Timeless (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jasmine Cresswell

  “That’s what I told the insurance company,” Zach said, getting to his feet. “The man in question had been losing money, but needed to keep up appearances to prevent a run on his business, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he quietly sold the genuine article and bought himself a nice little replica from a factory in the Far East.”

  “This is a fascinating business, isn’t it?” Robyn said as they walked back toward the lobby. “I love the unique combination of creative genius, ancient splendor, and high tech that keeps the whole industry afloat.”

  Zach smiled. “And the best part is, some of the creative genius is even legal.”

  She laughed, happy with the success of the evening, happy with the new sense of relaxation she felt around Zach. All in all, she felt confident that she had taken a giant step toward overcoming her infatuation. The entire evening, in fact, had followed the outline of her new Master Plan with gratifying precision. And their trip to London would complete her transformation into a new woman, she was sure of it.

  When they reclaimed their coats, Zach handed Robyn a slim portfolio containing about a hundred pages of photographs. “As soon as you’ve had a chance to look these over, tell me what you think about the Starke inventory,” he said, walking her toward the door. “I’m going to be in the office all day on Monday and Tuesday until early afternoon.”

  “I’ll call Shirley first thing and fix a meeting time.”

  “Do that.”

  The maitre d’ hurried up to them. “I ‘ope everything was to your satisfaction, Mr. Bowleigh?”

  “Wonderful as always, Jean-Pierre. Now all we need to make the evening perfect is a cab.”

  “I can call for one if you wish. But it is no longer raining, and probably you will ‘ave more success if you just walk up to Fifth Avenue.”

  “That’s what we’ll do,” Zach said. “Unless you’re still cold, Robyn?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Once outside, they found that the gutters ran with dirty rainwater, but the sidewalks had dried off except for the occasional puddle. The skies had cleared, revealing an ethereally beautiful moon and a brilliant scattering of stars. Pausing on the corner of Fifty-second, Zach scanned Fifth Avenue in search of an empty cab.

  The traffic roared past, including dozens of yellow cabs, all occupied. Zach sighed. “At moments like this I wonder why the hell I don’t buy a house in the suburbs so that I could own a car and drive myself where I want to go like a normal American.”

  She burrowed her chin into her upturned collar. “It’s the challenge,” she said. “The feeling that if you can make life bearable in New York City, you could do it anywhere.”

  He laughed. “You’re probably right, although I always kid myself I stay in the city because of the fascinating people and the great cultural—”

  He suddenly lunged toward her, pulling her close against his chest and throwing her bodily to the pavement. Only the fact that he kept his arm around her neck prevented her from cracking the back of her skull against the concrete. Vaguely, in the distance, she was aware of the sound of a car backfiring.

  They landed in a doorway, a tangle of legs and arms, with her face squashed against the buttons of Zach’s shirt, her nose tickled by the smell of Fendi cologne, her vision obscured by the hanging flaps of his overcoat. For thirty seconds, he lay on top of her, panting, his body rigid with tension. When he lifted his head slightly, she was able to move just enough to see his face.

  He was staring toward Fifth Avenue, his expression tight with fury. He looked pale and mud-splattered, but otherwise sane enough. On the other hand, she hadn’t met too many crazy people and was no expert at identifying them. She tried to wriggle out of Zach’s grasp, wincing as her bruised haunches scraped over the cement.

  “Get down,” he commanded, straddling her with his knee and thrusting her—none too gently—back into the recesses of the doorway where they had landed. “Don’t move until I’m sure they’re gone.”

  “Until who has gone? Zach, what happened? What frightened you?”

  He ignored her, but she obeyed him anyway, largely because she had no choice. Zach remained spread-eagled on top of her, effectively blocking her view of the street, and he was a foot taller and sixty pounds heavier than she was.

  She moved her legs, which were getting pins and needles. Cold, gritty rainwater sloshed against her calves and the back of her knees. A couple walked by, averting their gaze, and she realized just what a spectacle she and Zach were making of themselves. A surge of irritation replaced her bewilderment, propelling her into action.

  “Zach, get off me. This is ridiculous.”

  He stood up, pulling her with him. He’d thrown her into a puddle, she realized, as icy rivulets of dirty water trickled off her hair and into her face, but she didn’t feel the cold because her fury was keeping her warm. She picked up her purse and the portfolio with the catalogs. Fortunately nothing had spilled, although the photos were wet.

  “What was that all about?” she demanded, using the sodden sleeve of her coat in an effort to stop the water dripping from her hair into her mouth.

  “I... thought someone was shooting at us.”

  “Shooting at us?” Robyn looked around the peaceful street scene and swallowed hard. Zach’s nerves must be shredded, she thought sadly. She could imagine her mother or her sister-in-law finding the blank-faced, scurrying New Yorkers somewhat menacing, but for a city-dweller there was nothing threatening about the brightly lit street, or the people in it. “Zach, we’re fine, honestly.”

  He kept her pinned close to his side and scanned the sidewalks as if he expected an assassin to leap out from behind a lamppost at any minute. He finally seemed satisfied that they weren’t in imminent danger, and he dragged his gaze around to hers with visible effort. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No, of course I’m not all right! I’m freezing cold, my clothes are ruined, and your attitude is making me very nervous. But you didn’t manage to break any of my bones, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. He sounded remote, impersonal. “I thought you were in danger and I reacted without thinking.”

  “Yeah, well those he-man reflexes could get you into a lot of trouble. Miss Cosmos probably likes hitting wet cement even less than I do.”

  He didn’t crack even the ghost of a smile. Instead, he took her arm and started hustling her uptown. “Come on, we need to get out of here. I’ll take you back to my apartment. Walk as fast as you can, please. It’s not safe — You’ll catch cold if you don’t get out of those wet clothes.”

  Robyn didn’t relish the prospect of a wet and muddy cab ride back to Queens, but the prospect of going to Zach’s apartment was even less appealing. She didn’t think she had ever seen a man who looked closer to the brink of a major explosion, and she had no desire to be around when the explosion occurred.

  “It’s late, so I’d prefer to go straight home,” she said.

  He hesitated. “You’re soaking wet.”

  “My coat’s wet. The rest of me is pretty dry.”

  Her shoes were discernibly ruined and her hair still dripped mud, but he accepted her lie without protest. She had the sudden feeling that his mood had changed and he was now as anxious to be rid of her as she was to be home in the safety of her own apartment.

  “You must send me the dry-cleaning bill,” Zach said. “That way, I might feel a bit less stupid about the way I—overreacted.”

  The pause before his final word was almost imperceptible, but Robyn had spent too many months obsessing about Zach not to notice it. He didn’t really believe he’d overreacted, she was sure of it. In fact, she realized with a flash of insight, he was determined to send her home so that she’d be out of what he considered the danger zone. She looked up at him, worried by the carefully expressionless lines of his face, and the tight-drawn grimness of his mouth.

  “Zach, what is it? What’s bothering you?” she asked.

&nbs
p; “Good heavens, do you need to ask? I behaved like an idiot.” He gave a chuckle that sounded charmingly embarrassed and apologetic. She noticed that his eyes were still scanning the sidewalks and wasn’t deceived.

  “Look, there’s a cab,” he said, stepping out into the street to hail it. “Are you quite sure you don’t want to stop off at my place to clean up?”

  “I’m sure. Do you need a ride home?”

  “No thanks. My place is only five blocks from here and I prefer to walk.”

  Surprisingly, the taxi stopped, despite their bedraggled appearance. The cabbie stuck his head out of the window. “Where d’ya wanna go?”

  “Queens,” Robyn said, giving her address.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding.” The cabbie rolled his eyes with as much exasperation as if she’d asked to be driven across the Atlantic Ocean. He launched into a storm of protest, which Zach silenced by the surefire method of stuffing several large-denomination bills into his hand.

  “Make sure you wait to see the lady safely inside her building.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” The cabbie took a hearty drag on his cigarette, indifferent to the sign that proclaimed smoking in city cabs to be illegal.

  Zach wasn’t so far gone in craziness that he risked commenting on the cigarette. He leaned down to say good-bye to Robyn. “I’ll see you in the office on Monday. Look, I’m really sorry about the way this evening ended.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for, Zach. In this city, we all get jumpy at times.”

  “I guess we do. But I’d have preferred not to make a total ass of myself in front of a woman I admire as much as you.”

  “Time to go, folks!” The cabbie put the car in gear. Zach just had time to slam the passenger door before the cabbie drove off in an impatient squeal of tires. Robyn looked back and saw that Zach was already striding purposefully downtown, coat collar turned up, hands shoved into his pockets. She was so disoriented by Zach’s strange behavior that she was back home, standing under a hot shower, before she realized a final oddity: Zach’s purposeful strides had been carrying him in precisely the opposite direction from his apartment.

  Robyn wondered where he’d been going. And why.

  Chapter 2

  Zach keyed in his personal code to turn off the laser-activated alarm system, then walked into the deserted showroom. He couldn’t be sure all the staff had gone home, but he figured he was likely to arouse less suspicion at this hour of the evening than if he came back to the Gallery at midnight. His presence in the showroom would be photographed by automatic cameras and noted, even if only by a guard, since the security system was set up to record who shut it off and when. Fortunately he always took a personal interest in the Gallery’s major acquisitions, so his scrutiny of the Farleigh cabinet wasn’t likely to raise questions. With a price tag of fifty thousand dollars, the cabinet represented an important piece of inventory, important enough to justify some curiosity on the part of the company president.

  His first step was to check the documents showing provenance, to see if there was anything in the record of previous sales that he could possibly have missed. The cabinet had been built around 1740 for Richard Farleigh, a merchant who had retired from profitable London commerce to the more genteel life of a country squire during the reign of King George II. After World War I, taxes and death duties had forced the impoverished Farleigh descendants to sell some of their accumulated treasures, and eventually the elaborate marquetry cabinet, complete with its gold-leaf stand, had been shipped to the States. Sold to a Wall Street broker during the high-flying eighties, the broker had been forced to sell in the more somber economic climate of the new century. Detailed descriptions and bills of sale were enclosed for every transaction, including the original sale by Richard Farleigh’s descendants in 1919. In short, the provenance appeared impeccable.

  The visual impact was impeccable, too. The cabinet stood on an elaborately carved and gilded stand depicting intertwined cherubs, flowers, and lush vines, giving the piece an overall height in excess of six feet. The doors of the cabinet were painted with scenes of Oriental horsemen, galloping across the black lacquer surface, their colored banners flying with formalized abandon.

  To modern taste, it seemed strange to mix classical and Christian myths with imagined scenes from a romanticized Orient, but eighteenth-century craftsmen had enjoyed letting their imaginations roam free. Englishmen who had rarely traveled fifty miles from their homes liked to buy furniture decorated with pictures of mysterious beasts like elephants, or exotic emperors, or alluring Chinese maidens. In most cases, neither seller nor purchaser had any firm idea what elephants or emperors looked like, so everyone was quite happy with whatever fanciful image the artist dreamed up. The demand for authenticity, neat categories, and coherent decorative themes was a twentieth century innovation. A too accurate picture of a wild animal, for example, was often a sure clue that an antique had been faked.

  Zach opened the outer doors of the cabinet and revealed a typical inner display of exquisitely painted drawers and storage space, each sandalwood-lined section showing some detail of the larger picture portrayed on the doors.

  Zach read the provenance notes again, frowning as he ran his fingertips lightly across one of the cabinet’s joints. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this piece that he could see, not a single detail that suggested the cabinet was anything other than what it purported to be: a valuable antique, built and decorated by master craftsmen more than two hundred years ago.

  Unfortunately, in this case seeing was not believing, since the X rays he’d ordered last week proved conclusively that the cabinet was a fake, albeit a superbly executed one. To add to Zach’s frustrations, a check he’d conducted suggested that the broker who’d been listed as the owner in the 1930s had never existed.

  Zach heard the sound of hurrying footsteps behind him, and recognized at once who was coming. Damn! Of all the people he didn’t want to encounter right now, Robyn Delaney headed the list. He should never have brought up the subject of that fake pietra-dura cabinet on Friday night, but Robyn had such a crazy effect on his libido that his brain rarely functioned at more than half speed when she was around—even when he wasn’t worried that at any moment a scandal might break that would sink the Gallery.

  He straightened slowly, giving himself a couple of seconds to control the inevitable rush of desire. Much as he relished the thought, this would probably not be a good moment to drag Robyn into his arms and beg her to go to bed with him. After the fiasco of Friday night, he’d better put on a damn good show of looking calm, rational, and businesslike, or she’d be sending for the men in white coats.

  “Zach!” Robyn hesitated in the doorway of the showroom, her eyes darkening with surprise from green to amber. “I saw the lights were on and wondered who was in here.”

  “I’m leaving town tomorrow,” Zach said, hoping like hell his smile looked more casual than it felt. “That’s my excuse for working late, but what’s yours?”

  “Paperwork. Boring stuff. Is there a problem with the Farleigh cabinet?”

  He trotted out the excuse he’d prepared for the security guards, aware that it was inadequate for someone as well informed as Robyn. “Kevin wasn’t too happy with a repair that’s been done on one of the cherub’s wings. Do you want to take a look and tell me what you think?”

  “I certainly would. I’m surprised Kevin didn’t mention anything to me.”

  Too late, Zach realized he’d made a major error. In his effort to appear unconcerned, he’d invited Robyn to inspect a flawless repair which would inevitably increase her suspicion that he was either covering something up, or else teetering on the brink of a mental breakdown. Thinking with his hormones, he decided ruefully, was infinitely less efficient than thinking with his brain.

  He watched as she walked across the room, wondering if she had any idea how perfectly her tailored navy-blue suit and starched white blouse emphasized the seductive curve of her breasts and the flamboyant
color of her hair. Probably not, or she would be wearing a khaki smock and dun-colored knee socks. Short of pinning a label across her forehead saying Back Off, Robyn couldn’t have made her position about mixing work and personal relationships more clear. The hell of it was, he completely agreed with her attitude. In theory.

  “Where exactly is the repair Kevin’s bothered about?” Robyn asked, holding out her hand for the file.

  “Upper left-hand corner of the stand.” He didn’t have the file open to the cabinet’s repair record, because of course that wasn’t what he’d been checking. He handed her a magnifying glass, and bent down to point out the repair. Her hair brushed against his chin as she zeroed in on the cherub’s wing, and for several tantalizing seconds she didn’t move away. Zach indulged in a wistful fantasy in which Robyn looked up from the gilded cherubs and actually noticed that he was a fully equipped, heterosexual male.

  Robyn stood up. “The repair’s fine,” she said curtly. As he’d expected, she gave no sign whatsoever that she’d noticed he was a man and not a robot, but he did detect a flicker of anger in the depths of her eyes. Robyn was insulted by his clumsy lies, as she had every right to be.

  She handed him back the magnifying glass, making no effort to pretend she believed his story. “It’s late, and I have an early start tomorrow morning. Good night, Zach.”

  She was almost to the showroom door before he said anything, and a second before he spoke he had no idea what he was going to say. “Have dinner with me,” he blurted out.

  He was breaking every one of his personal rules about dating an employee. Worse, he knew he had no right to draw Robyn into the dangerous mess his life had become. He should never have invited her to dinner—but he didn’t regret the invitation for an instant.

  Robyn answered him without turning around. “Is this a request for another business meeting, Zach?”

  “No, this is strictly personal. We could go back to my apartment. I’d like to show you my grandmother’s collection of French fans. Or my etchings, if you happen to be in the mood for etchings.”