Captured by Time (5 page)

Jude closed his bag and came to stand behind her, turning her around and into his arms. She felt amazingly good within them, warm and slight and womanly.

"A woman doctor." He chuckled. "It couldn't have been easy for you to get your degree. I grew up in the east, and I can't imagine any of the schools there even allowing a woman to enroll, much less get a degree in something that's considered man's work."

Cimmy didn't have any more energy to talk, to explain, to even reason with the wild thoughts going on in her mind. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know this man. She had no idea what would happen next. The only thing she did know was that his strong embrace helped ease the sobs shaking through her body. Something about Jude calmed her.

He kept her against him with an arm around her waist, while his other hand roamed over her back, rubbing gently. Then he tipped her face up to his with a long index finger beneath her chin, his lips kissing away her tears, then settling onto hers as if that was exactly where they belonged.

But the bliss that surrounded the two of them at his actions was short lived, because the door to the room opened to reveal a woman she could only assume was Cherry. And standing next to this nineteenth century whore appeared to be a man of the law. The badge on his chest hinted that he may indeed be the sheriff of Twain Ridge. The look on their faces, the tension in Jude's body, all were a clear indication that this meeting was not going to end well.

"Hold it right there! You are both under arrest," the sheriff declared while he fumbled for his gun.

Within a split second, Cimmy found herself dragged out through the second story window and onto the roof while someone—and it had to be the man with the star on his chest, who had thrown the woman who had led him into the room to one side as if she didn't matter in the least to him, while he drew his gun at the same time—fired at them out of the same window by which they had left.

She was so terrified that she couldn't even begin to think. She just followed the man who had a death grip on her wrist. He seemed to know where he was going… she hoped.

But he did. They skirted around to the side of the building and then she saw him jump off the edge. If a bullet hadn't whizzed by her head at that point, she might have cried out, but she was struck dumb by just how close she had come to dying. Even before she got to the edge of the roof, though, she could hear him trying to order her around.

"Jump down! We'll catch you!"

We? she wondered, until she peered very cautiously over and saw that he was sitting astride a beautiful white horse. All he needed was the white hat to complete the stereotype, although Cimmy had a feeling that he was no one's idea of a hero.

"Jump!"

"Are you crazy? I'm not jumping off the roof of a hotel!"

She shouldn't run. She was innocent in all of this. She was the one whose belongings were gone, and who had been… well, taken against her will, she supposed, although she wasn't at all sure if what had happened really fit the description very well. She didn't want to follow him, did she?

But then again, the sheriff wasn't acting as if he would be much interested in her explanation of just how innocent she was in all of this. Like most men of this era, he appeared to be of the 'shoot first' philosophy of government. Could you die in a dream? Although this most certainly didn't feel like a dream any longer… if it ever did to begin with.

"Jump, Cimmy, or so help me I'll come back and get you and blister your behind for not doing as I told you, even if I have to come back from the grave to do it! You don't want to get shot, believe me."

He spoke as if he had some experience in that area, and that thought caused a painful twinge in her chest.

"Cimmy." One word, one very powerful word, said by a man who clearly expected to be obeyed.

But it was the next, even closer, bullet buzzing past her head to lodge itself in the side of the building next door with a spray of wood chips that had her closing her eyes and jumping.

She had been surprised, hours ago, to have awakened in her hotel room with a man lying beside her. And to find out that she, apparently, was actually in the year 1880. But the thing that surprised Cimmy the most out of the past several hours had to be that she had actually jumped off the roof of a building and been caught; picked out of the air by the man who had deflowered her, settled in front of him on his massive horse, and ridden out of town through a hail of gunfire. And this all clearly wasn't a dream. She was as alert and awake as ever.

She had remained skeptical about whether or not he had been telling her the truth about it being nearly a hundred and thirty years ago—until they skirted around a ridge that looked down on a railroad as it was being built. Cimmy could clearly see that most of the workers were Asians in traditional garb, and that everything was being done by hand. There were no bulldozers, no dump trucks, no jackhammers; none of the tools that would have been in evidence if this were the twenty-first century. And she couldn't imagine that reenactors were willing to go quite that far in order to portray the realism that was right in front of her. The men who were working—even from a distance—looked unkempt and underfed, and she was sure she could see chains on some of their ankles.

She'd held out hope that she was still dreaming, or that she was mistaken, that he had lied to her and this was all some elaborately staged hoax to give her a true taste of the Wild West.

Until then, she had kept herself as physically separate from Jude Buchanan as she possibly could, which wasn't by much, since there wasn't very far to go in the saddle. But she leaned as far as she could away from him. It made her feel better, psychologically, anyway, as she tried to work her way through what she was barely beginning to come to grips with about what had happened to her. Somehow, some way, she had managed to end up in the era in which she had hoped to immerse herself this weekend. She had no idea how she had come to be there, and therefore, she had no idea how to get back to her time. This was a thought that terrified her.

But even as the truth began to sink in, she found herself settling back against Jude, for even though she was stuck on a horse with a man who was apparently on the wrong side of the law, in the middle of the desert, in a time when the infection from a scratch could kill you, not to mention the rattlers and tarantulas they were trotting over who were only too happy to contribute to your demise, Jude was the closest thing to safety she had at the moment, and she had to get to grips with that fact.

"Why did the sheriff want to arrest us?" she asked, speaking for the first time since they'd left her room.

"I'm a wanted man." His reply was short and to the point. Cimmy could have gathered that much information on her own.

"Yes, but why are you a wanted man?"

He sat in silence, with the only noise being the hoofs of the horse hitting the dirt and the occasional squawk of a bird.

"So you just expect me to sit on this horse and ride off to God knows where with a wanted man and not tell me anything?" The absurdity of her situation really kicked in at that point.

"Well the way I see it, you don't have much of a choice."

"So what? I'm your captive?" she asked.

"Call it what you will."

Her spine stiffened at his words.

"You have a bold tongue, Miss Monroe."

"Call it what you will," she retorted.

Jude surprised her with a small chuckle mixed with a huff. She couldn't quite tell if he found humor or annoyance in her response.

"Where are we going?"

He took his time responding. "Somewhere safe."

She snorted. "Safe?" Granted, so long as bullets weren't flying past her head, she was safer than before. But was she safe with Jude? And the bigger question was whether she was safe with herself and all the emotions that caused her to feel dizzy in the desert air. "I haven't been
safe
since the minute you came into my life," she added.

Cimmy could feel how he tensed behind her, as if she'd insulted him. And maybe she had. But at this point she didn't feel like being polite, nice, or even bearable. Her thighs ached, her ass throbbed, and she really wanted a shower. Riding off into the sunset with an outlaw wasn't as romantic as a Western movie made it seem. And yet, still, she had no desire to escape her captor.

* * * * *

"Saf
er
, then," he growled. Jude didn't much like admitting that she was right about his inability to truly keep her safe. That was why he'd stayed away from entanglements of any kind while his name was still being dragged through the mud and he was branded an outlaw. Not that they would have deigned to see him anyway, but he hadn't even tried to contact his family, not wanting to draw them into the sordid life he was forced to lead until he could clear his name.

They began to climb into the nearest mountain range and the air began to cool, both with the descent of night and the elevation. Just before sunset, he drew the horse up and turned it, looking upon a one room cabin as he dismounted and reached up to pull her down. She surprised him and crumpled to the ground in a heap as soon as her feet touched the ground as a result of so long spent on a horse, something she seemed strangely amused by. He was worried she'd been injured in the firefight, but her muscles were just unused to riding, and she was steadier once he helped her up.

"Been a while since you've ridden a horse?" he asked.

"I haven't
ever
been on a horse. Unless you count the pony rides as a kid." She put her hand over her mouth and stared at Jude in… fear? Who was this Cimmy Monroe? Not a whore, but a doctor. Never been on a horse? And her defiant nature was more than that of all the whores he'd known combined. Who was this girl?

With night coming fast, he didn't have time to give much thought to this mysterious woman. He needed to make haste and ensure Cimmy's comfort as best as he could. He took from the horse the bag she would have sworn was hers, throwing the strap over his shoulder, then began to remove his belongings from the horse's saddle bags. She opened her arms to take some of the items. He was surprised at her offer of assistance, but grateful, too. They would only need to make one trip in, rather than several.

Although she was first in line, Cimmy stopped at the door and stepped to one side. "You go first, and kill anything with more or fewer legs than I have, please. If it crawls, hisses, or bites, I believe it's time it meets its maker."

The way she put it made him smile. She wasn't admitting to any fears, but simply asking him to prevent them, and he was surprised to find himself quite happy to do that for her. He hadn't always been a renegade. He'd had model parents who had done their best to instill manners into him, even though he definitely hadn't been the best of pupils in that area. His brother had always been much more of a gentlemanly charmer than he was. But some things had set in, and watching out for helpless women was one of them.

His fellow Rangers had teased him about that fact—that he rarely partook of the whores that practically threw themselves at anyone with a star on his chest, and that he tended to part with his own money to help the families of the men they captured or killed.

There were more birds nested in the cabin than vermin of any sort, although he ushered everything he found either out or into the next world. Then he made sure that the lock on the back door—which was directly opposite the front door—worked and was in place before opening the front door and beckoning her in. It wasn't much, but it was better than lying on the ground. There was a rough rope bed that looked as if it had seen much better days, and a small fireplace.

"I'm going to go gather some firewood and see if I can't scare us up some supper. I'll be back shortly," he told her.

* * * * *

Even though she didn't think much of the idea of being left alone in this place for any length of time, Cimmy recognized the necessity of them finding food and a means of heating the cabin. They were so far up the mountain that it was already getting quite chilly. They would need a fire to keep them warm tonight. She refused to consider any alternative methods of generating heat—such as the one he was very likely to suggest.

Luckily, he had left her with a small candle, the flame of which she guarded obsessively as she moved about the cabin trying to clean it up a bit. There was a small table that had been knocked onto its side, so she righted it and put it under the single window. There were no chairs at all, so it looked as if they were going to have to sit on the bed together to eat whatever it was that he caught.

She wasn't looking forward to that, either.

When she'd done about all she could to make the place somewhat livable, she sat gingerly down on the very edge of the bed, hugging herself. All of her beautiful clothes, the ones which would have been perfect for her just now, were gone somehow, and she was sitting here in bare feet and a floozy's robe. Neither was much for warmth, or protection when it came to that later this evening.

He was going to expect her to fall into bed with him—again, although there hadn't been much falling about it before—but she wasn't going to. She'd already made that resolution. He was just going to have to keep those strong, supple, knowing hands to himself. She hoped she was strong enough to resist him—her track record already wasn't very good. She may have been mistaken for a whore, but she
did
have morals. She wanted sex to be about love, regardless of whether she was in a dream, or some warped sense of time, or had completely lost her mind… or whatever the hell was going on. She wanted to love, not just fuck. Even if just thinking about what had happened, and the prospect of it happening again, had her nether regions throbbing and moistening at the image. Damn him.

As if he knew she'd been thinking about him, the door opened and he came in, carrying a big load of firewood in one hand and several rabbits by their ears in the other. "Clean these," he said, dropping them onto the table and disappearing outside again before she had a chance to tell him, "Hell, no!" So when he returned, they were still on the table.

"Did you not hear me?" he asked imperiously.

"I heard you fine. I just don't know how to skin a rabbit, and I'm afraid I'm not much interested in learning."

He looked at her as if she had told him that she didn't know how to brush her hair, but even as he glared, askance, he began to do it himself.

Cimmy was a doctor, and she had seen all sorts of gory things. But gory things happening to humans she could help was one thing. Seeing them done to a rabbit she couldn't, turned her stomach. She had always hated all the classes that involved dissecting, and this was even worse because she'd be expected to eat the specimens. She turned her back on him as he did what needed to be done.

"Do you know how to cook?" he asked doubtfully as he began to build the fire.

Actually, she did. But not like this.

"I'm sorry I'm not much help, and I do know how to cook, but not under these conditions."

The look he gave her was more curious than angry, and she felt compelled to explain, although she felt she had to be careful of what she said. She didn't want him discovering her secret and thinking she was insane.

"I have a stove at home. And a pump with water in the kitchen, which is inside the house, and a sink and pots and pans…"

He didn't say anything more, but quickly and efficiently set up a spit over the fire and had the rabbit roasting on it in minutes. And, as averse as she was to the idea of eating something so cute, Cimmy had to admit that the meat smelled luscious as it cooked and filled the tiny room with its scent.

"You obviously have money. How'd you end up here?" he asked.

She decided that sticking as close as she could to the truth was still the best idea. "I came here for a visit."

"Must've cost you a pretty penny to get out here, to say nothing of a lot of time." His eyes pinned her where she sat. "There's no one waiting for you back home? No man ready to marry you?"

It was an acceptable assumption that, at her age, she was engaged. Hell, people did it in the twenty-first century plenty enough, too. "I'm not engaged to be married. There is no one in my life, and no, there is no one to go home to. I have been on my own for a while now, and am doing just fine." Now why did saying that make her blush when it never had before?