A Knight in Central Park (6 page)

Shelly handed her a towel, eyeing her suspiciously. “The Professor mentioned that you believe you’re from another century. Is that true?”

“Aye. I told Sir Joe everything: about my being from the year 1499, about Sir Richard and his men coming for my sister; and how I desperately need his help. Sadly, he fails to believe me.”

“Think about it,” Shelly said. “If I told you I traveled from the moon...“

Alexandra huffed.

“Okay, never mind that. Let’s say I told you I was from the thirteenth century, two hundred years before you were supposedly born. Would you believe me?”

“Mayhap I would ask you a few questions about your village. I would want to know who your ruler was at the time. If your answers were feasible...“ She eyed Shelly carefully. “...and you looked fairly trustworthy...aye, I would believe you.”

“What happened in here?” Joe interrupted, giving Alexandra a start. Shelly turned about and hastily scrubbed the dishes piled in the basin.

Alexandra looked at the man filling the doorway. A shame it was to see his mood had not improved. He looked severely agitated and offered no sign of apologizing for his rudeness this morn. How was it, she wondered, that even perspiring and wearing a loose-fitting white tunic, he looked clean and newly shaved? His hunting garb struck her as odd, but it was his sturdy form that caught her full attention. Between his notable height and broad shoulders, he was maddeningly appealing.

Alexandra’s face heated at the remembrance of him standing before her without a stitch of cloth to cover his most private of body parts...thick and rigid, like a broadsword ready for battle.

Sir Joe looked about the kitchen with obvious disapproval. A deep frown creased his brow.

Shelly leaned close to Alexandra’s ear. “See what I mean?”

She nodded. Aye, the term “neat freak“ was beginning to make sense.

Sir Joe picked up a discarded chicken bone, letting it dangle precariously from his fingers. “What is this?”

“’Tis a bone,” Alexandra offered matter-of-factly. “It was delicious.”

Shelly hid a smile behind a drying cloth. “We’re cleaning up, so don’t get your feathers all in a ruffle.”

Alexandra’s amusement disappeared when Sir Joe directed his mulish expression at her, prompting her to say to Shelly, “It would seem Suzanne ruffled his feathers earlier after she discovered Sir Joe had been touching my breasts.”

Shelly threw Sir Joe a look of disapproval.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he told Shelly, “it’s your fault I woke up with her in my bed in the first place.”

Shelly frowned. “Alexandra, how did you end up in the Professor’s bedroom?”

“I sleepwalk at times, quite useless to ponder a cure. But,” she added smugly, “had Sir Joe’s hand not been latched onto my breast like a bloodthirsty leech, I could have snuck back to my room without disturbance.”

Joe looked about his usually pristine kitchen, deeply regretting returning so quickly from his run. A horrified expression remained on Shelly’s face, looking at him as if he had done something wrong when it was Alexandra who had snuck into his bed uninvited. More than ever he longed for the peaceful solitude he was accustomed to. “Why didn’t you take her to your place last night instead of mine?” he asked Shelly, unable to get over the fact that he’d had absolutely no control over the situation.

“My neighbor’s apartment is being painted, so she and her cat are staying with me. I didn’t have room for one more.”

“Swell. You get the lady and her cat, and I get stuck with the...” His gaze settled on Alexandra whose face was mere inches from the television screen. “What is she doing?”

“Watching television.” Shelly tossed the sponge into the sink and leaned back on the kitchen counter so she, too, could watch two naked women strip the man bare...one piece of clothing at a time.

“What is wrong with you two?” Joe asked.

Shelly raised a brow. “We aren’t the ones who ordered the porn channel, are we Alexandra?”

“Nay,” Alexandra said. “What is porn?”

“It’s what you’re watching,” Shelly explained. “Women and men all getting it on...you know, lots of sex...naked bodies...”

Joe’s frown deepened. Shelly was one of a half dozen students earning credits as his research assistant, hoping to receive her minor with honors in Ancient History. She’d always been outspoken, but sometimes, like now, her bluntness took him by surprise. “Shelly,” he said, “I think she gets the idea.”

Alexandra paled. “I am a virgin and—”

“Get out of here,” Shelly said with a wave of her hand.

“Should I go?”

“No.” Shelly smiled. “I didn’t mean ‘get out of here’ as in leave, I meant...oh, never mind.”

“I never ordered this channel,” Joe muttered, ignoring them both as he made his way across the kitchen to turn the television off.

“She’s never seen a television before,” Shelly said. “Turn it back on.”

Joe’s headache was back in full force. “She’s never seen a television, she’s a thirty-year-old virgin, and she never lies. Give me a break.”

“Five and twenty,” Alexandra corrected.

Joe cocked his head. “Five and twenty?”

“She’s twenty-five years old,” Shelly clarified, “not thirty.”

Joe raked agitated fingers through his hair. “I’ve got work to do.”

Shelly nodded in agreement. “He’s working on an important project.”

“A project?” Alexandra asked.

“Research actually,” Shelly answered. “He has a chance of being elected to the National Academy of Art and History and Medieval Studies. A huge honor. Kind of like being elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

Alexandra seemed genuinely interested. Once again Joe wondered what Alexandra was up to. This was the busiest time in his life. He needed solitude. He didn’t have time to explain, but he found himself doing exactly that. “The last ten years of my life have been spent with one goal in mind—to be accepted into the Academy. Membership will give me recognition, respect, and enough money to keep my research going for years.”

“It would also make his father proud,” Shelly chimed in.

A part of him wanted to correct Shelly, tell her that making his father proud was neither here nor there, but what good would it do? She’d been working with him for months now, and had obviously recorded all of his personality traits, hoping at some point to help him reach his full potential as a human being.

“Sounds terribly important,” Alexandra said. “Mayhap I can help.”

Joe looked at Alexandra, even found himself smiling.

Her eyes crinkled and small indentations appeared when she smiled back.

“Where did you get those?” he asked when he spotted three exceptional looking stones laying amongst scattered cookie crumbs on the kitchen table. He took the seat next to Alexandra so he could examine them. The stones looked oddly familiar. Had he seen them at the university-at a museum? His blood surged with an excitement he hadn’t felt in a long while.

“Those,” Alexandra said thoughtfully, “are the reason I am here. And when the moon is at its fullest, those stones will take me home again.”

Joe glanced at Shelly.

Shelly merely shrugged.

“I had five stones to begin with,” Alexandra went on, “but one disappeared upon my arrival. I placed the remainder of the stones in the hem of my gown, and then in the pocket of my robe yester eve. But now I can find only three stones. I fret whether ’twill be enough for my return.”

Joe didn’t give much credence to her story, but the stones looked familiar. He wondered if they could possibly be the same ones he’d seen in one of his catalogues? After placing the stones on a clean area of the table, he left the room, returning moments later with two binders filled with pictures and descriptions of ancient art. Joe took the seat next to Alexandra and began to skim the pages.

At first he hardly noticed Alexandra move closer, but then her chin brushed against his arm and strands of long curly hair fell across his fingers. He’d never seen redder hair in all his life. Red wasn’t even the right word to describe the color. Fiery orange with copper highlights would be a more accurate description.

As he turned the pages, a sweet scent filled his senses, making it difficult to focus on what he was doing. “What is that smell?”

“’Tis jasmine,” Alexandra said, inhaling deeply. “A wondrous sweet-smelling flower, is it not?”

“Nice.”

“Verily I could not resist the temptation to pick them from your winter garden.”

Both he and Shelly grimaced. Cantankerous Mrs. Peacock next door treated her plants like children. She even had a special heated glass house for the plants she called “her babies.”

“Would you look at that!” Alexandra blurted, pointing to one of the pictures.

Mrs. Peacock was quickly forgotten.

“’Tis the same candlestick I saw in Sir Richard’s possession upon one of his visits to our manor. He wished to give it to my sister, but I refused in her name.”

Joe took a closer look at the candlestick. “You’ve seen this? Are you sure?” The metalwork was incredibly detailed and combined both Canterbury and Winchester stylistic elements.

“Aye. And that cross,” she said, pointing to another picture on the opposite page, “’Tis worn around the neck of the same man who owns the castle, the man you are to do battle with.”

Joe ignored her talk of battle and pointed a finger at the picture. “Are you absolutely certain this is the same cross?”

She nodded. “’Tis matching in design and craftsmanship.”

“When was the last time you actually saw Richard wearing it?”

“Many months ago.”

Joe rubbed his temples, tried to think more clearly. His collection of theories and findings on the Myths and History in Four Ancient Civilizations was nearly finished. For years now, to the detriment of all else, he’d spent endless hours studying journals, hoping to find the elixir, the one detail or tidbit that could guarantee him membership in the Academy. If he could get his hands on either one of these lost treasures...

“Professor, are you okay?”

The concern in Shelly’s voice removed him from his thoughts. “I’m fine.” His gaze fell on Alexandra. “Recognize anything else?” He pushed the binder in front of her, watched her skim over the pictures, turning each page with a gentle touch. Seconds felt like hours. Midway through his binder, her face brightened. “I have never seen these sculptures of The Last Judgment.”

He frowned.

“But these ivory carvings and a few of those tapestries,” she said, pointing to the previous page, “could easily be traded for two rabbits and a lean pig on market day.”

Peering into her eyes, he tried to define what he saw there. Was Alexandra Dunn a con artist? He always prided himself in his ability to spot a fraud. Before becoming a professor at NYU, he acquired ancient art for various museums in and about New York, and before that, Washington DC. On more than one occasion he had turned away fraudulent dealers who tried to sell counterfeit artwork.

But Alexandra wasn’t selling anything. And she didn’t show any of the usual signs of being a swindler. Not once had she taken her gaze from his when he questioned her. Her voice was steady and confident.

Whether Alexandra had truly seen these lost treasures had yet to be determined, but judging by the sincerity in her voice and in her eyes, it was obvious she believed she had. “Can you take me to Richard and show me either of these items?” he asked calmly, feeling anything but. The idea of actually beholding one of these treasures, made his blood pump rapidly through his veins.

A devilish smile tugged at the corners of Alexandra’s expressive green eyes. She leaned toward him, her face inches from his, and said, “Upon your agreement to rid my family of Sir Richard and his men, I will not only show you these lost treasures, I will help you to gain possession of them.”

With that said, she crossed her arms over her chest, and beamed, nearly taking his breath away. What was it about Alexandra that made him feel so darn light-hearted? He’d felt it last night when he watched her sleep...and now again. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d actually ached for a woman. In fact, he was almost sure he never had before.

“When he gets that faraway look of his,” Shelly informed Alexandra, “it usually means he’s pondering the emergence of Assyria, or the history of the Mediterranean world.”

Alexandra focused her attention on him, a gleaming, hopeful look in her eyes.

What harm could it do to help her? Joe wondered. This Richard guy was probably out roughing it on the streets, too. Joe could offer him a few bucks to leave her alone. The odds of this character actually having the cross or the candlestick were a million to one, but he’d never be able to sleep unless he checked it out. “You’ve got yourself a deal,” he finally said, offering her his hand. “You show me these antiquities, and I’ll take care of Richard.”

Instead of shaking his hand, Alexandra threw her arms about his neck and kissed him on the cheek. He stiffened, surprised by the outburst of affection.

“Let me get this straight,” Shelly said to Alexandra, unaware of his sudden discomfort. “You’re going to take the professor through time so he can fight off a bunch of fifteenth-century warriors?” Shelly held up one of the stones. “And this rock is your transportation?”

Alexandra’s face glowed. “Aye. It is Sir Joe’s destiny. He is The Chosen One.”

Joe felt ridiculously honored. For a woman who was four kings short of a full deck, she spoke with poise and assurance.

Shelly took the stone to the built-in desk situated in the far corner of the kitchen and hit a few buttons on the computer. Within minutes she’d found the information she was searching for. “According to this website,” Shelly said, “the next full moon is this Friday.”

“How can that be?” Alexandra asked. “I arrived only yester morn. I do know that the stones must be used within...” She struggled for the words Grandfather had used. “They must be used within three consecutive months. According to my grandfather, there are nine and twenty days between each full moon.”

Shelly tapped a finger to her chin. “I bet if we calculated all of the leap years over the last few hundred years and then subtracted the number of days...”