Now and Forever (67 page)

Copyright 1995, 2012 by
Barbara Bretton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Prologue

Dakota Wylie had spent every summer of her youth in the back seat of her parents' van, wedged between her younger sister Janis, who existed on mascara and diet soda, and her twin brothers, Conan and Tige, whose joint claim to fame was the ability to play
Disco Inferno
with their armpits.

Frederick and Ginny Wylie believed that the best education they could give their children was to be found at 60 mph on Interstate 80 as they crisscrossed the country paying homage to every national monument and rest stop they encountered. Other kids went to Camp Winnemukluk and learned how to braid lanyards and smoke cigarettes without inhaling; Dakota learned the location of every Stuckey's between Princeton and the Grand Canyon.

Her father, a professor of physics, spent the dreary winter months with his desk littered with road maps and notebooks while he planned every step of the summer's journey. He approached the project with mathematical precision and an engineer's sense of efficiency. Getting there wasn't half the fun for Dr. Wylie; it was everything.

Her mother, a bona fide, card-carrying psychic, indulged her husband's love of ritual and technology but she despaired when she saw those careful traits rearing their heads in her children. Ginny knew life's greatest adventures were the ones that were unplanned and of her four children only her oldest seemed to understand.

Which was how Dakota Wylie--unmarried, unemployed and overweight--found herself that fine late summer morning in the gondola of a hot-air balloon bound for the eighteenth century.

At least that's where Dakota thought they were headed. It suddenly occurred to her that, considering the circumstances, she was taking a great deal on faith.

When you were about to challenge the laws of nature, you'd think there would be trumpets and fanfare, some kind of celestial sendoff that acknowledged the enormity of what was about to happen.

It wasn't every day a woman went leaping through time. Except for Einstein, most rational human beings put time travel up there on a par with the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and Easter Bunny. Fun to think about, but not bloody likely.

For weeks Ginny had told her something was on the horizon, an adventure more amazing than anything either woman could imagine, but Dakota had been so busy trying to figure out what Andrew McVie was all about that the signs had passed her right by until it was almost too late.

Every time she saw Andrew she'd passed out at his feet, overwhelmed by the force field his presence generated. It hadn't taken her long to realize he wasn't part of the twentieth century, and even less time to discover that he and Shannon Whitney, the woman he'd traveled across the centuries to find, had to go back through time to the place where they both now belonged.

Still, she hadn't figured they'd be taking her with them.

The basket shuddered as an air current buffeted it from the east, and Dakota glanced around. She was all in favor of adventure but why couldn't it take place at ground level. Shannon and Andrew were wrapped in each other's arms, oblivious to the fact that the only thing between them and instant death was that puny fire that kept the bright red balloon aloft.

"Sure," she mumbled. "What do you care if I'm a fifth wheel in two centuries?" This was their destiny, after all. As far as Dakota could tell, she was just along for the ride, comic relief to keep them laughing as the decades whizzed by.

"You won't be here forever," Ginny had said a few days ago. Dakota had thought she meant the library where she worked. Why was it her psychic abilities were able to zero in on everybody else in the western hemisphere with laser-like precision but when it came to her own life, she invariably came up empty?

For instance, it would have been nice to have some advance warning. If they were really traveling through time, she was going to need a makeover from Martha Washington as soon as they landed because her dusty Levis, worn Nikes, and Jurassic Park t-shirt weren't going to win any fashion awards. Then again, neither was her coiffure. She reached up and touched the close-cropped mop of jet black curls that had probably never been in fashion, no matter the century.

Next to the beautiful Shannon with her elegant bone structure and glossy tresses, she probably looked like a boy with a severe water retention problem.

"I have a question," she said to the embracing couple who shared the basket with her. "How do we know if we're going the right way? I mean, this thing doesn't come with a road map. What if we end up back in the 70s or something?" A lifetime sentence of leisure suits and disco. It was enough to make her leap overboard.

"You are the one gifted with second sight, Mistress Dakota. Do you not know the outcome?" He wasn't a handsome man by any account, but even Dakota had to admit he was quite something when he smiled.

"That's right," said Shannon. "You're psychic. You should know these things. We were counting on you to keep us on course."

"Just because I'm psychic doesn't mean I have a sense of direction," Dakota shot back. "You'd think there'd be some way to steer this thing." An odd prickle of apprehension twitched its way up her spine as she had a sudden and clear vision of thick woods and a child too young to find her way home.

"Dakota?" Shannon's voice reached her as if from far away. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," Dakota said. She shivered as a glimpse of tear-stained cheeks and tangled hair spun past. "I must be flashing on last night." She'd spent the night in the woods with some residents of the battered women's shelter in an Outward Bound experiment, meant to enhance self-esteem and independence. Dakota had spent most of the hours after dark worried that one of the kids would wander away and get lost and she'd have to venture deeper into the bug-infested woods to look for the child.

"Mistress Dakota has no fondness for nature's wonders," said Andrew. "She was most distressed when a spider took up residence on her arm."

"You would've screamed, too, if you'd seen the sucker," Dakota said to Shannon. "The darn thing was the size of a blue jay."

Andrew held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and Shannon laughed out loud. "Now you know everything you need to about Dakota. She hates spiders and loves jelly donuts."

"Raspberry jelly donuts," Dakota said. "If you're going to spill my secrets, at least be accurate." She patted her hips. "I worked hard for each one of these pounds."

Shannon executed a curtsy in her direction. "I stand corrected, Mistress Dakota."

Andrew's head snapped around. "I have not heard you speak thusly."

"'Tis time," Shannon said. "I must learn to fit into your world, Andrew."

Dakota watched, a huge lump throbbing in her throat, as the lovers took each other's measure and were well-satisfied. Their auras shimmered like molten gold and Dakota found herself blinking back tears of joy...and envy. They said there was someone for every man and woman on the earth but at times it seemed to Dakota as if she were meant to go through life alone.

She'd been born with a wisecrack on her lips and cellulite on her thighs and that wasn't a combination destined to bring men to their knees. No, most men liked their women straight out of a
Victoria's Secret
catalog, demure and airbrushed to within an inch of their perfect lives.

She forced a saucy grin. "You're our time traveling resident expert, Andrew. How long is this going to take?"

"You are wrong, mistress. I am no expert in such matters. 'Twill take as long as it takes."

"That's what my father used to say when we were halfway to Disney World and had run out of comic books and candy bars."

Andrew met Shannon's eyes. "Disney World?"

"You didn't tell him about Disney World?" Dakota stared at her friend in disbelief.

Shannon shrugged gracefully, the way she did everything. You'd never believe her life had been anything but blessed. "We covered all major wars, important scientific advances, and why Dick Clark still looks twenty-five when we all know he's one hundred and seven. I had to forget something."

"An unforgivable gap in your education," Dakota declared to Andrew. "Disney World is a theme park."

Andrew looked at her blankly.

"A place where adults and children go to have fun," she explained, "and it all centers around a mouse named Mickey."

"'Tis a good thing I am leaving your time," Andrew said, shaking his head in amazement, "for your world is a place of uncommon strangeness."

Shannon went on in great detail about mice in short pants who always had a date for Saturday night, ducks with attitude problems, and amusement park rides whose sole purpose was to make grown men and women lose their lunches.

"Andrew is right," Dakota said, wiping away tears of laughter. "When you put it that way, it
does
sound strange. Maybe--" She stopped. "Did you hear that?"

Andrew and Shannon exchanged looks. It was obvious they had no idea what she was talking about.

"The magic fire," said Andrew, pointing toward the flame that kept the balloon inflated. "'Tis a distinctive sound."

"Not that," Dakota said with an impatient wave of her hand. "It's softer...more like a cry."

Shannon tilted her head to listen. "I don't hear anything either, Dakota."

Dakota wrapped her arms around her chest as a blast of wind rocked the fragile gondola. The little girl knelt in front of her, crying brokenly over a tattered rag doll. The child's brown hair was tangled about her shoulders and badly in need of a good shampoo and conditioning, while her cotton dress was woefully inadequate against the cold. The image was so clear, so real, that she wanted to reach out and wipe away the tears streaking down the girl's dirty face.

She hated when the visions came at her like this, swift and hard as a punch to the gut, knocking the wind from her lungs and toppling her defenses. No matter how many times it happened, she never quite got used to this sudden stripping away of the shadowy barriers between the different levels of reality.

Most of the time she accepted her abilities the same way other people accepted a gift for music or a talent for drawing. They were part and parcel of the way she viewed the world and the way she viewed herself. But there were times, like now, when she devoutly wished she could be like everyone else and see life in only one dimension at a time.

The child's cries tore at her heart. "She's lost...she'll never find her way out of the woods--"
It's too late, Dakota
, she told herself
. You can't help her. Her time is spinning past...

A stiff wind blew in from the west, rocking the basket as if it were made of tissue paper. The hairs on the back of her neck rose in response.
This isn't the way it's supposed to happen. Something's terribly wrong.

"Dakota?" Shannon placed a hand on her arm. "Maybe you should sit down."

"I don't belong here," she whispered. "This is a mistake. I have to go back."

"Nay, mistress, 'twas no mistake." The basket lurched to the right and Andrew steadied her. "You are here because it was meant to be thus."

"We saw you, Dakota," Shannon said. "You were fading away right before our eyes. It was this or--"

Another gust of wind buffeted the balloon to the left this time, sending the three of them smashing into the side of the basket.

"Andrew?" Shannon's voice sounded high and tight. "Is something wrong?"

"I do not know. My own journey to your time was most enjoyable. Indeed I did not believe I had traveled anywhere at all until I found you and saw the newspaper."

I'm the reason things are going wrong. This trip should be as easy as the last. I'm the problem--

Dakota swallowed hard. Another blast of wind like that and they would all be tossed overboard like excess baggage. She closed her eyes, struggling to capture an image, a whisper, some indication of what was to come, but her thoughts were filled with the sight and sound of a little girl's tears.

"Look sharp!" Andrew's cry pierced through the roar of the wind. "To the left."

The cloud, an angular black mass, towered upward like a caricature of a twister. She didn't need second sight to know what it meant.

"Hang together!" Andrew called out. "We will--"