The Sapphire Brooch by Katherine Logan (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

“Yes, but first I need a commitment from ye to take me back to my time. If ye won’t, then let Jack. But in two days, I must leave.”

“You’re not—”

“I don’t require coddling. Ye have to let me go.”

Her phone beeped, and she silently thanked God for the interruption. She checked the message. “I have to return this call. We’ll talk about it later. I’ll bring you a dinner tray, or if you’d like, you can join us in the kitchen.”

“I’ll join ye. I need to get up and move around.”

“Okay. Dinner isn’t fancy. Come as you are.”

He glanced down at what he was wearing, smirking. “A gentleman would never present himself at the table dressed so informally.”

She laughed as she headed for the door. “What do you think Jack’s wearing? A suit? Not likely. He’ll be dressed just as casually. If you’d feel more comfortable wearing a robe, there should be one hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”

She closed the door and rested her head against it while her hand continued to grip the doorknob. She had to emotionally swim against the current to disengage from the intimacy they had shared, and from intruding memories. She had dipped into a swirling stream, and the surface was rippling from the force of the undercurrent.

Fear of the ambiguous gemstone, memories of being in danger, and an attraction to a man from the nineteenth century she couldn’t possibly have a relationship which propelled her away from the door and up the stairs. She ran into her old bedroom she still used on weekends, stripping off her clothes as she headed toward the shower, hoping to restore her equilibrium. Her call could wait another ten minutes.

Thirty minutes later, she entered the kitchen, composed.

Jack was standing on one side of the counter, and Braham sat on a barstool on the other. They were clinking their glasses of red wine, participating in a toast.

“To a profitable venture,” Jack said.

Charlotte grabbed a glass from a wall-mounted wine rack, picked up the bottle of an Australian pinot noir, and read the label before filling her glass. “What profitable venture are we celebrating with a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle of wine?”

“Since you have an overbooked schedule, I decided to take Braham home.”

She covered her mouth so she wouldn’t spew the sip she’d just taken. “What? You decided? Don’t you think I have a say here?”

He gave a deliberately nonchalant shrug. “It’s the only logical solution.”

“There’s nothing logical about your proposition. You’re always chasing a story, Jack. If you go back in time, I can’t even begin to imagine the damage you could do.”

Jack gasped, slapping his chest. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

“When it comes to you, there is no ‘little faith.’ Only a huge faith telling me you’ll get so caught up in researching the war that trouble will find you a willing victim. So forget it.”

“Then I’ll go with you. Remember, I’m a better fighter.”

Her nightmares kept her from wanting to go back, but if she had to go, having Jack along would certainly help her feel safer. “Okay, but we’re not staying. We’ll drop Braham off in Washington and come straight home.”

“You make it sound like we’ll do a drive-by. Isn’t it more complicated?”

“I don’t even know if it will work again. And if we get there, can we get back?”

Jack picked up a piece of cheese from a snack tray of crackers and Brie. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Charlotte plopped on a stool next to Braham. “I don’t want to venture anything or gain anything. I only want…I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to land in the middle of a battle again. It scared the crap out of me. I shiver in the night remembering the screams and the cannon fire and the bleeding, dying men I couldn’t help.”

Braham’s jaw was squarely set and his upper lip compressed. He listened intently, his eyes roving from her to Jack and back.

“Take all the time you need to decide, sis. I’ll give you five minutes.”

When she caught Braham’s eye, he smiled, but the smile was seemingly in contradiction with the weariness in his eyes.

Jack gave her his book jacket smile, the irresistible one capable of triggering emotional highs in complete strangers and making fans see things in a more favorable light. Like forking over twenty-five bucks for one of his hardcover books. He squeezed her shoulder. “Come on, sis. You met Sheridan, Lincoln, and Grant, and toured Washington and Richmond. The least you can do is give me a few hours to explore.”

This would be a perfect time for a snappy retort at the smiling coconspirators who were so busy manipulating her, but nothing came to mind. She’d already been to the past, thank you very much, and had discovered time travel was fraught with danger and rife with long-term consequences. But Jack would never believe her until he experienced it for himself.

It wasn’t a Japanese puzzle box she had opened. It was Pandora’s, and it had arrived without a warning label telling her to keep it sealed or suffer the wrath of the time-travel god.

If it was possible, Jack’s smile grew across his face to his eyebrows, and even his body was smiling. She finally acquiesced. “We’re not staying overnight. A couple of hours, max. That’s it. It should give you time to see Washington and stop by the White House.”

Laughing, Jack said, “Let’s eat. The steaks are ready.”

After a delicious dinner which left them all moaning from too-full stomachs, they took cups of coffee to the library and settled into the deep, tufted leather chairs. Braham told the story he had promised during dinner.

“Although I was born in America, I was raised in Scotland from a very early age. My friend Cullen and I finished our education at the University of Edinburgh then studied law at Harvard. When we finished our studies, we joined a small firm in San Francisco. Cullen met his wife on a