Read Online The Seer's Choice: A Novella of the Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney - Free Book Online

expectations. There had even been rumors that he sometimes bedded more than one lover at once. As kind as he’d been to her, she hadn’t wanted his attention in that way. She’d certainly never dreamed about having Duilio Ferreira in her bed. She’d pursued him on her father’s orders, and he, in turn, had never shown the slightest interest in her. But Rafael Pinheiro?
    She knew something about his passions. When she’d read his energies, she’d learned that he harbored strong desires even if he’d not been involved with a woman for months. But she also knew his compassion. He wasn’t the sort who would willingly hurt a woman. He couldn’t fool her about his nature, not when she’d read him so thoroughly.
    She pressed her flushed cheek against her pillow, pretending she had her arms about Rafael Pinheiro instead. He wasn’t slender, not like this pillow. Would he smell as he had when he’d come off the football field? Of perspiration? Or perhaps of soap or cologne? She sniffed the musty pillow. No, he would smell better than that. And he would be solid and heavy and warm. Maybe he would sleep with his arms about her.
    She didn’t need him, but she wanted him.
    Even so, she wasn’t going to give up the gains she’d made in the last few months. She didn’t want to become a wife like her mother, always cowed and serving her belligerent husband’s whims. Constancia was happy being a farm wife and looked forward to bearing a dozen children to her husband. That wasn’t what Genoveva wanted, either. Especially not after watching that young woman die this afternoon. Neither did she want to be like her middle sister, Efigénia, angry and frustrated and alone.
    There had to be some way to be a modern woman, and have Rafael Pinheiro as well.
    

    Rafael sat on the steps of the church, waiting.
    Despite the difficulties of her day, Miss Jardim had made an excellent dinner companion again. They’d discussed her work over at the hospital, his childhood at the seminary for boys, her upbringing split between the city and the countryside.
    That afternoon when she’d said he was only watching over her because of the incident the previous Sunday, he hadn’t considered before blurting out what he had. In his haste, he’d bluntly spilled that he’d foreseen he would marry her. And once he’d started talking about it he hadn’t known of a graceful way to stop without telling her the whole.
    He’d meant merely to reassure her that she hadn’t bewitched him. Not by using her gift, at least. He remembered her shock when she’d realized she could use her gift to affect his mind as much as his body. That was what she’d feared, so he’d hurried to reassure her that he’d been interested in her before that incident.
    He had all but asked Genoveva Jardim to marry him.
    He could have told her he’d been in love with her for months. It would have been a lie, though, and he didn’t want to lie to her. He wasn’t in love with her even now, was he?
    All the same, he did like her. Far more than he’d ever thought possible. And he felt alarmingly possessive about her, an impulse he had no right to feel. He’d tried to maintain his distance when Medeiros started to bother her because the man was younger and might be quite wealthy one day. Medeiros seemed a better match for her. But she hadn’t reciprocated the man’s interest. That had been patently obvious to everyone but Medeiros.
    Rafael still had reservations. She was ten years his junior. At one point she’d pursued each of his Ferreira cousins, although her father had pushed her to pursue them since the Ferreira family was wealthy. That was another thing; they hadn’t talked about money at all. And he had no idea what sort of lover she would make.
    There was so much about her he still didn’t know. He could only blame himself for that because he’d been so adamant about keeping his distance. He should have sought her out earlier and courted her like a sensible