“What do you care if I stay?” he asked with a quirk of his mouth and his brow. “I’m the man you believe will cage you.”
He was right! He was right! “I do not want you to be unhappy, Detective. Unlike you, I do not believe this drivel about the brooch bringing people to their true love. I do not need—”
She didn’t know what came over him. He didn’t seem like the drag a girl in for a kiss kind of guy. But that’s just what he did. He pulled her into his arms and onto his lap. He laid her over his bent elbow and slipped his free hand behind her nape to angle her at the perfect degree to take her mouth more fully.
She didn’t resist him when he bent and placed his lips to hers and covered her mouth and breathed her breath. She curled her arms around his neck and held him close while his tongue explored her mouth. His kiss was all consuming, turning her soft from the inside out. She moaned softly and he pulled his mouth away. “This will lead to something we’re not ready for. There are lots of rooms in this place.”
She turned a bright shade of scarlet thinking about being intimate with him. Him ripping off her clothes, carrying her to the bed…
“Aren’t there rules about being married first?”
“Aye. And my father will have you hanged if you plant your seed in me and do not wed me.”
“Plant my seed?” Michael said, looking down at her. “How romantic.”
They heard the doors opening downstairs. Some or all of the men had returned.
Charlotte bolted out of Michael’s arms. On her feet, she patted her hair, her skirts. A glance at Michael revealed the humor he found in her concern.
“They’re going to know soon enough,” he quipped and gave her rump a pinch.
She yelped, leaped forward into the table and then turned to him and gave him a whack on the arm.
He laughed as Colin walked into the hall with four other men. He was smiling with his eyes on Michael. Aye. It wouldn’t take them long to realize. To realize what? That the detective was falling in love with her. She bit her lip. Or that she was falling in love with him?
Chapter Eighteen
New York City
Autumn, 2019
Charles Arthur Lancasterwaited in the small coffee shop on East 98thfor Elia, the pretty woman who’d arrived here from the fifteenth century while he was in Egypt last month.
They had met early this morning. This morning, he’d discovered his baby girl, Kestrel, was stuck in the fifteenth century. Well, not stuck per se, as she chose not to come back. She made that decision because only one could return and she would not leave her husband. Good for her. Pendragons did not abandon their husbands or wives. Despite that he missed her terribly and despite what the fiction writers of this realm added to his story, his Guinevere had never been unfaithful with Lancelot, or any of his knights. Arthur, for he was none other than the lost king, had never abandoned Guin. There was no way possible to ever find her without alerting Morgan and putting Guin in danger. He wouldn’t do that. After he convalesced from his near mortal wound in Avalon, he’d planned his escape from Morgan and her brooch. Merlin had helped him. Arthur knew what he was giving up. He had no choice.
He missed his old friend. He missed his knights, and especially his Guinevere. He’d loved Cynthia, Kestrel’s mother. He loved her and treated her the way she should be loved and treated. When she died, he did not marry again. But he never loved anyone the way he loved his queen. He felt his face grow warm and his eyes burn thinking of her and the children he fathered with her. Micajah and Camelee. He knew he had children before Kes. He just hadn’t known who or where they were. But then he met Detective Michael Pendridge, who’d been assigned to Kes’ case. Michael had to be Micajah. The names were too similar. The age was right. He had to be! But Arthur couldn’t do a damned thing about it. He couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t risk Morgan finding out anything. He knew having his children in the same century as him would be dangerous for them all. It was why the children had been given up. But now it seemed the brooch was continuing to keep them safe by separating them from him. Would his first-born daughter be next?
And where was Merlin? He wasn’t just a great wizard. He was an expert thief. He’d found the brooch in Morgan’s castle and stole it and brought it back to Arthur. Together, they wove a powerful enchantment over it to override the first. Instead of seeking Arthur, the brooch united Pendragons with their true loves. He was happy to know—as of yesterday when he read his letter from his daughter—that it worked.
This…Elia returned here in Kestrel’s place—witha crush on him. What was he to do with her? He didn’t want to begin another relationship here on this realm where lifespans are so short. But he couldn’t go home. Not with Morgan on the loose.
He had to keep them all away and live alone. If anyone knew where and when he was, it would get back to her. He’d made certain that wouldn’t happen by weaving an enchantment over those who knew him in Avalon and in this realm to forget him, and to forget one another. The spell worked perfectly on the others. They all forgot, but Arthur remembered them. He still remembered his past, in Avalon, and then in Britain with his Round Table knights. He just didn’t remember what any of them looked like.
The spell had been vital. If his knights found him, Morgan would find him. Her evil knew no bounds. She had cast one of her spells over him so that he would impregnate her and give her a son, Mordred, whom she used to almost kill him.
She wanted him to rule Avalon with her. He’d refused. He didn’t want to rule anyplace with her. She was dark and vengeful, a worker of the enemy of God. He wanted to be away from her. He’d told her sisters of her schemes to rule over them and they locked her away for fifty years. But now she was free, and she was using the brooch.
Let those he loved live their anonymous lives without him. He didn’t try to find any of them.
He heard the little bell ring over the coffee shop door and looked up to see Elia of York standing at the sunny entrance. She had exchanged her medieval clothes for more modern jeans and a lightweight wool cable knit sweater. Her foster son, Sir Nicholas de Marre, who was also Arthur’s new son-in-law in the fifteenth century, sent enough silver and gold coins for her to buy what she needed when she got here.
“Forgive me for being late,” she said, coming toward him. “I got a call for an interview for a housekeeping job I applied for. They called five minutes before I was leaving.”
He left his chair to pull hers out. She fell into it and kept on talking. “And I forgot how to turn my phone on.”
“It is on,” he replied with amusement coating his deep voice. “You mean, you forgot how to answer your phone.”
“Aye. I mean, yes,” she corrected.
