OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (27 page)

So much for pleasant dinner conversation. I sat there and tried to empty my thoughts rather than dwell on even one more upsetting thing today. Garrison ate. I continued to sit there, trying desperately not to examine what sort of circumstances resulted in me lying unconscious on the prairie, with no word of Indian or outlaw attacks,
with nobody looking for me
.

Nobody caring.

Garrison stopped eating and watched me. Not even looking, I could feel the impatience of his gaze. He was the one who didn't like me talking, right? Fine. If he had a problem, he could damn well bring it up himself.

When he did finally speak, his choice of questions caught me by surprise. "You sick?"

"Yes!" I hissed, low, and his eyes widened at my vehemence. "I'm sick of not knowing who I am. I'm sick of not knowing where I'm from. I'm sick of being treated like a child and having to be grateful for the help. I'm sick of being a charity case and having to be grateful for that too. I'm sick of feeling incompetent, when I know deep down that I'm not, or at least that I wasn't always. I'm sick of not having a name, a real one!

"
For just a little while I wanted to imagine that I had a home waiting for me somewhere, and that everything was going to be all right, but you had to go and be Mr. Practicality and blow that right out of the water and so now I'm scared again and you know what? I'm sick of being scared! Tonight you're going to be with your herd and tomorrow you'll be on your way to fulfilling your dream in Wyoming and I don't even know where I'm going to sleep tonight or what I'm going to do tomorrow or where my next meal's coming from, and I'm sick of that too. So
yes, I'm sick!
"

Well. He
did
ask.

Now that I
'd answered him, though, he obviously had no idea what to do with the information. He swallowed, looked down, looked back up, and nodded hopefully at me. "You got your egg money," he pointed out.

Egg money again. My life was a great big sucking void and he talked egg money. "What if I don
't
like
eggs?"

And
curse him, he smiled again! That damned human, handsome smile. He looked quickly away, to try to hide it, but he wasn't quick enough and I saw.

I started to take deep breaths, to swallow back language that would probably end in tragedy at this point, and finally managed a simple, "What?"

He shook his head, unwilling to face me. I folded my arms and considered what he would look like with a plate of Stroganoff on his head. I'd already proved to myself that my life was in shambles—why not go for the gusto?

But at that moment, a different voice said, "Well if this ain
't a caution! I'd not have believed it 'less I seen it with my own two eyes. Jacob Garrison escortin' a lady to dinner!"

When Garrison looked up, his mouth was serious but his eyes were still smiling, the jerk. I smiled too, though, both at the friendliness of Benj
's familiar drawl and the too-welcome distraction he provided. Considering my fantasies about decorating the Boss with my dinner one way or another, Benj's arrival might have saved my life.

Having already swept his high-crowned hat off his head, Benj planted it over his heart for a dramatic stagger backwards. "Lillabit darlin! Let me feast my eyes upon you and that new dress of yourn!"

Garrison made a huffy, disgusted sound. Me, I hopped up and turned in a circle for Benj's sure approval, enjoying how my skirts belled ever so gently outward. While I got that approval—a gratifying string of comparisons between me and every beautiful thing in the known world—I noted that the Boss was no longer smiling, not even his eyes. He'd fallen back into disapproval mode. But as many people in the restaurant looked amused as scandalized, so I let it go.

"Why don
't I join you?" Benj borrowed a chair from another table even as he made the suggestion. I grabbed my own chair and tried dragging it around the corner of the table, to sit closer to Garrison—not that I really wanted to, but he
was
the one feeding me—and between both men.

It was a surprisingly heavy chair. Garrison reached out and finished moving it for me with one hand—make it look easy! He accidentally brushed my skirts as he did, and I froze. It wasn
't like he'd touched
me
—I only felt a slight bunching of petticoats, not
him
—but my stomach tingled oddly, anyway.

He withdrew his hand slowly, and when my searching gaze caught his, the tingle became a shudder, as if he scared me, except it wasn
't fear I was feeling.

He looked quickly out the front window and, sinking belatedly onto the support of the heavy chair, I took refuge in looking quickly over at Benj.

"Schmidty said I'd likely find you in town," he told Garrison, turning his own chair backwards, so that he could straddle it and fold his arms over its back. "Didn't say nothin' bout you courtin' our little maverick, though. Is this ol' judge showin' you a good time, Lillabit?"

It seemed most polite to avoid the question and its implied teasing, so I just gave him an
oh, you
smile and took a sip of lemonade.

"Have a seat," drawled Garrison, sarcastic. Good thing he
wasn't
courting me, or he'd probably be pretty ticked off at the third party.

"Don
't mind if I do." And Benj reached over the table and snatched a piece of his schnitzel, laughing as he popped it into his mouth.

Despite the residual stirring in my stomach, I didn
't feel half as nauseated as I had a few minutes ago, so I took a test bite of my own dinner. So far, so good. I ignored Garrison's slow double-take.

Having hailed the waitress and pointed at the Boss
's coffee, Benj was still stuck on the wonder of having found his friend in a restaurant with a woman, even if the woman was just me. "Here I've been mournin' the sheer waste of stayin' with the herd while you took yer day in town, since I
know
you ain't capable of enjoyin' yerself like the rest of us. And if you ain't gone and proved me wrong."

"Don
't look like you're with the herd to me," Garrison pointed out.

"Actually, that depends on how you angle your eyes at the townsfolk.
" Benj winked at me, but when he turned back to the Boss, Garrison's eyes narrowed as he continued talking, increasingly annoyed. "But before you get on that high horse you're so fond of, I've got good reason for bein' here. First of all, I wanted to assure myself of this l'il gal's well being. I got back to the herd this mornin' and heard tell
you
headed out with a soldier what come lookin' for
me
."

Garrison snorted. "Morning."

But Benj wasn't letting him get away with the implied criticism. "Near enough to mornin' by my calculations, and don't try to distract me from my figurin' there was trouble at the fort. As I recall, Jacob, you said the gal would do just fine there."

Garrison took his glare—full-fledged now—without flinching. "I was wrong."

I said, "It wasn't his fault." Both men looked surprised, at that. What, did Garrison also think the stockade was his fault? I didn't see why—though it would explain why he'd been so to me this afternoon. Nice by Boss standards, anyway, if not by normal human standards.

The idea that this had been a guilt lunch saddened me somehow.

"Thank you, darlin'," said Benj to the waitress, when she brought his coffee by. Then he said to me, "Well it does my heart good to see you lookin' so fit and fine, Lillabit."

"Thank you," I said, not bothering to repeat the litany of how sick I was. In fact, now that Benj was here, I felt much better. "So why were you out so late?"

Garrison, putting down his coffee cup, almost missed his saucer and had to do it with both hands.

Benj actually blushed. But he recovered quickly. "Day-and-a-half stop near Dodge means two afternoons and evenings to ration between us,
darlin. Half the outfit gets to hoorah the town the first night; other half gets the second while the first batch of us recover. I used my time to keep an eye on the younger boys."

I tried really hard not to laugh at his obvious posing. "Oh really? Awfully generous of you."

Garrison didn't snort, quite—he just exhaled sudden-like. When I slid a look at him, he met it in a moment of mutual amusement...before confusion and then an awkward disapproval reclaimed his expression.

Benj just grinned, and turned to the Boss himself. "Jacob, you
'll be relieved to know that the boys what drew to go first made it back in one piece. Now, Seth
did
get hisself roughed up a little. Sadly, none of the rest of us noticed he'd found trouble 'til it was too late to do nothin' 'bout it but carry him back. I do apologize for being remiss in my watch." His eyes twinkled.

Did he mean they didn
't help bigoted Seth on
purpose
? What really surprised me was the resulting flicker of humor in Garrison's eyes as the two men shared a knowing gaze. "Dangerous town," the Boss drawled. Like he condoned it!

"That it is," agreed Benj, pretending not to notice how I was looking from him to Garrison and back. "Just as well we
're only spendin' two nights here or we'd all go to the blazes. And speakin' of two nights...."

Garrison glared at him.

"Now you can't tell me you won't be back with those beeves by sunset," Benj challenged.

"So will you," the Boss drawled sternly, with as much assurance as he would mention the sun rising. "No swappin
' allowed."

Benj made a tsk-tsk sound, but seemed to be taking the order well. "Has anyone other than me ever told you that you
're no durned fun whatsoever? Can't say as I'm lookin' forward to spendin' the rest of my life in Wyoming with you."

Garrison took a sip of coffee, unfazed. "You seen the girl," he pointed out, an obvious dismissal.

I wanted to correct him—
woman
—but even more so I didn't want Benj to leave so fast, whether it was his turn to stay with the herd or not. I relaxed when he—Benj—said, "Now that was
one
reason I came lookin' for you, Jacob. Hold yer horses while I clear some of the dust outta my mouth, and I'll tell you the rest."

The waitress collected Garrison
's and my dinner plates, then brought us dessert plates with a slice of chocolate cake on each. That's how long Benj took to clear out the dust. I tried a bite of the cake, and it was sooo good, I closed my eyes to savor it. But it tasted fattening, too, so I pushed my slice over to Benj, to buy him a little more time.

He nearly blinded me with his grin, and dug in.

Garrison sighed.

Luckily for Garrison, Benj couldn
't stay quiet for that long. "The other reason I came to find the two of you," he finally explained, blue eyes sparkling as if with a secret, "is because I played a little Pinkerton last night."

"Is that a card game?" I asked, and he laughed. Even Garrison looked amused, though he had the wisdom to not let it reach his mouth. Funny, how Benj
's amusement at my expense didn't annoy me half as much as the Boss's.

"No, Lillabit, though I did some of that too. What I meant to say was, I did me a little investigatin
'. Now I didn't want to give away too much of your circumstances, bein' as that's no one's business but your own. But I figured I could ask a few questions vague-like, and see what I could find out."

"No one at Rath
's heard tell of a missin' girl," Garrison pointed out, prickly. He'd played Pinkerton too.

Benj pointed a cakey fork at him. "So I
've heard, but unlike you, I was wilier than to ask about a missin' gal. What I did was, I got myself over to the Long Branch where, sure 'nough, Wyatt Earp was dealin' faro."

Wyatt
Earp? Again, my stomach sank, and not in a pleasant way. "I know that name," I whispered. "But I thought he was a marshal."

Brow wrinkling in confusion, Benj glanced from me to Garrison.

Garrison said, "Thinks she's an outlaw," and Benj laughed, relieved. So much for being taken seriously.

I glared at both of them. "You two may think it
's funny, but there
is
such a thing as white-collar crime. I don't have to be good at riding or shooting in order to have embezzled money or...or cheated old men out of their life savings." Or been a high-class prostitute? 
Think of something else.
"Why
else
would I know about marshals in some Kansas town? And I
do
. Even without a memory, I knew Mr. Earp's first name should be Wyatt."

Benj looked intrigued. Garrison looked skeptical. Neither looked worried.

"And you mentioned the marshal who was killed earlier this year," I pointed out, turning on the Boss. "You said his name was Masterson, right?"

He nodded.

"His first name was Bat, wasn't it?"