Love's Redemption (eBook)

Chapter One

Under a sunny New Mexico sky, jeweler, Jake Connors, looked from his deceased wife’s gravestone out at the Santa Fe landscape of lonely distances and long silences. A man invested his mind, heart, trust, and time into things with intentions and goals. Sometimes they panned out and other times they certainly did not. With the death of his wife, Sierra, his heart had been challenged in ways that he didn’t see coming and that never had left him as ‘in it alone’ as he was now.

Since Sierra’s death three long years ago, he had been making the trek to her grave on a weekly basis to talk about the business they had built together, although he knew in the silence that he was only talking to himself. She had been laid to rest. He needed to let her, and move on, as she had encouraged him to do from her death bed. Easier said than done, he thought. But, it was that or quit, and he was no quitter. Tough times didn’t last. Tough people did.

He jiggled his keys, glanced down at the gravestone one last time, turned, and called to his dog. “Come on, Lewie, time to go to work.”

Back at his jewelry store on the Santa Fe Plaza, he completed the wax carving of his latest jewelry design. He then attached the carving to a wax tree, along with other pieces ready to be cast, being mindful of the best angle for liquid metal to flow. He next placed the wax tree into a plastic-filled canister and poured a special plaster over it, then heated it in the kiln where it would stay overnight. During the process, the wax would burn out and create an empty space, wherein either melted silver or gold would be poured, like love coursing hot through a man’s veins, filling his woman with himself, as an expression of all things beautiful and binding between them.

Only Jake didn’t need to be reminded that sometimes jewelry, like relationships, didn’t always last, no matter how beautiful, or the amount of care lavished on them.

Still, the creative process continued to flow. Today he was working on his signature copyrighted rings and pendants. He pulled off his goggles and looked up to see a woman with blonde hair in a thick braided ponytail, threaded through a sparkling, multi-colored sequined visor, window shopping. Then, the bell over his Santa Fe jewelry shop door tinkled an alert at her entry.

The bill on her visor hid her eyes and most of her face as her gaze swept his shop before she leaned over the store’s glass jewelry cases to browse the merchandise. He could see, as she worked her way down the counters in her black and white geometric striped sundress, that she was curvy in all the right places and had shapely, long legs. Her small bare feet were slipped into strappy high heeled mules, her toes and fingernails painted a rosy pink. A single pearl pendant dangled provocatively at the base of her slender neck that matched her pearl stud earrings and ring on her right hand. Nothing on her left, although she wore an unusually etched silver cuff on her wrist that looked like one of a kind.

The Navajo of New Mexico had a life philosophy they termed, ‘walk in beauty.’ She fulfilled it to a tee.

Although it was the siesta hour and not many shoppers were on the plaza, Jake could see his two assistants were already working with customers. He moved beyond the backroom plate glass enclosure to ask if he could help her, trailed by Lewie, his highly possessive and protective executive German Shepherd, whose ears had perked up at the sound of the bell, and whose interest was also now centered on her.

“See something you like?” Jake asked.

“Lots of things, actually,” she answered in a soft voice, while concentrating on the custom yellow gold and white gold jewelry inlaid with diamonds, turquoise, lapis, coral, and/or Australian opals, and not giving him eye contact, but only a view of the top of her blonde hair and sequined visor.

He tipped his head to get a better view of her face to no avail, as Lewie uncharacteristically left his side to mosey out in front of the glass case. Jake called him back before the dog scared her away. He obeyed, but with seeming reluctance.

“I’m the designer, so if you have questions, ask away. If you have something specific in mind that you want created, we can do that for you, too,” he said, in an effort to make eye contact. “Sometimes customers want something designed around a stone they already have, like a ring made from an old broach for instance. Or, we can make a one-of-a kind item, as well. We hand select, hand cut, and hand set each piece.”

In some ways she wished he would just be quiet and let her look. But his coffee-rich voice was both soothing and stirring, like a guitar strummed around a campfire on a warm summer’s night. It drew her to him, despite her reluctance to be drawn to any man.

“I’d like to try on this coral and gold ring, please, although I’d really like a ring and earrings in spiney oyster, but I don’t see that.”

Her choice surprised him. He would have guessed she would choose something more traditional in turquoise and silver. That is exactly why he always asked and never presumed, especially with his price tags.

“What size?” he asked, as he opened the back of the case to take out the ring she had pointed toward. From long experience he had learned that the rings in the showcases should be sized between six and a half and eight, as those were the most common sizes for women customers. “As long as your ring size isn’t smaller than two sizes less, or larger than the one you’re trying on, rings can be resized. Otherwise, they need to be recast. That would take four to six weeks if it’s a ring with inlaid sections.

“Bending an inlaid stone ring either up or down to make it larger or smaller is a tricky matter. Most jewelers don’t do that kind of work. I have an international reputation for that, and often take such orders worldwide.”

“Size 5.”

It could be sized.

His black western shirt open at the throat, its sleeves rolled halfway up his tanned forearms, he took out the love knot ring, edged in pave diamonds above and below its round, centered carat diamond and held out his hand for hers. She laid her left hand, all small, soft, and warm, in his big one and allowed him to slip the ring on her third finger.

“A beautiful ring for a beautiful woman,” he commented in his distinctive coffee-rich voice, as Lewie panted and whined.

She withdrew her hand, and he could see the blush that started at the top curve of her bosom and moved upward with the lifting of her head. Her black mascara lashed, startling sky blue eyes briefly locked with his steel blue ones, sending an unexpected shock through him.

Kat searched his features from his dark brown hair pulled back in a man bun, to his sideburns leading to his closely trimmed beard and mustache that emphasized his full, well drawn mouth, then again looked down at the jewelry in the glass case. A man’s handsomeness was not a weakness of hers, but despite her background, she could admire it.

“Normally,” Kat pressed her full, pink lips together, hesitant about her response, “I shy away from something like that said to me. But,” she cast her gaze around his shop once again with its one of a kind rings, pendants, bracelets, and earrings, “I consider it a real compliment, coming from someone like you with such an eye for beautiful things.” Her voice trailed off.

“Indeed,” he replied, as he let his gaze again slide over her, wondering at his own audacity and enjoying the lovely pink tinting of her radiant complexion that his comment had caused under the sparkle of her visor. She would look stunning in his beige Bentley convertible wearing that visor—or, nothing at all.

Of course, Lewie would have to be relegated to the backseat.

The dog whined again.

Where were these thoughts coming from? Only this morning, Jake chided himself, I was at my wife’s graveside pining for her. And now, not three hours later, I’m not only thinking but saying things to a perfect stranger I’ve never thought or said to anyone but my Sierra! Not that she had been a convertible lover, he thought. She was always too concerned about her hair being blown around.

He also wondered at this woman’s hesitancy to accept a compliment. Pretty as she was, surely this wasn’t the first of its kind she had received.

“We’re also known internationally for our beautiful collection. That’s why we’re called, A Diamond on the Plaza,” he commented further. “Is the ring of interest, or can I show you something else?”

Her attention swung back to him, as if she had been asked a loaded question, and then away again.

To Jake’s irritation Lewie was again on her side of the counter and whining for her attention.

“Well, hello there,“ she said, bending over slightly to give Lewie a pat. The dog’s tongue hung out in pure adoration.

Her response to Lewie gave Jake a mindboggling view of one of her breasts, as the neckline of her sundress gaped enough from his vantage point that his tongue nearly hung out.

“What a beautiful dog,” she said, her hand smoothing Lewie’s brown and black coat from his stand-up ears to his tail, the dog loving every minute of it. She found him friendly like her parents’ dog that never seemed to know a stranger, except he had never liked her ex, which should have told her something right away.

“He’s what they call an executive protection dog,” commented Jake. “He’s an alarm to wake you up in case of an intruder. A visual...