It was a quiet evening. Although Ella felt the chicken stuffed with forty cloves of garlic had been a rousing success, she felt that Rowan had eaten it mechanically, almost as if not tasting it. She prayed Carol’s call was simply unsettling him and that his reaction was not the result of some ultimatum or new strategy on her part to split them up. Ella was amazed at how effective the old bat’s methods seemed to be working—even from a distance of four hundred miles away.
Rowan and Ella did the dishes together until Ella recognized that she was babbling about any inane topic that came to her head—and he wasn’t really listening anyway. While she hoped watching television together would be a good segue to getting them snuggling on the couch and eventually kissing, she soon discovered that Rowan was more interested in interacting with the remote control than her.
“Are you not finding what you want?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine.
“Why do you ask?” he said, staring at the TV as he aimed the remote control.
“Because you’ve done nothing but change the channels for thirty minutes. Is there nothing good on tonight?”
“Was there something you wanted to see?” he said, still compulsively changing the channels.
“You know I don’t watch TV.” She was starting to lose patience with his mood.
He began to toggle back and forth between a basketball game and a show on the discovery of a tomb full of mummies somewhere in Egypt. Ella watched both with minimal interest. She felt her anger rising at how effectively Carol, with one phone call, had ruined their weekend and destroyed their fragile connection with each other.
Were they really that fragile? Was this thing between them really able to withstand murdering German warlords and plague but not disapproving mothers?
She finished her wine and stood up. “Think I’ll head up,” she said, hesitating to give him a chance.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “G’nite.”
With fear and loathing in her heart for a middle aged woman happily munching on caramel popcorn and watching her evening soap operas in Atlanta, Georgia, Ella went upstairs, alone, to bed.
One week minus twelve hours and counting.
It is an inviolate rule of the universe that just when you have the most important thing to do in your life—like get married, or safely deliver your first child—all freelance clients will immediately bombard you with more work than they’d ever given you before.
Ella sat at her computer terminal, mildly grateful that Rowan was working late again tonight, and tried to imagine how she would get all the annual reports, website continuity, and corporate brochures done before five o’clock in two days. Because at that time, she knew she would be required to cease any and all semblance to a working freelance copywriter and become that confounding and mysterious of all creatures—a woman on the cusp of her wedding day with her in-laws on her doorstep.
In less than forty-eight hours, Carol and Lowell would arrive in Dothan for the rehearsal dinner. While Rowan had only work friends and his parents and siblings—including two sisters Ella had yet to meet—Ella just had her father and stepmother. She was sure her lack of connections and friends was another black mark against her as far as Carol Pierce was concerned.
She sighed and looked at the source material for the annual report. Maybe Carol was right. What did it say about a person to have so little in the way of friends or people who loved you in the world? Ella glanced out the window of the upstairs den where she worked. Of all the things she had done in her life—learning languages, polishing her skills for the endless roster of new jobs she felt compelled to try on—making new friends had not ranked very highly. What friends she did have were scattered around the world and in some cases, she thought, the centuries.
She opened the Internet browser to a social media site and wondered, briefly, about issuing an all-points invitation to anyone who was free Saturday night and wanted to spend it in Dothan, Alabama, at her wedding. Sighing heavily, she clicked out of the webpage and went back to work. If she didn’t have the prospect of what was sure to be the most stressful weekend of her life ahead of her, she would have enjoyed the quiet industry that the evening promised. She loved engrossing work at her computer and could get lost in it for hours, emerging finally like a coma-victim dazed and hungry.
Thinking of the satisfaction her work gave her made her think of Rowan and his current frustration with his job. From what little she was able to deduce, it appeared that he was bored. How facing down and interacting with deadly killers on a daily basis could be boring was a mystery to her, but then that was one of things she loved about Rowan. He wasn’t obvious at all. In fact, she didn’t think she would ever be able to totally figure him out. And a very big part of her liked that just fine.
When the phone call came in the middle of the night, Ella’s first thought was that it must be Suzie calling to say her father had fallen or had a stroke. She fumbled for her cellphone on the bedside table, her heart pounding in alarm. The fact that she even thought it might be Suzie made Ella realize she had been waiting for this call for months now. It made her see that for months now she had been feeling like something was coming. Before she even said hello into the phone, she knew in her heart that this was that something.
“Ella?”
Instead of her stepmother’s sing-songy, high-pitched voice, Ella heard the low, hoarse tones of Madelyn Pritchard, her best friend from college. Maddie was living in Cairo preparing to marry her fiancé, a relentlessly handsome man named Gagan Gupta.
“Maddie?”
“Oh, my God, Ella, I am so sorry to wake you and I know I did but I just had to talk to you.”
Ella rubbed her eyes and looked at Rowan’s side of the bed to see that he still wasn’t home yet. It was only a little after one. She was relieved to be able to speak without disturbing him.
“What’s the matter?” she said. Her friend, usually so cool and collected, sounded agitated. “Is Gagan okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine. It’s me, Ella. I’m in a tiny bit of trouble here.” At this point, Ella heard her friend break down into heartrending sobs. Ella sat up straight and became fully awake.
“Sweetie, what is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“I need you, Ella,” Maddie said, her voice strangled with trying to speak through her tears. “I know you were coming out in a couple of months. Is there…is there any way you can get here sooner?”
Ella tried to make a fast calculation in her head of what her calendar looked like. It was June and she and Rowan had planned on going to Cairo in late September. He already had the vacation time approved.
“Well, yes, sure,” Ella said uncertainly. “You mean…August? Or next month?” As soon as Ella heard the answering weeping on the line she knew that soon meant now. It meant yesterday.
“Maddie, what’s happened? Have you been arrested? Do you need a lawyer?”
“No, El, I need you and I know I haven’t the right to screw up your life like this.”
It occurred to Ella that Maddie had forgotten that Ella was to be married this coming weekend. Ella cleared her throat to speak. Surely, she could fly out after the weekend?
“He’s started…he’s started…h-h-hitting me,” Maddie said.
“Who? Gagan?” Stupid question. Who else?
“Y-y-yes and I am so alone here, Ella. I can’t tell my folks.”
“Get on an airplane right this minute,” Ella said fiercely. “Get out of there now.”
“I can’t, Ella!” Maddie said, nearly wailing. “You don’t know what it’s like. I was lucky to be able to make this phone call! He watches me night and day or has his wretched mother and sisters do it. I’m a prisoner here. Please, for the love of God, come as soon as you can. They wouldn’t dare to try to stop you.”
“I will, Maddie,” Ella found herself saying as she climbed out of bed. “Of course. I’ll be on the first plane to Cairo tomorrow. I’m coming, sweetie, just hang
on.”
“Do not tell Rowan, please Ella. Gagan said if I embarrassed him by involving the authorities in any way, he would kill me. Promise me, Ella.”
“Yes, yes alright, although what I’ll tell him to explain why I’m leaving…”
“Thank God for you, Ella,” Maddie said, crying again. “Thank God for you.”
When Ella finally hung up she sat for a moment holding the cellphone and staring into space. Her wedding was in less than four days. Her in-laws, who already hated her, were due in in two. And her gorgeous hunk of already-seriously annoyed US Marshal was about to be left stunned and slack-jawed at the altar.
Chapter Three
Dothan 2013
Rowan stood next to her as she sat at her laptop. Ella opened her laptop to Expedia. The prices were all horrible at this short notice but Ella knew Maddie had enough money to pay her back. That wasn’t an issue. Explaining it to her six-foot four mass of furious fiancé, on the other hand, was.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Rowan said. He was clenching his fists as he spoke. Ella got the distinct impression he wanted to hit something.
“I have to,” she said. “Maddie is in trouble. She needs me.”
“That is a crock of shit. She can go to the police if she needs help.”
“I told you, Rowan. She’s afraid to.”
“You told me you’re blowing off our wedding so you can go to effing Egypt,” he said.
“You think I want to go? You think I want to miss our wedding?”
“It’s not a matter of miss, Ella.” Rowan cracked his knuckles and then flexed his fingers in agitation. “It’s not like the wedding is going to go on without you. My parents are coming in. Your parents are coming in.”
“I know. The timing sucks.” Ella squinted at the screen.
“That’s all you can say?”
“Rowan, it’s not like this is a big wedding. We can easily reschedule for later in the month.”
“I don’t believe this. What the hell is my mother going to say?”
Ella didn’t answer. She kept her focus on the computer screen. On the one hand, she knew the image of the flights and their astronomical prices was serving to further enrage Rowan every time he glanced down at the screen. But on the other hand, it gave her something to do besides directly confronting him.
“She needs me, Rowan,” Ella said softly. “Two phone calls can rearrange everything. Your folks aren’t even taking a flight to get here. You just need to stop them from leaving their driveway in two days.”
“What am I gonna say is the reason we’re not getting married this weekend?”
Ella stood up and willed herself to monitor her voice level. She could feel the adrenalin pumping through her, urging her to use the fuel to present her case. She took a long breath and tried to resist the temptation.
“This is only an inconvenience,” she said. “We don’t have relatives flying in, we don’t have a million dollars in flowers that’ll wilt and go to waste, and we don’t even have a caterer to pay. We just need to push it back a few weeks.”
“This will be the last straw for my mother,” Rowan said, raking his fingers through his thick brown hair.
“Don’t kid yourself. She’ll be delighted.”
“She won’t,” he shook his head. “Don’t you see? She’ll see this as just another example of why you’re not right for me. Putting someone else ahead of our wedding, for Chrissake.”
Ella sat back down and typed in her Visa card number on the registration page.
“It doesn’t really matter what your mom thinks,” she said, looking up at him and wishing it were true. “I have to go.”
“What am I gonna tell the guys at work? My fiancé had to go out of town?”
Ella typed in the time for her return flight. Hopefully, she could get Maddie on the same one coming home.
“It’s the truth,” she said, hitting the Buy button and then sank back in her chair as if she had finished a massive project and was now spent.
“I just can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“And I can’t believe you’re not a hundred percent behind my doing this. The Rowan I knew in Heidelberg, the Rowan I knew in 1620—”
“Don’t give me that shit! That was a different world.”
“It wasn’t a different you! Are you saying it was? The Rowan who went through hell and torture and threat of death to save his friends? That’s the Rowan I love! That’s the Rowan I’ve been trying to find ever since we…” She turned away.
“Really? You think I’m not the man you fell in love with?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Sounds like exactly what you meant.”
“It’s just that ever since we’ve been back everything has been so easy and so…”
“Dull?”
She looked at him to see if he was being sarcastic. She couldn’t tell but she didn’t think so. He sat down hard in the chair next to her at the computer.
“You know I love you, Rowan,” she said. “I love every piece and part of you.”
“I love you, too, Ella.”
“But these last three months have been really hard, you know? Trying to live together and keep alive the thing that made us love each other? I mean, we get back here in the States—in our own time—and I start to see how different we are.”
He looked up at her and his eyes narrowed but he didn’t speak.
“You can’t say you haven’t seen it, too,” she said. “We don’t have any of the same interests. You like to watch TV, I don’t. You like to go out with the guys for beer. I’d prefer to stay home and read or work. Even before your mom put her two cents in, we weren’t on the same page.”
“So what’s the answer? You move out and we start dating each other again? I think we’ve come too far for that.”
“No, Rowan. I love you. I want to be your wife. I do. But I want us to figure this out.” She waved to the air between them.
He nodded and ran his hand over his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion.
“How was work today?” she asked quietly.
“Not great.”
“What’s going on there, Rowan?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“How long will you be gone?” he asked, finally.
“I’ll fly out tomorrow, grab Maddie and fly back out the day after that. We’ll just push the wedding back a week.”
“Are you sure you want to?” His eyes drilled into hers, searching for the most honest answer she had in her to give.
She looked away. “Yes, I’m sure I want to,” she said. She looked up to see what the effect of her words on him were. His face never changed expression.
“My mother will flip,” he said finally.
“You need to care less about what she thinks.”
He looked at her and then something in his face seemed to relax. “Probably.”
“So you’ll tell them to come next week instead of this week?”
Rowan sighed and reached out to take her hand. “Why don’t we just play it by ear?” he said.
Great, she thought with her heart pounding in her ears. The wedding’s off. She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. For them to have come so far from the point where their love had them risking everything to be together to this place where their future together went on indefinite hold just made her want to cry.
And breathe out a monumental sigh of relief.
The drive to the airport with Rowan had been a chilly one.
“I’ll text as soon as I land,” Ella said as they stood together in front of the Birmingham International Airport security line.
“Don’t. Without a data plan in Egypt, it’ll cost more than your flight to send a text. If I don’t hear in the headlines about a major airliner going down in the Mediterranean I’ll assume you made it okay.”
“I guess since Maddie won’t be marrying this tool that our trip t
here in September is off,” she said as she shuffled through her boarding pass and passport.
“Guess so.”
“Maybe we can go some place else just to get away.”
“Maybe.”
Boy, he sure wasn’t giving her anything to work with. She didn’t dare ask how the phone call with his folks had gone. She had a long flight and she didn’t want to be rerunning the tapes on what was probably a seriously unpleasant exchange. Just looking at Rowan’s face this morning told her that.
“Did you call your Dad?” he asked, his eyes looking everywhere in the airport but at her.
“Earlier this morning. He was cool.”
“That’s good.”
“Are you working the rest of the week?”
He gave her a patient look and then sighed. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“No reason. I better go, Rowan. I’ll feel more comfortable waiting at my gate.” And away from the glowering and crippling guilt trip I’m starting to develop.
“Okay, Safe trip.” He took her into his arms but she felt none of the usual warmth and protection those arms usually gave her. He broke the embrace before she did and she realized that that was a first too.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said. “So you’ll be back here in three days to collect me?”
“That’s the plan.”
She strained up on tiptoe to deliver a kiss but, without his participation, only made it as far as his chin.
“Love you, Rowan,” she said softly.
“You, too, Ella,” he said gruffly.
She turned and hurried off through the final stage of security screening. When she looked back, just the once, to wave, he had already disappeared into the crowd.
Nine hours later, as she wove her way through the thick crowds at the Cairo International Airport, she was struck with the sheer excitement of being some place new and different. While she had spent a good deal of her flight obsessing about her relationship with Rowan and his obvious unhappiness with her, not to mention her worry that she might have difficulty extricating Maddie from Gupta’s clutches, she hadn’t given a thought to how it felt to be heading toward what many would argue was the most exotic locale on the face of the earth. Now, caught up in the noise and movement of the crowd, Ella was overcome with how incredibly different this world was from the one she had just left.
Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Page 3