C. Palov - Templar's Code

And why their long-distance relationship suited him so well. The quiet comforts of his Paris flat provided an emotional safety net.

“While I learned to live after love died, the transition didn’t come easy.” Extending a hand, he smoothed a flyaway curl from Edie’s face. “Am I in danger of losing you?”

“I don’t scare easily.”

He smiled, relieved. Although he reveled in the solitude of living alone, he frequently missed Edie’s cheery companionship and irreverent humor. Those were the times when he ardently yearned for the pleasure of her company. He just needed more time.

“Come here.” Taking her by the hand, he pulled Edie into his arms. Bending his head, he kissed her, leisurely exploring the soft swell of her lower lip before thrusting his tongue inside her warm, sweet-tasting mouth.

Two packets of sugar indeed.

Edie moaned softly and swayed toward him.

“Good God!” Rubin bellowed from the open doorway where he stood holding a tray. “You’re at it again!”

They instantly broke apart, Edie’s shoulders shaking with barely suppressed mirth.

Caedmon glanced at the martini pitcher and three iced cocktail glasses on Rubin’s tray. “A bit early for that, don’t you think?”

“Nonsense. Never too early to celebrate renewed friendships.” Pronouncement made, their host proceeded to fill their glasses from the sleek Waterford pitcher.

Edie also seemed surprised by the choice of “refreshments.” “Silly me. I was expecting tea and crumpets.”

“Of course you were. No doubt served by Miss Moppet.” Rubin handed Edie a cocktail garnished with a sliver of lemon. “No maraschino cherries, no ridiculous paper umbrellas. The dry martini is a civilized drink, ‘the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.’ ”

CHAPTER 45

“So this is what Shakespeare meant by ‘masking the business from the common eye,’ ” Marnie Pritchard complained aloud, frustrated. Squinting, she tried to bring the computerized spread sheet into clearer focus.

Still blurry.

Expediency trumping vanity, she opened the top drawer on the inlaid mahogany desk and snatched her prescription reading glasses. While Botox injections, monthly highlights at Daniel Galvin’s to cover the gray, and daily workouts at Gymbox kept Father Time somewhat at bay, there wasn’t much she could do about her deteriorating eyesight.

Oh, the vagaries of middle age.

Since Rubin was hopeless with numbers, she handled all of the financial accounts. Recently she’d computerized their outdated record system, Woolf’s Antiquarian having officially gone green. No more file cabinets full of dogeared vouchers and yellowing slips of paper. The boxed records were currently stacked in the upstairs stockroom awaiting pickup by one of those data storage companies.

Once again, she’d proved herself a model of professional efficiency.

Although in the nearly forty years that she’d known Rubin Woolf, she’d never had to prove herself to him. He’d always accepted her as is. No impossible expectations. No buyer’s remorse.

So different from her adopted parents, Rex and Lynda Pritchard.

When the pricey fertility treatments at the Swedish clinic failed to bring about the desired result, the barren couple returned to their native England. Whereupon they opted for the next best thing—adopting a blond-haired, blue-eyed four-year-old orphan named Marnie. A ready-made daughter. Old enough that Lynda didn’t have to bother with soiled nappies but young enough to still mold in their own image.

Or so they thought.

Imagine their surprise, and keen disappointment, when little Marnie turned out to be an introverted child, afraid of the dark, prone to screaming fits, and only able to speak in monosyllabic, barely intelligible phrases. Hardly the sort of child to make one beam. Well, Lynda, darling, what did you expect? The child was named after a character in a Hitchcock film. Fortunately for the Pritchards, they proved the fertility doctors wrong, Lynda giving birth to a scrunch-faced baby girl two years after the lamentable adoption. Soon thereafter the Pritchards began referring to Marnie as their adopted daughter, presumably to distinguish her from their biological pride and joy, the aptly named Felicity.

Relegated to second best, Marnie withdrew even more. Until she met her next-door neighbor Rubin Woolf. Five years older, he had funny hair that stuck straight up from his scalp at odd angles and wore thick Coke-bottle glasses that magnified his brown eyes, making him appear as though he were in a perpetual state of wide-eyed wonder. Like her, Rubin had a less-than-perfect family life. Without the buffers of adulthood to contend with, they immediately recognized each other for what they were, kindred spirits. Rubin, who had a precocious love of books, taught her to read. Soon they were performing Shakespeare plays in the back garden, complete with costumes and painted scenery. Her parents were delighted that “the little Jew boy” had managed the impossible. Although it didn’t escape Marnie’s notice that Mummy and Daddy still referred to her as their adopted daughter.

For the next five years, with her playmate Rubin at her side, Marnie continued to blossom. Until her parents realized that the little Jew boy had become a teenager who, they feared, had an unnatural attraction to eleven-year-old Marnie. In short order, calls were made, bags were packed, and before Marnie realized what was happening, she was shipped off to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Where she spent the next seven years imprisoned at one of England’s finest boarding schools.

By the time she was paroled from college, she’d acquired a haughty manner and a biting sense of humor. The best armor a girl could have. Particularly a girl making her way in London. Five feet ten inches tall, and blessed with a fashionably thin frame, Marnie soon found work as a fitting model for the avant-garde designer Vivienne Westwood. The uninhibited excess of ’80s London—couture, clubbing, and cocaine—nurtured her inner wild child; Marnie running with a very fast crowd. But as the bright lights around her began to extinguish—an anorexic model friend dying from a sudden heart attack, a flatmate tragically discovering what happens to bad boys who share needles—Marnie became disenchanted with the glam life.

And just like that, she packed it all in.

Steering a new course, she finagled a position with a charity-events planner. It was at a fund-raiser for the St. Stephens AIDS Trust that she ran into her long-lost friend Rubin Woolf. The rapport was immediate. And strong. As though the decade just passed had come and gone in the proverbial blink. Except Rubin’s hair was now spiky all over and he’d traded the Coke bottles for an ultra-hip pair of I. M. Pei-style glasses. He mentioned that having inherited the family house in Stanmore, he’d promptly sold it, using the proceeds to open an antiquarian bookshop in Cecil Court. Would she like to work for him? He needed an educated assistant with a bit of flash to chat up the male clientele. Some of the more valuable volumes could fetch upward of thirty thousand pounds.

If he’d asked her to set sail on HMS Bounty , she would have readily agreed.

Rubin’s estranged lover, Regina, had always been a tad bit jealous of their relationship, mistakenly thinking it was a sexual attraction. Simply put, it wasn’t an attraction. It was a bond. Different kettle altogether. And the reason why they’d never once slept together.

Over the years she and Rubin had weathered many a summer storm—his prostate cancer, her decade-long affair with a married man. Weight gains. Lost friends. Shaky finances. Lost faith. He held her hand when she’d had the abortion. She was at his side for the annual PET scan. They cried for the one and celebrated the other.