The Topaz Brooch

by Katherine Lowry Logan

  The paper was a letter written in a shaky script with smudges and crossed-out words and dated January 8, 1845.

  Miss Wilhelmina Penelope Malone, I hope this letter finds you and Mr. O’Grady growing old together. Marguerite and I moved to New York City but were never able to have children. On one of our many trips to Europe, we stopped in London. There I found Navy Lt. Maurice Bowes. When he asked if you had returned to your time, I knew I couldn’t allow him to live. I hope that by removing the lieutenant, it also eliminates your problem with his descendant.

  I found this box with the pendant in the lieutenant’s office and was pleased that it matched the picture drawn by Madame Orsini. As for your torc, in 1843, Marguerite and I toured Sweden and Denmark. In Sweden, I heard rumors of the existence of a Celtic torc that had special healing powers. It could be the one you wanted to acquire. I showed Madame Orsini’s picture of the torc, but no one recognized it. After searching for over a year and not finding additional leads, I fell ill, and we returned to New Orleans to bury your treasure, and I suppose Marguerite will soon bury me as well.

  I’m sorry I failed you, Wilhelmina. You have remained in my heart, and I die with memories of you warming my soul. I am your devoted servant, Jean Lafitte.

  Penny folded the letter and returned it to the box as she sank into herself and cried. She hadn’t finished grieving for Jean, and the loss of his larger-than-life presence was immense. Her heart snagged on the soft, loving tone of his note, tempered by the knowledge that his death was imminent. Utter sorrow and sincere regret coursed through her in equal measure. Her temples pounded, and she dropped her head into her hands.

  You didn’t fail me, Boss.

  She traced the scar on her palm—a tangible reminder of their time together. Then she fell back on the bed weeping.

  The door squeaked open, and Rick came in, breathing hard, with sweat on his face and chin and pouring down his shirtless chest. She couldn’t talk right now. She needed time to herself before she shared the letter and her grief.

  He wandered into the bedroom, and his running shoes squeaked to a stop. “My God, what happened? Who upset you? Has Meredith been here? Charlotte? Elliott? Elliott’s been here. What’d he say?” Rick sat on the edge of the bed, dripping sweat.

  His half-smile played a tug of war with his eyes, warming the empathy he exuded. He rubbed her leg. “What is it, babe? Talk to me.”

  She sat up, swiping at her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “Why don’t you cool down, get a shower, and then I’ll tell you.” She reached for a tissue to finish what her hands couldn’t. “I’m okay. How far did you run?”

  “Just five. I should have gone a few more, but I didn’t want to leave you alone that long. Looks like I should have cut my run much shorter. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?”

  “It’s not about us. We’re good. It can wait.” She tried to sound reassuring, but it came out wobbling with grief and regret.

  “Are you sure? I’m here. Whatever’s wrong, we can deal with it. Please talk to me.”

  She looked at him and said simply, “Topaz.”

  He jerked as if she’d smacked him. Then he pushed to his feet, crestfallen. “Oh. Okay.” He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wiped the sweat off his face. “You’re using your safe word in a non-sexual way.” He moved toward the living room. “I guess you want me to leave you alone.”

  She clicked her tongue. “You’ve got ten minutes to cool down. Ten minutes for a shower. Then I need you to make love to me, hard and fast, like there’s no tomorrow, like there’s only us, now and forever.”

  He nodded. “I can do that, babe.”

  She fell back on the bed as the front door opened and closed again, and she cried.

  Goodbye, Boss.

  Twenty minutes later, when she was gasping with sobs, Rick sat beside her on the bed and said in a low, deliberate voice, “Do you still want me?”

  “Yes.” She hiccupped as she gazed at him through teary eyes, wanting him more than she wanted to breathe. His gentle touch swept away the gnawing tightness in her gut, the tears burning her eyes, the sorrow in her soul.

  “I mean,” he said, “do you still want me to make love to you?”

  All she could do was offer a nod as a sweet ache stirred deep inside. His fingers curled into her hair, taking a gentle hold as he bent to kiss her throat, her mouth, licking his way to her earlobe. He gave it a tiny, sharp bite. “If you need more time…”

  “I only need you.”

  His cool fingers stroked her skin. “What hurt you? Why were you crying?”

  She slid her palms to his pecs, teasing his hard nipples with her thumbs, and he sucked in a deep breath at her touch.

  “I found a letter from Jean in the box the pendant came in. He wrote it in 1845, shortly before he died. He’d heard rumors of a Celtic torc with special healing powers while touring Denmark and Sweden. But after a year of not finding another lead, he got sick, returned to America, and died soon after.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rick said softly.

  “I mean, I knew he was dead, but finding out he searched for the torc until he died upset me.”

  “That’s part of this time-travel business. To you, Lafitte is still the thirty-five-year-old man you met a few months ago. It’s hard to sync your memories of that Lafitte with the sixty-year-old man you discovered in his letter.”

  “I just feel like I’ve lost a dear friend.”

  “You have, babe, and grieving is a natural reaction.”

  “We’ve been on a hell of a roller coaster ride.” She’d have to deal with all the emotions a little bit at a time. She flipped over onto her stomach and pushed up on her elbows. “You weren’t going to run today, but you did. Why?”

  “David called. Meredith’s genealogy research team discovered Colonel Bowes’s several-times-great-grandfather was Lieutenant Bowes’s brother.”

  Penny shivered. “I’m not surprised. That makes the colonel even more dangerous to me, to us.”

  Rick stroked the side of her face. “He can never hurt you again. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He was murdered two weeks ago in a ritualistic sacrifice at Jarlshof. David got copies of the police report and photographs, but I haven’t read it or seen the pictures. David’s description was bad enough. But there’s no doubt. It was him. I needed to run to get the horror out of my head.”

  She ducked her chin for a moment and took a deep breath. “I hated him, and I guess I hated myself for being so gullible and not seeing the evil in him sooner. I wanted to shoot him, hurt him, destroy his career. But I’m not sorry he’s dead. It saves me the time and energy I would have wasted plotting my revenge, but the timing…” She shook her head. “There are too many coincidences to ignore.”

  “According to Elliott, there are no coincidences.”

  “If there aren’t, then there’s an unknown force that wants to kill us.”

  “If killing us is the goal of the unknown force, then I believe the world of the brooches has been building resistance fighters made up of female warriors.”

  She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “Jean believed I was one of them.” She couldn’t say Boss’s name without a sharp pain gripping her heart.

  Rick must have sensed her discomfort, because he stroked her back—down, up, down. “We should drop all the brooches into the Ojos del Salado volcano in the Andes, so they’ll never be used again,” he said.

  “But then how will we ever know how many there are?” she asked. “We could dump eight, and eight more might show up. And then eight more.”

  He twirled the ends of her hair around his fingers. “We have to finish this soon. I want to get married…and maybe you’ll get pregnant soon.”

  “Well, as I mentioned before, I won’t get pregnant if you keep wearing condoms.”

  He laughed. “We used the last one after lunch.”

  “Geez. What a stud.”

  He lightly squeezed her as
s. “It’s you, babe. I’m just trying to keep up with a much younger woman.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Forty-five.”

  “God, you’re old.”

  He squeezed her ass again. “It’s not nice to call me old.”

  “But I also called you a stud, so age doesn’t matter.”

  “I haven’t come this many times in twenty-four-hours since I was a rookie cop.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he said.

  “Well, it’s never happened to me. I thought it was you.”

  “No, babe. It’s us together.”

  “It’ll wear off.”

  “Don’t count on it. Ask Kenzie. Ask Charlotte. Ask Sophia. Hell, ask Meredith. All the couples in this family have very active sex lives.”

  “I guess that’s what y’all talk about while you’re”—she giggled—“hanging out on the houseboat smoking cigars.”

  “Nope, it’s the girls who gossip about their men, not the other way around. Us men don’t talk. It’s… I don’t know…disrespectful.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “That the sex won’t slow down?”

  “I’m observant. And you’ve been around David and Kenzie and Sophia and Pete enough to know they’re always disappearing for a quickie.”

  She started to roll over, but he stopped her and traced his finger along the lines of the tattoo that spread across the upper part of her ass and hip on the right side. “Tell me about this. You were an Army Ranger. How’d you end up with a flower tattoo?”

  She chuckled. “When I moved to Napa, I wanted to wear red shoes and beautiful dresses and glam it up, you know… The whole makeup and styled hair and jewelry thing. But my mind was still in the Army, so I went all out for a feminine tat and ended up with Buckeye Belle peonies and a spray of cherry blossoms. I love the colors.”

  “If I’d seen your tat at the same time I saw you with blue hair and wearing leather pants, I would have thought you were a Motaur.”

  “What the hell’s a Motaur?”

  “A half-man, half-motorcycle on an insurance commercial. That’s how incongruent this tat was with Penny Lafitte.”

  “Motaur. That’s funny.” She studied the tat on his upper arm and shoulder. “There’s sadness in yours—the broken tanker helmet, soldier’s cross, worn boots, weathered flag, dog tags, Semper Fidelis.”

  “I don’t want to forget my men.”

  “It’s beautiful.” She rolled over onto her back and gazed up at him. “I love you, O’Grady.”

  He slowly lifted the hem of her teddy, giving her a lazy grin. “This is sexy as hell. I’m going to work around it because I don’t want to take it off.” His fingers brushed her skin. “I love you, warrior woman. Now and forever.”

  When he uncovered her breasts, he lowered his head and pulled a nipple into his mouth at the same time his fingers glided over her belly. “Spread your legs, sweetheart, so I can touch you and make you moan.”

  She squirmed and separated her legs to give him access, and his fingers pushed into her with ease.

  “Did you design your tat?”

  “What?” she moaned. “Are we back to tats again? I can’t think straight when you do what you’re doing right now.”

  His finger circled her clit. “You don’t need to think.” He inched down her, planting a trail of kisses until he covered her clit with his lips, kissing her. “I love the cute sounds you make when I touch you like this and the way you move against my mouth.”

  The more she moved, the harder he loved her with his tongue, his fingers. Shivers cascaded down her shoulders, her spine, and she was consumed and lost in the sensations, gasping and thrashing as she neared orgasm. Her hips bucked, her back arched off the mattress, but he held her in place, riding her climax to the end.

  Finally, she went rag doll-limp and slipped back to awareness slowly, like emerging from a thick fog. She reached out for him, and he pulled himself up and over her while their tongues tangled, and his mouth remained connected to hers, not in a kiss, but a hold, from lips to toes, flesh on flesh, until she was totally, absolutely, consumed by him.

  “I just remembered what I wanted to tell you,” she said, “but you distracted me.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “I’m about to distract you again.”

  “No, wait. This is weird—”

  He lightly tugged on her earlobe with his teeth. “I like your earlobes. They’re not weird.”

  “No, listen. This is important.”

  “What I’m doing is important.” Using his knee, he nudged her legs farther apart and pressed his cock over the seam of her sex.

  “Okay, but do not move, not even a millimeter, till after I say this. You really do want to hear it, and I might forget to tell you if I have another gazillion orgasms first.”

  He stilled himself. “You have ten seconds.”

  “Jean found evidence of the torc in Sweden, and we have a trip already planned to go there. And Kenzie said my scar reminded her of the Baltic Sea. Plus, Elliott made six trips back to Jarlshof, and some cult members murdered the colonel there. I think someone is sending us a cosmic map.”

  “We’ll figure this out. But, babe, we’re out of condoms.”

  “You don’t have to protect me anymore.” She gripped his butt, pulling him closer, and he thrust into her.

  71

  Mallory Plantation—Penny

  As dawn pushed toward sunrise, Penny woke to Rick whistling “Misty” while carrying a cup of coffee to her, a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair damp. She sat up for a kiss and her first cup of coffee for the day.

  “Thanks, babe.” She lifted the mug. “What the hell? Where’s the rest? There isn’t a teaspoon of coffee in here.”

  “You aren’t supposed to have any, but I thought you needed a mini-kick to get going.”

  She grumbled. “Guess that’s better than your boot up my ass.”

  He tossed the towel onto a chair. He was gloriously naked, large and broad, and his pecs and biceps rippled when he reached for a pair of boxer briefs in his duffel. “I’d never do that.”

  She downed the coffee teaser and groaned for more while watching him wrap his package in the soft black fabric. How long would it take before she could see his dick and not want it as badly as she did right now? She eyed him and all but drooled.

  Grinning, he clapped. “Chop-chop! Charlotte will be here in thirty minutes.”

  She swung her legs over the bed. “Do you think you can talk Charlotte into letting us stay here? I don’t want to give up our privacy.”

  He tugged on a pair of khakis, tucking himself out of sight. “I asked her. She said she’d see how you feel tomorrow morning.”

  “Ooookayy,” she said, stringing out the word until it grew into a question. “Sounds like I better bounce back quickly.”

  His mouth turned up just a little, but she could see him laughing at her at the back of his eyes. “You want to climb back in bed and have more sex, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, well… Don’t you?” She sighed again and thought there might be a way to make it happen. She did a slow striptease, pulling the teddy up over her hips—she paused—to the bottom of her breasts—another pause—to her nipples…

  Now he laughed, shaking his head. “It’s not going to work, babe.” He checked the time. “I tried waking you three hours ago, and you rolled over. I sucked your nipples. Nothing. I teased your clit. Nothing.”

  She walked into the bathroom and started the shower. “I’ve figured you out, Patrick O’Grady. Three hours ago, you were sound asleep. I woke up to pee, and you were snoring.”

  “I don’t snore.”

  “I guess there was another man in my bed, then. Besides, if you really wanted me, you wouldn’t have given up.” She tossed the teddy on the counter, twirled her hair into a messy bun, and climbed under the cascading spray.

  He followed her into the bathroom, where he
stood in front of the mirror to style his gorgeous thick hair. “Are you going to keep your name or take mine?”

  She peeked around the shower door. “What? It’s six o’clock in the morning, I’m on my way to the hospital, and you’re asking me about my name?” She picked up a razor to shave her legs, still confused about what was on his mind.

  “Sophia kept hers,” he said.

  Penny just stood under the pulsating spray, letting it soothe her muscles. “Honey, Soph’s a world-renowned artist. In her case, it makes sense. I have a business, but it’s not in my name.”

  “But you didn’t change it before.”

  Sometimes he hammered around the nail instead of smacking it head-on. “Rick, what are you asking? This isn’t about my name. It sounds like something else is bothering you.”

  He stuck his head around the door. “I want you. I want you to be the mother of my children. I want to grow old with you. And I don’t care what name you use. You’ll always be mine. But if I had a choice… Well, I’d like all of us to have the same name.”

  She gave him a wet kiss. “It just so happens that I want to be your badass Penny O’Grady.”

  He kissed her back. “You already are, but let’s make it official.” He grabbed a towel and held it out for her. “You have ten minutes to dry off, do your moisturizing thing, and dress.”

  “Okay. Move out of the way and let me get ready.”

  Ten minutes later, she was standing at the front door. “Chop-chop.”

  “I’m coming.” He shut his laptop, shoved it in his backpack, and followed her out onto the porch. “Wait.” He pulled her into his arms. “This is our first trip together to the hospital. I hope the next time is for the birth of our son.”

  “Son? What’s wrong with a daughter?”

  “Not a damn thing. I’d love to have a daughter, but, except for Connor, my other siblings have had boys first, and so did my mom. Since men determine the sex of a child, I’m not optimistic.”

  “Tell me this. How long have you been thinking about having a baby? It seems important to you, but shouldn’t we take some more time for just the two of us first? You know, to build a foundation before we start a family?”