This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

by a delightful seaside informality. Nearly a hundred years later on Mirella’s wedding day, the ambience was still the same.
    The oakwood paneling of Oceanside’s main rooms on the ground floor was as opulent as the furnishings, as grand as its arched and faceted ceilings, as spectacular as the view of sand and sea through its myriad windows. Soon the hundred breakfast guests would be seated in the extraordinary round-ended dining room; later, nine hundred guests would assemble to dance and dine in the Ballroom and the Tango room where Artie Shaw was playing his great rendition of the forties hit “Frenesi.”
    Now these rooms were not so much transformed into Gardens of Eden by the abundance of greenery and flowers filling them as they were decorated to enhance the contradictory elements that gave Oceanside its character. And these contradictory elements, oddly enough, imposed a light-hearted gaiety, an ease, on the ostentation and elegance of Mirella and Adam’s wedding reception. It inspired a happy, lazy, holiday mood in the hundred guests who were invited to the church and the noonday breakfast, while doing nothing to discourage their posing and preening.
    When Adam and Mirella walked from the midday heat and the bright sunshine into the cool, shady hall they were greeted by a ringing chorus of good wishes and a shower of white flower petals — jasmine and rose, lily of the valley, apple blossom, carnation, honeysuckle, heather, and thousands of baby orchids. Mirella and Adam were soon separated by their guests’ toasts and embraces.
    Even Ralph Werfel was now swept up by the incredible style of this joyous occasion. When he shook Adam’s hand there was a tear in his eye, and a tremor of emotion in his voice as he said, “This day has been a long time coming for you, Adam, and I hope your marriage brings you all the happiness you deserve.”
    He and Adam exchanged one of those hugs that men allow themselves when they’re happy for each other before Ralph slithered away into the crowd. It was only when Adam, while being kissed on the cheek by one of the female guests, was wiping the palm of his hand with his white linen handkerchief that he realized he was trying to rid himself of the touch of Ralph’s cold, clammy hand. For the first time in all the years Adam had known and worked with Ralph, he found him suddenly repulsive, but he was too happy to linger on that thought and it vanished from his mind even before he replaced his handkerchief in his pocket.
    When the fifty white-coated waiters finally stopped refilling glasses with Bollinger “Special Cuvée 1969 champagne, and began to usher the wedding party into the Dining Room, Mirella and Adam came together again and were surrounded by his family. There were his children — Joshua, Zhara, Alamya, Memett, and Alice — Alamya’s mother, Giuliana, a Venetian countess, and Memett’s mother, Aysha, a young Turkish courtesan. There were several beautiful young girls, all now former mistresses of Adam who, he had explained to Mirella, were part of his household, and all considered to be his immediate family. The realization that these were
her
children now,
her
immediate family now, just as much as they were Adam’s, shocked Mirella.
    She always had thought of Adam as a big man, a solid man, but she suddenly saw him as a powerfully loving man, a giant of a man. She saw she had taken him on not only with his unconventional family, but with all that living with a colossus and a rare human being might entail.
    The mother of Joshua, Adam’s eldest son, was the only other woman Adam had married. He had divorced her soon after Joshua’s sister, Zhara, had been born, and she was not included in the immediate family. Joshua now put his arm around Mirella and hugged her.
    “Do I see just a hint of concern about taking on our clan? We children, Marlo and Giuliana, Aysha, and the other ladiesof the yali household call ourselves a clan, you know. Not having second