Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2)

  He touched the tattoo on the inside of her arm. “Are you sure you don’t?”

  That made her smile. “Now that you mention it, I guess tattooing passages from the Book of the Dead on my arm to save your life might qualify—and be pretty hard to top at that.” She kissed him and then grinned. “So what did you get me?” She looked at his hands as if expecting a wrapped present.

  “I got you the one person in this world, besides Greta, who you’d like at your wedding today,” Rowan said. His eyes glittered with pleasure and love.

  Ella looked at him with confusion and then her face cleared and she turned from Rowan just in time to see Halima, her face wreathed in smiles, walking down the stairs from the embassy entrance. The two women ran to each other.

  Ella hugged her tightly. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re safe and you’re here.”

  “Your husband’s people found me,” Halima said. “I don’t know how they did.”

  Rowan walked up the stairs and put his arm around Ella. He grinned at Halima.

  “Halima is going to live with us,” he said. “Turns out she needs a family as much as Tater needs a grandma.”

  Halima rubbed Ella’s arm, her fingers slowing over the tattoo. Her eyes were bright with emotion as if words could not contain or express her happiness.

  Ella put her arms out to draw both Halima and Rowan into an embrace. “I literally have everything I ever wanted,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “And everything I never even knew I wanted.”

  “Me, too, beautiful,” Rowan said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “Me, too.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis lives in Florida and writes mysteries and romantic suspense. Like many authors, Susan depends on the reviews and word of mouth referrals of her readers. If you enjoyed Journey to the Lost Tomb, please consider leaving a review saying so on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Goodreads.com.

  Check out Susan’s website at susankiernanlewis.com and feel free to contact her at sanmarcopress@me.com.

  Note: If you discovered Journey to the Lost Tomb, which is Book 2 in the series, and liked it well enough to find out what happens to Rowan and Ella next in Book 3, Race to World’s End. If you want to know how they met, be sure and check out Book 1, A Trespass in Time

  Journey to the Lost Tomb

  Copyright 2013

  San Marco Press

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my beta readers Sheila Gallagher, June Abner, and Kathy Church for their invaluable input and for taking the time to read a work-in-progress complete with typos, inconsistencies and plot holes. Words can’t express how valuable you ladies are to me.

  I would also like to thank my Jacksonville critique group for their painstaking and always spot-on analysis of the first draft of the manuscript. Special thanks go to Cheri Roman, Cynthia Enuton, Mark Vance, Tracy Roberts, Rebecca Davis and Rai Roman. Thank you. Every line edit and developmental suggestion was gold to me and allowed me that much more distance from the potential slings and arrows of disappointed readers.

  Finally, as usual, love and thanks go to my long-suffering copyeditor, (and husband) Del Kiernan-Lewis. It was a great feeling of security knowing he would catch my mistakes and clean up my confused prose and I know it wasn’t always pretty when I occasionally refused to accept his perfectly logical, clear-headed suggestions. For that I’m sorry. I have to believe that there is a special place in heaven for people like my husband who work hard to catch the boneheaded errors of their writer-wives, only to have them ignored or waived in the name of “creative judgment call.”

  So as usual, the good stuff in the book was the result of the help I received from all the kind and smart people I turned to for advice. And the boneheaded stuff is mine alone.