Anywhere in Time (Magic of Time Book 2)

by Melissa Mayhue

  Syrie stood a few feet away, her expression of shock giving way to distress. Little wonder. Her hair, still matted with batter, now hung around her in thick, wet clumps. Crisscross trails covered her face where the spray of water had formed little rivulets in the flour mixture that had clung to her.

  With no hope of controlling himself, Patrick began to laugh. Only a chuckle at first, to be sure, but swiftly evolving into a heartfelt, gut-twisting laugh brought on by the ridiculousness of their situation.

  Anger darkened Syrie’s eyes, but only for an instant before she, too, began to laugh.

  He moved toward her, supporting her as she sank to sit on the floor, surrounded by water and floating chunks of the mysterious flour mixture. A moment later, he sat next to her, while she leaned against him, her laughter gradually dwindling until it was little more than a series of hiccups and gasps.

  “My only…only consolation is that when Ellen kills me, she’s…she’s going to kill you too,” she said between hiccups.

  It was then he realized that somewhere in the time they’d sat there on the floor next to one another, while his laughter had simply died off, her laughter had turned to tears.

  “Doona fash yerself so, mo siobhrag,” he said, laying an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

  “I’ve made such a mess of everything,” she whimpered, snuggling her face into his chest.

  While he would give anything asked of him simply to keep her like this, cuddled in his arms, he couldn’t. Not even this pleasure beyond pleasure was worth seeing her so upset.

  “Come now, Syrie. Yer made of sterner stuff than this.” He pulled her arms from around him and stood. “On yer feet, lass. With but a bit of applied effort, we’ll have this room back to rights in no time.”

  With a sigh, she stood up, wiping her face with her hands, but to little good effect. “You’re right. Sitting there sniveling like a child isn’t going to get anything done. I’ll go get towels.”

  By the time she returned, Patrick had found a bucket under the sink and carefully filled it with soap and warm water. The dratted faucet wasn’t going to catch him unawares a second time.

  They worked quietly and efficiently until, at last, all that was left to do was the dishes she’d dirtied in her original baking attempt.

  “Not bad, huh?” she asked, the hint of a smile in her eyes. “Guess we make a halfway decent team when we aren’t fighting.”

  “Indeed we do,” he replied, reaching over to take a cleaning cloth from her hands. “I’ll finish up here. You head upstairs and slip yerself into a well-earned bath, aye? Will do wonders for yer spirit.”

  “You’re sure? You don’t mind?” she asked, her eyes darting longingly toward the door.

  “I’m sure. Go on, then. Away with you now.”

  He watched her leave, licking his lips. In her wet shirt and trousers, she looked good enough to eat.

  And thinking of eating…

  He wiped his hands on the last sort of clean towel and picked up the recipe Syrie had shown him earlier. If he remembered correctly, Mrs. Whitman next door was quite the baker. And, considering all the work he’d done for her in moving around her damned bees and honey jars, he suspected he just might be able to convince her to help him out with the one remaining item on Syrie’s to-do list.

  Chapter 19

  That just might have been the worst mess she could ever remember having to clean up. Not that she could remember any instances of cleaning in her past.

  Syrie smiled ruefully at her reflection in the mirror and continued to try to drag the brush through her wet hair. She paused to secure the towel she wore as it began to slip and then tried again.

  At least the globs of sticky goo were out of her curls at last, even if her tangles were worse than ever thanks to all her scrubbing.

  A little rattle followed by a quiet gasp were her only warning that she’d forgotten to lock the door leading to Patrick’s room.

  “I beg yer pardon. I assumed you were finished, since the door was unlocked.”

  Her first instinct was to complain about his not knocking, but that annoyingly arrogant raised eyebrow told her without a doubt he hadn’t forgotten her tirade at his not having locked the door. Clearly she had no solid ground on which to make a stand.

  “Sorry,” she said instead, dropping her brush to clutch her towel around her.

  He might have given her quite an eyeful the night she’d walked in on him, but she had no intention of returning the favor. Besides, still covered in the evidence of their horrific kitchen adventure, he managed to look rather pathetic in spite of the eyebrow.

  “I’m done in here, anyway. I can finish up in my room.”

  “If yer sure.” He grinned. “Ellen and Robert have returned. I barely made it to the stairs before the door opened. Didn’t want to have to explain all this.”

  He swept a hand from his head to his waist, and she had to force her eyes away. He might still be wearing globs of dried batter, but even those had no hope of disguising a bare chest that looked as inviting as his. Or as intriguing. When they had more time, she’d have to remember to ask about the unusual tattoo over his heart.

  Have to remember? She almost laughed out loud. Like she could ever forget that bare chest of his.

  “All yours,” she managed, her voice little more than a squeak.

  Syrie started to bend down to pick up her clothing, but, considering the towel was all she wore, she decided better of it. Instead, she shoved at the pile with her foot, flashing him an apologetic smile as she guided her bundle out the door and quickly followed behind it.

  Safely on her side, she turned the little key and let out a long breath. How any man could manage to look as good as he did in an equally disheveled state, she simply couldn’t imagine.

  “Good looking or not, he’s still an ass,” she reminded herself, feeling a little flutter of guilt even as she voiced the familiar sentiment.

  Would an ass have helped her clean up that gigantic mess she’d made? Even though he did help make it worse…

  With a sigh, she shook her head, hoping to clear Patrick and any thought of him out of it. Almost an impossible task when she heard the water of the shower switch on.

  She remembered all too well what he was doing at this very moment. And how he looked doing it.

  Quickly, she slipped into clean clothing, realizing only then that she’d left her brush in the other room. No retrieving that now. Grabbing a rubber band from the top of her dresser, she gathered the unruly curls together and fastened them into a bundle. She could worry about her hair later. Right now she needed to be downstairs, trying to give some sort of explanation for her complete and total failure to do the one thing her friend had asked of her. Not to mention explaining away any of the mess Patrick might have missed after she’d left.

  At the foot of the stairs she stopped, deciding that complete honesty was the only defense she had. Ellen’s voice drifted to her from the kitchen, followed by the low rumble of Robert’s reply. Syrie wished she didn’t have to admit her failures in front of him, but it was unavoidable.

  Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway as Ellen met her with a hug.

  “The cake looks wonderful, Syrie,” she said. “I have to admit, you’ve always been so uncomfortable in the kitchen, I had my doubts. But you really came through for me.”

  “Smells great, too,” Robert added as he helped himself to a soft drink from the refrigerator.

  There, sitting in the middle of the table, was a beautiful cake, exactly like Syrie would have given her left arm to have baked. But of course, she hadn’t. Having no possible understanding of what was going on, she simply smiled and offered to help in preparing dinner, tucking away all thought of the complete honesty policy she’d adopted only minutes earlier.

  “No need for help,” Ellen said with a smile. “Robert and I decided to stop at that little restaurant we like so much and bring home dinner. It was a lo
ng day, if you get my meaning, and cooking didn’t sound at all like something I wanted to do.”

  Syrie bit back the temptation to agree with the “long day” comment.

  “Come on, El,” Robert said, the warning in his tone clear. “Even you have to admit, my mother was on her best behavior today. For her, at least.”

  “For her,” Ellen echoed, rolling her eyes as she turned toward Syrie. “You can help me set the table in the dining room, though. And then, if you don’t mind, you can go let Patrick know we’re home and we’re ready for dinner.”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  Much easier to agree than to say that he was in the shower. If she did that, she might be forced to admit why he was in the shower this time of day. Or how she knew where he was.

  By the time the table was set, Patrick had come downstairs. He’d obviously hurried through his shower, since he looked as though he could use a shave. But, other than that, he appeared fresh and clean and much too innocent for Syrie to believe anyone in the room wouldn’t be suspicious that something had happened in their absence.

  But, apparently, they weren’t.

  “A lovely dinner,” Patrick said, rising from his seat after the meal to collect empty plates.

  “Leave that where it is,” Ellen ordered, standing up to take his plate from him. “I’ll clean up. It’s the least I can do after Syrie baked this wonderful cake and left the kitchen absolutely spotless to boot.”

  “Patrick helped,” Syrie blurted out, unable to stay silent any longer. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”

  “Really?” Ellen said, her piercing gaze traveling from one to the other of them as though she could see right into their thoughts.

  “Kept her a bit of company is all I did,” Patrick said with a shrug. “It’s no’ as though I’ve any skill at baking. I doona even ken where to light ovens such as yers.”

  Ellen chuckled, picking up the last plate. “Well, since we don’t have to light our ovens, it’s apparent that you’re telling the truth about your lack of skill in the kitchen. Syrie, on the other hand, has kept her talents hidden all this time. I think that cake was even better than mine. You’ll have to share your secrets. What did you do differently to get that lovely flavor and texture?”

  Syrie blinked, her mouth firmly shut. How could she share the secret of how she’d made a better cake when she didn’t even know the secret of where the cake had come from?

  “She’s a sly one, our Syrie,” Patrick said with a grin. “If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the extra butter she used. That and a touch of Mrs. Whitman’s honey.”

  “Very clever,” Ellen said, nodding as she carried dishes to the kitchen. “I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Of course, I rarely alter a recipe once I’ve found a good one. Perhaps I need to take a page from Syrie’s book and be more adventurous.”

  “Adventure is highly overrated,” Syrie murmured.

  “On that, I agree,” Robert said, pushing back his chair and heading toward the sofa. “Join me for some television, Patrick?”

  “I’ll pass on yer kind offer. It’s been a long day, so I think I’ll retire to my chamber.” Patrick rubbed a hand over his cheek and grinned. “Perhaps even clean up a bit before I retire. Thank you again for a lovely meal, Ellen.”

  With a little bow, he left the room and disappeared up the stairs.

  Syrie found it almost impossible to drag her eyes from the direction he’d just gone.

  “He does cut quite a striking figure, doesn’t he?” Ellen asked as Syrie joined her in the kitchen. “With that long hair and those big shoulders. Not to mention that dark five o’clock shadow on his face.”

  “Quit your matchmaking, El,” Robert yelled in from the other room. “And don’t you even try to deny it. I know what you’re up to when you start that whisper-buzzing of yours.”

  “Men,” Ellen said, but a guilty grin played around her lips. “Still, you could do a lot worse than Patrick. He’s handsome and quite obviously helpful. I even suspect he rather likes you.”

  “Robert’s right, you know,” Syrie said as she scraped the plates to get them ready to wash. “You should quit your matchmaking.”

  The last thing she needed right now was to be fixed up with anyone, let alone the most confusing, aggravating man she’d ever met.

  Chapter 20

  Had guilt always been such a powerful force in her life? It was one of those questions that kept Syrie awake at night.

  She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, wishing she could turn off her overactive mind. She had an early shift tomorrow at the restaurant, and if she didn’t get to sleep soon, she was going to be one very tired woman before she left work.

  Logic did nothing to help. Her mind still wandered back to Patrick, forcing her to confront the day all over again, playing everything through her mind for at least the hundredth time.

  All through dinner, through all the accolades for the wonderful job she did on the cake, she had waited for Patrick to speak up. Waited for him to claim the credit he deserved. Even when she’d made her one, admittedly feeble attempt to direct some of the praise toward him, he’d placed it all back in her lap. Hardly the actions of the arrogant, egotistical man she’d always pegged him to be. The evening, the whole day, left her with no choice but to re-evaluate her original opinion of the man.

  More than anything, she hated being wrong. Almost more than anything. She hated being wrong and being the bad guy most of all. And when she considered the way she had acted toward Patrick on more than one occasion, it left her feeling like the bad guy. True, he’d been way out of line on the night he’d kept her from going out with Gino. But, in retrospect, he had been right about what she had intended to wear.

  What he hadn’t known, what she never would have admitted to him, was that a big reason for her choice of clothing that night had been to see if she could make him jealous.

  “Stupid,” she muttered, feeling her cheeks heat at the memory.

  She was much too old to behave in such an immature manner. That was behavior she’d expect from some tender young thing suffering through the throes of her first crush.

  “Stupid,” she said again, sitting up in bed and staring out the window into the night.

  Stupid was right. It wasn’t like she had feelings of any sort for Patrick.

  Or did she?

  She closed her eyes tight, struggling to replace the image of him with the one of the shrouded figure from her dreams, but her effort was useless. No matter how hard she tried, it was always Patrick’s face, Patrick’s eyes, that looked back at her from the depths of that hooded cloak.

  Maybe that was because she could hear him banging around in the bathroom right now.

  With an annoyed huff of breath, she swung her legs out of bed and stood, hesitating for only a moment to reconsider what she was about to do. No, she might as well get it over with. It wasn’t like she was going to get any sleep anyway. Maybe if she thanked him for what he’d done for her today, she could get him off her conscience and get some rest.

  At the bathroom door, she paused again, fitting her ear up to the wood to try to determine whether or not he was still inside the little room. The muffled sound of water turning on and off filtered through the door. No question, he was still in there.

  Last chance to change her mind and scurry back to her bed like some frightened mouse.

  “I am no mouse, frightened or otherwise,” she muttered, and knocked.

  “Aye?” Patrick called out. “Come in if you like. The door’s no’ locked.”

  Of course it wasn’t. Not that she could really complain to him on that account, since she’d done the same thing herself this very day.

  A cloud of warm, moist air greeted her as she opened the door, and only then did she regret not having asked him whether or not he was decent before she entered. As it turned out, he was, though only by the loosest of definitions.

  “Did you want something of me?” he asked, w
iping a small towel over his face to remove the remains of shaving cream.

  Was he kidding? He stood there, towel in hand, bare feet and bare chest. Her gaze fixated on one single drop of water rolling down the center of that bare chest, like rain down a carved ravine. Did she want something of him? What she was wanting at the moment couldn’t be discussed in proper company. At least he had jeans on, though the top button was undone and they seemed to simply rest on his hips, in danger of falling at any moment. Thank the Goddess he wore something.

  She barely had time to register the words that had just run through her mind, let alone question them, before he spoke again, sending all her thoughts tumbling around until she could barely form a response.

  “I do enjoy the razors they have now. It’s a fair, smooth feel they leave on yer skin, is it no’? Here,” he said, catching up her hand and lifting it to his cheek. “Feel for yerself. It’s nice, aye?”

  “Nice,” she managed to answer, though the words did their best to stick on her thickened tongue.

  More than nice. Once he released her hand, her fingers clenched into a fist at her side so she wouldn’t test the feel of his bare chest, too.

  “You’ve yet to tell me what it was that brought you in here,” Patrick said, his attention seemingly focused on tidying up the sink. “There was something, was there no’? I doubt you came in for no reason but to admire me shaving.”

  “There was,” she agreed, though she was doubting it herself at the moment. “I wanted to thank you for all your help today. The cleaning, the company, everything. And though I’ve no idea how you made that wonderful cake appear, I’m grateful to you for it.”

  Maybe that nasty streak of guilt would be put to rest now and she could get some sleep.

  “It’s no’ me you have to thank for the baking of that cake. It’s Mrs. Whitman.”

  Mrs. Whitman? Syrie couldn’t remember having spoken more than ten words to the old woman next door, and almost all of those were Mrs. Whitman complaining about something or asking for a favor of some sort.