by Linda Jones
“No. But you should have stayed in the house.”
“Why?” Jackson slipped the glasses into his breast pocket, calmly and almost serenely, every movement smooth. “Did you have something to say to Harold Goodman that you didn’t want me to hear?”
Catalina took a single step away from him. “Of course not. I didn’t realize until I was halfway here that it was Goodman on the horse. I thought it was just a visitor for Doc, and I wanted to keep him away from the house, so he wouldn’t see you.”
Jackson didn’t move, didn’t speak. In fact, as far as she could tell, he wasn’t even breathing.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“You warned me, more than once, that I would be ambushed in Baxter,” he said coldly. “How did you know that, Catalina?”
“I told you, but you didn’t believe me.” Her voice was small, shaky.
“That you came here from 1996?” he asked smoothly. “Hell no. I don’t believe you. How well do you know Harold Goodman?”
Catalina started to defend herself but instead took another step back.
“Come on, Catalina,” he pressed. “You’ve never been at a loss for words before. How long has this been set up?”
Catalina’s heart sank. She could actually feel it: a weight in her chest that made her physically ill. It had been too much to hope for, that Jackson could change. That he could trust her, and leave Kid Creede on the Baxter street. She was facing Kid Creede right now.
“I’ve never lied to you, Jackson. I love you. If I was in on some sort of … plot with Harold Goodman, why would I have bothered to save your life?”
He was shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know. You’re a woman; maybe you went soft on him. How the hell am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?”
“How can you believe … how can you even consider the possibility that I am somehow involved with that weasel Harold Goodman? That I would betray you? That I would betray anyone?” She shook her head. Had he lived with betrayal so long that it was the first explanation … the only explanation … that came to him?
“Do you think the worst of everyone you know, Jackson, or only me?”
He said nothing but continued to watch her with narrowed eyes that bored into her soul and hurt her heart.
Catalina unbuttoned the first four buttons of the green calico she wore. Jackson said nothing, didn’t move at all. Even his eyes remained lifeless. She took the leather thong between her fingers and lifted the wulfenite so that it lay in her hand.
“As far as I can tell, this is what brought me here.” The truth, all of it. “An old Indian gave it to me. He said that all things were possible, if I’d only open my heart and my mind. I was walking toward that rock.” She turned and faced the grouping of red rocks in the distance and started walking forward. “That big one, in the center. I was fascinated by that rock, and I was thinking about history, and men, and wishing for a different life.” That was exactly what she had wished for. Exactly what she’d gotten.
“Damn it, Catalina.” At least there was anger in his voice; that was better than no emotion at all. “All I want is the truth.”
“All I’ve ever told you is the truth!” she shouted, spinning to face him and continuing to walk backward … toward the rocks. “You don’t think I know how hard it is to understand? To believe?” She grasped the wulfenite tightly.
“It’s just a rock,” Jackson said, trying to sound reasonable. “A very pretty rock.” He pointed to the wulfenite she clutched. A tip of the yellow-gold peeked out from between her fingers. “But just a rock. If you … You can tell me anything. I can forgive you,” he said gruffly.
Catalina almost smiled, but it would have been bitter and ugly, so she didn’t. How noble of him. He could forgive her for betraying him, for being a party to the ambush that had very nearly taken his life. But would he ever forget? If he truly believed her to be capable of betrayal, of deceit, then he could never truly love her.
She spun around so she wouldn’t have to look into his face, and she continued to walk, taking long, angry strides away from Doc Booker’s ranch. Jackson was behind her, keeping pace while keeping his distance. “In 1996,” she began calmly, “Indian Springs is located right over there.” She pointed past the grouping of tall red rocks. “I work in the library on Independence Avenue, right in the middle of downtown, and I drive my Mustang there five days a week. I have Sundays and Mondays off. My Mustang, by the way, is not a horse, but a car. An automobile. A horseless carriage.” She glanced over her shoulder. Jackson was close, matching her step-for-step in spite of the limp that slowed him.
“I share an apartment with my friend Kim, or at least I did before the disastrous wedding that never took place.”
Catalina stopped and stared at the red rocks in the distance. They were no farther away than they’d been that day when she’d grasped the wulfenite and been caught in that sandstorm … and been carried here. Would Kim wonder where she was? Of course she would. Would anyone else? Not likely. At least, not for long. Since Grandma Lane had passed away, all those years ago, Catalina hadn’t been really close to anyone but Kim and Wilson, and even then … it was nothing like the connection she felt to Jackson. A man who believed her to be capable of the worst sort of treachery.
She hadn’t thought about what she’d left behind, not since that first day or two. The Indian Springs library, and the nonfiction section where she’d spent so many afternoons — work done for the day, nothing to do but read and dust endless rows of old and new books.
She would miss that place, and Kim, and her Mustang.
The dirt at her feet danced, swirling delicately in whirlwinds that rose suddenly to all but engulf her. It was the same as before. Her breath was literally stolen away, and she began to feel as if she were floating.
“Catalina!” Jackson’s voice called to her, but it was so far away … so distant. As though there was a thick wall between them.
She could go back. Here and now. If that was what she really wanted. Catalina closed her eyes tightly against the dirt, and all she saw was Jackson. Approaching her that first day, a somber picture on his horse. Standing in the doorway of Alberta’s parlor, casual as you please as he bid on her. Leaning over to kiss her. Making love to her.
Catalina heard him call her name again, and it was further away than before. Faded. Faint. She could hear something else, too.
The unmistakable hum of a big truck, an eighteen-wheeler, close by. A car, wheels singing against asphalt.
She dropped the wulfenite that was still clutched in her hand, and thrust that hand out to the side. She tried to block out the hum of the truck, and Kim’s face, and her memories of Indian Springs, and to see only Jackson. Only Jackson.
His hand was on hers, his fingers on her wrist — warm. Strong. Real.
And then it was over. The windstorm died. The highway sounds were gone as suddenly as they’d come, and Catalina fell backward, jerked from the ground and into Jackson’s arms. They both fell back. Jackson landed in the dirt, and Catalina remained on top of him, too scared to move. His arms went around her, tight, powerful arms.
“Catalina,” he whispered reverently.
Seventeen
*
Catalina leaned her head back against Jackson’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She was still a little dizzy, shaken, afraid. Jackson’s arms were tight around her waist, his breathing near her ear ragged and deep.
“Catalina,” he murmured once again.
They stayed there on the ground, silent, still but for the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed deeply for several long minutes. The sun beat down on her face, but Catalina felt a deep chill that the sun couldn’t chase away. She’d almost left this place. She’d almost left Jackson.
Jackson sat up without easing the grip that comforted her, and Catalina rested between his spread legs. Jackson Cady, a man she would have described as fearless only moments before, was shaking, a deep tremble she felt in his arms an
d the chest on which she rested her head. Catalina lifted her face and looked into his eyes, pale blue eyes that glittered like ice.
“You pulled me back,” she whispered.
Jackson nodded his head slightly. “You were … ” He swallowed, and the arms around her tightened. “Fading. The dirt came up around you, and then you started to … to go. But the hand, the hand you raised was real, and I took it, and I held on, and I pulled. Catalina,” he whispered her name. “Promise me you won’t do that again.”
Catalina shifted, scooting around and placing both her legs over one of Jackson’s thighs. This way she could look easily into his face.
“Do you believe me now?” The chill that had gripped her was gone, chased away by her first glance at Jackson’s face.
“I believe,” he said softly, “but I don’t understand how it’s possible.”
Catalina took the thong that held the wulfenite around her neck and lifted the crystal. She didn’t dare touch it, but she studied the play of light on the yellow surface.
“I can’t be certain, but I think this is a kind of key. An old Indian gave it to me, and … I told you what he said. When I came here I was thinking about the past … about now, and I got caught up in a sandstorm. Just now I was thinking about Kim and the library, and I was holding the wulfenite just like before, and it started to happen again.”
She turned her head to the red rocks in the distance. “I’m almost certain those rocks have something to do with this. I was about the same distance away the first time, but I was on the other side.” A frown stole over her face. “What if it’s not a doorway, but a huge circle around those rocks? A … a hole. It’s almost like stepping into a hole, and then floating instead of dropping.”
“I want you to stay away from this place,” Jackson said hoarsely. “And throw away that damned yellow rock.”
“No.” Catalina pulled her hand away when he tried to grab it. “This is what brought me to you, Jackson. I told you I traveled a long way to find love. To find you.”
Catalina slipped from between his legs, but Jackson kept his hand on her arm, almost as if he were afraid to let her go. She lifted the leather thong over her head and put the wulfenite in the dirt.
She reached into Jackson’s boot and withdrew his knife. He moved slowly to kneel beside her, and his hand slipped down to her wrist.
Catalina turned the wulfenite over again and again, searching for a weak spot. It was there, a thinner section near the center of the stone. She laid the tip of the knife in a hollow between two crystals that seemed to have grown together, and wiggled the tip of the knife to force it deep within the crevice.
Jackson’s hand remained on her wrist as she raised it and brought it down on the hilt of the knife. There was a brief spark, a flash of light so bright and so quick it could have been the sun reflecting on the metal surface of the knife, and the wulfenite on the ground broke easily in two.
She lifted the piece of the crystal that was still attached to the leather thong and placed it around Jackson’s neck. “A piece of what brought me to you.”
He pulled her against him, at last releasing her wrist as he threw his arms around her.
When his grip loosened a bit, Catalina lifted her face to him. He kissed her, a soft, lingering kiss that made Catalina melt in his arms. His heat surrounded her like a protective cocoon; his arms held her gently. And when he pulled his mouth away from hers it was with a low moan of regret.
“We’ve got to get away from this place and get married,” he grumbled. “Soon.”
Catalina perched on her knees between his spread legs and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We don’t have to wait,” she whispered.
“You said … ” Jackson began.
“I said I love you. I said I traveled a hundred years to find you. Married? I feel more than married to you. I feel a part of you. Two halves of the same soul.” She kissed him briefly to try to ease his obvious distress. “Do you believe in the existence of the soul?”
“Yes.”
With one arm hooked around Jackson’s neck, Catalina leaned over and scooped up the half of the wulfenite that still lay in the dirt.
“Two halves of the same stone,” she said, holding the golden crystal on her palm. “One incomplete without the other. Just as I am incomplete without you.”
Catalina placed a palm against Jackson’s cheek. “Make love to me.”
His lips met hers, kissing her softly, parting to claim her mouth as he had claimed her heart. Fully, without reservation, deep and soul-searing. Catalina tipped her head back and pressed her chest against his. The stone she had placed around his neck was caught between them, and it seemed that the crystal was warm, throbbing, alive, trapped between two pounding hearts.
Catalina wound her hands around Jackson’s neck, twisting her fingers through his hair. She felt as if she were glowing, as certainly as the wulfenite had blazed with the sun on its surface.
She was falling backwards, slowly, Jackson’s hands at her back. His lips left hers and trailed down her throat to the hollow at the base of her neck. He lingered there, maddeningly.
Jackson pulled away from her and rose slowly, never taking his hands from her. He lifted her from the ground gently, as if she might break, but he never loosed his grip. Did he think she would disappear again if he wasn’t there to hold her in the nineteenth century?
“I will never leave you,” Catalina said, looking up into pale eyes that were still a little dazed.
“Is that a promise?”
Catalina smiled. “A promise, a vow, a sworn oath.”
Jackson kissed her again, as tenderly as before, and still the caress was filled with passion, the same longing that was tearing her apart. She felt, at that moment, a desire so intense it was painful. She pulled her lips away from his but kept her face close, so close she could almost feel the beat of his heart in the lips near hers.
“Are you going to make me ask again?” she whispered.
“No.” Jackson kissed her, a quick and tender meeting of their lips, and then again and again. “Ahh, Catalina.”
She loved the way he whispered her name, silk and velvet.
“You wrest promises from me and then you demand that I break them.” There was more than a little humor in his soft voice.
“I never made you promise not to … ”
He silenced her with another maddening kiss, and then he turned, his arm firmly around her waist, toward the little house. His step was slow, his hold on her secure. She knew what he was feeling — the fear of coming so close to separation, to a division so complete, so final, that nothing could repair it, and she slipped her arm around his waist as well.
Catalina led him to the narrow bed she’d been sleeping in, rather than the larger bed in the main room. Jackson didn’t mind. He’d come too close to death in that big bed, too close to losing his chance for a lifetime with Catalina.
This was a woman’s room, filled with lace and frills and the things a woman needs. Mirrors and brushes, ribbons and hairpins, all spread across the top of a polished dresser. Lace curtains, a white bedspread dotted with pillows — yellow and blue, with delicate embroidered flowers and birds, splashes of bright colors against the pale.
Catalina closed the door and placed her half of the crystal on the dresser with her other things. Jackson noticed that she was looking all around the room, avoiding his gaze. Nervous. He smiled. He was pretty damned nervous himself.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently to face him. Catalina lifted her face to him, and Jackson lowered his head to kiss her — just a kiss — with his hands resting on her shoulders and her hands hanging at her sides — they kissed.
He’d almost lost her. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet, felt so right, and he couldn’t forget how close he’d come to watching the only person he’d ever loved disappear before his eyes.
She pressed her body closer to his, and he felt the pressure of the golden stone against his chest,
a reminder of the magic that had brought Catalina to him.
Her fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt, slowly, surely, her lips never faltering, and Jackson allowed his hands to slip down from her shoulders to brush lightly over her breasts. Catalina’s breathing changed, quickened, and she made a whispery noise against his mouth. Not a moan, not a whimper, not a sigh. Or maybe all three.
The buttons of her calico dress slipped easily through his hands, baring the swell of her breast and a lacy chemise. He lowered his head to touch his lips to her throat. His mouth lingered there, tasting her, feeling the rapid beating of her heart. Without lifting his head he slipped the sleeves from her arms and lowered his head to taste the silky skin above her thin chemise. He kissed that skin as tenderly as he had her neck, and Catalina wrapped her fingers through his hair, holding him against her.
She couldn’t hold him tight enough. The desire he had always felt for Catalina grew, until he was certain it would consume him, burn him from the inside out. It was like a fire, hot and uncontrollable.
He turned his attention to her arms, kissing the inner crook of her elbow, brushing his lips over her wrist, the palms of her hand. Catalina grabbed the open front of his shirt and slid it over his shoulders, and he shrugged it off.
They continued slowly, unfastening buttons and ties and buckles, tasting newly exposed skin, bringing their lips together when the drive to do so was so strong neither of them could fight it. Catalina spoke only once, to complain weakly that women in the nineteenth century wore entirely too many clothes.
As he laid Catalina on the narrow bed and placed himself above her, the stone she had hung around his neck swung forward between them. With a wistful smile, she reached up to slip it over his neck and placed it on the bedside table.
When she brought her hands back to him she traced his face with her fingers, and wrapped her hands around his head to pull his lips to her. He kissed her, and her hands explored his body: light, feathery touches that drove him past reason, past rational thought.
