Genre: Historical Romance Heat Level: 2 Word Count: 40, 000 ISBN: 978-0-3695-1493-6 Editor: CA Clauson Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Centuries Between Us by Deborah Dickey

Heat Level 2
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Love Throughout Time, 3

During an archaeological dig, French historian Dr. Genevieve Vivi Moreau is swept through a temporal portal and thrust into eighteenth-century colonial St. Lucia.

Determined to find the place where she first arrived and uncover a way home, Genevieve's search is complicated by Jean-Luc Dubois—a proud plantation owner who is as suspicious of the mysterious woman as he is captivated by her. She speaks his language but defies every expectation of the world he knows.

As Genevieve's desperate search for a way back begins to fade, an unexpected love blossoms between them. Jean-Luc is drawn to her intelligence, courage, and fiercely independent spirit, while Genevieve finds herself falling for the honorable man behind the title.

But love comes at a cost.

Together they must face the brutal realities of colonial life, the risks of changing history, and the consequences of a future neither of them can predict. When the chance to return to her own time finally arrives, Genevieve must make an impossible choice: go home... or remain with the man she loves, forever altering both their destinies.

 

Excerpt:

Archaeological Dig Site, near Castries, St. Lucia, March 2026

 The air at the dig site was a humid, breathless weight, thick with the scent of damp earth and verdant decay. Dr. Genevieve, known as Vivi, Moreau, a French archaeologist with a penchant for lost things, wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, her gloved hands sifting through the soil with practiced care. Below her, the foundation of what was once the grand eighteenth-century Dubois plantation house Habitation de la Rose lay buried, a skeleton of stone and forgotten history on the vibrant, volcanic shores of St. Lucia.

Genevieve had dedicated her life to uncovering the past. The present, with its dizzying technology and impersonal conveniences, had always felt like a distraction. It was the thrill of touching something centuries old, of piecing together the lives of those who came before, that made her feel truly alive. The island, with its tumultuous history of French and British control, offered a treasure trove of stories waiting to be told.

Genevieve was born in 1995 in a small, ancient village nestled in the Dordogne region of France, an area famous for its prehistoric cave art and Roman ruins. Her childhood was spent exploring the very land her ancestors had walked for millennia. Her grandfather, a retired local historian, would take her on walks, pointing out fossil imprints and fragments of pottery, sparking a fascination with the stories the earth held.

The pivotal moment in her life came at age twelve when, while exploring a lesser-known grotto near her home, she stumbled upon a remarkably well-preserved Bronze Age burial site previously unknown to local experts. The feeling of uncovering a secret lost to time was intoxicating

This discovery solidified her life’s ambition. She pursued her education with fierce determination, attending the Sorbonne in Paris, specializing in Classical Archaeology and receiving her Ph.D. with honors. Her research focused on the trade networks between Gaul and the Roman Empire. The artifacts she found as a child inspired her to become an archaeologist.

Now at the age of thirty, Genevieve was a respected field director and professor with a focus on rescue archaeology—the urgent work of excavating sites before they are lost to modern development. She was known for her pragmatic approach, a touch of dry wit, and her preference for field boots over city shoes.

She was relentlessly curious and had an almost intuitive sense for where to dig. Having spent much of her career in male-dominated fields and remote locations, she was fiercely self-reliant. She preferred to work late into the night, meticulously cleaning and cataloguing artifacts while the rest of the team slept. She always wore a faded, red silk scarf her grandfather gave her on the day of her first major discovery, a personal reminder of her roots and her initial passion.

Her mentor, Dr. Alain Petit, had been obsessed with the legends of St. Lucia. He had spoken of a lost indigenous civilization, one with a unique knowledge of the island’s geothermal energy, and an ability to manipulate the earth itself. The rest of the academic community had dismissed his theories as fanciful, and his reputation had suffered for it. When he’d gone missing years ago, most assumed he’d simply become lost in his own fantasy. But Genevieve, his most brilliant and loyal student, had always believed there was more to his disappearance. She had come to St. Lucia not just to excavate, but to finish his work.

Her life was a blend of demanding fieldwork, lab analysis, and academic work, involving travel to diverse locations, using advanced technology, and potentially dealing with gender biases while pursuing specialized research areas. Her daily life included a mix of on-site excavation, lab-based artifact analysis and conservation, computer work like GIS and 3D modeling, and writing grants and research papers. She was also an active member of the international archaeological community, participating in conferences and collaborating with colleagues from around the world. 

She was a woman who had given up everything. Her work dominated her life, often with personal sacrifices impacting relationships and work-life balance. Work and research took precedence over social commitments.

 Her physically and mentally demanding career required a high degree of physical fitness, mental resilience, and emotional fortitude to endure the challenges of both fieldwork and the academic world. 

She listened to the distant sound of her team, their chatter and the rhythmic scrape of their tools a stark contrast to the mystical atmosphere surrounding her.

Her team, a small and dedicated group of graduate students, had been working for weeks, and the midday sun was beginning to wear them down.

“Dr. Moreau,” one of her students, Marc, called out, his voice laced with fatigue. “Anything yet?”

Genevieve shook her head, but a glint in the soil caught her eye. She leaned closer, her heart thrumming with anticipation.

 “Hold on,” she murmured, her voice barely a whisper. Carefully, she brushed away the last of the stubborn dirt. It was a silver locket, intricately carved with a small, unidentifiable symbol. Her breath hitched. The craftsmanship was exquisite, almost otherworldly. It was the first sign of a personal story on a site that had, until now, only yielded evidence of a brutal, industrialized plantation system.

As she picked it up, a strange sensation, like a sudden drop in a fast elevator, made her stomach clench. The air grew still, the cicadas’ chirping fell silent, and the heavy humidity vanished. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and the world seemed to ripple, blurring at the edges. The sound of her own heartbeat was suddenly deafening.

She had spent her life dedicated to history, but only the parts she could hold, measure, and carbon-date. The intangible, the magical, she had left for others. Yet, as she stared at the silver locket she had just unearthed, she couldn’t deny the feeling of being called, of standing on a precipice not just of time, but of understanding.

She clutched the silver locket in her fist. She was a scholar, not a seeker of magic, but its pull was undeniable. The silver artifact she held in her hand seemed to grow hot and thrum under her touch and it glowed and pulsed brighter, its light illuminating the dig site around her in a brilliant, golden dance. A sudden, sharp earthquake-like tremor shook her world. She lost her balance and hit her head, slamming it against a rock on the ground, and the brilliant light engulfed her completely.  The ground beneath her feet vanished, and a feeling of falling, like a stone, dropped into an endless well, consumed her. Her last conscious thought was a fleeting moment of regret, a wish that she hadn’t left her research notes in the camp tent…

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