Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (4 page)

           
“Yes,
yes alright, although what I’ll tell him to explain why I’m leaving…”

           
“Thank
God for you, Ella,” Maddie said, crying again. “Thank God for you.”

           
When
Ella finally hung up she sat for a moment holding the cellphone and staring
into space. Her wedding was in less than four days. Her in-laws, who already
hated her, were due in in
two
. And
her gorgeous hunk of already-seriously annoyed US Marshal was about to be left
stunned and slack-jawed at the altar.

Chapter Three

Dothan 2013

           
Rowan
stood next to her as she sat at her laptop. Ella opened her laptop to Expedia.
The prices were all horrible at this short notice but Ella knew Maddie had
enough money to pay her back. That wasn’t an issue. Explaining it to her
six-foot four mass of furious fiancé, on the other hand, was.

           
“I
can’t believe you’re doing this,” Rowan said. He was clenching his fists as he
spoke. Ella got the distinct impression he wanted to hit something.

           
“I
have to,” she said. “Maddie is in trouble. She needs me.”

           
“That
is a crock of shit. She can go to the police if she needs help.”

           
“I
told you, Rowan. She’s afraid to.”

           
“You
told me you’re blowing off our wedding so you can go to effing Egypt,” he said.

           
“You
think I
want
to go? You think I
want
to miss our wedding?”

           
“It’s
not a matter of
miss
, Ella.” Rowan
cracked his knuckles and then flexed his fingers in agitation. “It’s not like the
wedding is going to go on without you. My parents are coming in.
Your
parents are coming in.”

           
“I
know. The timing sucks.” Ella squinted at the screen.

           
“That’s
all you can say?”

           
“Rowan,
it’s not like this is a big wedding. We can easily reschedule for later in the
month.”

           
“I
don’t believe this. What the hell is my mother going to say?”

           
Ella
didn’t answer. She kept her focus on the computer screen. On the one hand, she
knew the image of the flights and their astronomical prices was serving to
further enrage Rowan every time he glanced down at the screen. But on the other
hand, it gave her something to do besides directly confronting him.

           
“She
needs me, Rowan,” Ella said softly. “Two phone calls can rearrange everything.
Your folks aren’t even taking a flight to get here. You just need to stop them
from leaving their driveway in two days.”

           
“What
am I gonna say is the reason we’re not getting married this weekend?”

           
Ella
stood up and willed herself to monitor her voice level. She could feel the adrenalin
pumping through her, urging her to use the fuel to present her case. She took a
long breath and tried to resist the temptation.

           
“This
is only an inconvenience,” she said. “We don’t have relatives flying in, we
don’t have a million dollars in flowers that’ll wilt and go to waste, and we
don’t even have a caterer to pay. We just need to push it back a few weeks.”

           
“This
will be the last straw for my mother,” Rowan said, raking his fingers through
his thick brown hair.

           
“Don’t
kid yourself. She’ll be delighted.”

           
“She
won’t,” he shook his head. “Don’t you see? She’ll see this as just another
example of why you’re not right for me. Putting someone else ahead of our
wedding, for Chrissake.”

           
Ella
sat back down and typed in her Visa card number on the registration page.

           
“It
doesn’t really matter what your mom thinks,” she said, looking up at him and
wishing it were true. “I have to go.”

           
“What
am I gonna tell the guys at work?
My
fiancé had to go out of town?”

           
Ella
typed in the time for her return flight. Hopefully, she could get Maddie on the
same one coming home.
 

           
“It’s
the truth,” she said, hitting the
Buy
button and then sank back in her chair as if she had finished a massive project
and was now spent.

           
“I
just can’t believe you’re doing this.”

           
“And
I can’t believe you’re not a hundred percent behind my doing this. The Rowan I
knew in Heidelberg, the Rowan I knew in 1620—”

           
“Don’t
give me that shit! That was a different world.”

           
“It
wasn’t a different
you
! Are you
saying it was? The Rowan who went through hell and torture and threat of death
to save his friends?
That’s
the Rowan
I love!
That’s
the Rowan I’ve been
trying to find ever since we…” She turned away.

           
“Really?
You think I’m not the man you fell in love with?”

           
“I
didn’t mean that.”

           
“Sounds
like exactly what you meant.”

           
“It’s
just that ever since we’ve been back everything has been so easy and so…”

           
“Dull?”

           
She
looked at him to see if he was being sarcastic. She couldn’t tell but she
didn’t think so. He sat down hard in the chair next to her at the computer.

           
“You
know I love you, Rowan,” she said. “I love every piece and part of you.”

           
“I
love you, too, Ella.”

           
“But
these last three months have been really hard, you know? Trying to live
together and keep alive the thing that made us love each other? I mean, we get
back here in the States—in our own time—and I start to see how
different we are.”

           
He
looked up at her and his eyes narrowed but he didn’t speak.

           
“You
can’t say you haven’t seen it, too,” she said. “We don’t have any of the same
interests. You like to watch TV, I don’t. You like to go out with the guys for
beer. I’d prefer to stay home and read or work. Even before your mom put her
two cents in, we weren’t on the same page.”

           
“So
what’s the answer? You move out and we start dating each other again? I think
we’ve come too far for that.”

           
“No,
Rowan. I love you. I want to be your wife. I do. But I want us to figure this
out.” She waved to the air between them.
 

           
He
nodded and ran his hand over his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion.

           
“How
was work today?” she asked quietly.

           
“Not
great.”

           
“What’s
going on there, Rowan?”

           
“I
don’t know,” he said.

           
Neither
of them spoke for a moment.

           
“How
long will you be gone?” he asked, finally.

           
“I’ll
fly out tomorrow, grab Maddie and fly back out the day after that. We’ll just
push the wedding back a week.”

           
“Are
you sure you want to?” His eyes drilled into hers, searching for the most
honest answer she had in her to give.

           
She
looked away. “Yes, I’m sure I
want
to,” she said. She looked up to see what the effect of her words on him were.
His face never changed expression.

           
“My
mother will flip,” he said finally.

           
“You
need to care less about what she thinks.”

           
He
looked at her and then something in his face seemed to relax. “Probably.”

           
“So
you’ll tell them to come next week instead of this week?”

           
Rowan
sighed and reached out to take her hand. “Why don’t we just play it by ear?” he
said.

           
Great,
she thought with her
heart pounding in her ears.
The wedding’s
off.
She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. For them to have
come so far from the point where their love had them risking everything to be
together to this place where their future together went on indefinite hold just
made her want to cry.

           
And
breathe out a monumental sigh of relief.

           
The
drive to the airport with Rowan had been a chilly one.
 

           
“I’ll
text as soon as I land,” Ella said as they stood together in front of the
Birmingham International Airport security line.

           
“Don’t.
Without a data plan in Egypt, it’ll cost more than your flight to send a text.
If I don’t hear in the headlines about a major airliner going down in the Mediterranean
I’ll assume you made it okay.”

           
“I
guess since Maddie won’t be marrying this tool that our trip there in September
is off,” she said as she shuffled through her boarding pass and passport.

           
“Guess
so.”

           
“Maybe
we can go some place else just to get away.”

           
“Maybe.”

           
Boy, he sure wasn’t giving her anything to
work with.
She didn’t dare ask how the phone call with his folks had gone.
She had a long flight and she didn’t want to be rerunning the tapes on what was
probably a seriously unpleasant exchange. Just looking at Rowan’s face this
morning told her that.

           
“Did
you call your Dad?” he asked, his eyes looking everywhere in the airport but at
her.

           
“Earlier
this morning. He was cool.”

           
“That’s
good.”

           
“Are
you working the rest of the week?”

           
He
gave her a patient look and then sighed. “Why wouldn’t I?”

           
“No
reason. I better go, Rowan. I’ll feel more comfortable waiting at my gate.”
And away from the glowering and crippling
guilt trip I’m starting to develop.

           
“Okay,
Safe trip.” He took her into his arms but she felt none of the usual warmth and
protection those arms usually gave her. He broke the embrace before she did and
she realized that that was a first too.

           
“Yeah,
thanks,” she said. “So you’ll be back here in three days to collect me?”

           
“That’s
the plan.”

           
She
strained up on tiptoe to deliver a kiss but, without his participation, only
made it as far as his chin.

           
“Love
you, Rowan,” she said softly.

           
“You,
too, Ella,” he said gruffly.

           
She
turned and hurried off through the final stage of security screening. When she
looked back, just the once, to wave, he had already disappeared into the crowd.

Nine hours later,
as she wove her way through the thick crowds at the Cairo International
Airport, she was struck with the sheer excitement of being some place new and
different. While she had spent a good deal of her flight obsessing about her
relationship with Rowan and his obvious unhappiness with her, not to mention her
worry that she might have difficulty extricating Maddie from Gupta’s clutches,
she hadn’t given a thought to how it felt to be heading toward what many would
argue was the most exotic locale on the face of the earth. Now, caught up in
the noise and movement of the crowd, Ella was overcome with how incredibly
different this world was from the one she had just left.

           
Suddenly
a thought came to her. Whether it had been percolating all along underneath all
the worry and exhaustion or whether it sprang fresh born into her brain, as
soon as she became physically a part of the mesmerizing color and vibrancy of
this unique culture, she found herself thinking,
after I’ve rescued Maddie, am I really going to rush back to Dothan,
Alabama?