ChasetheLightning (11 page)

Amanda shook her head. “No. I can’t do this.”

His eyes were hot. “You were doing just fine, sweetheart.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I can’t do this. I’m engaged. To Rob.”

“You weren’t thinking about Rob a few moments ago.”

It was true and she couldn’t deny it. What did that say
about her relationship with Rob? She touched the ring on her finger, turning it
round and round. If she loved him, really loved him, would she have been so
quick to fall into the arms of another man? A man who was, for all intents and
purposes, a complete stranger?

“I’d better go,” she said hoarsely, and ran out of the room.

For a moment, she stood outside in the rain, letting it cool
her heated cheeks. What had she done? How was she going to explain it to Rob?

And how was she going to face Trey in the morning?

Trey climbed out of bed and ran a hand through his hair. It
had been a long, sleepless night. Every time he had closed his eyes, he had
seen Amanda, remembered how her kisses had aroused him, how good she had felt
in his arms. Angered by her abrupt departure, he had paced the floor far into
the night. Hell, he could have walked back to her house with all the miles he
had put on the rug.

Crossing the floor, he drew back the curtain and looked out
the window. He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover she’d taken off without
him, but her fancy car was still there, as sleek and beautiful as the lady
herself. It had stopped raining. The sky was clear and blue, the sun shining
brightly.

Damn! What was he going to do about Amanda?

Another half-hour passed before he heard her knock on the
door.

There was an awkward moment of silence when he opened the
door.

“Are you ready?” she asked, not meeting his eyes.

“Yeah. Just let me get my boots.”

She waited in the doorway while he sat on the edge of the
bed and pulled them on. Grabbing his hat, he settled it on his head, then
followed her out to the car, waited while she unlocked the door and slid behind
the wheel.

He ducked inside and closed the door, watched while she
backed up and drove out onto the street. He wondered if she’d ever let him have
a try at driving the car.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

He shrugged. “If you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay by me.” He swore silently, angered by the wall she had
erected between them. Last night, she had been like a living flame in his arms;
this morning, she was like ice. “What are you gonna do about that tree?”

She shrugged. “Hope that it’s been cleared away.”

“Cleared away by who?”

“The road maintenance people.”

“And if it hasn’t?”

“I don’t know. Go back to the motel and call for help, I
guess,” she replied, her voice cool. Taking one hand from the wheel, she turned
on the radio.

He grunted softly. If she didn’t want to talk, that was fine
with him. He’d try to catch up on the sleep he had lost the night before.

He sat back, his hat pulled low over his eyes, listening to
some gravel-voiced singer lament over a love that had gone bad. Interesting
thing, radio, he thought. And television. And all the other things she had
shown him. Things he had never imagined, things he would never have believed
existed if he hadn’t seen them with his own eyes. Her car, for instance. It was
comfortable. It was fast. But the car was just a machine, cold, unfeeling. Give
him a good horse any day. Like Relámpago.

He sat up, pushing his hat back, as the car came to a stop.
“Something wrong?”

“No. I need to go to the store. I’ll be back in a few
minutes.”

She exited the car. He watched her walk across the blacktop
toward Tom’s Market; a moment later, he followed her.

It was kind of like a general store, he thought. Looking
around, he spotted Amanda pushing some sort of cart down the aisle. She didn’t
look happy to see him when he fell into step beside her.

He studied the boxes stacked on the shelves that lined both
sides of the aisle. Cocoa Puffs. Rice Krispies. Count Chocula. Mini-Wheats. He
shook his head. “What is this stuff?”

“Cereal.” She picked a box of Rice Krispies off the shelf
and tossed it in the cart.

The next aisle held shelf after shelf of bread.
Old-fashioned Rye. Country Potato. Hawaiian. Homestyle White. Country Wheat.
Wheat Berry. Wheat and Honey. He shook his head. He’d always thought bread was
bread. He picked up two loaves. One was whole; one was sliced. He shook his
head again. Seemed people in this day and age didn’t even have to slice their
own bread unless they had a mind to.

Amanda dropped a loaf of wheat bread into the card.

They walked down an aisle of canned goods and bottles of
fruit juice, an aisle filled with various kinds of paper goods, an aisle filled
with candy and cookies, nuts, coffee and cocoa, marshmallows and pudding.

The next aisle held frozen foods. Trey stood there
wide-eyed. There was a long double-row of glass fronted cupboards, some of the
glass looking kind of frosty. The temperature along the aisle was colder than
the rest of the store. Amanda opened one of the doors, and a puff of cold air
touched his skin. She pulled a carton of chocolate ice cream off the shelf and
closed the door. It closed with authority, like a bank vault.

A little further on, she selected several packages of
vegetables. Trey picked one up, feeling the chill sink into his fingers. The
package said frozen, and it was as cold and hard as a block of ice. He marveled
that it was possible to keep food frozen when there was no ice in sight.

“It works like my refrigerator back home,” Amanda explained,
seeing his puzzled look.

He nodded. Electricity, again.

Perhaps most remarkable of all was the meat section. He
stared at package after package of meat. Steaks, pork chops, chicken, and all
kinds of fish and what was labeled as sea food. They were a long way from any
ocean, and he read the labels and signs with interest: crab, shrimp, shark, albacore.
At least he recognized the ice. A sign over a large tank read, “Fresh lobster.”
In another case, there were whole turkeys and whole chickens, neatly cleaned
and plucked, and cans that said they had smoked hams inside them. Smoked ham he
knew, and his mouth watered at the thought.

Amanda put some slabs of steak, red and heavily marbled,
into her cart. They were in individual packages, wrapped in transparent
coverings. The pork chops and the whole chicken she selected were packaged the
same way.

The last stop was the dairy section. He read the cartons.
Buttermilk. Whole milk. Low fat milk. Nonfat milk. Butter was in this section,
as well as items he had never heard of: margarine, cottage cheese, yogurt.

“Unbelievable,” Trey muttered. Didn’t anyone milk their own
cows anymore?

He followed her to the check out counter, watched in awe as
the clerk added up her purchases. She paid with her credit card, a young boy
put the groceries in some kind of bag, then placed them in her cart.

“I’ll do that,” Trey said when Amanda started to push the
cart toward the door.

“I can do it,” she retorted.

He didn’t argue, just put his hands over hers. She relented
without a word and led the way out to the car.

Amanda unlocked the truck and Trey put the bags inside. She
watched with obvious disapproval when he reached for his gun.

A few minutes later, they were on the road again.

Knowing the weapon made her uneasy, Trey slid it under his
seat.

“Where does all the food in the store come from?” he asked.

“Farmers, ranchers. I think most of it is brought in by
truck.”

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Don't people grow their own
food anymore?”

“Not many. Farming and agriculture is a huge business.”

With a shake of his head, he settled back in his seat.

She slowed the car as they reached the curve in the road.
The tree had been dragged away. Two men clad in strange hats and bright orange
overalls waved as they drove past.

Amanda waved back.

A short time later, she pulled up in front of her house.

Trey unfastened his seat belt and slid out of the car. He
helped Amanda carry the groceries into the house, then headed for the barn.

Relámpago let out a shrill whinny as Trey opened the door
and stepped inside.

“Hi, fella,” Trey said, scratching the horse’s ears. “Bet
you thought I was never coming back.”

The stud tossed his head, then shoved his nose against
Trey’s arm.

“Coming up,” Trey said, and scrambling up the ladder, he
dropped two flakes of hay into the horse’s feeder.

He was filling the stud’s water barrel when Amanda entered
the barn.

“Is he all right? I feel awful,” she remarked. “Leaving him
locked up in here for so long.”

“He’s been through worse,” Trey replied with a shrug. “I’ll
turn him out later.”

“Whatever,” she said, and left the barn.

Trey stared after her. Damn! What the hell was “whatever”
supposed to mean?

Filled with a sudden restless energy, Trey grabbed a shovel.
Opening the stall door, he began shoveling manure into a wheelbarrow.

When he was finished, he dumped the wheelbarrow out behind
the barn and spread it around with a rake. He stood there for a moment, gazing
into the distance, one arm propped on the tip of the handle. He grunted softly,
wondering, for the first time, what the posse had thought when he vanished
without a trace. He thought about his grandfather. He had promised Walker on
the Wind he would return home when he had avenged Louis’ death. But Hollinger
still lived. And now he was here, in the far distant future, with no idea how
to get back where he belonged. And then there was Amanda…Amanda, with her silky
red hair, luminous green eyes, and a body that he couldn’t stop thinking about.
Damn, but she had felt good in his arms! Women had never been a problem for
him. He didn’t know why they were drawn to him, but they were. Maybe it was his
love ‘em and leave ‘em attitude. He knew some women saw it as a challenge of
some kind and longed to prove he couldn’t live without them. Maybe it was his
Apache blood that made him attractive, the lure of the forbidden, the
dangerous, the unknown.

He laughed out loud. Damn, she must be driving him crazy for
him to be having thoughts like that. The long and the short of it was, he liked
women and they liked him. And Amanda had been no different until she suddenly
remembered she was engaged. What kind of man was… What was his name? Rob?

Muttering an oath, he took the wheelbarrow and the rake back
to the barn. Removing his hat, he wiped the sweat from his brow with his
forearm. Settling his hat back on his head, he opened the door to the
stallion’s stall, and went outside. Relámpago trailed after him like a puppy.
He put the stud in the corral, gave him a pat on the shoulder, and went up to
the house.

He found Amanda in the kitchen, laying out enough grub to
feed the Seventh Cavalry. Bacon and eggs. Waffles. Sausage. Fried potatoes.
Something called cantaloupe. Orange juice. Coffee.

“You expecting company?” he asked drily.

“Just sit down and eat.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Removing his hat, he tossed it on the counter.

She was a good cook, and he was hungry now. So was she.
Between them, they finished up everything except the potatoes and half a
sausage. All in silence so thick he could have cut it with a knife.

As soon as she finished eating, she stood up and began to
clear the table. He sat back in his chair, a cup of coffee cradled in his
hands, and watched her. She was angry. It was obvious in every taut line of her
body, every movement, as she rinsed the dishes and shoved them in the
dishwasher, then filled the sink with water and began to wash the frying pans.

She gave a little cry of dismay as she reached into the
sink. Pulling her hand from the water, she stared at the blood filling her
palm.

Trey was on his feet in an instant. Setting his cup on the
table, he snatched the towel from the back of a chair and wrapped it tightly
around her hand. “What happened?”

“I must have cut it on a knife. I’m all right.” She tried to
pull her hand from his.

“Yeah, you look all right. You look like you’re gonna
faint.”

“I feel that way, too,” she murmured, swaying against him.

He sat down, drawing her down on his lap. “Let me take a
look at it.”

She glanced away while he studied the cut in her hand. It
was long, but not too deep.

“How’d you ever manage to cut a bullet out of me?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t mind the sight of blood,” she said weakly, “as
long as it’s not mine.”

He laughed at that as he wrapped the cloth around her hand
again. Rising, he sat her down in his chair. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Amanda stared after him. He was a rogue, she thought, with a
killer smile and a laugh that made her insides curl. He was a stranger, a man
from another time, and he made her feel more alive, more feminine, than any man
she had ever known. How dull her life had been without him! Though she hated to
admit it, she knew she would miss him terribly if he was suddenly zapped back
to his own time.

He returned a few minutes later carrying the roll of gauze,
tape, and the bottle of disinfectant she had left on his bedside table, along
with a wet wash rag.

She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I know what I’m doing.”

Kneeling in front of her, he unwrapped the towel from her
hand and spread it on her lap. Then, very gently, he washed her palm and coated
it with disinfectant. Next, he wound several layers of gauze around her hand,
and then taped it in place.

She checked the bandage. “You do know what you’re doing,”
she allowed.

Still on his knees, he looked up at her. “Why’d you run away
last night? What were you afraid of?”

On the way home, she had vowed to put some distance between
them but now, gazing deep into his eyes, it was all she could do to keep from
running her fingers through his hair, to keep from bending down and pressing
her lips to his.

“Amanda?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I wasn’t afraid.”

“No?”

“No. Ohmigosh, look at the time!” she exclaimed, and jumped
to her feet.

“What the…where the devil are you going?”

“I’ve got to go…go…wash my hair,” she said, and hurried out
of the room and up the stairs.

Trey stared after her. Wash her hair? Not likely!

* * * * *

Amanda hid out in her room the rest of the afternoon. It was
a cowardly thing to do, and she knew it. What was worse, she knew he knew
exactly what she was doing, and why. But she couldn’t help it. Every time he
looked at her, she melted like ice cream on a summer day. Never before had a
man affected her so strongly. Why had he come along now, when she was engaged
to someone else?