The infant beneath the plastic shell of the incubator beyond the glass was asleep. Scrawny little thing, the man looking at her through the window to the neonatal nursery thought. Though the newborn lacked the excessive tubing and breathing apparatuses some of the even tinier babies had. He’d overheard the nurses talking. The child was basically healthy, just needed help to keep warm and eat. It wasn’t excessively premature.
It wasn’t going to die.
Not unless something drastic happened.
It’d been easy enough to backtrack the group he’d been watching outside from the parking lot to where they’d come from within the hospital. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to glean any information about the father of the child his investigation had led him to. The nurse became closed-mouthed when he’d asked too many pointed questions.
Were they just visitors or something more?
Unfortunately, the band around the baby’s ankle provided no assistance. Only a series of numbers and a barcode graced the blue band. He took a picture of it on the off chance he might be able to hack their system. Briefly, he considered snatching the baby and making a run for it, but the RFID technology imbedded in the ankle bracelet secured the child’s good fortune.
For now.
Turning on his heel, he strode with measured steps down the hall and past Scarlett Thomas’s hospital room. Unlike many of the rooms in this section, there was no window to the hall and the door was closed.
A part of him longed to open it, step in and confront her about the child and its father, but again he refrained. He wasn’t prepared to reveal himself and show his hand yet. He had time.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
Rhys
Ten days later
“Are ye all right, mate?”
“What? I beg yer pardon?” Rhys blinked and lifted his gaze to the lean man skirting the pool toward him.
“Nothing.” The chap laughed and slung a towel over his shoulder. “Ye’re just staring at the pool as if ye’d never seen one before.”
Rhys chuckled too, though he had to force some levity into the sound. If it looked as if he’d never seen a swimming pool before, it was because he hadn’t.
The water was impossibly clear. He could see through to the bottom. Even at what Hugh had termed the ‘deep end.’ What discouraged him thus far from diving in and enjoying the cool water, however, was the stink of it. An acrid stench he couldn’t quite identify. He’d been thinking about waiting for Hugh to join him prior to risking his health.
But perhaps he didn’t have to.
“Smells bluidy rank.” Rhys phrased his curiosity as casually as he could.
“Aye,” the fellow nodded. “They may have put too much chlorine in. Seen worse though. At least we’re not bleeding out our eyes, aye?”
“Aye.”
Taken aback that such a thing was a possibility, Rhys nonetheless echoed the man’s laughter once more. ‘Twas enjoyable the way he threw back his head and let the humor flow unrestrained as he removed his T-shirt. He was young, a few years younger than Rhys’s thirty years if he had to guess. Close cropped brown hair and hazel eyes. Nearly as tall as Rhys but far leaner with finely cut, pleasing musculature. His blue swim trunks were shorter than those Claire had helped Rhys purchase. Snugger, too. He couldn’t resist dipping his eyes down a notch.
When he looked back up, the fellow’s expression had changed. He cocked his head as if Rhys were a curiosity or surprise, however there was no censure in his eyes nor the revulsion Rhys had experienced throughout his life when he’d been caught admiring the male form. In fact, he could have sworn there was a hint of pleasure there as the full-body assessment he’d just completed was returned in kind.
“Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed it,” the man murmured.
Rhys’s body tightened under the appraisal. Many of the males in this time were not as broad and heavily muscled as Rhys was. It left him wondering if he would pass muster. He never had to wonder in his own time but this one was ever contradicting all he thought he knew.
Added to that, it’d been some time since he’d felt such a tug of attraction. Not since Willem had died. A mournful pain squeezed his chest. He looked away. The sting wasn’t as piercing as it had been in the past. He was healing from his loss. Mayhap the time had come to begin looking to the future.
Rhys certainly hadn’t imagined Scarlett’s modern world to be anything like this. They’d been in this time for over a week already. Scarlett and Laird spent their days at the hospital. She’d gotten her agent to provide additional security for them there, leaving Rhys free to spend his days as he wished. He, Connor, and Emmy explored the new world around them. Hugh had updated them regarding the history of Scotland. The changes over time concerning government and religion, though he’d mysteriously asked Rhys not to get him started on notions of evolution and the Big Bang Theory. Whatever that was.
The Edinburgh he’d known was still there between the cracks of the more modern world. Rhys took some comfort in knowing the things his contemporaries had built weren’t entirely swept away by the winds of time.
There was a fresh exhilaration though in exploring the new. Never knowing what he’d find next. Far more exciting than his predictable life at home—travel from court, to his family at Crichton then to Dunskirk and back again in a never-ending rotation.
Unlike Laird, Rhys relished the unexpected, the rush of blood in his veins. He felt truly alive. Hugh and Claire were excellent guides. They’d been from one end of the city to the other in the past week. He’d visited pubs with the recognizable flavor of old Scotland and a nightclub with hellish music and flashing lights that left a bad taste in his mouth. Small shops and vast stores with enough clothing to fit every person he’d ever known a hundred times over.
