Heidelberg Effect (19 page)

She reached out and took his hand and began
to lead him out of the garden and toward the back door of the
convent. “You know what?” she said. “You just come to it at your
own pace. Meanwhile, let’s get out of the cold. The last thing we
need is for people to hear you talk. I have my own room here.”

“Why don’t we just go to your perfectly nice
apartment? Ella, what’s going on? What is this place?”

Gripping his hand, Ella pulled him through
the kitchen door. Inside it was totally dark and she whispered to
him to be quiet.

“Put your hands on my hips,” she said. “And
I’ll lead you.”

“Where the hell are we, Ella?”

“Keep your voice down. I don’t want the
ladies to meet you until morning. They have enough going on right
now.”

“The ladies?”

“All in due time, Rowan. For now, just
follow me.”

Feeling his strong hands on her hips gave
Ella a surge of strength and optimism she hadn’t felt in months. As
she led him through the medieval kitchen with its hanging poultry
and rabbits, she could feel his fingers tighten on her, but he
didn’t speak. When they left the kitchen, she hurried down the
stone hall to her room. She paused briefly to listen for anyone
else up and about in the convent. She heard nothing and pushed open
the door to her room.

In the moonlight coming through the single
window in the room, she watched as Rowan automatically felt on the
wall for the light switch he knew must be there.

“Forget it, Rowan,” she said, pulling him to
the bed. “There’s no electricity here.”

“You’re kidding. What is this, some kind of
hostel or ashram?”

“Something like that,” Ella said. She pulled
off his jacket and dropped it to the floor beside her. “Come sit
down.”

“I can’t see my hand in front of my face,”
he said. He sat down next to her on the bed and she knew he was
confused and unsettled.

“Your eyes will adjust,” she said. She took
both his hands in hers. “Rowan.”

“Ella.”

“We’re together now. We’ve found each other
literally across time itself.”

“You didn’t drink any Kool-Aid at this
ashram, did you? Because although you have no idea how happy I am
that I found you, Ella, you sound really different.”

Ella laughed and clapped a hand over her
mouth to stifle the sound.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I cannot believe
that you are here. If I had any prayer, ever, it was answered when
I saw you in the garden tonight. God gave you back to me. God gave
me a second chance to not fuck this up.”

“Does God know you’re using that kind of
language? Because I’m pretty sure he frowns on it.” He shook his
head. “What happened to you, Ella? I got that crazy
middle-of-the-night call from you and then nobody knew where you
were. Not your dad, not—”

“You talked to my father?”

“Hell, yeah, I did.
You
disappeared
.
I’ve been living in your Heidelberg apartment for over a week now
and it’s like you never existed. No friends stopping by, no phone
calls. What the hell happened?”

“You came to Heidelberg to
find me? Oh, Rowan. You came to
Germany
?”

“Okay, Ella, why are you
talking like this? Of
course
I came to Germany. We’re
in
Germany, aren’t we? Why are you
acting like this is news to you?”

“I thought you might have come here from the
States,” Ella said. “You know, from Dothan.”

“I
did
come here from the States,”
Rowan said. The confusion on his face made Ella want to laugh
except she knew it wasn’t going to be funny when he finally figured
it all out.

“I’m just grateful is all, Rowan,” she said,
squeezing his hands. “You have no idea what kind of trouble we’ve
got here.”

“Here at the ashram.”

“Okay, Rowan, I know you must be exhausted
and I don’t intend to wear you out any more than is absolutely
necessary because trust me you’re going to need to be a hundred and
fifty percent for what you’ll need to deal with tomorrow,” Ella
said as she pulled out a short candle from her nightstand and set
it in the dish next to her bed. “But for starters, this is not an
ashram. It is a seventeenth century convent.”

She lit the candle with a packet of book
matches. She held them up. “I feel guilty about doing it this way
but I’m hopeless at starting any kind of fire without them. The
Mother Superior says I’ll burn as a witch if anybody finds them on
me so I just keep them here in the room.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he
said.

She tossed the matches into the drawer. “You
know what, Rowan? It’s nothing that can’t be dealt with a whole lot
better in the light of day. Forget I said anything.”

“You’re talking like a crazy person,” he
said.

“I know I am,” she said. “The thing is, I’m
out of my head to see you again. I’m bonkers to be able to feel
your hands on me and to be with you after all this time.”

She pulled on the drawstring at the neck of
her nightgown. She watched his face relax and then expand into a
smile as the nightgown dropped to the floor.

“No problem,” he said softly, reaching for
her. “I’m feeling a little crazy myself.”

She moved into his arms and turned her face
to feel his sweet breath, the bristle of his five o’clock shadow
against her skin. When he kissed her, she moaned and opened her
mouth to receive his probing tongue. After a moment, she pulled her
face away and he kissed her throat and her neck, his calloused but
warm hands caressing her naked back and hips.

“I know it’s late, Rowan,” she said,
gasping, “and I’ll be happy to take it slow tomorrow but for now…”
She groaned as he reached between her legs.

“Not to worry, beautiful,” he said hoarsely
as he leaned her back onto the bed. “I’m way ahead of you.”

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning, Ella woke to see her
rumpled cowboy was snoring softly with his arm thrown over his
face. He was wrapped up in the coarse woolen blanket of her single
bed. The bed was too narrow for the two of them and way too short
for a US Deputy Marshal, so Ella had slept on a blanket on the
floor next to the bed. Now she knelt next to the bed and kissed him
on his unshaven cheek.

“I have to go,” she whispered. “Stay here
until I get back, okay?”

His eyes opened sleepily and then closed
again. “Okay,” he said.

Ella hurriedly pulled on her novice habit
and tied her long hair with the strip of rawhide she kept on the
nightstand. She ran down the hallway to the kitchen where she was
already late for her chores. As soon as she entered the kitchen,
she saw Mother Superior standing at the kitchen table, kneading
dough. There were big splashes of white flour spoiling her black
habit. She was alone.

“I’ll do that,” Ella said, moving to Greta’s
side.

“I’m already doing it. Why don’t you check
on the oven?”

Ella tried to gauge Greta’s affect. She was
always fairly cool—very German in that way—but she usually smiled a
good deal. Not this morning.

Ella moved to the oven and looked in. She
used a thick pad to pull four loaves of bread out of the oven and
set them on top of the stove to cool.

She moved to where Greta was kneading the
dough.

“You know I have a visitor,” Ella said,
standing with her hands on her hips.

“We do not bring men into the convent,”
Greta said. “I didn’t think I had to tell you that.”

“It’s Rowan, Greta.”

The nun stopped kneading. “Your man,” she
said with a smile. “He came to you from the future?”

“Yes,” Ella said, grinning. “Yes, he
did.”

Greta reached out and grabbed Ella’s hand.
“Forgive me, Ella,” she said. “I should have known it couldn’t be
anything else.” She dusted off her hands and pulled her apron off.
“Do you have the instant coffee that you brought back?” She moved
to the stove and put a pot on top of it, moving the various lids
around to direct heat under it.

“Great idea,” Ella said, taking the bread
knife and moving to the counter to slice off two large pieces of
steaming brown bread.

“He’s here to help us, isn’t he?” Greta
said, clasping her hands in front of her like she didn’t know what
to do with them.

“Helping people is in his genetic makeup,”
Ella said. She put the bread on a chipped saucer and reached for a
crockery mug for the coffee. “Now that he’s here, we can all stop
worrying.”

“Have you told him of our predicament?”

“Not yet. I’m letting him get there in
increments.”

“He doesn’t know what year it is?”

“Well, he thinks he does,” Ella said,
stirring the instant coffee into the mug.

“He will need time.”

“Not as much as you might think,” Ella said.
She picked up the mug and the plate, gave her friend a wink and
exited the kitchen.

He was awake when she came into the
room.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said, setting
the bread plate and steaming mug on the side table by the bed.

“Where’d you go?” he said, reaching for her
and pulling her onto the bed with him. “Waking up with a hard-on
isn’t nearly as much fun alone.”

“Wow, you really are a romantic, Rowan,”
Ella said. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“You’re so beautiful, Ella,” Rowan said,
still holding her. “I can’t believe I’ve found you. But I’m ready
to hear why you’re living here instead of at your apartment.”

Ella handed him the coffee mug and smiled
ruefully. “Trust me, you’re not, Marshal,” she said.

“No, really. Do you have
any idea how upset everyone was? You really think you can just
disappear like that? I mean, what the hell? Were you just going to
abandon all your stuff in your apartment? Your computer? All your
clothes? Your
passport
?”

Ella could see he was starting to work
himself up. “I can see how crazy it must look—” she said.

“Hell, yes, it’s crazy. And then sneaking
back to get stuff in the middle of the night? What is this place?”
He looked around the room.

“Look, Rowan, I have good answers to all
these perfectly reasonable questions. I promise I do. But let’s do
it in stages, okay? Can’t we just enjoy the fact that we’ve found
each other after all this?”

“No, Ella, we can’t.” He
set the cup down on the table and spilled coffee in the process.
“We could have
been together
all along if that had been any kind of goal for
you. All you had to do was answer your damn phone or, I don’t know,
call
me
for a
change. You act like it’s a fucking miracle we’re together and it
was always just a matter of a phone call.”

“I wish it were that easy.”

“How the hell is it not that easy? Come on,
Ella. I need some answers. Where’s my phone? You need to call your
father, like yesterday.” He pulled the covers back and looked
around the room for his things. He grabbed up his phone from the
side table and peered at the screen.

“The reception here isn’t very good,” Ella
said.

He looked at her in frustration and she
leaned over him and kissed him on the mouth. “Everything in good
time, Rowan.”

He dropped his phone and pulled her on top
of him in the bed.

“Rowan, no,” she said. “We don’t have time
for this and besides, I look like hell.”

“You look beautiful,” he said, kissing her
neck.

She pulled away from him and stood next to
the bed.

“You must have been dating some pretty rangy
skanks back in Alabama if I look beautiful with this rats nest
hair, no razor to shave my legs with and wearing a shapeless nun’s
habit.”

“Is this your subtle way of asking me if I
dated anyone while we’ve been apart?”

“Was I being subtle? I meant to ask right
out.”

“Nobody but you, beautiful. Can you say the
same?”

Ella sat on the edge of the bed. “I got
backed into a date,” she said. Rowan raised his eyebrows.
“Meaning,” she continued, “I didn’t agree to go on a date but ended
up on one all the same.”

“I see. Sometimes those kind are the most
fun.” He drank his coffee and watched her closely.

“This wasn’t one of those times,” she said.
“Don’t be jealous, Rowan. I never got you out of my system, not
even for five minutes.”

“Is that why you stopped calling me and
started screening my calls?”

Ella sighed. “I don’t have a good answer for
that,” she said. “I’m just no good at long-distance
relationships.”

Rowan put his hand on her back. “Guess I
better make sure to keep the distances between us as short as
possible,” he said.

“That would help,” she said, taking his mug
from him and leaning down to kiss him again. When he reached for
her, she pulled back. “We really can’t,” she said. “The whole
convent is up and on high alert. The Mother Superior already knew
you spent the night, which means the others probably know,
too.”

Rowan swung his legs out of bed and sat on
the edge, scratching his head.

“You never told me what you’re doing in a
convent,” he said. “Is there a place to take a shower around
here?”

“No, and you’re going to have to go to the
garden to relieve yourself.”

He gave her an incredulous look.

“I tried to explain it to you last night,”
Ella said, smiling in spite of herself. “Now I’m going to let the
day explain it.” She patted him on the knee. “Finish your
breakfast,” she said. “Get dressed and I’ll be back in a few
minutes to introduce you to your new world.”

As she got up to leave, he reached out and
took her hand.

“Ella?”

“Yes, Rowan?”

“I just want you to know that no matter what
bunch of crazies or whacked out nonsense you’ve got yourself
involved with here, there’s no place on earth I’d rather be.”