I was reading through myself tonight when I caught a major blunder that messes up the first part of the book lol. Figures, right? Well I hope you make allowances since I am new at this. I went back and added it, and Kindle should have the updated version available to you. If you’re too lazy to that at the moment, I’m posting the last quarter of Chapter 1.
Somehow, in the mad haze of trying to publish, I did not get everything on there. So here it is in full!
Thank you for your patience 🙂
Must have hit my head harder than I thought…
He stood first but offered her no hand. “I do not always look where I am going.” There it was again, that thinly veiled amusement.
She stood, soggy papers clutched to her chest, eyes narrowed. It didn’t ease her temper when the top of her head did not quite meet his chin and she was forced to glare up. “Well you should have thought of that before you saw me running down the street!” Gritting her teeth she made to walk past him. She hated his odd-almost-British-accent anyway.
Can’t run from it no matter how hard you try…
“What’s that you have there?” he said, motioning to the thin key clutched in the hand currently holding the papers to her chest.
Amie froze, knuckles white against the old metal. She had already been imagining how it would look after a good polishing. It was almost as if the man had read her thoughts. Against her will she took in his open curiosity. Sighing, she answered, “Found this under my papers.” Shifting the stack to the crook in her arm she held up her palm, displaying the key for his inspection. “See? Just a key.”
His eyes flickered back and forth from the key to her and a ghost of a grin shadowed his face. “Interesting,” he said, leaning forward as if to grab it.
Amie shrugged, denying the fact this was potentially, at a glance, the oldest key in her collection. “Just a piece of junk,” she said, enclosing the metal within her fingers. She couldn’t help the fact he had shifty eyes and she didn’t trust him. Her chapters slid against her side, reminding her she was already running late.
Mr. Englishman carefully tucked his smile back into place and clasped his hands behind his back. “Please miss. Is there nothing I can do to make amends? I see I have ruined your morning. Perhaps some…”
“No thanks,” she interrupted, “I think you’ve helped enough.” Their eyes met again and she was struck by the contradiction. This Britt hardly looked like the gentleman he was trying to be. And Amie had had more than enough of his sarcasm and strange clothes and strange looks…and that messy black hair! Didn’t the man own a comb? He even had the nerve to bow his head to her like some period-film bloke!
What the deuce?
“Very well then, if you are certain?” he said.
“I am.” She checked her wristwatch.
9:30 a.m.
“I’m late. Sorry if I don’t ask for your name and let you ruin the rest of my day, sir.”
“It won’t happen again I assure you milady,” he said with a grin. Polite to the end and surely making fun of her, she ignored him and ran away. The wet pages were likely the end of her all too short career. And when she looked back down the square to find the cause, the strange man was nowhere to be found.
She managed to find the post office seconds before the rains broke free, showering the carefree world she’d breezed past in a veil of day-lit darkness. As Emilio the Xerox guy got to work on faxing her pages for her, Amie studied the key and thought of her string of bad luck that morning. It hadn’t been written in the weather, but somewhere in her gut the feeling persisted, like a permanent bad feeling. At least she’d found the key. It was heavier than she had realized the end curving and shaped into an oddly familiar Celtic shape.
With her free hand she clutched the ring on the necklace hidden beneath her shirt and froze. The symbol on the key was the same as on her ring.
Jennifer Silverwood 