A Time Apart: Book One of The Macauley Series Read online

  Olivia reasoned that she could use the opportunity to find out what, exactly, he knew about her and why he was only now interested.

  Aside from feeling shocked at the way this situation was playing out, Olivia was also starting to feel the slightest bit afraid that she’d just met a man who was going to be more problematic for her than she had ever anticipated.

  Still, she really wanted to see him in person to know if the real thing matched up to her fantasy.

  “I’ll be down in 10 minutes,” she said as she hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER 7

  Oh my god, what am I doing? What kind of woman goes downstairs in the middle of the night to meet a total stranger?

  Given that she had dressed in mere minutes and was looking the best she could on such short notice, apparently Olivia was the type of woman who inexplicably did something like that. In fact, she was already well on her way toward the staircase to the lobby.

  No turning back now, she thought as she tried to steady her heartbeat and will herself into an emotional state of zen. Unfortunately, her attempt at calm, cool, and collected was for naught as her legs were shaking so badly they could barely carry her down the hall in a straight line. And the only way Olivia could keep her hands from trembling was to curl them into fists so tight that her fingernails cut half moons into her palms.

  At the landing she inspected her face in the ornate gilded mirror; to underscore just how nervous she was she could actually see the artery in her neck pumping blood through her body at the same rhythm as the heartbeat she heard in her ears. Worried about this tell, Olivia pulled her hair down from its untidy bun to frame her face in an effort to hide the surefire giveaway of the extreme nervousness she was feeling behind a tumbling mass of red curls.

  When she reached the lobby Olivia was reminded just how late it was as except for an overnight desk attendant lazily flipping through a gossip magazine she was the only soul in sight, and the only sound she could hear were her own footsteps echoing on the white marble floors. She looked for William in the chairs in front of the lobby fireplace, but she was alone in the large, empty room lit by exquisite chandeliers that cast a million sparkling rainbows on the walls around her. Olivia sat down in one of the chairs and tried once again to steady her emotions and nerves.

  He had said he was down here, hadn’t he?

  A couple of minutes later a young Yugoslavian woman – a hotel employee, Olivia surmised by her attire – approached and directed her to the bar across the hall where William was apparently waiting for her.

  Right, the bar. Good idea.

  A whiskey was exactly what Olivia needed at the moment. Also, they’d have more privacy to speak in there as they wouldn’t be on display to anyone walking through the lobby - not that there was likely to be a lot of foot traffic after midnight. Olivia steeled her resolve and walked in, feeling even less sure than she had before but hoping it didn’t show on her face. She scanned the room but didn’t see anyone save a bartender who was pouring a large dram of whiskey into a heavy crystal glass. When Olivia turned away from the bar, she saw a man emerge from the shadows to stand in front of the blazing fire on the other wall.

  William.

  Olivia felt her breath catch, and she knew her reaction had been obvious when she saw him smile. While she was extremely nervous, she was also inexplicably overjoyed to see him standing there. Her insides a tangle of emotions, Olivia’s overriding thought was that she was amazed at what a beautiful creature he was. As he walked toward her, she could see that photos didn’t do him justice at all.

  She had pictured a decently sized man of about 5’10” with a lean build; athletic, but not brawny. The man approaching her, while very clearly the same one she’d seen in photos, possessed a vitality and presence that couldn’t be captured on film. William was also much taller than she’d figured – probably closer to 6’4” – broad shouldered, and strongly built with clothes that fit his frame perfectly: a black cashmere sweater falling like liquid silver over a firm chest and taught belly, the charcoal grey wool slacks showing off long, powerful legs. His mouth was somewhat wider than she had thought from his photo. The one thing Olivia hadn’t gotten wrong was that he definitely had lips made for kissing. His eyes were as blue as the Caribbean Sea and his thick, jet black hair was just long enough to fall perfectly – carelessly – into his face.

  No, the photos she had seen could never come close to capturing the vibrancy of the man that stood before her. He wasn’t just handsome – he was stunning.

  And this stunning man hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she entered the room. Olivia was amazed to realize that he was clearly as entranced as she.

  She stood rooted to where she’d entered, her heartbeat drumming in her ears and echoing in her head. She couldn’t stop staring. Gesturing for her to sit down on the couch to his left, William must have known that she would have stood there gazing at him all night if he didn’t break the spell.

  As Olivia moved within inches of him, she could feel a physical current running between them, something she had never experienced with any other man in her life. It was as if he was pulling her to him and she was powerless to resist. She wanted so badly to reach out and touch him, to never let go. She had to remind herself, rather sternly, that he had proven that he was not a man she wanted to be feeling these things for. All Olivia could do to save herself from this overwhelming tide of feelings was to break the electrically-charge silence.

  “Hello William,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  He looked away quickly, toward the doorway, and then back to her – making sure that they were alone – but Olivia couldn’t figure out why that would be necessary. For a few seconds longer he simply stared at her, then shook his head in bewilderment before his gaze traveled up and down her body, finally resting on her face.

  Olivia could feel her body temperature rising and she knew that her face must be flushed. William was clearly fighting a smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth, and all she could think at that moment was that she’d love to wake up to that smile every day, those mischievous eyes sparkling like so many crystals in the firelight. Olivia had no idea what he was thinking, but somehow she knew that he was pleased. With himself or with her, she couldn’t be sure.

  “Hello Olivia.”

  She realized instantly that this was the second time he’d said her name and that she liked it, a lot. In fact, Olivia thought she’d never tire of hearing the way the syllables danced off his tongue, with the deep timbre of his Irish brogue.

  Olivia sat down and curled her body into the corner of the sofa, expecting him to join her. Instead he remained standing, looking down at her for a long while. While he was extremely good at hiding his thoughts – and masking his emotions – his eyes gave away more than he wanted, and she saw a multitude of thoughts playing out in those crystalline orbs. For all of his self-assured behavior and arrogance, Olivia realized that she affected him too. Perhaps not nearly as much, but she took comfort in the knowledge that she had disrupted his confidence. She could see some sort of inner debate taking place behind his eyes in regards to how he wanted to handle her and the situation they were currently in – this strange, magnetic attraction they obviously had for one another.

  While waiting for him to sit, speak, do something – anything – a multitude of questions were running through her mind. All the while, Olivia never took her eyes off his exquisite face. She didn’t necessarily want to break the spell, but she needed him to tell her why he was here, to give her something to go on in explaining this magnetic attraction. Above all she wondered what was so important – so completely urgent – that this strange, self-assured man had needed to see her tonight instead of waiting until the morning.

  And then like any single woman with a history of failed relationships behind her was wont to do, Olivia jumped to the most negative conclusion: William thought he felt something but in order to put his mind at ease, he wanted spend some time with her, during wh
ich he would realize that she was nothing special and then he could go about his life pre-Olivia Donnelly. Whatever his line of thinking, his face told her that he was clearly weighing a lot of issues.

  The minutes ticked on, and still neither of them spoke.

  Finally he turned his back to her and stepped closer to the fireplace, reaching his hands out to warm them by the flames.

  Becoming impatient with the ridiculous silence, Olivia let out a soft sigh – no louder than a regular breath – to communicate her frustration. Hearing it, he turned to face her but still didn’t speak. After staring at her for another long minute, William sighed himself and walked over to sit on the couch, careful to be as far away from her as he could while still occupying the same space. He was still on guard; whatever Olivia had thought would happen tonight – wished, was more like it – the situation was certainly off to an extremely slow start.

  While William turned his body to face Olivia, he didn’t actually look at her. Instead, he looked out into the room, absentmindedly running his hand through his hair and then down across his smooth, perfect chin – the act of a man uncomfortable in his surroundings. He raised his eyes and finally looked Olivia square in the face. She raised her right eyebrow in question. Chuckling under his breath, he turned his head slightly – never letting his eyes leave her face – and motioned for the bartender.

  The silence between them still unbroken – Olivia’s nerves taught like never before – the bartender delivered two crystal glasses of whiskey in front of them. Instead of walking back to the bar to resume his duties, however, he bowed to William and then left the room, closing the heavy wooden doors behind him. Olivia’s heart sped up, if that were possible, because they were finally, truly alone. And, she realized, for the first time since walking into the room she was actually afraid. Not because they were alone, never that.

  But sitting there, without either of them saying a word, she was afraid that she wanted the man before her like nothing she had ever wanted before, and Olivia was adult enough to admit – at least to herself – that she was willing to do just about anything to have him.

  Olivia raised the glass in silent salute to the man in front of her. He smiled, and nodded his head a fraction of an inch in acknowledgement of the gesture. Before drinking, she raised the glass to her nose to take in the caramel smoke wafting from the amber liquid below. Her glass still raised, she lifted her eyes over the brim to look at William.

  “Cheers.”

  As she brought the peaty Connemara to her lips, the smoked liquid coated her tongue and warmed her belly, and she knew a longing in her heart, an aching deep down, and a throbbing between her legs. She closed her eyes, savoring the whiskey, and then felt herself beginning to slip into an almost dreamlike state. Instead of fighting it, Olivia let it wash over her and then the unexplainable visions descended on her – she saw a long life with William unfold in front of her: the two of them walking hand-in-hand through a field of green, down to a river at the bottom of a hill covered in clover; a dog loping after her as William sat on a blanket laughing at the pup’s boundless enthusiasm and awkward gait; she sitting naked in a large, battered antique copper tub, William washing her hair behind her.

  Olivia felt a peace descend on her at the visions, but as she settled in to the fantasy, they were replaced by nightmarish thoughts of death and destruction: William walking toward her with hate emanating from his very being, fury and evil looking out from his normally tranquil blue eyes; Olivia standing in the middle of that same emerald green field screaming and begging William for her life; and finally, their beautiful home turned to cinder and ash as it burned to the ground, her body lifeless on the bank of the river where they had frequently frolicked.

  Olivia was in a deep trance – she couldn’t will the visions away and she couldn’t bring herself back to the present. She felt her body go clammy as little pinpricks of light danced all around her and then the weight of the couch gave way beneath her body as she slid to the ground, the whiskey glass in her hand crashing into a thousand tiny shards next to her.

  “William,” she moaned before everything went black.

  After what could have been minutes, or even hours – she truly had no way of knowing – Olivia’s mind went deeper into its black haze and her body began to feel as if it was being torn in half, a searing, painful sensation taking over her limbs. In the back of her mind Olivia knew that she was thrashing – fighting the burning flames of her mind – but the torture was stronger than she, a pain worse than anything she’d ever experienced before.

  While she battled these dark images she heard a voice in the distance calling her name, repeatedly, and then she felt herself being shaken into consciousness, the burn slowly fading. As she opened her eyes, William was there, his face lingering just inches above her own. When her eyes focused on his – too bright, too blue – Olivia let out a blood-curdling scream, terrified of the man she saw in front of her.

  No one answered that horrific call; no one came to save her.

  Olivia could taste the fear and bile at the back of her throat, the hollow, metallic flavor you get when you bite your tongue. She remembered the visions of William advancing on her with malice in his heart, a man hell-bent on taking her life. Her screams were replaced by sobs, all of her hope at any future – bright, bleak, or otherwise – completely lost the second she had agreed to go downstairs to meet this man.

  Her undoing.

  Olivia emerged from the trance-like state, and even though she wanted to leave she physically could not – she was grounded there, unable to depart the room. Her brain told her to flee, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. She sat there hyperventilating, convinced that she was looking death incarnate square in the eyes. William kept himself from touching her, speaking, or making any movement that would startle her. He sat on the coffee dainty table in front of the couch – surprised that it was holding his weight – his legs spread slightly, hands hanging down between his knees, his head in repose.

  More minutes passed. William could pinpoint the precise moment that she had begun to calm down, her gut-wrenching sobs giving way to stifled cries, which gave way to silence. Too much silence.

  Olivia don’t know when or how she had got there, but when she next became aware of her surroundings, she was on the floor in front of the fire and William was rocking her back and forth, rubbing her hair and whispering to her in Gaelic. She was too worn out to protest, and she couldn’t have screamed if her life had depended on it. At that point, Olivia was resigned to her fate, wrapped in the powerful arms of a man who in her worst nightmare would sooner kill her than love her.

  While Olivia’s thoughts were a jumble, one thing was certain – she hadn’t been dreaming. Somehow, against all odds, she knew that the horrible images that had flashed through her mind weren’t visions, but rather, had been her own memories from a time hundreds of years before. She didn’t know who, or what, William was, but she knew that she had loved him before and because of that love, she had died a painful, terrible death.

  Going back through the visions – both good, and bad – Olivia felt the hysteria welling up inside of her again, but she pushed it down with all of the force she had left at her disposal. If she was going to die, she vowed she’d be dignified about it.

  As she moved out of his arms, William didn’t fight her but his hands did linger as she slid away, as if he was trying to hold onto something significant. Looking back at him – really looking for the first time – Olivia could see quite clearly that he was no ordinary man. As an atheist, Olivia didn’t give much credence to angels or demons, heaven or hell, but she did know that humans didn’t walk alone on this earth. William was not human, but he wasn’t a ghost either.

  “What are you?” she asked, her voice barely audible above the logs crackling in the fire.

  “You know me then,” was his anguished response. It wasn't so much a question as a statement.

  How could she respond? Prior to her research the night
before, she would have sworn that she had never seen him in her life. But she knew that wasn’t true, for she knew now that she had seen him – them – as she had dreamed on the flight from San Francisco. She had seen him lying with her, touching the most private and intimate parts of her body. And just last night she’d fantasized about making mad, passionate love to him outside, under the stars. She hadn’t made that up – it had happened before, perhaps hundreds of times. She knew this man’s body, including what he liked and how it liked it. Oh yes, she knew him but not the nightmare version of him, the man who had killed her. But more importantly, she realized, Olivia didn’t know herself – that she of a time long forgotten.

  “Who ... what ... am I then?” Olivia asked, fear creeping back into her voice.

  “I don’t know much about who you are today,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I only know who you were and when you were. In the year 1658, you were Ceara, my fierce beauty. You were my wife and I loved you more than you can know.”

  William paused, waiting for her to speak but Olivia didn’t interrupt him as she felt he needed – more for himself than for her, she knew – to tell her who she was, what she had been to him, and how she had died.

  “If asked at the time, I would have said that I would have given anything – my life, even – for you. Instead, I took it.”

  He stopped speaking and Olivia could tell he was remembering the same things she’d just seen in her own memories. His face was a mask of loathing as he saw himself chasing her down to break her neck while he sucked her body dry of blood.

  Olivia had seen the love they had shared once upon a time as real, and as potent as if it were happening today. How could he have turned on her? What had she done to deserve that fate? And who was he to sit there now, forcing these memories to the surface when she never should have been able to remember?