Hidden Obsession

by Joanne Rock

  “Aye.” Linnet nodded. “I bought it from a peddler with crazy hair sticking out from his cap at all angles. He was insistent I should purchase it even though he asked a king’s ransom in return.”

  Visions of the night watchman at the J. Paul Getty Museum returned. Had the old man known more about Graham’s travel through time than Graham ever suspected?

  “You were brilliant to buy it.” He kissed her hard, pulling her against him for a fierce embrace with all the longing in his cagey, cynical, blind soul. “This picture is going to take us home if you’ll let it.”

  HOPE AND FEAR DANCED seductively inside her, dodging and weaving, moving together in one seamless motion until she could not tell where one ended and the other began.

  But she could not deny her fate any more than she could hurt the man who’d stolen her heart.

  “I’m scared to leave—” What? The home where her drunken brothers held her captive? Who knew how long Hugo would remain sober. And as for a happy marriage or family, she would never have those things as long as Kendrick sought her. Besides, she began to think the only man she wanted to give her babes was the one who stood beside her now, his hand reaching out toward her….

  “I will do everything in my power to make you at home. Buy you a house near a creek with a waterfall. Build a big-ass fence so no one sees you swimming naked. Except for me, of course, if you allow it.” He stared at her with unwavering eyes, so sure of himself. “What do you say? Will you go with me?”

  She started to reach for him, to take his hand and run toward whatever future they might share together, but the sound of crashing swords outside the holding made her hand freeze in midair.

  Graham picked up her tapestry and rolled it under his arm before launching over to the arrow slit to peer down.

  “Of all the blasted luck.” He turned, an unlikely smile on his face. “Kendrick has returned with renewed forces and they seem to have engaged the Welborne clan.”

  Disbelief set her feet into high speed. And sure enough, Hugo, Douglas and John fought hand-to-hand with Kendrick’s men in the courtyard. Her belated champions at last.

  “They can’t hold them for long,” Graham assured her, reminding her the battle had not yet been won. Especially when one of the opponents could vanish into another time period by simply willing himself into nothingness.

  “What do we need the tapestry for?” She carried a taper and followed him down the staircase, his sword in one hand and her favorite tapestry in the other.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I swear to you if you string that hanging between two trees while I help your brothers, you will see for yourself.”

  She thought she heard him mutter a halfhearted “I hope” as he tossed the heavy roll on the grassy lawn and ran into the fray with his sword already in motion.

  How could she have ever doubted his warrior capabilities when he had once outsmarted her brothers, and twice helped her kinsmen to stay alive despite having sound reason to despise them? And no man on the field was Graham’s equal with a sword. Only Burke Kendrick came close.

  But Linnet noticed Graham dodged Kendrick’s gaze with nimble-footed stealth, a feat assisted by the clouds gathered round the moon and the lack of torchlight in the courtyard around the fortification. She saw Graham engage an enemy, helping wounded Hugo defeat one of Kendrick’s men.

  Linnet dragged the heavy tapestry through patches of dew-damp grasses and flat stones, going about her work quietly in the shadows of the swordplay. Did twenty-first century women have to tiptoe around violence this way? Or had their men conquered some of their baser tendencies to keep the world a safer place?

  Or…was the world safer because Graham Lawson—warrior for all time—protected his people in his role as sheriff?

  The thought made her smile in spite of the clank of weaponry nearby. She prayed for her misguided kin and for Graham as she tied the silken cords around two tree trunks as he had requested. She’d just finished cinching a knot when strong, cold hands gripped her waist like grim death nipping at her heels.

  She knew who held her without looking, and yet she could not reconcile herself that all her efforts to elude Burke Kendrick could still come down to this. She lurched forward, away from him, and a knife appeared at her throat.

  “We will beat your lover to the future so you can join the other women who serve me,” Kendrick whispered into her ear and she could not tell if her sudden vision of herself disappearing was a true experience of the Sight, or if she’d merely imagined her own worst fears.

  “I will not go,” she protested through clenched teeth out of deference to the blade at her throat. She strained her eyes to see Graham where her brothers fought an assortment of Kendrick’s men.

  “Oh, you will go.” He squeezed her breast painfully with his free hand, digging deep beneath her surcoat to tweak the nipple. “And now that you have been despoiled, I hardly need to worry about protecting your skills with the Sight by saving your innocence. Rest assured I will be the next man to have you naked beneath me.”

  Fury for the women he’d brutalized gave her courage. Graham had shown her the honor in fighting for others who could not fight for themselves and, out here, she was no longer a docile prisoner of her own keep. She would give this bastard the battle of a lifetime.

  Wrenching her knee forward, she kicked back like a donkey to plant her foot in his crotch, but she kicked only air as his hands, his body fell away from her.

  She half fell on top of his fallen form before Graham’s arms saved her, his sword clattering to the courtyard stones with a clank.

  “You got him.” She blinked in disbelief at the fallen man who’d terrorized her both waking and dreaming. Kendrick’s body did not appear harmed from the front, but his eyes were already wide with death, his hand still clutching the knife he’d used to threaten her. His other hand gripped a handful of her kirtle she hadn’t realized he’d torn.

  “Are you okay? Jesus, Linnet, I had to take him out. Not just for you but for all the women he’s stolen and sold into God knows what kinds of hellish slavery—”

  “Frontier justice,” she found herself whispering, recalling Graham’s words about horses he’d commandeered from the bandits who’d beset him in the forest. “A quick death is a merciful end for a man whose deeds incited so much pain.”

  Graham squeezed her tighter and she was surprised to realize her words had offered him comfort. How fortunate was she to find a warrior with a heart? A conscience?

  “Take me home with you, Graham.” She didn’t need to ask her stepbrothers for permission. They would fare well without her and she would pray for their souls in her absence. She would like to think they would find peace in restoring order to this part of the world in the king’s absence. Maybe then they would find absolution for helping a wicked man.

  Graham stepped back to peer at her in the darkness lit only by fickle moonlight.

  “Are you sure?”

  “We have others to save, do we not? Those other women Kendrick hurt need your aid as much as I have.”

  His hands cradled her head, tipping her face up to his so he could look into her eyes.

  “I love you, Linnet. And you will be a free woman in my country to do whatever you want, even if that means you don’t want to be with me. But I swear to you, no matter what you choose, I will never doubt you again and I’m damn well going to keep on loving you.”

  He kissed her until she saw stars, until the moon seemed to sink a bit lower in the sky, until her brothers defeated their foes to shout unseemly catcalls from across the courtyard.

  She had a reply of love in her heart, but as soon as Graham released her, he called for his horse. And to her amazement, her oafish brothers delivered it along with Graham’s fallen sword.

  “You need to round up anyone wearing Kendrick’s device now that he is dead,” Graham told Hugo as he lifted Linnet up onto his horse’s back.

  “Aye.” Hugo nodded and gestured toward the ol
der men behind him who looked more haggard than she remembered, but more clear-eyed than she’d seen them in a long time. “And my kin have set a bonfire with the remains of the ale at Welborne. Seeing the brutality Kendrick was capable of made us all a bit wiser, I think.”

  Pity they couldn’t have seen it long ago when she’d told them the same, but she could not begrudge them their belated attempts to make peace.

  Graham dug in his braies to remove a black leather case. At first she thought he would take out another charmed bit of protection since that was the only time she could remember seeing the small case, but thankfully, he only removed a shiny gold brooch from the pouch, which Graham went on to affix to Hugo’s surcoat.

  “You are the sheriff of these lands now. It is your duty to protect and serve all who reside on it.”

  Hugo bowed low and even his older brothers looked properly humbled by the charge.

  “Aye, my lord.” He stood straighter with the gold emblem on his cloak. “Godspeed you both.”

  “Godspeed,” Linnet whispered in return, her heart overcome to think Graham might have reformed the drunken oafs for good. “I wish you all well.”

  They hailed her health and long life as Graham climbed up onto the horse’s back behind her. He tugged the reins to steer the mount toward…

  The tapestry she’d hung?

  “What are you doing?” She wondered if Graham had indulged in some spirits himself as he urged the horse forward at full speed.

  “I’m praying that old man who sold you this tapestry is a friend of mine.”

  She had thought they would disappear into nothingness the way Kendrick had, but it appeared they would ride headlong through the tapestry. She screamed at the last minute, holding tight to Graham’s neck as they hurtled into endless darkness.

  16

  LINNET AWOKE TO A SCENE she’d been staring at on the wall above her bed every night for the last year. Except this time, she didn’t awake looking at the tapestry. She sat in a field full of tall grasses alongside a vineyard of rich green leaves and half-grown grapes. A mellow sunset disoriented her since it had been nighttime when she and Graham…

  Graham.

  Her hands already reaching to pat the ground beside her, she rose from her ungainly sprawl in the quiet field to see a horse grazing nearby and Graham lying a few feet away.

  “Graham?” She crawled over to him, her head fuzzy with a mix of dreams and visions, past and present swirling through her brain. Was he all right?

  A thunderous noise growled from overhead and scared a scream from her throat. She looked up to see a…metal bird?…hurtling above them at terrifying speed, a wake of white smoke filling the sky behind it.

  “Welcome to the future, Lady Linnet.” Graham’s voice wrapped around her with soothing effect, settling her nerves into submission as she realized he was fine. Healthy. Whole.

  And the tenderness in his eyes made her knees weak. She had so much she needed to say to him, but somehow words escaped her as she tried to take it all in.

  “This is your homeland?” She began to notice subtle differences from the place she’d left. Tall poles in the distance held up thick wires. A shiny metal windmill stood taller than any building she’d ever seen on a nearby hillside.

  “It feels more like home now that you’re here.” He levered up to a sitting position and plucked a leaf from her hair.

  A ringing noise emanated from his braies and startled her all over again. The twenty-first century was noisy.

  He reached into the pouch containing his magical knife and his fire-lighting device and pulled forth a metal object she’d not seen before. Covered in buttons, it lit up from within as it rang.

  “I didn’t miss cell phones, but I’ll have to put a call in to my precinct as soon as we get you settled. And damned if this phone can’t hold a charge.” He clicked a button to make the ringing stop and then stared at her in the sudden quiet. “Would you have believed me if I tried to describe my homeland to you?”

  Laughter bubbled up her throat. “Not in a million years would I have believed this. England looks very different in the twenty-first century.”

  “Oh. Um. Welcome to the New World. I can take you back to England sometime if you’d feel more at home there, but we’re actually sitting on another continent that didn’t get discovered by Europeans for three hundred years after you were born.”

  For a moment, the changes threatened to swallow her. But then Graham held her hands in his and she remembered why she’d braved this trip with him.

  “I love you, Graham Lawson LAPD. And no matter how crazy your world feels to me right now, I know I’m going to grow to love this as my homeland, too, because you are here. Safety is here. And freedom is here.” He’d given her so much more than love. He’d saved her. Inspired her. Made her want to be strong and brave like him.

  Graham closed his eyes and kissed her as he wrapped Linnet in his heart as well as his arms. She felt soft and warm. Real.

  And she loved him, too.

  He couldn’t begin to contemplate the miracles he’d witnessed in the last week, but somehow he’d explain the whole mess to his commanding officer. The disappearance. The capture of a criminal in another century—okay, he’d have to work on his delivery for that one—and the loss of his badge, which was a big freaking deal.

  But no matter what came of it all, Graham had a new peace inside with Linnet in his life. She’d reminded him that love and loyalty coexisted. That life should be lived without guilt and fear. She’d be an inspiration at the local women’s shelter if she ever decided to go that route and let her experience inspire others.

  All that was in the future, however. Right now, he just wanted to settle her somewhere safe until he could round up the rest of the Guardians and the women they held. He had a pretty good idea where to look since he still had Kendrick’s scrolls with an inventory of his goods. He hadn’t realized at first that some of the numbers along the bottom might be modern addresses, but once he’d discovered the guy traveled through time…the pieces had fallen into place.

  “Are you ready for me to take you home?” He rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. Maybe they could take the horse if they stuck to back routes. No interstates for Buttercup.

  “You have a keep near here?” She spun around to scan the landscape with her eye.

  “It’s more like a fortified house.” Hey, he had a security system after all. “But I think we can be there in about an hour if we get moving.”

  He whistled to the mare that trotted over with reins dangling.

  “Will we pass the holding of Lord Walmart on the way?” She grinned as she patted Buttercup’s neck. “I think every woman in the twenty-first century should have a pocketknife.”

  “No doubt about it, but I don’t know if you’re ready for Wal-Mart today. It can be a bit overwhelming even for modern man.” He helped her up on the horse’s back, his hands fitting perfectly around her waist. “How about if I promise to take you tomorrow, but for tonight you come home with me and I’ll show you a bath that remains hot at all times?”

  “There really is such a thing?” Her eyes narrowed as he climbed up behind her.

  He settled her across his lap, all too glad to undergo the delectable torture of her rump on his thighs when he would get to have her all to himself later tonight. And tomorrow. And tomorrow…

  “One of many creature comforts I think you’ll enjoy.” He definitely needed to see about moving someplace with a waterfall in the backyard though. He couldn’t wait to make new memories with her and relive some of his favorites so far.

  Her cheeks turned a beautiful shade of pink and he wondered what she was thinking. He held the horse in check until he could find out.

  “You look like a woman with something wicked on your mind.”

  Her hand brushed over his chest and dipped into the collar to touch bare skin.

  “I was just remembering the charmed protection we used. You said it was from a medicine
woman, but now that I see the wonders of your world, it occurred to me that—”

  “That I might have been using a little twenty-first-century magic?” His body responded to the thought so damn fast he had no choice but to kick the horse in motion. Too bad he didn’t have time to find a hotel on the other side of this vineyard, but duty called.

  “Your guess is accurate and I know just where to find more of those charms.” Not soon enough, damn it, but then he had a lifetime to explore those delights with Linnet. “You’ve just discovered one of the greatest benefits of life in the modern age, sweetheart.”

  “I think I’m going to like it here,” she whispered, unbuttoning his shirt to plant a kiss over his heart. “But I bet I will like it all the more if you can express to Buttercup my urgent need to be home if only so I can start waiting for your return to me.”

  “Aye, lady.” He’d taken all week to acclimate himself to her language, but he thought he had this part right as he kicked the horse faster through the rolling fields and grapevines toward their future. “Your wish is my command.”

  Epilogue

  One month later

  “I SPENT EVERY CENT of my first check.” Linnet plunked her shopping bags on Graham’s kitchen table in the home they’d shared for the last month, thrilled to have joined the workforce a week ago so she could spend money that was all her own. She’d taken a temporary job at a large riding club just outside L.A. until she figured out what she wanted to do long term. Horses hadn’t changed since her time and she savored the outdoor work that let her board Buttercup for free.

  She would have gladly worked at Wal-Mart, having fallen in love with twenty-four-hour shopping even though she didn’t know what to do with half the items sold there. A hunting rifle? Motor oil? Still, who wouldn’t have fun playing with the rows and rows of ribbons in every color?

  And then there were all the delectable candies.