One Magic Moment Read Online Free Page B

shepherded out of the pub by a man who would have put Ireland’s finest sheepdog to shame.
    She managed to stop outside the pub only because she dug her heels in. She looked up at her rescuer, thanks on the tip of her tongue, only to have her mouth fall open.
    It was her sister Pippa’s husband, Montgomery de Piaget.
    Only it couldn’t be, because the man next to her was dressed in modern clothes and, she soon found, speaking in modern English.
    “Your car’s finished,” he said, taking her by the arm and leading her off the sidewalk. “Looks like rain.”
    It was December; of course it looked like rain. Actually, it looked like snow from where she was standing given the sudden chill that had washed over her. She wished she could have shut her mouth, but she couldn’t.
    She looked around herself to make sure she was still in the twenty-first century, looked at the comforting tarmac under her feet, looked at the shop that rose up in front of her with her little red Ford sitting in front of it. She looked at the fingers curled around her arm in a way that wasn’t at all uncomfortable but definitely supportive, as if she’d been a woman of questionable balance who couldn’t be counted on to make it across the street on her own.
    She took a moment or two to get hold of her rampaging and apparently quite unreliable imagination as she was escorted into the garage’s office. She didn’t see her escort’s face again because he kept it turned away from her as he held out his hand.
    “Charge card,” he said briskly.
    Tess fumbled in her purse for it, feeling not flustered, but floored. She was having a hallucination; that was it. It was broad daylight and she was having a hallucination. Or a paranormal, um, something. And it all involved that man standing on the other side of the counter from her, the one who looked like . . .
    Well, never mind who he looked like. The truth was, he might have looked like someone she knew, but he couldn’t possibly be that someone because that man was safely locked away eight hundred years in the past.
    Her delusion—and she was perfectly happy to term him that and be done—didn’t seem at all inclined to look at her, which was just fine with her. Maybe he’d seen how the first sight of himself had freaked her out and decided that one view of his admittedly gorgeous face was enough.
    She watched his back as he ran her credit card, then at the dark hair that shadowed his face as he pushed the slip across his counter for her to sign. The moment she’d finished, he shoved her keys at her as if he couldn’t wait to be out of her presence, then ushered her out of his office.
    He pointed in the direction he wanted her to go, then disappeared into the darkness at the back of the garage. She looked at the door where she’d last seen the man who definitely wasn’t Montgomery de Piaget but couldn’t have looked any more like him if he had been him, then turned and stumbled out of the shop.
    She ran bodily into Bobby before she realized he was giving her new mirror a last-minute polish. She looked at him and wondered what he thought of his boss, how long he’d worked for him, if he knew any pertinent details about him.
    “All ready to go, then?” Bobby asked with a friendly smile.
    “Sure,” Tess managed. She stepped back as Bobby opened the door but hesitated before she got in. “Could I ask you a question?”
    Bobby shrugged. “As you will, miss.”
    She nodded toward the back of the shop. “Is that your boss?”
    “Aye, miss.”
    “Does he have a name?” she managed.
    “John,” Bobby said simply, “and just John. He don’t like to be talked about so I don’t unless he says to. I fancy you can imagine why.”
    Yes, because he would probably draw his sword and skewer you on it, was the first thing she thought, but that thought was so ridiculous, wild horses couldn’t have dragged it out of her. Of course she hadn’t seen what she’d just seen because Montgomery de