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  Avril was so relieved she jumped from her chair and threw her arms around Dale’s neck.

  Without thinking, she planted an exuberant kiss on his lips. The contact was brief and impulsive, but enough to kindle a spark that Dale had never felt before.

  “How can I thank you?” she asked.

  His lips quivered and parted. “Join me for coffee?” He tried to think back to the last time he’d been made such an offer. “It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed the company of a young woman or experienced such a loaded kiss.”

  “Hey, not so young,” she chuckled, suddenly embarrassed by her spontaneity and ignoring the tingling that ran along her spine. “I’ll have you know that I’ll be twenty-five in December.”

  Dale rose from his chair. “In that case, we’d better make it an early lunch.”

  SONIA ICILYN

  was born in Sheffield, England, where she still lives with her daughter in a small village that she describes as “typically British, quiet and where the old money is.” Her first romance novel, Significant Other, was published in 1993. Since then, she’s had nine titles published. Sonia has been featured in Black Elegance and Today’s Black Woman and included on Ebony’s recommended reading list. She would love to hear from readers. Contact her at her Web site, www.soniaicilyn.com, or write to Sonia Icilyn, P.O. Box 438, Sheffield S1 4YX, England, U.K.

  RAPTURE

  SONIA ICILYN

  Dear Reader,

  In the tradition of wisdom that was personified in a great African-American man, this is my tribute to Coretta Scott King, 1927–2006, wife of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., 1929–1968.

  A RIGHTEOUS NEGRO’S CRY

  It came like a swarm

  or a burst of gale-force wind, rustling through the trees

  More than a cold breeze

  Shook houses with frozen hearts

  Drove bigots apart

  A courageous start

  Felled the standing ignorant to their knees

  There was general unease.

  Made the sound of God dropping apples down

  Heaven’s stairs

  They said their prayers

  Tearful, woeful affairs

  A wail that was a righteous Negro’s cry

  From up on high

  Echoed far and wide

  Across oceans, rivers, lakes and streams

  He had a dream.

  That little black boys go in search of white pearls

  And little white boys could play with black girls

  Black pearls, white girls

  In nature’s sea

  As God intended it to be

  A nation living out the true meaning of its creed.

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident” as a breed

  “Set my people free.”

  Moses said on the mountain

  Mahatma Gandhi to the king

  Mandela to his countrymen

  Malcolm X on militant wings

  Muhammad Ali with a knuckle’s sting and

  Martin Luther King

  “My country, of thee I sing”

  Mississippi, from your molehills, “Let freedom ring.”

  “I have a dream”

  That civil rights should forever reign

  Majestic, without hate like Cain who did slain

  his brother for being another, created equal

  Dust to dust of mother earth, place of man’s birth

  With faith, “a stone of hope,” for what it’s worth

  God’s liberty and justice will always mean

  A man’s freedom is more than a dream.

  Sonia Icilyn

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Prologue

  “I do,” the groom said proudly.

  Surrounded by some of London’s society mavens, Miss African-Caribbean was determined to enjoy her moment of glory for all it was worth.

  “Do you take Maxwell George Armstrong III to be your lawful wedded husband?” the vicar of Grantchester village said with a welcoming smile.

  Winner of the Jamaican Festival competition, Avril Vasconcelos flashed the tall handsome man standing beside her a sexy grin that was her trademark. She was standing among guests, family members and the chairman of the cultural development committee.

  But as she stared into Maxwell’s deep brown eyes, with the immortal words “I do” hanging on her lips, Avril suddenly developed a miserable case of cold feet. Then came her answer.

  “I’m sorry….” She looked at the vicar, whose face was aghast. “I can’t.”

  A piercing shriek shattered the silence.

  The banshee cry was Bertha de Souza, Avril’s mother. With her stricken face beneath a pink cossack hat, she was the picture of devastation.

  The sound echoed around the church, disrupting the calm of everyone except the bride. The only drama earlier that day had been when Bertha crashed her Mercedes-Benz en route to the wedding. The injury had been a twisted tire and a dent in Bertha’s pride before a quick call from her cell phone brought her third husband to the rescue.

  As for the bride, to the casual observer it was difficult to establish just exactly where Avril’s ambitions ended and began.

  First she tried to follow in the footsteps of her Brazilian father and become a dancer. But when he remarried after Bertha divorced him because of his philandering ways, Avril followed her wayward half brother. His battle with alcohol and problems with domestic violence took her on a wild road.

  It was the first of many disappointments that came to characterize her life.

  By her early twenties, it became apparent to Avril that she was never going to be good at anything. The only thing she had going for her were her looks—the long curly twists of hair that were the legacy of her Portuguese paternal grandmother, the caramel brown skin inherited from her Jamaican mother, and the broad African nose, full pink lips and rounded cheeks that proved she was her father’s child.

  Encouraged by one of her college teachers, she decided to become a model. It was the first step down a road that would take her perilously close to self-destruction.

  The endless rounds of parties, Olympic-level drinking, the skinflint boyfriends and fellow hell-raisers blinded by cocaine abuse, and the long days of hardly being clothed in anything except lingerie to meet her photo-shoot deadlines was not the life for a young, innocent and spirited girl. The day she quit was the day she saw the Jamaican pageant competition.

  At age twenty-four, Avril did not expect to win. She had also not expected to be chased by Maxwell George Armstrong III either. What would such a worldly man want with her, she’d wondered.

  His father, Maxwell George Armstrong II, known affectionately as “Georgie” to his family, friends and colleagues, made his fortune as the owner and pioneer of Britain’s first homegrown Caribbean food packaging company.

  Within seven years, he and his family had taken on a millionaire’s lifestyle. Avril knew that most women would be falling over themselves to be in her shoes, betrothed to the heir of a fortune. But she felt numb. Even her mother’s shriek did not shake her.

  “Excuse me?” the vicar prompted, almost dazed. “What did you say?”

  Avril looked into Maxwell’s eyes. Her mouth opened and the tears came. “I don’t love you.”

  There it was. She had finally said it.

  She had confronted the first of many fears t
hat had recently emerged in her troubled life.

  Chapter 1

  “Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Bertha de Souza complained as she paced the room with a glass of water and two aspirins in her hand. She looked at her Haitian husband of three years who was chomping heavily on a cigar, before throwing a contemptuous glare at her only daughter. “How am I going to hold my head up in London? Your marriage meant everything to me.”

  “Miss African-Caribbean and Mr. Multi-Millionaire,” Antonio Contino chuckled cynically.

  Bertha looked at her son fathered by her first husband. Of her two children, he was the oldest and the one who had, until now, severely tested her nerves.

  “Don’t talk about your sister like that,” she seethed before popping the two aspirins in her mouth. “If Avril had wanted to marry Maxwell for his money, they would be on their honeymoon now.” Bertha took a large gulp of water. She looked at her daughter, seated in her wedding dress on the sofa where Avril had miserably spent most of the night. “In God’s name why did you have to shame me, mother of the bride?”

  Avril did not reply. She did not know what to say. At that precise moment, her only thoughts were that she should go to her room, dry the tears she had cried throughout the night and get the hell out of her £3000 wedding gown. She had already kicked off the £1200 cream-colored satin mules from her feet and removed the £8000 diamond clustered engagement ring from her left finger. Both were placed next to the white stole and pink rose bouquet on the carpet beneath her feet.

  Throughout the night, she had toyed with her ring, wondering why she had not stopped the roller-coaster that led to her wedding day. Was it because the chairman of the Cultural Development Commission, who had crowned her Miss African-Caribbean, begged to attend? Or the fact that Maxwell had dogged her constantly.

  Could it even have been that she was trying to please her mother, Bertha Contino Vasconcelos de Souza, married three times and each man more powerful than the one before him?

  Avril could not decide. It was Sunday morning. Chaos was all around her.

  Her eyes were so swollen, they refused to open. She was still fatigued by all the problems that faced her. The five-foot wedding cake, the four hundred bottles of champagne, the boat load of food that was enough to feed three armies, the presents that came from far and wide and, most important, the engagement ring that she had removed from her left finger were all on her mind.

  And the people she owed an apology. The vicar, who had officiated the wedding ceremony. The groom. His family. Hers. The six bridesmaids and Kesse Foster, her maid of honor who was also her closest friend.

  The entire congregation who attended and watched her being whisked away by her father in the long limousine outside the church were all owed an explanation. No wonder she had not slept. Instead, she kept a night-long vigil on the sofa that had been a gift to her mother from Lennie, her current husband.

  Her stepfather was the only person on her side. He was a tall, impressive man with straight black hair over an oval-shaped chestnut-brown face. Lennie was used to candid conversations and preferred when matters were out in the open, with a “let it all hang out” approach.

  “Leave the girl alone,” he said while her mother continued pacing across the sitting room floor. “Avril will tell us when she’s good and ready, in her own time.”

  “She’ll tell us now,” Bertha demanded, her stomach churning sickly. “God help us if the newspapers get wind of this. The shame will blow in our direction like a cold breeze in winter. I’ll be snubbed by London society forever.”

  “We,” Antonio corrected, adding his inclusion. “We will be pariahs forever.”

  “Stop it,” Avril shouted suddenly. She opened her eyes. “This is my life you’re talking about.”

  “And don’t I know it,” Bertha agreed. She looked directly at her daughter whose fine-boned face was an unusual gray pallor. “My only children and this is how you both repay me,” she continued. “Last year it was Tony. This year it’s you. What did I ever do to deserve this?”

  “Now, now,” Lennie said calmly, noting the anxiety in his wife’s voice. “I’m sure Avril has a simple explanation why she ran out of church yesterday afternoon and left the groom standing alone at the altar.”

  The awful truth sounded even worse the moment Avril heard it said aloud. More tears threatened. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No, you never do,” Bertha responded. “And I’m tired of all the things you don’t mean to do.”

  For a woman with two grown children, she looked amazingly young to be fifty-two. Bertha still had her carefully coifed hairstyle, but with clumps of curls that emphasized the sleepless night she had endured. She no longer wore the pink suit she had on for the wedding ceremony. Bertha was now walking around in a Dior nightdress, too upset to calm down.

  “You never meant to be a small-time model,” she complained angrily. “Never meant to have a handful of boyfriends that were hard luck cases, never meant to meet a wonderful man and never meant to humiliate him on his wedding day.”

  “That was cold,” Antonio piped in, mimicking a shiver. “Brutal.”

  “And you,” Bertha scolded her son. “Just like your Dominican father. You never meant to get married, lose your wife and never meant for me to have to legally petition the courts for the right to see my only grandchild. Even so, I only received a photograph.”

  “Don’t start on me,” Antonio said wounded. “I never told Avril to be a runaway bride.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry,” she wept. She spoke in a halting voice, as though something was clogging her throat. “I just couldn’t do it. Not to me, not to him.”

  “Do what?” Bertha demanded. The answer was so important, she immediately took the seat beside her daughter.

  “Marry Maxwell,” Avril confessed.

  “The way you just said it,” Bertha began, hearing her daughter’s distress, “it sounded like something else.”

  Avril nodded. “It is.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “How do you switch it off…you know, the feelings you have for somebody else.”

  “Somebody else?” Antonio chuckled. “Boy, I am waiting to hear this.”

  “Sssh,” Bertha chided. She looked at her daughter, concerned. “Who?”

  “It’s all right,” Lennie encouraged, calmly. “Spit it out.”

  “Meyrick,” Avril confided, sorrowful at making the admission.

  “Meyrick!” Bertha repeated slowly, attempting to allow the information to sink in. “Maxwell’s younger brother?”

  “You’re in love with the groom’s brother,” Antonio gasped. “This is rich.”

  “But….” Bertha didn’t know where to begin. “He’s—”

  “Engaged, I know,” Avril finished, lowering her watery brown eyes. “I could never come between Meyrick and Delphine. I thought I could love Maxwell, but the more time I spent with him, the more I began to realize there was nothing there. This whole…nightmare was a publicity ploy that started the moment I won the Miss African-Caribbean competition in March.”

  “What do you mean?” Bertha probed, her face etched with disbelief.

  “I’ll go and get us all a brandy,” Lennie managed to say before hurriedly leaving the room.

  “I think Maxwell dated me because I won the title,” Avril admitted between more sobs. “Look at all the media exposure I got.”

  “But you accepted his hand in marriage when he proposed in June,” Bertha reminded her solemnly.

  Avril agreed. She now accepted that her rush to be married in late July had been a mistake. “It was all too soon,” she admitted sadly. “It could only have been a publicity stunt. By linking himself to me, Maxwell saved thousands in advertising for Armstrong Caribbean Foods. He was with the girl of the moment, with my brother as the company’s sales manager. I think that’s all I ever was to him.”

  “Avril!” Bertha shrieked. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  She nodded.
<
br />   “I don’t,” Antonio chimed in. “This is my sister being her reckless self, as usual, forgetting that I will have to face Maxwell at the office on Monday.”

  “You don’t understand,” Avril cried.

  “Yes I do,” Antonio’s eyes crinkled in disgust as he turned toward his mother. “This is the latest installment in the lengthy story of Avril obsessing about men that are not good for her. And then the moment she meets a stable, dependable guy like Maxwell, she doesn’t want to stay with him because she likes the excitement of going for what she wants. Danger.”

  “That’s not true!” Avril spat out as the tears fell. “A relationship cannot function when one person in it wants something else.”

  “Someone else,” Antonio corrected. He threw his sister a tight smile, with no hint of sympathy in it. “So tell me, are you going to hold out for Rick Armstrong or wait until he marries Delphine? After all, he’s been with her three years and has kept her dangling for two. Isn’t that how a player works?”

  “Meyrick is not a playboy,” Avril heatedly defended. “He’s misunderstood.”

  “Yeah,” Antonio agreed, smiling lopsidedly. “Isn’t that what his lawyer said when he paid over twenty thousand euros to get him released from jail in January?”

  “That incident in Europe was unfortunate,” Avril defended hotly.

  “For the girl involved,” Antonio agreed. “And what about that case in New Jersey when he flew to the States to join an animal rights campaign to force the governor to halt the black bear hunt. Didn’t he get arrested there, too?”

  Avril stared angrily at her brother. He was a compact slim man in a camel-colored linen suit with an open-neck shirt the exact color of his skin—pale honey. “I hate you, Tony.” She wept.

  Antonio’s eyes glinted shards of anger. “The feeling’s mutual,” he responded.

  “Stop it,” Bertha demanded. She rubbed a manicured finger across her forehead. “Now listen to me, both of you.” She tried to steady her voice and placed the water on a nearby table. “We, the three…four of us need to decide what we are going to do.”

  “This has nothing to do with me,” Antonio argued. “This mess is Avril’s bed. Let her lie in it.”