Nancy Jardine Author: The next little bit...

Friday, 4 January 2013

The next little bit...

Topaz Eyes

Yesterday, I posted the first nine pages of my ancestral mystery. Now here's another little bit to get you into the plot...

***

Teun’s entreaties made not a blind bit of difference. The woman up and ran – make that squeezed – as best one could along the heaving street. He sat down, sending a brief glance of apology to the other couple for startling them, realising his pleas had been loud. What exactly had just happened? Surely the woman hadn’t been upset by a little beer? As he reflected on her haste, he knew it wasn’t the beer spill that had distressed her, because she’d been smiling as she wiped away the flow.

However, something had.

They’d been getting along quite nicely till she’d taken flight. Maybe he’d been too crass in mentioning the invitation so soon in the conversation, though she hadn’t looked to be the type of female who’d be shocked by his fumbling request. Too poised and too assured. Gorgeous didn’t describe her. Beautiful seemed too clichéd as well. More appropriate was stunning; exactly how she’d grabbed his attention.

He still felt whacked when he envisioned her face. Eyes, just like the huge imperial topaz he’d seen on his Aunt Marta’s finger years ago, had lured him. He’d never forgotten his fascination with the stone, the name having etched itself in his memory banks. The varied golden brown-twinkling facets of the ring were just like the individual hues of the woman’s amazing irises, the tiny little diamonds around Aunt Marta’s ring like the whites of the Scotswoman’s eyes. Her straight dark brown hair matched those drugging eyes since it, too, had many tints, falling as it did from a side parting to well past her shoulders, in a softly uneven cut at the ends. So uniformly uneven, he guessed clever styling created it.

His palms curled around his beer stein, his restless imagination replacing the cold glass with warm soft flesh. He’d wanted to toy with the unusual necklace she’d been fingering, her hand drifting to it, circling sensually around it. There’d been such a temptation to finger the little bunch of golden charms dangling below her throat, her lightly tanned skin below it seeming to beg for his touch. Nothing blunt, or harsh, about her.

He sighed before picking up his now replenished beer, the waiter having lifted the woman’s unfinished coffee cup, and the money she’d tucked alongside. She’d been a bright spot in a very odd day.

Gone. Like a will o’ the wisp.

Teun fingered the condensation off the side of his beer stein, his focus on it intent. His detour now seemed an unwanted interruption to his carefully planned schedule. Too many things remained unknown, and mysterious, about this invitation to Heidelberg. Fingering the card, he debated whether to collect his luggage from the hotel, which had been booked for him, and disappear as well.

Like the elusive siren he’d just encountered.