Swept Away (27 page)

“Rowan?” she said. “Before we leave tomorrow, I want to introduce you to someone very special.”

“You mean Aunt Erica? I can't think of anyone I'd look forward to meeting more,” he said.

Ella turned away again, snuggling with her back to him as he wrapped her in his arms. “Oh, Rowan,” she whispered, feeling like her heart would explode with happiness. “I wasn't sure you still wanted to be married.”

“God, Ella, do you know me at all? You're my
wife
. You were then, you are now, you will be back in the States. Forever and ever.”

The tears escaped down her cheeks and Ella knew for the first time in her life what total security wrapped in love felt like.

“Amen,” she said.

S
usan Kiernan-Lewis
lives in Ponte Vedra, Florida and writes mysteries, dystopian and romantic suspense. Like many authors, Susan depends on reviews and word of mouth referrals of her readers. If you enjoyed
Swept Away
, please consider leaving a review saying so on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Goodreads.com.

Check out Susan's website at
susankiernanlewis.com
and feel free to contact her at
[email protected]
.

W
hen the phone
call came in the middle of the night, Ella's first thought was that it must be her stepmother Suzie calling to say her father had fallen or had a stroke. She fumbled for her cellphone on the bedside table, her heart pounding.

As she picked up the phone she realized that no matter
who
was calling, somehow, bizarrely, she had been waiting for this call.

Something was coming. Before she even spoke 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 must still be downstairs watching TV. 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're 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 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.”

“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.

R
owan stood
next to her as Ella opened her laptop. The prices for flights were all horrible at this short notice but 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.

“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're blowing off our wedding so you can go to effing Egypt.”

“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 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 kept her focus on the computer screen. On the one hand, she knew the image of the flights and their astronomical prices was only helping to further enrage Rowan every time he glanced at the screen. But on the other hand, it gave her something to do besides directly confront him.

“Maddie 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 why 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
! 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.

“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 hard. 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.”

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. 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 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.”

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 to the States 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.

T
he 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.

N
ine 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, she didn't know but 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?