Page 25 of All The Time You Need (Magic of Time #1)

As if awakening from a long sleep, Annie opened her eyes to find herself crumpled on the ground beside the large stone bench. The arbor around her was just as she’d first seen it, a tangled, overgrown garden, complete with the rusted iron gate hanging askew from the stone wall.

By all signs, she’d been successful in her attempt to return to her own time.

Once again, she’d run away from her problems, leaving everything that threatened her far behind.

She laughed out loud, a harsh, biting sound, filled with a million emotions, none of them joy or happiness. Yes, once again she’d run away. But this time, it wasn’t for her benefit that she’d run. This time she’d left a huge piece of herself behind. The aching, gaping hole she felt where her heart should be was still with the man who was no more than a memory now, dead for more than seven centuries.

A sob shook her body at the thought. All this misery she’d caused herself by coming to Scotland to escape her commitment to marry Peter, and what had she actually accomplished? Nothing. Now she’d escaped the problems confronting her in the past, but in the process, all she’d managed to do was return to the problems that had sent her to the past in the first place. Dealing with life in the manner she had since childhood had finally caught up with her. After a lifetime of running away from anything that threatened her happiness, she had finally come full circle, and she didn’t much care for where it had brought her.

“Maybe it’s time to grow up and start facing life like an adult,” she muttered, rising to her feet.

With a shaking hand, she retrieved the stone heart from its hole in the bench and dropped it into her bag. That was one talisman that was much too dangerous to simply leave lying around where anyone could stumble on it.

As she left the arbor, she averted her gaze from the direction of the castle that would be little more than crumbled ruins here in this time. She couldn’t bear to think of all those she’d left behind. Instead, she concentrated on her feet, on placing one in front of the other, moving forward toward Bield Cottage.

The sun shone brightly by the time she came out of the trees and into the familiar clearing. Ahead of her, the big rock stood just as it had for so many centuries. She allowed her fingers to trace the heart-shaped carving on its surface for only a moment before she continued on, passing the rental car she’d left parked in the driveway, and finally coming to a stop as she spotted her missing suitcase sitting just beside the front door. Apparently the airline had delivered it to her just as they’d promised.

If she’d needed proof that she was back in her own time, she had it now. And with that proof came the realization that she had some big decisions to make. Her life would never be as it had been before she’d gone back in time. Though the only true love she would ever have was behind her now, with its loss, she’d learned a valuable lesson. For the first time in her life, she’d actually experienced life. She knew the feel of true love and the burden of true loss. She was done with living her life as others plotted it. Done with doing whatever others expected of her. Whatever life held in store for her now, she would never settle for a pale version of what she’d experienced at Dunellen.

Inside the cottage, she headed straight for the shower and allowed herself the luxury of a good cry under the pelting almost-hot water. She dried off and wrapped herself in a thick towel before opening her suitcase to find nothing there that suited her. She once again dug through the piles of her grandmother’s clothing, choosing another of the long skirts her grandmother had favored over the jeans she’d brought along with her.

In the kitchen, she rummaged through the cupboards and pulled out a loaf of bread. The evenly sliced pieces were still soft, and the cheese she pulled out of the refrigerator was fresh. That had to mean that, somehow, time here had passed at a different rate than where she’d been.

Her phone, once she’d retrieved it from the desk drawer where she’d left it, confirmed that theory. Although she’d lived through months in the past, only two days had elapsed in her own time.

It was just as well. She still had time to deal with the changes she needed to make in order to get on with her life.

After eating, she pulled the itinerary she’d printed from the desk drawer and dialed the airline’s customer service number. There was no point in delaying. She needed to face up to the issues confronting her in this time, beginning with Peter and her family. And after that?

After that, she’d come back here, to Bield Cottage. It was as close as she could get to the place where she felt she truly belonged. And who could say? Maybe she’d even look into rebuilding the keep at Dunellen. After all, the entire rest of her life spread out before her. Now that she was taking control of that life, she certainly had all the time she needed to spend on doing whatever she wanted.

Whatever she wanted—as long as what she wanted wasn’t being with her one and only love.