Captured by Time (4 page)

Of all places? she thought. Why shouldn't a virgin check into a hotel? "I'm a guest here."

He laughed, heartily at first, then less so as he saw the confusion on her face. "A guest? In a saloon with a brothel, you're a guest? I've heard you girls called all sorts of things, but 'guest' is a new one."

Cimmy frowned. "No, at the hotel. At the Granville Arms Hotel."

"What hotel?" He frowned right back at her.

"
This
hotel!" She practically yelled at how obtuse he was being, as if he was deliberately trying to annoy her, but thought better of actually giving her anger free reign, lest she raise her voice higher than he allowed. Cimmy wasn't used to looking to someone else—much less a man like him in particular—for permission to do anything, but the way her butt continued to throb against the bed sheets, which somehow seemed a lot rougher than they had when she'd originally gone to sleep, had her thinking twice. He looked so implacable, so damned sure of himself, that she was having a hard time not becoming about as close to hysterical as she'd ever been in her life.
He
was the one who was in the wrong here,
not
her! "This is
my
room in the hotel, and
my
bed, and I woke up to find you in it!" she said hotly.

He grinned, saying sarcastically, "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but this here is not a hotel. It's a saloon downstairs and a… well, a house of ill repute upstairs, which is right here. This is usually Cherry's room. I was hoping to see her, and, well, see her." He seemed uncomfortable saying the last sentence; it was as though he wasn't telling the whole truth. Cimmy didn't know this man at all, but something told her he was holding something back. A slight blush took over his cheeks, as if he was embarrassed to admit he was in a whore's room. "But instead I found you."

"Well, I am not a whore!"

He smiled and kissed her forehead. "All right, I won't call you a whore if you don't like that name."

"I don't have sex with men for money!"

"You did with me."

"That's different. You didn't give me a choice, you…" She paused before continuing. She didn't want to accuse him of just taking it. As much as she hated to admit it, she'd wanted him to. "This was a mistake. I'm not a whore, never have been, and no intent of ever being one. And I didn't take your money, nor will I!"

"I don't understand," he replied. "Then what are you doing here?"

She studied his face for an answer, almost as if she was waiting for him to tell her this was all a joke—a sick one at that. But all she saw was a man who patiently waited for some sort of clarification as to what was going on. To him, she was just a hysterical woman he had just met, whose body he'd just claimed.

"This is some sort of mistake," she barely squeaked.

Jude nodded and his expression hardened. "Well then, ma'am, I apologize for mistaking you for a woman of loose morals. It's just that this is Cherry's room, and she is most certainly loose, and—"

Before he could do anything to stop her, Cimmy tugged free of his hold and hopped out of bed to go to the armoire and get her robe, but when she opened it, none of the clothes she had carefully placed inside just a few hours ago were there. She began to rifle through its contents, opening drawers and pulling down dresses that were hanging there in her haste. There were items that looked like costumes a nineteenth century hooker would wear, and there were historically accurate underclothes—what there were of them—but there was nothing of her own.

She was in such a tizzy about what he had said to her that she threw on the first robe she came to out of the wardrobe and marched out of the room. The hall was dark, and she had to creep to the top of the staircase, where she looked down at the small dining room and lobby that should have been there… only it wasn't. Instead, she found herself looking down at exactly what he'd said would be there; a small saloon, with a bar along one wall and a barkeep in period costume behind it, an upright piano in one corner and tables full of men playing card games—obviously gambling—with scantily clad, overly made up women hanging off them who looked like they were wearing the same type of clothing she'd found in the chifforobe. She couldn't see one familiar face in the bunch; not the gentleman who'd checked her in, or the one who'd given the lecture earlier this evening. No one.

Could it be that they were doing some sort of role play thing? Like the reenactors during the day, for the amusement of their guests in the evening? If so, she was
not
amused.

Just as she turned reluctantly to go back to her room, she felt someone's all too familiar fingers closing around her arm and was jerked back in there unceremoniously. He closed the door behind her while looking out of it for as long as he could, as if he was worried that someone had followed her. Or spotted him, but the thought flew into her mind and right out again in the face of the reality she was apparently confronting.

"How can this be? I checked into a hotel last night. I gave them my Visa card for incidentals and everything. There weren't this many people in the whole place when I arrived, including the reenactors. It's a ghost town, for Heaven's sake!" she said.

"What's a Visa card? What's a re–re–reenactor? And what did you mean by a ghost town?"

His face had darkened considerably as he stared down at her, making her feel very uneasy, and this was the first time she'd noticed the gun at his side. She could only see the butt of it from where it sat quite comfortably on his hip, but it was very well worn, as if the gun had seen a lot of action, and so was the holster.

After staring at the holster for a long while, Cimmy let her eyes wander over the rest of him. His boots were leather, although crudely made, and dirt—or worse—covered. His pants were of a good quality but obviously hand-stitched. His shirt was chambray, but it was the buttons that caught her attention. They were similar to the ones she'd seen in the mercantile earlier in the day; hand-carved but more utilitarian, and not as finely detailed as the examples she'd seen.

And beyond all that, he sported a star on his chest that identified him as a very rare man indeed; a man of courage, honor and integrity. Cimmy knew enough about history to know that Jude was a Texas Ranger, and his badge appeared as battered as the rest of his equipment. It looked tarnished, and she had a strong feeling that that wasn't the only thing about him that was. Her bold inspection of him had him resting his hand on the butt of his gun in a manner that made her think he stood like that a lot, although that didn't ease where her troubled mind was going in the least.

As fanciful as the notion was, and despite how likely it was that she was going to make herself look like a complete fool in front of him, she had seen too many science fiction programs not to ask—but only after she'd wrenched her arm from his and sat down on the edge of the bed. In the unlikely event that she heard what she didn't want to hear, she didn't want to faint on him. There'd be no telling where, or when, she guessed, she'd wake up the next time.

Bracing herself with a hand on the bed to either side of her hips, she asked, "Just out of curiosity, Jude, what year is this?"

"What year?" he asked, obviously confused.

"Yes. It's a simple question. Don't you know?" For all her expertise on the period, she had no idea what the average person from that era might have known, beyond the fact that a lot of them were entirely uneducated and couldn't read. But this man was familiar with Shakespeare, so she figured she had a better bet that he would know.

His frown deepened, as if she'd insulted him. "Of course I do. It's 1880."

Cimmy stared at the floor and decided to take a deep breath and question him a bit further before she allowed fully fledged panic to set in. "
Eighteen
hundred and eighty?" she asked breathlessly, clutching at the bedspread.

"Yes. Why? What year did you think it was?" he said curiously.

She didn't know why, but she had a sudden flash of insight that he may not find it shocking if she did state a different year, despite the fact that she didn't look drastically different from the women he knew… especially naked. And now that she was wearing some other woman's robe, she probably looked just like any other prostitute. But still, she had to seem somehow out of place to him, regardless. The way he looked at her gave that away.

But she kept silent. She didn't know if she should tell him or not, but decided to err on the side of discretion, just in case. Cimmy didn't think they were likely to hang her for a witch in this era, but she wasn't very keen on the idea of putting that theory to the test, either. Announcing she was from another time would make her either look like a witch, or crazy. She would agree with crazy, no doubt about that, but she didn't want to be viewed as a witch in 1880 in the Wild West.

Instead of answering him, she got up and began a methodical search of the room to see if there was anything at all in it that was hers, working in a counter-clockwise motion, starting with the bedside table. As she did so, she covertly looked for signs of any kind of technology or electronic gadget of any sort—anything at all.

But then, the room was supposed to be authentic to the era, so it didn't have electrical outlets or double paned windows or heating ducts to begin with. The entire town was set up to be that way, although, on second thought, she would have bet that there was a back office of sorts somewhere in this building. She had said it herself; they had taken her Visa card number. They had to have a modern niche in order to do that, somewhere around there—unless they used that old knucklebuster thing to make an imprint and then just sent in the charges, like they used to do in the old days.

The old days! She almost chuckled. She was thinking of the 1980s, not the 1880s.

She turned up nothing at all in the room, until she felt behind the armoire and latched onto something that felt familiar—it was her doctor's bag! She'd never felt so happy to see anything in her life. On her way back to the bed, she was brought up short by Jude, who also had a hand on the bag.

"That's mine, and I'll thank you to take your hands off it," he growled. He didn't raise his voice, but his words sounded all the more threatening for the lack of volume.

Suddenly she was more aware than ever of the differences in their sizes. He towered over her in the small room, and even ignoring the firearm at his side, there was no question as to who was going to end up with the bag if it came to a fight.

"I think you're mistaken," she said. "This is my bag. It's a doctor's bag, and I'm a doctor."

He looked stunned at that revelation, which didn't help Cimmy's worries that he was telling her the absolute truth.

With a sigh, she decided to compromise rather than extend a fight she was very likely to lose. "If I let go, will you show me what's in it?"

In answer, he yanked it out of her hands. "No. It's my private property."

"Please. Then don't show me. Just tell me what you see in there. Please."

"It seems mighty important to you that I check inside. But, missy, I was the one who gave sweat, blood and tears to get the stuff that's in this bag, and I put it in there myself to give to Cherry for safe keeping."

"Please," she asked again, unashamedly letting the tears that had been threatening to fall spill down her cheeks.

"I can tell you without looking that there are a whole bunch of papers that pertain to me in there. Why? What did you think was in there?"

"Look for me, please, and see if you're not mistaken—if there's not bandages and Band Aids and a stethoscope in there. Please, please look." She wasn't trying to take it away from him anymore, but had a hold of it still as she begged him to open it.

With her hanging off him, Jude backed towards the bed and sat down. Cimmy sat right next to him, still clutching the bag desperately. She noticed that he'd carefully maneuvered it so that she was not on his gun side.

"All right, I'll open it, but these are my private documents, and I don't want you to see them."

Cimmy immediately wondered if it was porn—did they have porn back then? Then she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, if they had any kind of porn back then, she would bet it was extremely hard to get hold of, and thus was unlikely to be in a small podunk town in the West.

"So I want you to stand up and turn away from me. I'll tell you when you can turn back around."

Feeling like a recalcitrant child who had been sent to the corner to consider her transgressions, Cimmy sighed heavily and got up to stand in the middle of the room, facing away from him. She could hear him fiddling with the bag and it seemed to take him forever just to look inside it.

"My stuff would be easily visible. I know I had some Neosporin in there, and Benadryl, a digital ear thermometer, some alcohol swabs, bandages, Band Aids, and the stethoscope I already mentioned."

"I'm taking all of my stuff out to see if there's anything down at the bottom."

Cimmy's shoulders slumped. If it had been her bag, he would long since have found things he supposedly didn't recognize.

"Don't bother." She sighed heavily. "My bag was full of stuff. You wouldn't have to hunt to find anything." She wasn't the kind to give in to despair, but, just for a moment, she let her hands cover her face and allowed the tears to come as they would. What the hell was going on? Had she lost her mind?