Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Read online

  Journey to the Lost Tomb

  BOOK 2 of the Rowan & Ella Time Travel Adventure Series

  Ella Stevens is a woman on the eve of her wedding when a frantic phone call from an old college pal sets her on a course that takes her away from the altar and any semblance of life as she knows it. Unfortunately, rescuing her friend means losing herself when Ella stumbles through a time portal in the bazaar of Old Cairo that sends her back in time at the moment just before the greatest archaeological discovery of the age: the opening of the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

  Desperately trying to get back to her own time and her fiancé—a sexy US Marshal who, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have all the patience in the world—Ella discovers that evil is not limited to any one timeline. With the shocking discovery of what will be the most precious treasure she will ever own, Ella risks her life to protect it while fighting to find her way back to her man.

  Journey to the Lost Tomb

  Book 2 of

  The Rowan & Ella Time Travel Adventure Series

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Atlanta 2013

  “Well, it’s not so much about taking the last biscuit, is it?” Carol Pierce frowned at her prospective daughter-in-law, repositioning her glasses on her nose as if to examine her more closely. “It’s more what it says about the character of a person.”

  “Give it a rest, Mom,” Rowan said, signaling to the waiter. Ella wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d thrown down his money and just walked out. His impatience was bristling off him in waves. “Everyone was finished eating. No one wanted the last damn biscuit. Dad, you ready? Walk with me to the check out?”

  Oh, hell no, Ella thought. You are not leaving me alone with your mother. She stood and pointed in the direction of the restrooms.

  “I’ll meet you at the car,” she said, forcing herself to smile at Rowan’s mother before leaving.

  What was with her? Was she really going to rake Ella over the coals for reaching for the last biscuit? A biscuit that now lay cold and uneaten on Ella’s plate? Wasn’t this just one more brick in the case she was building for Rowan to not marry Ella?

  Ella pushed open the door to the Ladies’ rest room and steadied herself by leaning against the sinks and watching her reflection in the mirror. This whole trip was such a disaster, she thought. She was supposed to be getting to know Rowan’s folks on their home turf of Atlanta, and they her. The wedding was in less than a month. She looked in the mirror and grimaced. She looked less like a blushing bride-to-be and more like something hunted and trapped.

  She was sure Rowan’s mother had taken one fast look at the woman her son had presented to her as his future wife and dug in her chubby little heels and said no, way.

  More like no effing way.

  Carol Pierce was an alien creature in Ella’s world. Domestic, stable, content, comfortably locked into her ideas she’d held since high school. Not only was she at the furthest end on the personality spectrum from Ella, she didn’t even register on the Ideal Mother barometer. To be fair, Ella had no real experience with loving mothers, having lost her own at age five, but even her best girl friends’ mothers were a different breed from this. Maybe it’s just mothers of sons, she found herself thinking as she washed her hands.

  At any rate, the old man seemed cool, she thought. Or, at least noncommittal. Guess that comes from thirty years of letting Carol tell him what he thought and why he thought it. Mr. Pierce looked like an older version of Rowan—a tall man, needing to fold his lanky legs under him to negotiate a restaurant booth or chair. He was barrel-chested, full of good humor and ready to erupt in a giant laugh any minute. Rowan was definitely a quieter version of that, she thought. As a US Deputy Marshal, his job was routinely dangerous and Ella could never get over the fact that every day he went to work he might end up shooting someone. Or getting shot.

  She had moved in with him in Dothan after her return from Heidelberg, Germany, and after a failed adventure in overseas living that could well have shaken the sexy Marshal out of her mind but in fact had served to make her realize how much she couldn’t live without him.

  Knowing she’d stalled long enough, she dried her hands and exited the room to find Mrs. Pierce standing outside the bathroom waiting for her. The woman held her purse in both her arms like she was afraid Ella might try to snatch it from her. Her lips were crimped shut as if she smelled something unpleasant and was trying to reduce the number of orifices the odor could come in.

  “We are waiting, Ellen,” she said tightly.

  “Jeez, Carol,” Ella said. “Are you really going to pretend you don’t know my name?”

  Ella had the pleasure of watching the older woman startle at Ella’s bluntness, but quickly felt guilt at the cheap shot. This was Rowan’s mother. No good could come from baiting her.

  “We are waiting for you,” Carol repeated, then turned on her heel to lead the way through the restaurant lobby to the parking lot. Ella followed, feeling as if she were walking to her own execution.

  They’d been in Atlanta exactly four hours of a weekend-long visit.

  * * * * * * * * * *

  “I’m just saying, she’s set in her ways and you could do a little more to placate her.”

  “What you mean is I should just fake it to make you happy.”

  Rowan sat on the edge of the double bed in his parents’ guestroom watching Ella unpack her suitcase.

  “Would being nice to my mother really be a matter of having to fake it?”

  “She hates me, Rowan!”

  “Oh, give me a break. And lower your voice. These walls are thin.”

  “She threw a fit because I took the last biscuit!”

  “I was there, Ella. Do we have to relive it?”

  “She’s doing a character test on me. Do you get that? If I were to cough after someone sprays cologne in the air, she’d jot down my reaction.”

  “That’s an exaggeration. She will love you when she gets to know you.”

  “Rowan, if you’re holding out for her loving me, you have some serious reality issues.”

  “It’s just one weekend, Ella. Can you not just grin and bear it for one damn weekend?”

  Ella took a long breath then sat down next to him, putting her hand on his. She was silent for a moment. “Promise we’ll leave right after lunch tomorrow?”

  “I told you we would.”

  “I can hang on that long,” she said, resuming her unpacking. “It’s easy to see why she behaves like this. They want the best for you.”

  He stood, took the silk panties out of her hands and tossed them on the bed, and drew her in
to his arms.

  “And when they get to know you,” he said softly into her ear, brushing her long dark hair out of her eyes, “they’ll know that’s what I got.” He reached down and gave her bottom a squeeze. “I’m going to go play some one-on-one with my dad. You gonna be okay?”

  “Of course,” she said kissing him and secretly wishing he wouldn’t go. “After I finish up here I’m gonna go have a coffee with your mom and tell her a few different things she can do with her hair.”

  Rowan stopped mid-stride and turned to face her.

  “Kidding, Rowan,” she said. “I’m kidding. You mother says she doesn’t drink coffee.”

  It had been pure folly from the start.

  Carol Pierce suggested that she and Ella spend the afternoon at Lenox Square shopping for bridesmaids’ presents. Ella had no idea what possessed Carol to suggest it, but the look of unbridled hope and joy on Rowan’s face combined with the fact Ella hadn’t known she needed to buy bridesmaids’ presents quickly had the two of them in the car heading to the mega shopping center in Buckhead.

  Ella figured out early on the key was not to speak. Since everything she did and said seemed to royally piss the woman off, it was best to just go through the motions of shopping. They made it to the parking lot okay, fueled directly, Ella believed, by her policy of not talking unless absolutely necessary. Because she was driving, she accepted with as much good grace as possible every time Carol corrected her timing, second-guessed her decisions, or made the most annoying grunting noises to indicate—as far as Ella could decipher—that Ella had committed a gaffe beyond what words could express. When mere silence didn’t seem to be helping her tamp down the rising indignation Carol was igniting in her, Ella began to mentally chant: she’s Rowan’s mother, she’s Rowan’s mother, she’s Rowan’s mother.

  That hadn’t been effective for long either.

  As Ella pulled into a parking spot in front of Pottery Barn, Carol sucked in a breath that made Ella slam on the brakes. Fearing she’d just run over a small entourage of baby strollers at the very least, Ella asked: “What? What happened?”

  Carol looked away, as if vastly disappointed she had to state the obvious.

  “You’re parking next to a handicapped spot, dear,” she said tightly as if this was pertinent if not obvious.

  Ella was confused. “I’m not parking in the spot,” she said.

  “Rowan’s father and I know several people who need to use these parking spots,” Carol said, concentrating on sorting out her handbag in her lap and not looking at Ella.

  Ella turned off the ignition and looked at the handicap sign next to her spot.

  “But I’m not in the handicap spot,” she repeated. She pointed to the sign. “See? It’s—”

  “Parking this close to the line next to a handicap space is nearly as bad as parking in their spot,” Carol said. “It’s not illegal so you may, of course, do it if you really need to be this close. I, for one, am not crippled in any way and am perfectly capable of walking.”

  “You’re saying I’m too close to the handicap spot?”

  “I’m saying by parking here you are creating one more barrier that people with handicaps have to overcome before they can park and get into the store.”

  “No problem,” Ella said, starting the car back up again. “I am happy to park a little further away.” See, Rowan? See what I’m doing here for your whacked out mother? Are you watching?

  “Please do not move on my account,” Carol said. “I am sure that would be out of character for you and I do not want to inconvenience you while you are visiting with Rowan.”

  Holy shit. Direct shot across the bow. Full-on attack, that one.

  “I am happy to change my personality in any way that I can to keep peace in the family,” Ella said sweetly.

  “I wasn’t aware you had a family.”

  “It’s a figure of effin’ speech.” Damn. That just slipped out.

  “I have to say I find you profane and lowbrow, my dear.”

  “You don’t have to keep calling me my dear, Carol, when it’s the last thing you feel about me.”

  “It isn’t the last thing,” Carol said smugly, gripping her purse tightly on her lap, looking everywhere in the parking lot but at Ella. “I am not comfortable with you calling me by my Christian name.”

  “You rather I call you Ma Pierce?”

  Carol twisted in her seat to glare at Ella. “This is all a game to you, isn’t it?”

  “Not a very fun one, if that’s any consolation.”

  “I am not happy with the idea of my son marrying someone like you.”

  No shit.

  “And by someone like you, you mean…”

  “Worldly, loose, shallow.” She paused. “Old.”

  “Old? I’m thirty.”

  “Rowan is an attractive, well-educated Deputy in the United States Marshal Service,” Carol said proudly. “He can have anyone he wants. A younger woman would have no trouble giving him children.”

  “Well, I will certainly do my best to pop out a few,” Ella said, grabbing her purse. The whole silence thing clearly didn’t work very well when you were trapped in a parked car. It was best they got into the store where there were lots of distractions.

  “And then there is the little matter of the tainted gene pool,” Carol said, straightening out her sweater and making no move to open the car door to join Ella.

  Ah, there it is. Ella was surprised Rowan had shared that information with them. That she had a grandfather who was hanged at the 1945 Nuremburg Trials was not something she normally told people. Her own mother died with the secret. Ella guessed in Rowan’s mind it just made Ella all the more unique and he couldn’t see how other people wouldn’t see it that way too. Especially his own people. Sweet, naïve Rowan.

  “It’s not just a matter of having a monster in your recent history,” his mother was saying, “but combine it with the fact you are older, probably picked up a few sexual diseases over the years, and your chances of giving my son a healthy child are significantly diminished. Any doctor will tell you that.”

  “Are you coming, Carol? Because now we’ve got this awesome parking spot way out here and I don’t want to give it up unless we really have to.”

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

  Ella sighed, praying for patience or strength or both. “Are you coming?”

  “Are you determined to marry my son next month?”

  “Isn’t that why we’re here? To get the bridesmaids’ presents for when I marry your son next month?”

  “I was hoping we might have a conversation about whether or not that was really necessary.”

  “I take it you don’t mean the bridesmaids’ presents.”

  Carol turned a cold stare on Ella, so she leaned on the window of the car.

  In for a penny…she thought. “You know we’re as good as married, right?” Ella said. “I mean, we live together in his apartment in Dothan.”

  “Shacking up is not the same as married.”

  “No, which is why we want to get married.”

  “Did he mention his first wife to you?”

  Ella felt the question hit her like an iron fist in the stomach. First wife?

  Carol smiled. “I take it by the expression on your face that he did not.”

  “Without kids, it doesn’t count,” Ella heard herself say. Her stomach was roiling now. Why hadn’t Rowan mentioned the fact that he had been married before?

  “He has a child.”

  Ella wrenched open the car door and sat down before her knees collapsed on her. She felt a tingling sensation in her chest and a lightheadedness. It was difficult to breathe.

  “Would it help to put your head between your knees, dear?”

  “Rowan has a child?” She could barely get the words out. Her first instinct was to kick the old broad out of the car and drive straight back to Dothan alone. Come to think of it, she didn’t have anything in Dothan she really cared about.
She could just drive the hell off and end up as far as her credit card would take her.

  “No. More’s the pity.”

  Ella snapped her head around to look at Carol. “No? He does not have a child? You were messing with me?”

  “You do not look to me like a woman who has complete faith in her groom-to-be, Ella,” Carol said. “You look to me like a woman who just believably imagined her man keeping a very important item of his backstory from her.”

  “An item that you just made up.”

  “Yes, this time. But what other things has he not told you? You didn’t know he was married before. To a lovely girl, by the way.”

  Ella’s head was spinning from the warmth inside the car and overpowering proximity and abundance of Carol’s cologne. She rolled down the window and prayed she wasn’t going to vomit. God, it smelled like cleaning fluid. Was it possible Rowan’s mother had deliberately doused herself in Mr. Clean just to make Ella sick?

  “I think you are not as close to picking out bridesmaids’ presents as you think you are,” Carol said, flipping down the visor to access the passenger side vanity mirror. She unscrewed a lipstick and applied it, making loud smacking noises as she did. Ella watched in fascination as if watching someone gut a deer on the highway.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Carol snapped the visor back and looked at Ella. “I thought that was clear,” she said. “I am not in favor of this wedding.”

  “The reasons being that I’m profane, immoral and too old for Rowan.”

  “And selfish.”

  “Because I took the last biscuit at lunch?”

  “It’s the biscuit today, and tomorrow it will be insisting Rowan forgo a transfer for promotion because you don’t want to leave the town you’re living in. I do not see you as thinking of anyone but yourself.”

  “Is that what you do with Mr. Pierce?”

  “Make a joke of it. I was sure you would.” She shrugged. “Rowan did too, truth be told.”

  “You told all this to Rowan?”

  “Yes, of course. I see my son making the biggest mistake of his life, I’m not going to stand back and say nothing.”