“You also told me you are not an art thief, a spy, or a foreign agent. I haven’t decided what to do with it, and I moved the painting to a safer place.”
She nodded and expelled a giggle of relief, and he hoped it was not hysteria that provoked her sudden change of mood. “You haven’t asked me what happened to me in the burial chamber.”
“Fair enough. Why did you faint in the burial chamber?”
“Are you familiar with the term déjà vu?”
“Yes, of course. It’s a rather recent term coined by a French philosopher, and it relates to a sense of having lived through an experience or been in a place before.” His curiosity piqued, Jack leaned forward. “Is that what happened? Did you experience déjà vu in that chamber?”
“Yes. It was my burial chamber. The shock awakened memories of another life, and you were there with me.”
“In the burial chamber?”
“No, not in that chamber. I was a priestess, and you were an elder. I believe that is what they called the councilmen of the Etruscan cities. I think perhaps you were also a warrior. The finest I had ever known.”
She smiled at him, and he felt ridiculously giddy.
“We’d known each other all our lives, since childhood, and we fell in love.” She stopped and took a sip of wine. “Forbidden love, as I was chosen to be a priestess. Our families had placed us on different paths. Different destinies. But nothing could keep us apart, and we planned our escape. Unfortunately, the elders got wind of it and sent soldiers to slaughter us. You told me to run and that you would hold them off. I didn’t want to leave you, but you were most insistent. Typical Jack, if you ask me.”
She quirked another smile, and his heart did a backflip. How well she knew him.
“But I couldn’t leave you,” she continued. “So, I turned around and ran back. You were holding your own against a group of soldiers. You were magnificent. Although you missed a sneaky guard who’d crept up on you. But I dispatched him readily enough. We managed to get away. But we both knew it would not be long before more soldiers came after us. There was nowhere we could go. I looked at you, and you understood what we needed to do. The only thing that we could do—” Gaby’s voice cracked as she stared at the flames in the hearth. “W-we ran to the bluff, but the s-soldiers were getting closer… Soon they would be upon us. Y-you picked me up and carried me to the edge. We gazed into each other’s eyes and told each other that we would love each other for all eternity. And then we jumped.”
Gaby’s shoulders shook, and a sob escaped her.
Jack had sat frozen in silence as he listened to her story. But now, he leaped into motion. Taking the glass out of her hand, Jack set it on the side table with his. Then he pulled her onto his lap. Relieved she didn’t resist him, he held her close against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her as she cried.
His heart ached; his soul ached. Her story had rendered him speechless. And yet it explained so much. It explained why he’d fallen in love with her from the moment he set eyes on her, why it felt so right to hold her in his arms, and why he never wanted to let her go.
When her sobs had ceased, and her tears had stopped flowing, he kept holding on to her.
“Jack, we loved each other in that life, and we lost each other,” she whispered. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” He nodded. It also explained why he’d felt a strange feeling come over him at the archeological site. But more importantly, it explained why he’d always been so drawn to that bluff. Why when he visited Piombino he rode Xanthus past the spot, long before he’d ever met Gaby. “Well, those Etruscans clearly scooped you up and put you in that burial cave. I must have ended up a midnight snack for the lions.”
Gaby’s shoulders shook again, but this time from her giggles.
She leaned back and looked up at him, and the sight of her tear-streaked face made his chest constrict. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. “It’s clean, I promise.”
She giggled again as he gently wiped the tears from her face.
“This was quite a revelation,” he said. “But this can’t be the grave secret you’ve been keeping from me.”
Gaby reached out and caressed his face. “No, it is not. What I have to tell you, you’ll find far more difficult to believe, and I fear the vision of our past life is a warning.”
The warmth of her touch sent the blood surging through his veins. He cleared his throat and tried to rein in his desire for her.
“I am a time traveler,” she whispered.
“A what?”
“I am from the future.”
Surprise was the least of the emotions he was feeling.
“When you were riding Xanthus and came upon me on the bluff, I had literally just arrived in that spot. Before that, I had been sitting in an art gallery in New York City. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to be exact. I was born at the end of the twentieth century, in 1996.”
“I was certainly not expecting to hear that.” Although he tried, he couldn’t subdue the trembling in his hand as he continued to wipe away her tears.
