OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (33 page)

He grabbed both the gunbelt and the gold coin on his way out.

What the hell was
that?

For a few minutes I didn
't even move. I felt loved and abused at the same time, my sticky, drying body confusing the wake of pleasure and lingering pain in a dull, erotic throbbing. I touched myself, between my legs, in wonder of what had just happened. I wanted to lay on Fanny's rickety bed long enough to figure it all out despite—or hell, maybe because of—the Boss's curt order.

Git dressed.
Hardly words to brighten a woman's deflowering! But I wasn't a whore, not even now. That was why he'd taken the coin back... wasn't it? I wasn't a virgin anymore—but I wasn't a prostitute, and I didn't belong here.

Besides, I had someone to murder back at the doctor
's office.

So, still dazed and thinking it was maybe a blessing that I was, I cautiously sat up—
ouch
—and then stood. One of my stockings sagged to my knee, and the other fell all the way to my ankle, so my first order of business was rolling them back up my legs and retying the garters. I used a piece of my petticoat to wipe myself clean between my legs—
don't think about that
—before I reassembled my new, slightly worse-for-wear girl clothes. I put my hair back into its snood, but without a mirror or Mrs. Staunton's help, I doubted it looked any neater than my attempt at a bow behind my back.

I stepped on something.

Belatedly, I thought to kneel on the floor and gather up my scattered egg money from where Garrison had thrown it... and finally something made its way through my daze.

The coins looked awfully funny.

The largest were two silver half dollars and three silver dollars. Several were dimes, quarters, nickels. But three, like Garrison's, really were gold! One had an Indian-princess head on it and read "three dollars." A three-dollar coin? More amazing, two had a Liberty head and an eagle on them, and read "ten dollars." The cowboys had given me change, all right. Right around thirty dollars worth of change!

The dates on the coins—1869, 1874, 1877—seemed equally significant. I knew I
'd never held coins this old before.

This... old?

The alternative to me being a high-priced escort hovered at the edge of my awareness, waiting for me to recognize it for whatever it was.
Not yet,
I begged it.
Not yet.
It had been at least a week since the awful thing, whatever it was, had separated me from me, after all. A little more denial there wouldn't change much. But it hadn't been ten minutes since I—

That is, since the Boss—

In any case, I had to prioritize my crises. The first order of business was to find out how alone I really was, and if I put it off much longer, I would never get up the nerve. So, putting the coins and torn bandana back into my little purse, I collected Garrison's coat and made myself step outside Fanny's crib.

The shadows were lengthening; since it was summer, that meant it was getting fairly late. For a moment, all I could see was the ugly little path through the cribs, the prairie, the back of several Dodge City saloons—showing their false fronts for what they were—and a couple of tired prostitutes. I was afraid to turn and look beside me, afraid I
'd see nothing more. But I did turn.

And he was there.

Garrison stood silent, holding up the wall of the crib I'd been in, smoking a cigarette. Even under the shadow of his hat, I could tell he was eyeing me, and the moment of hurt that I caught in his gaze, before it hardened itself into a more characteristic disapproval, surprised me... so much so that I decided I must have been mistaken. I was the one who'd been hurt, after all, and
I
wasn't glaring at
him
. Even now, noting his stiff posture, sensing the shield of distance he wore around himself, I could remember the touch of his hands, of his lips... the illogical, overwhelming joy of him wanting me and fulfilling my wants.

Contrasted against his abrupt departure, and this new disapproval, I wasn
't sure
what
to feel about him now. He'd always been a hard man to read. But it soothed something inside me, to know he'd stayed. My world felt a little more secure, just for that.

I handed him his coat.

Taking it, he dropped the cigarette and ground it out in the dust under his heel.
Bad for you
, I thought, and looked quickly away from his unwavering scowl. By another crib, the redheaded prostitute—Alice—and the black woman huddled together, watching me but saying nothing. I glanced from them to Garrison, and saw that whereas he was scowling at me, he wouldn't even
look
at them, wouldn't acknowledge their presence from fifteen feet away.

Hypocrite.

Lifting my chin defiantly, I walked over to them. The glare that I sensed from Garrison burned against my spine. The older women—but how old were they, really?—split their attention between me and the angry trail boss somewhere behind me.

"You all right, honey?" asked Alice, low and guilty. "I didn
't know when he asked about you that he'd be so rough...."

What?
For a flustered moment I thought she'd been spying, that she knew I'd just been deflowered, that she was criticizing the very wildness that I'd savored in... in my lover? Not quite. But then I remembered the door-kicking. Ah. That must have looked as scary from the outside as it had from the inside.

"I
'm fine," I assured her, though to be honest I couldn't quite tell yet. In any case, she didn't need any more burdens just because I felt like whining. "And I'm sorry about Fanny's door. Will three dollars cover it?" I dug the strangest of the coins out of my little purse.

Alice shook her head. "Ain
't our problem, honey. Landlord will take care of it afore he rents it out again. At fifteen dollars a week, he can swaller the repairs hisself."

"Then will you please take this and buy yourself something you need? Or just something nice?"

She stared, her mouth falling open to show her ravaged teeth.

"Please. You were kind, and I would very much like you to—
"

But even before I
'd finished my plea, she'd snatched the coin from my hand. "Didn't say I wouldn't!" she protested, looking it over as if to spot a counterfeit. The black woman stepped closer to look too; I hoped Alice would share. "Your loss, honey."

"I don
't think so." God, but I sounded calm. Something had happened to me here, something other than just Garrison. While I'd been focused on him, and his hunger, and what our bodies could do together, I'd forgotten to think—and my other defenses had been crumbling. Memories no longer tumbled onto me in chunks. While I wasn't looking, they'd buried me up to my neck, surrounded me like a sand trap, closer than ever before.

I didn
't know everything, yet. By no means did I know everything. But I sensed that, of all the things I'd lost this week, the coin was minor. I turned away and Alice said, "You really ain't one of us, are you?"

"No," I said. "No, I
'm not." And I walked back to Garrison and stopped in front of his full disapproval, just daring him to comment on my friends this time. He'd put his coat back on. If he meant to spit on me and stalk away, now was his chance.

He didn
't. Oh, he didn't look
happy
. If his set expression weren't so fierce, I'd even call it miserable. But he said nothing.

And, scowling, he offered me his arm.

I took it, almost as fast as Alice had grabbed hold of that three-dollar coin, a lot of my own misery melting away at his gesture. Sure, it felt awkward to touch him so formally, after we'd just, well, been about as informal as you can get with a person. My body remembered his. I felt vaguely swollen... there.

But at least I was touching him.

If he noticed me shiver at the not-unpleasant memory, he didn't show it.

We walked up Second Avenue, past loud cowboys and saloons, and I wished I knew where he thought he was taking me. I wished he would say anything at all.

What he did finally say, though, was, "Reckon we'd best find the preacher."

And now I knew the true meaning of the phrase,
'stopped in my tracks.' If he hadn't had me anchored by the arm, I might have fallen over, right there. "
What?
"

He knew I
'd heard, though, and just scowled down at me, waiting for my agreement. He didn't mean to make confession or something, did he? No, that was priests, not preachers. He meant... "Get married?"

He released an angry breath. "What you wanted."

"Excuse me?" I raised a hand to fend off his glare. "Yes, I heard you, but—what I mean is, what do
you
mean, that's what I wanted? When did I say that I wanted to get married?"

If anything, his scowl deepened with his disbelief. He deliberately aimed it away from me, scowling at the world instead.

"We can't get married just like that," I insisted.

"You
've got a name," he clarified at the spot he was glaring toward, apparently remembering a similar statement at the Peaves farm. He dropped his voice for the second argument. "And y'ain't already married."

"But there are blood tests and licenses and....
" But this time I didn't need him to correct me to know that in fact there weren't, were there? As clearly as I knew there
should
be such things, I also realized, looking around me at the false-fronted businesses and the horses standing at hitching rails, that such things were
not
. I didn't belong here. I knew that now.

That was by no means the only reason I couldn
't accept his grudging proposal, but it was the most compelling. I didn't belong here. I sure as hell didn't belong with him.

That knowledge ached.

"Just the preacher." The Boss still wouldn't look at me.

"I know that you mean to do the right thing," I said carefully, around the not-quite-uncomfortable clenching in my stomach at the outlandish idea. I liked the hardness of his arm beneath my hand, the strength of him beside me... and the memory of the sex didn
't completely suck either. He could solve my problems. I would be taken care of. I would have a place.

But it so definitely wasn
't
my
place. And that he apparently hated my guts wouldn't help matters either.

"I know that," I repeated. "And I appreciate that—it
's one of your nicer traits. But you don't have to marry me."

He started walk
ing again, stiffer and angrier than ever—unless I wanted to pull away from him, I had to trot at his side to keep up. "Late for second thoughts," he scolded, dipping his head so that his words were shadowed by his hat.

"I never even had first thoughts," I reminded him. "Thinking wasn
't a big part of the... of...."

But from the accusatory glare he
'd dropped on me, I suddenly realized why he looked so angry, even hurt, and I felt like I'd been slapped. "You think I
planned
it? You think I've been setting you up all along, and now I'm just playing hard to get? I can't believe this!" I yanked free of him, stepped back. I couldn't think clearly, that close to him. "For your information, Boss, I do have more self-respect than to trap unwilling cowboys into marriage!"

He looked confused, now, and he clearly didn
't like it. Good! "Ain't said—" he started.

I cut him off. "I know what you said and
ain't
said, and buddy, you just insulted me a hell of a lot more than you did back in that—" His eyes flared, horrified that I would even mention it, in time to keep me from announcing our liaison to the folks lounging outside the Lady Gay Saloon.

I stepped closer to him, lowered my voice... and couldn
't keep myself from touching the lapel of his coat, softly enough that I could hope he wouldn't notice. Not that I needed to touch him. It just steadied me, that's all. "I think it's safe to say that we made some pretty big errors in judgment today," I whispered up at him, and tried not to be distracted by how closely he searched my eyes, my face, looking for... what? Proof of my innocence, or my duplicity? "
Both
of us. Mine was a mistake too—not a scheme, not a con, nothing underhanded or premeditated and
certainly
not directed at you...."

But my mind was beginning to work again. "...or perpetrated by me," I realized, slowly.

"Beg pardon," he drawled finally—but I think he was being sarcastic. "Still gotta find a preacher."

"No, we don
't. Aren't you listening? I'm not holding you to any of this."

He folded his arms. "And if there
's issue?"

What? Oh. Score one for the Boss. Why hadn
't the possibility of pregnancy immediately occurred to me as well?