With his mind raw and bleeding, he knelt and touched the garments within.Herslay at the top.He had to close his eyes against the wave of pain.He remembered exactly what she looked like in it, how it molded to her gentle curves and flowed over her hips.The garment wasn’t the most elegant nor best made—her husband would not allow her such luxuries—but on her it looked magnificent.
Christien clenched his teeth and hung his head, cursing his mind for not being able to forget.’Twas as if he’d lost her just yesterday, the pain was so acute.
When his emotions were under control, he sat back on his heels and withdrew his hand from the fabric.Even though it’d been decades since he opened the lid, he knew without a doubt that her gown hadn’t been on top.So how had it come to be there?
She searched through your bedchamber.
Looking for what?Proof of what he tried to tell her?There wasn’t any better proof than her own gown.But would it be enough?
He closed the lid and stood, suddenly needing to see her, to touch her, to know she lived, that she was real and not a figment of his imagination.
He made his way to her bedroom and knelt beside the bed.Her face was beyond pale with dark circles beneath her eyes and a bruise on her chin.Her cheeks were wet with tears.Behind closed lids, her eyes moved back and forth.Once again she was immersed in her dreams.Silently he cursed.As much as he wanted her to remember, sometimes he thought it best if she remembered nothing at all.This trickle of memories was tearing her apart and in turn tearing him apart.
“Ah, Madelaine,” he whispered, tortured to see her crying in her sleep yet afraid to bring her out of it.Would it be best to let her remember through her dreams or wake her before the memory was complete?
She cried out softly.At first Christien thought she was in pain but quickly realized it wasn’t the physical kind.What was she remembering?What painful memory had her mind dredged up?There were so many bad memories and so few good ones.He wished it had been the other way around.
He stood, kicked off his shoes and stripped to his boxers.He lifted the covers and carefully crawled into bed.Immediately Madelaine curled her warm body around his, snaked her arm across his chest and laid her head on his shoulder.He put his arm around her and squeezed his eyes shut, but knew the sleep he desperately needed wouldn’t come.That the memories Madelaine was experiencing and the memories released when he opened the trunk would haunt him until he slipped from her bed in the early morning dawn before she awoke.
“What are you doing?”
Lainie jumped and twirled around, her hand going to her suddenly racing heart.“Christien.You scared me to death.”
He glanced at the folded clothes on the bed.“What are you doing?”
“Getting my clothes together.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, distracted by the way he was leaning against the doorframe, a frown marring his brow.Christien in a designer suit was magnificent.In well-worn jeans molding his perfectly formed thighs and a black T-shirt stretching across an impressively muscled chest, he was…scrumptious.She had to squash the urge to run her hand through his mussed hair and across cheeks shadowed by a day’s worth of beard.What this man did to her should be illegal.
This reaction scared her the most, the intense relief when she saw him after being away from him for even the smallest amount of time.It wasn’t natural to feel that way for a person you barely knew.
“Why what?”she asked, stalling.
He scowled and crossed his arms, not stepping any farther into her room.Since coming to his home five days ago he’d been like this, remote, yet attentive.Seeing to her every need, but keeping his distance.She was hurt by his attitude, yet understood it because she felt the same way.Words were left unspoken, conversations avoided that needed to be said, but neither of them had the guts to broach the subject.Things between them were up in the air and both were left wondering what the next step should be.
If this were a normal relationship, Lainie would demand they sit down and talk, but this was far from normal and she had no idea how to proceed.The conversation from the night in her hospital room went round and round in her head and the more she stewed on it, the more confused she became.He knew things no other person knew.Things she dreamt of.He claimed they were lovers in a past life, but how was that possible?Did things like that happen?Was there more than heaven and hell at the end of it all?
Did God really give people a do-over?
They should talk, yet she shied away from broaching any discussion.He ran a popular nightclub and conducted business throughout the world.He was gone more often than not.The opportunity for discussion was limited.
She purposely didn’t mention the dress she’d found in the trunk.How do you broach something like that?
By the way, Christien, I was snooping through your things the other day and found a trunk with very old clothes in them.What’s that all about?
Not hardly.
Yet she couldn’t stop thinking of the clothing.She’d even gone so far as to use his computer to research the garments and discovered the design of the dress was from the early fourteenth century.
The same time period her dreams took place.
She also learned the sword hanging above the fireplace was from the fourteenth century, as well.Was it the same sword hanging at her dream man’s side?Was this yet more proof he was right?That maybe they did know each other in a different time?
“Madelaine?”
She sighed and looked him in the eye, refusing to lie to him.“I can’t stay here forever.”
