Chapter 2
Ned studied the young woman in front of him. Ree Hamilton was the youngest CEO he’d ever worked with, but she was everything he’d hoped she would be and more. After the initial phone calls and subsequent face-to-face meetings, he had sensed a strong connection building between them and hoped it would develop further.
Her sandy-blonde hair was cut straight across the shoulders of her black suit, emphasizing the captivating luster of her tresses. She wore a thin gold chain around her neck that peeked between her shirt lapels against that pearly skin of hers. Her pressed black pants dropped straight down to reveal only the tips of her polished black leather boots, effectively hiding what he was sure would be glorious long legs. She shifted from one foot to the other while looking around the park. She was doing her best to hide how uncomfortable this whole situation had made her, and it was cute. Every flicker of her eyes endeared her to his heart. She was everything he’d dreamed she would be.
“So what are we doing here?” she asked, looking him straight in the eyes. “How does coming here get us closer to defeating our Goliath?”
“We’re not here to defeat Goliath,” he replied. “Not that Goliath, anyway. I brought you here so I could get to know you better. I know almost nothing about you. I like to get personally acquainted with my clients so I have a personal investment in the outcome instead of just earning a paycheck. Then you know I have something to lose if you don’t succeed in your objective.”
“What do you want to know about me?” she asked, shifting her left leg back a touch. “I’m an open book. You already know everything about my company.”
“That’s your company,” he replied. “I’m talking about you. I want to know the you that isn’t part of the company.”
She looked away. “That’s kinda tough since the company is my whole life.”
“I doubt that,” he replied. “There must be more to you than that. Don’t tell me you’re one of those executives who spends every waking minute breathing, eating, and sleeping their company.”
She held both hands palm up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m afraid so. You caught me.”
He gazed out over the pond. “That is such a tragedy. Why do you waste your life like that?”
“What else is there?’ she asked. “I’m addicted to success. I’ll admit it. I put everything into this company. I mean, I’m not friendless, isolated; the other partners are my best friends. There’s just no separation between personal and business for me, though honestly, it is mostly business. I don’t really have a life outside the company.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Don’t you ever go out on the weekends?”
“Oh, sure, I go out. I have a good time, but not so much that I’d have any trouble getting to work on Monday morning. Working and building up this company is the most fulfilling thing I’ve got in my life.”
“What about your family?”
“I visit my parents all the time,” she replied. “They live around the corner from my office.”
“Do you have siblings?” he asked.
“Not really.”
He burst out laughing. “What do you mean ‘not really’? Either you have them or you don’t. There is no ‘not really.’”
“I used to have a brother,” she replied, “but he died. He was my only sibling, so now I’m on my own. That’s all.”
Ned offered a sympathetic nod. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ree waved a hand on the air. “Life can be a bitch.”
A wry grin broke out on Ned’s face as he nodded in agreement. “It certainly can.”
“What about you?” Ree asked. “Do you have family?”
“I have two brothers,” he replied. “The rest of my family are dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you see your brothers much?”
“All the time,” he replied. “We’ve always lived near each other. I would be lost without them.”
“That’s kind of how I feel about the company. I’ve been around my friends all my life. I don’t really want to be anywhere else.”
They both fell silent.
Ned listened to the ducks honking in the distance and the trees throbbing with insect noises. It never ceased to amaze him that the sights and sounds of wildlife could exist within the city like that. This really was a beautiful place.
“So,” she began, “if you’re such an expert on having a life outside of work, what do you do when you’re not saving companies from hostile takeovers?”
“I practice fencing, and martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat,” he replied. “I have a thing for learning new languages, so I spend a lot of time on that. I speak about twenty different languages.”
“That’s a lot,” she remarked. “That must not leave you much time to spend with your brothers.”
“We do it all together,” he replied. “They’re into the same things I’m into. That’s how we spend so much time together.”
“What about when you’re at work?” she asked. “You don’t see each other then.”
“Yes, we do,” he replied. “We work together too. We’re involved in the same business.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, then frowned.
Ned could see she didn’t really understand, but that was okay. She would understand in time. He had all the time in the world to make her understand. “So tell me,” he prompted. “Tell me how you came up with the idea for this company of yours.”
“It wasn’t much of anything,” she replied. “We were working to earn a particular merit badge for Girl Scouts. We had to study medicinal plants growing in our neighborhood and write a report on how we would use them to cure the common cold. Then it sort of morphed into chemical formulas, kind of like creating magic potions and spells in fairy tales. That’s how it started. Up into high school, we always had the idea that we would do medicine, but once we started studying chemistry, it changed. All five of us got more interested in chemistry, and medicine fell by the wayside. Chemistry was more interesting, so we started a chemical company. And as none of us want to ever get old, we focused our attention on anti-aging products.”
He listened, focusing on her face with his whole attention. Everything about her fascinated him.
Ree fidgeted. “Well, don’t just stand there staring at me. Say something.”
“It’s so interesting. I don’t often meet women who are interested in that sort of thing, much less have turned it into a successful company.”
“I’m sure it’s not all that interesting,” she muttered. “I’m sure you meet all kinds of successful people in your work.”
“Not many women,” he replied. “Most of them are men, and the women aren’t as interesting as you.”
“I’m just a regular person.”
“You’re so much more than that.” He couldn’t stop himself from drifting closer to her. He had to make this happen, and he didn’t want to wait any longer. “You’re the most interesting person I’ve met in…well, in forever.”
“Stop it.” She turned away and looked out over the pond.
Ned came up behind her and whispered into her ear, “Do you have a boyfriend, Ree? I can’t stand to think about you spending your life in a corporate prison.”
She took a step forward, trying to look casual about putting space between them. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I’ll bet you have guys banging down your door. I bet you have to fight ’em off when you go out on the weekends.”
Ree trained her eyes on the distant horizon, her back still to him. “No, I don’t. I don’t have time for guys.”
He sidled up closer to her again. “I don’t believe it. You’re a guy’s dream come true.”
“I am not!” She whipped around and glared into his eyes. “I’m the last thing any guy would want anything to do with.” She marched around him to a bench at the pond’s edge. When she turned around to sit down, her left leg bumped the wooden seat with a resounding thunk.
Ned’s eyes flew open. “Wha
t was that?”
Ree plopped down on the bench, folded her arms across her chest, and looked away. “Nothing.”
He stood back and studied her, his heart aching to comfort her, to show her how he really felt, but he had to tread lightly here. He didn’t want to scare her away.
He walked over and sat down next to her, then nudged her with his shoulder and said softly, “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to touch on a sore subject. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
She spun to face him, bent down, and pulled up her pant leg. “You want to know why I don’t have a boyfriend? There it is. Take a good look.”
He looked down. Instead of a calf between her knee and shiny leather shoe, the smooth curve of a carbon-fiber prosthetic took the place of the missing leg.
“See?” she snapped. “No one in their right mind would want to get involved with me.”
He studied the artificial leg. “How did it happen?”
“I got in a car wreck, okay?” she fired back. “It happened when I was in high school. End of story. I went on a few dates with a guy before that, but when I got out of the hospital and went back to school, it all sort of became nothing. He never asked me out again.”
“And you haven’t been out with a guy since?” he asked. “I find it hard to believe a little thing like that would put a guy off.”
“Little!” she shrieked. “You call this little? What guy would want to have anything to do with a woman who’s damaged goods? It’s disgusting. I can hardly stand to look at it myself. I sure as heck don’t expect anybody else to put up with it.”
“Your friends at work don’t seem to mind.”
“They don’t have to look at it,” she replied. “They don’t have to touch it or watch me undress. Do you want to know something? I haven’t had a mirror in my house since the accident. I have a small mirror the size of my face where I do my hair and makeup. That’s it. I haven’t looked in a full-length mirror in over ten years.”
Ned leaned back on the bench. So there it was. She’d gotten it off her chest. She’d told a total stranger her dark secret. What could he say to her to make her believe it was all right when she didn’t believe it herself?
She pushed her pant leg down. Except for the strange curve in one leg, no one would could tell she wore a prosthesis. They both sat gazing out across the pond in silence for a long time. This hadn’t turned out like Ned’s usual walking meetings, but then again, she wasn’t like his usual clients, either.
She finally broke the stillness. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not laughing at me, or running away in horror,” she replied. “You’re the first person I’ve told in years. I couldn’t stand for anybody to pity me about it. I just want them to respect me for who I am without that interfering.”
“I don’t pity you,” he replied. “I respect you, but I don’t respect you in spite of it. I respect you because of it.”
She looked away. “Shut up.”
“It’s true. It’s like we were talking about in your office. Asking for help and making yourself vulnerable doesn’t make you weak or unattractive. You like giving value to your network contacts, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied. “That’s how I established connections with them in the first place.”
“There you go,” he exclaimed. “Now you just have to get it into your head that they want to give value to you too. They want to do things for you. They want to know they’re as essential to you as you are to them. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”
Ree slowly turned her gaze toward him. “You’re right. I never thought of it that way.”
Ned banged the back of his hand against her thigh. “Hey! I want to show you something.”
“What is it?”
He stripped back his sleeve and exposed his forearm. Veins bulged along the muscle, and a bright red birthmark colored his smooth skin. It undulated when he moved his wrist, like a bird flapping its wings.
Ree gasped. “That’s amazing!”
“Amazing!” He snorted. “It’s hideous, but I was born with it. I won’t get rid of it by hating it. It’s just there. It’s a part of me.”
She stared down at the birthmark, then reached over and traced the outline with her fingers.
“So now you know something about me, the same way I know something about you,” he said. “Not many people know about that.”
“It’s not exactly a skeleton in your closet,” she remarked. “It’s almost…I don’t know. It’s almost beautiful.”
“Your leg’s not a skeleton in your closet, either, and you’re beautiful. Your leg makes you more beautiful, not less so.”
She blushed and withdrew her hand.
“Do you want to know a real skeleton in my closet?” he asked. “Then you’ll really have some incriminating dirt on me.”
“I don’t want you to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I want to tell you,” he replied with wide eyes. “I want you to know everything about me. Then maybe you can tell me if you think it’s beautiful.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
Ned’s eyes turned dark. “I killed somebody,” he told her.
Ree’s eyes popped. “You did?”
“I was sitting in my room reading a book, and this gang of thugs broke into my house,” he told her. “I fought back, and I killed three of them.”
She stared at him. “Was it…was it hard?”
“No, it wasn’t hard at all,” he replied. “They were trying to kill me and my family. I had to fight back, and I killed them first. That’s the way it is.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “That’s awful.”
“Not really,” he replied. “That’s just life. Sometimes bad things happen. It was a question of them or me. I would do it again if I had to. One of them had my younger brother pinned down and would have cut his throat. I rushed in and pulled the guy off. The guy turned around and slashed me across the stomach. See?” He yanked up his shirt, revealing a wicked scar across his abs. “Anyway, that’s my deep dark secret to you. Not everything is horrible just because it appears to be. Sometimes there’s a perfectly not-horrible explanation for things.”
She looked away again.
Ned could only hope he was getting through to her. After a few more moments of silence, he jumped to his feet and grabbed her hand. “Come here. I want to show you something else.” He pulled her to the edge of the pond, picked up a handful of stones, and placed some in her hands. “Skip stones with me.”
“What?”
Ned sent a flat stone winging across the pond. It touched the surface in three places before it plunged into the water. “See? It’s easy. Now you try.”
She stood back and blinked at him in wonder.
He skipped another two stones just to show her how. While he skipped them, he chanted a little rhyme.
“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae
Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe
Takiyok keorvik suluk yo
Uyarak ek chua lo.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It’s just a nonsense rhyme,” he replied. “I learned it when I was younger. My dad told me you have to say it to make the stones skip the right way. The words give them wings. If you don’t say it, they won’t learn to fly. That’s what he told me anyway.”
Ree laughed.
That was the first time he’d heard her laugh like that. He spun around, and when he saw her face, he had to smile. “You try it now, and don’t forget to say the words.” He stepped back to give her space.
She hesitated, then brightened and walked down to the water’s edge. She hefted a stone in her hand, bent back her arm, and sent the stone skidding across the water.
“That was pretty good,” he remarked. “Now say the rhyme and see how they fly.”
She laughed again. “I can’t remember it all.”
“Just say what y
ou remember, and I’ll remind you when you get stuck.”
She picked out a new stone and started chanting.
“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae
Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe
Takiyok keorvik suluk…”
“Yo,” he prompted.
She laughed again and repeated, “Yo,” then finished, “Uyarak ek chua lo.”
“Excellent,” he told her. “Now say the whole thing without stopping while you skip another stone.”
She shot him a bright grin. She was enjoying this, and that smile filled his heart to bursting. She was doing it. She was letting down her guard to let him in.
“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae,” she recited. “Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe, Takiyok keorvik suluk yo, Uyarak ek chua lo.”
The minute the words left her lips, a gust of wind puffed across the pond. In the blink of an eye, a powerful funnel of swirling water erupted from the water and extended one long tendril over the surface.
Ree raised one hand in front of her face to shield her eyes, but it was too late. The funnel stretched across the pond, whipped around her waist, and snatched her off the ground. Before Ned could do anything, it retracted into the pond and took Ree with it. The surface fell still and silent, the sun came out, and not a trace of her remained.
Chapter 3
A large wave surged onto a rocky shore, hissing and foaming among the stones, and when it retreated into the steel-gray ocean, it left a huddled mass of sodden misery lying on the beach.
Ree twisted into a ball, rolled up onto her knees, and coughed until she retched. Water ran out of her nose, and every breath cut like a knife. A frigid wind screamed across the beach and cut straight through her saturated clothes, sending bone-deep shivers over her body. She hugged her arms across her stomach, but that did nothing to help her. Her teeth chattered, and she struggled to stand up. Murky water dripped from her hair.
She looked both ways up and down the beach. A few boats rested on the headland not far away, so there must be people around. She headed for them, but when she got there, she found no one. Her brain shrieked for some explanation. Where was she? What happened to her at the duck pond? Why did that funnel come out and grab her like that?
Pirates of the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 1): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 2