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“So remind me which one is yours.”
Toby turned away. “Neither of them. Daire, the taller one, is in love with Lorcan.” She nodded to the woman on the sidelines.
“I didn’t even see her there,” Alix said.
Toby laughed. “I know what you mean. See that flower bed on the far left? It gives me the best view of the men. I water the flowers in that poor bed for so long they’re in danger of being waterlogged. But then, whenever Lorcan and I feel we’re being ignored, we get the men back by doing yoga—with lots of rear-end-up poses.”
Alix was watching Toby. “It sounds like you’ve set up a family here, but Mom said they’re all going to leave soon.”
“Yes,” Toby said, her voice showing her dread of that event. “In about two and a half weeks Graydon will return to his country and announce his engagement to another woman.”
Alix put her hand on her friend’s arm. “Mom said you and Graydon were becoming …” She didn’t finish that sentence because she thought it was better not to tell everything her mother, Victoria, had to say about Graydon and Toby. “He’s going to break her heart!
” Victoria had said, anger in her voice. “He’s going to ride away on his black stallion, sword in hand, and leave dear little Toby crying so hard her life will be destroyed.”
Since her mother tended to dramatically exaggerate at times, Alix hadn’t paid a lot of attention to what she’d said. But now, looking at Toby’s face, she thought maybe her mother was right.
Looking back out the window, Alix saw that the men had stopped trying to kill each other and were picking up equipment. They’d soon be coming inside.
“Why don’t you and I go to Kingsley House and talk?” Alix said. “I want to hear every word of what’s been going on while I was away. Besides, I have a few things I want to tell you.”
“Your dad said you were terrorizing Jared’s whole office.”
“No, of course not,” Alix said as they walked toward the front door. “Well, maybe a little.”
The two women laughed all the way to Kingsley House, and it was only later that Toby realized she hadn’t left a note to tell Graydon where she was. But she shrugged. It wasn’t as though there was anything permanent between them. They were roommates and that was all.
“Graydon,” Toby said for what seemed to be the hundredth time, “I don’t know anything about the history of Japanese tattoos. I’m really glad that, in their quest to find more goods for importing to the U.S., sailors sometimes endured the pain of having them done. That’s all deeply interesting, but I’ve been a little too busy to give tattoos my full attention.”
She was glaring at him, her eyes letting him know that she’d had enough of his very strange behavior in the week since the dinner party. After she’d returned from spending the day with Alix and Jared and other friends, Graydon had greeted her as though she’d been away for a year. He’d swooped her into his arms and kissed her in a very intimate way.
It hadn’t helped that for that entire day, she’d been lectured by members of the Kingsley family about how she must not get too close to Graydon. As if she weren’t already deeply aware of it, they repeatedly told her that he was going to leave soon and she’d probably never see him again.
“You will be devastated when he leaves,” Victoria said, her lovely face full of fear as well as warning.
Their words reminded Toby of what she already knew, and by the time she was ready to leave, her resolve had hardened. The dinner party had brought her and Graydon closer, but she knew she must stop it. It didn’t help when she entered her house and Graydon pulled her into his arms and kissed her as she’d never been kissed before. In the past his kisses had been reserved. Nice but not full of … well, of passion. But the man who met her at the door didn’t seem to be Prince Graydon but someone else. Her lover, was the first thought that came to her mind.
The truth was that if Lorcan and Daire hadn’t been there, every word Toby had heard that day, every warning of the dire consequences of falling for Graydon, would have flown out the window. She had no doubt that she would have given in to his kisses to the point of losing her virginity on the dining room table.
But Lorcan and Daire were there, both of them staring in openmouthed astonishment, their Lanconian reserve overridden by their shock.
It was Daire who dropped a stack of books, thus reminding the two people who were so deeply kissing, with Toby’s leg around Graydon’s hip, that they weren’t alone.
“Put me down!” she hissed.
“Yes, of course,” he answered. “Later, in private, we’ll be together.”
He moved away too fast for her to answer him that they would not “be together” later. When Toby looked at Daire, she saw his disapproval.
Embarrassed, Toby ran up to her room. When throwing cold water on her face didn’t cool her, she stripped off and stepped into an icy shower. As she shivered under the water, she began to have visions of Graydon’s hands on her, of her hands on him. At one point, she seemed to see his smile as he promised to spend his life with her—then he slipped a gold ring onto her finger.
She put her hands over her face and let the cold water beat down on her. This had to stop! It couldn’t go on. She must do whatever it took to halt these fantasies about him. He belonged to another woman. No! His body, his mind, his very soul belonged to another country. He loved that place so much that he was willing to marry a woman he didn’t love, which would probably alienate his beloved brother. If Graydon had such firm principles that he was willing to do all that, then Toby was going to help him by not further complicating his life. She wasn’t going to make his parting harder for him—or her—than it was already going to be.
Besides, she had her own sanity to protect.
By the next morning she’d strengthened her vow to just be friends with Graydon. The way to do that was to bury herself in work—and maybe that would put a stop to her ridiculous visions. She had two jobs and she dove into them, trying her best to fill her mind with tasks that needed to be done.
Over the next week she spent a lot of time in the garden that Jared had given her to landscape. However, the first time she went there alone she had visions of the garden at the BEYOND TIME house. But she could imagine only a part of it and she kept thinking that there was a full grown tree missing. She thought of asking Dr. Huntley if he knew anything about that garden, but she decided it was better not to dwell on it. The house wasn’t hers and truthfully, she had no desire to ever enter it again.
