“I love you.”
She filled her eyes with the look of him, imprinting his image in her mind as he stood there, tall and straight, with the early morning sun casting gold highlights in his black hair. He must have been terrified, she thought, yet he looked calm, at peace.
The courthouse clock chimed the hour. It was time.
A man standing next to her shouted, “Get on with it, Conner, some of us have got work to do!”
Shaye turned to look at him and found herself staring into Dade McCrory’s cold blue eyes. “You!” she hissed. “It should be you up there.”
“Me? What the hell for? I didn’t kill her.”
Shaye stared at McCrory. He was telling the truth. She knew it. But if not McCrory, and not Alejandro… “Then who did it?” she murmured.
“She killed herself.”
Shaye’s eyes widened. She had suspected Daisy committed suicide, but there had been no proof, no note. “How do you know?”
Dade pulled a crumbled piece of paper from his pants pocket. “She left a note.”
She looked up at the platform again, hope rising within her. If Daisy left a note, they would have to free Alejandro. “You lied!” she exclaimed.
McCrory laughed coldly, bitterly.
“If you’ve got any last words,” Conner said, “now’s the time to say ‘em.”
Alejandro shook his head, his dark eyes fixed on Shaye’s face. “Just get on with it.”
The sheriff took a step backward, one hand resting on the butt of his gun, as the hangman slipped a hood over Alejandro’s head.
“Wait!” Shaye screamed the word, but no one paid her any attention. She was Alejandro’s woman, after all.
The hangman reached for the wooden lever that would spring the trap door and put an end to a man’s life.
“No! Wait! He didn’t do it! I can prove it!” She grabbed the note from McCrory’s hand and raced toward the platform, but it was already too late.
As if in slow motion, she saw the hangman’s hand reach for the lever. She screamed as the trap door beneath Alejandro’s feet fell away. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as his body plunged through the opening.
“No, no.” Her hand fisted around the note. Too late, too late.
It should have been over, but it wasn’t. He was still alive, his legs twitching convulsively as the rope tightened around his neck.
A hush fell over the crowd as they watched the life being slowly strangled from his body.
“No. No. No!” Hardly aware of what she was doing, Shaye ran toward him, the note falling from her hand as she wrapped her arms around Alejandro’s legs. Lifted upward to ease the awful tension on the rope. He was heavy, so heavy.
Why didn’t someone help her? She couldn’t support him much longer. The world began to spin out of focus, the faces of the crowd blurring, fading. She staggered beneath his weight, tears of frustration running down her cheeks. Why didn’t someone help her?
Bright lights exploded behind her eyes and she felt herself spinning down, down, into a deep black void.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Feeling as though she were waking from a long sleep, Shaye opened her eyes. The sun was high in the sky. And it was quiet, so quiet. A glance to the left showed the Methodist Church. Had it all been a dream then, she wondered. But it had all seemed so real, the people, the town. Alejandro…
She closed her eyes, and his image sprang to mind: Alejandro striding toward her in the saloon, smiling at her across the table, teaching her to play poker, dancing with her on the Fourth of July, making love to her, swinging from the gallows.
Choking back a sob, she opened her eyes, banishing the last gruesome image.
She looked away from the church that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was back in the present, and saw Alejandro lying on the ground a short distance away, the ugly black hood still in place, his hands tied behind his back, and she knew it had been all too real. She didn’t stop to wonder what he was doing in her time, or how he had gotten there.
Scrambling to her hands and knees, she ripped the hood away, then placed her hand over his chest, reassured by the steady beat of his heart. He was here, alive, in the flesh. She fumbled with the rope binding his wrists and tossed it aside, then sank back on her heels, weak with relief. The how and the why of it didn’t matter, she thought. He was here.
She wondered what day it was, and how long she had been in the past, and knew, if it weren’t for Alejandro lying there beside her, she would have been certain she dreamed the whole thing.
She thought briefly of Clark McDonald, wondered what he would say, what he would think, if she and Alejandro were to walk into the museum. Perhaps she would write him later. Of all the people she knew, he was the only one who was likely to believe what had happened. It would make a great story, but of course, it was one she could never write, except as fiction. Who would believe it? She could hardly believe it herself.
She glanced past Alejandro, surprised to see her backpack and overnight bag, both of which had been left in the past, sitting a few feet away. How had they gotten there?
He groaned softly, then jackknifed into a sitting position, his hand going to his throat. “What happened?” he asked, his voice low and raspy.
“I’m not sure, but somehow, we seem to have been zapped back to my time.”
“Your time?” Alejandro’s gaze rested on Shaye’s face for a moment, and then he glanced around, taking in his surroundings. Across the way stood the Bodie Chop Shop. It had been a new building when last he saw it. Now, the paint was gone, the roof was sagging, there were boards nailed across the windows.
He stood up, his hand absently massaging his throat, then, leaning down, he took Shaye’s hands and pulled her to her feet. Feeling a little dazed, he began to walk down Green Street, past the morgue and the Boone Store, past the Swazey Hotel, past the schoolhouse. So many buildings were missing, he mused, with nothing left to show where most of them had stood. He recalled Shaye telling him that fires had decimated much of the town.
It took some getting used to, this idea of being in the future. He supposed it wasn’t any more impossible for him to be in Shaye’s time than it had been for her to be in his, but, damn… He shook his head. It was downright disconcerting to see the town the way it was now, to realize that the life he had known no longer existed, that everyone he had ever known was dead. Lottie, Sophie, Philo Richardson, Rojas, the men he had played cards with, Addy Mae and Lily, the doves at the Queen, all gone. Dead and gone.
It was quiet, he thought, so quiet without the ever-present thumping of the stamp mill, without the boisterous shouts of the teamsters, the rumble of heavy-laden wagons and carts, the rowdy banter of the miners as they swarmed over the hills. The stillness was oppressive. Nothing stirred save a faint warm breeze. The town looked old, he thought, old and tired, as if a good strong wind could blow it all down.
“Are you all right?”
He turned to see that Shaye had followed him down the street. She was his reality now. Standing on the gallows, with a rope around his neck and his future measured in heartbeats, he had realized that he loved her but been too damn stupid to realize it until it was too late. It had been his last thought when the hangman dropped the noose over his head, his last thought as the trap was sprung. Why had he waited so long to admit it? Why hadn’t he told her sooner?
“Shaye.” He drew her into his arms.
She looked up at him, her heart shining in her eyes.
“I love you, darlin’.”
“And I love you,” she replied tremulously. “More than anything in this world or any other.”
And perhaps that was the magic that had brought him here, he thought, the magic of their love, a love that was strong enough to defy death, strong enough to bring him across time and space to the only woman he had ever loved. Would ever love.
Her smile faded. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
“I know.” He gazed down at
her, needing her in a way he couldn’t quite explain.
“I want to make love to you here, one more time.” Everything and everyone else he had known was gone, but Shaye remained, a link between his past and his future.
“I wish we could.” She glanced around. The town seemed deserted but, even so, there was no place where they could be alone.
The words were barely out of her mouth before Alejandro swung her into his arms, striding purposefully toward one of the houses that was located up a side street well away from all the others. The doors were locked, but that slow him down. Going around to the back of the house, he broke a window and they went inside. The interior was dark and quiet. There was a mattress on the floor in the bedroom. Alejandro spread an old quilt over the mattress, then took Shaye in his arms again, the need between them humming like a live wire.
He kissed her gently, softly, tenderly, his hands moving ever so slowly, ever so lightly, up and down her back before he pulled her up close against him, letting her feel his desire. He deepened the kiss, and she opened for him like a flower reaching for the sun, felt his heat flow into her and through her. His desire fueled her own, and she clung to him, everything else forgotten, but the wonder of his kiss, the magic of his hands moving over her body. She didn’t remember undressing him, or being undressed, but somehow they were lying on the quilt, arms and legs entwined, moving toward that moment when two became one. His skin was fever hot beneath her fingertips.
He rose over her, his long black hair brushing against her breasts, his dark eyes blazing with a need she knew was reflected in her own.
“Now,” she whispered urgently. “Now, now, now!”
She closed her eyes, a wordless cry of pleasure on her lips as his body merged with hers, filling her with delicious heat, completing her. She grabbed the moment, that one moment when there was no telling where she ended and he began, that one moment when two hearts beat to the same wild pulsing rhythm.
She heard his voice whisper that he loved her and knew, in that single perfect moment in time, that the love they shared had forever bridged the gap between her world and his.
It was near dark when they left the house. Alejandro glanced from side to side as they made their way back down Green Street. It seemed impossible, yet here he was, in the twenty-first century, walking through what was now a ghost town, he mused with a wry grin. And soon even the ghost would be gone.
He paused when they reached the Methodist church, which hadn’t been built during his lifetime. His old lifetime.
When they reached the top of the hill, he glanced over his shoulder one last time, bidding a last goodbye to everything he had ever known.
And then he swung Shaye into his arms and twirled her around and around, eager to begin their new life together, to see for himself all the wonders she had told him about, knowing in his heart and soul that nothing the future held could be more wonderful than the woman in his arms.
Epilogue
Shaye placed her hand on her father’s arm, her heart beating in anticipation. Today was her wedding day. Though she had adamantly declared that she didn’t want a church wedding, when the time came time to pick a place, she found that she did, indeed, want to be married in a church with all the trimmings. She wore an old-fashioned gown made of ivory antique lace and a shoulder-length veil, and carried a bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath.
It was a small wedding, with just her parents, her boss, a few coworkers, and Clark McDonald in attendance. She had called Clark when they got to L.A. He had been surprised to hear from her, relieved that she was all right, amazed by her story. But, just as she had known he would, he had believed every word.
It had been more difficult to convince her parents that her future husband was from the past. They had been certain it was some kind of joke, but after talking to Alejandro and seeing the photographs Shaye had had developed, her parents had come to believe the truth. It had been, Shaye thought, the pictures that had really convinced them. The photos had come out bright and clear: the picture of Alejandro, taken in his room; a view of Main Street crowded with people and freight wagons taken from Alejandro’s hotel room window; another picture of Main Street; one of the Queen of Bodie; three of the mine; the photo Alejandro had taken of her; a picture of the two of them, taken outside the mine; eight pictures of the Fourth of July parade; three of riders trying to pull the rooster out of the ground. The other two rolls of film were pictures of the ghost town as it was today. The differences between the town, old and new, were too obvious to deny.
Shaye peeked around the corner. She could see Alejandro standing at the altar, looking more handsome than ever in an old-fashioned frock coat made of fine black broadcloth, black trousers, and black cowboy boots.
Fake ID for Alejandro had been a lot easier to get hold of than she had thought it would be, thanks to her father, who still had some connections with some rather shady characters he had arrested a time or two when he worked for the police department.
Yesterday, they had gone to the library and there, in a chapter on Bodie in an old history book, they had found a reference to Alejandro.
“One of Bodie’s more colorful characters was Alejandro Valverde, a professional gambler by trade. Valverde was convicted of killing Daisy Sullivan, known prostitute and former business partner. Though he professed his innocence to the last, Valverde was hanged on July 15, 1880. Several hundred people witnessed the hanging, which took place as a violent windstorm swept through the town. When the dust settled, the body was gone. Ironically, a suicide note written by Sullivan was found immediately after the hanging. For a time, Valverde’s ghost was said to haunt the town…”
Shaye smiled as the organ began to play.
“Ready?” her father asked.
“Oh, yes,” she replied tremulously.
Alejandro stood in front of the altar, unmindful of the guests in the church, only dimly aware of his surroundings as he gazed at the vision walking down the aisle toward him. Never had she looked more lovely. Her gaze met his, and a swarm of emotions flowed through him: admiration, desire, anticipation, gratitude to whatever Fate had sent her to him, but most of all a deep surge of love. She was every dream he had ever had, every hope, every desire.
He stepped forward, taking her hand in his, hardly aware of the words the minister spoke until it was time for him to say the words that made Shaye his wife.
“I, Alejandro, take thee, Shaye…”
He looked into the depths of her beautiful green eyes as he spoke the solemn, heartfelt words that would bind them together for now and all eternity, and knew that he had come home at last.
* * * * *
Ever After
The explosion of my soul
now freed into her keeping
carried us into reality
where we had dreamed
where I had
wished…
to hold her close
to fly through time
as one
skin so easily tasted with kisses
from lips so eagerly awaiting
my touch
My hands raised with freedom
life coursing through my veins…
come with me, my love
our travels now begin
we fly into the clouds
never looking back
never looking down…
for time has healed its mistake
and folded you into my embrace
now my arms
stronger than bars of iron
will hold you close
keep you near
for now and
evermore
The End
About Madeline Baker
Madeline Baker started writing simply for the fun of it. Now she is the award-winning author of more than thirty historical romance books and one of the most popular writers of Native American romance. She lives in California, where she was born and raised.
Madeline welcomes comments from read
ers. You can find her website address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
Tell Us What You Think
We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email the author directly or you can email us at [email protected] (when contacting Customer Service, be sure to state the book title and author).
Also by Madeline Baker
A Whisper in the Wind
Apache Flame
Apache Runaway
Chase the Lightning
Chase the Wind
Cheyenne Surrender
Dakota Dreams
Feather in the Wind
Forbidden Fires
Hawk’s Woman
Heart of the Hunter
Lacey’s Way
Lakota Love Song
Lakota Renegade
Love Forevermore
Love in the Wind
Love’s Serenade
Midnight Fire
Prairie Heat
Reckless 1: Reckless Heart
Reckless 2: Reckless Love
Reckless 3: Reckless Desire
Reckless 4: Reckless Embrace
Renegade Heart
Shadows Through Time
Spirit’s Song
The Angel and the Outlaw
The Spirit Path
Under a Prairie Moon
Under Apache Skies
Warrior’s Lady
Wolf Shadow
Print books by Madeline Baker
Apache Flame
Cheyenne Surrender
Dakota Dreams
Hawk’s Woman
Heart of the Hunter
Lakota Love Song
Love’s Serenade
Reckless 1: Reckless Heart
Reckless 2: Reckless Love
Reckless 3: Reckless Desire
Shadows Through Time
Under Apache Skies
Journey to Yesterday Page 27
