Falling in Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

– she
was sure her imagination had kicked into overdrive – but she’d swear the air
smelled different. It seemed tinged with a deeper, brittle kind of cold one
might expect to find in Iceland.
    It was definitely a crisp, Nordic
type of cold.
    Lindy frowned.
    She could almost taste the snow.
    She half expected to see little
sparkly bits of frost clinging to her jacket sleeves when she looked down to
examine them.
    But, of course, she saw no such
thing.
    Yet she did see something
extraordinary when she glanced up again.
    Three large open-hulled boats were
pulled up at the water’s edge, their elaborately-carved prows and rowing oars
proclaiming their identity. Not to mention their square sails, raised and ready,
and the colorfully-painted shields hanging along the wooden sides.
    They were exquisite replicas of
Viking longboats.
    Lindy stared, eyes rounding.
    They looked so real.
    The bulky fur-wrapped packages and
wooden barrels and crates crammed into the narrow space between their rowing
benches looked equally authentic. Clearly provisions, the supply goods
indicated that the re-enactors were about to embark on a staged journey and not
a warring raid.
    Only….
    Lindy gulped.
    The little group of men who came
into view just then, striding down the opposite cliff path, didn’t look like
modern day men dressed up as Viking re-enactors.
    They looked like the real thing.
    Worst of all, one of the men near
the front, leading the others down the steep cliffside, was him . The man
she often dreamed of and who she’d named Lore in her romance novel, but now
knew to be Rogan MacGraith.
    Except – Lindy’s heart tripped –
when a tall blond-braided woman in a flowing red cape appeared at the top of
the bluff, her hair and her cloak whipped by the wind, Lindy knew that the man
she was staring at was named Ragnar.
    In that instant, she also knew that
she’d once been the woman.
    She’d fallen in time, and was
reliving a fateful day that had changed her life ever after.
    Tears streamed down the woman’s
face and, even from here, across the cove, Lindy could see how the woman’s
anguished gaze stayed pinned on the man as he strode purposely down the path,
making for the longships.
    He was heading to his death, Lindy
knew.
    She could feel the woman’s pain
clawing at her heart, ripping her soul.
    “No-o-o!" Lindy wasn’t sure if
she’d yelled, or the red-cloaked woman on the other cliff-top, but the cry
echoed in the cove, causing the men to pause and swing round to stare up at the
woman.
    Lindy watched her, too, looking on
as the woman pressed a fist against her mouth and shook her blond head as Rogan
– no, Ragnar – called something up to her. But whatever it was, the wind took
his words and Lindy couldn’t hear what he’d said.
    Then he turned away again and, for
an instant, his gaze caught hers. He froze, shock and recognition flashing
across his face before he whipped back around to stare up at the woman on the
cliff.
    Only she was gone.
    And before Lindy could see his
reaction, he disappeared, too. His little party of men and the three beached
longboats vanished as well, the entire scene erased from view as if none of it
had ever been.
    Yet Lindy knew it had.
    She’d just glimpsed her own past.
    “Oh, God!" She started to
tremble. The camera slid from her hands, bounced twice, and began clattering
away. “Damn!" She grabbed at it, but her foot slipped and she plunged
forward, tumbling down the remaining steps.
    Blessedly, they weren’t that many,
but she slammed painfully onto her knees all the same, flinging out her arms to
break a worse fall. Even so, she feared the hard shingle might have cracked her
kneecaps. And her hands were definitely bleeding. They hurt badly, burning like
fire.
    “Oh, God…." Shaken, she
slumped against a rock just as the dog she’d seen earlier came bounding up to
her, barking excitedly and wagging his tail as he scampered close to sniff at
her scraped and bloodied