Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (14 page)

She put her head in her hands. She’d come on to a guy who was in love with
Guinevere
. Guinevere was in a league even movie stars couldn’t be in, let alone a mousy-looking romance writer. No one could remember what color her eyes were two minutes after she left them.

Write what you know. Like she would know anything about love. Or men.

She scrolled down to where she introduced the hero. What he needed was a few scars. Gawain was a fighter after all. And there had to be a lot more dirt in Camelot than she’d put in. More soot from the fires. The place would be drafty at night. And maybe it wasn’t completed. It still had sections of wooden palisades in the outer wall.

Sometime later she realized she was writing because she didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to think about how she felt about the man in the other bedroom, since it was going to go nowhere, and she didn’t want to think about how she had totally embarrassed herself tonight. She sat back in the desk chair. If only she could just leave right now, run away.

But she couldn’t. He might be right. If Mordred wasn’t wild about the fact that she knew who he was, she might need that big, protective guy around.

She’d probably embarrass herself again tomorrow, making calf eyes at him or something. She got up and put on her sleep shirt and got into the double bed. Depressing. And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him, lying in his own bed in a room with all that Oakwood plaid. Did he sleep in the buff?

Oh, she shouldn’t have thought about that.

How she fell asleep that night she never knew. Or why. But she did. And woke up strangely rested, dreams dissipating in the morning light.

It would be okay. Somehow she could trust Gawain to make it okay.

She heard him moving around in the kitchen.
Very well then.
She couldn’t avoid him, if she was stuck here. She’d just have to have more self-control today. She gathered her clothing, slipped into the bathroom, showered, and washed her hair. There was a hair dryer under the sink. The very concept of a man from the fifth century owning a hair dryer, even if Oakwood provided it, made her chuckle. That chuckle further relieved her tension. Maybe today he’d come forth with confidences about his love for Guinevere. She could use those in her novel.

That
was what he was to her. Research. She’d never known a man up close other than her father, and you never ascribed real emotions and reactions to your father. Fathers were another animal altogether from a man your own age. Or Gawain’s age.

She brushed her hair ruthlessly straight, despairing for the millionth time that it wasn’t chestnut or auburn or endowed with natural honey-blond highlights. It was brown. A particularly undistinguished brown. Of course, these days you could highlight and lowlight, or make it vibrant red if you dared. But she deserved plain brown hair. She was a plain-brown-hair kind of girl.

That was just what she needed to anchor her. That’s who she was. Someone a man like Gawain would never notice. A person who wrote about other people’s love stories. So today she’d just apologize to him about getting the wrong idea about his kindness, and that would clear the air. She might be mousy looking, but she wasn’t a mouse.

She pulled the white turtleneck tee she’d ordered from Lands’ End a couple of weeks ago down over her jeans firmly and opened the bathroom door.

*  *  *

Gawain started scrambling her some eggs when he heard her drying her hair. He always had bacon, and he made some coffee. He’d better get to the store if they wanted to eat tonight.

He’d not only had access to her dreams last night, but he’d also decided just how to address the . . . the . . . issue. He’d just pretend it never happened. She’d take her cue from him and it would be as though it really
hadn’t
happened. That would be good.

God, but you’re an idiot. Couldn’t you control yourself? You scared her.
No. He wouldn’t think about that. He’d fixed it up by entering her dreams.

She came out from the back looking like . . . the Christian version of an angel. Her soft hair framed her face. You thought her skin was luminous until you saw her eyes. Then you revised your definition of “luminous.”

“Hey, your eggs are just ready.” He took down a plain white cup and poured it full of coffee. “Sorry—no Equal, and no cream. Can you do black?”

She looked around, a little dazed. Then she blushed. “Yeah. About last night . . .”

“Did you sleep well?” He scraped the eggs onto a plate.

She took the plate he thrust at her. “Thanks.” She looked around. “I did sleep well. But . . .”

“Sit, sit.” He shushed her over to the little table. “Eat hearty. We have a lot to do today.”

“Gawain, I want you to know . . . about last night. . . .”

By the Grail!
Women could
never
take a hint. They had to talk over every detail of a failure until it was fixed in everyone’s minds forever. He took a breath. “What about it?” He tried to look expectant. He couldn’t help that his eyes slid to the side.

She blinked. “I’m sorry I reacted badly. . . .”

Just push on through.
“If you mean having you here is some kind of imposition, it isn’t. Oakwood apartments
are awash with loneliness. All those transient corporate types, you know.”
Why
had he mentioned loneliness? He rushed on. “It’s good to have a roommate for a while.” He gestured toward her eggs. “They aren’t any better cold.”

She blinked again, confused. She remembered all too clearly what she’d felt against her belly last night, and she wanted to
talk
about it, for God’s sake. After a little silence when her eyes bored in on his expression, she turned to her food. He watched her delicate bowlike mouth slip the eggs from her fork. He couldn’t help but smile a little. He’d provided for her. And he’d distracted her from her need to discuss things that should not be discussed. He turned back to the bowl of eggs and splashed some more into the pan. “I was up early.” Or late, as you would have it. Or all night long, if truth be told. “And I checked on some other coin dealers. I think that’s our best shot.”

This Internet was really a marvelous tool. Mordred sat back in the leather couch and sipped a glass of red wine better made than any from the vines the Romans had left in Gaul. The lamp next to him cast a golden cone of light that kept back the dark spaces of his loft. Out the wall of windows, the lights of the city were winking on as dusk settled in. He’d been on the Internet all day, using the girl’s computer.

One could talk to people far away as though they were in this very room, just by entering the words and letters of this new language he had learned. For once he thanked Arthur’s diligence in making him wield a pen as well as a sword when he was a young man. Now, because he was literate, he could find people. And they could find him. What better for his purpose?

It didn’t take him long to learn the secret code to attract the ones he wanted. “White,” “pure,” “American,”
“liberty,” “taxes,” “big government,” “Jew,” “nigger,” “fag.” Who they were was in their words, and he fed it back to the Internet, and the responses came pouring in.

These were the disaffected ones, the angry ones. The ones that could be fooled into fighting for him. They would fight for a cause and never know that he had assumed the mantle of that cause until the cause was he and he was the cause. They would put him in power.

They were his.

Now to bring them to his side.

“You speak brave words,” he typed. “But where are the deeds that make the words live?”

Immediately a chorus of responses cascaded onto the “post” he’d made. They talked of gatherings of protest. Mere shouting, of course. They talked of pamphlets written. To a small audience of believers only, of course.

He searched the Web sites he had found for evidence of deeds. Long ago some leaders whose words spoke for the side of right and justice had been killed. Nothing recent but a couple of doctors who performed some surgery they didn’t like, and some isolated instances of suspected homosexuals. Nothing large scale since that government building in Oklahoma years ago. That meant they craved someone to take them to the next step. On several Web sites he saw a single saying, often available on T-shirts or banners:

The tree of liberty must occasionally be watered by the blood of patriots.

That would do nicely. Add something from the Bible as sauce. He entered several keywords in a concordance of the Bible. Many phrases came up. He scanned them. The Lord’s Prayer. Excellent. Religion was always like oil to a fire of ignorance.

He returned to his posting, scanned the replies. Time to put a red-hot poker up their anuses:

The tree of liberty must occasionally be watered by the blood of those who have trespassed against it. Anything less sends a message of weakness.

Mordred sat back and reached for his goblet of wine. He watched the replies roll in.

Gawain fumbled in the hall for the keys to his apartment, arms full of grocery bags. They’d stopped at Ralphs after a very silent trip home. It shouldn’t have surprised Diana that he wouldn’t let her help carry any.

“Did I leave the keys in the car?” he muttered, balancing his load and shoving a hand in his front jeans pocket. “I always put them . . .”

“Right jacket pocket,” she murmured absently. It had been a depressing day.

“You’re right,” Gawain said, startled, coming up with his keys. He unlocked the door, looking at her strangely. “I never put them there. Too easy to lose.”

Oops. Shouldn’t do that. It only draws attention. I should know that by now.

Another little “quirk” she had—finding lost things. She always knew where they were. But she’d learned to camouflage that little knack by asking a few questions of people before she told them where to look for whatever they’d lost. She threw her coat on the couch and pushed herself up onto one of the stools at the bar as Gawain put away the groceries.

“At least we’ll have Equal tomorrow,” he remarked. His light tone masked a disappointment that matched hers. “I know oxtails don’t sound great, but cheap cuts are all I learned to cook in prison.”

Had he seen her expression at the meat counter? “If they’re as good as the brisket, I’m a lucky woman.” She put her chin in her cupped hands, propped up by her elbows.

“At least you’ve got your car and your license back.”

They’d reported Jim Medraught missing. Diana had gotten a lecture about taking in illegal immigrants. The detective had liked Gawain for the shooting until Diana swore he was just a neighbor dragged into taxi service. Of course no one really believed a guy like Gawain would be obsessed with Diana, so they let it drop. Cheery all the way around. And the police thought Mordred had just headed back to Canada. They wouldn’t be lifting a finger to look for him. “Yeah. But no Mordred.”

He popped open some more white wine. This one was a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile called Caliterra. “We got closer. Here, this will make you feel better.”

She sipped. It was great. “I’m not sure we’re closer.” They’d found the coin dealer Mordred had visited but no information on Mordred himself. That was depressing enough, but all day, in and out of the coin shops from as far away as Saratoga to downtown Marin, she’d been hyperaware of Gawain’s body moving inside his clothing, all muscle and sinew, just as she’d seen it after his shower yesterday. She’d never really felt the physicality of a man before. Maybe she’d never been around men. Boys in her classes at college didn’t count. Gawain had a mature man’s bulk of muscle. His face had lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes born of experience and hardship. And she was aware of him with parts of her body that she’d never realized knew how to recognize a man. More than recognize. If she weren’t careful, she would embarrass herself again. He hadn’t let her apologize for her sad lapse when she’d turned a simple act of comfort into something more . . . or less. Maybe his way was best.

She sipped her wine in silence.

“So, my writer friend,” he said finally, as he dumped the oxtails into a big iron pot. “If you were writing this in a novel, what would our heroes do to pry Mordred’s location out of the coin dealer?”

That made her smile a little. His eyes glinted in return. “Uh . . . well . . . First of all, only one of them would have accosted him the first time, so he wouldn’t recognize the second one.”

“Oh.” His voice fell. “And why is that?”

“So the one he didn’t recognize could pose as some kind of federal agent looking for stolen coins without proper provenance.” She lifted her brows at him. Did he know provenance?

“Every antique must have documentation saying where it comes from, so the dealer knows it isn’t stolen. I’m not
that
ignorant.” He looked at her reproachfully. “So you would imply that this man accepted these coins to sell without provenance.”

“Which he did, because Mordred doesn’t have any documentation.”

“And the second one would frighten him into telling how to reach Mordred.”

“All this assumes he knows where to contact Mordred at all.”

Gawain sighed. “Yeah. And Mordred would be cleverer than that.”

“We don’t even know if he’ll return to the dealer or when.” This thing was all hopeless.

“He may not need to sell them if he’s stealing credit cards.” They both knew that left them nowhere. Gawain put some butter in to brown the oxtails. A lovely sizzle rose from the pan.

“Give me something to do,” she said, sliding off her chair.

“You want to cut up some garlic?” He handed her a knife.

“Yeah. I want to cut up
something
.”

He grinned at her.

God, that grin.

“You’d be ruthless with a sword.”

She laughed. “You could teach me. Why shouldn’t girls know how to use a sword?”

“I might have known you’d want lessons in swordplay.” He sounded disgusted.

She looked at him quizzically. “Why?”

He paused. “I know you better than you think.”

“Which is not at all,” she harrumphed as she peeled mango.

“I’ve read your books,” he reminded her.