A Ghost of a Chance
by Carolan Ivey
Copyright © 2017 by Carolan Ivey. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Chapter One
Gráinne Cottage, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland
“I cannot complete this reading.”
The older woman’s hands moved quickly to gather the Tarot cards spread on the kitchen table, the movement causing the flame of the single white candle at its center to flicker.
Carey Magennis leaned back in the creaky wooden chair, trying to decide if she should be amused or alarmed. For now, she chose the former. After all, Genola’s informal Tarot reading was only for fun.
She sipped her tea, admiring the vase of freshly picked heather on the table. The moist breath of an afternoon breeze felt unusually cool on her cheek as it puffed in through the open window. But then again, an Irish July felt downright arctic to any North Carolina native. The morning rain had passed, and through the storm door she saw the rich, green hillside below the cottage. Beyond, the sea glittered like muted pewter. GreatBlaskettIsland lay a few miles offshore like a sleeping giant, half covered by a fluffy blanket of mist.
She had left Kyle poring over maps and guidebooks while she had gone in search of a cup of tea to settle her still-queasy stomach, the aftermath of getting food poisoning from a Killarney restaurant. Thanks to her twenty-four-hour stint on her knees before the porcelain god, they were now a full day behind schedule. They were darned lucky Genola McCarthy had a vacancy in her little cottage B&B at the height of tourist season. Carey had been too ill to make it to their original destination.
Kyle had been less than thrilled with the comparatively rustic accommodations, but Carey, now that she was well enough to have a look around, loved the old stone cottage with its thick, whitewashed walls and cozy thatched roof. Traces of the morning peat fire still tanged the air inside the little dwelling, blending with the aroma of fresh bread baking in the Aga.
Genola had welcomed her warmly into the homey, low-ceilinged kitchen, and cheerfully joined her for a cup of strong Irish tea with plenty of fresh milk and sugar. Spying the new engagement ring on Carey’s left hand, Genola had reached into her apron pocket and withdrawn a set of Tarot cards, saying with a wink that she was going to see how long it would be before Carey and Kyle began adding to their respective family trees.
Carey glanced down now at the sparkling diamond solitaire on her left ring finger as Genola continued to gather the spread-out cards. She’d thought they’d only be spending a few days in Dublin, Kyle making contacts for his fledgling, international real-estate development firm, while she wandered in and out of old churches and museums, feeding her insatiable appetite for all things historic. But he’d presented her a ring at dinner one night—in between taking business calls on his cell phone—and swept her off on a surprise whirlwind tour of Ireland, attempting to see the entire country in five scant days.
She idly turned her hand and wondered why the sight of the glittering stone didn’t set her heart to glittering in return. She ought to be deliriously happy. She should. After all, her life was turning out exactly as she’d planned.
“Are the spirits carrying around erasers these days?” She tore her gaze from the ring and, propping her chin in her palm, winked to let the woman know she was only kidding.
Genola smiled and winked in return. “Oh, ’tis nothing, darlin’. Simply a mistake, that’s all.”
“What kind of mistake?” Carey was relieved to see the Death card disappear back into the deck.
“This blank card—” Genola held it up, “—shouldn’t have been in the deck. It’s included only to replace a lost card.” She put the card back into a small wooden box and firmly shut the lid, then shuffled the deck three times. “Now, let’s be after tryin’ this again. Please cut the deck into three piles.”
Carey did as she was told, and watched Genola spread the cards across the table with one smooth motion.
“And choose three cards, please.”
Again, Carey pulled three cards at random and placed them face down in front of her.
Genola turned over the first card, and Carey swallowed a gasp. It stuck in a painful knot at the base of her throat before she forced herself to relax.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Genola, unconcerned. “You drew the Death card again. This card represents your past, and at some point…”
“I’m going to die?” Carey croaked, only half joking.
Genola chuckled. “Not at all, dear. You simply underwent a time of great change. Or you will. Sometimes the timeline is a bit vague.”
Carey relaxed, and leaned her elbows on the table again, and allowed a small smile. “Well, I got engaged recently. Maybe that’s it. And I lost my parents at a very young age…” She quickly shut her mouth. This wasn’t something she normally shared with relative strangers.
Genola stilled, her expression distressed. “I’m so sorry, child.”
Carey reached out and patted one of Genola’s hands. “It’s all right. It was a long time ago and my aunt raised me.”
Genola relaxed, then looked her up and down, eyes slightly unfocused. “Your aura is very strong, particularly around your heart. It’s bright green.” Her eyes focused again and she smiled gently. “I thought when I first saw you, that you had the look of a faerie child.”
Carey found herself toying with one of her wild black curls. Chemical processing had tamed the unruly mass that was her hair, but Ireland’s damp weather had brought back its tendency to kink. All she had managed to learn about this gift from her father's side of the family were four clipped words, "Black Irish and Indian." At which point her aunt’s lips would compress into a tight, thin line.
“Faerie. Yes, well, I don’t much resemble Tinker Bell,” she said ruefully, remembering her own mother’s petite, fair beauty, lost to her now except in photographs.
“Oh, the other crowd are a dark, little folk. Nothing like you see in the movies. The Magennis people in Ireland are mostly fair in coloring, but once in a while they throw a dark one, and it’s said such people are touched by the good folk. You may be several generations removed from Ireland, my dear, but the magic still lingers about you, that I can see.”
Oh, this was getting good. Carey dismissed the uncomfortable notion that Genola McCarthy could somehow know exactly how she’d been feeling these past months. As if she were poised on some great precipice of change. She’d chalked it up to the ticking of her biological clock.
The Irishwoman flipped the next card. “This card represents your present. Oh…dear…”
Carey stared in amazement. She’d drawn the exact same card as last time.
“My, my! The oracle certainly is speaking strongly this afternoon.” Genola’s voice quavered a little, despite her efforts to sound cheerful. “I can’t remember any other time someone has drawn the exact same cards in this way, in spite of the deck having been shuffled. Very…odd.”
“What do you think it means?” Carey watched Genola’s face. This was only a Tarot reading, for heaven’s sake.
“This card represents your present situation. It’s the suit of Wands, which is the suit of change, restlessness, possibly upheaval. And this is the Knight. There’s a man involved. Quite possibly a blond man.”
Curious, Carey leaned in for a closer look at the card in question. The card depicted a warrior in battered Athenian armor standing on a hilltop overlooking an ancient city. The soldier held a heavy sword, and a helmet adorned with a horse-tail plume covered his head. Lion-colored hair flowed out from under the helmet. But it was his direct stare that snagged her attention. His vivid green eyes—all she could see of his face—glowed like living things in the stillness of the picture.
She had the absurd notion that she wished she could step into the picture and straight into his protective arms. With a hard, mental shake, she tore her gaze away from the warrior and noticed a banner flying over the city in the background. It was clearly labeled Troy.
Her scalp prickled.
“Interesting.” She tried to sound offhand. “My middle name is Helen.”
Genola’s eyebrow went north. “Is that so? You should see the queen of this suit. It is, indeed, Helen of Troy.”
A woman who brought disaster down on an entire kingdom for loving the wrong man. Carey’s stomach started to feel funny again, and she forced herself to relax. “But I don’t know any blond men. At least not well enough to consider them part of my personal life.”
Genola smiled, serenely confident again. “If there isn’t one now, there will be. And I daresay his entrance won’t be subtle.”
“Hm. If you say so.” Maybe Kyle was going to bleach his dark hair or something. Then she laughed to herself. Not bloody likely.
“I certainly do say so.” Genola nodded and reached for the third card. “Well, then let’s see what all these changes and this mysterious blond man will mean for your future. At least we know the card won’t be…” she flipped the card, “…blank.”
Now Carey’s heart really did turn over. What the…?
Genola’s calm demeanor vanished, and she turned white.
The card was blank. Again.
“Impossible,” Genola whispered. “I just put that card back in the box. You saw me put it there, didn’t you?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Carey, reaching for the box and popping off the lid. “Maybe it stuck to your hand.”
But the first blank card still lay inside. She looked up at Genola. “Is there more than one blank card in this deck?”
Genola shook her head. “Only one.”
“Do it again.”
“What?”
“Shuffle the cards and let me draw again.”
Genola seemed to come back to herself. “Of course, of course.” She gathered the cards and began to shuffle them, then her fingers slowed. “Let’s try a different deck. This one’s new—I haven’t worked with it much.” She leaned back in her chair, reached into a half-open kitchen drawer, and extracted a small, battered wooden box. Sweeping the offending deck off the table and back into its own box, she spread the well-used deck face up on the table, so they could both see that no blank cards lurked. Then she quickly shuffled, humming softly to herself as she worked.
“Now,” she said confidently, her face relaxing into another smile. “This deck has never failed me.”
Again Carey went through the ritual of drawing three cards, wondering why she was doing this when she ought to be telling Genola “t’anks, but no t’anks”.
“Here we go.” Genola turned over the first card.
Carey gave a bark of surprised laughter and nearly fell out of her chair.
The Death card grinned mockingly up at her.
“Ehm…” Genola turned the middle card. Knight of Wands. Again. “I, ah, don’t know what to say, Miss Magennis. I truly don’t. This has never, ever happened before. To draw the exact same cards repeatedly? From different decks…” She reached for the third card, her hand visibly trembling.
Carey reached out and gripped her wrist. “Let me.” If the woman was indeed doing a sleight of hand, she was going to make darned sure it didn’t happen again. Not that she believed in this stuff, not at all. But she’d rather sleep without nightmares, thank you very much.
She turned the card. Blank. She let it drop from her numb fingers.
Get a hold of yourself, girl. It’s a trick. Just a trick.
She forced a laugh and quickly gulped the rest of her tea. “You’re very good. Ever thought of going on the road?” Her laugh trailed off when the other woman said nothing.
Genola didn’t look at her, but down at the cards, her face pale and still. Then she looked up at Carey, her eyes seeing something beyond the here and now.
“I tell you, miss, these cards have never lied.”
Carey gave the woman what she hoped was a bright smile that hid how rattled she was. “Thanks, Mrs. McCarthy. I…think I’ll take a little walk down to the headland. Kyle should be finished re-planning our schedule, thanks to me and my rebellious tummy.”
Genola nodded and began picking up the cards, one by one, examining each one as if she’d never seen it before. Carey rose from the chair, uneasy and unsure what to say next. Genola touched her arm as she passed, eyes troubled.
“Just be careful, miss. Be very, very careful.”
Carey chuckled again, trying to put the poor woman—and herself?—at ease. “Oh, don’t worry. My fiancé plans everything down to the last detail. I won’t have time to get myself into trouble. Trust me.”
***
Cape Hatteras Beach, North Carolina
Where the hell are you, John?
Troy Brannon gave in to frustration and roared out loud, the release of energy kicking up a half-dozen whirlwinds that scattered Outer Banks sand in every direction.
A nearby fisherman yelped in surprise, hunched his shoulders against the onslaught and dropped his gear into the knee-deep Atlantic surf.
“Ah, hell.” Troy muttered an unheard apology as the startled man gathered up his gear and warily scanned the skies, undoubtedly wondering if an errant nor’easter was on the way.
Troy turned his face toward the late-morning sun he could not feel in any normal way, except perhaps how a battery feels when it’s in recharge mode. He pivoted in a slow circle, trying to focus his scattered thoughts, trying to hone in on the familiar energy pattern of John Garrison’s missing spirit. A spirit Troy himself was responsible for losing.
Most people, he mused as he watched the frightened fisherman make his way over the dunes, thought ghosts were just protoplasmic mist floating around in some nether world. Scary on a dark night, but basically harmless.
He indulged in a grim smile. If only they knew how much havoc one determined spirit could wreak on the tangible world.
He ought to know. He’d wreaked enough of it all by himself to affect the lives of dozens of people. One in particular. The one he’d meddled with and lost.
He knew John’s energy fingerprint. He’d felt it when he’d wrested the man’s spirit from his body so another desperate spirit, that of a Union soldier named Jared Beaudry, could use it to regain honor lost during the Civil War. He’d felt it again when he’d tried to guide John back to where he belonged. But he’d failed. In some misguided attempt to be noble, John had let Jared’s spirit remain in his body while he took his chances elsewhere.
The trouble was, Troy had no idea where that elsewhere was. In the blink of an eye, John had disappeared into the void of space and time. Troy’d had the devil’s own time learning to drill down through time as well as he could move himself through space. But with his inborn bulldoggedness, he’d figured out how to focus his thoughts and energies in just the right way. It was a tremendous drain, and after each jump it took him hours, if not days, to recover.
The process was tedious and more time-consuming than he’d anticipated, penetrating down through layers of time and sweeping the area he’d last seen John on the Outer Banks. Day by day. Hour by hour. Hell, minute by minute. He’d come up empty, time after time. He’d gone as far into the past as he dared—he wasn’t sure how far his ability extended—and back again until he’d bumped up against an unexpected ceiling. What he could only surmise was his twin sister Taylor’s current time. He could sense her nearby. She must not have moved far from where she’d last seen him.
Good girl. Stay right there, T-bird. I’ll find you after I’m done here.
Troy scratched his head—an old habit left over from when he’d possessed a body of his own—and dredged up from his memory what he’d learned about the real Jared Beaudry. Where he’d been born, what battles he’d fought in. Maybe John would end up there. If not… Troy closed his eyes against the daunting task before him.
A task with a ticking clock. For a long time now, he’d sensed he was being tailed. Probably by forces that were none too pleased that a lowly human spirit such as himself had learned to mess with people’s souls, to skip through time and space at will. Staying one step ahead of those who would force him to be a good boy and get along to heaven.
Troy had no use for heaven. He had things to do, rights to wrong. A family to protect.
He groaned, his formidable powers of concentration failing him, exhaustion threatening to send his energy sinking into the sand at his feet, where it would lay until he found the strength to gather himself up again. He couldn’t let that happen. It left him too vulnerable.
One more time, he promised himself. One more sweep and he’d take a break. Touch base with Taylor—she was bound to be worried sick. And if she was still in the same expectant condition as when he’d left her, she didn’t need any extra burdens right now. Focusing his energy like a beam from the nearby Hatteras lighthouse, he swept the area, his back to the sea. Too tired to care where he aimed, he swept wider, letting the momentum turn him around.
Whoa.
He froze in a twisted position, torqued somewhat to the northeast. He felt something stir in his chest and he gasped at the unexpected contact. What was that? Who?
Not John, he told himself. He must have forgotten to tune out all other energies in his quest for John’s unique pattern. This one was nothing like he’d felt before. It seemed to reach out and touch him from head to toe, side to side, humming and singing along his energy meridians like warm water turned to music. His weary soul, acutely aware all of a sudden how long he’d been without a living body, drank it in, begged for more.
He tilted his head and let the vibrations form a vision. Green hills. A white, thatched-roof house with a scarlet door. Fields enclosed in seemingly random stone walls. A vertical, black cliff with cold, crashing waves at the base. Ireland.
Troy clenched his jaw and reluctantly turned away, intending to break contact. But something brought him back, making him turn all the way around to face northeast. He narrowed his eyes as this new energy wavered and flickered, like a candle caught in a high wind. In danger of going out.
She’s in trouble.
He had no idea how he knew this energy was a she, but he’d learned not to question his instincts. No matter how often they’d gotten him in trouble. Forgetting John for the moment, Troy focused on this new target.
It was too far. Across open water. And he had no time for this.
He narrowed his energy with laser precision to the northeast and prepared to make the jump.
***
Powell Beach House, near Cape Hattera Lighthouse
Taylor would deny it, but with each passing day—and each additional inch to her expanding belly—Jared Beaudry thought she grew more beautiful.
He’d glanced up from his task of sanding the beach house’s porch railing as Taylor’s blue pickup crunched on the driveway gravel. Frowned mentally at the long, lean lines of her body, still a bit too thin despite her wolfish prenatal appetite. He dropped the sandpaper and hit the bottom step before she finished gathering an armload of grocery sacks from behind the front seat.
She squeaked in surprise as she turned into him. In one smooth motion, he neatly relieved her of her burden and tucked her under the other arm. He lifted his chin an inch to tuck the top of her head under it. She relaxed and settled there like she was made to fit in the space.
“How did your session with Daira go?”
Her sigh was hollow. “Rough. But I managed a whole minute bare-handed without any visions this time.”
“And after a minute?”
“Daira’s dead grandmother told me in no uncertain terms to get my paws off her string of pearls.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and held her closer. This was all his fault.
“This was a long time coming,” she said into his neck. “It would have had to happen sooner or later.”
“Will you stop reading my mind?”
“I don’t have to. Besides, I’ve been in your mind. Cobwebs. Yeesh.” She gave a mock shudder of revulsion.
Jared laughed, and caught Lily Brannon’s gaze over the top of her daughter’s head as she ambled around from the truck’s passenger side. Her eyes, exactly like Taylor’s, sparkled with a knowing that made him blush and set Taylor a few inches away from him.
Public displays of affection were something he was still getting used to in this century. Particularly in front of a woman who wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man who had come out of nowhere to tell her—not ask her, insist—that he was marrying her daughter.
Lily grinned and took the grocery bags off his other arm. “I’ll take these and get dinner started… Who’s that?”
The dinging chime of an open car-door alarm reached his ears. He turned his head in the direction of her raised eyebrow as Taylor muttered, “Uh oh,” and pulled her big overshirt closed around her body.
A tall, middle-aged man strode toward them, apparently too agitated to remember to remove his car keys and close the door of his nondescript rental car. He wore an older version of the face Jared had almost gotten used to seeing in the mirror.
“Ross,” Jared muttered.
In the next second Taylor was behind him. Whether he’d moved first or she had, he didn’t know. His instinct to shield her was automatic. Stupid, he thought. This is John’s father. He’s no threat to us. Not physically, anyway. But to Taylor’s emotional stability, Ross Garrison was the worst kind of threat.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Stuttered a little before Taylor’s subtle poke in the back helped him get the word out. “Dad.” He had seen Ross only twice before, a few days after the re-enactment that had irrevocably changed his, Taylor’s and John’s lives. Ross, flanked by two more of his sons, had appeared in Jared’s hospital room, where Jared had thought it best to let them think his head injury had left him painfully tongue-tied. Later, Jared had put in a brief, awkward appearance at the family law office in Columbus, Ohio to raid John’s files for information vital to his survival in this modern, unfamiliar world. Thanks to Taylor’s friend Stephen, who had accompanied him and knew which strange pieces of equipment to take, Jared had managed to get in and out of the office with a minimum of fuss. It also helped that everyone there had been too stunned by the bandages and purple bruises on his face to respond when he’d announced he—rather, John—would be taking an extended leave of absence.
Apparently, Ross hadn’t been satisfied and had come looking for him. Not an easy task, as Jared had found it fairly simple to stay, as Taylor put it, “off the grid”. In his time, the telegraph had been cutting-edge technology.
Ross stopped a few paces away and settled into a deceptively relaxed pose. “Son. We didn’t get much of a chance to talk. Before.”
“Yes. Um, no.” Jared could feel Taylor’s eyes boring holes in his back.
An uncomfortable silence, in which the Outer Banks wind rustled the plastic grocery bags still dangling from Lily’s arms. A seagull wheeled overhead in the late-morning sun, its yodeling scree punctuating the tension.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
Jared started guiltily. Manners were something his own parents had drilled into him back in the nineteenth century, and apparently John Garrison’s had been no different. That Ross bore more than a passing resemblance to Jared’s own father made his throat kink in painful knots. He took a half step to one side, enough so Taylor could see around him but not enough that Ross could get a clear view of her.
“Ah…yes. D-Dad, this is Mrs. Lily Brannon and her daughter Taylor. Taylor, Mrs. Brannon—”
“Lily,” she put in.
Damn it. “Lily, this is Ross Garrison. My father.” John’s father, he reminded himself. And for John’s sake, he would make an effort at normalcy.
Ross stepped around him and extended a hand toward Taylor. She reflexively let go of her overshirt and returned the gesture. His gaze flicked down at the thick gloves she wore, and up. Then back down to stare at her rounded belly, which had only recently started showing enough to leave no doubt.
Ross’s dark eyebrows went north and his mouth looked like it wanted to form words, but had forgotten how. “Ah,” he finally managed. “Now I’m beginning to see—”
Before Jared could respond, a golden flash of blonde hair zipped past his peripheral vision and Lily Brannon planted her diminutive self under Ross’s nose.
“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not what it looks like,” she snapped, fists planted on hips.
Ross looked down and backed up a step, as if a snake had unexpectedly reared its head out of the sandy yard. Startled…and maybe just a little scared. Jared crossed his arms and prepared himself to enjoy the show.
“Mom…” Taylor began.
“You have no idea what these children have been through in the past few months. The last thing they need—”
“Mom!”
Ross’s gaze snapped back and forth between the sputtering mother hen in front of him, and the taller, younger version over her shoulder. His brow furrowed deeper with each shift.
“—is judgment passed on them by some…some trial lawyer who—”
“Ma’am…” Ross wasn’t looking at Lily now. His gaze was locked on Taylor.
Bad move, Jared thought. Lily Brannon, once wound up, would not be ignored. Much like her daughter. No, exactly like her daughter.
“—sits in a cushy, leather-bound office deciding who’s guilty or not guilty—”
Without a lick of warning, Ross put both hands on Lily’s waist, picked her up and swung her to one side, setting her down as swiftly and gently as he’d lifted her. In the next second he lunged past her to catch Taylor just as her knees buckled.
Muttering a curse for allowing himself to get distracted, Jared managed to catch one of her arms. He placed it around his shoulders, pulling her away from Ross as he bent and picked her up with his other arm under her shaking knees. He got one look at Ross’s stricken face as he swept her toward the front door.
The expression on it was not unlike the one on John’s before he’d slipped out of Jared’s grasp and vanished into the void of space and time. Determination…and sheer terror.
“Jared.” Taylor’s whisper rasped in his ear. “Troy was here. I felt him. Then he was gone.”
He headed up the steps and into the house, throwing over his shoulder, “Make yourself at home, Dad.”
Behind him, he heard two sets of feet hit the wooden steps at a run.
“Now look what you’ve done,” hissed Lily.
“Me?” barked Ross.
Jared half turned to get at the doorknob with one free hand.
“Your door’s open,” Lily remarked, and curled a lip in satisfaction when Ross’s gaze automatically dropped to his own fly. “Your car door, genius.”
Ross spun on his heel, muttering under his breath.
“God help us all,” Jared breathed to himself.
***
Hours later, their stomachs comfortably full of Lily’s cooking, Taylor made contented nesting sounds deep in her throat as Jared slipped into bed to spoon himself behind her.
“Mmmm. You’re naked.”
“These days, I think it’s best to follow your lead.” He smoothed his hand over her warm, bare belly then up to cup one of her breasts.
“Smart man.” She covered his hand with hers, still gloved, and let a few moments of silence pass. Then, “I think he took it well, don’t you?”
He remembered Ross’s look of total concentration as he and Taylor had carefully laid out all the details of how his son’s spirit had gone missing during that April re-enactment of the Battle of Roanoke Island.
And how all hope for his recovery lay in the hands of her dearly departed brother, Troy.
Ross had sat for a long time leaning forward in the kitchen chair, elbows on knees, staring at his loosely clasped hands before nodding curtly, getting up and going out for a long walk. In an hour he had returned and, without a word, picked up a piece of sandpaper and helped Jared finish the porch railing.
After dinner Ross had set up his laptop and was on his cell phone, barking orders to some unfortunate underling to ship a variety of office equipment from his Columbus, Ohio law firm to the Outer Banks beach house.
“I think he’s probably dialing that cellar phone of his to cart us both off to an asylum,” Jared said into her hair.
“That would be a cellular phone, dearest.”
“Cellar, cellular…it’s still the most evil contraption ever invented.”
“No argument from me on that point.”
“I think Ross is more concerned that I haven’t married you yet.” He felt her body shift as her defenses went up.
“I did make it clear that you asked.”
“I’m still asking. And if you don’t make a decision soon I’m not going to give you the luxury of a choice.”
She rolled over in place and faced him, her eyes flashing in the gathering darkness. “We’ve already had this discussion, Jared.” Then she sighed quietly. “It’s been months. At some point we’re going to be finished renovating this house for Stephen, and we’ll have to decide what’s next for us. I…can’t go back to my job at the museum. Technically you have a license to practice law in Ohio…”
“Thanks to John’s investments, when the time is right I will find my place in this century. That’s the least of my worries.” Jared smoothed her shaggy, chin-length hair behind her ear. “When Troy’s found something, he’ll come to you no matter where we are. I have no doubt.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That he’s found something. Otherwise, why was he here and gone so fast?”
He reached across her body to open the drawer on the bedside table, extracting a brass Civil War infantry uniform button. “Then summon him.” Knowing her damnable sense of honor precisely matched her brother’s, Jared knew what her answer would be. But it was the only way to break her out of her downward spiral of worry. It wasn’t good for her. Or the baby.
She took the button and turned it over and over in her gloved fingers. “I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.” Her voice was small. She dropped the button back into the drawer, slid it shut, and turned into his arms.
“Don’t worry, Miss Taylor. If it comes down to it…”
She drew back, expression tortured. “You’ll what? Tell John sorry, he can’t have his body back after all? What if you don’t have a choice, Jared? What if I marry you now, but wind up legally married to a virtual stranger? What if…”
He placed a hand on either side of her head and made her look into his eyes. “Our child. Will have. A name. And a family on both sides that will love and protect him.”
She blinked. Then a half smile played at one corner of her mouth. “You’ve been waiting a long time to play that card, haven’t you?”
There. Distraction mission accomplished. “Once I saw my…the way Ross looked at you, I knew it was safe to lay my last one down.”
Taylor rolled back over and pulled his arm around her. Her next words were muffled.
“What was that?”
“I said…” and she muttered something into the pillow.
He felt a grin spread wide across his face. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
She lifted her head and tossed over her shoulder, “I said okay. You win.” She flopped back down and muttered another word into the pillow that sounded distinctly like bastard.
Jared laughed, pulled her closer and closed his eyes.
Damn it, Troy, where the hell are you?
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