The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

through the vortex. If Meredith was alone, she’d go directly to the mansion to wait for him and the others. Until he saw her and held her in his arms, though, he’d worry about her, which he did every minute they were apart. Fortunately, all three women—Meredith, Kit, and Emily—were at home here and wouldn’t be alarmed if they were alone.

Elliott was heading through the tree line in the mansion’s direction when a horse and rider jumped a rail fence a few yards ahead. Elliott dodged in time to prevent a thousand-pound Thoroughbred from landing on top of him, but his numb foot caused him to lose his balance, his hat flew off, and he fell back into a blackberry bramble.

“Damnation!”

The only fruit he hated more than kiwi was blackberries. The floral scent made him barf, and the bitter notes were disgusting—even in wine—and then there were the damn thorns. Well, enough said.

But it wasn’t the thorns and nettles scratching the exposed skin of his neck and hands that pissed him off. It was his racing heart. It was racing to either get away from the blackberries or leap out of his chest.

And on top of that, he wouldn’t be surprised if the pain was a heart attack, and he was going to die while stuck in a goddamn brambleberry thicket.

After the family recovered from the shock, they’d spend the next fifty years talking about how Grandpa Fraser died in a bramble. No one could find out about this. No one. He’d have to bribe the asshole who ran him down.

The man reined his horse and trotted toward him. “Are ye injured?” he asked while dismounting. “Do ye need a doctor?” He reached to help Elliott up. “I could have killed ye.”

“I’ve worked with Thoroughbreds my entire life, and that was the closest one’s come to killing me. Kicked, aye! Bitten, aye, but run over… Never!” Elliott glared at the man with gray hair and brown eyes. “Are ye Sean MacKlenna?”

“Aye, and who might ye be?” Sean glanced around. “And where’s yer horse? Were ye thrown?”

Elliott snarled and narrowed his eyes. “A horse hasn’t thrown me since I was a lad!” He extended his arms for Sean to grab hold of.

Sean pulled Elliott to his feet and brushed fruit and stems and thorns off his back. “I’m verra sorry. I jump this fence every day, and this is the first time anyone has ever been on this side of it when I landed.”

“Well, someone was here today!” Elliott’s tone was sharper than it should have been, but he just had the piss scared out of him. His racing heart slowed but hadn’t returned to its regular rhythm. “I’ve walked, driven, and ridden through this tree line for fifty years, and no one has ever tried to kill me before.”

“Fifty years! Ye lost yer mind when ye fell. This is MacKlenna Farm”—Sean thumped his chest with his thumb—“my farm, and I’ve never seen ye here before.”

“Of course ye haven’t. I don’t live in yer time,” Elliott snapped, still irritated at Sean’s recklessness. And at eighty, he shouldn’t be jumping fences anyway.

Sean’s face paled, and his eyes opened wide. “My time! What the hell does that mean?”

“Exactly what ye think it does. I’m Elliott Fraser, Kit MacKlenna’s godfather.”

“Elliott? Kitherina’s Elliott?” Sean grabbed his chest and leaned back against his horse.

Elliott almost laughed until he remembered Charlotte’s comment about Sean’s heart, and then he was alarmed. “Do ye need a doctor?”

“No. I’m just surprised. I never thought I’d meet ye.” Tears filled Sean’s eyes as he gripped Elliott’s hand tighter, then swept him into an exuberant embrace before clapping him on the back. Elliott swallowed the lump in his throat, but he couldn’t swallow the tears no matter how fast he blinked them away.

“Ye don’t look like Sean VI, but I see a resemblance in yer eyes,” Elliott said.

“Kitherina told me ye were like brothers.”

“We were, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t look for him to share something important that just happened.” This time Elliott pulled Sean in for a hug and clap on the back.

The last hug Elliott gave his friend Sean VI was the night before he died. That image flashed before his mind’s eye now. Elliott managed to hold it together during the funeral for Kit’s sake, but Sean’s and Mary’s deaths broke off a part of Elliott’s heart. And all the love he found since then had never healed that jagged edge. “This is cause for celebration, and I’m embarrassed… I didna bring a flask. What kind of Scotsman leaves his flask a’ home?”

Sean bellowed. “A poor one, I reckon!” He picked up Elliott’s hat and brushed it off before handing it to him. “I know where there’s more than enough to fill a flask and no one to bother us while we celebrate.”

“By all means, lead the way.”

The two men hit their stride and followed a well-worn path leading away from the mansion. “I didna think I’d ever say this,” Sean said, threading his horse’s reins through his fingers, “but thank ye for raising my niece. We were heartbroken when the ship bringing my sister and her babe to America sank during the storm. We believed we’d lost them both, but Jamilyn had the foresight to see to her daughter’s future.”

“We were gobsmacked when we found her on the doorstep,” Elliott said. “Sean pulled some strings, forged a few documents, and Kit became his adopted daughter and legal heir.”

“What’s so striking,” Sean said, “is that Jamilyn’s death brought Kitherina to ye, and it was the death of her adoptive father that brought her to me.”

“I never thought of it that way, but I guess ye’re right.”

“And then four years ago, her fall and Cullen’s heart attack sent her back to ye.”

“And here she is again.”

Sean’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and he squinted into the distance, as if he could see her already, and asked in a whisper, “Kitherina’s here?”

Elliott grinned, and his heart rate