The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

words as much as heard them. “I’ll never forget ye. Go now, before I canna let ye leave.”

Jack took her hand and led her through the doorway. She glanced back to see Braham in silhouette, his hair glinting off a beam of moonlight streaming through the window. He turned slightly, and she gasped.

Her shoulders began to quiver with repressed sobs. His long hair would never again trickle across her breasts like the sweetest of lovers’ touches. Never again would she smooth the long golden strands behind his ear. Now she saw him in profile, she could see what she hadn’t noticed before. She had thought he had bound his hair in a tail, but she was wrong. He had cut it.

Jack pressed the brooch and tweezers into her hand. “When you’re ready, let’s go home.”

Part Three

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

—Abraham Lincoln

72

Richmond, Virginia, Present Day

Charlotte spent the next few days in a twilight sleep. Going through the motions necessary to sustain life, but not living it. Numb to everything but her pain. Decisions took effort, so she didn’t make any.

In twenty-first century time, she and Jack had been gone only four months, leaving her with two months of sabbatical time still available. When she could think clearly, she’d make a decision about when she wanted to return to work.

Food wasn’t easy to swallow. Bitter or sweet, tangy or salty, hot or cold—everything had the bland indigestibility of cardboard. She ate only enough to keep her stomach settled. Even putting on her shoes to go running exhausted her, so she quit lacing them up and left them in a pile on the floor with her other running gear.

Sleeping, however, came as easily as closing her eyes, but only during the day. At night, she cuddled up on the chaise lounge on her screened-in porch and stared into the starlit sky. She withdrew to a place where she could control what was happening to her by refusing to think or feel. Grief, as she’d discovered as a teenager, was not easy to live with.

Whenever Jack called she lied and told him she’d been eating well and exercising, and he’d respond with a snort. He didn’t believe her, but he’d probably decided, since she was a health nut and exercise junkie, she’d eventually find her way back from her depression. He wouldn’t let her drag it out for long. If she didn’t come out of this on her own, he’d intervene and they’d do something completely random, like a quick trip to London or the Caribbean or Alaska.

A picture on the bulletin board in the kitchen of her and Jack at the family’s oceanfront cottage on Hilton Head Island became the impetus to kick-start her recovery. She needed the ocean, the ebb and flow of the tide—sometimes soft and gentle, and sometimes furious. If any place could soothe her and restore her connection to life again, surf and sand had the best chance.

Jack was meeting in LA with his agent and two movie producers and wouldn’t be home for several days. If glowing sunrises, lazy afternoons, and al fresco suppers at the inn down the street from the cottage wouldn’t snap her out of her funk, she’d need his intervention.

On the sixth day following her return from the past, she loaded her car and drove to the island. Jack had shuttered the cottage for the winter and the house needed a good airing. She threw open the windows and left for the market. When she returned, a cool sea breeze had filled the rooms with the tangy scent of salt and the promise of healing.

She changed into shorts and a T-shirt and went out on the back deck with a basket of medical journals, her cell phone, and iPad. It was a gorgeous day for early March: high sixties and a light breeze, goose-bumply cool, but the sun warmed her face.

Her phone rang. She dug it out of the basket, frowning. If Jack was calling instead of texting, something was wrong. “What’s happened? Are you in the hospital?”

“No. I’m just tired.” The reply was casual, but there was something odd in his voice, off-key. “The producers are requesting changes to the proposal.”

“If you make them will they option your story?”

“They might, but I can’t find my journal. Did I leave it in your bag? Where are you, anyway?”

Charlotte stretched out on the cushioned lounge chair and wiggled her toes, admiring their trimmed, polished pinkness. “I’m at the island. I stuck the bag in my clothes closet when I got home and never opened it. Go over there and look. Check my mail, too.”

“I’m taking a red-eye tonight. I’ll go over there tomorrow. I don’t remember packing it in your bag, but it’s the only place it could be.”

“Maybe you left it at…” By unspoken agreement, they hadn’t mentioned Braham’s name. It didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about him. She had, constantly. She just couldn’t talk about him. “Maybe you left it behind.”

“If I did, I’ve lost six months of irreplaceable research, and if anyone reads it, the stock market could be impacted for the next hundred years. I’ve got to find it.”

“I’m sure it’s in my bag. You wouldn’t have left it behind.” She slipped on her sunglasses and hat and stacked the magazines on the table next to the chair. “I wish you’d come to the island. The weather is decent for early spring.”

“How long are you staying?”

“If you won’t come down, then I’ll come home Friday. It’s lonely here by myself.”

“Come out to the mansion, and I’ll grill steaks. Do you want to invite Ken? You promised him a full report when you got back.”

“No, I’m not ready to talk yet.”

“I’ll see you at the house Friday night about seven thirty. We’ll sit out on the portico, watch the sunset over the river, and drink a bottle of the Australian wine you like. Be sure to