfather Jebediah . Does your grandfather remember Jebediah ?”
    “No, when Jonas was still a boy, a
Model-T backfired and spooked a horse that trampled Jebediah .
That was way before Granddad’s time. Some people thought Jebediah’s death was intentional—murdered over a deal gone bad, but that was never proved.
Family legend says he received the Lotus as an engagement gift.”
    “An engagement gift!” Her eyes lit up
with excitement. “Really? From whom?”
    “Good question, but Granddad doesn’t
know the answer.”
    “And your great-great-grandmother didn’t
survive to tell anyone the tale?”
    “Nope, she died having Jonas. The gift
apparently would have been for his second marriage to some opera singer, but
the wedding never took place.”
    “Opera singer?” Molly’s already wide
eyes grew wider. She leaned toward him with new urgency. “What was her name?”
    “Bella Simone, according to Granddad.”
    “That’s it! That’s the link!” Molly
exclaimed. “We did it!”
    “What did we do?” He put his hand on her
arm as if to keep her grounded, but really, he just wanted an excuse to touch
her.
    “Bella Simone was my
great-great-grandmother.” A confident head toss sent her hair fluttering around
her glowing face. Her eyes glittered with excitement. She threw her arms around
him for a quick hug, rubbed against him, then jerked away. “One of my family’s
two claims to fame.”
    Whistling his surprise, Gabe’s head spun
with desire while barely hanging onto the thread of the conversation. “What
happened to her?”
    “She died.” Molly paused, building the
suspense. “On the Titanic.”
    He ignored the dramatic delivery and
mentally did the math. “That would have been two years after Jebediah bit the dust.”
    “Sensitively put.” Molly’s face pulled
into a pained expression. “But yes. She’d been singing to packed houses in
London, and her manager-slash-husband at the time wanted to take her home in
style. Plus, they were eager to get back to the States, because they’d left
their infant daughter with Bella’s sister, Rose.”
    Molly straightened her shoulders. Gabe’s
gaze was drawn to the undulating flag on the front of her shirt. With her
charms jingling on her bracelet, she tapped her index finger against her lips.
“So, Jebediah and Bella didn’t marry after they
received the Sleeping Lotus as a betrothal gift, and both of them died
tragically. Coincidence? I think not.”
    Gabe glared in Molly’s direction. “Don’t
start about the curse. Life was uncertain in those days.” The way she looked
today, he’d follow her almost anywhere. But not down that road, not in the
direction of pure hogwash. “Bad things happened to people all the time, even to
nice people. And by all reports, Jebediah wasn’t all
that nice.”
    The shrug of her shoulders sent the flag
waving once again. “All right, I won’t go there until I know more. But while
we’re here, I may as well do some research. If you want to keep on with—” she
gestured to the laptop screen, “whatever you were doing, I can look through
these reference books for information about the curse— er ,
I mean, the carving.”
    He reached out to raise the screen, but
thought better of it as a couple of teens in baggy shorts with huge sports’
logo shirts