by JoAnn Ross
"You realize, of course," she said calmly, refusing to let him know how relieved she was to have found him safe and sound, "you're going to catch pneumonia."
"This isn't real. It's a delusion you've put in my mind."
"I see." It was, she decided, one way to explain the inexplicable. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to get into the car and explain exactly how I achieved this wondrous mind-altering feat?"
"No." He didn't bother to give her so much as a glance as he kept walking.
A car sped past, horn blaring at her for blocking the right-hand lane. Jessica didn't blame the angry driver. What with the heavy rain, the mist and the lack of sun, the visibility was almost nil.
"You're going to get us killed," she said.
"I'm not going to die."
"You may believe you're invincible, but there's a bullet hole in your back that says otherwise."
"That was from Clayton. And I'm not going to die— or rest—until I get my revenge."
"Revenge is for vigilantes. If you really are a marshall, you undoubtedly took an oath to uphold the law." Since logic had failed, Jessica decided to go with the flow and play along with his delusion.
"Clayton will get a fair trial," Rory agreed. "Then I'll hang him."
Another car roared by. Then another. "Dammit, Mannion." She pulled off the road, then got out of her car. In her hurry to leave the hospital, she'd left her jacket behind, which left her as unprotected from the rain as he was.
"What are you doing?" he asked when she appeared beside him.
"What does it look like? If you insist on walking in the rain, I'm going to keep you company."
He slanted her a sideways glance. Water streamed down her face, plastering her hair to her head and drenching her clothes. "You're crazy."
"Ah. I thought I was merely a hallucination."
Rory thought about that for a moment. "You're not," he decided. "But everything else is." That was, Rory assured himself, the only answer.
"This rain sure doesn't feel like any hallucination."
"It is." Although the chill that had seeped into the very marrow of his bones said otherwise, Rory held his ground.
Another car sped by. Then another. And another. A fourth one tore through a dip in the road, engulfing Jessica in a muddy spray.
"Dammit!" She stepped in front of him, stopping his obdurate march. "Look at me!" she shouted, dragging her wet hair out of her eyes. "I'm soaked to the bone and I'll be lucky not to be wheezing my lungs out this time tomorrow with pneumonia."
"You can keep walking until doomsday, Rory Mannion, or whoever the hell you are. Or we can both die from exposure, which seems more likely the way the temperature is dropping. Or you can trust me enough to get back in my car and let me take you someplace safe."
"Safe?" He arched a brow. "Like your sheriffs jail?"
"No. Like my home."
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Terrific. Her caseload, always heavy, had been piling up while she'd been spending her days and nights in the hospital. The last thing she needed was to play housemaid and nurse to a man with amnesia.
He stood there, staring down at her. In his whiskey brown eyes Jessica viewed his blatant distrust.
"You're playing with my mind," he insisted yet again. "This isn't real."
She ground her teeth and muttered a particularly frustrated curse that Rory didn't remember ever hearing from a woman before. Not even from the whores at The Road to Ruin.
"You want real?" she demanded. Her hands were splayed on her hips as she glared up at him.
And then suddenly those slender hands were around his neck and she'd risen up on her toes and her mouth was pressing against his, making Rory forget he'd ever been cold.
3
Jessica's temper flared into a sizzling passion that surged from her lips into Rory's blood; desire curled, hot and insistent like a fist in his gut. Her kiss was hard and hot and over far too soon.
"Is that real enough for you?" she challenged, her hazel eyes shooting golden sparks up at him.
"It's a start." His eyes flickered to her mouth. "But I need more convincing."
Before she could respond, he hauled her against him, his strong fingers splayed on her hips, digging into her flesh beneath the wet denim. His mouth burned over hers, his tongue probing deep, his teeth biting at her lips.
As he moved her back and forth against him, teasing the hunger that pressed rigidly against the rough wet denim of his jeans, a sweet, piercing heat radiated outward from the pit of Jessica's stomach.
Oblivious to everything but the wild desire whipping at her blood, she thrust her hand in his thick, soft hair, fit her body even closer against his, and surrendered to that wicked, wonderful mouth that was consuming her. As the rain sluiced down their bodies, as his hot and hungry hands moved over her, Jessica began to burn from the inside out. She was amazed that so much fire and water hadn't turned them to steam.
The soft, desperate moans escaping her ravaged lips were the most provocative sound Rory had ever heard. His heart was hammering in his chest when a roar like a bull elk shattered the silence.
"What the hell?"
Jessica had been flying. Higher than she'd ever flown with a mere kiss. The strident sound sent her crashing immediately down to earth.
"It's an air horn."
Horrified at her public display, and wondering what on earth had possessed her to kiss the man in the first place, she tried to pull away, but Rory refused to release her.
"An air horn?"
"On a semi." She tilted her head back and looked up into his uncomprehending face, realizing that whatever the cause, he obviously still believed himself to be a man of the nineteenth century. "A truck." She shook her head when there was not an iota of recognition in his steady gaze. "Never mind."
Whatever it was, Rory realized that the mood had been shattered right along with the silence. His fingers curved into the top of her arms as he put her a little away from him, and treated her to a prolonged look.
"You're wet."
"So are you."
"True, but it looks better on you." Before she could respond to his easy compliment, his gaze turned serious. "Am I insane?"
Her expression softened. A sheen of moisture brightened her eyes. She reached up and pressed her palm against his cheek and felt a muscle clench.
"Of course you're not," she soothed. "You're just confused, from the head injury."
"I am confused," he admitted reluctantly.
"I know. But perhaps, together, we can sort everything out. Once we get out of this rain."
The touch of her hand on his face was more than a little familiar. "You stayed with me," he remembered. "During the fever. You kept talking to me. You assured me that I'd be all right. That I'd live. You kept calling me back."
He hadn't wanted to come back, he remembered. He'd wanted to stay in the sun-spangled meadow with Emilie. But then Emilie had sent him away. And he'd vowed, while being pulled through that cold dark place, that he'd never rest until he made Jack Clayton pay for his crimes.
That was what Emilie had been trying to tell him, Rory decided now. That before they could be together, he had to kill the man who had murdered her and her father.
So. He understood his mission. But where did this woman fit into the plan? He gave her a long look, trying to understand.
"Why did you stay by my bedside?"
"I felt responsible for you." That was the truth. Not the entire truth, but all that she could understand.
"But you didn't shoot me."
"Of course I didn't. But I found you."
Finders, keepers. The old childhood saying flashed through her mind and Jessica wondered, although she knew it was an outrageous thought, what would happen if, having found Rory Mannion, she kept him all to herself.
She'd never, in her entire life, experienced such a mind-blinding reaction to a mere kiss. And although she knew it was dangerous to allow her mind to go off in
that direction, such passion was definitely seductive.
"Why did you kiss me?" he asked.
Once again they seemed to be on exactly the same wavelength. Jessica laughed, a short humorless sound that revealed her tangled nerves and her own confusion.
"I have no idea. I was furious with you, and well, it just felt right at the time."
Like the touch of her hand on his face. Although his heart would always belong to Emilie, Rory knew he was in trouble when he found himself imagining how that soft hand would feel on other parts of his body.
"Do you always kiss men you're furious with?"
He remembered, with vivid clarity, Emilie responding the same way during their first argument as a married couple. Much, much later, after they'd made love, she'd confessed that she felt overmatched trying to argue with a man trained in the law, so she'd used the only method she could think of to shut him up. Her tactics had worked perfectly. Not only had he stopped arguing, her passion had burned the reason for the foolish argument out of his mind.
"No." Jessica still couldn't believe she'd responded so uncharacteristically. "You were the first."
Rory thought about that for a moment and decided he liked the idea.
"You're wet," he said again, closing his mind to thoughts he was better off not considering. "We should get out of the rain."
"Good idea."
"You know, if you turn out to be telling the truth," he said slowly, "I suppose this place is preferable to where I'd planned to end up."
She smiled, beginning to relax. It was going to be all right, Jessica told herself. He'd get his memory back, Trace would solve his crime, and she'd be able to return to the courtroom and win her case.
That's all she needed, she told herself. One good solid win under her belt. And then the world would be back on an even keel.
"Where's that?" she asked.
Rory did not return her smile. His eyes were as bleak and dark as a graveyard at midnight. And as lonely.
"Hell."
The frightening thing was, she believed him.
They walked side by side, not touching, but close enough to match their strides easily. She opened the passenger door, gesturing for him to get in.
Rory paused a moment, gave the car a long look, then climbed into the seat. Jessica closed the door behind him, then walked around and climbed into the driver's seat.
"What kind of automobile is this?" he asked, glancing around with interest.
"A Jag. A Jaguar," she elaborated at his blank look.
The name was fitting, Rory decided. The sleek vehicle looked as if it were made to go fast, like the jungle cat it was named for. It also made him wonder again if perhaps she was telling him the truth. Although it made no sense, perhaps he had somehow traveled through time, like the character in the H. G. Wells novel, The Time Machine.
Of course, he thought, perhaps the fact that he'd read the popular novel was why he was able to concoct this fanciful scenario in the first place. Perhaps he was still unconscious and dreaming this. The conundrum made his head ache.
"How does it go?" he asked, looking at all the dials and gages that vaguely reminded him of the controls on a steam engine. "Does it use an internal combustion engine?"
"Yes." She gave him a long look. "Isn't it funny you should know that, when you still don't believe it's 1996."
"The Germans, Otto, Benz and Daimler, built gasoline-powered automobiles eleven years ago," he told her. "The Duryea brothers produced the first American one three years ago, and Henry Ford introduced a similar model this year."
He hadn't seen it personally, but he'd talked to a man who'd been in Detroit when Ford had introduced his four-horsepower horseless carriage.
"There was also an automobile race last year in Chicago… Don't you need me to crank start it for you?" It was a dirty, dangerous task, unsuitable for a woman.
"Thanks for the offer, but things have come a long way in the last century."
Rory watched as she turned a key in the metal column, causing the car to come to life with a throaty roar that once again made him mink the Jaguar was well named.
A chime sounded. "You'll have to fasten your seat belt."
When he only looked at her, Jessica sighed and wondered how long this strange fugue state would last. If she had to explain every single little thing to him, she was going to be exhausted by lunchtime.
"like this." As she leaned over him to pull at the strap, her breasts brushed against his chest and he experienced a twinge deep in his groin. The wet fabric of her shirtwaist clung to the luscious mounds and he watched their movement as she stuck the belt into the holder with a decisive click, then fastened her own.
"What's the purpose of this uncomfortable device?" he asked, dragging his mind back to more mundane matters. Thinking about this woman's breasts was far from prudent.
"It may be uncomfortable, but you'll feel differently about it if we crash and it keeps you from flying headfirst into the nearest pine tree."
"Do you intend to crash?"
"Not today."
"That comes as a relief." His tone was as dry as hers.
Rory observed her carefully as she shifted the car into drive and stepped on the gas.
"You use a wheel to steer, rather than a lever?"
If this was a dream, it was the most detailed one he'd ever had. It crossed his mind that perhaps he should be writing all this down, for use when he woke up. If he could obtain patents on even half the things he'd witnessed thus far, he could definitely become a wealthy man.
Without taking her eyes off the road, she asked, "How long are you going to stick to this story about coming from the 1890s?"
"It's not a story. It's the truth."
"Right. And I'm Annie Oakley."
"You're far more lovely than Annie," Rory said. "Although she sure can shoot," he allowed. "Buffalo Bill's Wild West show came to Whiskey River last year, right before she retired. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but she shot a cigarette out of her husband's lips at thirty paces."
"Talk about your power of love," Jessica muttered. "I can't imagine trusting anyone enough to risk my life that way."
"That thought crossed my mind as well, when I saw her do it," Rory agreed. "But her husband, Frank Butler, didn't even flinch."
"Good thing. Since that would've been the end of the act." She paused, then lifted a hand off the steering wheel and struck her forehead. "Damn."
"What's wrong?"
"Now you've got me doing it."
"Doing what?"
"Talking about Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill as if they just came to town yesterday."
"It was last year," he reminded her.
Jessica's only response to that was a muttered curse.
The pain was coming back with a vengeance, making Rory disinclined to argue any further. He decided he'd think of some way to prove his claim later, when it didn't feel as if someone were banging away with a sledgehammer in his head.
He settled back into the comfortable glove-soft leather seat, felt the warm air blowing on him and decided if Black Jack had actually succeeded in killing him, which had somehow caused him to end up in the next century, traveling had definitely improved in a hundred years.
That thought was driven out by the unpalatable idea that incredibly, he was about to die again.
"Do you always drive at this speed?"
Rory straightened his legs to brace for the impending collision. Now he understood the belt wrapped across his body; obviously, without restraint, if she had a sudden inclination to stop, they'd both go flying through the front window glass.
"Not always." Jessica frowned as she came up on a trio of slower moving vehicles. "I hate motor homes." Flooring the accelerator, she pulled out to pass. "On days like today, when it's raining, I try to go slower."
"You've no idea what a comfort that is."
As he viewed the huge horseless wagon loaded with logs headed straight toward them,
Rory was tempted to shut his eyes but decided that having already been ambushed and shot in the back, this time he intended to face death head-on.
Just when he was certain his heart was going to break through the wall of his chest, Jessica managed to make it past the third vehicle and slip back into her own lane, seconds before the load of logs thundered past.
"You're a very reckless woman," he said when he could talk again.
"Do you think so?" She glanced over at him. "I've always thought of myself as being unrelentingly prudent."
"You?" Despite the circumstances, Rory laughed. "Since I have known you, you've taken a strange man into your arms, never mind the fact that he was bleeding all over your clothing—"
"You remember that?" This was, Jessica thought, a start.
"I didn't when I first woke up. Later, I kept thinking you looked familiar, but I couldn't place you. But now that the drugs have worn off, I recall more about the incident."
"Trace will be so pleased to hear that."
He heard the satisfaction in her voice and wondered about the relationship between his rescuer and Whiskey River's sheriff.
"I owe you a debt of gratitude," he said. "For getting me medical care."
"That's no big deal." She shrugged. "Anyone would have called 911."
The term was unfamiliar, but Rory understood the meaning. "Perhaps," he said, not believing it for a minute. "But not many of them would remain by a stranger's bedside for so many days and nights."
"Obviously I have a subconscious Florence Nightingale complex I didn't know about," she said blithely, not wanting to discuss her behavior until she'd figured it out for herself.
"So," she said, returning the subject to its previous track as she passed another car as if it were standing still, "what else makes you think I have reckless tendencies?"
"The way you drive, for one thing."
"Better watch it," she warned. "Any cracks about women drivers and I'm putting you out in the rain. For the record, I've never, ever, had an accident."
"That's commendable." Also astonishing, Rory thought. "How about inviting a man with a bullet hole in his back to stay in your home?" He would, of course, never hurt her, but she had no way of knowing that.
