Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (3 page)

           
“All
these battle terms,” he murmured, reaching for his wine glass.

           
“I
don’t mean it like that,” she said. “It’s just that, of all the things we have
had to deal with in our relationship, we’ve never really had anything drive a
wedge between us before, you know?”

           
“And
that’s what you see my mother doing?”

           
“Give
me a break, Rowan! She came right out and told me that she doesn’t want us to
marry. She didn’t make that clear to you?”

           
Rowan
had to admit she did. “They won’t be a part of our lives,” he said. “Hardly at
all.”

           
That
seemed to satisfy her. “And maybe over the years,” she said, hopefully, putting
a hand out on his knee, “she’ll get used to me.”

           
“I
guess it can’t all be perfect,” he said, lifting a strand from her neck and
rubbing his thumb against her throat.

           
“Is
it just me, Rowan?”

           
He
frowned. “Is
what
just you, babe?”

           
“How
you’ve been lately. I mean, is it work? You just don’t seem happy.”

           
“Funny
you should say that,” he said, reaching for her and turning her around so she
fit up next to him again. He pulled her hair back and wrapped his arms around
her and held her tightly. “That’s just what my Captain said to me this
morning.”

           
The
next day was Saturday. After a loving start to their weekend, Rowan was up and
showered and out of the apartment running errands and hitting the gym. Ella was
especially glad for their bathtub conversation. Not only had they reconnected
in a strong way but it was a relief to know she wasn’t the sole reason for
Rowan’s moodiness.
 

           
Ella
grabbed a quick breakfast, then dressed for her yoga class, feeling more on
track and centered than she had in weeks. She blew a kiss to the calendar on
her way out the door. In seven days she would officially be Mrs. Rowan Pierce (
again
.) How her life would change after
that
, she wasn’t sure, but she
believed—she had to believe—that the event would alter her life in
some very significant way.

After the yoga
class, she spent a pleasant hour strolling the aisles of her local Whole Foods
(who would have guessed that Dothan would have one!) and then returned to the
apartment with more makings for another memorable meal with her sexy
husband-to-be. Her arms full of the grocery bags, she struggled with the front
door and felt a wave of pique that Rowan had missed her so little that he
hadn’t been waiting to unlock the door. She shook off the twinge as irrational
and called to him as she entered the apartment. He came out of the kitchen, his
hand holding their landline phone to his ear. He frowned at her as if to say:
do you have to be so noisy
? Or maybe she
imagined that.

           
“Yeah,
Mom, I know,” he said. “We’ve been over this.”

           
With
a sick feeling developing in her stomach, Ella parked the bags on the kitchen
table and dropped her purse on a chair. She heard the front door open and then close
as Rowan left the apartment to finish his conversation in private.

           
It
was a quiet evening. Although Ella felt the chicken stuffed with forty cloves
of garlic had been a rousing success, she felt that Rowan had eaten it
mechanically, almost as if not tasting it. She prayed Carol’s call was simply
unsettling him and that his reaction was not the result of some ultimatum or
new strategy on her part to split them up. Ella was amazed at how effective the
old bat’s methods seemed to be working—even from a distance of four
hundred miles away.

           
Rowan
and Ella did the dishes together until Ella recognized that she was babbling
about any inane topic that came to her head—and he wasn’t really
listening anyway. While she hoped watching television together would be a good
segue to getting them snuggling on the couch and eventually kissing, she soon
discovered that Rowan was more interested in interacting with the remote
control than her.

           
“Are
you not finding what you want?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine.

           
“Why
do you ask?” he said, staring at the TV as he aimed the remote control.

           
“Because
you’ve done nothing but change the channels for thirty minutes. Is there
nothing good on tonight?”

           
“Was
there something you wanted to see?” he said, still compulsively changing the
channels.

           
“You
know I don’t watch TV.” She was starting to lose patience with his mood.
 

           
He
began to toggle back and forth between a basketball game and a show on the
discovery of a tomb full of mummies somewhere in Egypt. Ella watched both with minimal
interest. She felt her anger rising at how effectively Carol, with one phone
call,
 
had ruined their weekend and destroyed
their fragile connection with each other.

           
Were
they really that fragile? Was this thing between them really able to
withstand
murdering German warlords and plague but not disapproving mothers?

           
She
finished her wine and stood up. “Think I’ll head up,” she said, hesitating to
give him a chance.

           
“Yeah,
okay,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “G’nite.”

           
With
fear and loathing in her heart for a middle aged woman happily munching on
caramel popcorn and watching her evening soap operas in Atlanta, Georgia, Ella
went upstairs, alone, to bed.

           
One
week minus twelve hours and counting.

           
It
is an inviolate rule of the universe that just when you have the most important
thing to do in your life—like get married, or safely deliver your first
child—all freelance clients will immediately bombard you with more work
than they’d ever given you before.

           
Ella
sat at her computer terminal, mildly grateful that Rowan was working late again
tonight, and tried to imagine how she would get all the annual reports, website
continuity, and corporate brochures done before five o’clock in two days.
Because at that time, she knew she would be required to cease any and all
semblance to a working freelance copywriter and become that confounding and
mysterious of all creatures—a woman on the cusp of her wedding day with
her in-laws on her doorstep.

           
In
less than forty-eight hours, Carol and Lowell would arrive in Dothan for the rehearsal
dinner. While Rowan had only work friends and his parents and siblings—including
two sisters Ella had yet to meet—Ella just had her father and stepmother.
She was sure her lack of connections and friends was another black mark against
her as far as Carol Pierce was concerned.

           
She
sighed and looked at the source material for the annual report. Maybe Carol was
right. What did it say about a person to have so little in the way of friends
or people who loved you in the world? Ella glanced out the window of the
upstairs den where she worked. Of all the things she had done in her
life—learning languages, polishing her skills for the endless roster of
new jobs she felt compelled to try on—making new friends had not ranked
very highly. What friends she
did
have were scattered around the world and in some cases, she thought, the
centuries.

           
She
opened the Internet browser to a social media site and wondered, briefly, about
issuing an all-points invitation to anyone who was free Saturday night and
wanted to spend it in Dothan, Alabama, at her wedding. Sighing heavily, she
clicked out of the webpage and went back to work. If she didn’t have the
prospect of what was sure to be the most stressful weekend of her life ahead of
her, she would have enjoyed the quiet industry that the evening promised. She
loved engrossing work at her computer and could get lost in it for hours,
emerging finally like a coma-victim dazed and hungry.
 

           
Thinking
of the satisfaction her work gave her made her think of Rowan and his current
frustration with his job. From what little she was able to deduce, it appeared
that he was bored. How facing down and interacting with deadly killers on a
daily basis could be boring was a mystery to her, but then that was one of
things she loved about Rowan. He wasn’t obvious at all. In fact, she didn’t
think she would ever be able to totally figure him out. And a very big part of
her liked that just fine.

           
When
the phone call came in the middle of the night, Ella’s first thought was that
it must be Suzie calling to say her father had fallen or had a stroke. She
fumbled for her cellphone on the bedside table, her heart pounding in alarm.
The fact that she even thought it might be Suzie made Ella realize she had been
waiting for this call for months now. It made her see that for months now she
had been feeling like something was coming. Before she even said hello into the
phone, she knew in her heart that this was that something.

           
“Ella?”

           
Instead
of her stepmother’s sing-songy, high-pitched voice, Ella heard the low, hoarse
tones of Madelyn Pritchard, her best friend from college. Maddie was living in
Cairo preparing to marry her fiancé, a relentlessly handsome man named Gagan
Gupta.

           
“Maddie?”

           
“Oh,
my God, Ella, I am so sorry to wake you and I know I did but I just had to talk
to you.”

           
Ella
rubbed her eyes and looked at Rowan’s side of the bed to see that he still
wasn’t home yet. It was only a little after one. She was relieved to be able to
speak without disturbing him.

           
“What’s
the matter?” she said. Her friend, usually so cool and collected, sounded agitated.
“Is Gagan okay?”

           
“Yes,
he’s fine. It’s me, Ella. I’m in a tiny bit of trouble here.” At this point,
Ella heard her friend break down into heartrending sobs. Ella sat up straight
and became fully awake.

           
“Sweetie,
what is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

           
“I
need you, Ella,” Maddie said, her voice strangled with trying to speak through
her tears. “I know you were coming out in a couple of months. Is there…is there
any way you can get here sooner?”

           
Ella
tried to make a fast calculation in her head of what her calendar looked like.
It was June and she and Rowan had planned on going to Cairo in late September.
He already had the vacation time approved.

           
“Well,
yes, sure,” Ella said uncertainly. “You mean…August? Or next month?” As soon as
Ella heard the answering weeping on the line she knew that
soon
meant
now
. It meant
yesterday
.

           
“Maddie,
what’s happened? Have you been arrested? Do you need a lawyer?”

           
“No,
El, I need
you
and I know I haven’t
the right to screw up your life like this.”

           
It
occurred to Ella that Maddie had forgotten that Ella was to be married this
coming weekend. Ella cleared her throat to speak.
Surely, she could fly out after the weekend?

           
“He’s
started…he’s started…h-h-hitting me,” Maddie said.

           
“Who?
Gagan?”
Stupid question. Who else?

           
“Y-y-yes
and I am so alone here, Ella. I can’t tell my folks.”

           
“Get
on an airplane right this minute,” Ella said fiercely. “Get out of there
now
.”

           
“I
can’t, Ella!” Maddie said, nearly wailing. “You don’t know what it’s like. I
was lucky to be able to make this phone call! He watches me night and day or
has his wretched mother and sisters do it. I’m a prisoner here. Please, for the
love of God, come as soon as you can. They wouldn’t dare to try to stop
you
.”

           
“I
will, Maddie,” Ella found herself saying as she climbed out of bed. “Of course.
I’ll be on the first plane to Cairo tomorrow. I’m coming, sweetie, just hang
on.”

           
“Do
not tell Rowan, please Ella. Gagan said if I embarrassed him by involving the
authorities in any way, he would kill me
.
Promise me
, Ella.”