Stay With Me (3 page)

Then why couldn’t she shake the feeling this
man was trouble? He acted like he’d met her before. He’d said
something about a stage. Maybe he had trouble separating fact from
fiction and he’d confused her with some actress.

She walked over to the shelf, the one he’d
pulled the extra cup from. She picked up a small mirror and held it
in front of her face. She looked for a moment, studied the
reflection, then put the mirror down. She counted to ten and picked
it up again. Same thick blonde, almost straight, shoulder-length
hair. Same blue eyes. Same small scar running through her left
eyebrow. She checked her teeth. Nothing new.

Sarah Jane Tremont looked like she did every
other morning. She’d dropped out of the clouds and landed flat on
her back on some country road but other than that, nothing much had
changed. Now she just needed to find her way home. After all, how
far could it be? Was it possible the storm had carried her miles?
Could a person survive that?

She had. Looking around she noted the old
black stove, like one she’d seen in history books, in one corner of
the room. Where was the refrigerator? Surely, in this day and age,
even the most rural houses had refrigerators.

A small table stood against the far wall. On
it was a book of some sort, with a piece of paper sticking out. She
walked over and pulled out the paper. It looked like an invoice.
Flour, salt, sugar, and coffee. The man had made a grocery run.
He’d stocked up on the basics.

She looked a little closer. He’d bought a
barrel of flour. Who the heck bought flour in a barrel? Was there a
bakery out back she hadn’t seen?

She ran her finger down the list. He’d bought
eight pounds of coffee for a dollar. What? She looked again. The
last time she’d bought coffee it had been over five dollars a
pound.

Hooper’s Mercantile. The name, like the
purchases, was handwritten. She focused on the date at the top of
the invoice. April 16, 1888. She grabbed the book and flipped
through it. Entries recorded the weather, crops planted, livestock
bought and sold. She flipped to the last page. Halfway down the
page, she saw the last entry. It, too, was dated April 16,
1888.

She picked up the invoice again. She’d been
too stunned by the date to take much notice of the signature. Now
she ran her fingers across the large, slanted writing. John
Beckett. She opened the ledger once again, this time to the first
page.
Property of John Beckett, Cedarbrook,
Wyoming Territory.

The guy had to be a history nut. She flipped
the invoice over. The paper looked new, the ink fresh. She sniffed
the ledger. It didn’t smell old.

She jumped when she heard the rattle of the
doorknob. She stuffed the invoice back inside the book and pushed
it toward the middle of the table. The man, carrying a bucket of
water in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, opened the
door.

He didn’t say a word or even look at her when
he entered. Setting the basket and the bucket on top of the stove,
he took off his cowboy hat and hung it on a nail by the door. He
bent down and scooped up a handful of wood from the box next to the
stove. Using a small hook, he pulled out a burner and shoved the
wood inside before striking a match and throwing it on the pile. He
replaced the burner. Each movement was efficient, no wasted
action.

In the morning light, he looked less devilish
and more handsome. He did not, however, look any smaller. His
shoulders still looked incredibly wide and she could see muscles in
his back ripple as he worked. From her vantage point, she noted he
also had one great butt. All nice and firm. Heck, he had a better
butt than she did.

He turned toward her and she jerked her
glance away. “I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Still like
your eggs fried?”

She preferred scrambled but she didn’t want
to debate it. “Yes,” she said.

“You want some coffee?” he asked.

Maybe it was Heaven. “Flavored?” she
asked.

He frowned at her. “I hope so. It better
taste like coffee. Or Hooper’s owes me a refund.”

“Hooper’s?” As in
Hooper’s
Mercantile
?

He looked at her more closely. “Are you sure
you didn’t bump your head?”

“I don’t think so.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Alice Hooper still
talks about you. I don’t know why. You barely ever gave the poor
woman the time of day. Even so, on Tuesday, when I went to town, I
heard her talking to another customer. She said Cedarbrook lost all
its style the day you left.”

On Tuesday, when I went to town.

April 16, 1888.

Cedarbrook lost all its style the day you
left.

I thought you said you weren’t coming
back.

Her heart slammed against her chest and her
knees started to buckle. “What…what day is it?” she asked.

He frowned at her. “It’s Thursday.”

She shook her head. “What’s the date?”

“The eighteenth of April.”

“The year?” she demanded.

“1888. What the hell’s wrong with you,
Sarah?”

She put her hand over her mouth, afraid she
might throw up. Like pieces of a puzzle, the log walls, the bare
wood floor, the old stove, and the long-handled lethal-looking
razor next to the mirror all slipped into place, making a clear
picture.

“Sarah? Damn it, don’t you faint on me
again.” The man dropped the spoon he held and crossed the room in
five strides.

She held up her hand, stopping him. “I’m
fine,” she lied. “Just hungry. Breakfast would be good.”

“You’re sure?”

She was sure, all right. Sure she was in a
heck of a jam.
Property of John Beckett, Cedarbrook,
Wyoming Territory. April, 1888.
No, she hadn’t gone to Hell.
But she’d come close.

Time travel. The very idea of it seemed
beyond comprehension. But the reality of her situation was all too
tangible. She could touch it, smell it, and see it. Things like
this didn’t happen to Sarah Jane Tremont. She went to work, she
came home, had some dinner in front of the television, and then
went to bed so it could start all over the next day.

She watched him while he cooked. He cracked
the eggs with one hand and deftly turned them in the pan. He took a
sharp knife and cut big slices off a loaf of bread before grabbing
two plates and some silverware off the shelf.

He had on a plain tan shirt. Almost like a
long-sleeved T-shirt only it had three or four buttons at the
neckline. He’d tucked it into darker tan pants held up by blue
suspenders. He wore a bright red bandanna around his neck. His
boots, scuffed and scratched, added another inch to his already
tall frame. He had wavy brown hair, almost touching his shoulders.
She guessed he might be around thirty. No middle age spread
here.

A man’s man. A sexy, handsome,
rough-and-tumble, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way type of guy. Who was
he? He acted like he’d known her well. She couldn’t accept that. He
wasn’t the type of man she’d forget. She might have gone back in
time, but she refused to accept she’d lived here once before. This
had to be her first pass through.

She tried in vain to remember her sophomore
year of American History. Had Wyoming even been a state in 1888?
Evidently not, she realized as her mind jumped into gear and
started to work once again. The invoice said Wyoming Territory.
Good grief. She wasn’t even in a state. Hadn’t the Oregon Trail cut
through Wyoming? Were the Indians friendly in 1888?

What she didn’t know far outweighed what she
did know. Not that it mattered. She really only needed to know two
things. How far was California and what was the best way to get
there. She needed to get back to her beach and walk along the shore
and, somehow, find the door back to her own world.

“When’s the next stage?” she asked.

He set her plate on the table. “Next week.
Stage still goes on Wednesday mornings, just like before.”

She couldn’t stay here another six days. She
didn’t want to stay another six hours. “Then I need to find another
way. I need to get back,” she said.

He pulled his chair out from the table, sat
down, and folded his arms across his chest. “At last, we agree on
something. Where you going this time?”

She walked to the table and took the chair
opposite him. She took a small bite of bread, chewed it to death,
and wondered what she could tell him. He wouldn’t believe that
she’d stumbled across a set of footprints on the beach and been
blown back more than a century. She barely believed it. She
swallowed, hoping the bread wouldn’t stick in her throat. “Look,
John,” she said, trying out his name, “it’s hard for me to
explain.”

He shrugged, looking a little bored. He
pointed to her plate. “You going to eat those eggs or just look at
them?”

She stabbed her fork into one. Yellow yolk
spread across the plate. She ignored it and took a bite. She’d eat
to keep up her strength. She had a long trip ahead of her. If the
stage didn’t go for a week, she’d find another way.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a horse I could
borrow?”

He laughed but he didn’t sound amused. “Sure.
Take my horse. Why not? Six months ago you took most of my
money.”

She hadn’t taken his money. It hurt to be
accused of something and not be able to defend herself.

“What happened?” he asked, pushing his chair
back so suddenly that the front legs came off the wood floor. “Did
you run out? Is that what brought you back?”

She shook her head. He looked mad,
dangerously mad.

“Listen here, sweetheart. You’re not getting
another dollar from me. My brother never should have married
you.”

His brother. One more piece of the puzzle
started to slide into place. Perhaps she’d walked out on his
brother. She felt oddly disappointed until she remembered that it
hadn’t been her, her marriage, or her leaving. Six months ago,
she’d been slogging through case files and counseling sessions.

“I don’t want anything from you,” she assured
him.

“That’s hard to believe. Why else would you
show up at my doorstep? How the hell did you get here anyway?”

She’d like an answer to that one as well. “I
walked,” she said. At least she had the last mile or so.

“What happened to your clothes?”

Her clothes? She looked down at her wrinkled
silk camisole and skirt. Her Jones of New York had seen better
days. She doubted that was what he meant anyway. She was probably
dressed pretty scantily for the day. “They got wet.”

“Wet? They wouldn’t dry?”

She needed to be more careful. “They got wet
when I waded into the river. After they caught on fire. I
was…cooking. On a campfire.”

He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. It
didn’t matter. She didn’t need to convince him of her sanity. She
just needed a horse.

“If you could just reconsider letting me
borrow a horse,” she said, “then I could be out of your hair
today.”

He shook his head. “I can’t afford to lose
another horse. All I’ve got left is mine, mother’s mare, and a
bullheaded colt I’m breaking in. You’ll have to stay here until
Wednesday.”

“No,” she argued. “I can’t.” What if the
window, the door, the crack in time, shut before she could get to
California? “You don’t understand,” she said.

“I understand, all right. You come back here,
all pitiful, hoping you could talk my mother out of another pile of
money. But it’s just me. Hell of a mess, isn’t it, Sarah?”

He had no idea. “Your mother?” she asked.

“She moved to town just weeks after you left.
She needed to be around folks, not stuck out here on the ranch.
Peter’s death hit her hard. Harder than it hit his wife,
obviously.”

Peter, the husband she’d never met, had died.
The man had lost his brother. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry she’s not around? I’ll bet you are.”
He looked at her with such disgust that she felt dirty. “Don’t be
getting any crazy ideas about going to town to see her. You’ll keep
your little backside here until Wednesday morning, and then I’ll
personally see to it that you get on that stage. She doesn’t need
anymore heartache from you.”

“I don’t want to cause anybody any
heartache,” Sarah protested. “Can you at least loan me a pair of
shoes so that I can walk to town?”

“No. I just told you why.”

She wouldn’t know his mother if the woman
stood next to her. “Fine,” she said, trying hard to hold on to her
temper. “I’ll walk the opposite direction.”

“I suppose you’ve forgotten that the closest
town in that direction is a day’s ride? That’s a three-day
walk.”

She didn’t care. She had to do something. Any
action seemed better than no action. “I like to walk,” she
said.

“Your feet are in no shape for a walk like
that.”

“So, I’m stuck here,” she said, not even
trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“Yeah. And there’s nobody unhappier about
that than me.”

Debatable. She tried to think of other
options but the dog’s barking interrupted her. John walked over to
the window. “Hell,” he said, and rubbed his hand across his face,
as if trying to rub away the last twelve hours of his life. “Stay
back. I don’t want Fred to see you.”

“Fred?”

He sighed, loud enough that it was easy to
hear. “Were we all that easy to forget, Sarah?”

She ignored his question. Instead, she peeked
around his shoulder and saw a giant of a man get off his horse and
stoop to pet the dog, who had stopped barking and now lay on his
back, his four legs pointed at the sun, his tail wagging. “At least
one of us is happy,” she muttered.

“I’m not the one who just decided to drop
in.”

She’d dropped in all right. “Why can’t he see
me?”

“Fred Goodie gossips with the church ladies
every Sunday.”

He didn’t sound angry. More like half-amused.
Fred didn’t look like a man who’d have a lot in common with church
ladies. He looked as if he might like to hang around with other
giants, maybe lift some small trees, or for a real workout,
shot-put some boulders. “Why does he do that?”