“If that’s going to be a problem, Charlotte, I can write it into our contract that the job comes with certain other duties.”
She burst out laughing. “Don’t you dare. Just open the packaging for me. I’m really drawn to that one.” She pointed to a wooden horse encased in Bubble Wrap and a crate. She longed to touch it, to feel the wood beneath her fingers so she could learn about everyone who had ever touched the horse. Once she got that pull, that intense draw, she knew the object was very old and had a lot to tell her. Wood was her favorite medium. It seemed to absorb so much more than man-made substances.
Tariq smiled again, taking her breath. With his easy, fluid steps he seemed to glide through the various wrapped bundles lying on the floor until he got to the one she was compelled to touch. She stood close. Holding her breath. Anticipating. Not daring to hope but hoping anyway.
Tariq was careful with the packaging, removing it one strip of wood at a time to reveal more of the Bubble Wrap. She watched him closely. His hands barely seemed to touch the wood, and he loosened the nails just by pulling. She knew he was strong, but he made dismantling the crates look easy. She was fairly certain she could open the others without help.
“Tariq.”
Both turned at the sound of his name being spoken, but Charlotte realized she wasn’t in the least startled. She’d heard and smelled the man leaning his upper body and head into the room with one foot still on the basement stair. She recognized him from the previous night. He was tall, like Tariq, with long dark hair and cold-as-ice, black-as-night eyes. He was handsome, but in a rough, bad boy way, although, like Tariq, he wore a suit. Where Tariq looked as if he stepped off the cover of GQ magazine, his partner, Maksim Volkov, looked as if he’d grace the cover of a biker magazine.
“Need you for a moment. Won’t take long.”
Tariq frowned at him, but straightened, leaving the very corner of the horse peeking out at Charlotte. She tried not to stare at the faded wood, but it was seductive, beckoning to her, a thousand voices whispering just because she was in such close proximity.
“I’ll be right back,” Tariq assured. “Wait for me. If there’s a curse on that thing, I’d rather it fall on me than on you.”
“So sweet of you,” she murmured, and stepped even closer to the carousel horse. Tariq was sweet, but if there truly was a curse, she would know the moment she touched the wood.
“I mean it, sielamet, you are not to touch that thing until I have had time to examine it.” He used his voice that brooked no argument, the one that said he was in charge and everyone jumped to obey him.
She nodded, a little distracted, and when Tariq went up the stairs with Maksim, she stepped closer to the antique horse. The whispers grew louder when she extended her palm and placed it carefully just above the wood peeking out of the wrap. Immediately she heard the sound of children laughing. Voices murmuring softly. Drawing her into that tunnel of time she lived to enter. To see worlds lost. People already gone. Glimpses into the past. Various languages. French. Hungarian. Italian. Romanian. A language she didn’t understand but had heard recently, the one Tariq spoke.
Excitement was a dark drug in her veins. This could really be it, the find of a lifetime. A genuine horse carved hundreds of years ago for the express purpose of training young men to thrust spears, swords or arrows through rings with precision. She would be able to establish an exact timeline. She’d know when the horse had changed hands, where it had been, which families had owned it and the country they were in when they had it.
Ricard Beaudet had spent his entire career, even most of his life, searching for this very item. She stepped close enough to bump the Bubble Wrap with her knee, her hand trembling as she slowly lowered it until the wood whispered against her hand. Beckoning. Calling to her. Accepting her. Ready to give up every secret. There was no resisting that call. She laid her palm gently on the exposed wood, her fingers unerringly finding the grooves of the carving.
Around her the walls of the basement shimmered and then disappeared. Everything went dark, but she wasn’t alone – the voices were there, calling out to one another in various languages. Happy. Laughing. Sobbing. Anguish. Children. Adults. They were there with her in that dark place. She shivered in the cold, feeling as she always did when she first made contact with an ancient object. It was icy cold until she managed to connect with a time and a place. She was looking far back, trying to ignore the mesmerizing, seductive lure of the voices.
She hunted through time for the wood-carver. The closer she got to him, the more she could feel it. The more the cold receded and she felt warmth. Heat. The voices grew. Men laughing. Talking together. One man with his back to her worked with the block of wood, his knife moving in soft, gentle strokes, his hands caressing the wood with care and love.
The men spoke in Tariq’s ancient language. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, but she heard the teasing notes of laughter in their voices. They were giving the carver a hard time. She found them interesting. All were of the same race. Tall, wide shoulders, long black hair, stunning men with muscular physiques that would set them apart easily. Two of them practiced sword fighting, going at each other repeatedly, but they seemed evenly matched, so much so that they were involved in the conversation with the others gathered around the wood-carver.
“Which part of ‘Don’t touch that until I check it out’ didn’t you understand?” Tariq snarled the question from behind her.
Charlotte jumped, still in the past, a little disoriented. The wood-carver turned his head and looked directly at her. He had the same wide shoulders as the others. The same long black hair. The same powerful muscles rippling over his tall frame. But his eyes were vivid blue. Intense blue. Eyes she’d looked into when he’d made her come apart in his arms.
She gasped and jerked her hand away, feeling the sting of a splinter biting at her finger as she did so. It couldn’t be Tariq. Maybe an ancestor. That was why he collected carousel horses. He knew someone in his family had carved these horses. She put her finger to her mouth to soothe the tiny wound, staring at the carver.
He stared back at her, his face totally exposed under the light of a full moon. He was… gorgeous. There was no mistaking him. He looked no more than thirty or thirty-five, just exactly like Tariq. Exactly like Tariq because it was Tariq. It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense. But she knew absolutely that the man staring at her was the same man snarling at her, revealing the true predator he actually was.