The Right Man

by Anne Stuart

  Chapter Nine

  The sun was beating against her closed eyes, but Susan was afraid to move. She wanted to postpone the moment as long as she could, the realization that her dream wasn’t over yet. The bed was soft beneath her, the faint smell of old cigarettes clung to the pillow and sheets, and she was still back in 1949, about to marry the wrong man, about to die within hours of making that mistake.

  There used to be some television show about someone who traveled through time, trying to fix people’s mistakes. She’d never been into TV much, except for old movies, but she’d seen an episode or two and liked it. Maybe that was why she was here. To stop her aunt Tallulah from making the mistake of her life. To change history. And then Tallulah might still be alive.

  Except this wasn’t an episode of “Quantum Leap,” and there was no gorgeous actor around. Well, Jack McGowan did happen to be unsettlingly attractive, but he wasn’t the one traveling through time. And neither was she. This was a dream, a crazy, mixed-up dream, brought on by the stress of the wedding. She simply needed to get through it and she’d wake up back in her own bed, ready for her own wedding.

  She grabbed the chenille bathrobe and headed for the luxurious pink-tiled bathroom, which Mary had assured her was the recently remodeled height of modern plumbing conveniences. There was no shower stall, but the huge tub at least came equipped with a shower head, and even smoked-glass doors, and she had every intention of getting thoroughly clean. She couldn’t wait to get the smell of cigarettes out of her hair.

  She hadn’t taken into account how strange it would be to brush someone else’s teeth. Her mouth wasn’t that dissimilar from what Susan was used to, but the body was strange indeed. She’d never soaped such ample breasts before, and the flesh beneath her hands was softer, less muscled than the body she was used to. Obviously women in the late nineteen forties didn’t work out.

  There was no way in hell she was going to put on that horrific girdle again, though she had no choice with the holsterlike bra that turned Lou’s already generous endowments into Madonnalike missiles. It took her forever to find a pair of baggy Levi’s, and she almost wept with relief when she did. There were no T-shirts, of course, but she found an oversize man’s dress shirt that worked perfectly if she tied the tails in front of her. She even found a pair of blue sneakers, and for the first time she began to feel slightly human, even with the unfamiliar mane of long wet hair trailing down her back.

  There was no sign of anyone else as she made her way down to the kitchen, in desperate need of coffee. The comfortable-looking woman who worked as the Abbotts’ maid stood at the stove, busy with something, but she looked up when Susan walked in. Hattie, her name was, Susan remembered. She was someone her mother still occasionally talked about. Hattie had been more of a mother to Mary Abbott than anyone.

  “’Morning, Miss Lou,” she greeted her placidly. “You’re up early this morning. You don’t usually get out of bed before nine.”

  Susan glanced at the clock on the wall. It was seven-thirty in the morning—no wonder the house was quiet.

  “I was too restless,” she said, sliding into one of the kitchen chairs and yawning. “I couldn’t sleep any longer. Maybe I’ll go for a run.”

  “A run? Now why on earth would you want to do a fool thing like that?”

  Oops, Susan thought. “Well, a brisk walk. I need some fresh air. Something to clear my head.”

  “You didn’t have anything to drink last night, sugar. Why would you need to clear your head? Unless you’re thinking twice about marrying that young man of yours.” Her voice was soft and noncommittal, but Susan didn’t miss the faint undertone.

  “You don’t like Neddie, do you?”

  Hattie turned to look at her. “Mr. Marsden’s all right,” she said carefully. “If he’s what you want, then that’s fine. I just hope you know what you’re doing, Miss Lou. I’ve taken care of you since you were a little baby, and you’re like one of my own. I don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

  “I’ll be okay, Hattie,” she said. Wishing she could be sure of any such thing.

  “You go on into the dining room, and I’ll bring you your tea, baby,” Hattie said.

  “Er...I’d rather have coffee if that’s okay. And couldn’t I just have it here with you?”

  Hattie stared at her. “Miss Lou, you never liked coffee. And your mama would have a fit if she found you in here eating with the help.”

  “She’s not my mother, and I really don’t care what she thinks,” Susan said. “And I’m in a coffee kind of mood. If you don’t mind the company?”

  Hattie gave her a radiant smile. “I’m gonna miss you, Miss Lou. If it weren’t for Miss Mary, I’d finish up here. Things have never been the same since your real mama died.” She set a cup and saucer down on the oilcloth-covered table in front of Susan, then poured her a cup of oily black stuff out of the aluminum percolator on the stove. “You gonna keep your promise to your little sister?”

  “Don’t I always keep my promises?” Susan replied, hedging. The coffee was too strong and almost flavorless, but she suspected that was more a fault of the can of supermarket coffee sitting on the counter than Hattie’s culinary failings. She dumped some sugar in it and drank it, anyway.

  “This is no house for a little girl. Even if you can’t take her to live with you like you promised, maybe you could arrange for her to visit. If Mr. Marsden doesn’t mind. If he doesn’t want her around, maybe you could arrange for her to go away to boarding school. I think Miss Mary would like that.”

  “He’ll want her around,” Susan said firmly, remembering the fading bruises on her arm, and wondering if bringing Mary into that household would be taking her from the frying pan into the fire.

  For that matter, what was Tallulah thinking of, marrying a man who hurt her? If he had no qualms about bruising her before marriage, what would stop him once she was his legal property? And Susan had no doubt Neddie Marsden would consider any wife of his just that. His possession.

  No, she had to stop the wedding. If this was some kind of weird, time-travel experience then it was her chance to change history and save Tallulah’s life. If it really was a dream, then there’d be no harm done.

  But how would Neddie Marsden take to being jilted the day before his wedding?

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Hattie,” she said calmly. “I promise you.”

  “I surely do hope you’re right, Miss Lou,” Hattie murmured, looking doubtful. She glanced out the kitchen window to the formal gardens, her broad face creasing. “Now what is that man doing here at this hour?” she said, but there was affection in her voice. “It’s too early for visiting.”

  A sudden chill went through Susan’s body. Or was it Lou’s? “Neddie’s here?” she demanded, unable to hide her alarm.

  “No, ma’am. It’s that Jack McGowan.” Hattie tried to sound disapproving and failed completely. It was clear she had a fondness for the man. “You take him a cup of coffee and get nd of him, you hear? If Mr. Marsden was to show up there might be trouble.”

  “Why would Neddie show up?”

  Hattie shrugged her solid shoulders beneath the starched uniform. “He likes to keep tabs on you. You know that. Now see what Mr. Jack wants and then get rid of him before there’s trouble.”

  At that moment Susan thought she’d rather face a grizzly bear, or at least Tallulah’s unpleasant fiancé, than deal with Jack McGowan first thing in the morning. Whoever and whatever she was, she was far too vulnerable to him, and it only complicated an already-difficult situation.

  She stepped out onto the flagstone patio in the early-morning sunshine, the coffee in her hand. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself,” he replied, looking up at her. Reaching a hand up to shade the glare of the rising sun behind her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  “Hattie sent me out with a cup of coffee for you and strict orders to get rid of you,” she said cheerfully, coming down the stone steps
and into the shadows. “What do you want?”

  “I promised Mary I’d help her with something,” he murmured absently, taking the delicate cup from her hands. He should be drinking from a mug, she thought, but obviously people didn’t use mugs in 1949, just those delicate, hardly hold anything teacups.

  “What?”

  He took a deep drink, obviously stalling. “Hattie makes some of the best coffee in the world,” he said.

  Susan kept a straight face at that one. “Are you going to keep acting like a television commercial or are you going to answer my question?”

  “Television?” he echoed, startled. “I didn’t know the lordly Abbotts owned such a plebian appliance.”

  “They don’t,” she said, guessing. “But the ads must be the same as the radio, right?”

  “With the added benefit of pictures,” he drawled. “What’s between Mary and me is a secret. She likes surprises, and she doesn’t realize what a joke this wedding is. I think she just wants to get the happy couple a wedding present.”

  “It’s not a joke...”

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered, draining the coffee. “You want to tell me why you’re dressed like that?”

  She glanced down at the jeans, the white shirt, her sneakered feet. “It’s comfortable. I’ll have to dress up later so I might as well wear what I want now.”

  He reached out a hand and caught one long, damp strand of hair. It curled lightly against his fingers. “I’ve never seen you without your hair curled and arranged, your clothes just right. I sure as hell have never seen you without makeup.”

  “Sorry,” she said, unrepentant. “Now you get to see what a hag I really am.”

  “Not quite,” he murmured. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

  She glanced down, startled. “What makes you think this is yours?”

  “Because I gave it to you, five years ago, after the dance at the country club. You had a fight with your parents and you’d taken off, and by the time I found you you’d fallen and skinned your elbow. Like the perfect gentleman .I always am, I gave you the shirt off my back to bind your wounds and then drove you home.”

  “You drove me home shirtless? Doesn’t sound gentlemanly to me,” she said, trying to disguise her feverish thoughts. Why did Tallulah still hold on to Jack’s shirt?

  “I was wearing an undershirt, sweetheart. And trust me, you were too distraught to be seduced by my manly charms. I was only sorry Jimmy wasn’t around to take care of you, but he’d already shipped out.” He reached out and touched the shirt, just above her left breast, and for the first time she noticed the faint rust-colored stain of old blood. “That’s how I know it’s mine.”

  “Don’t start imagining things, Jack,” she said. “I only held on to it because it’s comfortable. It’s the only thing that goes with my jeans.”

  “Your jeans? Oh, you mean your dungarees.”

  Damn. “Jeans, dungarees, blue jeans, Levi’s. Whatever you want to call them,” she said carelessly. “I couldn’t very well steal my father’s old shirts—he’s too short.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Mine fits you.”

  There was a sudden, strained silence between the two of them. The air smelled of a cool summer morning, and in the distance she could hear birds singing. His dark eyes slid over her, over the shirt she’d wrapped around her body, and it was like a caress, hot and intensely physical, and she wished to heaven that she’d opted for a girdle and seamed stockings.

  “Don’t marry him, Lou,” he said quietly. “It would break Jimmy’s heart.”

  “Jack...”

  “Don’t get me wrong, he’d want you to get married. Just not to Neddie Marsden. He’s a crook, Lou. A cheap, lousy war profiteer, a bully and braggart and just the kind of man who’d break your heart.”

  “No, he isn’t,” she said.

  “You think he’s some kind of tin god? Because I always thought you were smarter than that.”

  “I’m not arguing with anything you say about him,” she said. “He’s just not going to break my heart.”

  “He’ll cheat on you. Hell, he already has someone on the side.”

  “Most likely,” she said in that calm, husky voice she was growing eerily used to. “But it won’t break my heart. That happened when Jimmy died, and nothing is ever going to hurt me like that again. It’s impossible. Neddie will make a good enough husband. He wants me because I’m pretty and because I’m an Abbott. I suppose that sounds conceited but it’s not. He doesn’t care about who I am, what I think about, care about. He just wants me as a decoration.

  “And that’s fine with me. I need to get out of this house, and there’s no way I can support myself. There aren’t any jobs for women right now, and you know it. Too many GIs with families to support. So if I’m going to get out of here, and take Mary with me, I’m going to have to take my best offer, and that’s Neddie. And frankly, I don’t mind if he cheats on me. I’m hoping after the novelty of marriage wears off, he’ll pretty much leave me in peace.”

  Jack stared at her in consternation. “That’s a hell of a future, Lou. Don’t you think you deserve better?”

  “A lot of people deserve better than they get. Jimmy didn’t deserve to die. But life isn’t fair.”

  “Hell no, it isn’t fair,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take a dive. I thought you were a fighter. I didn’t think you’d let them beat you.”

  It stung, his casual contempt. Somehow in the last, uncharted time since she’d woken up in Tallulah Abbott’s body, she’d become Lou. She might not have Lou’s memory or familiarity with life in 1949, but she had Lou’s emotions, Lou’s longings and loyalties and slow, deep despair. She looked at Jack McGowan and knew she had Lou’s passion, as well. For the wrong man.

  “Sometimes you get tired of fighting,” she said.

  “Not the Lou Abbott I know. Not Jimmy’s Lou.”

  “I’m not Jimmy’s Lou any longer!” she shot back, feeling dangerously close to tears.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re not. You’re a coward, taking the easy way out. Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not going to blow the whistle on Marsden. I don’t have enough to pin anything on him, and I don’t want to do something that might destroy you—your family.” She might have missed the slight slip, but she didn’t.

  “Very noble,” she said drily, mocking him, angry and miserable and guilty.

  “Not particularly.” Before she realized what he intended he’d taken a step toward her, sliding one hand beneath her tangle of wet hair to cup her neck. “Take care of yourself, kid,” he murmured. “’Cause I won’t be around to do it.”

  She was frozen, staring up at him. He’d nicked himself shaving that morning, and his brown eyes were flecked with gold. She looked at him and felt a deep surge of longing race through her, sharp and painful and completely overwhelming.

  “I don’t need looking after,” she said. Making no effort to break away.

  “Like hell,” he muttered, and kissed her.

  It was shockingly foreign and completely familiar, his hard, hot mouth against hers, pushing her lips open, tasting of coffee and toothpaste. She remembered his mouth, somewhere deep in some distant memory, and she remembered another mouth, another hot beat of longing that transcended common sense and even sanity.

  She stopped thinking. She slid her arms around his waist, plastering her body against his, and she made a soft, moaning sound of surrender in the back of her throat. She’d been so cold, and now she was blazing hot, her body on fire, tasting his tongue in her mouth, feeling the strength of his hard body against hers, his hand closing over her breast, his leg nudging between her thighs.

  She wouldn’t have pushed him away, she would have let him lay her down on the flagstone terrace and take her there in full view of the bedroom windows, when Hattie’s voice called out to her from the kitchen.

  “Yoo-hoo, Miss Tallulah! Telephone for you.”

  Jack let go of he
r immediately, as if she were a hot potato, taking a step back as if to avoid further contamination. She forced herself to look at him. His breathing was ragged, his eyes almost black, his expression unreadable.

  “Better go, Lou,” he said in a rough voice. “It’s probably your fiancé calling you. But remember one thing during your long, empty years. He’ll never give you what you need.”

  The words stung, almost as much as her mouth. “And what are you offering, Jack?” she mocked him. “I haven’t heard you come up with any alternatives.” Say something, she thought. Ask me and I’ll come with you.

  But he said nothing.

  She wanted to slap him. Something childish, out of an old movie, she wanted to give him such a crack across the face that the sound of it echoed through the town of Matchfield.

  But she didn’t. “Have a nice life, Jack,” she said carelessly. And she turned and ran up the stairs, back to the kitchen.

  “My, my, Miss Lou!” Hattie greeted her. “Are you sure you ought to be doing that kind of thing the day before you’re getting married?” Oddly enough her brown eyes looked more sympathetic than condemning. “You’re just lucky your parents are sleeping in. What do you think would have happened if they woke up and happened to look out the window?”

  “I don’t know,” she said listlessly.

  “You’re marrying the wrong man, child,” Hattie said.

  “I know,” Susan said. Or was she Lou? She didn’t know anymore. “But the right man didn’t ask me.”

  Chapter Ten

  Susan already knew what she faced on the second day of her life in the first half of the century. It was the day before the wedding, and the Abbotts didn’t do things halfway. In about three hours everything would start, and she probably wouldn’t have a moment to herself until—

  Until when? Until she died? Is that what it would take to send her back to her own time? To stop this dream which was rapidly turning into a nightmare?

  The rehearsal was set for noon at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, followed by a huge supper for wedding party members, relatives and anyone else they could drag in. And then tomorrow, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Tallulah Abbott would marry Edward Marsden. And she’d be dead before midnight.