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Mortification swept through her. "I'm sorry."
He abruptly stood. "Don't be." He pulled a hand through his hair before he asked, "Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Very well, then I shall return to London." He started for the door when Quinn called to him.
"Wait. Why? What's the rush?"
He didn't look like he was going to answer. Then he turned so suddenly and faster than she thought possible he was standing inches from her, nose to nose.
"Because when a woman kisses a man the way you kissed me last night, it makes that man forget himself. And in this particular case I don't want to forget myself."
She was almost speechless. The look of lust burning in those green orbs had her pulse racing, but she did manage to ask rather weakly, "Why in this particular case?"
His gaze never wavered when he answered, "Because it wasn't me you were kissing."
And with that he turned and left the room. She heard his footfalls on the stairs and the closing of her front door. Moments later, a powerful engine roared to life then quickly faded in the distance. Quinn just sat on her bed dumbfounded.
"What the...?"
Chapter Fourteen
Three days later, Quinn was sitting on a plane heading to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to meet, Tessa, her friend with Mayan expertise that she had sent the pictures of Derek's odd necklace to.
She'd spent far more time thinking about Gabriel's rather abrupt departure than she should have and though she knew she needed to talk with him, she just wasn't ready to face him.
He was upset because she kissed him believing him to be Archer and he was right. How did she explain her feelings for a man who'd been dead for over three hundred years? It was one thing to theorize about past lives and souls calling to each other. Not as easy to explain that she was actually in love with a man who lived three hundred years ago and she had literally moved through time to be with him.
Oh, she could see how that explanation would go over. She wondered if she would get all of the words from her mouth before the paddy wagon pulled up and the doctors, wielding large syringes filled with mind-numbing narcotics, came filing out of the back to take her away.
The other point she wanted to make to Gabriel, one she knew based on his reaction the other day wouldn't be well received, was she truly believed they were drawn to each other because in some sense he was Archer. Archer had vowed to find her and he had. She knew this unequivocally because she had gone twenty-seven years without finding love, had never even known what she was missing. But when she found it, she knew it was real. She knew it was because Gabriel and Archer were one in the same and she was drawn to that man like a moth to a flame. But convincing Gabriel of this, hell, she'd have an easier time convincing him that aliens were camping out in his backyard.
Her thoughts turned to her friend's phone call, the conversation that had her catching the company plane to Mexico. It was because of a book, a very old book that had her catching a red-eye. The Dresden Codex was a Mayan book so old it was written in glyphs. It contained astronomical tables that were frighteningly accurate. The two most notable were the Lunar series, that mapped the cycles of the moon, and the Venus cycle, that detailed the schedule of sightings of Venus in the eastern sky just before sunrise.
Using these tables the Mayans made predictions on the success of agricultural crops, of wars, coming illnesses and the like. But the Codex covered another topic, though not in the same detail as the other two: time travel. There was another chart in the Codex that plotted out the stars and their alignment in the sky during the various phases of the moon's cycle and the location of Venus.
What her friend Tessa, an anthropologist who specialized in Mayan culture, recently uncovered was a link to this mapping and their meditative rituals: rituals that involved transcending one's current consciousness. She'd uncovered accounts where the meditator was successful in projecting their soul onto a spot on the celestial line when the stars were lined up in such a manner with the moon and Venus as to create a rip in the space-time continuum or, in layman's terms, the Mayans had actually discovered time travel.
The glyphs on Derek's necklace corresponded to the celestial alignment most conducive for projecting through time. However, there seemed to be some negative effect on the human body from the travel. Tessa had yet to quantify it but it was so devastating that the Mayans quickly abandoned the practice almost as soon as they started it. Quinn was eager to learn more and so she dropped everything and caught a plane.
Tessa met Quinn at the airport and as soon as they saw each other it was as if all the years since graduation dissolved away. Time in Mexico made Tessa's mocha-colored skin darker than ever, making her pale green eyes even more dynamic. Her tall willowy body was sculpted with more muscles from work in the field but the expression on her face and her voice were exactly as Quinn remembered.
"It's so good to see you," Quinn whispered as she embraced her friend.
"I was so glad when you called me. It has been too long, Quinn. Way too long."
"I couldn't agree more."
Tessa stepped back and admired her friend. "I've known you a long time. Business first?"
As they drove toward the temple, Quinn studied it with awe. It was unbelievable to her how well preserved they were considering their age. She loved it here, had planned to study the temples with Tessa until she stumbled onto a forgotten castle in England and everything changed.
"So how's your work at Whispering Winds? I heard the Duke is a hottie."
Quinn didn't know if Nicholas was a hottie since she had avoided any contact with him, but even if he was, it wasn't Nicholas that made her heart beat faster.
"I haven't met him yet," Quinn confessed.
