The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (63 page)

“I don’t know,” Bowdry said, and then he grinned. “Maybe he brought us together for a reason.”

“Yeah? What reason would that be?”

“Well, since you found me, I thought maybe you’d know.”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Maybe if we spend some time together, we’ll fi nd out.”

His words, the look in his deep brown eyes, sent a wave of heat spiralling through her. Spending time with Ace Bowdry certainly wouldn’t be a hardship in any sense of the word.

After dinner, Bowdry secured two rooms in the hotel, then asked the desk clerk for lots of hot water to be sent up to their rooms as soon as possible.

Macie felt somewhat lost when she entered her room and closed the door, along with an unexpected sense of disappointment that they wouldn’t be sharing a room. And a bed. She shook the feeling away. What was she doing here, anyway? Surely whatever fate had sent her here must know she could end her life in this century as easily as her own.

Moving to the window, she pushed the white lace curtain aside and stared at the street below. How was she going to get back home? If she asked Relámpago to take her, would he? There had been times in her life when she felt like she didn’t belong, but in this case, it was true. She defi nitely didn’t belong here, and never would. Yet even as she yearned for home, she knew she would be sorry to see the last of Ace Bowdry. There was no denying that she was attracted to him. And he to her.

Maybe Relámpago was more than a time-travelling horse. Maybe he was a matchmaker, as well.

The following morning, bright and early, Bowdry knocked on her door. “You awake in there?”

Scrambling out of bed, Macie wrapped a sheet around her nakedness and opened the door.

Bowdry grinned at her. “You ready for breakfast?”

“Do I look ready?”

“You look ready for something.”

The look in his eyes caused a shiver of excitement in the pit of her stomach. With his gaze focused on hers, he backed her into the room and shut the door behind him.

Macie stared up at him, her heart pounding, her lips slightly parted, as he reached for her.

He’s going to kiss me.
Breathless with anticipation, she closed her eyes.

There was no hesitation in his kiss. His lips were warm and firm, confi dent without being demanding.

Needing something solid to hang on to, Macie’s hands curled over his shoulders as he deepened the kiss. He made a throaty growl when her tongue slid over his lower lip.

Muttering something unintelligible, he backed her towards the bed, lowered her gently to the mattress, and covered her body with his.

“Damn, woman, what are you doing to me?” he asked, his voice gruff.

“What are
you
doing to
me?”
she retorted.

He grinned at her, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, stripping her of the sheet, “but whatever it is, let’s not stop.”

Four

Macie woke abruptly. For a moment, she stared up at the ceiling, unable to recall where she was. And then it all came rushing back. The horse. The journey through time.

And the man. Ah, yes, the man. She turned her head to see him lying asleep beside her. Just looking at Mr Tall, Dark, and Sexy made her toes curl. They had had sex again last night. No, it had been more than sex, but before she fell too much harder, she should probably find out a little more about him. Like, was he married?

The thought sent a cold chill down her spine. Maybe she should have found that out before they tumbled into bed last night.

Slipping carefully out from under the sheets, she pulled on her sweatshirt, stepped into her jeans, pulled on her boots. She had never been one to have casual sex, and although there had been nothing casual about what had happened between them, the thought of facing Bowdry in the light of day had her stomach tied in knots.

The creak of the bed, the rustle of blankets, told her he was awake. She could feel his gaze on her back.

“Goin’ somewhere?” he asked.

“I need to . . . ah . . . use the . . .”

“It’s under the bed.”

Under the bed? Good Lord, did he expect her to use a chamber pot while he watched?

“Give me a minute and you can have some privacy.”

There was no mistaking the amusement in his voice. Maybe she was being silly to be so modest after what they had shared last night, but she couldn’t help it.

She bit down on her lip, listening as he dressed, remembering all too well how he looked in nothing at all.

Her stomach fluttered wildly when his arms slid around her waist and he kissed the back of her neck. “I need coffee, and lots of it,” he said, his breath warm against her cheek. “How about you?”

“You’re a man after my own heart, Ace Bowdry,” she replied, feeling breathless. “I’m about a quart low.”

Murmuring, “I’ll meet you downstairs,” he kissed her again and left the room.

Later, after eating breakfast in the hotel, Bowdry suggested they buy some new clothes. “You should have a dress,” he said. “Something blue, to match your eyes. And I need a new shirt.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Falling into step beside him, they walked down the boardwalk to the mercantile. Oddly, it never occurred to her to object when he paid for her dress and a few other items she needed. Of course, the fact that she didn’t have any money accounted for part of it, but more than that, it seemed as if she had known him for years.

“I’ve got a place about twenty miles from here,” he said. “I haven’t worked it in a while, and it’s pretty run down, but I’ve been thinking about fixin’ it up, maybe running a few head of cattle.” He removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Seein’ as how you’re new here, that is, if you’ve got no place else to go . . . hell, woman, I’m askin’ you to . . . hell, it’s probably too soon, but . . .”

“If you’re asking me to come with you,” Macie said, smiling up at him, “I’d love to.”

“Well, hot damn!” he exclaimed and, lifting her in his arms, he twirled her round and round, oblivious to the startled looks on the faces of people passing by.

After another trip to the mercantile, where they stocked up on blankets, canned goods, coffee, salt, flour, sugar, baking soda and matches, they went to the livery stable where Bowdry bought a horse and a wagon to carry their purchases. He lifted her on to the high spring seat, then swung up beside her. Picking up the reins, he clucked to the horse. Relámpago trotted after them.

Macie’s initial burst of excitement faded as they left the town behind. What was she doing here with a man she hardly knew? That thought haunted her in the days that followed.

As Bowdry had said, the place needed work and they spent their days cleaning up the rough four-room cabin. Bowdry made a trip into town and bought a gallon of whitewash and they painted all the rooms, which brightened the place considerably. Macie had never been much of a seamstress, but she bought several yards of gingham and sewed curtains for the windows in the kitchen and the bedroom. She ordered drapes for the living room from a mail order house in the East. On another trip to town, Bowdry bought a new mattress and pillows for the bed.

At the end of three weeks, the cabin looked a hundred per cent better, and Bowdry went to work repairing the barn and the corrals. Macie helped as best she could, but she’d never been proficient at swinging a hammer and after she smashed her thumb for the third time, Bowdry sent her back to the house to bake a pie.

It wasn’t the best-looking apple pie she’d ever seen, but Bowdry praised her efforts.

As their life settled into a routine, Macie grew more and more depressed. She missed going to the movies and shopping at the mall, she missed watching TV, hot running water and her computer. She didn’t like doing her laundry in a wash tub over a fire, or cooking on a wood stove. She missed her microwave and frozen food.

They’d been living together just over a month when Bowdry said they needed to talk.

“I can’t help noticin’ you’re not happy here,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes. “I know you’re probably used to better than this . . .” He cleared his throat. “And I know I’m not much . . .”

“It’s not you,” she said quickly. And it was true. She loved him more every day they spent together. He was as strong as an ox, yet tender with her, considerate of her needs. She had only to ask for something, and he did his best to get it for her.

“Then I guess you’re missing your old life. If you’re truly unhappy here, I reckon Relámpago will take you back home, if that’s where you’re meant to be.”

That night, Macie stayed up long after Bowdry had gone to bed. Did she want to go back home? There was nothing for her there. And no reason to take her own life. In spite of what she had lost, she still had a lot to live for. She was young. She was healthy. And she had a man who loved her. But did she want to stay here? Could a woman from the twenty-first century ever be happy living in the past?

She was still mulling the answer to that question when she woke in the morning.

Stepping outside, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the chill, she gazed at the land, and at the tall, dark-haired man who was chopping firewood near the barn.

She was about to go back into the house to start breakfast when Relámpago trotted up to the porch. “Hey, boy,” she murmured. “What should I do?”

The stallion shook his head, then whinnied softly.

“I’ve been asking the wrong question, haven’t I? The question isn’t whether I can be happy here, in the past. The question is, can I be happy in the future without Bowdry? And you know what? The answer is no.”

With her decision made, laughter bubbled up inside Macie. Life wouldn’t be easy here, but suddenly, it didn’t matter. She was here, with Bowdry, and that was where she belonged. In a fl ash of intuition, she saw herself married to Ace Bowdry, saw them raising half a dozen kids, growing old together, living happily ever after.

Bowdry looked up just then, a smile curving his lips when he saw her. He sank the blade of the axe into a piece of wood, then strode towards her, his dark eyes alight.

“You can go now,” she said, giving the stallion a pat on the rump as she hurried towards Bowdry. “I’m home.”

Jean Johnson

“So this house has just been sitting there, waiting for you to come along and inherit it?”

David refrained from nodding, since that would have caused his cell phone to slip from between his shoulder and ear. His hands were busy carefully pulling dust covers from strange pieces of archaic electrical equipment. “Yeah, that’s right. I never even met this guy, but Mom and Dad, and even Grandma and Grandpa always swore he was like the family’s Secret Santa, for decades. And ‘Uncle’ David left it to
me
in his will. Said his ‘namesake’ should be his inheritor. A pity he and his wife ended up disappearing during that hurricane . . .”

“Well, I hope it was a quick end. And all that Victorian chinoiserie will be right up your steampunk alley, bro,” Kevin offered not unsympathetically.

“Actually, I’m more Edwardian than Victorian in my chosen era,” David countered. He pulled yet another dusty sheet off a chunk of furniture and found a beautiful, wonderfully preserved oak roll-top desk. “Ooh, baby . . .”

“What, a sexy picture of a dame?” his best friend joked.

“Almost that good, bro. A late-nineteenth/early twentieth-century roll-top desk.”

“You’re sick, man.” The tone of his friend’s voice was more dismissive than disgusted, so David ignored the insult. “Listen, after you’re done drooling over your Edwardian love desk, you wanna hit the pub for a darts game?”

“That’s rather tempting,” David admitted, gently rifl ing through the papers pigeon-holed in the desk, some of which were quite old and yellow, while others were a lot newer. A stack of old photographs, sepia with age, drew his attention. He pulled the pictures out, blinking in shock. They were of a beautiful young woman, her curls piled on her head in a Gibson hairstyle and her dress equally turn of the previous century. But her pose was anything
but
the staid, starchy, glassy-eyed stare of someone forced to sit still for several seconds while the photographic plates were exposed.

Instead, she had coyly unbuttoned her waistcoat and blouse and had lifted her breasts out of her corset, displaying them with a small but clearly lecherous smile.

He dropped the phone. Scrambling to catch it even as it fell from his shoulder, David almost crumpled the pictures as well. For a moment, he was all thumbs, juggling cardstock and plastic, until the pictures fluttered on to the desk surface. The disarray displayed more lascivious images, some half-hidden by the photos that had fallen face down. Gaping, David swallowed and lifted his cellphone back to his ear.

“Uh, listen,” he stated, interrupting his friend’s rambling comments about doing something or other at the proposed bar, “I just found some very important, uh . . . paperwork . . . that I have to . . . examine much more closely. I think it’ll take me all night.”

“Paperwork?” Kevin asked, his tone dubious.

“Yeah. Paperwork. Very . . . important . . . paper. Work. I’ll chat with you later, OK? Bye.” Thumbing the red button, he pressed and held it a second time as soon as the phone blipped, letting him know the call was ended. It blipped and buzzed a second time, letting him know it was now turned off. That left him in the privacy of a gadget-crammed attic with a roll-top desk that would have made an antiques collector weep, and some rather outstanding examples of turn-of-the-century pornography.