Marjorie Thelen - The Forty Column Castle

“Yes?”

“Real sleep as in eyes closed, alone in my room at Yannis’s house.”

“Princess, you make me sad. I was hoping I could entice you into a nice breakfast at the Coral Bay Resort and then a wonderful relaxing bath in a big Jacuzzi and then a nice, cool lay on the clean sheets of a king size bed. What do you say?”

“You’re wounded. I don’t think you should overextend yourself.”

“This is nothing.” He brushed over the holes the bullets made in the front of his shirt. “Just a few bruises. My face is healing up. Look, hardly any black and blue.”

I examined his eye and cheek. “I’ll take you up on the invitation. But I’m calling my aunt, Yannis and Lena as soon as we get to the hotel to let them know we’re all right and that life can proceed on.”

“It’s a deal.”

Later, as we lay together entwined on top of that king size bed in the coolness of the room, another fiery sunset splashing over the skies of Coral Bay, Zach said, “What I am really asking is what will you do now that all this is over?”

I sighed the wonderful contentment of a well-sated woman. “I’m going to stay on a few more days in Cyprus and recover my strength. How about you?”

“Me, too. I have some R & R coming. I take a few weeks off after an assignment. But what about after that?”

“I’ll go back to Boston. But I might be back. I’m thinking of opening an office on Cyprus. How about you?”

“I’m going shopping for an island.”

Marjorie Thelen lives and writes novels outside a small town on the Oregon frontier. She enjoys writing stories that entertain her and, hopefully, her readers. The Forty Column Castle is the first in the series Mystery-in-Exotic-Places. The next in the series is The Hieroglyphic Staircase set in Copan, Honduras. If you would like to learn more, visit her web site:

www.MarjorieThelen.com