Maia's Magickal Mates [The Double R 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (23 page)

“Maybe you’re wrong,” Cade said. “How can you two be so sure we went back in time?”

“I just know,” Maia said. “I saw this place in a vision. And in it both of you were dressed in Old Western garb, guns, gun belts, the works.”

“Well, neither of us is in Old Western garb, as you can see.” Cade raised his arms away from his hips. “No guns or gun belts.”

It was a conundrum, true, but then why would they go back in time in clothes other than their own? Maybe they would acquire the Old West garb sometime later on?

“Who was that guy, anyway?” Cade asked.

“I caught the name Prentice, but as to
who
he was…” Thayne shrugged.

Maia dusted her palms against her jeans. “What we really need to figure out is how to get us out of here and back home.”

“Fucking A,” Cade agreed.

“That might not be so simple,” Thayne said.

“Sure it is. Just do the incantation thing and pop us back.”

That bad feeling grew in the pit of Maia’s stomach. She knew what Thayne didn’t tell Cade proved a complicated combination of lack of ability and lack of desire. Thayne might have the ability to zap them back with the chant, but if his heart wasn’t in it, if he truly didn’t want to go back, and she believed he didn’t, then they were pretty much screwed.

The same realization seemed to hit Cade at about the same time it did Maia.

“Look, let’s make our way to the nearest town and find out where we are and work from there,” Thayne said as if to mollify them.

“I know where we aren’t, and that’s all I need to know.” Cade glared at his brother. “Do the chant, Thayne.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I can’t just recreate all those emotions, that moment, and pull the chant out of my ass to make the spell work.”

“Why not? You did it the last time, and that was under serious duress.”

“Maybe that’s
why
it worked,” Maia put in.

“Look, I don’t give a crap why it worked or not. I want to get out of here.”

Maia and Thayne stared at Cade. He looked like he was having a panic attack.

Thayne went over to his brother just as Cade sat on his heels, panting. He put his hand around Cade’s nape and gently pushed his head forward. “Take deep breaths. It’s going to be all right.”

“How can it?” Cade asked but did as his brother suggested and took slow, deep breaths. “We’re stuck out here, God knows where. How are we supposed to survive?”

“Spoken like a true city slicker.” Thayne chuckled.

“He’s not the only one.”

Thayne arched a brow at her. “C’mon, guys. We’re not totally helpless. I’m sure between the three of us we’ll figure a way to make it out here. Besides, it’s not like we have to do this alone. We just have to make it to a town and ask for some help.”

“That’s if a tribe of Indians on the warpath doesn’t get to us first.”

“Stop it, Cade. Just stop.” Thayne looked at Maia when he spoke, as if to check that Cade’s words hadn’t sent her spiraling toward a panic attack of her own.

He didn’t have to worry about her, at least not yet.

Maia knew they were right where they needed to be. She didn’t know what they needed to do or what grand,
Quantum Leap
plan the Goddess had in store for them. She just knew they had landed where they belonged.

She couldn’t say any of that to Cade. He wasn’t open to the idea of being out here for any reason or length of time, much less them having to perform some kind of divine, sanctioned mission while they remained in this time and place. Maia decided to keep her thoughts to herself for the time being.

“You okay?” Thayne asked him, and Cade nodded before getting to his feet. Thayne rubbed then squeezed his shoulder. “We’re going to be all right, Cade. As long as we stick together, we’ll make this work.”

“Easy for you to say. You want to be here.”

Thayne didn’t argue, confirming Maia’s and now Cade’s suspicions.

“Someone’s coming.” Maia went over to the well from where Thayne had earlier come and saw a horse and wagon cresting the ridge in the distance.

“Maybe we can hitch a ride into town.” Thayne came to her side.

“You really think they’ll take us?” Cade asked.

Thayne frowned. “When did you become such a skeptic? I thought that was my job.”

“Maybe we switched personalities on the trip out here.” Cade shaded his eyes from the sun with one hand as he watched the horse and wagon. For the moment he seemed resigned to their predicament. If Maia and Thayne’s certainty hadn’t convinced him, then the appearance of the fast-approaching, antiquated mode of transportation most certainly did.

“Switched personalities? Perish the thought.” Thayne smiled.

Maia laughed at their exchange, glad they sounded at least a little like themselves. She hated it when they argued or were at odds with each other. “We need to come up with a cover story,” she blurted. “Something believable.”

“Oh sure, that should be easy,” Cade said.

“How about our stagecoach was set upon by bandits and we managed to escape,” Thayne suggested. “We all look like we came through hell and back.”

“Except for our clothes. How do we explain them?”

Maia and Thayne both spread their arms and looked down at their boots and jeans, and Maia said, “Maybe we don’t have all the accessories—”

“Like the all-important cowboy hat and gun,” Cade said.

“We lost them in the attack.”

Thayne laughed. “You’re pretty good at this fabricating. Should we be worried?”

“I’ve always been able to think quickly on my feet.”

“Good. We’re going to need that talent out here.”

“Speaking of which…” Maia reached for the pendant dangling outside his Oxford shirt, prepared to tuck it beneath. She pulled back when her fingers made contact. “It’s hot.”

“I know.” He gingerly took the decorative casing between his thumb and forefinger, just avoiding the crystal itself as he lifted the pendant and tucked it beneath his shirt.

“Won’t that burn?”

“It’ll cool off soon. The T-shirt’s protecting me for now.”

Maia nodded then had a thought and caught him by the wrist.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me see,” she said firmly, pulling his hand toward her.

Thayne reluctantly opened his hand to show her his palm.

Maia gasped at the red, blistering skin. “You’re burned!”

“It was a lot worse. This is nothing.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“Maia, I’m a doctor and empathic. It’s healing. Trust me.”

“Physician, heal thyself, huh?”

He grinned. “Something like that.”

“Guys, company’s almost here,” Cade said.

The wagon gained on them, and Maia turned from Thayne to take in the two travelers.

The man clad in typical Western garb pulled back on the reins to the horse, bringing the wagon to a stop. His female companion, dressed in a brown cotton calico dress, sat beside him.

Maia assumed the young couple husband and wife.

The man had broad shoulders and large feet braced against the front of the wagon. Though bent at the knees, his legs looked a mile long. The top half of his face, however, remained obscured by the brim of his hat, so she couldn’t yet see his hair or his eyes. The lower half was chiseled with a cleft chin just barely visible beneath a day-old growth of golden-blond stubble.

The woman was beautiful with exotic features—sharp, high cheekbones, full lips, a cleft chin to match the man’s, and slanted, striking gray eyes—that just didn’t seem to fit her environment. With her obvious height—her head topped the man’s shoulders by a few inches—supermodel bone structure, olive complexion, and tendrils of chestnut hair peeking out from the crushable brown felt hat on her head, she could have easily found work on the runways of Milan or Paris.

Maia continued to be drawn to the woman’s eyes, however. They were kind and her most important characteristic at that moment.

The man pushed his hat back on his head, and Maia finally received the full effect of his long-lashed, sky-blue eyes as he touched each of them with his gaze. “You folks look like you been bushwhacked,” he drawled, voice deep and not unkind or unpleasant despite the wary narrowing of his eyes.

“We were.” Thayne stepped in front of Maia before she could speak. “If you could see your way clear to getting us to the nearest town, we’d surely appreciate it.”

Talk about thinking quick on one’s feet, Maia thought, admiring the way Thayne instantly adopted the man’s accent and manner of speech. She didn’t, however, like the way he’d stepped in front of her until it suddenly dawned on her why he’d done it.

Being a second-class citizen would definitely take some getting used to. Wait, she was actually a third- or fourth-class citizen out here in this time. Not only was she a woman, she was an African-American woman.

Maia understood now why Cade had been having a panic attack earlier. She thought she might have one herself any minute. All three of them were out of their element here, and the mere idea of having to bow and scrape to the white folk in town who would probably expect her to be shy, retiring, and lacking intelligence just stuck in her independent, outspoken craw. Sure, it wasn’t slavery time, at least she didn’t think so, but it wasn’t much better.

They needed to get home as soon as possible, Maia thought, starting to feel unaccountably claustrophobic in the great wide outdoors.

“We’re just heading to town to pick up some provisions, so there’s plenty of room in the back for you. Might not be the most comfortable ride, I reckon.”

“It’ll be fine,” Thayne said and cupped Maia under the elbow to escort her to the back of the wagon.

“My name’s Wyatt Baldwin, and this here is my wife, Lily.”

Thayne reached up to shake first Wyatt’s hand then his wife’s, who had yet to contribute anything to the conversation.

Maia didn’t even want to think what caused her quiet-as-a-mouse, browbeaten persona and tried not to stare at Wyatt when it came her turn to shake his hand. Her avoidance certainly didn’t stop him from staring at her. From the hair on her head all the way down to the vegan cowboy boots on her feet, she felt the heat of that blue gaze and tried not to react. She realized how she must look to him in her jeans and Western shirt—a single black woman in the company of two white men—and allowed him his curious stare.

“My-a? That’s a beautiful name, and unusual. Are you folks from New York?”

Wow, when Lily spoke, she certainly made every word count, didn’t she? “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. My friends here are from California.” Maia smiled.

Lily’s eyes went wide, as if she’d never dreamed of traveling to so foreign or far-off a land as California or New York.

Her glance, though also curious and slightly cautious like her husband’s, held a hint of admiration that made Maia’s heart flutter and swell. She didn’t think she’d ever had anyone as stunning as Wyatt’s wife admire her. She was the screwup, the irresponsible, reckless, and unfocused youngest daughter whose own mother and sister forever told her she needed to get her shit together and grow up.

Well, here was certainly her chance to do both. If she couldn’t get it together and grow up out here, she wouldn’t be able to get it together and grow up anywhere.

Once the three of them were safely in the back of the wagon, Wyatt clucked his tongue at the horse and firmly pulled back on the reins.

When the horse trotted forward the wagon took off with a little jolt, giving them a preview of just how bumpy a ride they would be in for on the way to town.

Maia thought the ride was just the beginning of the bumps she, Thayne, and Cade would be coming across on their Old West adventure, and with a sense of dread and wonder, she looked forward to it.

Anything had to be better than what that madman at Aunt Aura’s had in store for them.

Didn’t it?

Cade wasn’t usually the jealous or possessive type, but he hadn’t liked the way Wyatt looked at Maia when Thayne helped her climb up into the wagon. Not that there had been anything sexual in his expression, and to be fair he had looked at all three of them strangely, but it had just been the point. Maybe he wasn’t as worried about Wyatt’s reaction to Maia as he was worried about her reaction to him, and that probably bothered him most of all.

He’d also gotten a brief and vaguely unsettling vibe from the man. He was thankful that Wyatt wore gloves or Cade might have had a full-fledged vision, and how weird and embarrassing would that be to these Western denizens? That wouldn’t have made a very good first impression.

From Lily, ah, dear Lily…Even though he’d touched her bare-handed, he hadn’t gotten much of any impressions from her. It seemed as if she remained a blank slate who only existed at the will of her husband. Not that Cade always received sensations or visions upon touching someone. Sometimes he received spontaneous feelings just being in the same vicinity as a person without coming into physical contact, but a totally blank slate was unusual, if not outright weird. This was why Cade knew something vital and destructive lived within Lily. He felt it, something dark and agonizing buried deep and hidden—from herself, from her husband.