Free All The Time You Need by Melissa Mayhue Page B

those and I’ve none that will fit. I suppose we’ll have to pay a visit to old Willie. Have ourselves a wee chat about how quickly he thinks he can make a pair for her.”
    Shoes? Seriously? If what they were saying was true, Annie was somehow trapped in the wrong freakin’ century, and these two were worried about shoes? She wanted to scream at the women. She wanted to scream at the world around her, or simply scream, period.
    Annie took a deep breath to calm herself, struggling to center her scattered emotions and regain her tenuous hold on reality. Obviously, her imagination was running wild. None of this was possible. And even if it were, hysteria wasn’t the answer. It made much more sense that these people were playing her in some elaborate con. That had to be it. She’d taken her share of science classes and loved to watch every science documentary that showed on television. She knew for a fact that time travel absolutely, positively was not possible. Time moved inexorably forward. In one direction only, like a raging river.
    A memory of Syrie’s parting words crowded into her mind, shoving aside every other thought, demanding her attention.
    It isn’t a river, flowing only in one direction. It’s a grand, swirling wind, blowing hither and yon.
    No. She simply couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t accept it. The conversation with her grandmother’s friend was merely a coincidence. A weird fluke. Nothing more.
    “You’re making a big mistake,” Annie said at last. “I don’t know what you guys are trying to pull, but you’re not going to get away with it. I don’t belong here. Maybe you should just help me get back to my grandmother’s cottage, okay?” When the two women exchanged another look she couldn’t read, Annie tried again. “Never mind that. How about you just point me in the direction of the arbor. I’ll find my own way back to the cottage. My shoes are in the arbor, anyway. We won’t even need to bother your old Willie.” Whoever the hell that was.
    “Alex is no’ likely to allow you outside the gates. He says it’s no’ safe,” Lissa said. “No’ with the threat of the Gordons lurking about.”
    Someone here wouldn’t allow her outside the gates? They were keeping her prisoner? Wait! What had she said?
    “Gordons? Peter’s family?” Even if Peter knew she’d been kidnapped by some oddball cult—which he couldn’t possibly at this point, because she was only now learning of it herself—he would hardly be the one to come looking for her. And his family? There was no way they’d be here. They’d much more likely be waiting for her family to cough up the ransom while they sought sympathy from all their wealthy friends at the country club.
    “Peter is a Gordon?” Lissa asked, all trace of her smile gone. “And how is it that you know Peter of the Clan Gordon?”
    How? Because their fathers had done numerous business deals together over the years. Because they belonged to the same social circles. Because her parents thought he’d make the perfect husband and their marriage would meld their family fortunes into one giant conglomeration worthy of a mention in one of the prominent business magazines.
    “Peter is…” Annie paused, as she twisted the diamond ring on her finger, finding it as difficult to say the words now as she had from the moment she’d foolishly accepted his proposal. “We’re to be married.”
    “I must say, that’s no' something I expected to hear.” Lissa stepped back from her, shaking her head. “And no' something I think Alex will be at all pleased to learn, either.”
    This was the second time she’d mentioned this Alex person. Perhaps he was their ringleader. But regardless of who he was, if he thought she cared what he liked or didn’t, or that she was going to take this whole charade like some pathetic whiner, sitting back, waiting until…well, waiting for whatever it was he planned for her, then he’d better get himself a whole new