Entangled
S.B.K.
Burns
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Cover Artists: Barbara
Marker/Jonathan Cervantes III
Book
Description:
She’s Hume’n, a member of the
lower class, with a chance to change her life…
In an alternate, twenty-first
century Boston, Dawn Jamison is a hair’s breadth away from earning her
doctorate degree—a degree that would allow her entrance into the upper class,
to become the unemotional and self-disciplined Cartesian she is now only
pretending to be. To reach her goal, all Dawn must do is overcome her forbidden
attraction to the Olympic-class weightlifter Taylor Stephenson who’s just
crashed her lectures on past life regression. She must teach her group of
misfit students how to travel back into their past lives—and, oh, of course,
figure out how to save the great scientists of the early eighteenth century
before they’re inextricably caught up in a time loop.
He’s Cartesian, a member of the
upper class, and supposed to know better…
Coerced by his politically
powerful, wheelchair-bound brother into spying on Dawn’s past-life regression
classes, Taylor knows better than to give into his desire to claim Dawn as his
own. But his past-life entity, eighteenth-century Colin, has no such
inhibitions. When Taylor and Dawn meet up in Scotland in the 1700s, all the
discipline he’s forced on his twenty-first century self is powered into the
past, leaving only his overwhelming lust for Dawn’s past-life double, alchemist
and witch, Lily.
Unable to escape their sexually
obsessive past, Dawn and Taylor find themselves in a race against the clock at
the epicenter of a world-altering time quake of their own making.
Excerpt:
From the Annals of the Alchemist Society of 2117:
During the twenty-first century,
two scientists pursuing independent methods of brain wave research, a
Cartesian, Professor Richard Stephenson of the University of Boston, and a
Hume’n, John Marrick, CEO of MathMagics Corporation, refused to share data about
travel into the past.
If these two warring factions had
agreed to work together, the dark time between the eighteenth and twenty-second
centuries might have been avoided.
Chapter 1
Sometime in the twenty-first
century, Boston, Massachusetts
Heavy breathing? Not the breath
of some hunky guy sliding his warm lips down her neck, she only wished.
Unfortunately, the only breathing was hers. She needed to tamp down her
nerves—and fast.
Armored from neck to knees in her
gray business suit with pleated skirt, Dawn Jameson forced all her
concentration into putting one high-heeled foot in front of the other, moving
through crowds of students ever closer to the Administration Building at the
University of Boston. There, in less than half an hour, nine people would
determine her academic fate.
“Sorry.” One of the
holier-than-thou coeds, almost a mirror-image of Dawn with blonde hair wrapped
tightly in a bun, accidentally bumped her, throwing her shoulder bag to the
ground. With not the slightest look backward, the girl said something to one of
her friends, then giggled.
Dawn regained her balance.
“Curses on your past life,” she said under her breath as she bent to retrieve
her bag. Hadn’t she seen a muddy-yellow aura emanating from the girl’s
head? The other students to Dawn’s right and left, strutting on the paved
walkway in the University’s common area, had dark yellow auras. Low life
energies. They marched to their own Cartesian philosophy of rational
thinking and stoic detachment. Rene Descartes, the philosopher they supposedly
emulated—if he were alive—would be none too pleased with the way Cartesians
practiced his teachings.
Hypocrites.
Dawn gazed ahead at the hill of
stairs leading into the gaping mouth of Administration, one of many red brick
buildings on campus, each with a white-columned facade, each housing a college
of something-or-other.
The University Council, all
Cartesians, had called her for a face-to-face. The strategy of its members,
simple—intimidate students into showing too much emotion, then expel them for
failing to fit the University’s strict code.
Had the Council discovered her
hidden identity? She’d been undercover for Marrick these last two years, a
favored route through Cartesian minefields for a Hume’n. The greed for
Marrick’s money so great that the University, blind to its own prejudice,
offered degrees to his protégés based on his donations alone.
The truth? Dawn believed in the teachings
of the philosopher David Hume. She based her life decisions on what could be
derived through her senses and emotions, not only her rational mind. In other
words, she believed thinking about love, a surface pursuit, was
not the same as being in love, an emotion traveling to the very core of
her existence. For those beliefs, she’d be expelled, especially if the
Council discovered that she, lowly Hume’n, had attempted to obtain, through
deception, one of its advanced degrees.
Shoulders back and chin up, Dawn
reminded herself no one could tell the difference between her and a real
Cartesian.
To her right and beyond, acres of
mammoth shade trees punctuated well-manicured lawns. Topiary gardens and tall
hedges forming giant mazes floated in the misty distance like optical
illusions. They led her eyes to a white edifice—University Medical. Her twin brother
had admitted himself there for inpatient testing. She missed him. Needed him.
But, as usual, she’d suck up her anxious thoughts.
Dawn took heart from the view of
green lawns and ancient woods. Here the power of nature still flourished,
albeit crowded with egotistical students. The giant oaks seemed as spiritual
entities, their branching humanlike arms penetrated the present from the past,
without the need for meditative transport through time, her preferred
mode of travel.
She couldn’t see the auras of the
trees, didn’t have the talent her parents had for perceiving a rainbow of
colors. Ultraviolet, high-frequency emanations, were invisible to her; they
meant harmony and wisdom. Unlike the students’ auras, the shade trees bore no
yellow light; their radiation, clean, pure, undetectable—wise.
Climb me, the trees beckoned. Play
hooky, and leave all that seriousness behind.
What had she been thinking? Off
the sidewalk, her shiny spike heels sank into the soft earth beneath mowed
grass. Before any of the Cartesians noticed, she slipped her stocking-clad feet
out of the heels, pulled her pumps from the ground, and ran to hide behind one of
the mammoth trunks. A red squirrel chirped its complaint before scurrying to
the far side of the oak.
Leaning against the wide trunk,
away from the students, she hyperventilated, taking deep breathes, attempting
to dampen her fears. At twenty-six, she was still a graduate student in
psychology with no degree in sight. So maybe she wasn’t that good at following
the stupid Cartesian dictates of the University. Yet she had to obey the rules.
Without a degree, how could she continue to support a sick brother on a meager
Hume’n salary?
“Find yourself in a bit of a
pickle?”
Dawn choked at the sight of a
tall, gray-haired woman, dignified looking, in a white jumpsuit. A uniform? Maybe
the dignified part was the woman’s very formal-sounding accent. British.
Perhaps, for the same reason as Dawn, she hid on this side of the tree.
The woman sighed deeply as if
relieved for the cover. Her aura encapsulated her whole person, glowed a
rainbow of colors, strange yet beautiful.
“Who are you? Do you know there
are dancing colors around you?” Dawn said, looking away, shielding her eyes
from a piercing beam of sunlight.
The older woman inched her way
toward Dawn. “It’s the side effect of the prisms.”
Dawn shook her head vigorously,
hoping the strange apparition with the heavy accent would leave. That’s all
I need—one more person to mess with my focus.
Her best friend and major
distraction, Naomi, had yet to show up. Perhaps she’d thankfully decided not to
give Dawn her misguided brand of moral support. Wasn’t facing the Council
enough for one day? Apparently not.
“No, I am actually here,” the
woman said, as if anticipating Dawn’s question.
“Can I touch you?”
At the permissive nod, Dawn let
her fingers make contact with the woman’s arm, the skin soft and warm.
“I’ll be gone in a moment,” the
woman said. “I just wanted to stop by and thank you.”
“Thank me? You know me?”
“You’re Dawn Jameson, the one who
wrote the book on past lives.”
Staring blankly, Dawn’s head bobbled in a nod,
like a trinket on a car’s dashboard. So confused.
“But, more importantly, you are
the Dawn Jameson who saved the world.”
Had Dawn just seen the woman wink
at her? She closed her eyes, and a warm sea of red blazed through her eyelids.
She and this woman had been standing in a sunbeam focused through the tree
leaves. The sky had been bright. Too bright.
Yeah, right. Save the world. Dawn let
her head rest back against the living tree. She’d be lucky if she could save
herself.
Opening her eyes, she looked to
her left. No one. Had she imagined the woman? Or had the woman been an
apparition, a past life, like Lily, the eighteenth-century alchemist whom she’d
channeled into on occasion?
As she forced away any thoughts
of the strange visitor and her stranger words, a salty metallic taste assaulted
her tongue. She’d been so nervous she’d bitten her lip. Grabbing a tissue from
her bag, she dabbed at the blood.
Heart beating into her ears, Dawn
wiped the heels of her shoes with the rest of the tissue, then stuffed it into
her jacket pocket. Once again, she tilted her head back against the massive
trunk, hoping to connect with its spirit, to find her center, her serenity.
Okay, here goes. Dawn suppressed her emotions,
especially those about visions of people with rainbow auras and British
accents. She swallowed her errant nerves, and in her stocking feet carried her
pumps to the sidewalk. Balancing on one foot then the other, she replaced her
spiked heels. Just a few more strides and then up those intimidating steps and
into that building where Council members, department heads, and her advisor,
Professor Stephenson, might enhance, or end, her opportunities at research.
Dawn stroked a few hairs that
slipped from her bun, smoothed wrinkles from her jacket, and straightened her
shoulders as she prepared to climb the thirty-or-so steps to the façade of the
Grecian building that held Administration. She could do this. What could go
wrong?
*
* *
The night before
Taylor Stephenson stepped out of
the shower, rubbed a spot on the steamed mirror, and looked back at the idiot
who’d agreed to sub for his older brother at the University Council. The
upscale apartment they shared was a short walk from campus. A scientist of some
renown, Richard had wanted to provide Taylor with a limo and chauffeur, saying
the distance to campus was too far to walk. Unlike other weightlifters on his
team, Taylor preferred getting aerobic conditioning from jogging, as well as
quick-twitch workouts with the weights. The walk would do him good.
Tempted to grab a towel and clean
the shower steam from more mirrored surfaces, Taylor sought to catch a glimpse
of his progress, his sculpted muscles, maybe flex in various poses to assure
himself that his hard work had paid off. He’d seen his Cartesian teammates do
that. Didn’t seem right, though. Self absorbed. Yet he was a
Cartesian. Wasn’t he?
He heard his bedroom door close;
the sound, unmistakable. He glanced over to the bed where Sophie, Richard’s
nurse, had fluffed the pillows and turned down the sheets.
Just left. Close call. Why did he
resent her? The older woman had been kind to him, good to his sick brother, and
efficient.
Something’s not right about her.
Taylor
sprawled onto the bed, his body drained, his mouth dry, his head dizzy.
The hot shower had done its job.
“Off,”
he said, and the room faded to black.
How had Richard talked him into
taking his place with the Council, stodgiest group of self-important people
Taylor had ever known? Under his brother’s protection, as long as Taylor stuck
to his studies and weight training, he didn’t have to concern himself with
university politics. So why had he committed to stand in for Richard now?
Guilt.
Nurse Sophie shouldn’t be looking
after his brother—he should. Instead, Taylor had pursued his own
interests, the applied math Richard had encouraged him to study and his weight
training. Richard’s health had stabilized after his body had lost most of its muscular
functioning. Whenever Taylor confronted his brother about the deteriorating
condition and the need for a living will, Richard responded with optimism.
What if Richard were wrong? What
if his disease worsened? What if he died while Taylor was off doing his thing,
solving equations and lifting weights, missing valuable moments of his
brother’s companionship? Thoughts like that brought too much pain. He slowly
drifted into sleep, longing to be somewhere else and somebody else.
*
* *
Taylor found himself sitting on a
log, a six-foot-diameter tree trunk with a ninety-degree wedge cut out to form
the bottom and back of a long bench.
And he couldn’t see. Of course,
his hands were over his eyes and they were covered
in . . . he licked his palms . .
. in salty liquid. Tears?
As he stared up and around, he
saw nothing but fog. Thick.
He inhaled abruptly. His clothes
were old, not shabby, but garments one might have worn in the past. All the
materials covering his body were black, from the roughly tooled leather forming
his shoes to his stockings and breeches, his shirt and judgelike robe. And
what’s this god-awful stiff thing around my neck? He pulled it off.
“A preacher’s collar,” a voice said.
“A what?” He had the answer
almost before he realized he’d asked the question.
He couldn’t remember deciding to
speak those words. They’d come from a voice—unbidden.
“A preacher’s collar,” the voice repeated.
Squinting into the opaque haze
for the speaker, he slammed back against the bench, as if expecting an evil
spirit to come for him out of the mist.
“I’m not out there,” the voice said. “I’m in
here, inside ye. And, no, ye aren’t imaginin me.”
“Yeah, like you’re going to tell
me this isn’t a dream.”
“Ye are right, me friend.”
Okay, maybe he should humor
himself. He’d had strange, exotic dreams, sometimes sensual dreams, as a result
of suppressing some of his baser compulsions. Better go along with his
subconscious, or his dreams, or whatever they were. Imaginings fueled by his Cartesian
repression might go a little nightmarish on him. Better to be safe.
“Okay. Who are you?” he said,
still looking around.
“Most of the time, I visit ye in
Boston, but ye never visit me.”
Taylor didn’t know how to react
to that statement. But when he found his arms and legs moving without volition,
he tried to keep his panic to a minimum.
This was a dream.
Right? Just a dream.
His body, or whoever’s body he’d
entered, opened a heavy wooden door and walked into a small room with pews
lining either side—a chapel. In one corner, a spiral stairway connected to an
upper floor.
Taylor continued to feel the same
dizziness he’d experienced falling onto his bed. In his bedroom—he reminded
himself—in the Boston of the twenty-first century, not this old-time mist-covered
relic of the past.
The second floor, an attic,
bathed in shadow until his arms and hands moved—as if they knew what they were
doing—lighting a candle on a desk, in front of a mirror. As the body stood
there reaching for a coarsely bound book, Taylor glanced at his image,
horrified.
The face, his face, peered back
at him—the same dark auburn hair, but long and tied back. His new body
resembled his, filled out the dated clothing the same way his muscular frame
would.
“Me name’s Colin,” the voice said. “Ye’ve
channeled inta me from me future. Look.”
Colin forced him to observe a
book opened on the desk. The book, written in freehand, appeared to be lab
notes and equations. If the book were printed, he might have an inkling of the
time period of the imprint; the information might have helped him figure out
how to wake up—how to get back.
Get back? Get back to where? The thoughts jolted his focus
away from the book. Was he somewhere besides in his bed and sleeping, or
dreaming? One thing he knew, if this were Colin Stewart, his math idol, he’d
spent entirely too much time on his studies.
“This is me work, me equations,” Colin
said. “Do they look familiar? I’ve been fascinated by all the things
ye’ve done with them in yer century.”
Taylor swallowed his nausea. Had
he actually swallowed? Was he now in control of this body that looked so much
like his own, but wasn’t? He moved his index finger along the neatly written
equations. “These are series expansions, formulas that represent natural
behaviors like parabolic motion of something thrown in Earth’s gravity, or the
oscillating vibrations of sound waves.”
“Yes, isn’t it amazin what a few
mathematical symbols can reveal?”
“But this isn’t the only thing
you wanted me to see, or to know about you, is it? What’s the point of this
dream?”
“Oh, no, Taylor, this is not a
dream. This is yer life. The mess ye will make of me life if ye and yer friends
don’t stay in me future where ye belong.”
“But I didn’t choose to come
here.”
“Didn’t ye? Ye and all yer
Cartesian friends? Those
who think a degree is more important than a life? Ye pollute the past with
yer suppressed emotions. Ye take for granted the time that flows through ye and
past ye. Ye slow and twist and loop the flow with yer flooded rivers of
collected debris.”
A young woman in a simple,
light-blue cotton gown stood at the top of the stairs. Her long straight blonde
hair caught in a neckline trimmed in white lace. “Did I miss anythin?” Her
bodice gave an unapologetic view of her ample breasts—gifts—as if she
were presenting them to him. She swished this way and that, tempting him to
touch.
“Looks like Lily’s back,” Colin’s voice said, almost
laughing.
The book. The mathematics of
scrawled words. Forgotten.
The inviting chest of the blonde
temptress, Taylor’s only focus.
Her breasts heaved with each of
her labored breaths.
Reluctantly his body was drawn to
satisfy her, the stitching in his trousers constraining his erection.
No. He couldn’t let her take
possession of him like this.
His mind fought to emerge from
the nightmare.
“Runnin away willna help,” she
said.
Maybe not, but somehow,
surprising himself, he’d managed to awaken.
Taylor lay shivering on his bed.
Even turning on the lights didn’t quell his trembling within the sweat-drenched
robe.
This seductress, Lily, resembled
a photograph from the dossier of one of his brother’s grad students, one he’d
have to deal with tomorrow at the Council.
Dawn Jameson.
About
the Author:
From an early age, S. B. K. Burns
recited Shakespearean sonnets or snuck a read of a Broadway script from her
parents’ theater magazine.
Having worked in the world of
science—oceanography, biomedicine, and aerospace engineering—she brings these
experiences to her sci-fi paranormals imbued with her idealistic philosophy
that merges science with spirituality.
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