Kiss Across Time (Kiss Across Time Series) by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page A

gripping her chest. “Why?” she breathed.
    He lifted the almost weightless plastic sheet away from the thing beneath. “This is why.”
    It was a book. A very old…no, an ancient book. Hand-written of course and illustrated with loving care by some monk at a monastery. Then her gaze fell upon the script and she automatically began to translate.
    Then she realized what this was and began to tremble. “This is Inigo Domhnall. This is his work.” She pressed her hands against the table for support. “He really did exist. He really was a playwright…oh my god….”
    Brody’s arm was there, holding her up. “Veris, she’s gone white.”
    Veris’ shoulder slid under her cheek, his fingers soothed her brow. “I’m sorry Taylor. I should have eased you into this.”
    She blinked as a tear stung in the corner of her eye. “He was real,” she repeated, as Brody stroked her shoulder.
    “Yes, he was real, my lover.” Veris’ voice rumbled against her, deep and comforting.
    “They fired me at the university because they finally got too embarrassed about my thesis—I kept insisting he was real but I couldn’t find any proof and it was here all the time.” She clutched at Veris. “You knew, when you came to see me that night. You knew and you let me think I was chasing a shadow, just like all the other experts.”
    “I had to, Taylor,” Veris said. “This manuscript was carried through history by us and can’t be accounted for in a way that humans will accept. I came to you to see if there was another way— any other way than using this book.” His hand lifted toward the ancient manuscript lying on the table.
    “Why?”
    “I want Inigo Domhnall accepted into human history as badly as you do. I want his works discovered and acknowledged. I want him and his descendants remembered.”
    She lifted her head from his shoulder. There was something in his voice, a core of determination that she recognized. It was the steel of a man who would stop at nothing.
    “What is Domhnall to you, Veris?” she asked. “You were the conqueror, the invader.”
    Brody turned Taylor to look at him. “Inigo Domhnall was my father.”
    Taylor felt her mouth open in a silent “oh!” as the unexplained motivations and behaviors of these two men fell into place with an almost audible click in her mind.
    They were watching her now, to see what she would say. If it were possible for two large, strong men with little in the way of a human conscience to look sheepish, then she thought they carried a touch of guilt in their expressions too.
    “And so,” a woman’s voice said from the far end of the long boardroom, “we have the beginnings of a conundrum that it seems I must step in to resolve. You two will forever vex me with your games, won’t you?”
    As soon as she spoke, both Veris and Brody let Taylor go, straightened up at her side and bowed their heads low.
    This must be the queen, then, Taylor realized.
    As the queen continued to speak, she moved further down the room and the overhead spotlights illuminated her as she stepped into their radius. She was tall for a woman, about five feet nine, and slender to the point of skinny. But she did not look ill. She looked radiant. Her skin was olive colored and glowed. Her black hair was shoulder length and groomed in a fashionable straight bob. She was wearing a designer business suit. She had elongated, big, dark brown eyes that stared into Taylor’s in a way that made her feel like the queen was scooping out her thoughts wholesale.
    “It has been a very long time since a human ventured inside these walls,” the queen said.   “Veris assures me the matter is a worthy one. I hope for his sake he is right. At first glance I can see why he believes you might be worth the fuss. You do me honor with your appearance, little one. Thank you.”
    Taylor scrambled to process the meanings and secondary meanings behind the woman’s words, then gave up. Veris was going to have to