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“First off, I’ll come over and have a look when we get back.” His brow furrowed. “Look, I don’t want to rush you but we can only stay an hour or so in Taunton. I’ll drop you off at a café and you can get your caffeine hit and check your e-mail at the same time.”

“That’ll be long enough. I just need to see what’s happening at home.” She let out her breath in a sigh and he looked across at her.

“Problems?” he said.

“A problem at work. If it’s not sorted, I’ll have no job to go back to.”

“What do you do?”

He actually sounded interested so she gave him the short version of her career. He didn’t need to know all the details. “I do some lecturing and tutoring in the sociology of music while I’m working on my PhD. It was actually your Uncle Davy who fostered my love of seventies music.”

He glanced across at her as he changed a gear and the car took off down a narrow hill. “Hmm. Interesting.”

All was quiet until they drove into a medium-sized town and David dropped her off on the main street.

“There’s a café that should have computers about halfway along. I’ll pick you up here in an hour. Okay?” he asked.

“What about an electrical store? I need an adapter.”

He pointed one out across from the café. Megan grabbed her bag and climbed out of the car, taking note of the cafe name so she didn’t get lost.

***

It only took five minutes for David to meet with the bank manager and sign the transfer for it to be couriered back to Clive at his bank in London. The royalties from his music were still providing him with a luxurious lifestyle in the twenty-first century and enabled him to split his time between Glastonbury and his island in the Bahamas.

He wandered along the main street, which was lined with a mixture of old buildings from previous centuries and modern glass-and-concrete structures. Glancing at his watch, he turned into the courtyard of the Castle Hotel, where he knew he could get a quick coffee in the BRAZZ brasserie beneath the imposing four-story structure.

He loved the old castle, and he’d stayed there a few times before he’d bought the cottage. An ancient wisteria vine with a trunk as thick as a tree rose from the walls beside the entrance and covered them with soft purple blooms. Once a Norman fortress and reconstructed in the eighteenth century, the Castle at Taunton had been welcoming travellers since the twelfth century and David idly wondered how hard it would be to find a time gate to go back and see it in its heyday.

Too risky. Alice had constantly warned him about using the ley line gates just to satisfy his curiosity about the past.

He shook his head as he sipped his coffee and pondered the problem of Megan. He’d finally found out her name before they’d started the short trip to Taunton. He’d tried to avoid her at the pub yesterday, but Bear had pushed him on. Life was complicated enough without having her next door and seeing him head for the stones every day. When she arrived at this year’s festival and he and the band weren’t playing, she was going to be asking some difficult questions.

He’d have to spin her some story about their act being canned from the current lineup to explain their nonappearance this year. But more importantly, he’d have to keep Megan away from the stones.

He could still smell her perfume from being in the car with her, despite the top being down. She must have plastered it on but he’d been relieved when her hair had been pulled back and she’d looked less like the woman he’d been dreaming about for the past two nights.

Bloody hell, I don’t need this complication.

Pushing back his chair, he stood and gestured to the bar attendant, pointing to the money he’d left on the table. The pretty girl gave him a wave and held his eye, but he had no reaction to her come-hither look. His head was full of the black-haired beauty from next door. His dreams about her had left him curiously content, but restless, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to have to do something about it. There was an inevitability about it that he was trying to deny.

Megan was waiting for him at the intersection as he’d asked. She’d wound her hair up and secured it with some sort of clip.

“Thanks for being on time,” he said as she slipped in and closed the door. Huge sunglasses covered her eyes and her lips were tight. He risked a quick glance across at her and frowned as she brushed the back of her hand across her cheek.

“You okay?” Not that he really needed to know, but sympathy settled in his gut as she drew a shaky breath and then tried to disguise it with a cough.

“Fine.” She didn’t speak again as they travelled through the outskirts of the small town. A couple of times, she brushed her hand to her eyes but said nothing.

David shrugged and focused on his driving. The small sports car ate up the miles quickly and it was less than half an hour when he turned onto the narrow unpaved lane that led down to the two cottages. As soon as he stopped the car outside her place, Megan opened the door and grabbed her bag.

“Thanks for the lift. Appreciate it.” She flicked him a quick wave as she shut the door and headed off down the path towards the front door of Violet Cottage. David put the car into gear and drove the short distance to the small barn on the other side of Rose Cottage.

***

Megan pulled the clip from her hair and ran her fingers through her loose curls before wandering through the kitchen. Casually picking up an apple from the shopping bag she’d left on the counter yesterday, and grateful for the large coffee she’d had in town, she stepped out the back door. She was still gob smacked by the e-mail from Tony. Her chest closed and she fought the rising panic as she slipped through the back door.

Documentary evidence of e-mails and finances supplied by VC was in the subject line of the email. Tony’s e-mail had been brief.