Losing Time (Lost Time, Book 1): A Time Travel Romantic Suspense Series Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  About the Author

  Free Download

  Also by Nicola Claire

  Description

  Even Dreams Couldn’t Change Those Sorts Of Things

  You Coming?

  This Wasn’t Happening

  Mouse

  Bloody Hell, Indeed

  But There’s Always A First

  Doctor

  Without The Neuralyzer

  And All I Could Do Was Squeak

  Ah, Crap

  Orange

  You Are No Mouse

  Well, Two Could Play That Game

  I Was The OE

  In A Manner Of Speaking

  It Just Made It More Real

  Just What The Bloody Hell Was Sergei Playing At?

  Forgive An Old Man His Quirks?

  Bloody Fucking Bollocks!

  And The Room Erupted

  I Honestly Don’t Know, Miss Wylde

  This Is Happening

  The Rest Is Up To You, Jack

  And It Wasn’t Mine

  Don’t Leave Me, Jack

  The Beginning

  The Sooner, The Better

  Until It Isn’t

  Only Time Would See

  Ready?

  I Call You Mouse In My Dreams

  A Woman Living Out Of Time

  Please Don’t Kill The Special Agents, Miss Wylde

  Return!

  And Then Silence

  Time Drove Us All Now

  Afterword

  Review Request

  More Free Books From Nicola Claire…

  With Over 750 5-Star Reviews On Goodreads…

  Losing Time

  Lost Time Book One

  Nicola Claire

  Contents

  About the Author

  Free Download

  Also by Nicola Claire

  Description

  Prologue

  Even Dreams Couldn’t Change Those Sorts Of Things

  You Coming?

  This Wasn’t Happening

  Mouse

  Bloody Hell, Indeed

  But There’s Always A First

  Doctor

  Without The Neuralyzer

  And All I Could Do Was Squeak

  Ah, Crap

  Orange

  You Are No Mouse

  Well, Two Could Play That Game

  I Was The OE

  In A Manner Of Speaking

  It Just Made It More Real

  Just What The Bloody Hell Was Sergei Playing At?

  Forgive An Old Man His Quirks?

  Bloody Fucking Bollocks!

  And The Room Erupted

  I Honestly Don’t Know, Miss Wylde

  This Is Happening

  The Rest Is Up To You, Jack

  And It Wasn’t Mine

  Don’t Leave Me, Jack

  The Beginning

  The Sooner, The Better

  Until It Isn’t

  Only Time Would See

  Ready?

  I Call You Mouse In My Dreams

  A Woman Living Out Of Time

  Please Don’t Kill The Special Agents, Miss Wylde

  Return!

  And Then Silence

  Time Drove Us All Now

  Afterword

  Review Request

  Free Download

  More Free Books From Nicola Claire…

  With Over 750 5-Star Reviews On Goodreads…

  Copyright © 2017, Nicola Claire

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  © Cover Art by Cora Graphics

  © Depositphotos.com/Kevron2002

  ISBN: 978-0-473-40106-1

  Created with Vellum

  About the Author

  Nicola Claire lives in beautiful Taupo, New Zealand with her husband and two young boys.

  She's tried her hand at being a paramedic, bank teller and medical sales representative, (not all necessarily in that order), but her love of writing keeps calling her back.

  She has a passion for all things suspenseful, spiced up with a good dollop of romance, as long as they include strong characters - alpha males and capable females - and worlds which although make-believe are really quite believable in the end.

  There's nothing better than getting caught up in a compelling, intriguing and romantic book.

  When she's not writing or reading, she's out on her family boat at Lake Taupo, teaching her young boys to fish, showing them the beauty that surrounds them in nature and catching some delicious trout for dinner.

  Creating rich worlds with dynamic characters and unexpected twists that shock and awe has been pure bliss for this author. And just as well, because there's a lot more story yet to tell...

  For more information:

  @NicolaClaireNZ

  NicolaClaireBooks

  www.nicolaclairebooks.com

  [email protected]

  Free Download

  Sign up!

  Get your free copy of Nicola Claire’s Starter Library!

  Three free books to get you started!

  Starter Library

  Also by Nicola Claire

  Kindred Series

  Kindred

  Blood Life Seeker

  Forbidden Drink

  Giver of Light

  Dancing Dragon

  Shadow's Light

  Entwined With The Dark

  Kiss Of The Dragon

  Dreaming Of A Blood Red Christmas (Novella)

  Mixed Blessing Mystery Series

  Mixed Blessing

  Dark Shadow (Coming Soon)

  Sweet Seduction Series

  Sweet Seduction Sacrifice

  Sweet Seduction Serenade

  Sweet Seduction Shadow

  Sweet Seduction Surrender

  Sweet Seduction Shield

  Sweet Seduction Sabotage

  Sweet Seduction Stripped

  Sweet Seduction Secrets

  Sweet Seduction Sayonara

  Elemental Awakening Series

  The Tempting Touch Of Fire

  The Soothing Scent Of Earth

  The Chilling Change Of Air

  The Tantalising Taste Of Water (Coming Soon)

  H.E.A.T. Series

  A Flare Of Heat

  A Touch Of Heat

  A Twist Of Heat (Novella)

  A Lick Of Heat (Coming Soon)

  Citizen Saga

  Elite

  Cardinal

  Citizen

  Masked (Novella)

  Wiped

  Scarlet Suffragette Series

  Fearless

  Breathless

  Heartless (Coming Soon)

  Blood Enchanted Series

  Blood Enchanted

  Blood Entwined

  Blood Enthralled (Coming Soon)

  44 South Series

  Southern Sunset

  Southern Storm

  Southern Strike (Coming Soon)

  Lost Time Series

  Losing Time

  Making Time (Coming Soon)

  For:

  Mrs Stead, my high school English teacher,

&nb
sp; who barged on into my fifth form year

  and gave me a new appreciation of the English language,

  and a female role model to look up to.

  I applaud you!

  “Fideliter”

  Description

  “That is what we do, Miss Wylde. We mend Time. Catch it. Stitch it. Make it. We’re Surgeons of Time. And you’re about to go where no layperson has ever gone before. So trust me, when I say I am responsible for you. And believe me, when I say your presence alone could fracture or restore Time.”

  Mourning the loss of her parents, Mimi Wylde embarks on a holiday of a lifetime with her twin sister. But when breaking the rules ends up shattering her understanding of the world around her, Mimi has to draw on more courage than her nickname, Mouse, would attest to. Losing everything she holds dear and challenging all that she believes to be true, Mimi faces up to a future that is tangled in a past too frightening to comprehend.

  At the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons, things happen for a reason, even in their dreams. There are consequences to surfing time waves. So when Dr. Jack Evans inadvertently picks up a woman from the past, he knows immediately that Time has been tampered with. It doesn’t help that he’s been dreaming of the girl even before she arrives, and when she does, she proves to be everything he'd hoped for.

  Time changes in the blink of an eye, and as Mimi and Jack chase down history, trying desperately to stop catastrophic oncoming events, they both start realising that dreams are always meant come true. Even the nightmares.

  “Lost time is never found again.”

  Benjamin Franklin

  Prologue

  Mimi

  It’s funny how things happen. How the unexpected can catch you by surprise. How your life can have meaning and the world can be bright, the future an impossible to believe promise.

  And then everything is taken in a flash of blinding light.

  The dream wasn’t the same dream I’d been having for so many months now. It didn’t start with the grinding sound of metal twisting. Or the flash of orange as flames erupted into a darkening sky. Or the startling thud of a bullet ejecting from a gun. Or the multitude of other imagined ways my parents could have died.

  It started with a kiss.

  I’d thought I’d had my share of surprises. I’d thought my once glistening future could never have looked so bleak.

  Until he invaded my dreams.

  But it’s not the dreams we should worry about. It’s not what’s to come, but what has been.

  But when you’re talking about temporal paradoxes, those causal loops that mix up Time, where a future event is the cause of a past event, well…

  Maybe we should just fear everything.

  Even Dreams Couldn’t Change Those Sorts Of Things

  Mimi

  It was a scream that woke me. So desperate and full of fear. For a moment, I couldn’t tell where I was. Who had made the sound. What the wretched cry could mean. I sucked in a breath of air; noticed the rawness of my throat, which led me to believe it had been me screaming and not some other person, and then felt a jolt rock through my body, followed by a rumble filling my ears. Panic and disorientation took a moment to subside. And then a careful hand grabbed my wrist and whispered, “Hey, sleepyhead, we’re here.”

  I blinked, the vision of a water-filled car and distorted faces slowly vanished, replaced with a United Airlines Airbus A330 plane.

  “That guy over there was watching you,” Carrie said conversationally. “I thought it was because you look sexy when you sleep. And then I noticed the drool.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I muttered.

  My sister watched me from the corner of her eye as I rubbed two hands over my face and tried to settle my heartbeat. It always thundered inside my chest when I woke from the dreams. The nightmares. I stared at the blank screen in the seat in front of me; aware Carrie hadn’t stopped her furtive glances yet. She wouldn’t ask. She didn’t need to.

  We both knew what my sleeping mind had seen.

  “So, what are we doing first?” Carrie asked, hugging her small carry-on backpack to her chest and jumping up and down in her seat. She stared out the window at the tarmac as the plane slowly lumbered down the runway. “Universal? Disney? I know! The Everglades.”

  She turned and looked directly at me, a smirk twisting the edges of her lips. Blue eyes the mirror image of mine stared across at me; blinking widely, innocently. She raised her eyebrows and then wiggled them suggestively.

  “All those rugged airboat captains,” she purred. “Smooth southern accents telling you just what they want. Big muscles from wrestling the alligators wrapped around your body.” She winked. “Just what the doctor ordered, I think.”

  That was Carrie, full of joie de vivre. If it wasn’t for the dark smudges under her eyes and the occasionally haunted look staring out of them, you’d think Carolyn Wylde didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I know, I know,” she said exasperatedly. “NASA. It’s all about the science.”

  “Well, I am one, so…”

  “Yeah, not recently.”

  “I have my degree,” I argued.

  “You have,” she agreed good-naturedly, then ruined it by adding, “and a half written Ph.D.”

  “We’re not here to discuss that,” I griped, slumping back in my seat and wondering when they were going to park this damn thing. How long did it take to drive from one end of a runway to the other and hook up to a terminal?

  I looked out the window at a stunning blue-sky day and saw three other United Airline planes parked up on the runway before us. Stationary.

  Great. No avoiding Carrie.

  “We’ve got time,” Carrie offered, always acutely aware of what I was thinking.

  That’s the thing with twins; they’ve known you since conception. They have a connection right to your inner thoughts and feelings.

  “Carrie,” I said softly, a hint of defeat entering my tone.

  She was silent for a while and then she asked tentatively, “How did it happen this time?”

  The nightmare. My mind’s effed up way of making sense out of something that didn’t.

  I’m a scientist; I like answers. If I can’t see an immediate solution to a problem, then I search for one. No stone unturned. My mind had decided there was an answer somewhere. I just happened to have a very creative mind while asleep.

  In stark contrast to my mind when awake.

  I sighed. “Car accident.” I shifted uneasily. “Into a river.”

  “The Neva?” she asked. St. Petersburg was the last location we’d heard from them.

  “Yeah,” I said, as the plane started moving forward.

  Her small hand reached over and clasped mine. It was cold. Like the icy waters of the Neva. “It’ll be all right, Mouse,” she said softly. “We’ll be all right.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was saying that more for herself or me.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, and let out a slow breath of air that hurt deeply.

  We didn’t talk again while we went through customs. Both of us lost to our heartache. When would it feel better? When would these incessant dreams cease? Not for the first time, I wished for something normal. For a life without this aching melancholy.

  The lines zig-zagged back and forth for what seemed like miles, but we finally made it up to the immigration officer and handed over our passports. Armed security guards stood behind the wall of welcome signs, their eyes hard, their postures alert. I’d never been fingerprinted before, but then I’d never been to America either. Not that I’d ever considered one being synonymous with the other.

  The officer asked a few questions, Carrie trying valiantly not to hop around excitedly listening to his accent and no doubt thinking up raunchy things, and then we were through. And our chariot awaited.

  It was a Cadillac. An Escalade. It was bigger than my studio apartment.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Carrie mock-whispered to me in the back of the vehicle. Th
ere was something akin to a rugby field between us. I shot her a shut-up look.

  The driver glanced at us in the rearview mirror but didn’t say anything.

  I closed my eyes and tipped back my head, not wanting to sleep, but too tired to face the craziness of American driving. Every time we’d turned a corner onto the wrong side of the road, I’d cringe. It was bizarre enough that the car had the steering wheel on the left of the vehicle.

  Which only made me think of the foreign vehicle that had been in my dream. I’d been sitting on the right, the driver’s side. As if I had caused the accident, not them. Did they drive on the left like us in Russia? I didn’t know. My nightmares were vivid, but not necessarily accurate.

  Something that should have made it easier to breathe.

  Carrie bounded out of the SUV when we arrived at the resort, jumping down from the enormous rear seat with unending enthusiasm. That was Carrie; full of beans even after more than a day of travel. Sometimes her energy sustained me. Sometimes her upbeat personality was enough to brighten my day.

  It’s not that Carrie didn’t miss them or grieve them. I could see the wear of their loss on her face. But Carrie and I had a symbiotic relationship. When she was down, I’d pick her up. And when I was, she’d be the clown for me.

  Lately, though, I’d been down more than up. I resolved to stop that immediately.

  “We can’t go straight to bed,” I announced after we’d searched every inch of our condo; you never knew what you’d find in a closed drawer. Carrie was lounged out on the sofa, a glass of water in one hand, the resort’s information folder in the other.