Between Two Worlds (11 page)

“We try,” she replied. When she slid onto her seat at the table,
Gabriel, the perfect gentleman, pushed her chair in. Once she’d placed a napkin
on her lap, the three men sat back down.

Delaney was impressed. Manners, a sense of humor,
and
hot!
When Gabriel caught her staring, she averted her gaze and felt her neck grow
warm.

Charlotte took her place at the head of the dining table. “May we
bow our heads and pray.” She closed her eyes. “Father, thank you for this food,
and grant that we may partake of it in order to nourish our bodies. We thank You
for our health and for the friendship You have provided, and ask that You bless
each of us as we go about our daily lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

“Amen,” echoed the others.

Fletch took up his fork and cried, “Good eggs, good meat, good
golly, let’s eat!” He received a round of laughs, with the heartiest coming
from the proper Mrs. Quinn.

Nine

“It looks like it’s going to be a pleasant morning,” Delaney said.
“Would you care to go for a walk, Dr. Whitman?” With breakfast over and the
others scattering in their own directions, she had one goal in mind—returning
to her world—and she needed Gabriel’s help to do it.

“I’d love to,” he replied, tossing his napkin onto his cleaned
plate.

“Let me run to my room and grab my purse. Be right back.” She
gathered up the folds of her maroon skirt so she wouldn’t trip while tromping
up the stairs in her boots. She looked over her shoulder. Gabriel eyed her from
the bottom of the steps. When he winked, her heart lurched.

“Ready,” she said, returning a few moments later. He held the door
open, and she began walking toward town with determined strides.

“Where are we going?” he asked, making his own long legs keep up
with hers.

“To see Donovan McKinney.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he knows how I got here, and he’ll know how I can
get back. He didn’t tell us everything yesterday. That Irishman is hiding
something. If he’s not Samuel McKinney himself, then he’s very closely related.
More closely than he wants me to believe. He won’t convince me otherwise.”

“Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly,” she confessed.

Gabriel chuckled. “You’re telling me you believe Donovan and
Samuel is the same person. Does Donovan look three hundred years old to you?”

“He holds up well, doesn’t he?” She gazed into the clear sky, blue
as the sea, and changed the subject. “Charlotte sure is a good cook. That breakfast
was unbelievable.”

“How exactly do you think Donovan can help you?” Gabriel wasn’t
going to let her flip the conversation.

“He can tell me who Samuel really is, why he tricked me into
crossing a bridge that brought me back in time, and how I can find that bridge
again so I can go home.”

Gabriel was silent a moment. Then he said, “I thought you were
going to stay a while.”

She came to an abrupt stop and faced him. They both panted lightly
from the brisk walk. “I never said that, Gabriel. I agreed to let you take me
to the boarding house last night because I had no other options. But I don’t
belong here in 1888. I have a life somewhere else. I need to get back to it. Or
forward to it…or…whatever. You know what I mean. Right now I’m stuck between
two worlds.” She fixed on his eyes, which looked brown today, and sucked in a breath.
His stare was intense, and it made her jumpy.

“Do you have a husband, or gentleman friend there?” he blurted.

She rolled her eyes and said, “No. I swore off men right before…
well, right before I came here.”

“Really?” Intrigue furrowed his brow. “Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

“That’s right.” She took up walking again, with him by her side.

“So, tell me about your life there,” he persisted. “In the
future.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You said you’re involved in advertising. Do you print posters and
flyers? We have tonic salesmen that come around here every few months. They
have colorful banners attached to their wagons, which advertise their product.
Is that the type of thing you do?”

She laughed. “No. I pitch ads.”

“I don’t know what that means, but do you enjoy the job?”

“Yeah. Of course I do. Most of the time, anyway. My grandfather
and father were both ad men. You might say I was born into the life. It’s what
I was weaned on.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, Delaney. I asked if you
like
the
job. At the end of the day, when you’ve left the office, are you satisfied? Do
you feel you’ve served humanity in a positive way? Are you excited to get up
the next morning and do it all over again?”

She stopped again. “Have I served humanity? Wow, those are some
deep, personal questions, Gabriel. Do you always get right to the nitty-gritty
when you first get to know a woman?”

“Only those I feel a connection to and want to know more about.”

She gazed into his eyes, and the breath caught in her throat. He
seemed interested in her in a genuine way. He wanted to know what made her
tick. He wanted to know if she was happy. She couldn’t remember the last time a
man asked her if she was happy. Despite the shame that came with admitting it,
she felt compelled to give him a truthful response.

“The answer is no, to all of your questions.” Her gaze fell to the
ground, and she nibbled her lower lip. She felt both a sense of relief and a
pang of guilt. A physical pain stabbed at her heart. She felt like she’d just
let her father down by confessing the truth.

“Then why do you do it? Why don’t you find another job?” he wanted
to know.

She sighed. “To be honest, I’m not sure what else I’d do.
Advertising is all I know. Let me tell you a little story.”

Gabriel shoved his hands into his pockets and listened.

“My father hoped for a son—a boy to follow in his footsteps. When
I was born, it apparently took him several weeks to get over the shock of me
being a girl. Once he accepted that fact, he decided all was not lost. He could
still stick with his original plan. He didn’t need a son. Women had become equal
to men in society. So he raised me to carry on the Marshall legacy of
advertising. He and a partner started their own agency right before I was born.
It was called Marshall and Pendergrass. It became the biggest and most
successful ad agency in Phoenix. Growing up, I adored my father and wanted to
make him proud, so when I was a little girl, I decided when I grew up, I’d go
into advertising, too, and we’d work together. When I was fifteen, my mother passed
away, and it was just dad and me. Shortly before I graduated college, my father
remarried and moved to New York. It crushed me. I’d always dreamed of working alongside
him, but those hopes were dashed when he left Arizona permanently. His partner
bought him out, and I decided to go ahead and apply for a position at the
company. It was the track I’d been on for so many years. I didn’t think I could
veer from it. Mr. Pendergrass hired me, and I’ve been there ever since. My boss
is sort of the reason I’m here now,” she said, ending the story.

A silence fell between them, and their paces slowed. Gabriel
appeared to be mulling things over. Delaney kneaded her knuckles between her
fingers, dying to crack them. Somehow, she managed to control the urge. She
hadn’t intended on spilling her guts that way. She wondered if she’d said too
much too soon. But there was something about Gabriel that made her want to open
up. She felt secure and safe around him. It was a comfort level she’d never
experienced with any other man.

“Did you always want to be a doctor?” she asked, switching the
topic.

Her voice snapped him out of his reflection. “Yes. I felt a
calling to it at a young age.”

“Was your father, or any other member of your family a physician?”

“No. My mother was a midwife. She wasn’t formally trained, mind
you. My father was an uneducated man—a farmer. He was proud of me, but he
didn’t have the money to financially support my dream.”

Delaney waited for him to go on, but when he didn’t she asked, “When
did you know you were meant to heal?”

Gabriel smiled. “When my cousin Jonas fell out of our tree and
broke his arm. My father was plowing in the fields and my mother was at the
neighbor’s house helping deliver a baby, so I made Jonas some tea with
chamomile in it to help ease his pain, like I’d seen my mother do. Then I tried
to set the bone myself. I formed a sling out of one of my dad’s work shirts. I
don’t know if my poor cousin suffered more pain because of me, but it was at
that moment that I knew I wanted to be a physician.”

“That’s a wonderful story.” She wanted to know more about him. “How
old are you, Gabriel?”

“Twenty-eight. Tell me more about the year 2012.” He reversed the
subject again. “What do you do for fun?”

Their pace picked up again. “Let’s see. I love curling up on the
couch with a bowl of popcorn and watching old movies on the weekends. I like to
shop. I have some friends I hang out with occasionally, when I’m not working. I
order Chinese take-out once a week.” She paused when she noted the expression
of pity on his face. He must think her life was pretty dull and boring, and not
very fulfilling. She could read Gabriel like a book. He felt sorry for her;
sorry that she led such a pathetic life.

He was an honest man who called it the way he saw it. Delaney had
already realized that about him. When he opened his mouth to speak, she held
her breath, not sure she wanted to hear what he had to say.

“The future doesn’t sound all that wonderful to me. Why are you in
such a hurry to get back to it?”

“I thought you wanted to help me,” she said, with a sharpness she
didn’t intend.

“I do, if that’s what you really want. But why don’t you stick
around for a while? You might decide you like it here.”

“Right.” Delaney rolled her shoulders forward and wiggled them as
if ants were crawling down her back. “This corset is squeezing the life out of me,
these boots are killing my feet, and it is
way
too hot to be wearing
long skirts and blouses that choke my neck. I feel for these poor women. My power
suit was much more comfortable.”

“And much more interesting to behold,” Gabriel replied with a devilish
grin.

She playfully slapped him on the arm, but was glad he was joking
again.

~ * ~

Just as they arrived at the door of Donovan’s Café, a horse-drawn
wagon rumbled up and stopped in front of the clinic. A woman in a checked
bonnet drove. Four children were crouched in back with a man sprawled across their
laps. “Dr. Whitman!” the woman yelled, pulling back on the reins. “It’s Frank!
He’s been bit by a coral snake.”

Gabriel rushed to the back of the wagon and took a quick look at
the moaning man. His pants were torn open at the calf, allowing Gabriel to see
that his skin was discolored and there was swelling at the site. Gabriel
rallied the two boys in the wagon. “Help me carry your father into the clinic.”

The boys eased their father off their laps and crawled out of the
wagon as their mother jumped off the buckboard and tied the horses to a
hitching post. Her two young daughters climbed out of the wagon, ran to her and
clung to her skirt, sobbing.

“What can I do to help?” Delaney asked Gabriel.

“Unlock the door for me and then go to the examination room and
fill the basin with water from the pitcher on the side table.” He pulled a
skeleton key out of his vest pocket and tossed it to her. She did as Gabriel
requested, and he and the boys hauled Frank into the clinic by his feet and
shoulders.

“Back here,” Gabriel instructed with a nod of his head. They
carried the man to the exam room. “Lay him on the table.” Sliding his hands out
from under Frank, Gabriel strode to the basin and doused them in the water.
Delaney handed him a bar of lye soap she’d found on the table and he scrubbed
well, and then dried them on a towel that hung from a rack on the wall. She was
pleased to see him wash before tending to his patient.

The man’s wife hurried in with her daughters; one young girl at
each hip. The whole family gathered around the table as Gabriel strode to his
medicine cabinet and began pulling bottles of potions and boxes of herbs off
the shelves. Delaney stood to the side, watching. “Did anyone kill the snake?”
he asked, searching their stricken faces.

“I did, sir,” the eldest boy offered. “I tossed it in the wagon in
case you wanted to see it.”

“Go get it, Frankie,” his mother ordered. “Hurry!”

The boy ran out of the room with the front door banging behind
him.

As Gabriel set about immobilizing the wounded area with a splint
made from wood, he shot questions at the wife: “Where did it happen? How long
ago? What’s Frank been complaining of?”

Delaney peered at the woman. Her face and skin were tanned and wrinkled,
probably from spending a great deal of time in the sun—without sun block. She
and the children’s clothes looked home sewn, and all of their shoes were so old
they were barely held together with string. The woman was stoic, though
obviously wrought with emotion as her voice choked when answering Gabriel.