They looked so happy, she thought and took the picture to look closer, but paused when she saw the photo underneath. It was of a much younger Wyatt and Merry, in front of Merry’s house. Elspeth suddenly suspected she knew why the house had looked so familiar to her when she’d seen it online. She’d seen it before. Wyatt must have shown her that picture when they met years ago, and while her mother had erased her memories, her subconscious had recognized the house. Her renting from his grandmother hadn’t been chance.
Feeling sick over what her mother had done, Elspeth handed back the photo of them in front of the theatre.
Wyatt took it, but didn’t put it away at once. Instead, he peered at it for a moment and said, “This was just after I finished my last enlistment. I took a couple weeks to travel and decide if I should enlist again, and if so, for how long. I was going to tour several European countries while I thought about it. I started in England. France was supposed to follow, but I never got there.”
“Why?” she asked, but already knew the answer.
“Because I met you. I stopped to have lunch in a café the first day after I arrived. You were at a neighboring table. I asked to borrow your vinegar and we started talking. You were playing hooky, you said. You had called in sick to work because it was your birthday.” A smile curved his lips. “We ended up sitting there for a couple of hours, and only left when the workers started giving us dirty looks. I was booked for a tour of the Tower of London and was going to cancel, but you said you’d come with me. In the taxi on the way we briefly got held up in traffic in front of a theater that had We Will Rock You playing. The Dominion Theatre. I mentioned I was kind of interested in seeing it and you said, then we should. We’d go on the tour, have dinner, and then go to the play. And that’s what we did. We went on the tour and spent the entire time talking and laughing, annoying the heck out of our tour guide.”
He grinned at the memory and Elspeth grinned back. She could almost picture what he was describing. In fact, she could see a ginger-haired Yeoman Warder scowling at them for laughing while he was trying to talk to the group.
“Afterward, we went to dinner, and then we went to the theater to see if we could get tickets to We Will Rock You for that night. I didn’t think we would, but apparently it had been showing for years at the time, six or eight I think the guy said. There were seats available.” Peering at her solemnly, he said, “You told me it was the first play you’d been to and I believed it, because you sat there wide-eyed with wonder throughout . . . and I just sat and watched you. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“I don’t . . .” She shook her head helplessly.
“Do you remember what you did on your birthday four years ago?” Sam asked quietly when Elspeth continued to just shake her head.
Elspeth paused and tried to think back. “We always go away for my birthday. Last year we went to Spain. The year before that it was Greece. The year before that was Germany, and the year before that . . .” She thought briefly, and then remembered and was oddly disappointed to say, “Italy. I was in Italy for my birthday four years ago.”
“That’s not true. It can’t be,” Wyatt said with a frown.
“It isn’t,” Victoria announced, drawing their attention to her presence in the open kitchen door.
Elspeth raised her eyebrows as the twins entered. “Yes, Victoria, it is. I remember we stayed with Raffael, and he took us to a little trattoria for my birthday dinner.”
“We did stay with Raffael that year, and he did take us to a trattoria for your birthday dinner, but it was the day after your birthday,” she assured her solemnly.
When Elspeth frowned, Julianna told her, “It’s true. You went missing on your birthday and didn’t show up until the day after. Mom freaked. She went into full-on panic mode. Even Dad couldn’t calm her down. She must have called the head of the UK Enforcers a hundred times, demanding he take every one of his hunters off any jobs they were on and send them out to search for you.”
“Yeah. I think she nearly drove Scotty over the edge. At least, it looked that way when he came to the house,” Victoria said with a grimace.
“Scotty came out to the house?” Elspeth asked with amazement. Scotty, whose true name was Cullen MacDonald, had been helping out Mortimer the last several weeks. She’d spoken to him several times since moving to Canada and he hadn’t mentioned anything like this. Which was probably a good thing since she wouldn’t have known what he was talking about, she supposed.
“Oh, yeah, although at the time I wasn’t sure if he was there to try to calm her or kill her,” Victoria said dryly.
“I was sure it was kill,” Julianna put in with amusement. “Mom was constantly on the phone to him, shrieking her head off, freaking all over him, calling him an idiot and useless and whatnot. After twenty-four hours of that, I’d want to kill her.”
Elspeth turned to Wyatt with wide eyes. “Twenty-four hours?”
Wyatt nodded. “After the play we went back to my hotel room.”
“Really?” Alex drawled the word out and leaned forward, her gaze on Wyatt becoming concentrated briefly before her eyes widened. “Not quite after, though. You left early,” she said with a grin.
“Yes,” he acknowledged, looking somewhat embarrassed.
“Why?” Elspeth asked with surprise. “Why would we leave early?”
“Actually, we were asked to leave,” Wyatt admitted almost apologetically.
“We were?” Elspeth gasped with shock. She’d never been kicked out of anywhere. Ever. “Why?”
Wyatt blew out a sigh. “I kissed you.”
Alex snorted at the claim.
Wyatt scowled at her, and then admitted, “It was supposed to be a quick, gentle kiss, but . . .” He shook his head. “It was like an explosion happened. My lips brushed lightly over yours and the next thing I knew, we were tearing at each other’s clothes and . . .” He shrugged helplessly.
“Yeah, that life mate sex is a killer. I mean, none of us intended to ruin the holidays we told you guys about. You just intend to give your loved one a quick kiss in passing and kapow!” Sam said on a sigh.
Alex nodded. “A kiss, a touch—heck, even a look—and it can happen. Kapow and you’re gonzo.”
Elspeth glanced from Alex to Sam. Noting the secret smiles they both wore made her wish she’d experienced what they were talking about. It sounded . . . interesting. And then she recalled that she supposedly had experienced it and simply didn’t remember it and heaved a sigh. Another memory and moment stolen by her mother, she thought bitterly, and turned to Wyatt to ask, “So we left early that night, but I didn’t show up at home until the next day?”
“We stayed in bed until midafternoon the next day,” Wyatt explained quietly. “And we only got up then because we were hungry. We went to a café. I went to the bathroom and when I came back you were talking to some guy. You said he was a family friend and he and a lot of other people had been looking for you since the night before. You said your mother was freaking out. You should have called her, and you had to go home and calm her down. You’d meet me in that café the next day, at the same time.”
Wyatt frowned as he recalled it. “The guy was pulling you away as you talked. Afterward, I didn’t understand why I didn’t intervene. Now I suppose the fellow was controlling me and making me accept what was happening. But I didn’t even get a chance to ask your phone number. I tried to follow you, but I had to pay for our meal, and by the time I got out you were both gone.”
“I’m guessing she didn’t show up the next day?” Alex asked quietly.
“I waited for hours for her, but no, she never showed,” Wyatt admitted and then turned back to Elspeth. “So then I tried to look you up. I started looking for an Elspeth Pimms in the phone book, and on the internet, but there was nothing. No phone number listing, no Facebook, not even a Google search of your name turned up anything. It was like you didn’t exist.”
Elspeth turned to her sisters. “What happened? Why didn’t I go back the next day?”