A Tumble Through Time (4 page)

Anna opened her eyes, rolled over on the hard mattress and groaned. It hadn’t been a dream. She was really stuck in the nineteenth century. Everything in her expensive college-educated brain told her it was impossible, but nevertheless, here she was. And with no idea where the hell the ‘magic’ chair was that could get her back.

Despite Wes telling her to take her meals at the café, she’d skipped dinner, unwilling to face what her brain fought so hard against. Shortly after sunset the evening before, a young girl had arrived at her door with a blue and white print dress over her arm. She’d blushed as she handed it to her, along with a pair of drawers, cotton stockings, a chemise, and a corset. Anna had giggled as she examined the cotton corset. Old-fashioned underwear was not exactly her bosom buddy. She’d groaned at the pun.

Even though her attire was very unorthodox for the time period, the thought of putting on that long, hot dress had been the deciding factor for hiding in the hotel room. That, and fear of running into the marshal again. Furthermore, no way on earth would she squeeze herself into any corset not from the scented racks of
Victoria’s Secret. For goodness’ sake, her own
mother
had stood on the courthouse steps and burned her bra during an ERA protest.

But her appetite had returned full force this morning, encouraging her to relent, though she ditched the underwear and put on her panties that she’d rinsed out in the wash bowl provided by the hotel. Skipping her morning shower sucked.
Well, when in Rome . . .

A half hour later she entered the café, buzzing with morning diners. Mostly men, and mostly dressed as if they were heading off to tend to the cows. What exactly did people do in the eighteen seventies? The Civil War had ended five years ago,
Oklahoma wouldn’t be opened up to settlers for another nineteen years, and if her history lessons had stuck, the Chisholm Trail was very active, bringing all sorts of crime with very little punishment to Kansas cowtowns.

“Mornin’, Miss Devlin.” An older woman with steel gray curls that seemed cemented to her head greeted Anna. “The marshal said you’d been comin’ in for meals.”

“Yes. Good morning to you, too.” Anna followed the plump woman to the back of the restaurant. Thank goodness hoop skirts had already gone out of fashion. She didn’t think she could deal with that obstacle.

“My name’s Flossie. You can park it there,” the woman gestured to a table in the corner, “and I’ll bring ya some coffee.” She stopped and narrowed her eyes at Anna. “Unless yore one of them tea drinkers?” She made it sound like a hanging offense.

“No. Coffee is fine. Thank you.” Anna smoothed her skirt over her bottom and sat, feeling foolish dressed like this, but excited at the same time. If this was real, she was getting a look at what people were really like in the old west. Smelly. Dirty. Missing teeth. Men covered with facial hair. Now that she thought about it, the marshal didn’t have what seemed to be the requisite handlebar mustache or beard.

Almost as if her thoughts could conjure up the man, the door opened and Wes entered the room. He glanced around and headed straight for her. Why was her heart speeding up? Yes, he was hot. But he’d already been dead a hundred years or more in her time. As she took in his long, lanky stride, his lips tilted in that sexy grin, he sure as hell didn’t look dead now. Her brain ordered her body to behave.

“Mornin’, Miss Devlin.” He took off his hat, tempting her fingers to run through the brown wavy hair that fell over his forehead. Wes pulled out the chair across from her, and nodded at Flossie as she set two cups in front of them.

“Mornin’, marshal.” She grinned at him. “The usual?”

“Absolutely.” He eyed Anna. “You order yet?”

“Nope.” She
turned to Flossie. “Do you have biscuits and gravy?”

“Sure do. House specialty.” The woman swiped the table with a dirty cloth, then waddled off.

Well, that’s sanitary. No wonder they died young
. She turned her attention to Wes, who studied her carefully.

“Has your memory returned?” He heaped several teaspoons of sugar into his coffee and stirred.

“There isn’t anything wrong with my memory.” She took a sip of the coffee and almost spewed it across the table. What the hell did they put in this? No wonder Wes had drowned it with sugar. Anna eased the cup back down and slid it away with one finger.

“Let me put it another way. Did you figure out where ‘home’ is?”

Anna crossed her arms and leaned on the table. “I know precisely where my home is.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, I’m beginning to believe you can’t get there from here.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“Amazingly enough, yes.”

“What will you do now?”

She shrugged. “Get a job.”

“Where? What can you do?”

The man was as thick as the coffee she just pushed aside. “I told you what I do.”

Wes blew on his coffee. “No.”

“Why not?” Anna impatiently tapped the table with her spoon.

He nodded at Flossie as she set two plates in front of them. “Thanks.”

Anna poked at her breakfast with the fork. Hopefully this wouldn’t be as bad as the coffee. She cut off a piece and gingerly raised it to her mouth. And groaned. It was the most delicious biscuits and gravy she’d ever tasted. They must have used a pound of butter and a quart of heavy cream in each serving. Paula Deen would be proud. And her own thighs would grow inches with each bite.

She closed her eyes as she savored another taste. Running her tongue around her lips, she peered at Wes, and all her blood froze, then raced around her body like the Indy 500. He stared at her open-mouthed, his fork halfway to his lips. His eyes had glazed over, and she swore his breathing had picked up.

Her own fork clattered to the table. The last time a man had looked at her like that, they’d spent the following twenty-four hours practicing gymnastic moves in bed. “What?” Her voice resembled a frog’s.

Wes shook his head as if to clear it. “Nothing.”

They finished their meal in silence as Anna continued to soak up the atmosphere. No John Wayne movie or history book could have prepared her for the reality of the eighteen hundreds. People were much thinner, almost wiry. Several women sported pock marks from childhood diseases. Teeth were not well cared for, and deodorant was obviously not a big seller. Soap, either.

And the dimness. Without electric lighting, the large windows provided the only light. Oil lamps stood in the center of each table, which were probably only lit after darkness had descended. Clothes were serviceable, not stylish.

But despite it all, people were still people. They worked, played, reproduced, socialized, and lived their lives much like the twenty-first century.

“Are you really not going to give me a job?” Anna scraped her plate and sucked in the last of the gravy.

“No. Bounty hunting is not a woman’s job.”

“It is where I come from.”

“Among the Indians?”

Anna stood. Dealing with men in her own time was hard enough, but more than a hundred years before the ERA, it was impossible. Women couldn’t even vote at this point. “Thank you for the breakfast. I’ll be on my way now.” She swept past him, her head high.

“Where you headed?”

“Where do you suppose?” She swung around and scowled at him. “I have to find a job.”

For the next few days, Wes stayed as far away from Anna Devlin as he could. He’d checked on her by stopping at the hotel to make sure she was still in town. Why he cared, he didn’t want to dwell on. If she took off, it would be the best thing for him, and he suspected, the town as well. He still wasn’t convinced she didn’t have some dishonest reason for being here.

As the sun sank behind the buildings, he
snatched his hat from the hook by the marshal’s office door and headed to the saloon. Although he wasn’t much of a drinker or gambler, the company helped on those days when he felt unsettled, not wanting to be alone with his thoughts.

From about half a mile away, he could hear music and shouting from The Next Stop Saloon echoing off the buildings. Some of the cowboys must’ve gotten paid and were drinking and gambling their money away. Hopefully it would remain a peaceful night. Wes checked the gun at his side, as he did numerous times a day.

The boardwalk was deserted, every decent person behind locked doors, eating supper and dealing with families. A lady of the night staggered away from the saloon on the arm of a bear of a man. He recognized her as Bertha Sinclair, just another of the women in Denton without a man, trying to make a living. His stomach tensed. He never did determine what sort of work Anna had ended up doing. Tomorrow he would make it a point to find out. Only to assure himself it was something honest.

Wes pushed the batwing doors open and came to an abrupt halt. Anna stood in the middle of the room, wearing the scanty red satin dress of a saloon girl, her hands on her hips, glaring at a dusty cowboy with his arm slung over her shoulder. “You keep your hands off me, mister, or I’ll flatten you.”

Chapter Four

W
es groaned as he strode into the room, headed for the confrontation. Then to his amazement, Anna spun into action and all hell broke loose.

That little slip of a woman stomped on the cowboy’s foot, then
fisted her hands together and elbowed him in the stomach. With the heel of her hand she smashed his nose as she brought her knee up to his groin with a vengeance. Every male in the room, Wes included, winced at the last movement.

The man dropped to his knees, all the blood leaving his face. He gripped his privates and with a groan, fell face-first onto the floor, curling into a ball. All sound, including the tinny piano, had ceased.

What in tarnation did she just do?

Her breasts heaving, threatening to spring from the low-cut bodice of the satin dress, Anna stared down at the hapless man, her hands resting on her hips. “I warned you.”

Jake Stewart, the bar owner, scooted around the counter and confronted Anna. “You’re fired.”

“Fired?” She glared at him, open-mouthed.

“That’s right. I don’t want to get a reputation of my girls beating up the customers.”

Anna pointed to the still-pale man moaning on the floor. “That man
fondled my bottom every time I walked past him.”

“So?”

“So? Why do I have to be fondled to serve drinks?”

“Anna, come on, I’ll walk you home.” Wes touched her gently on the arm, no
t quite sure if she’d wallop him, too.

She rubbed her forehead and peered up at him. Part of her curly hair fell around her shoulders, freed from her topknot. A red satin ribbon hugged her neck, a good ten inches from the bodice of the dress that ended above her knees. Anna was, by far, the prettiest woman Jake had ever hired. No wonder the boys were having trouble keeping their hands off her.

“Go with the marshal, Anna. You’re through here.” Jake nodded to the wizened old man behind the piano and the music started up again.

She stiffened. “What about my pay?”

Jake pulled a few bills from his pocket and handed them to her. “Here, now get lost. This ain’t the job for you if you can’t be friendly to the customers.”

Anna snorted and headed for the door, Wes on her heels. Every man in the place found his drink much too interesting to view their exit.

Having recovered from the vision of Anna beating the hell out of the cowboy, Wes’s lips curved into a grin. Never in his life had he seen a woman defend herself like that. The few times he’d had to pull two scrapping women apart, it had always been about yanking hair and rolling on the ground, tearing at each other’s clothes.

“Where did you learn that?” He waved his hand back toward the saloon.

“At the academy.”

He frowned. “You went to an academy that taught young ladies how to fight?”

Anna stopped and she shrugged. “No. The police academy.”

“I don’t understand.”

Anna peered up at him, tears standing in her eyes. What a life she must have lived until now, to find it necessary to defend herself in such a manner. He had the strongest urge to assure her he would fight her battles from now on.

Where did that thought come from?
He’d been fighting his own battle for five years. Not successfully, either.

“Welcome to the club. I don’t understand either, but here I am.” She swiped at her eyes, and tucked a curl behind her ear.

They continued on in silence until they reached the hotel. Anna stopped abruptly a few feet from the entrance. “Since I’m no longer employed by the saloon, maybe you could—”

“No.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why not?”

Wes pushed the brim of his hat back with his thumb, then rested his hands on his hips. “Chasing down outlaws is not work for women.”

“You saw how I took that cowboy down.”

“Surprise.”

“What?”

“Surprise. No one expected a slight little lady to haul off like that. Don’t think for one minute word hasn’t already spread. The next man will be ready for you. It will never work a second time.” He grinned at her scowl. “I hear Flossie is looking for someone to help out at the café. Now there’s work suitable for a woman.”

“Oh! You male chauvinist pig.”

He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “What?”

“Never mind. It would take too long to explain, and I doubt it would make a difference anyway.” She sidestepped around him and stormed into the hotel.

“Good night, Miss Devlin.”

She ignored him, but he couldn’t overlook the sway of her hips as she marched away. Or the creamy skin on her shoulders and back the skimpy dress didn’t cover. He’d never met a woman like Anna. Bold, outspoken and exciting. The man who caught that tiger would be in for a ride. All the more reason to stay as far away from her as possible. The last thing he needed in his life was excitement.

Anna had been at her new job at the café for two days. The work wasn’t bad, and at least the men kept their hands to themselves. Either they didn’t equate bacon and eggs with lust, or word had already spread that she wasn’t a woman to mess with.

Her reputation was the least of her worries. Time was passing, and her hearing loomed closer each day. Unless time in the past didn’t move at the same speed as normal. She sighed. What was normal? Nothing at all since she’d stepped away from the ‘peace chair.’

She stopped at a table of cowboys. “What’ll it be, boys?” God, she couldn’t believe how she’d already picked up old west phrases. She hadn’t ever called a man ‘boy.’ The PC police would have a ball in this time period.

Her gaze drifted to a man in the corner, his head bent, shoveling food into his mouth. He looked vaguely familiar. This was the first time he’d appeared in the café since she’d started, but something about him nudged her memory. Maybe he was from her time, and had made a visit to the chair too, finding himself hurled into the past.

Wes arrived each morning by
seven o’clock for his breakfast. Although she wanted to hate the man, she felt a strong attraction to him that annoyed her. As much as his male superior attitude—so typical for this time period—irritated her, in some ways it drew her in. Men in her time had softened, at least the ones she’d known. Maybe the modern era did a disservice to males. A unique idea, since her focus had always been on female equality.

“How’s the job going?” Wes tossed a few coins on the table as he stood, preparing to leave.

“Okay. Not the kind of work I’m used to, of course.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Wes grinned and her stomach tap-danced. It was all that male testosterone. It oozed from him like a mating call, a signal to every female within range. So different from Robbie. Of course, being a product of his time, she never would have tolerated in Robbie the very things she’d found sexy about Wes. Except when he refused to give her a
man’s
job. It didn’t help that she told herself she couldn’t have it both ways.

“By the way, you can tell the town they no longer need to pay my hotel bill.” Anna gathered Wes’s dirty dishes.

“You sure?” He reached out and lightly touched her hand.

The concern on his face hit her like a sledgehammer. He cared. He was a male chauvinist, bossy, domineering and frustrating, but there was a soft side to Wes that affected her as much as the rest shouted to everything feminine in her.

“Yes, I’m sure. I can take care of myself.” Why did those words ring so hollow?

“I’d like you to stop over at the jailhouse when you’re through here today.”

“Why?”

“On his way back through town, Slug dropped off a few things he thinks may have fallen out of your pouch. The way he drives those horses, I don’t doubt it for a minute.” Another disarming smile.

She nodded and turned toward a table with three cowboys signaling for more coffee. “See you later,” she flung over her shoulder as she headed in their direction.

Why did I do such a fool thing?
Wes’s resolve to stay away from Anna weakened every day. He still didn’t trust her, but that didn’t stop the powerful need to see her, watch her hurry around the restaurant, smile at her customers, touch his hand when she placed his breakfast in front of him.

He could have brought her things with him, instead of inviting her over to fetch them herself. His thoughts drifted to the trinkets sitting in his desk drawer at the jailhouse, the likes of which he’d never seen before. A long slim object, wrapped in paper, with the word
tampon
stamped on it, and a round disc made of something hard and unfamiliar to him. When he finally figured out how to open it, there was a circle of cardboard inside, with white pills attached to it, days of the week marked alongside each one. Very strange.

No stranger than the woman herself. Her way of speaking, the peculiar clothes she’d arrived in, her ability to bring down a cowboy easily twice her weight. Where did she come from? The name she’d given him
−Tulsa−turned out to be false, after a thorough search of Federal court records showed no town by that name.

Wes spent the rest of the day strolling around town, visiting with the shopkeepers, the presence of the town marshal providing townspeople with a s
ense of safety. So far—thankfully—Denton hadn’t been a draw for outlaws, most of them hitting the bigger cities north and south. Even though only a few miles west of the Chisholm Trail, Denton didn’t have the problems other cowtowns in Kansas did. When the cowboys came into town, Wes made the rounds of the saloons, chatting with the boys from the trail, letting them know he had his eye on them. Not being the end of the road, most stops were brief before they continued north.

He was sitting behind his desk, going through the new batch of
‘wanted’ posters he’d just picked up from the post office when the jailhouse door opened and Anna entered. He stood and cursed the swift reaction his body underwent. Dry mouth, thumping heart, and a definite stirring below his belt.

She paused and smiled. “Is this a bad time?”

Wes cleared his throat. “No, not at all. Finished for the day?” He waved at the chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”

He considered the two bright red dots on her cheeks and the hitch in her breathing. Could she be having the same reaction to him? He quickly recoiled from that thought. She was a complete mystery, possibly here for dishonest reasons, and the last thing he needed to add to his already muddled life was a woman, particularly with the lure of this one.

“So, what do you have?” Anna fussed with her dress, not meeting his gaze.

Wes opened the desk drawer and withdrew the two objects. Anna drew in a sharp breath and grabbed them, fisting them in her lap. The two red dots spread until her entire face appeared to be on fire.

She couldn’t believe it. Of all the things that could have fallen out of her purse and found their way to the marshal, why did it have to be a tampon and her birth control pills?

“Can I ask you a question?” Wes’s forehead creased, but the mirth in his eyes convinced her he knew his question would annoy her.

“Sure.” Maybe she could get through this by acting nonchalant, certainly far from how she felt. She fingered the plastic container of pills. If he wanted to know what they were, she sure as hell couldn’t tell him unless she was in the mood to be dragged off to the local preacher to confess her sins.

Wes nodded toward her lap. “What are they?”

“What?” She blinked, tilting her head. Maybe using innocence would work.

“The round disc with pills.”

“Um. Medicine I take for headaches.”

“Why are the days noted?”

“I forget to take them occasionally.”

“You have a headache every day?” His eyebrows rose to his hairline.

Apparently innocence wasn’t going to work. Anna stood. “Well, I want to thank you for returning my personal property. Have a nice day.” She turned to leave.

“Wait a minute.”

She swung her gaze back to him, and focused on the ‘wanted’ poster sitting on his desk. Her eyes widened and her pulse picked up. Staring back at her was the man from the café scarfing down his breakfast that morning. No wonder he’d looked familiar. She must have seen him on the wall over the post office counter in the mercantile. Quickly, she skimmed the information. A two hundred and fifty dollar reward. Here was her way to make a little bit more money and prove to Wes she could do more than sling hash. If she was going to be stuck here for any length of time, she might as well do something more interesting.

She brought her attention back to Wes. “What?”

“You did it again.”

She tilted her head, questioning.

“You use strange words, strange sentences.
Personal property
?”

Anxious to leave to see if she could track down Benny Coats, a/k/a Big Ben
−
how original
−she needed to leave quickly.