Love Entwined (30 page)

Old insecurities came flooding back into her mind. In this life, they had met only three months ago. Though she knew him well, it was possible someone knew him better, longer than she had.

And he did not love her. He had never once mentioned love. She’d never mentioned her feelings to him either. He’d said once that they were adults and could sleep with anyone they chose to. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She didn’t know what she was doing, but one thing she was certain of: she would die if anything happened to Roman.

The tears turned into dry, hacking sobs and still she lay there, holding her aching head, crippled with her pain.

Cardiff Estate, Rhine Valley, Koblenz, Germany – May 13, 1988

“What do you mean she is gone?” Roman shouted.

He was standing in the guest bedroom, angling his cell phone toward the window slit in the castle’s stone wall. He could hardly understand James through the bad connection. “How could you let her go?”

“Sir, Miss Amelie said if I did not take her to the airport, she would walk to it. Anne tried to convince her to return to the house, but she refused. She was very upset, sir.”

“Why? Why did she leave?” Roman paced the floor.

“I don’t know, sir. She didn’t say.”

Maybe she was not feeling well. But she hadn’t mentioned anything to him when he’d left yesterday morning.

“Did she go back to New York?” He would have to bow out of today’s meeting and leave this morning. James hadn’t answered him yet. “James?”

“Sir, she didn’t want us to know. She made us leave her at the airport.”

She didn’t want him to know where she had gone. She was upset with him. But why? How could she leave at a time like this?

They were a team now, personally and professionally. They were involved in these strange happenings and had to see it through together. Didn’t she realize that?

“James, I’m going after her. I don’t know where, but I am going to find her. And I don’t know when we’ll be home. I’ll call you.”

“Yes sir.”

Roman swore a colorful oath. France to her parents? Or back to New York?

He and Dylan had gotten home so late last night that he did not call Amelie. She usually went to bed early and he did not want to wake her. He had been about to call this morning when he’d received James’s call.

Doctor Latham had cautioned them on the side effects of a coma. She could black out at any time or even experience loss of memory. He should have never left her alone in Yorkshire. He would never forgive himself if something happened to her.

He looked at the clock on the bedside table. Nine o’clock in the morning. Though it was only three o’clock in the morning in New York, he picked up the phone on the night table and connected long distance.

* * * *

“If she left, perhaps your business is concluded.” Dylan leaned against the bureau.

“It will never be concluded, Dylan,” Roman ground out through clenched teeth as he shoved his things into the garment bag on the bed.

“I see, and what is this business you two have with each other?”

“There’s the project, and…”

“Yes?”

“Amelie and I work very well together, and I’m thinking of hiring her on.”

Dylan was grinning at him.

Roman grabbed his travel pack off the bureau. “Well, you don’t have an artistic bone in your body, you refuse to leave this medieval castle filled with another family’s history that your father acquired on a drunken shopping spree and for all that, you are the only cousin sober enough to run the plant. I need help in Yorkshire. Amelie will do.”

“ ‘Will do?’ From what I hear you two are inseparable.”

“All right, Dylan, all right. I know you won’t let up until I’ve given a full confession. I…I think I love her. But this is old news to you, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Right. The only other thing James pries into besides the wine cellar is my personal life.”

Dylan’s features broke into a grin. “That I had to hear it from him instead of my own flesh and blood is already forgotten. And that it takes the baffling notions in a woman’s mind for you to come to me, well, that’s fine, too.”

“What did you promise him, a fifty-year old Single Malt Scotch? I know he’s been after that lately as he’s swum through most of ours.”

“You never know what you might find in the bowels of an ancient castle. But now that it is officially out in the open, I knew it! I told Maddy you were going to come around one day. She did not believe me, she thought you would never settle down,” Dylan crowed.

“She said that?” Roman glanced at his cousin.

“That is what Lisa told her when you two broke up.”

Roman stopped packing. “Lisa who?”

“Ah!” Dylan wagged a triumphant finger at him. “Maddy’s point exactly.”

“Do me a favor, will you? Remind me to keep your wife out of my affairs if that is at all possible.”

Dylan became serious. “You ‘think’ you love her.”

“I do love her. I thought she loved me, until she left. We…we have so much in common.”

“Well, there is rather a lot of thinking going on, isn’t there? I thought you artistic types were very good at expressing yourselves.”

He resumed his packing. “I haven’t been able to reach her. I’ll be on the afternoon flight to New York.”

“I will finish up with the recruiters, you go get the girl. There will be a car waiting out front to take you to the airport. Oh, a letter arrived for you this morning, it’s on the desk.” Dylan took his leave.

Roman crossed to the writing desk and picked up the envelope. When he saw it was postmarked London he swallowed his disappointment. It was probably work-related. He opened the letter to find a single white sheet of paper with a typed message.

I AM HER BETHROTHED

His brows furrowed in disbelief when he saw the signature below. It was signed “The Marquess of Alsborough.”

* * * *

New York City – May 14, 1988

Amelie had decided not to go home to her parents in France. They would only ask her what happened and she did not know if she could get through an explanation without crying. They would find out soon enough when she told them the project in England wrapped early. That would be her official excuse, but her mother would know it for what it was. She’d run away from Roman.

She didn’t know how she was going to live without him, but she could not marry him. He was not free, and somehow because of her, he was in danger.

Maybe the killer would leave him alone and come after her. She must never see Roman again and her parents must stay in France until this was all over. They were all better off distancing themselves from her.

She called the office to let Harold know she was coming in. He had started asking her questions about the collection, wanting samples and sketches. She had rushed him off the phone without answering, promising to see him later in the day.

It was better to go to work and keep busy. If she stayed home, she would cry all day, as she had done all night, and that would only make her head hurt more. With the demands at work, she would not have time to think about how miserable she was and would be from now on, for the rest of her life.

She convinced herself she was fine to start back to work. Her hair was knotted into a bun and she wore the gray suit and white silk blouse like armor. The suit almost had her believing she would get through the coming days, business as usual, with no time to think of Roman.

It was lunchtime at Penrods. She was able to sneak in with little notice.

She walked through the maze of cubicles where some employees ate at their desks. At least she wouldn’t have to pass Harold’s office at the other end of the floor. She wasn’t ready to deal with him yet.

She went straight into her office and shut the door.

It was just as she had left it. There was a box on the desk filled with her drawings. Charcoal and mechanical pencils lined up on her drafting table. Everything was in its place, but nothing at all was the same.

She had changed. This room was no longer the comforting, creative environment it had always been to her.

She had virtually lived in this room for the last two years, but her heart was no longer here, among the designs in this sterile, white-walled office. There was no thick Aubusson carpet here in elegant blue and gold swirls to sit on before a cozy fire.

Khan…she had left without saying goodbye to the lovable giant.

She turned in a circle in the orderly workspace. It was not the immaculate office that went against the grain; it was the control evident in every neat pile. Everything she had ever done had been so damned controlled.

What had happened to the girl who frolicked in the Seine in her underwear? She thought. Jacqueline would never have run from her
capitaine
.

She shook off a wild impulse to rip around the office in a wrecking dervish.

Roman had her from the first; she had hardly been human when she met him.

The dreams began her transformation, and Roman had completed it.

This room would never hold what she needed most. There was no love here, no laughter and since her dreams had become reality, she was painfully aware this room didn’t look like fun anymore.

Roman was the earth her roots had grown into. She felt as though she had been ripped away from his warmth.

She looked at the empty glass vase on the coffee table. She should have bought roses on her way in, but she had forgotten. She never forgot anything; between her lists, day-planners and recorded messages to self, her system was fail-safe.

The oversight made her burst into tears. Roman would have been proud of her for showing this human trait of emotion.

She swiped a tissue from the box on her desk and rummaged in her purse for a mirror.

“Well, it is true. You have returned to us,” came from the doorway.

She dabbed at her face with the tissue before turning toward the door. “What do you want, Dora?”

Dora closed the office door and leaned against it, giving her a shrewd look. “Who are you? Certainly not the Amelie who left New York three months ago. I just wanted to hear about your project. Did everything go okay?” Dora walked into the office. “Something is wrong. Amelie, I am your friend. You know you can talk to me.”

“You have
never
been my friend, Dora. Is there something I can do for you, or isn’t the Sweet Life project keeping you busy enough?”

“Actually, it is going very well. The Sweet Life executives love my designs. Production will start soon. Nigel and his team have worked around the clock to get this show on the road.”

Amelie took Dora’s arm and ushered her out of the office. “How wonderful for you. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

She shut the door.

* * * *

“You left the designs with Cardiff?” Harold’s ballpoint pen hovered over the letter he was signing.

Amelie pursed her lips to keep from laughing at his bewildered expression behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. His red bowtie with white polka dots was just big enough to make him look like part of a circus troop. Her
capitaine
would have called him a dandy.

Maybe she was going a little crazy. She had a right, after all. Not only was she Roman’s lover in a past life, but she was also the evil High Priestess who most certainly had ordered enough people to death that death had followed her into this century to return the favor. It was what she deserved.

If Harold ever heard this tale, he would see to it she was put away somewhere comfy in a straight jacket where she could not hurt herself.

It was insult added to injury when she thought about the designs she had left in England along with her heart. Three months in England and she had nothing to show for it. Harold must think she had been on holiday.

She suppressed a giggle.

“Mr. Cardiff and I collaborated on many designs. I have enough now to work from my office, so I decided to come back.”

Good answer, Amelie!

She put a proverbial checkmark on her game card.

“And he was okay with that?” Harold asked as he finished signing the letter.

“Oh, he’s fine with it,
il est d’accord
.”

Harold stared at her over his horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

Too late, she realized her reply was a tad too bright. And, she had lapsed into French. Harold would know that was a clear indication she was upset.

She turned before he could say anything. She went back into her office and sat down at the desk with her head in her hands. She had really botched that up.

Could things get any worse? She sighed in resignation.

As she was wont to do in times of stress—or any time, really, she thought disgustedly—she immersed herself in work.

She began working on a copy of the ruby and emerald set she and Roman had designed for what they were calling the Renaissance collection. She knew the fluid lines of the necklace and the earrings by heart. She had to show Harold something, or he would get suspicious.

She started etching the grainy texture of the necklace. The pencil in her hand flew over the paper at the thought Harold would probably call Roman for another version of the story.

Roman would know she was back in New York, but he was in Germany on business. He would not leave his meetings to follow her to New York.

She scolded herself for the smile threatening to turn her frown upside down. She had left him after all. She had made a decision, hadn’t she?

New York City – May 14, 1988

The Lear Jet landed at JFK Airport at two o’clock in the afternoon.

Roman stepped onto the tarmac and walked swiftly into the terminal.

Dylan would thank him in the end for leaving Koblenz. He could not think about anything besides Amelie. He had tried her apartment number and kept getting her answering machine. He had called Penrods and repeatedly listened to her husky French accent on voicemail, but did not leave a message.

He still had no idea why she had left Yorkshire and he wasn’t sure if she would take his call, but it was clear now that he was not the only one with a target on the back. There was someone out there who wanted Amelie. He just hoped that someone was human and would succumb to a bullet.