Eternal Eden (14 page)

My eyes tore open, only to widen in horror when I viewed my surroundings, and those surrounding me, with no hint of familiarity, or with any recall as to how I’d ended up here.

I was lying on my back in a four-poster bed in the middle of a room that was easily as many square feet as the home I lived in until kindergarten. I scanned my mind for the last memory I had before waking up in this foreign place.  I couldn’t recall anything except for a face . . . a face that was burned into my brain.

“Hello, Miss Dawson. Welcome back to the living.” My eyes scurried to the man with the silky-smooth voice.

The female standing beside him snickered.

He glanced at the female before turning back to me with a smug smile. “Although I suppose
living
takes on a slightly different meaning now . . .”

As desperate as I was to speak (or to scream), I couldn’t. I was rendered speechless when I took in the full view of these two impossibly beautiful figures before me. The man was tall, broad-shouldered and had light brown hair—the kind that would glimmer in sunlight. His stance was imposing, and from the confidant gleam in his deep-blue eyes, I imagined he was not the kind of man you wanted to cross.

The female beside him was a goddess. Statuesque, thin (although her thinness was unfairly coupled with voluptuousness settled in all the right places), and had hair so fair in color it was nearly white. She exuded an air of superiority, and was looking at me as if I was about as inconsequential as where the rubber on the bottom of her knee-high, suede boots was made.

“Where am I?” I shifted up in bed, eyeing cautiously over this modern day Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

The male took a step towards me. It echoed through the mass of the room. “Settle down, there’s no need to—”

“Don’t come any closer,” I pleaded, my voice edging on hysteria as the man continued to advance in my direction.

His brow furrowed, and he gave me a look that reminded me of how my mom used to look at me when I’d said or done something she thought juvenile. “That’s quite enough. We mean you no harm,” he said, with warning in his voice.

“Get away!” This time I yelled, the hysteria coming to fruition, and my body reacted before I made a conscious request.

With foreign strength and speed, I sprung from the bed in one lithe movement, and was across the room in less time than it took the female to roll her eyes. I didn’t have time to ponder where this inhuman speed and agility had come from, because the male continued his advance to where I cowered in the corner across the room. My eyes—automatically, and without cognition—darted around the room, seeking an escape.

“Miss Dawson, everything will be fully explained once you settle down. You’ll see you’re overreacting quite extraordinarily,” the male said, sounding more irritated with each word.

My eyes found what they needed, and I ran—which felt more like flying—to the door on the adjacent wall.

“Stella, stop her,” the man yelled, but my hand was already on the doorknob and I flung it open, taking one look back to see both figures gliding towards me. I lunged through the door with my head still turned towards the approaching strangers, and rammed into something hard. I bounced against it, and would have fallen backwards, had not a warm set of arms reached around me to keep me upright. The arms pressed me tight against the hard surface I’d just barraged into . . . the arms that felt like they’d been created to hold me.

“Ohhh!” My hand would have flown to my mouth if my arms weren’t so tightly held against his body.

His head tilted down and his mouth fell just outside my ear. “Follow my lead,” his hurried whisper entered my body, surmounting an attack on the fear that had ensnared me. “Everything will be alright.” His head snapped away from my ear so fast, I doubt the two individuals who were nearly upon us would have noticed any transaction taking place.

“Mr. Winters, what nice timing. Good to see you awake and recovered at last. It appears you’ve brought us an overreacting, would-be escapee.” The male came to a stop behind me, and the prior fear I’d had for this unknown person, was no more. I was pressed securely against the man I’d come to accept I’d never see again, and I didn’t care about anything else. I looked up at his face, and despite the chaos that had permeated my life since I’d opened my eyes, my heart still trilled out-of-control. His eyes were anxious though, and his expression was as rigid as his body felt. 

“Her screams could have roused the dead. Perhaps you could have been a little less imposing,” he responded, a half smile pulling at his lips; one that was not familiar. “I’m sure you can remember John, how disturbing it was when you awoke for the first time in such
curious
circumstances.” William raised a brow, at the same time releasing his clutch on me. 

So this was the infamous John, much more Francis Ford Coppola
Godfather-
like than William had let on. Sure would have been helpful to have had the answers to my questions before I’d ended up smack in the middle of whatever William had been trying to keep me out of.

“Why don’t we all have a seat? Since it appears we’ve calmed down enough to be reasoned with.” John’s tone sounded final, as if there was no other option but what he’d requested.

“That sounds like a good idea,” William said, motioning his hand forward to the figures behind us. “After you.”

I heard two sets of footfalls commence to a far corner of the room. The eyes I’d stayed focused on since they’d reentered my life looked down to me, and the emotion that had been absent, flooded them.

“William . . . what’s going on?” My voice would have hardly registered on sonar.

With as much speed and urgency as before, he lowered his head to my ear and whispered, “I will explain everything. I promise you . . .
trust
me.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. I’d heard that before.

He spun me around and guided me, with a light hand resting over my back, to a pair of modern sofas where John and Stella were seating themselves. As their eyes traced back to us, William readjusted his hand from my back to slide it in his pocket.

“Have a seat,” he said to me with a coolness in his voice I did not recognize.

I did as requested, sliding my body into the corner of the sofa. He took a seat beside me, positioning into the opposite corner, keeping as much space between us as the couch would allow. John and Stella’s gazes were penetrating. Their eyes shifted between the two of us with curiosity, as if attempting to piece together a puzzle.

Finally having a moment of quiet, I was able to ponder the string of events that had just taken place. I’d awakened in a foreign place surrounded by strangers; with otherworldly forces coursing through my body; and reunited with the man who I never dreamed I’d see again. Maybe that’s what this was . . . a dream.

“I’m John Townsend, and this is Stella.” The imposing man dressed in a tailored suit, began. “I believe you already know Mr. Winter’s here . . .” The edge in his voice led me to believe he wasn’t thrilled with this. “You are at my estate and vineyard, Townsend Manor, outside of Newburg, Oregon. You have been here, unconscious, for five days now.” He stopped, and although I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the quiet man sitting beside me, I could see John watching me with interest—as if trying to figure out a mystery as furtive as why the sky was blue.

William glanced over at me, meeting my gaze for a moment, and then turned his attention back to John. Perhaps I imagined it, but it seemed he was signaling my gaze to do the same.

“Why am I here?” I asked, turning my stare towards John.

“Maybe you should ask him,” John suggested, with annoyance written on his face, and pointing at William. “He’s the hero. He’s the one that nearly killed himself saving you.”

Something tugged at my memory when John said this . . . water . . . blackness. My face fell featureless, and every last drop of blood drained from it when I recalled, with vividness, my last memory.

“I remember . . .” I whispered, the scene flashing before me like a movie in the theatre. “But I went under—I . . . drowned.” The word sounded with an air of finality, chiming against the room’s cathedral ceiling.

“Actually, you didn’t, but if it’s any consolation, you would have if Mr. Winters wouldn’t have been so
conveniently
around.” John’s eyes narrowed at William, as a father would at his son after he’d done something reckless.

“Is this true, did you save me?” I whispered, my eyes amplifying.

William sighed, leaning forward and fixing his stare on his clasped hands below him. His silent answer had me reaching at my stomach from the nausea circling in it when I thought of the ocean claiming his life that night because of my carelessness.

“I think that’s our cue to leave, Stella.” John glanced at the goddess sitting beside him. She sat so close her leg that swung from its crossed position, brushed his trousers. He didn’t appear to be affected by the gilded leg caressing him, though.

“Since you’re the reason she’s here, it is your responsibility to make the initial explanations before class begins tomorrow.” John addressed William as he stood up.

“I look forward to seeing you again soon, Miss Dawson.” John’s eyes grazed over me, as a butcher would a slab of meat before deciding how best to cleave it, and then chuckled, patting William’s shoulder as he passed by him. “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand why you pulled that asinine stunt . . . she’s exquisite.” He bestowed upon me one more long stare, one about as appealing as grease mixed with lard, and exited the room.

Stella sauntered past us without any acknowledgement, although I didn’t miss the once-over she gave William as she passed him. Unsure where to direct my gaze, I stared through the open French doors across from us which lead out onto a balcony. The scents of honeysuckle and rain enter my senses.

Although I’d identified it with assured confidence, I was sure I’d never smelt honeysuckle before this. How could I know the nectar-sweet aroma that entered my nose was a delicate flower I couldn’t even identify by sight? Strange . . . like the majority of happenings occurring around me. It seemed I’d been transformed into a living, breathing Wikipedia.

I heard the door slam shut, and my eyes flew back to the man whose own eyes had storm clouds rolling through them. His fists were clenched, causing a web of veins to burst through the skin.

His expression defrosted a moment later, and he looked at me in a familiar way—a staggering way. “Why don’t you get changed,” he requested, as his eyes trailed over the silk pajamas I was adorned in. “And I’ll get you out of here and explain everything.”

The skin between my eyes creased together—a physical response to the confusion and bewilderment running like a herd of wild horses within me.

He reached his hand towards my face, and right before it came to rest on my cheek, indecision colored his face, and he lowered it back down to the sofa. I felt nauseous from the disappointment. “Trust me,” he said, nearly pleading.

Not able to deny him anything, I nodded my head. “I do. I’ll change and then we can go.”

He smiled a figment of the smile I remembered, and then stood up. “I’ll be right outside the door.”

After he’d left the room—although the intoxicating scent he left behind led me to believe otherwise—I let my eyes search around the bedroom that was as elaborate and vast as the presidential suite at some hotel in downtown New York. There was enough crystal and gold-leaf within it to have kept a family of four comfortable for their lifetimes.

I found the clothes I’d worn that fateful night, freshly washed and folded, on the dresser across from the bed. I slipped into the cotton skirt and linen top faster than I’d ever changed in my life, and faster still, I glided to the door and flung it open.

True to his word, he was waiting for me right outside my door. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. A brilliant smile exploded, like the one I remembered, and the opulence of the Manor around me paled like a dim star beside the full moon.

I fell in line beside him as he led me down the long hall of Townsend Manor. I would occasionally stop to inquire as to some piece of art work or ancient looking artifact, and true to his good-natured spirit, he would pause to answer, but his answers were hurried.  He seemed anxious, if not desperate, to get me out of the Manor that resembled more a fantastical castle than an estate in rural Oregon.

We walked down a sweeping set of stairs—their glossy mahogany covered down the center by plush, ivory carpet—down into the foyer that could have held my attention for days.

William cleared his throat, distracting me from admiring the baroque like architecture around us. He motioned me through the open double-doors, and followed behind me.

His Bronco laid in wait in the circular driveway. My heart overreacted when he placed his hand over my back as he led me to the passenger side door, and assisted me in. He entered the cab with his signature grace, and we were in motion; departing to whatever location he had in mind for explaining the impossible mysteries.

He exhaled once we passed through the black, sweeping metal gates that had a cursive T embossed in the center of each one.

Feeling as unsure of what to say as he looked, I started simply. “So, this is what you meant by living off campus?” I asked, admiring the Manor from the side view mirror. Like some kind of palatial estate from the Golden Age of England, Townsend Manor was made of solid brick, although the generous, mullioned windows led me to believe the house was made as much of glass as brick. It was symmetrically designed, and a mixture of classic and gothic architecture. It rested in the center of a vast square of lawn adorned with several pathways and gardens, which were fenced in by the endless rows of grape trees.