His eyes flared, like an unexpected wound, and Victoria didn't want to see it, didn't want to think about what might happen later. Now was important. Grabbing happiness and running with it. She hoped he was game.
"Where's the finish line?"
He nodded to the mountaintop, still searching her face, and she looked up at the imposing land. She'd never make it, but wasn't about to let him know.
"To that clearing, near the rocks."
She met his gaze. "Ready to lose?" She knotted the shin she'd thrown over her tank top at her waist.
His sadness faded, blending into a smile. "I'm going to win, Tori. Again."
"You just want to see if I can walk in a dress without padding.''
Slowly he shook his head. "I want you in it, so I can take it off."
"You're just too damn sure of yourself, Swift Arrow." She snaked her hands around his trim waist, pressing his lower back and drawing him willingly against her. Then her free hand dipped beneath the soft flap of doe hide and cupped the bare skin of his buttocks. Air hissed through his teeth.
"What are you doing?" *
She smiled, stroking tight smooth flesh in maddening circles. "Evening the odds."
He was growing hard and she knew it.
' 'Ready—''
"Tori," he warned as she moved away.
"Set—"
"Victoria!"
"Go."
She took off and Chris groaned, his hand brushing across his arousal. The little witch. It was no use trying to hide it, yet he wanted to see her in that blue dress so damn bad that he grabbed his bow and lurched after her, his long legs tearing across the terrain. He had one advantage. This was his land and he knew every inch like a father knows his child.
"I give," she gasped, bent over, her hand braced on her thighs as she struggled for air. Her quads and calves burned and quivered from exertion. Her clothes were soaked, her feet screaming for a rest and Victoria managed to lift her head. He was still running, the show off. And worse, he didn't make a
sound.
Dragging off her shirt and wiping the sweat streaming over her body, Victoria watched him. He looked like a deer in flight, darting around trees, leaping gulleys, and she imagined his hair longer and laced with feathers. He was born in a teepee, grew up in a southern Cheyenne camp, traveling where the food moved. A plainsmen. His people lived for the moment, the season, not wasting anything and never waiting for the future to come to them. It startled her down to her bones every time she thought about where she was.
And she didn't have to turn her head to see the untouched glory around her. She felt it, smelled it, tasted it on her lips with each hard breath. It made her remember where she came from, the little chicken ranch in California that scarcely survived year after year until a worn out kerosine heater torched her family's home.
And it made her want to stay and start again.
Shaking her head, she dropped down onto a bolder and tried to whistle. She couldn't catch her breath and shouted.
"Hey, He-who-won-this-one. Stop!"
Chris slowed to a halt and turned, swiping the back of his hand across his upper lip. He headed back down. "Cougar-
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Who-Walks is conceding defeat?'' he said with a quick lift of j his brow.
She enjoyed the rolling gait of his hips before she said, : "Don't be smug. I'll get my wind in a moment." Empty threats, { she thought.
He dropped to the ground at her feet, bracing his forearms on his knees.
"I can't wait to see you in a dress, a real dress." "You wanted to so bad, you bought some?" He smiled, lighting a fire in her heart. ' 'Abigale picked them out," he managed, drawing the strap to his quiver and water bladder off over his head. He offered her the bladder and her brows wrinkled as she loosened the hide strings securing the opening. It was amazing that this thing still held a drop and she tipped her head back and let it trickle into her mouth.
She swished and turned her head to spit, catching his smile, then drinking more. She handed it back and he repeated the measure before tying it off.
She gazed down at him. He looked so comfortable here, in tune with the wild nature. Sunlight dappled across the dead brush and leaves, glowing off the vibrant green of the trees and scrubs offering them a cooling canopy. But it was the way he was looking at her, his emotions in every feature of his handsome face. She wanted to capture the image and freeze it in her memory. Now or never, girlfriend.
Her eyes stung and she moved off the rock and knelt before him. Please don't hate me, she prayed. Don't push me away. Chris watched her throat work, her eyes sheen and knew what was coming. And it terrified her. He couldn't think of a damn thing to ease her suffering. "If it hurts you this much—"
"No." She dashed at a single tear, annoyed with her weakness. ' 'No. I just don't want to spoil this.'' She gestured between them. "And it will." "Trust me, it won't."
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She scoffed. "It's bizarre, Chris. Hell. It's totally out there!" She waved above her head.
He caught her hands and felt her trembling. "Then I have something to tell you first," he said and she nodded mutely, much like a prisoner awaiting sentence. "I knew you were coming here."
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
"This is not funny, Chris."
Her lips scarcely moved, he noticed, and her jaw was set against him.
"I don't mean it to be, but I knew." .
"Hell. I didn't, so how could you?"
He loved the mutinous fold of her arms across her middle. It pushed her breasts up out of the tee shirt rather enticingly. He shook himself, reminding to be serious. She'd beat him up if he teased her now.
"I had a dream."
She scoffed, the reaction he expected.
"Dreams are doorways of the soul and the future, Tori."
Doorways. Why did he use that word? she^wondered and searched his features carefully for the He. He was Cheyenne, raised with the Sun Dance and vision quests and she respected that, and in the New Age of the twentieth century, people, herself included, drew on the ancient ways to find balance in their lives. Didn't she meditate to release stress? Hell. It was safer than valium.
"Okay, so tell me." Nothing was going to beat her story
and she relaxed back against the rocks, stretching her legs out
beside him.
He eyed her suspiciously. She didn't look the least bit responsive.
"In the dream I saw fog, a heavy mist and heard the rush
of water, like a fall."
Her eyes widened and she shifted, her arms unfolding and her palms flattening on the ground. Oh Jesus. He went on, describing his vision, the human figure emerging out of the mist and turning into a mountain lion, a cougar, a hunter, Cougar Who Walks. Yet, it was the whirling sound, like a bolo, that Victoria could only explain away as helicopter blades knifing the air, the chopper that circled over her head just before she stepped into the fall. How could he have known? Her blood skated through her veins with a strange unnameable excitement.
"Wait, wait," she interrupted when he got to the part about the cougar clawing him. "You think I'm this animal?"
"Yes." Unquestionable.
"Bull."
His lips twitched with a smile. "You have fought me, Tori, every step of the way," he patiently pointed out. "And you've also appeared in a form other than the delectable sight I see
now."
True, but delectable? She glanced down at herself—sweaty, grimy, with unshaved legs. Hell, if he liked it, who was she to argue? "You have strange tastes, Chris, but go on."
"The lion protected me." His brows knitted and he struggled to mesh feelings and vision into words. "It was as if the beast was bringing me back into the fold of the town, carving a
path."
"I didn't do anything. Except give you a royal pain in
the—"
"Clare did," he
interrupted smoothly, grinning proud, "Defended me in the general store. Noble saw it."
Noble has a big mouth, she thought. "Okay, I'll give you that. And they deserved it, you know."
"I'm sure you played judge and jury quite well." Steam
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rose around her and his lips stretched into a teasing smile. ' 'The cougar," he continued before she socked him "—was within the mist again, this time gentler, no longer the hunter and then changed into human form."
He paused, his expression clouding, the sadness in his eyes felt like a blunt smack through her chest. "You're stalling," she warned.
"It—you tumbled back into the mist, vanishing."
She wet her lips and swallowed. ' 'I see.'' She exhaled slowly, not liking what this dream meant, could mean, but Christ, it was just too coincidental. "You believe this, don't you?"
"Yes. Of course." Again, doubtless. As if there were no other reasoning in existence. . "And the cougar was alone?"
He nodded.
"And it—"
"You—"
"Okay, / returned alone?"
Sadly, he repeated the gesture.
"If that's so, then your dream is wrong, 'cause I'm not leaving without Becket."
She was determined to go, and that she'd leave him so willingly tore him in half just to consider it. And when he spoke again his voice came softly, a flicker of hurt and wonder in his tone.
"And where will you take him, Tori?"
Their eyes locked.
"Through time. To my century."
His expression didn't shift a fraction, patient for an explanation.
And she suddenly felt one brick short of a full load. But now that she'd said it, she had to convince him.
"You were right about the mist, the water, the sounds." She plucked nervously at pebbles and twigs, watching her moves. "I followed Becket's blood trail into a waterfall. There's a corridor behind it and it opened . .." her gaze flew to his, "into this century."
His features yanked tight.
"Yeah, I know. Told you it was—" she made a circular motion beside her head "—out there."
"That night, in the forest when we first met? You'd only recently come through this fall?"
"Yeah." Her gaze slid over his bare chest, the deerskin enhancing his physique, and she remembered that night. "Believe me when I say you were the last person I expected."
He liked the way she said that. A lot. And splashes of moments played in his mind—Victoria beating the stuffing out of three drunks, as Vic Mason in his jail, arrogant, defiant, and men panicked.
"When did you realize you were not where you imagined?"
"In your jail."
Great Mother of Earth, he thought, trying to understand what it was like to find herself in another century, another world. "You didn't intentionally come here then?"
Her tapered brows flicked up. "Walk through time? Hell no. Oh, don't look so hurt." She nudged him playfully. "I followed a serial killer and didn't care where he headed, just that I had his scent and went for it."
Scent. How like her.
"Yet there's no fall in that area." Skeptical again, edged.
"On this side. On mine, it's there and a stream. With a few hundred marshals and FBI combing the area," He opened his mouth and she added, "Federal Bureau of Investigation."
His look approved, then fell into confusion. ' 'But that was weeks ago."
"Time doesn't move there, when it moves here. I went back to check.''
His dark eyes flared, panic seizing him. "You've traveled back—?"
"—Forward," she interrupted, leaning close. "I'm from the future, Chris. And get this in while it's hot. I'm a bounty hunter in the twentieth century. Nineteen ninety-seven." If he was going to turn away, she wanted it done now. "I was a U.S. Marine, then a Federal Marshal, and when I couldn't bend
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the rules to get the perp who killed my daughter, I went to bounty hunting. I did what it took to get them."
The disguises, the personas, the coldness, "Even losing all you know and love?"
"They're all dead except—wait! Whoa." She shook her head, her hand up, then peered crookedly. "You believe me?" "There's far too much about you that cannot be explained, Tori. And you will begin now."
He folded his arms over his chest, looking less like the Cheyenne warrior and more like an impatient child waiting to be amused with a wild fairy tale.
"I—I—can't believe you're taking this so—easily." She eyed him up and down, "What's the catch?"
"I am wondering why you didn't tell me before." "Are you serious?" she shrieked, her voice echoing in the dense forest. "Oh, excuse me, Marshal, while you've got that gun at my back and about to lock me up for a crime I didn't commit, I'm a time traveler. Just in case you needed reason enough to throw away the key." He was scowling as if that was the last thing he would have done. And they both knew it was a lie. "You weren't very accepting, Chris, even after you knew I was a woman." A flicker of old hurt stirred in her eyes, and he regretted causing it.
"It's hard to admit a woman is more capable." Sullen, apologetic.
"Make you feel better to know I have a hundred twenty-five years of other marshals, sheriffs and rangers experience to draw from and not just a talented hunter with legs you lust after?"
He blinked, not sure how to answer. And she laughed softly, like smoke laced Bordeaux, scooting closer.
"Plead the fifth, Chris." She patted his knee, then stood. "Besides," she took a few steps to stretch her muscles. "I still don't think it's such a hot idea you knowing any of this."
"And why not?"
Propped against a tree, she gazed at him, her arms folded. "Think about it," she said, brushing her hair off her cheek.
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Her hand trembled and Chris studied her dirt smudged face. "Is my being here screwing up your life? Will you die because I'm here?" Her voice wavered, belying her casual stance. "Will I? What events have changed just because I talked to just one person, not to mention what harm's been already done to Vel and the others. And what about my interference in your investigations?' '
He could hear the guilt in her tone, see it in her eyes. "I would have searched for the wrong person. Raif would be dead and Sean might never have found peace, Tori. God, Lucky is alive because of you. Raif and Lila, too."
She shook her head. "Raif was probably supposed to die."
"I don't believe that and neither do you. It's our job to preserve law and life."
Our job. It made them sound like ... more than partners. "But Velvet—"
"Vel's dead because of Becket." He rose and went to her, gripping her upper arms, forcing her to see she couldn't carry a killer's guilt. "He killed her. And God knows how many others if you hadn't followed him—" His words ceased abruptly, his gaze searching hers. "Does he know he was followed?"
She shook her head, her heart racing so hard she couldn't think straight. "But he had a four-hour head start and in your time, it's been four months."
Chris's expression fell away to sadness. "No wonder so many have died."
"He has to be stopped."
"My men are watching him." His tone clipped off each word. "He hasn't moved from the saloon since Vel vanished. He was asking about Clara to some of the locals, though."
Suspicious still, she thought. "He's slick, Chris. He moved Vel's body without anyone seeing him. And he had to have gone right past me to do it."
His jaw tightened. "I have him covered."
"I know," she said without doubt, her palms rubbing his biceps. "I trust you."
284 Amy J. Fetzer
He let out a long breath. "Finally," he said to the heavens, then drew her into his arms. His look was serious, his gaze sweeping over her face. He brushed a smudge of dirt from her chin with his thumb, let the calloused pad slide over her
lips, Her tongue grazed the tip and he inhaled, a short gasp. "I'm very happy you found that cave, Tori. Very glad. And as to screwing up my life—" He shook his head at the odd phrase. "It wasn't much of one until you arrived."
She made that sound, one he'd heard too often, a scoff of disbelief, as if she couldn't matter in the grand pattern of life, and he realized she never recognized the measure her worth beyond the next bounty. He'd change that.
Then she said something that astounded him. The pure admittance he never expected.
"I never realized what a pitiful life I chose," she said, taking the blame. "Until—"
"What?" His gaze searched. He'd never seen her so uneasy. "—you showed me how low I'd sunk."
"Do not credit me with that." Chris responded sharply, angrily.
She shook her head, hoping he'd understand.' 'You reminded me, with all the finesse of a bully, that there were other things in life besides hunting bounty." His expression was knowing. "Ahh, in the hotel." "Guess it wasn't memorable enough for you, huh?" Her tone dripped with sarcasm.
He tightened his arms and ducked to whisper in her ear, "I fall asleep every night with the image of you finding rapture beneath my questing ringers." A little moan escaped her and her hands flexed on his arms. "You were so wi^ and hungry for me—"
"Stop."
"—wet and panting—"
"Chris."
"And the scent of you makes me ache to taste—" ' 'Okay, okay, enough.'' She rested her forehead on his chest, tucked beneath his chin and his low chuckle rumbled softly.
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"Come, Cougar-Who-Walks-Like-A-Woman, tell me of your world."
"I don't think you should—"
"Ah!" He touched her lips with a fingertip. "Do not think for a moment that I'm letting you off this mountain without details."
She considered him for a moment, then realized it would do little good to hide anything now. "On what?" Stupid question.
He looked thoughtful. "You are convinced this . . . portal will not allow entry?" He was thinking about after she took Becket back.
"It was unstable. I mean . . . when I came back after checking, it was harder." She shrugged. "I can't imagine it being flexible. It was pure chance that I could get back."
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