happy with only me, knowing you will never have children, that I will be the only family you will ever have?"
"Yes, Gabriel." She stroked his cheek with her fingertips, then sealed her promise with a kiss. "I'll live only for you, dance only for you. I'll be your sunshine, as you'll be mine, and all my tomorrows will be yours."
Humbled, as always, by her love and her trust, Gabriel drew Sara into his arms and held her close to his heart. He would lay the world at her feet, shower her with love, and pray that his meager offerings would be reward enough for sharing the loneliness of his existence. Gazing into her eyes, he vowed to do all in his power to make her happy so that she would never have cause to regret her decision.
And then she was lifting her face to his, pressing her lips to his, and there was no more time for thoughts of the future; there was only the here and the now, and the woman in his arms.
She had spoken truly, he thought as he covered her mouth with his. She was his sunshine, the light to his darkness, and from this night forward, all their tomorrows would be one.
PART Two Chapter One
PART TWO
NOW AND
FOREVER
Chapter One
Los Angeles, 1995
He stood on the upper balcony of a mansion located in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, staring at the lights that stretched away as far as the eye could see. So many changes in the world since he had gone to ground half a century ago, he mused. Miraculous changes in science, in people and places. So many changes, while he had remained the same.
Upon rising from his fifty-five year rest, he had spent weeks reading newspapers and magazines from the world over in an effort to bring himself up to date. Only when he felt he had learned enough to function in this new age had he left Salamanca. He could not bring himself to stay in the castle now that Sara was gone.
His first instinct had been to go home to Italy, but nothing there had seemed familiar; the village where he had grown up no longer existed, and so he had left there, as well, and come to the United States, where there would be nothing to remind him of Sara, or of the life he had left behind so many years ago.
He had been a part of this new and modern world for less than a year, and already he didn't like it. Everything seemed transient, rushed, tawdry. Twentieth-century man seemed to be in a terrible rush. Food was cooked in minutes in microwave ovens, clothes no longer needed to be ironed, airplanes carried passengers from one end of the world to the other in a matter of hours. Everyone seemed in a hurry all the time, almost as if they were afraid to slow down for fear they would realize they had sacrificed quality for quantity, serenity for chaos.
There were, however, a few things the modern age had wrought that he liked very much. Television was one of them. Sports cars were another. One of the first things he had done upon arriving in the United States was to buy an automobile. He had learned to drive as effortlessly as he learned everything. He loved the speed, the thrill of driving a sleek sports car at a hundred miles an hour down a narrow ribbon of road in the dark of night, the countryside whipping past in a blur.
And yet, as much as he loved fast cars, there was no spiritual communion between machine and man as there was between horse and rider. The dark red Jaguar didn't nuzzle his arm or whinny a soft welcome. He didn't find the same pleasure behind the wheel of the car that he found on the back of his horse, and yet he loved the soft purr of the Jag's engine, the feel of the wind in his face as he roared down the highway.
He had been shocked by the change in fashion. Women paraded around in scandalously short pants and tops that barely covered their private parts, flaunting their bodies. Even dresses revealed more than they covered. And hair styles - he had been shocked the first time he had seen a woman with her hair cut above her ears. The fact that it was dyed a bright orange had hardly registered.
It had taken less time to grow accustomed to the change in