OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (37 page)

Not that I could tell him that.

"And you've done more than anyone could expect," I assured him, instead. "But the final decision is mine, and I'm deciding no. For one thing, the chances that I'm preg—"

His disapproving inhalation interrupted me, and we both glanced nervously toward the kitchen. To be honest, this was getting old too. I hadn
't been a teenager for a while now... and even when I
was
a teenager, my grandparents hadn't been much for chaperoning.

I whispered, "Don
't tell me
pregnant
is a bad word too!"

From the way his glare gained voltage on the p-word, it was.

I flopped back in the sofa. "Oh good golly, what
isn't
a bad word around here?" And I looked back at him. "How about
expecting?
Is
expecting
proper enough? The word, I mean?"

This overcrowded sitting room was beginning to make me almost as claustrophobic as the rules, the nearness of our chaperone and the stubborn principles of my companion. He glowered at me, not deigning to answer. But since he hadn
't clapped a hand over my mouth or grabbed for the nearest bar of soap, I took a chance that I'd stumbled on a decent euphemism.

"Well then, the chances that I
'm expecting are slim." I hoped. Not being sexually active—until today—I hadn't exactly had a contraceptive implant or gotten my tubes tied. But still, I'd never had truly regular periods, and I tended to skip in times of stress. If getting a parking ticket could do it, you'd think being shanghaied out of my own freaking
existence
would leave me less than fertile. "Very slim."

His reproachful posture hadn
't lessened a jot. Surprise surprise, he wasn't a gambling man. Then again, until today I wouldn't have thought he drank or had pre-marital sex, either.

I tried to remind myself that I was a people person. Getting the Boss angry at me, and getting angry at the Boss, might grow increasingly easy the less I needed him
and the more I needed to break from him, but it was
not
accomplishing anything worthwhile. Taking a deep breath, I sat up again and pried one of his hands off his knee to hold it—the hand—between mine.

He
didn't pull loose. But he watched me suspiciously, as if I was going to throw him back on the sofa and have my wicked way with him. Like I'd do that with Mrs. Rath in the other room!

"Boss," I tried.

"Ain't yer boss," he drawled, curt.

Take a deep breath and count to three, Elizabeth
. But I couldn't call him Jacob again. It would seem too manipulative, somehow. So I concentrated on his hand, to better avoid his silent accusations. "Mr. Garrison," I tried, even if that one felt most awkward of all. "I've heard that you were married, once. She died, right?"

He nodded, suspicious.

"I'm sorry," I said, and I was. A nice, respectable man like this deserved a nice, respectable life. He didn't deserve to have been caught up in the snarl of corporate and scientific intrigue that I'd apparently brought with me.

Everett had
really
better not be dead tomorrow!

Still, one man at a time.
"I don't know if you ever planned to remarry or not. That's your business. But you couldn't have ever pictured marrying someone like me. You would want someone who can cook, and clean, and work right beside you, and behave properly. Someone who would
like
living with a bunch of cows in the middle of nowhere. Right?"

He was wise enough not to answer that.

"Whereas me, I'm from... um... somewhere else, with different needs and values.
Definitely
a city girl. Not only would I probably disappoint and embarrass you at every turn, which I wouldn't like any more than you would, but I would be homesick and lonely. I would probably complain about it and make a nuisance of myself. An even bigger nuisance." Nervous, I traced my index finger around his hand, in and out of the spaces between his fingers. He had big hands, strong and hard and capable....

What was I saying?

Oh yes. "We would make each other miserable, and even if there
were
children, which there almost certainly won't be, that would be a terrible environment for them. Better to have one happy parent than two miserable ones."

He snorted at me and my beautiful argument.

Okay, fine, so now I was glaring too. "What?"

"No one makes you miserable
'cept you," he informed me.

And you know, for a second there I almost bought it. Not enough to marry him, mind you, but enough to feel guilty. Then it occurred to me just how easy it was for him to say that.
He
still got to keep his cows, his ranch, his horses, his friends, his job, his
world
. He planned to run off to Wyoming for the year, and have me show up in the spring, maybe complete with baby. Insta-family, no assembly required. Because I was female, I was the one expected to give up everything,
everything
, more than he could even imagine.

"Well I
'm sorry if my explanations don't matter to you," I told him more coolly, letting him reclaim his hand. "But unless you plan on kidnapping me, I'm not marrying you. I'm going home to my grandmother and my pets and my friends, home to where I belong and where I matter." Where I could be
me
again.

Even if I
'd had to lose myself to really start learning who that was.

"How?" Well, he knew it wasn
't by train.

"I don
't know yet." But before the truth of that could frighten me, I added, "Are you sure
you're
doing the right thing, giving everything up for a cattle drive to Wyoming?"

Sometimes, we just have to take our chances for what
's important.

"That
's your final word." The way he gazed at me, stern and reproachful, was almost a dare.

I bit my lip... and nodded.

He stood and picked up his hat, just as Mrs. Rath appeared at the door. Her look of welcome faltered slightly as she took in the tension between us. "Are you going so soon, Mr. Garrison?"

He nodded. "Yes, ma
'am. Show myself out. My thanks for your fine hospitality."

Caroline
brightened. "Thank you for having such confidence in my establishment," she said, with an indulgent smile at me, his little jewel, faithfully entrusted into her care.

He said nothing, just nodded once more and headed, scowling, for the nearest exit. Watching him, I realized he
'd left it to me to break the news about our aborted engagement whenever I saw fit. I was in this beautiful house, with this pleasant woman, almost solely on the weight of not only his money but his reputation. Stifling though his standards were, I was sure benefiting from them.

"The soup is ready, Miss Rhinehart,"
Caroline told me, but I could hardly hear her over the quiet thump of Garrison's boots in the foyer. It was the right thing, for me to go home and for him to move on. I
knew
it was the right thing.

So why did I feel so panicky inside?

I heard the door open. Maybe it was
how
he was leaving—in anger.

Caroline
looked a little confused now. "I've also made tea."

"I
'm sorry—could you excuse me for just another minute?" I was backing away even as I said it, and winced when the door shut. "Please?"

She nodded
, even as I took off after the Boss.

He
'd put his hat back on, and had barely left the steps for the path to his horse when he apparently heard the door. He stilled—then turned. I ran to him, put my hands on his chest to steady myself, looked up at him.

He looked skeptical. Smart man. Drawl or not, ancient artifact or not, he was a very smart man.

"I didn't want you to think—" I had to gasp some air, more breathless than my little sprint from the parlor warranted. "I didn't want you to leave, thinking that I don't appreciate everything you've done for me. Just because I won't marry you doesn't mean that... well, that you aren't maybe the most admirable man I've ever met. You saved my life, you know. You saved me from the prairie, and from the Army, and even from myself, and I won't forget that. I won't forget you. Not ever. I wanted you to know."

He didn
't say anything, just continued to scowl down at me.

Oh God. This was the Victorian era, and I
'd just embarrassed myself silly, hadn't I?

Then again, I was a 21
st
-century woman and I hadn't had the luxury of worrying about embarrassing myself for the past week—why start now? Using his lapels for leverage, I strained upward and kissed the corner of his unyielding mouth. "That's all I meant to say," I admitted, still nervous. "Thank you. And good—"

But in one smooth move he caught me to him and covered my mouth with his for a more significant, demanding kiss.
Oh!
I sighed once in happy surprise, crumpled against him... and possibly whimpered.

Maybe this man alone had been worth the trip.

When he straightened, his mouth leaving mine, my lips felt cold and tingly, but nowhere near as tingly as the rest of me.

And I noticed that while I hadn
't been paying attention, he'd swept off his hat.

He made sure I was standing on my own feet again—God, but he was good at that—and then fixed me with a stern, unromantic look. "Behave."

I nodded and said "Yes, sir." I know, I know—not very liberated of me, but it was practically an inside joke by now.

He nodded curtly, stepped back... then turned and walked as far as the
road, to the horse tied at the hitching post. He put on his hat, collected the reins, and mounted with inhuman ease.

Then he touched his hat brim and rode away.

I backed toward the house, less willing to stand and watch him go now than I had been at the Army fort. Too much had happened since the fort. I wasn't questioning my decision—he had his life, and I had my life, and they were really,
really
different lives. But still....

Turning away from his departure, I escaped into the boardinghouse. Mrs. Rath put a comforting arm over my shoulder and led me back to her old-fashioned kitchen.

For some reason I wanted to cry.

"I apologize for shocking the neighbors," I said stiffly, in an attempt to distract myself. When in the Old West....

"Oh, they'll survive it." At my surprise, she smiled. "I'm pleased the two of you patched things up before he left. But—Jacob Garrison." And she clucked, more amused than disapproving. "Now there's one I never would have figured."

"Me neither," I told her softly, thinking that Garrison
's kiss might be even more astonishing than the time travel. "Me neither."

And so ended the search for myself.

The next morning, I woke up happy. 

The simple act of stretching luxuriously in the embrace of a feather mattress wasn't a betrayal against my now-absent trail-boss sponsor, was it? Because I also had clean sheets—with a seam running down the center, how crazy is that?—and real pillows. Birds sang outside a very close open window with lace curtains that moved gently in the morning sunlight. Turns out there were beds and waking after dawn in the olden days, after all, and I savored it.

It was a joy second only to knowing who I was, at last.

I admired the quaint mahogany washstand in my beautiful tiny room, its pitcher-and-bowl set-up not as convenient as a bath tub, but far nicer than a few buckets of cloudy river-water in a claustrophobic canvas teepee. I was thrilled to use the outhouse in the back yard, which was clean as an outhouse can be—you might think it would be horrible, until you've spent a week out on the prairie. Suddenly the simple presence of four walls, a polished wooden seat, and a little door with a diamond shape cut in it for light seemed the height of luxury.

We humans do adapt, don
't we?

I enjoyed breakfast in a real
, if small, dining room—eggs, bacon, sausage, and
no crunch of dirt
. Other than a few nods, the other three boarders weren't particularly conversational, not even the one woman, who looked to be older than either me or our landlady. Cowboys, they were not. But sitting down at a table went a long way toward making up for anyone's silence.

It wasn
't like a certain trail boss hadn't gotten me used to a general lack of conversation. In fact, he'd given me what might now become survival skills, at least until I got Everett Heard to tell me how to get my butt home. And what Garrison hadn't unknowingly trained me for, he'd paid for. The clothes. The room. The breakfast.

I might not be a prostitute. But at this rate, I was probably the most expensive
kept woman in Dodge City.