It was the main reason she’d picked Wales for her bachelorette trip. She lay back on the bed with a sigh and, unbidden, the warrior-saint from the church filled her thoughts.
Chapter Two
“Now of a truth, Kai, no man ever before confessed to an adventure so much to his own discredit; and verily it seems strange to me, that neither before nor since have I heard of any person, besides myself, who knew of this adventure, and that the subject of it should exist within King Arthur’s dominions, without any other person lighting upon it.”
- from The Mabinogion, an ancient Welsh romance
Katy ran her shaking fingers down the taut muscles of his abdomen, the soft, flickering glow from the nearby candle lending an unearthly glow to his skin. The heat of his body nearly burned her fingers. Such power coiled within, but also a soul-deep yearning suffused her that no touching of skin could satisfy. She glanced up to his face—
“Earth to Katy.”
A soft, dry—something—slapped Katy’s cheek. The end of a croissant.
“What?” She collected the crumbs and brushed them onto her bread plate.
She and her bridesmaids were tucked around a bistro table in the back corner of their B&B’s dining room. Her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Catherine, who barely knew her, displayed only a pleasantly curious expression. But the others? Not so much. Lizbeth and Sandra bore matching who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-Katy expressions, and Traci’s was crossbred with a healthy smidgeon of concern.
“You’ve been zoned out ever since you woke up this morning. What’s up with you?” Traci cocked her head, her hair collected into a careless, but somehow fashionable, bun. Whenever Katy tried that, it looked, well, messy. “It’s a new look for you, and frankly, it’s unnerving.”
“Missing Preston?” Catherine’s voice was tinged with the eagerness of an outsider hoping she was group bonding.
A weird feeling of disconnect permeated Katy, because, no, the hogger of her attention was not her fiancé.
Instead of dreaming about Preston, she lusted after a medieval warrior-saint. A lot. As in all last night he’d so crowded her dreams, she’d awakened feeling as if she knew him. As-if-he-were-her-lover knew him. And missed him. How could she miss someone she didn’t know?
But she was immersed in him, in the dream, like water, and seeing the world through its saturated lens. She couldn’t shake it. And wasn’t that effed up? Sorry, Preston, can’t marry you because I’m lusting after some dead guy in chainmail.
This was so unnerving, so unlike her. Practical and organized, that was her. Not someone carried away by this ephemeral stuff.
But she did the I’m-fine nod and pasted on the I’m-feeling-even-better smile and sought to latch onto a detail, any detail to give her focus and control. “What do we have planned today?” She pulled out her mini-planner.
“You’re kidding, right?” Traci motioned to the folders under Katy’s hand. “You tell us.”
Katy took in the neatly stacked folders she’d prepared before leaving her apartment in Stratford East London, each with their name and today’s date meticulously printed from her favorite label maker.
“Oh. Right.” She passed them out. The focus on details helped center her. She was in control, dammit.
“After breakfast, we have a forty-minute drive to Castell y Bere for a self-guided tour. Then lunch at a cafe in the nearby village of Abergynolwyn, followed by some shopping in Tywyn. Tonight, we’ll—”
The chirrup from her phone interrupted her recitation. A text from Preston:
Need advice on the groomswear!
Frustration lanced through her as her friends glared. “It’s from Preston.”
Traci held out her palm and beckoned. “Come on. Pay up. I know you want to call him.”
Katy sighed, rummaged in her purse—the back of an earring stabbing under a nail—and plopped one of five red poker chips into her friend’s waiting hand. She gave a quick suck on her wounded finger.
Every day, they returned the confiscated chips to reuse. Phone addict that she was, this was what they’d hit upon to attempt to cure her. She didn’t want to think about how many times she’d had to use it past the five. Tonight at the hen party, she’d pay for that. Yesterday had been a disaster—she’d surrendered all five before noon, which was why she’d had to sneak outside the church. Today, she’d do better.
She excused herself, stepped away, and called her fiancé.
“Hiya, sweetheart. Sorry to interrupt your hen party, but I need your advice.”
His voice. She let the cultured Oxford, but not too snooty, accent roll over her as she scanned the village street of Corwen and tried to anchor herself with him,