A Knight in Central Park(48)

Joe sighed as he watched the sunset. The medieval women he’d studied over the years had been fictional beings. A great gulf had separated him from the medieval world and its occupants. Nothing would ever be the same again.

No matter how many years separated his and Alexandra’s births, the two of them now shared something he and his colleagues never would...a miraculous connection, binding them like no other two people on this earth.

A tug on his stick prompted him to gaze into the crystal clear water. He shuddered when he found himself staring into the hideously ugly eyes of his dinner. Yanking his makeshift fishing pole upward, he jumped to his feet and watched the snake-like creature wriggle helplessly from the end of his branch.

“You did it!” Alexandra said. “You caught an eel.”

The eel’s slick, scaly skin and thin body with flattened tail made him question her excitement. No way in hell was he going to eat the thing for dinner.





Alexandra flayed the eels, three altogether, and put them over the spit to cook. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sir Joe leaning against the trunk of an oak tree, watching her. She wiped her hands on a cloth tucked in her waistband, then pulled the matches from her satchel. One swipe of the match across the box and she had fire. An ingenious invention, she thought, as she lit the straw beneath a pile of sticks.

“Makes life a little easier, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Aye, although methinks life in your world is a little too easy. From what I witnessed, it makes people soft.”

“Yeah,” he said as he knelt by the fire and added more kindling. “I guess it does. A person would have to be as hard as steel to live in times like these, wouldn’t they Alexandra?”

The way he said her name made her shiver. She noticed the flexing of muscle as he stirred the fire. During their ride today, she had been startled by Sir Joe’s inquiries when he asked about her life. No man had ever asked her to speak of such things. The men in her village rarely took an interest in what she was saying, let alone thinking. But Sir Joe was from another time. Mayhap he asked only out of politeness. It mattered not. She enjoyed their conversations. Sir Joe was not fond of violence, but he appeared to be anything but soft. His hands looked sturdy and strong as he stirred more than just the fire beneath the spit.

He turned about and caught her staring.

“Hungry?” she asked.

He held her gaze. “I don’t remember ever being so hungry in my life.”

She smiled as she turned back to the eel. She could feel the heat of his body as he came to his feet. She tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear within her hood.

“Maybe the way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach,” Joe said, “because if that eel tastes half as good as it smells, then you—” He stopped short.

Her eyes were still locked on his. “Then what?”

“Then you will make your future husband a very happy man,” he finished half-heartedly.

“As I told you before I-I have no interest in marrying.” ’Twas the truth, she told herself. At least it used to be.

“And why is that?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand why you wouldn’t want to marry me...you made that point very clear, but what about one of those two or three dozen other guys knocking at your door?”

She looked at him to see if he was teasing, but there was no mockery there. “Wh-what was the question?”

He leaned closer. “I asked you why you weren’t interested in marriage to one of the other dozens of men following at your heels?”

“D-did I say there were that many?”

He nodded.

He stood so close she could hardly think. “I guess I have seen too many women spend their entire days hoping to please their men. Cleaning after them, worrying about each meal: Can I get you this? Can I get you that?” She waved her cooking stick through the air. “’Tis exhausting to watch.”

“You might have noticed that that’s all changed in the twenty-first century. Everyone looks out for themselves, men and women both. It has become a Me-Me world.”

“How about your mother?” she asked as she set the stick on the ground and turned to open a tin box, pinching its contents, then sprinkling herbs over the eel. “I bet she used to cook for you and run amok trying to please her son.”

“She passed away when I was thirteen.”

Alexandra wiped her hands, then put the tin away. “I am sorry.” She was not oblivious to the strain in his voice. “What was she like?”