Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (10 page)

“A warrior doesn’t sleep through anyone moving around him. He was playing possum.” Strange colloquialism for someone from the fifth century. His deep voice held no expression. But as he glanced up, he saw the look on her face. His gaze strayed briefly to the knife and back to her with no apology. “I’ve got a gun, too. Or had one. You already know that.” He examined her face. “But I’m not a danger to you. I’m here to protect you.”

“Yeah. So you said.” And what else would a stalker say?

“While you’re deciding about me, look around. See if anything is missing.”

That seemed sensible. One way or another, they had to find Medraut. Mordred. But she had no idea what she was looking for. The room seemed just as she had left it except for a very large guy with . . . blue—they were definitely blue eyes right now.
Oh, shit.

He sighed. “You had your purse with you?”

She nodded.

“Any other money in the house?”

“He had a bag of coins on him when he got here. I can check around for it. . . .”

“He wouldn’t leave them behind. But it’s not like they’re spendable cash.”

She sighed. “I took him to a dealer yesterday and traded one for two thousand in cash.”

He pressed his unfortunately delectable lips together in chagrin, then forced a smile. “Well, that’s one place to look for him later today.”

He pushed past her into the little living room. Diana trailed after him. She looked around. “Oh no.” She went to the desk and slid some papers around as though her computer and the power cord could be hiding under them. “He’s got my computer.” All her books, all her research, was on that computer. Thank goodness she’d saved her work to a thumb drive, or she’d have lost everything. What could Mordred do with a computer?

“Okay.” Gawain looked grim.

“Why wouldn’t he take his sword?” It leaned against the desk, dried blood on the steel.

“Too difficult to conceal. Besides, he’ll move on to better weapons. You showed him how guns work.” A stab of guilt struck through her. Gawain’s gaze fell on her mandolin. He smiled. “Do you still play?”

“Yes.”
Still
play? What did that imply? She frowned. How long had he been stalking her?

He closed down. “Yes, well, never mind.” He stalked into the kitchen and bore down immediately on the wooden knife holder. Two slots were empty, the one for the big kitchen knife and a paring knife. “In the dishwasher?” he asked.

She shook her head. Unlike swords, knives could be concealed.

“Doesn’t matter.” This guy was really a glass-half-full kind of person.

“He . . . he can’t be far away,” she said. “I wasn’t gone more than half an hour.”

“He could be anywhere. Buses run this early. BART trains. Or he could have stolen a car.”

“He wouldn’t know about any of those.”

“He would if he saw them on television, or heard people talking about them. He saw you driving when you took him around yesterday.”

Oh yeah. Adapter. What an unusual “special power.” Not exactly the kind of powers X-Men had. She gave her stalker a rueful look. “I really botched this up, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t know,” he said, and his voice was surprisingly soft. “I didn’t realize that. I thought. . . .” But he apparently thought better of what he was going to say and trailed off. He felt more familiar, more real, to her in that moment than anyone else she had ever met. That was dangerous. And he was looking at her . . . like she was some kind of lifeline and he was a drowning man. That didn’t make her feel scared or anything.

He broke the mood and took a breath. “If anyone botched it, it was me, right from the first.” He looked around, checked the kitchen window locking mechanism. “So, we’ll go to my place and I’ll get some things. I’m moving in.”

Diana felt her jaw drop. “What? You are
not
moving in here.”

“Or you could move in with me. That’s better. Mordred doesn’t know where I live. It was never any good trying to protect you from afar.”

“I don’t need protection from anybody but you.” She was actually standing with her hands on her hips. If she wrote that in a novel it would seem trite. But apparently people really did stand that way when they were angry.

“You know who Mordred is. He’ll return and make sure you don’t tell anybody.”

“You mean
kill
me?” She shook her head impatiently. “All I ever did was help him.”

“Doesn’t matter. The man is evil, Diana.”

“And you aren’t? I don’t even know you, and you want to move in.”

“Oh.” That took him aback. “But you know my name from the legends.”

“That means nothing. All those were written about a thousand years after you were . . . you should have been dead.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged again apologetically. “And they did exaggerate. Mostly.”

“The part about the strength of ten men?”

“Yeah. Not ten.” He looked abashed.

Oh,
that
made her feel better. “The honor?”

A fleeting look of regret or shame crossed his face and was gone. “Not that honorable.”

She remembered the tale of the Green Knight. In that story Sir Gawain vowed to give the Green Knight anything he got from his wife and then neglected to mention the magic girdle she gave him. He did tell the Green Knight about the kisses she bestowed on him. That was honorable. Unless . . . “Your relationship with the Green Knight’s wife was a little more than kisses, right? Anyway, you lost your strength in some versions of the legend, for that transgression.”

He looked away. “I didn’t actually lose my strength. The Christians told that version to make it a better lesson about why you shouldn’t lie. Even lies of omission.”

He didn’t deny he’d taken more than kisses from the Green Knight’s wife. He was
so
not staying in her apartment.
Wait a minute.

“Gawain was Mordred’s half-brother, along with Gareth, Geheris, and Agravain.” This guy might be as evil as Mordred. If Mordred was really evil.

“Nope.” He was matter-of-fact. “Not sure why I got tagged with that. By the time anybody wrote the stories down, maybe they just assumed I belonged with the others because my name started with ‘G.’ Poetic license, I guess.”

“But you
were
a knight of the Round Table.” This man really
knew
Arthur and Guinevere. If that shining moment existed, he’d experienced it. But when she’d seen him . . .

He shook his head. Got that wrong too. “I was too young. Legends get time frames mixed up.”

Yeah. She’d seen him at ten or eleven, on the day Arthur probably died. That made him pretty young to be Mondred’s half-brother too. “Then when did you do all those deeds in the legends, if the Saxons overran Camelot?”

He glanced away. “Didn’t happen right away. My father and a few knights held out for a time. After the Saxons finally prevailed we formed a resistance of sorts. We punished those Saxon lords who abused the people. We raided their lands, killed their cattle, that sort of thing. The Saxons started the legends you read.”

Resisting the Saxons must have been a hard life. But still, he’d know something about how it really was in Camelot . . . even if he was young when it all happened. He could tell her. And
how
she wanted to know, to believe in Merlin, in Arthur and . . . She wanted to believe this man was Gawain, the semiperfect knight, sent by Merlin to protect her. Who wouldn’t?

And that was a problem. “Why me?”

He held his face very still. But he couldn’t hold the color of his eyes still. They roiled with swirling color. “Why not you?” he said after a moment. “You’re a damsel in distress, aren’t you? Code of a knight and all.” He shrugged as though to conceal the fact that he was lying. He didn’t lie very well. Maybe a “parfait knight,” as he was called in the Medieval texts, wouldn’t. “Get your purse.” He glanced toward the window as the first spatter hit the pane. “And a raincoat. I’ll come back for your things.”

“I am
not
going anywhere with you.” He just assumed she’d follow orders. How fifth century of him.

His face turned hard. “You’re coming with me or I’m staying here. I’m not leaving you alone where Mordred can find you.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll call the police.” Would she? “Home invasion.”

He stalked up to her, exasperated. She didn’t even come to his shoulder. Weren’t people supposed to be smaller back then? She swallowed. “You are my responsibility,” he practically growled. The police can’t protect you from Mordred. I can. So don’t make me tie you up and throw your pretty little iPhone in the toilet.”

He knew a lot about her. From stalking her. And that was exactly the kind of threat a stalker would make. Her fear must have shone in her eyes. He looked embarrassed.

“I don’t mean to frighten you,” he said grudgingly. “But don’t be stupid. I’ll . . . I’ll tell you about Camelot. You’d like that. I’ll find Mordred. I’ll kill him, and then you’ll be free of me. Mordred must be what I was supposed to protect you from.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“My father didn’t tell me . . . exactly.” He looked uncomfortable.

“Oh, great.” But he had her. She wanted to know about Camelot more than anything. Enough to take a chance on a stranger? A stranger from the fifth century . . . yeah. How often did an opportunity like that come along? To her, apparently, twice.

Gawain lived in one of those Oakwood corporate apartments over on Dolores, furnished with everything, down to the silverware. Which was too bad. You could usually tell a lot about people by where they lived. Diana always used home settings in her books to reveal telling details about her hero and heroine. All she could tell from this place was that Gawain didn’t think of it as home.

“We’ve got a few hours,” he said as he shut the door. “The coin dealer probably doesn’t open until ten or eleven. And if he wants a gun or an identity card, the action on the streets doesn’t start until late afternoon.
If
he’s still in San Francisco.” He gestured around the living room. It was done in burgundy, hunter green, and navy blue to appeal to Oakwood’s masculine residents. Did they have a feminine version? “It won’t be a hardship on you to stay here. See? All the amenities. Flat-screen TV with TiVo. Home theater system.”

He moved to the kitchen through the little dining area. “Microwave. Basic small appliances. We can cook here pretty comfortably.”

She followed him, hoisting her bag, heavy with Leonardo’s book, up over her shoulder. Actually, Gawain had a top-of-the-line KitchenAid mixer, and an industrial-strength blender. Would Oakwood provide that kind of stuff to transient corporate types? She noticed a well-thumbed copy of a Sheila Lukens cookbook and some computer printouts with the Food Network logo on them scattered over the counter.

“Do you cook here?”

“Uh. Yeah.” He gathered up the recipes and stuffed them in a random drawer as though they were pornography. Where had a fifth-century guy learned to cook? Except haunches of venison over an open fire. Women did all the cooking back then, what cooking there was.

“How long have you been here?”

“A month or so.” He pushed past her and led the way into the back. “My bedroom.” He waved to an open door. Boy, Oakwood liked plaid. He pushed open a door across the narrow hall. “Bathroom. Uh, there’s a tub if you like baths better than showers.”

Did he know she liked baths? Scary . . . It was really quite amazing that she had no idea what he would say
before he said it. Why
was
that? Because he was from the fifth century like Medraught and Merlin, whom she also couldn’t hear? Was it a time thing?

“And in here’s your bedroom. I . . . uh, use it as an office. It’s only a full-size bed, but . . .” He trailed off. He’d make a really bad real estate agent. The room was tidy. The desk had the newest version of the MacBook Pro laptop open on it. She practically drooled. She’d wanted to replace her old iMac for forever. He looked back at her. “A little institutional, but not sinister. Just make yourself at home. I’ve been up all night, so I could use a . . . uh . . . well, a shower, and then you can tell me what you need from your apartment.”

She nodded thoughtfully. She’d rather be in her own place, but he might have a point about Medraught. Mordred.
If
Mordred was looking for her.
If
he was Mordred. What a mess!

She sat in the big green squishy leather couch with the striped and plaid throw pillows while he went into the bathroom. She heard the thunk of boots on the floor and the rush of water.

This whole thing was as strange as it got. An honest-to-god knight? To protect
her
?

Nope. This was all some hoax by a very sick man and she’d better get out of here pronto.

But he knew Medraught of Orkney was Medraught’s full name. He looked just like that boy she’d seen in the fifth century. And then there were the eyes . . .

What could be stranger than the fact that she’d gone back in time using a machine made by Leonardo da Vinci? Maybe he
was
Gawain. She was definitely not in Kansas anymore.

She looked around the living room. Nothing personal here. Okay. A book. She scooted over to the little side table and turned it around.
The Missing Manual
for MacBook
Pro. He’d been studying how to work his new computer. Not revealing.

The shower still hissed from the bathroom. She took a breath and decided. She refused to tiptoe, but she did walk very quietly back to his bedroom and slipped through the half-open door.
Ahhh.
Bookshelves. Lots of them. Crammed with books. This was more like it. Books always told you something about their owner. She went over to peer at the titles.
Wow.
Eclectic. Modern mechanics, Proust, Kurt Vonnegut, some manga, lots of history . . . And an entire set of romance novels by Diana Dearborn.

Oh my. They weren’t pristine, either. The spines were bent. Someone had read them. Unless he bought them used,
he
had read them. She felt a blush rising as she straightened.

“Of course I’d want to read them.”

She jumped out of her skin and whirled around. He was standing there with only a towel draped around his hips and tucked in precariously on one side. He held his boots and an armful of his discarded clothes. She noted all that, even as the heat rose in her chest and neck and face. What was making her blink was all that expanse of chest dusted with dark hair, and how broad and muscled his shoulders were. And then there were the nipples tightened from the cool air after the warmth of his shower and the bulge of his biceps where he held his clothes. And let’s not forget the corrugated abs and the narrow hips. The feeling between her legs was almost pain. Really different reaction than she’d had to Mordred in the same state of dress. Gawain smelled like soap. An image of him washing himself all over in the shower with a bar of soap floated around in her mind and wouldn’t dissipate. His hair was wet, and though he’d toweled it dry, a drip of water coursed down his chest. . . .