Trouble With Harry Read Free Page B

born?”
    “Nineteen seventy-five. Which, I suspect is about when you were born, give or take a few years.”
    “Nineteen seventy-five.” Harry snorted. “This game has gone on long enough, woman. When I woke up this morning, it was the year of our lord nineteen hundred and twenty-four. I know I couldn’t have been out for very long. What is today’s date?”
    “March fourteenth, two thousand and five. Now, as you so eloquently put it, I’m tired of playing games. Who are you and why are you naked in the warehouse of the New York City Anthropological Museum?”
    Two thousand and five? Was she out of her mind? That would mean he’d been asleep for over eighty years. His vision blurred, and he staggered backward until the backs of his bare legs brushed against the cool stone of the sarcophagus. He turned to stare down at the mummified remains of the princess Vashti. Where was the stone? He reached down, digging alongside the petrified remains until his fingers connected with a cool smooth surface.
    “What are you doing?” The woman behind him asked.
    “I told you, the last thing I remember was touching the stone of Azhi. And this…” He lifted the stone out of the coffin and held it up for her to see. “This is the stone.” The last time Harry touched the stone, strange things happened. This time, nothing. He stared at the object in his hand turning it over. Why all the commotion the first time and not now?
    “Put it back.” She jabbed the stick into his side.
    “You don’t understand.”
    “Yes, I do. You’re trying to steal what belongs to the museum.” She poked him again. “Put it back.”
    “Edie!” A voice echoed off the exposed beams.
    The woman jerked back, her gaze darting from him to the end of the aisles.
    “Look, I’m not here to start trouble.” Until he knew exactly what had happened, Harry didn’t want anyone else to know about him or the stone. “You have to believe me.”
    “Why?” she whispered, her gaze darting toward the source of the voice.
    Why, indeed? “Because, you’re the only one who knows I’m here and apparently I need your help.”
    “Edie!” Mr. Baumgartner called out again.
    Edie jerked around. “That’s my boss. I should turn you over to him.”
    “But you won’t, will you?” he said, his voice soft and persuasive.
    He sounded sultry and dangerously sexy, very much like the pirate in her daydream. And his wickedly black hair hung down to his shoulders, just as she’d envisioned. Shoulders so broad, she longed to run her hands across them to see if they were as hard as they looked.
    “Edie!” The voice moved closer, blocked from view by several high rows of crates and boxes.
    Damn! What should she do? The proper employee would report the naked stranger to her boss. But the man’s deep brown eyes pleaded with her. She’d seen similar tactics used by puppies in the pet store window. Her stomach knotted. Should she or shouldn’t she? Her boss was only a few steps away, and Edie couldn’t decide. “Oh, I wish you’d just go back to wherever you came.”
    The floor beneath her trembled and a sudden gust of air lifted the hem of her skirt.
    “Uh-oh,” the naked man said. “It’s happening again.” His body shimmered and dissolved into a transparent image. The apron drifted to the floor and the stone slipped from his fingers to land among the apron’s folds.
    Before Edie’s unbelieving eyes, the man turned to smoke and was sucked into the blue-green bottle at the foot of the sarcophagus. Edie stared at the apron and back to the sarcophagus. What the hell? Had she been daydreaming again? Or had she slipped over the edge and gone into nutso lunatic land? She squeezed her eyelids closed, counted to four and opened them again. Still no man, only the apron on the floor.

Chapter Two
     
    “Edie, where the hell are you?” Mr. Baumgartner’s voice was sharp and nasal. The nasal sound being more pronounced when he was highly irritated.
    For a very