“The book isn’t dangerous, at least in her hands.”
“True. She can’t power the machine. She’s human.” He opened the door for her. She watched him walk around the front of the car. He opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. “She doesn’t even know the machine is under the Baptistery in Florence. She’d need a crane to lift the stone that leads to the crypts.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’ll use it. The book’s meant to be hers. I felt it.”
Henri smiled and turned the key. The engine caught with a purr. “So … you’re thinking this book is a supernatural object?”
Frankie laughed. “Leonardo was artist and scientist together and that made him half magician. That book describes a machine half science and half art. Maybe the book itself has been transformed into a sacred object. Sacred objects have a will of their own, you know.”
“You’re making this up, aren’t you? Just so I’ll think you know what you’re doing?”
She chuckled. He always knew. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he echoed. She didn’t know whether he was talking about her making things up, or the truth of what she’d said. She didn’t know herself. She leaned across the armrest between them. She missed bench seats in cars. Henri put his arm around her.
“Let’s go have a drink at Ozone,” she said. “That’s where all this started.”
“And it’s been quite an adventure. Living with you is always an adventure.”
She pulled her head from his shoulder. “This from a man who led the Resistance in Marseilles? Dodging the Nazis every day? Captured and tortured and I couldn’t find you for weeks? And I won’t even mention risking your life to save the Dalai Lama, or that time—”
“See what I put up with?” Henri raised his eyes to the roof of the car. “This is what comes of living with one woman for two hundred-plus years. They know everything.” He lowered his eyes, though, and they were soft—the look she’d come to treasure. He kissed her forehead silently, letting his lips linger there. Then he glanced at the clock.
“We have hours before we have to meet Donna and Jergan. And we have that lovely penthouse suite at the Fairmont with that huge bed.”
“With clean sheets.”
“Might have put chocolates on the pillows.”
“You could order champagne.”
“Done.”
Time for Eternity
© 2009 Susan Squires
ISBN: 9780312943530
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
Ed♥n
Time for Eternity Page 33