“I want you to not be an idiot.” Deke summed up flatly.
The woman kept glowering at Cade. She might not know their language, but that didn’t stop her from weighing in. “Are your brothers telling you you’re an idiot? I hope so, because you’re being an idiot. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here, but it might take a little time for the rescue party to arrive, alright? When you’re lost, you should stay put until help comes. McGruff the Crime Dog taught me that in kindergarten.”
“Who?”
The woman kept talking. “Besides, I’ll die if I stay out in those woods alone.”
“Which is not my concern.”
“I’m making it your concern. Before I freeze, I’ll be pinning a note to my hypothermic body so the cops know you’re the one who tossed me out.”
Cade scowled at her, weighing his options. This woman belonged to someone important and Shadow-of-the-Gods wasn’t important, at all. If she died, her pissed off benefactor could execute all the Westins for failing to protect her, and no one would care enough to stop him. Cade should let her stay just to avoid a bigger fight down the road.
That logic appealed to him. Yes. That was why he was agreeing to this. It would save him trouble in the long run if he allowed her to stay for a night. Two at most. That was the only reason he wasn’t booting her out the door.
That godsdamn click sounded in his ears, just to mock him.
“What is your name, lady?” Cade finally demanded.
“Adeline Mulhaney.”
“Adeline?” That wasn’t a name, but, for some reason, he loved the sound of it. “Of course, you’re Adeline.” He taunted. “You’re very… Adeline looking, aren’t you?”
Green eyes narrowed, not appreciating her own words being turned against her. “Except, no one ever calls me Adeline outside of the DMV. My friends all call me Addy.”
“We’re not friends.” Cade warned. Four gods, just insinuating that would get them both lynched. Ladies didn’t befriend Voltyn. Ever. “Do you have gold, Adeline? Or do you think you should just move into our home for free?”
She swiped a hand under her nose and seemed to think for a minute. “I don’t have a lot of cash on me and you guys don’t seem to like the taste of credit cards, but I can trade you something if you let me stay here.”
“…Trade?” A thousand thoughts went through Cade’s head, all of them obscenely graphic.
Deke flashed him a dry look, as if he was reading Cade’s mind.
“Yeah. I have a bunch of stuff.” Addy lugged her spotted bag up onto the counter and opened it with some quick movement that sounded like a hiss of metal. “I’ve got… let’s see… Oh! A brand new bear whistle. Becky-the-glamping-ranger said it was state-of-the-art.” The odd name was pronounced as one long word. “You could probably use a state-of-the-art bear whistle here on the range, right?”
Cade didn’t see how.
The woman kept going. “Or --um-- some nice, healthy granola bars or… Oh God! Cookies!” She pulled out a clear bag of some kind and tugged the edges of it apart. “I forgot I bought these. Here, I’ll give you a snickerdoodle for a drink. We can talk about trading my brand new iPhone for a room, after I get a little bit drunk.”
Cade hesitantly took a “snicker doodle” from her strange bag, waiting for her to start eating one herself before he risked taking a bite of his own.
“Fucking hell.” He groaned in ecstasy as the sweet flavor exploded on his tongue.
Deke frowned and edged closer. “What is that food?”
“I have no idea, but it’s better than sex.” Not as good as sex with Adeline Mulhaney and her acres of perfect skin would be, but better than with any other woman. He’d never tasted anything so good in his entire life. He broke off a piece and tossed it to his brother. “See for yourself.”
Deke gave it a suspicious sniff. “Could be poison.” He muttered. He might be a sucker for every lost cause that wandered by, but Deke also persisted in being as negative as possible.
“I don’t care. I’m eating it anyway.”
Not entirely mollified, Deke tasted the tiniest bite imaginable. A second later, his eyes jumped back to Cade’s in astonishment. For once, he didn’t have anything dour to say.
“You two like cookies?” Addy brushed a handful of shiny hair back from her face. “I have a whole thing of Oreos in the backpack. You let me stay here and I’ll give them all to you. They’re chocolate.”
“Chocolate?”
“You don’t know what chocolate is?”
“No.”
“You don’t have chocolate around here?” She repeated, like she still didn’t believe it.
“I don’t think so.” He looked over at Deke who shrugged.
“Great. So, it’s official, then.” She reached for a bottle of liquor and poured a haphazard amount into the nearest glass. “Worst. Day. Ever.”
Chapter Two
Did you know that Mount Rushmore could well be the most enduring part of our whole civilization?
It’s true! The heads of the four United States presidents are sixty feet high and carved into solid granite. Cars will rust away. Buildings will fall. Oceans will reclaim great cities. But mighty Mount Rushmore will survive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Just imagine what future inhabitants of the Black Hills will make of such a sight!
Brown’s Glampling Tours Official Pocket Guide
Worst days ever. Plural.
For the first five of them, Addy stayed locked in her dingy hotel room. The whole place was freezing cold and lit with nothing but a flickering lantern. The mattress looked like a breeding ground for bedbugs. All the wobbly furniture seemed to have too many corners, not enough corners, or no corners at all, even though corners clearly should have been there.
…But, everything outside the small room was even worse.
Shadow-of-the-Gods was some kind of Wild West slum. As far as Addy could tell, the entire town was one street wide and made up of flat-fronted buildings that couldn’t possibly have passed any fire codes. It looked like the set of a John Ford film, only dirtier and filled with animals she didn’t recognize. Buffalo roamed by and deer and antelope played. But, what the hell were those big lizard-y things that wandered down the road?
And “road” was being generous. It was basically a mud puddle, traveled by disreputable guys in bizarre, triangle-shaped cowboy hats. They all carried buckets and pick-axes into the hills in the morning and returned with glowing, green rocks at night.
They were mining something, but damn if she knew what. Addy certainly wasn’t going to head out and see for herself what made the stones shine like kryptonite. Everything beyond the edges of town was a sea of wilderness. She could see that and it was enough to keep her inside. Staring out her window, she didn’t see a single cellular tower, passing airplane, satellite dish, or car.
Something was very, very wrong.
On day one, Addy was in denial. This couldn’t be happening to her. She wasn’t cut out for roughing it. Nature and animals and all the rest of it was great… she just didn’t want to be near any of it. In kindergarten, she’d had a panic attack about visiting the zoo. She was the fat kid who sat in the library during recess and who faked an ankle injury to avoid taking the stairs. She was supposed to be safe inside her gated condo complex, with her collection of designer handbags and reruns of ‘80s TV shows.
This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Addy was normal, in a drinking-nice-wines-and-going-to-Saks-after-Sunday-brunch kind of way. It just couldn’t. be. happening. Very, very soon camera people would burst through the door, laughing about how this was all a reality show prank. She was sure of it.
Only it wasn’t a prank.
On day two, Addy was angry. This trip was nothing like the brochure promised. She was going to write Brown’s Glamping Tours the worst TripAdvisor review in the history of the internet. Just as soon as she got home.
And she was going to get home. Surely, they�
�d noticed she was missing by now. Her coworkers would alert Becky-the-glamping-ranger, who was leading the group. Becky would call the police or the FBI or the fucking Mounties or whoever was in charge of saving nice girls from wherever-the-hell Addy was stranded. Brave men in uniform would burst through the door, arrest all those people downstairs who were mean to her, and she’d give a heartfelt interview to Dateline about her ordeal. It was just a matter of time before all of this was a bad memory. Very, very soon, someone would show up to rescue her.
Only no one showed up to rescue her.
On day three, Addy was worried. What the hell was going on? One minute she’d been trudging through Yellowstone, looking at Strickland Geyser, and thinking it looked an awful lot like a certain part of the male anatomy. The next, it was erupting with a huge quake, knocking Addy off her feet. She hit the ground, slamming her skull on a rock. When she opened her eyes, she was in goddamn Tombstone. Minus a very hot Val Kilmer.
Clearly, hitting her head had caused this. Clearly, she’d suffered some kind of brain damage and this was all a coma-induced dream. Clearly, she would wake up very, very soon, and forget she’d ever hallucinated such a nightmarish place.
Only she didn’t wake up.
On day four, she was desperate. Addy spent the whole afternoon crying, praying, and staring at her iPhone, willing more bars to appear. Her battery was dying and she hadn’t had a signal since she fell. Maybe even before that. National Parks didn’t get great reception, so the phone had been going in and out the whole trip. Why didn’t she pay for one of those plans that promised reception everywhere? Wasn’t it worth fifty extra bucks a month to get reception everywhere? Maybe then she wouldn’t be trapped in some icky, dirty, future place.
Not that this was the future.
No way. There was a very logical reason for the people downstairs being dressed like space cowboys. And for their bizarre language. And for the lack of modern conveniences. And for why no one had heard of even the most basic technology. There was a simple explanation for all of it and she was going to think of one very, very soon.
Only she couldn’t think of one.
By day five, Addy was resigned. She huddled under a threadbare quilt and listlessly watched Mount Rushmore out the window. She was possibly in a state of shock, because every drop of her concentration was now centered on cataloging the damage to the presidents. The National Park Service would not happy.
Washington’s nose was gone. Very Sphinx-like, but not an appropriate look for the Father of the Country. Part of Jefferson’s cheek had fallen away, providing a rooting spot for odd red vines. They obscured most of his features, adding a shocking splash of color to the white granite. Lincoln was buried in dirt and snow up to his beard. It seemed like the angle of his face was acting like a natural funnel for debris and it piled up beneath him. Only Roosevelt was unchanged. Good for you, Teddy. Tucked back farther than the other three presidents, his toothy grin would probably last for another countless millennia.
Because centuries had already passed since those stoic faces were carved.
In her heart, Addy had to admit what she’d suspected from the beginning. This was actually happening. It was actually happening. It wasn’t some elaborate joke. No one was coming to rescue her. She wasn’t going to wake up. She wouldn’t think of another explanation.
She was stuck in the future.
Like really, really far in the future. Where things had gone to hell and no one knew what a credit card was. She was marooned in this crappy, dreary, dystopian nightmare, wearing her least-favorite bra and waiting for a real-life Planet of the Apes to start up at any minute.
…And she had no idea how to get home.
Returning to the spot where everything went wrong seemed like the best idea, but how the hell was she supposed to get back to that stupid geyser? She was in South Dakota. What was she supposed to do? Buy a plane ticket down back to Wyoming, at the travel agent’s hut down the road?
A particularly frigid wind blew through the boards of the hotel and Addy shivered. She was in so much trouble that she didn’t even know how to process it. There weren’t any steps she could follow to solve this problem or people she could call for help. She didn’t even know what direction to start walking. There was nothing but her, and that stupid guidebook, and a million acres of snow.
She blinked, rousing from her stupor.
Wait a minute… Where was that stupid guidebook?
Addy grabbed the backpack full of wilderness essentials that Becky-the-glamping-ranger had given her and dug out her copy of Brown’s Pocket Guide. Every guest of the company got an “officially trademarked Glamp-pack™” and a spiral-bound tour book to help answer all their glamping questions. The guide was filled with suggested activities, dining tips, “wish you were here” photos of breathtaking vistas… And maps. Maps of the entire region, including Rushmore and Yellowstone.
Oh God, she had a map!
If she could figure out how to read the thing, she was on her way home.
Addy frowned at the foldout, her purple manicured fingernail tracking along the fairly straight route. According to the helpful scale, it was a seven hour drive from Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone. Four hundred and thirty-five miles. Her mind raced. Traveling that distance on foot sounded impossible, but so did everything else that was happening. She was looking at the ruins of Mount Rushmore, for Christ’s sake! Nothing else even came close to that level of crazy. What if she just started walking and didn’t worry about what was possible?
Could she make it?
A knock sounded and Addy jumped, startled her from her contemplations. She turned to look at the door, her heart hammering. It was him. She knew it. The massive guy, with the unnerving lavender eyes and the thick ebony hair. Cade said she could stay two nights and she’d already stayed four. Unless she somehow produced more Oreos, he was probably going to evict her.
“Yes?” Addy called, trying to sound calm and in control.
“You need to come out, before you starve. A dead girl in my saloon won’t be good for business.”
Addy winced, hunching deeper under her quilt. Now that he mentioned it, she was starving. All she’d had to eat for days were granola bars and the gloopy stew someone left outside her door in the evenings. She assumed that “someone” was Cade, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
“Um… I’m kinda busy.” She said, not moving from her chair.
“Now.”
Shit. “Uh, why don’t you come back in… Hey!” Her stalling tactics ended in a yelp as Cade opened the door himself and stepped inside.
He was dressed in a strange double-breasted shirt and suede pants that did wonderful things for the length of his legs. Damn it, why did he have to be so big? Was it some evolution thing, where future people were unnaturally large? Probably not, since no one else in town was quite so Delta Force huge. Cade’s shoulders barely fit through the door. He seriously looked like he could lift a lizard-monster over his head.
“You can’t just unlock my door without permission!” She snapped, refusing to be intimidated by the guy.
“Sure I can. I have a key.” He held it up so she could see. Good-looking men were always the biggest assholes.
Addy pushed a stray curl behind her ear and glowered over at him. His brothers shared some of his features, but Cade’s were arranged to achieve a way more wow! result. With his chiseled cheekbones, blue-black hair, and golden skin, she imagined there was some Native American DNA in his background. Probably Lakota, given they were in the Black Hills. She wondered if he knew about his ancestors or if their heritage had faded along with everything else in the future.
“We need to talk, Adeline Mulhaney.” He told her in an ominous tone. Cade was one of those guys who looked hot when he was pissed. Which was lucky, since it seemed to be his only mood.
Addy decided to brazen it out. “Talk about what?” It was the same voice she used when she was trying to return a slightly used lipstick to the Channel counter.
As if she was completely in the right and the reluctant sales clerk was being totally unreasonable.
Cade regarded her silently, taking in her wary expression and the way she was huddled under the blanket. “No one is coming for you, are they?”
The flat words struck her like bullets. Tears burned her eyes and Addy shook her head. “No.” She whispered, her defensives crumbling. “No one’s coming for me.”
Cade glowered ferociously at that news. “I knew you were going to say that.” He muttered. It was so unfair that a man would have lashes that long. Not as unfair as Addy being stuck in The Road, but close. For some reason, his eyes flicked to the area just above her head and he gave a strange sigh. “You are going to cause me no end of trouble, lady.”
His grouchiness made her feel suddenly hopeful. This guy was going to tell her exactly what he thought, no matter how grim. She didn’t have to worry about him lying to her, even if it was just to make her feel better. It was actually a relief. Social niceties were not going to get her out of this mess.
Addy sometimes got feelings about the world, telling her when something important was about to happen. Right now, she was getting a very strong feeling about Cade Westin. “Will you help me?” She asked simply. “I want to go home.”
“Yes.” He agreed a little too fast. “You must go back to where you came from.”
He was right. The sooner she got to Yellowstone, the sooner she’d return to the twenty-first century. The problem was finding the geyser in this weather. Addy lived in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona, so she was used to wintertime being a light dusting of snow. The blizzard outside just seemed so daunting…
“In the morning.” She negotiated. “I’ll leave in the morning.”
“In the morning.” Cade nodded like it was all settled. “Fine. Good. I’m not responsible for you and your many confusing problems, so you should just… leave.” He hesitated, his eyes moving over her face. “Uh… Where will you go?”
Cowboy from the Future Page 3
