Out of Time (6 page)

He turned his head away from her and kept his eyes on the opposite side of the street. Dilapidated tenements and brownstones nearly black at the base with soot told them they were in the right area. This area they could afford at least. Simon watched the people gathered on the stoops warily and gripped the handle of their suitcase that much tighter. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before he saw signs for rooms to rent.

They settled on the Manchester Arms. It was an average sized residence hotel—three stories, no elevator, but the lobby was clean and the price was right. Seven dollars for the week, paid up front. Simon took the key from the desk clerk, and they started up the stairs.

“He was nice. I was beginning to wonder if everyone here was just nasty,” Elizabeth said. “Gives me faith in humanity again.”

“You’re easily persuaded,” he said, squinting to read the door numbers in the poorly lit hallway.

“You’re such a cynic. I thought he was nice.”

“A bit too nice, I think.”

“Come on, newlyweds always get special treatment,” she said. “Ah. Here we are. Room thirty-four.”

Simon set the suitcase down and unlocked the door. He pushed it open and gestured for Elizabeth to go first.

“Aren’t you going to carry the bride over the threshold?” she teased.

She was impudent and absolutely charming. “Miss—”

“Elizabeth. You know, you haven’t said it once.”

Simon took a deep breath. “Elizabeth.”

She blushed a little and grinned. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

What could he say? Yes, it was. That saying it meant he’d crossed some invisible line he’d drawn for himself? That the mere thought of her name made his stomach drop with desire? That the way it fell across his lips felt like a prayer he wasn’t worthy of?

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

“Good,” she said with a smile and took a step into the dark apartment. She found the light switch quickly and turned it on.

Simon picked up the case and followed behind. She stopped a few feet inside the door. He was about to ask what was wrong, when he saw it for himself.

The bed. There was one bed. One tiny, little double bed, for them both to share.

ELIZABETH COULD FEEL SIMON’S presence behind her. When she’d pulled up short, he’d practically run into her and now they were standing so close they were almost touching. Touching. The bed. Those two thoughts definitely needed to be separated, and so did they. She tore herself away from staring at the small bed and walked over to the window.

The room was musty and could use some fresh air. And so could she. “Is it me or is it hot in here?” she asked, and then yanked open the drapes.

Simon cleared his throat and set the suitcase down. “Yes, it is rather warm.”

She tried to jimmy the window open, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”

“Let me,” Simon said from close behind her. Too close behind her.

She turned around, and they were almost touching again. She smiled nervously and side-stepped out of his way. “I’ll unpack,” she said, desperate for something to do.

For all her bravado about making this an adventure, she hadn’t considered this part of it. Alone in a bedroom with Simon Cross.

She was generally comfortable around men. Working with them, playing with them, but never simply being with them. She’d grown up surrounded by men. Her mother had left her and her father when she was too young to remember. It had been just the two of them, so she tagged along wherever he went. And he went a lot of places. Not the typical American childhood, growing up in back rooms and pool halls in towns all across Texas, but she wouldn’t have traded it for anything. She’d learned an awful lot about people. How to read someone’s face when they’d drawn an inside straight. How a man’s hands told his life story. Or how the truth was easier to keep track of than a lie. But, even in all that, she hadn’t learned much about being a woman.

She’d had relationships, but somehow there was always something eluding her, like there was a secret handshake she didn’t know. Each time a man asked her out she was surprised, flattered and a little frightened. Some had lasted weeks, some months, but inevitably, her insecurities brought things to a premature end. Not that she’d been heartbroken over any of them. They were good men, most of them, but none of them had managed to force her heart to overrule her head.

“Bloody piece of…” Simon grumbled and took off his jacket, tossing it over the back of a chair.

She opened the suitcase and put their old clothes away in the small dresser and armoire that served as a closet. It was a silly thing to do really. She didn’t expect to be staying. But she’d lived in hotels most of her life and the first thing she always did was unpack. It made the room hers instead of yet another place to stay.

Simon rolled up his sleeves and hit the wooden window frame with his fist. After a few more good bangs, it finally opened. A breeze blew into the room, but the night air wasn’t much cooler than the hotbox of their apartment.

He turned around triumphantly, and she offered him a smile.

“Here we are,” she said.

Simon stared back, and the awkwardness hovered between them. They’d spent hour after hour in closer quarters than this, but then again, the office didn’t have a bed in the middle of it.

“Yes, well,” he said and sat down in one of the two chairs that accompanied the small, round table near the window. He took out his grandfather’s watch and carefully opened it.

He worked best uninterrupted and she tried to find something to occupy herself. She looked around the small apartment anxious to find anything of interest. The walls were an indistinct beige and the rug a darker shade of indistinct beige, stained and tattered at the edges. She could see the ghost of earlier wallpaper, some sort of dizzying stripe hidden beneath the hastily applied paint. The room itself was no more than ten by twelve. The ceiling light, a thin brass tube jutting straight down to a chipped smoked glass shade, hung down too low.

She made her way to the bathroom and nearly bumped into the sink when she opened the door. The fixtures were dull and rusted. The faucet arched high over the basin like a drooping branch, its constant drip leaving a dark yellow stain on the porcelain. The paint was bubbled and peeling.

There wasn’t a shower head, but she supposed she should be thankful they had a bathroom at all. It sure beat long walks down the hall in the middle of the night to a community bath. The bathtub was old, and she noticed a series of deep scratches gouged into the tub. What the heck could have made those? Maybe some bathtub gin, she thought with an odd thrill. Or a gangster shoot out, bullets ricocheting from a mob hit. Or not.

She went back into the bedroom and Simon was still hunched over the watch, completely oblivious to her. Some things never change. And on that depressing note, she busied herself with looking around the room again.

The furniture was plain, but practical. The bedside lampshade was crooked. She tried to straighten it, but like everything else in the apartment it did what it wanted and apparently it wanted to be crooked. She’d stayed in worse places, but those had been with her father. Being with Simon was an entirely different story.

A splash of red caught her eye. The only decoration in the room was a god-awful painting of a barn over the bed. Elizabeth shook her head. The bed. She’d managed to ignore it for all of two minutes. Time for a little more ignoring.

“So,” she said too brightly, walking over to the table to look over his shoulder. “You got it figured out yet?” She thought she saw Simon smirk.

“Incredible workmanship,” he said. “These dials control the time—century, decade, year, month, day. Down to the very minute. Fascinating.”

Elizabeth pointed to the thin bands that ringed the face. She leaned in closer and rested her hand on his shoulder to steady herself, and willfully ignored the feeling of his muscles beneath her fingers. “And those must be directional coordinates. Longitude and latitude.”

He cleared his throat. “Exactly.”

“Then shouldn’t you be able to set it for the time and place we left? And voilà. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.”

“Or it could have a built-in homing device. Automatically returning the person to the point at which they left.”

“What makes you think that?” she said and took a chair.

He glanced up at her. “I can’t seem to change the dials anymore. They appear to be locked in place.”

“Well, then let’s hope it’s got an auto-return feature.”

Time travel was fun and all, but deep down she’d always believed Simon would be able to control the watch without any trouble. The small room got a little bit smaller.

He tried varying the extension of the stem, but the dials remained fixed. “I wish I knew how it was activated in the first place.”

“We could just recreate exactly what we did before,” she reminded him.

Simon looked up from the watch and gazed at her intently. “It could be dangerous.”

“Nothing ventured…” she said and came to his side.

A smile tugged at Simon’s lips. Her confidence and bravery shouldn’t have been surprising. She’d met each obstacle they’d encountered so far with enthusiasm and a very appealing sense of adventure. She really was quite bewitching. Abruptly, his smile faded. He had to stop doing that. Every time he looked at her his thoughts drifted to foolish schoolboy notions. Now was not the time.

“Right, exactly as we were then.”

Elizabeth put her hand back on his shoulder. “You were sitting, and I was looking over your shoulder. What did you do next?”

Simon pretended not to notice she was touching him, that the simple gesture made his heart beat a little faster. “That’s the problem. I didn’t do anything. The watch simply…started.”

“You must have done something. Did you close the case?”

“No. I remember watching the moon phases as it—”

Elizabeth interrupted him, her voice loud with excitement. “The eclipse! Remember, we had a lunar eclipse and that little black disc slid over the full moon?”

The enthusiasm ebbed from her voice as well as her body. “You don’t think we need an eclipse to make this thing work, do you?”

The moon displayed now was barely half full, and there was no sign of the small disc. He wasn’t surprised she’d come to the same conclusions he had. It was one of the things that had drawn him to her when she first started working for him.

“It’s not uncommon for astrological phenomena to play a critical role in the supernatural.” The words were spoken by rote. He’d probably said the same thing in his class dozens of times, but he’d never considered what it really meant.

“So we have to wait for an eclipse?”

“Possibly.”

His mind was racing now. Memories of conversations with his grandfather sped across his thoughts. Grandfather had always been obsessed with the phases of the moon. Simon had never paid it much heed. Sebastian Cross had been obsessed with many things.

Elizabeth started to pace. “I wonder how long we have to wait.”

“A few days. A few months. A year.”

She stopped pacing now and looked back at him, stricken. “A year?”

He wanted to reassure her, but he wasn’t going to give her false hope. What would be the point?

“We’ll have to research that tomorrow. There is another possibility. The watch could have broken when we landed, and we will never be able to return.”

“You must be fun at parties,” Elizabeth mumbled. She shook her head and pushed out a deep breath. “For now, I’m going to believe it’s set on auto-return.”

“Believing it doesn’t make it so,” he said matter-of-factly and went back to studying the watch.

“Sometimes believing something is all you have,” Elizabeth snapped. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

“Miss…Elizabeth,” Simon said, alarmed at her abrupt change in tone. “I didn’t mean….”

Ignoring the worst was only an invitation to bring it to bear. He couldn’t let himself simply believe in things. He had to prove them first. It was the only way to avoid disappointment. It was a philosophy he’d lived by and it had never failed him. Until now. Part of him wanted to share her faith, but it meant offering far too much of himself.

Elizabeth shook her head. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” She ran her hand through her hair and heaved a heavy sigh. “You’re right. We have to be prepared for that possibility.”

She looked suddenly very tired. Dark smudges hung below her eyes. Clearly, the day had taken a greater toll on her than he’d thought. Despite wanting to keep analyzing the watch, he closed it. “All of that can wait until tomorrow though.”

“Right. Tomorrow,” she said resignedly. “So, what side do you want?”

“Oh, I…” Simon said, his mouth suddenly dry. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I think…” he stammered and tugged at the collar of is shirt. “I think the chair is best.”

She sighed. “For heaven’s sake, we’re both adults.” A sudden, wicked smile brought a delightful, wicked light to her eyes.”I won’t compromise your virtue.”

Simon was so pleased to see her spirit back that he forgot himself and returned her smile. “Is that a promise?”

“I
believe
it is,” she said.

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, but the playful exchange melted into something more. Before the tension became too much, Simon looked away.

“I’m going to get washed up,” Elizabeth said and ducked into the bathroom.

He heard the door click shut and slumped down into his chair. She had to be part siren. What a wonderful idea. A little sexual repartee before sharing a bed with a woman you can’t have. Bloody brilliant.

He spent the next few minutes reminding himself of why he’d put the barriers between them in the first place. Loving someone was a risk he couldn’t afford. He’d spent too many years trying to close wounds that wouldn’t heal to open a fresh one now. No, his life was fine the way it was. Distance meant control. And now, more than ever, he needed both. Feeling more himself, he turned calmly when she called out from behind the partially opened door that she was getting in to bed.