Cuckoo in the Coven

He was propped on one elbow at her side and smiled down at her. He moved his hand to her hair, teasing skeins of it between his fingers and looking at it, as if he’d been waiting for her to wake up for some time. “You’re awake, my lovely.”

“How long have you been watching me snooze?”

“Long enough to be sure you’re real.” His handsome mouth quirked at the corner.

Sunny laughed in delight. He’d been thinking like her, that perhaps it was a strange dream. When he lowered his head to kiss her, she wrapped her arms around him. “We’re still together.”

“We are, yet I find the room somewhat changed,” he whispered in a disconcerted tone.

She gasped when she saw their surroundings.

They were back in her time. Everything was just as she’d left it, her very own wrought-iron framed bed and the gilded mirror over the dresser. The stripped pine floorboards awaiting their varnish, the old oak wardrobe and the framed prints on the walls. Yet she’d managed to keep her lover by her side, at least for a while. How long though? The details of her deal with Viscount Fox seemed vague while she basked in the embrace of her lover’s arms, back in her own home, in her own time.

He kissed her deeply, then moved to rain kisses on her bare shoulders, and lower, across her breasts. Sunny sighed, feeling content in his arms. Over his shoulder, she saw the morning light at the window, and heard twittering birds in the garden outside.

She had to be sure. Easing herself from his grasp, she darted to the window. Yes, there was the road, and the garden was just as she knew it.

Cullen moved and sat up on the edge of the bed, his hair awry an

d his clothes undone. She broke into giggles at the sight of him. He was scratching his head and looking around with a bemused expression on his face. She knew the feeling.

She pointed through the window. “Look, Cullen, the road!”

He came to her side and peered out just as the hourly bus trundled by.

“Hellfire!” He leapt back, pulling her with him. “What was that?”

“The bus. It goes into Raven’s Landing.” She smiled at him. “Like a horse and cart, but quicker.”

He nodded warily, his hand taking hers as if to reassure himself, and then he grinned as he looked across the view from the window. “It really is Cornwall, but it’s somewhere else, too...”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I hope you don’t regret this.”

“Why would I?” His genuine expression reassured her, quelling the rising doubts about what they’d done.

“It’s very different. I don’t know how I’d have coped in your time, without you.”

“But you didn’t have to, and I’m here because of you. Don’t you think things would have been very different for me in the Americas?”

“Yes, but not quite as different as this.”

The phone on the bedside table rang and Cullen turned to look at it in surprise.

“It’s a telephone. It lets you talk to your friends even if they are far away.” She smiled at his expression of disbelief as she picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

He stared at her, incredulous.

“Celeste, yes, I’m fine.”

“I’m so relieved to hear it.” Celeste sighed. “I’ve been fretting about you, all day yesterday.”

That meant time had progressed in the future, too, and that’d work well for Cullen if he wanted to travel back again. She eyed him up and down, her heart beating. Perhaps she could convince him to stay, rather than going back to his time. “I-I’ve been away, but I’m back safe now.”

“What manner of witchcraft is that?” He stared at the handset, his head tilted to one side as he tried to make out the voice emitting from the earpiece.

She smiled and put her finger to her lips, hushing him, and then beckoned him nearer so he could hear, too.

“Is that a man’s voice I hear?” Celeste asked, and gave a delighted chuckle. “Sunny, have you got a man over there?”