“Do you have anything that could make me not be fat anymore?”
He glowered down at me. “You aren’t fat. Is that why you stopped eating the chips earlier?”
Unable to meet his gaze, I nodded. “It’s something my former trainer told me today. That I’d let myself go. And she was right.”
He curled a finger under my chin. “Look at me. You are beautiful, lamb. Womanly. I, a veritable connoisseur of beauty, would change nothing about your appearance.”
My heart fluttered at his words. Stupid, stupid heart. Overeager for genuine male admiration.
Look how well that turned out for you the last time! A little voice shrieked. Mentally, I referred to her as the sensible shrew.
I pulled out of his grip. “So, what was it you wanted to show me?”
Robin studied me a moment and then turned to a rough-hewn desk. He opened a drawer and extracted a golden box. He gestured for me to come forward. “This.”
I circled the desk and came to stand beside him. “What is it?”
“Open it.” His eyes had caught that bright sapphire gleam again that I was beginning to associate with trouble ahead.
A sense of foreboding washed over me. I hesitated. What could possibly be in the golden box? Something magical, no doubt. But why had it been shut away in his desk? Perhaps it was dangerous.
Too late to turn back now. The bargain had already been struck.
I reached for the lid and lifted the latch.
There were no eddies of magic or amber sparks. Instead, there was velvet cushioning to protect the object within.
Inside lay an hourglass filled with purple sand. The sand was evenly divided between the top and the bottom of the glass. Even though it appeared plainer than most of the items in the room, power thrummed off of it in great cascading waves.
“What is it?” I asked him nervously.
“An hourglass.”
I shot him a withering look. “I can see that. I mean what does it do?”
He picked it up and oddly, the sand within didn’t begin trickling down into the bottom portion. “It allows you to alter the space-time continuum. Want to see how an election turns out?”
“Not especially,” I grumped.
He waved it off. “Poor example. How about seeing what your life looks like plus forty years? Or maybe just rewind time an hour to make an appointment that you are fifteen minutes late for?” He unscrewed the lid and removed a single grain of sand. “This can allow you to do it.”
“One grain of sand.” I eyed it skeptically.
His grin turned wicked. “Better hold on to me, lamb.”
The ground shifted beneath my feet. Panicked, I reached for Robin’s arm to keep from falling under the motion. The shifting wasn’t jarring like an earthquake, more like one of those moving sidewalks at a really big airport. Except it was churning along at an incredible rate. The objects of magic blurred into streaks almost as if they were subjects in a still-life watercolor that were being smeared with a wet brush. It was disorienting in a different way from Robin’s magic transporting us from one location to another. I felt unsteady and displaced. Like my essence was barely clinging to my body.
And then it stopped.
The lurching momentum killed the little that was left of my equilibrium and I would have sprawled face down on the floor if Robin hadn’t snagged me around the waist.
His body was warm and hard and he smelled of cedarwood and male spice. I clung to him, urging my heart rate to slow. It wasn’t cooperating.
“Are you all right?” he murmured in my ear.
“What just happened?” The weird streakiness had dissipated. All the objects in the room were exactly where they had been.
“We traveled back in time exactly one hour.” He wasn’t releasing me and I hastily moved away, needing a minute to process without his heated touch distracting me.
I looked up into his eyes to see if he was teasing but could see no sign of his standard humor. “Back in time? You’re serious?”
“Absolutely. There are now two versions of me here as well as two versions of you. Our echoes should be leaving for the café right about now. Take a look.”
“Echoes?”
Robin moved over to the window and beckoned for me to follow. “Quickly.”
I moved up to his side and looked down from the tree and to the top of the hill where I could see another Robin holding my hand. My lips parted. An instant later, the two figures vanished.