The Concubine's Tale (9 page)

“Please let me in, and I’ll explain.”

She sighed. Her body told her to let him in, invite him back into her bed which seemed cold and lonely without him these past three nights. Her head told her to open the door just enough to slam it closed on his toes. Besides, she looked like hell. How could she let him in when she was wearing laundry-day clothes? Her T-shirt bore a drop of pizza grease, and her underwear—not that she’d let him see it, of course—consisted of a pair of holey white briefs and her most comfortable sports bra. Her hair hung in braids, and she wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. He’d be shocked to discover she didn’t always wear satin and lace.

Reluctantly, she opened the security chain and flipped the lock below it. She opened the door a crack, and he held up a bottle of wine and pointed to the cork. “Not screw top,” he said.

“That’s not much of an explanation.”

“I’ve got something else for you. Something you’ll find amazing. If you let me in.”

Oh, please
.
Spare me.
“All right.” She stood back, and he slipped through the narrow opening.

“God, you look great,” he said handing her the wine.

“I’m not in the mood for flattery.”

“Seriously. You look adorable. I thought you only wore those uptight business suits.” He grinned at her, and she noticed he wore jeans and a T-shirt too. He had a book and a file folder under his arm and a corkscrew in his pocket. Or maybe it wasn’t a corkscrew.

“What’s up, Grant? Why did you ignore me at the auction?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get you in trouble with your boss.”

“You could have said hello.” Her tart reply seemed to affect him. He looked contrite, staring at her with those bottomless brown eyes.

“You’re right. I could have. I should have. If it means anything, you were on my mind. I didn’t like that Mack the auditor was chatting you up.”

“He wasn’t. Were you jealous?” Cait stifled a satisfied grin.

“Extremely. I couldn’t wait to get you alone. I have something to show you, and a question to ask you.”

Cait set the wine down on the kitchen counter and crossed her arms over her chest.
This better be good
, she thought. She didn’t like the way her resolve to stay mad at Grant seemed to disintegrate so quickly.

He opened the book he’d brought to a page marked with a bright yellow sticky note. “Here it is. This is the only reference I’ve found to the Soul Jar.” He pointed to a small footnote at the bottom of a page of nearly microscopic text. “The author mentions a rumor about a jar fitting Layton’s description having been found in the ruins of a small, obscure temple in Coptos. The jar disappeared shortly after it was uncovered.”

A shiver of anticipation ran down Cait’s spine. Could the jar really exist? “Do you think the jar can be found?”

“Apparently it’s already been found. After losing the auction, I decided to contact the woman who outbid me for the scroll. I wanted to make sure she had plans to display the item publicly, and I managed to find out a little more about the Soul Jar and the fate of Nayari and Khanu.”

Cait’s breath caught. Could it be that the lovers had somehow managed to survive after all? She nodded to the wine bottle in Grant’s other hand. “Open this while I put on something a little less comfortable. This, I have to hear.” She handed him the wine and a glass, and he popped the cork.

On the way to her bedroom, Cait silently berated herself for letting Grant in so easily. She should have made him suffer a bit in exchange for leaving her hanging for so long, but the prospect of finding out what had actually happened to Nayari and Khanu overshadowed her annoyance.

She shed her sweatpants and T-shirt and unbraided her hair while rummaging through what little was left in her underwear drawer. She slipped on a lace bra and panties and shrugged into a wrap shirt and a pair of sexy jeans. Let him drool, she thought as she breezed back out into the living room.

Grant sat on the chair across from the couch. He’d opened the file on the coffee table and was sifting through papers. The corners of his mouth lifted in a sly smile when he looked up.

“You didn’t have to change for me.”

“I didn’t…” Lie. Lie. Lie. “I changed because…never mind. Tell me what you found out. Who was that woman who bought the scroll?”

“Her name is Bree Sennett. She’s a collector of Egyptian antiquities, and apparently she’s seen the Soul Jar, even held it in her hands. These pages are notes I made of the conversation I had with her today.”

A tingle of anticipation feathered up Cait’s spine. Whether it was caused by Grant himself or his story, she couldn’t tell.

“So what happened to the jar and to Nayari and Khanu?”

Grant handed her a wine glass. “Take a drink first. You’re going to need it.”

Time had ceased to exist for Nayari and her warrior. For eons, it seemed, they knew nothing but an endless void, a darkness through which only their thoughts reached each other across a deep, terrifying chasm.

This was not the coveted afterlife of which they’d been taught. Of that much, Nayari was certain. The priests and acolytes, and even Baakah and the servants in Ammonptah’s household, had spoken of a glorious heaven where the gods bestowed blessings and generous gifts on the souls of the departed. She’d long imagined that when her time on earth ended, she would be reunited with her mother and father and the siblings she’d left behind in her native land.

Perhaps somewhere that heaven did exist, but now Nayari despaired of ever reaching it.

Little held meaning in their isolated netherworld until the light came to them. Nayari could not have said if a year or a thousand had passed while she waited, longing for nothing but the occasional brush of Khanu’s mind against hers and his gentle reassurances that one day they would be free.

She’d felt nothing for so long that the sensation of being torn away from the darkness frightened her. She cried out to Khanu, and his voice reached her through a swirling mist that replaced the endless blackness.

“Stay with me, my love.”

“What’s happening? Are we finally free?”

There was no answer at first, and then the world began to form around her. For the first time in longer than she could dare remember, Nayari saw. She saw the rough walls of the temple room and smelled the heady aroma of incense and the dry, stale scent of old stone.

In a frenzy, she whirled around, searching for her warrior, calling to him. When she turned, what she saw made her long for the safety of her dark prison. Ammonptah stood behind a narrow altar, his dark-skinned hands wrapped around an alabaster jar.

Free of her confines, unchained and unencumbered by the strong arms of the ruthless guards, she had one chance to seek her revenge against her former master. Nayari flew at him and reached out her hand to touch the fine linen that lay above his black heart.

Terror blanched Ammonptah’s skin. His eyes bulged, and his breath rattled in his lungs. Behind him hovered the faint outline of a broad-shouldered warrior—Khanu! He placed his hands on Ammonptah’s throat as if to squeeze the life from him, but almost instantly, the magistrate slumped forward. His hands fell limp, and the alabaster jar rolled away from him, nearly to the edge of the altar.

“The spell has failed.” Khanu’s voice rang in Nayari’s ears, and her heart soared. “We’re free.”

“But what have they done with us?” Nayari felt the warmth of the flickering torches on the wall and tasted the incense smoke on her tongue…yet she couldn’t see her own hands or her body. She remembered lying on the floor of the temple, too weak to move, wishing only that the end of her suffering would be swift.

“There.” Khanu’s vaporous hand gestured to a dark-haired body reclining on the floor. A woman. Above her stood a man, tall and slim, with hair the color of spun gold. Both were dressed strangely and speaking words in a language Nayari had never heard before.

The man reached down and pulled the woman up from the floor. Their hands were clasped tightly together, and that gesture arrowed to Nayari’s core. These were lovers, seeking escape from Ammonptah just as she and Khanu had.

Without exchanging another word, she and her warrior moved toward the couple. It seemed natural somehow, to settle within these foreign bodies and take temporary residence there.

Nayari felt Khanu’s hand in hers, and she nearly wept at the sensation. When she looked up into the eyes of the golden-haired man, they were no longer foreign. The eyes of her husband stared back at her, and Khanu’s lips curved in a smile.

He pulled her to him and kissed her until the chill of their long incarceration faded to nothing. She sank into the strong arms of her warrior, reveling in the touch that had been denied them for so long.

Suspended time came rushing back at them all too soon, though, and Nayari was the first to see the brilliant light of the nether world beckoning them. She dragged her needy lips away from Khanu’s and pointed over his shoulder.

“We need to go now. We’ve been trapped here long enough,” she said.

He squeezed her hand once, then together they stepped away from the borrowed bodies and moved into the light where the gods waited to welcome them into life everlasting.

Cait wiped at the corners of her eyes when Grant finished his story. Part of her wanted desperately to believe that the ancient lovers had finally found peace, but part of her remained skeptical.

“How does this woman know this? None of this was part of the narrative on the scroll.”

Grant’s eyes sparkled, and Cait wondered if he were playing her. This couldn’t be true, no matter how satisfying it was to know that Nayari and Khanu found peace together at the end of their long imprisonment.

“She was the woman in the temple.”

Cait took a deep sip of wine. “Seriously?”

“She claims she found the Soul Jar, though she wouldn’t tell me where. When it was opened, the souls of the lovers escaped, and finally, after three thousand years, they passed into the afterlife.”

“Do you believe that’s what happened?” Cait asked. Even though the events he’d described seemed too fantastic to be real, they felt right somehow.

“Yes, I do.” Grant set his wine glass down. He collected the papers and slid them back into the file folder. “I offered her double what she paid for the scroll, but she turned me down. At least she promised it would be put on public display along with the Soul Jar, which has been given back to the Egyptian government. The bad news is, we’ll have to go to Cairo to see it.”

Cait managed a chuckle at the hopeful expression in Grant’s dark eyes. “It’ll be a while before I can afford a trip to Cairo. Maybe one day…”

“How about next month?” From the back of the file folder, beneath the sheaf of papers and handwritten notes, Grant produced two white envelopes and handed them to Cait. “I managed to get myself an invitation to help oversee the opening of the exhibit. I’d like you to come with me.”

Speechless, Cait opened one of the envelopes and stared at the airline tickets inside. Her jaw dropped, and she managed a nervous laugh. “I’d love to go, but—”

“Mr. Greer might fire you. I know. You don’t have to decide right away, but don’t worry about a job for now.”

Cait hesitated only a second before throwing her arms around Grant’s neck. “I’ve decided. Let’s go. I want to say a proper goodbye to Khanu and Nayari.”

Grant smiled and planted a kiss on her nose. “I figured we should thank them for bringing us together. Maybe that’s their legacy. Anyone who hears their story falls in love.”

“Are you falling in love, Mr. Pierson?” Cait’s heart nearly stopped at the thought. If a concubine and a warrior could fall in love over the space of a few days, why couldn’t she and Grant?

Grant rose and scooped her up in his arms. “I think I am, Ms. Lang. I think I am.”

About the Author

To learn more about Jennifer Colgan, please visit
www.jennifercolgan.com
. Send an email to Jennifer at
[email protected]
, join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electricromance/
, or stop by her Two Voices blog at
http://bernadettegardner2.blogspot.com/

Look for these titles by Jennifer Colgan

Now Available:

The Rebound Guy

The Matchmakers

The Soul Jar

La Mirage: A Midsummer Night’s Steam Story

Coming Soon:

Uncross My Heart

A romance three thousand years in the making.

The Soul Jar

© 2009 Jennifer Colgan

When Bree Sennett breaks into Ming Xao Chen’s Curiosity Shop to recover the fabled Soul Jar of Ammonptah, the last thing she expects to find among the tacky souvenirs is a ghost. But there he is, Mason “Chance” MacKenzie, back from the dead and stirring a confusing mix of joy at seeing him alive…and betrayal for leaving her.

Two years ago, Chance faked his own death to save both their lives. It’s taken him that long to convince himself she’s better off without him, that she’ll never forgive him much less love him. Yet as their mutual search for the Soul Jar brings them face to face, he realizes the only one he was fooling was himself.

Now the woman who stole his heart is about to steal the Soul Jar, but a life he promised to protect hangs in the balance. There’s only one way to satisfy both their clients. Make a deal. And hope he can trust her to help him complete his mission before he loses her forever.

Warning: This title contains too much caffeine, just the right amount of fireworks and a heaping scoop of steal-your-heart Australian hunk.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Soul Jar:

Bree Sennett clamped her lips shut on a startled gasp as a long shadow fell across her hiding place. She pushed her body deeper into the narrow niche where she crouched and listened to the measured footsteps coming across the dark, crowded storeroom.

Ming Xao Chen’s curiosity shop was supposed to be closed tonight. Bree had made certain the old man found his usual spot at the bar down the street. She’d seen him there, drinking rice wine with his two sons while the Chinese New Year parade snapped, crackled and popped its way through the narrow streets of Chinatown. Certain that the shop’s eagle-eyed proprietor and his burly offspring were occupied for the night, Bree had let herself inside through the storeroom window.