“Dinner later?” he mouthed.
Gavin gave him a little salute, then leaned back and propped his feet up against the edge of the conference table.
“Gavin, get your feet off the furniture!” Dexter shouted.
Nathaniel smiled and looked at his attorney. “They’re all yours, Pete.”
“This might take a while,” Peter said, frowning thoughtfully. “A long while.”
Nathaniel imagined it would, and that it would be damned expensive, but if he didn’t have to deal with it, he didn’t care how much it cost. He escorted Emma from the conference room, then pulled the door shut behind them. It was only then that he allowed himself to give thought to what she’d said. He leaned against the wall, because he wasn’t sure he could stand up much longer.
“Are you sure?” he managed.
She nodded slowly. “I’m afraid so.”
He rubbed his hands over his face briefly, then shook his head and looked at her. “I think it’s time to go home.”
“I’ll be interested to see who follows us there.”
“Hopefully just my cousin and not your father.”
She smiled briefly. “I suppose things could be worse.”
They could indeed, which he didn’t think he needed to say. He pushed away from the wall and walked away. There wasn’t anything else to do.
He had seen to one piece of madness.
It was past time to see to the other.
Chapter 21
Emmaknew she should have felt safe and grounded where she was. After all, she was far from anywhere with paranormal elements like ghosts, she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to run into any medieval Highlanders lingering in Times Square, and she thought she was fairly well acquainted with any modern-day guys who might or might not have visited the past while masquerading as medieval Highlanders.
Or she had been until she’d looked across that very elegant conference table at Nathaniel’s cousin.
It had been yet another thing to add to her list of odd things that had happened to her in the past couple of weeks. She had looked at Gerald and seen him not as he was, dressed in a very nice suit and holding on to a pen, but as she’d seen him, dressed in a ratty kilt with a sword in his hand.
Or at least she thought she’d seen him. To be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure, because if he was the one she’d seen, he’d been hiding behind a tree near the other man who had leaped out at her and wound up on the end of Nathaniel’s sword. She would be the first to admit that the situation hadn’t exactly been conducive to keen observation. All the more reason to perhaps consider a brief trip back to 1387 where she did less participating and more spying. Now that she had some idea of what to expect, she might manage to slip in and out without being noticed.
She came back to herself to find that she was in the elevator and Nathaniel was watching her. She attempted a smile. “Hi.”
“Oh, nay,” he said, “none of that. And you can stop with the subversive thoughts as well.”
“I wasn’t thinking subversive thoughts.”
“You were thinking investigative thoughts,” he said pointedly. “Those are worse, I’m sure, though they might be an improvement on mine at the moment.”
She leaned back against the wall and looked at him. “What does your grandfather ever accomplish with all that drama?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Nothing changes because there’s nothing to change. He’ll never manage to throw me off the trust because I’m just so damned responsible and ethical.”
“He must hate that about you.”
He smiled a quick little smile at her. “You have no idea, love.”
She felt some of the tension ease out of her. “So what now?”
He shrugged. “A day of liberty and an enormous apple to enjoy. What do you want to do? See a show later? Have dinner with my brother, the vexer of dodgy cousins and grandsires?”
