Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (15 page)

Yeah. He’d read her books. Including the sex scenes. She felt herself coloring.

“That’s not bad. They’re good books. I enjoyed them,” he insisted. “Mostly.”

“What
mostly
? What didn’t you like?”

There was a long pause. He busied himself with chopping some onion.

“Come on. You can tell me. Lord knows I’m used to hearing it. I used to read all those comments on Amazon even.” She didn’t anymore. But what would he say? She had no idea.

His knife stilled. He took a breath. Then he looked at her.

Uh-oh.

“First let me say that the women in your books—well, they’re wonderful. Complicated, smart, courageous . . . But, well, the . . . the men are like the men on the covers. They’re not quite real. Too . . . tidy. They talk about things too much.”

She felt another flush creep up her cheeks. In her heart she knew he was right.

“Either that or they are, what is the modern word? Scum.”

She burst out laughing. “Scum?”

His eyes laughed with her. “Yes. Selfish users, villains.”

“Well, you have to have villains,” she protested.

“Have you never known men who were honorable? But yet . . . manly?”

She leaned her butt against the counter and thought about that. “I haven’t known too many men. My father, of course. He was a good man. He and my mother didn’t have to take in some difficult case like me. And I try to remember him when he was strong, not weak and sick.” She sighed, breathing out her loss. It was still fresh, even after three years. “But you never think of your father as manly. He’s just your father.”

“I’m glad he was a good man.”

She couldn’t do anything but nod. She missed her father—mother, too, but since her mother’s death when she was sixteen she’d spent six years with her father as her only family.

“Women are more open about their desires in your time,” Gawain observed after a moment. It was kind of him to change the subject.

“It’s your time, too, now,” she reminded him. “And yes, they are. Thank goodness for that.”

“That was hard to get used to. And how little clothing they wear sometimes. Like when sea-bathing at the beach.” He stuck some potatoes in the oven to bake. He stole a glance to her, but she couldn’t read his expression. Or maybe she could. Was that heat in his eyes? Had she seen that look before? Like maybe last night?

No, definitely not. But she bet he loved women being more open about their desires. Women on every street corner just drooling to get into the bed of a guy like Gawain. He’d cut a swath through women like a mower
through a field of grain. After he got out of prison. And between finding and stalking her. Still, how much time did it take for a man like that?

“The most difficult thing is that sex is no longer a sacred bond meant for getting children and becoming life partners. I miss that part.”

Absolutely surprising. True?
“Come on. You had women outside a sacred bond. Admit it.”

It was his turn to flush. He bent his head over his work. “A man struggles. Sometimes he’s weak,” he muttered. “It
should
be a sacred bond. I . . . I was not always honorable. I lost my honor with the Green Knight.”

“You told the Green Knight about her kisses.” She wanted to remind him that he’d been honorable about that part at least.

“She gave me a magic girdle, too, that made the wearer invisible.” He doused the oxtails with red wine and clapped the cover on the pot a little too hard. “I didn’t tell him about that. A sin of omission.” His head jerked away.

She wanted to tell him that the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight was famous for its moral ambiguity. The woman had seduced Gawain. And why did the Green Knight send him to his wife but that he knew she would do just that? He may have been guilty, but he wasn’t the only one. The jury had been out on the moral of the tale for sixteen hundred–odd years. It probably always would be. But she didn’t try to tell him. This was obviously a painful subject. It wasn’t that she didn’t know him well enough to continue. Sometimes she felt that she knew him well indeed. It was more that she didn’t want to cause him any more pain.

Gawain got up and went to the little pantry. He hoped she’d liked the oxtails. She said she did. Several times. And she cleaned her plate. But she had seemed distracted,
not concentrating on her food. Perhaps it wasn’t to her liking and she told a white lie to spare his feelings. He liked providing for her. He wanted to keep her safe, protect her even from the fear of Mordred. That’s why he had talked so much through dinner. When had he talked so much? Not in many years. Not ever. And he wouldn’t let his other feelings get the better of him, no matter what.

He wouldn’t even think about that. He poured her a tiny glass of Grand Marnier.

“How did you know I like Grand Marnier?” she asked, her brows drawing together.

“That’s what you were buying at the liquor store the first time you saw me,” he said simply. “Grand Marnier and milk.”

She looked shocked.
Damn!
He’d reminded her that she’d thought he was a stalker. But he saw her get control of herself. “Sorry I was a washout about how to track down Mordred.”

He handed her the glass. “His actions will reveal him in time.”

She shuddered. Gawain couldn’t seem to stop frightening her. He poured himself a glass of Scotch whiskey and motioned her into the living room.

“What if he damages this century with his actions? We
have
to find him first.”

Gawain shook his head. He wouldn’t tell her that was exactly what he was worried about. Or that he had no idea how to find a man who was, by his very nature, adept at blending into his surroundings. “I’ll think of something.” She sat in the wing chair, so he took the corner seat in the couch. It felt so natural sitting here with her after dinner. It felt right on some fundamental level that he hadn’t experienced in many years.

And why not? He
should
feel comfortable with her. Well, almost comfortable. There was the physical
discomfort she raised in him. He felt it rise now, brought on by the soft light on her gleaming hair, her cheeks flushed from the wine at dinner, the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her breasts beneath the light sweater she wore. It was pale gray-green, just like her eyes. The urge to claim her for his own came over him like a rushing charger.

Best take his mind off that by focusing hers. She’d been so busy going back in time, searching for Mordred, and getting used to Gawain’s own guardianship of her, she hadn’t been reflecting on what all this might mean about her. It was time she did. He had to bring her round to it slowly. “You said your parents took you in? Were they not your real parents?” He tried to ask it like he didn’t know the answer.

“No. They adopted me. I was rather a lost cause at the time.”

He merely lifted his brows.

“Well, the social services agency didn’t quite know what to do with me.”

“Because . . . ,” he prompted when she fell silent and sipped her brandy.

“Because I was found wandering around a suburb of Chicago with no memory, except my name. I spoke a foreign language they didn’t recognize.” Her eyes got big. “Brythonic Proto-Celtic.” And then the dam broke.

“I’m . . . I’m from the past.”

“That’s why I could understand Mordred.” Now she was unable to contain the flood of words. “And how I could speak to you and your father when I went back in time. . . . Oh my God. That’s why no one came forward to claim me. And I just dropped out of the air like I came out of nowhere. And I . . . I did, didn’t I?”

Gawain nodded and kept silent. Best let her sort through this revelation herself. He saw her eyes focusing inward. “But I can’t remember any of it,” she said. “Not coming through time, not anything before. All I remember is the fear, of everything and everyone. . . .”

He tried not to look disappointed. He’d thought when she realized, she’d remember it all. That she’d recognize him. “Not unexpected. The experience was probably pretty traumatic.”
Damn right it was.
He’d been disoriented and wandering aimlessly himself before he was set on by that black gang on the South Side of Chicago.

“But the time machine wasn’t built in the fifth century. So . . .” Her gray-green eyes shot up to his. “Did Merlin send me like he sent you?”

He took a breath, and nodded.

“But why? Why me?”

He couldn’t answer that. He didn’t know why this girl
was so important that she must needs be protected at such great cost to his father. It had taken all Merlin’s power to send them forward. Even as the haze of magic had enveloped them, Gawain had seen the power draining from his father’s eyes. He was most afraid the act of sending them forward had left his father a broken man. If he lived at all.

And for what? The Resistance lost its strongest arm, all so a gawky thirteen-year-old could be protected? And this girl? His father should have hated her. But he hadn’t.

She saw Gawain’s thoughts in his face, and her expression shut down. “You really don’t know, do you?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t I realize this before?”

“You were on overload from going back in time. You had a stalker and a very difficult houseguest. You thought I shot at you. You were under stress.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What prison were you in?”

“Joliet.” The other shoe was about to drop, as they said.

“That’s in Illinois.” She sat back in the chair. “You were in Chicago when you killed those gang members. We came together.” She said it like an accusation.

He nodded. “We came together. But we were separated. Even in prison, I looked for you. I went to the prison library, combed the newspapers around the time we came through. I saw the notice that you’d been found. That was at least a relief. You’d made it. After I got out it took some doing to find you. You had a new name and a new family. The records of the adoption were sealed.”

“How did you do it?” she asked.

“There was a girl who worked in the hall of records. She . . . she desired me.”

“You . . . you made love to a woman to get her to do something illegal?” Diana’s voice was an outraged squeak.

“No,” he protested. “I . . . I never went that far.”

“Oh, Mr. Honorable, excuse me. You just let her think
you might, and that was enough for her to just roll over and do whatever you wanted.” Diana sounded so disgusted.

“That wasn’t how it was. I just told her we’d been separated and asked her, very nicely, if she would help me.” He cleared his throat. No sins of omission, so he had to tell Diana all. “She might have thought you were my sister.” He’d let the girl think that, in itself a sin of omission. He felt his blush rising. He was not honorable, no matter how he struggled.

“And you are so used to women falling all over to do things for you when they desire you that you just knew you could get what you wanted that way.”

“You make it sound like . . .”

“And did you ever think about how the girl felt about it? She wasn’t pretty, was she?”

How had he become the villain of the piece? “No, but . . .”

“And when you walked into her office . . . was it her office?”

“No! I met her in the deli next to the hall of records.”

“Oh, devious! Where they all went to lunch. You were bound to run into one of them. Like flies to your web . . .” She had a head of steam up now. “And then you just look so handsome, and vulnerable with that comma of hair that goes over your forehead like that. And she says she’ll help you.”

“It was all to find you. And I found you. Late. But now I can carry out my father’s wishes and protect you. Why is that so bad?”

“Because . . .” She was looking truly distressed now. “Because it’s a responsibility to look like you do. You can’t
use
it like that on women who aren’t pretty and haven’t had the attention of men. You smile at them . . . and they’re goners. And you get whatever you want.”
She made it sound like he wanted to rape them or something.

He raised his hands helplessly. “I can’t help it if women are nice to me, Diana.”

“I know.” She practically spit the words at him. She got up, put her glass down on the coffee table so hard it almost broke, and stomped back to her bedroom.

He sat blinking after her. How had that gone so horribly wrong? He had wanted to help her remember who she was. Didn’t she know that? Didn’t she want to remember?

His head lolled back against the cushions.

Maybe it was better if she didn’t remember.

Diana seethed, and hated herself for it. He was right. It wasn’t his fault he was so damned attractive. What did her writer friend Rhonda call it? Sex on a stick. But he traded on it, damn it. He
knew
he was like a honey pot and that they couldn’t help but be drawn to him.

Diana kicked off her boots and pulled her sweater over her head.

And that girl in the records office had . . . had been just like Diana—a woman men never noticed. And she had reacted just like Diana had reacted to Mr. I’m Too Handsome for Words. When
he
came into the deli next door to the records hall she bet every woman there just fell all over herself to make room for him at the counter, to offer him a seat at her booth. The little scene played out in her mind as if she had written it. And when he paid attention to the plain girl who worked in the adoption records place, she must have felt like the chosen one. She must have been so grateful that she could do something for him.

The chosen one.

Diana felt her anger drain away.
That
hit too close to home.

Why the hell was it
her
he had to protect? Why had Merlin (
the
Merlin!) sent her forward in time? Why couldn’t she remember anything from her former life?

Fool!
She’d gotten carried away and hadn’t thought about the consequences of getting mad at him. Her gaze fell on her mandolin case, leaning against the wall.

“Do you still play?” he’d asked.

He hadn’t just come through time with her. He’d
known
her then. Was that why she felt she knew him so thoroughly sometimes?