Hidden Obsession

by Joanne Rock

  “My mother was renowned for her ability to see the future. She confided everything I need to know about the art of scrying and foretelling.”

  “Fortune-telling is not the same as having the Sight.” She thought she could see Graham moving a little more out of the corner of her eye so she purposely walked in the other direction to draw his guard’s eye away. “Besides, how could consummation hurt a woman’s ability with the Sight if your own mother boasted facility with her power after she bore a child?”

  “Are you suggesting my mother gave me false information?” His gaze narrowed along with the other man’s who was supposed to be guarding Graham.

  Linnet would not have noticed the other man except that Graham reached toward the hem of his captor’s cape and held a tiny blue canister beneath the fabric. With the flick of Graham’s thumb, a small orange flame leaped from the blue vial.

  “I am certain your mother knew her powers well.” She did not look toward the oblivious guard, and readied herself to take action. “But perhaps every seer likes to maintain an element of mystery about what makes her abilities special.”

  An unholy scream tore through the chamber as the knight realized he was on fire, or at least his cape went up in flames. The unfortunate man did not seem to know the difference judging by the ruckus he raised as he tore through the great hall in circles.

  “Hold your man,” Kendrick shouted at his burning knight.

  Graham swiped the blazing man’s sword with ease and wielded it toward Kendrick while Linnet backed against the safety of the tower wall, which was well beyond Kendrick’s reach.

  “If ever there was an opportune moment to journey through time, buddy, now would be it.” Graham leveled his sword at Kendrick’s heart while the burning man flung himself in what little water remained in the washtub still sitting near the hearth.

  The hiss of burned cloth and singed hair filled the chamber along with the man’s wails of pain.

  “So you’ve learned the truth, Detective.” Kendrick clutched his own sword, though it remained low by his side. A position of weakness compared to Graham’s dominant stance.

  “Your preference for toys made in Taiwan clued me in.” Graham must have pushed on the sword tip slightly since Kendrick flinched. “Thanks for the dumb-ass mistake. Makes my job so much easier.”

  Linnet listened in disbelief and confusion. Kendrick had made the terrible Taiwan mistake and not her? She did not understand their conversation about journeying through time but she began to suspect Kendrick hailed from the same foreign land as Graham.

  “I find anachronism amusing,” Kendrick shrugged, albeit carefully, in deference to Graham’s blade. “I don’t see where it’s much of a mistake when you haven’t even begun to suspect the nature of my kidnappings or the ways I’ve amassed my wealth.”

  Linnet picked up a loose rock from the floor that must have crumbled away from the walls when the battering ram had broken through the door. She would be ready to act when the moment was right or when Kendrick attempted an escape.

  “You steal women for their extrasensory perception.” Graham reached into a pouch at the back of his braies with one hand and pulled out the blue vial he’d used to set the other knight on fire. “Those who don’t show enough aptitude are sold as sex slaves.”

  “You make it sound so sordid. And I don’t sell them all. I give some away to my knights—or my most loyal gang members, depending on the century—as reward for services rendered.”

  “What does he mean?” Linnet gripped her rock for protection, unable to stay quiet any longer when clearly the men understood one another far better than she understood either one of them.

  “You haven’t told her?” Kendrick smiled a dark and wicked grin even though he never took his attention away from Graham. “How dishonorable of you when you were born to protect and serve.”

  “Your ex-boyfriend travels through time committing crimes,” Graham informed her. “He hasn’t been on Crusade the last three years. He’s been in twenty-first-century L.A. setting up another gang of screwed-in-the-head neophytes to do his dirty work.”

  Graham flicked on the blue canister, igniting a small flame that he waved threateningly close to Kendrick’s cape while Linnet tried to process what he’d said.

  “L.A. That is where you are from.” She remembered their first conversation. Graham Lawson LAPD. Was he really a traveler through time as well?

  The notion was preposterous. Was it not?

  An overwhelming sense of betrayal made her knees weak as she wavered on her feet. Had she been an inconvenience on Graham’s path to justice?

  Or worse, a conduit to find Kendrick in 1190? She remembered with damning clarity how Graham had asked her to tell him the date that first night in her bedchamber.

  “Setting up the gangs is the least of it,” Kendrick sneered, ignoring her in favor of bragging to Graham. “Harnessing the women’s powers to uncover treasures all over the world is the fun part. Perhaps my next target should be the Sex Through the Ages exhibit. A fitting end to our battles, wouldn’t you say, Lawson?”

  Linnet’s gut roiled in protest at the thought of Kendrick’s crimes that she was only just beginning to understand. Half of her wished Graham would simply run him through and have done with it. But just then, Kendrick’s image started to…fade?

  One moment he was there, flinching from the nick of the sword’s edge and the next moment the edges of his rangy body grew fuzzy. Dim.

  “I am only sad it will not be Linnet who leads me to the next treasure.” His ghostly, half-present self looked over his shoulder at her while everyone else in the chamber gawked at the spectacle.

  Graham attempted to run him through at that moment but he fell into air, his sword meeting no resistance. Still, they could hear Kendrick’s voice as if from far away.

  “Thankfully, I have a couple of college coeds who can’t wait to serve me on my next endeavor.”

  Linnet was certain her mouth hung wide open as she gaped at the place where a monstrous man had stood only moments ago.

  “Damn it!” Graham launched into a string of obscenities that even her brothers had probably never matched.

  Hugo finally stirred at the commotion while the injured knight hurried toward the cracked-open chamber door to escape into the night.

  “Holy hell.” Hugo shook his head as if to clear it while Graham swung his sword in a vicious arc of empty air. “You must have the devil’s own sword arm to have saved the day all by yourself.”

  Linnet shook her head at the two of them, her heart well and truly broken thanks to Graham’s lies. Bad enough when he had not believed her when she’d told the truth. But for him to point fingers at her character when he’d been lying to her all along?

  “The day has not been saved, brother. It has been lost with lies,” Linnet assured him as she mourned the man she’d grown to care for. He had disappeared as surely as Kendrick had faded into nothingness.

  Worse, the Graham Lawson she’d thought she knew had never existed at all.

  15

  HOW MANY WAYS COULD A MAN screw himself over?

  Graham figured if Guinness gave out a world record for longest string of devastating errors, he’d have a lock on the category. He’d lost his bad guy in two different centuries, unleashed a sexual predator on two unsuspecting women in present-day L.A., blamed Linnet for lying to him when the fault lay solely with the ex-fiancé she’d told him all along was no good and now on top of it all he had to explain why he hadn’t bothered confiding the truth of his origins to her before now.

  He tore his gaze off the darkened courtyard where he must have decided to search for signs of Kendrick at some point during the bout of recrimination.

  “Linnet?” Turning toward the hall interior, Graham sought her out in the chamber full of shadows as twilight turned to full darkness.

  “She went up the tower steps a moment ago,” Hugo provided, a quiet presence next to Graham’s simmering fury. “Shall I ride out to l
ook for any sign of him?”

  “A man who vanished into thin air?” He couldn’t even wrap his brain around the physics of time travel, let alone a man who could make it happen at will. “Don’t bother. And thank you for coming back for Linnet. I know that having you here meant a lot to her.”

  Hugo lit a fire in the hearth, a spark popping anew as he stirred the ashes of a flame Graham had thought long dead.

  “It occurred to me that it was never too late to atone for a past wrong. No matter whether she forgave me or not, I needed to at least admit I made a mistake to hurt her.” The guy’s brawny shoulders seemed straighter than Graham remembered when he’d last met the guy at Welborne Keep, arguing about the proper way to infuse a spit wad with extra flight power.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Who me?” Hugo tossed another piece of wood on the growing blaze. “I’m just tending the home fire and wishing I didn’t have so many regrets.”

  Rising to his feet, he clapped Graham on the shoulder and limped toward the door.

  “Tell Linnet if she needs me, I’ll be outside keeping watch for that milksop varlet I nearly forced her to marry.”

  Straightening, Graham figured he’d better start tending a home fire of his own. Because if there was any chance he could explain away his actions or make her understand why he’d kept the truth of his past to himself…

  Well, he’d be an idiot not to try.

  Taking the tower stairs two at a time, he raced up to the room he’d locked her in to keep her safe. Instead, she’d kept him safe, probably kept him alive by telling Kendrick she wouldn’t cooperate if the jerk-off hurt Graham. Or at least, that’s what Graham dreamed had happened. But he couldn’t be sure what he’d dreamed and what had really happened when he’d been unconscious on the great hall floor earlier.

  Reaching the second floor of the tower, he pushed open the door that remained half-open. Linnet crouched on the floor, a candle beside her as she gazed at a huge tapestry she’d unrolled to cover half the small chamber.

  A tear glistened in her eye as she seemed lost in the view, but Graham could not care about the picture when his every instinct screamed to fix this, to make sure that tear didn’t roll down her soft cheek.

  “I’m so freaking sorry.” He dropped down on one knee beside her, careful not to crowd her but needing to be closer. “Linnet, I don’t even know where to begin with all the things I’m sorry for.”

  “You traveled through time to stop Kendrick.” Her voice remained strong and clear and more than a little pissed off despite the sheen of wetness in her eye.

  “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know, actually, because it wasn’t a conscious decision.” He relayed the facts of the episode as succinctly as possible from his investigation that had taken him to the exhibit, to his fall through the painting and ultimate arrival in her closet. “I didn’t even know for sure what had happened to me. I kept thinking I was part of a movie—it’s a kind of dramatic entertainment in the twenty-first century. Like a play.”

  “You thought I was an actress. A player. Even though I remember telling you quite clearly that I did not play a game.” She tucked her gown around her legs and sat cross-legged on the floor, her candle still flickering softly in the darkness and painting ominous shadows all over the round room.

  “I didn’t know what to believe, but I did come to believe you.” Yet he hadn’t shown faith in her. He could almost hear the words she did not speak. “Then when I saw the belt had come from another time period, I was angry at myself for having—Damn it, Linnet, you didn’t deserve my distrust but I find it next to impossible to believe people without some kind of evidence to back it up.”

  “Why?” She did not plead her case or yell; she simply pushed the matter when he hadn’t explained to her satisfaction.

  He could hardly blame her.

  A shaft of moonlight suddenly filtered in through one of the arrow slits, brightening the chamber.

  “Remember how you asked me who—uh—hurt me in the past?” He didn’t want to tell her any of the stupid points of his history that only made him sound like a whiner in his mind. But he couldn’t look himself in the eye ever again if he didn’t make every effort to fix things with her.

  With the woman he loved.

  Renewed confidence filled him as he reminded himself that tending the home fire wasn’t always about setting the big-ass blaze to light the rest of the world. Sometimes you had to admit your spark sucked and take a little warmth from somebody else. He could deal, couldn’t he? Share something that sucked so Linnet could at least understand him better?

  And hell, if she wanted to spread a little warmth his way after all the ways he’d hurt her, he’d count his blessings a million times over.

  “I remember.” Linnet ran her fingers over the weave of the tapestry.

  “I guess I’m fairly cautious about who I let get close to me after an incident as a kid where an abusive son of a bitch played the nice-guy stepfather to me and won me over before I realized what he was doing to my mom.” That grudge was still going strong, but the guilt outweighed it by double.

  “Many men are abusive,” Linnet assured him, her fingers slowing to trace the leaves of a tree stitched into the heavy fabric. “But I agree that there is something all the more devastating about a man who hits and yet wears a charming face. Were you hit as well?”

  “No. I think maybe I could have handled the guilt better if I had been. Or at least I would have known what a monster this guy could be.”

  “You are fearful of being fooled the same way I am fearful of being locked away—or worse—alone.”

  He reached to stroke her hair, hoping this wouldn’t be the last time he touched her.

  “Linnet, I have to go back to my home. I have no choice. But you can come with me. I want you with me. Hell, I’m not going to leave your side unless you ask me to.” He wasn’t sure if the time was right to admit he loved her, even though he knew it deep in his soul already. She was young and she’d been through so much. Way too much to take on his baggage as well.

  “I am not certain I want to be with a man who doubts me so deeply he cannot share anything about his home. His past. His life’s journey. I find I don’t know you at all.”

  “Yes, you do.” He had no choice but to touch her now, to pull her into his arms and remind her how well they knew one another. “You know me better than anyone because I’ve been more myself here, with you, than I’ve been in a long time.”

  The scent of her, of her soap that he’d personally lathered over her skin, made him crazy with memories. With want.

  “I don’t understand.” She paused in her tapestry tracing to look at him, her head shaking in confusion.

  And she didn’t believe him—he could see it in her eyes.

  “I moved three thousand miles last year to be with a woman I thought I cared about only to find out I was a useful stepping stone for a bigger and better relationship for her. And that time, I really wasn’t hurt, just mad at myself for not being true to what I really wanted in life. I’d become so antisocial before meeting my former girlfriend that she had to seek me out. Flirt with me.” Manipulate me. He’d never wanted to work on the movie set, but he went a couple times a week to hang out with a bunch of Hollywood types because he’d felt obligated.

  “Why do you think it is any different here? Why would you think I didn’t seek you out? After all, you would have left Welborne Keep if I asked you to go. Instead, I attached myself with you and asked for help. Perhaps I…what did you say?…flirt with you as well?” She looked concerned about what nefarious crime flirting might be.

  “Flirting isn’t a problem. It’s like…enticing talk.” God, he prayed she’d want to flirt with him again one day. And kiss him. And make love to him in waterfalls. In front of fireplaces…

  “But why do you think it is any better to be with me than a woman who forced you to be someone you are not?” Her lips pursed in a thoughtful pout. “You are
not really a knight, after all. It seems to me, you are not yourself in this realm either.”

  “But I was born to wield a sword.” He hadn’t realized how fated it seemed that he come back in time to meet Linnet until just now, but he would have been dead by now if not for his lifelong interest in weaponry—swords in particular. “I am at home in this time in a way I’m not in Hollywood. And now I understand that whether or not I can convince you to come back with me to the twenty-first century, I need to move to the country, far away from pop culture and false faces.”

  He could tell by her wrinkled brow he had not said the right words. Damn it. They both spoke English, and yet their languages were so far apart.

  “Linnet,” he tried again. “With you, there is no artifice. Like you said, you don’t play games. And I just hope with all my Johnny-come-lately heart that I haven’t messed up my chance with a woman who’s perfect for me just because I hail from a land of phony people and somehow wound up a cynic.”

  Her finger went back to tracing the lines of the tapestry, perhaps lost in thought as she weighed his words. The tension, the fear of losing her, clamped his heart so damn tightly he could only hold his breath and watch her fingernail scratch lightly along the curving stem of a grapevine beneath a mellow afternoon sun.

  Grapevine?

  Shoving to his feet, Graham changed his perspective on the tapestry for a bird’s-eye view. He could hardly appreciate her decor when half-seated upon it, but from above, he recognized wine country that could be Italy, or perhaps…Napa Valley?

  Holy hell.

  “Remember you said something about a tapestry you purchased recently?” He grabbed her lit taper to hold it aloft for a better angle on the image. “Is this the one?”

  A crazy idea formed in his head. A foolish idea. Full of risks that could land them in the middle of a vineyard during the American Revolution. Or the Italian Renaissance. Or God knows where. But all Graham had to go on now was instinct. And he just so happened to recall there was a vineyard or two around Santa Barbara. Not exactly a stone’s throw from his place, but he’d be happy if they landed in the right state, let alone the right city.