She’d slept within them last night, and he’d awakened to the lovely sight of her face, trusting and innocent in repose. He’d kissed her full, lush lips, and when she’d awakened, sleep-flushed, with crease marks on her cheek from being pressed to his wrinkled T-shirt, he’d felt a rush of tenderness he’d not felt for a woman before. Lust, ever at a boil within him when she was near, had simmered into a more intense, complexly layered feeling, and he’d recognized that given time he could fall deeply in love with her. Not merely ache to keep her in bed without respite but develop a real and lasting emotion, equal parts passion, respect, and appreciation, the kind that bound a man and a woman together for life. She was everything he wanted in a woman.

Gwen trudged into the circle, clearly reluctant to give up when there was even one stone unturned, another trait he admired in her.

“Why won’t you tell me what you plan to do?” All day she’d tried to coax it out of him, but he’d refused to tell her anything more than that they were looking for seven stone tablets inscribed with symbols.

“I said I’d give you proof, and I will.” A stunning, irrevocable amount of proof.

The hours had dragged on as they searched, tossing rocks and rubble, and his hope had steadily faded with each broken chip of pottery, each timeworn memento of his dead clan.

At one point futility had nearly overwhelmed him, and he’d sent her down to the village with a list of items to pick up so he would have time to think, undistracted. During her absence, he’d meditated upon the symbols, working through complex calculations, and derived his best guess at the last three—the guess that would be put to the test in less than one hour. He was aiming for two weeks after his brother’s death, plus one day. He was almost certain they were correct and believed there was only a minute chance the worst would happen.

And if the worst happened, he had prepared her well and need only remind her what to say and do to restore complete, merged memory to the past version of himself. ’Twas why he’d bid her memorize the spell.

She’d picked up several jugs of water, along with flashlights, coffee, and food, and now sat beside him near the fire, cross-legged, cleaning her hands with dampened towels, emitting little sighs of pleasure as she scrubbed at her face with tiny pads from her pack.

While she freshened up, he broke open the stones he’d collected during their hike. Inside each was a core of brilliant dust, which he scraped carefully into a tin and blended with water to form a thick paste.

“Paint rocks,” she said, intrigued enough to pause in her ablutions. She’d never seen one but knew the ancients had used them to paint with. They were small and craggy, and deep in the center a dust formed over time that made brilliant colors when mixed with water.

“Aye, ’tis what we call them as well,” he said, rising to his feet.

Gwen watched as he moved to one of the megaliths and, after a moment’s hesitation, began etching a complex design of formulas and symbols. She narrowed her eyes, studying it. Parts of it seemed somehow familiar yet alien, a perverted mathematical equation that danced just out of her reach, and there was little that did that to her.

A beat of nervous apprehension thudded in her chest, and she watched intently as he moved to the next stone, then the third and the fourth. On each of the stones he etched a different series of numbers and symbols upon their inner faces, pausing occasionally to glance up at the stars.

The autumnal equinox, she reflected, was the time when the sun crossed the planes of the earth’s equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth. Researchers had long argued over the precise use of the standing stones. Was she about to find out their real purpose?

She eyed the megaliths and pondered what she knew about archaeoastronomy. When he finished sketching upon the thirteenth and final stone, her breath caught in her throat. Although she recognized only parts of it, he’d clearly stroked the symbol for infinity:

beneath it. The lemniscate. The Möbius strip. Apeiron. What knowledge did he have of it? She scanned the thirteen stones and felt a peculiar itchy sensation in her mind, as if an epiphany was trying to burrow into her overcrowded brain.

Watching him, she was struck by a stunning possibility. Was it possible that he was smarter than she was? Was that his madness?

Gorgeous and smart? Be still, my beating heart….

As he turned away from the last stone, she shivered. Physically, he was irresistible. He was wearing his original costume of plaid and armor again, having shed “such trews that doona let a man hang properly and an inar that canna conceal an oxter knife” as soon as he’d awakened that morning. Hang properly, indeed, she thought, gaze skipping over his kilt, mouth going dry as she imagined what was hanging beneath it. Was he in that seemingly permanent state of semi-arousal? She’d like to kiss him until there was nothing “semi” about it…