Theo walked over to them, his bearded, kind face split in a grin, and Myles noted how Danny imitated Theo's stance, standing with his legs apart and his hands stuck in the back pockets of his denims.
Clara, with Ellie on her hip and Missy by the hand, came rushing out to welcome them. Both little girls wore matching gingham dresses with white pinafores over them. As usual, Clara had been busy sewing.
"Come in." Her wide face was wreathed in smiles, her eyes behind the round lenses of her glasses filled with delight as she glanced discreetly at Paige's burgeoning stomach. "It's just so good to see you, the coffee's on, and I've just made a pan of fresh gingerbread."
The table was a plank set on two sawhorses, and the chairs were packing crates, but as the day sped past, it was obvious that Clara and Theo and their three children couldn't have been happier if they lived in a mansion.
Ellie and Missy tumbled about on the floor, giggling as only small girls can, playing with rag dolls Clara had made them. Danny stuck to Theo like a burr, very much the important big brother as he divided up the gumballs and suckers and molasses candy Myles and Paige had brought, rationing them out to the little girls.
Paige watched Myles take one sticky small girl after the other up on his knee, gently teasing them and making them giggle. She saw his tender smile as he held them. She watched his eyes follow Danny, and she noted his wistful expression.
It was painfully obvious that he was a man who loved children.
The ache in her heart grew almost unbearable.
She'd give anything to be able to hand him their own child to hold. The closer the time came, the less she wanted to even try to leave.
But the bigger her unborn baby grew, the more certain she became that unless she had access to modern medical procedures, both she and the baby might die.
Sometimes, the irony of the situation twisted her mouth in a bitter smile. She remembered an expression that her partner, Sam Harris, used to use on occasion.
"Poor bastard," he'd say. "He's caught between a rock and a hard place."
Well, that was where she was right now.
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
Two weeks passed, and there was only a month left before the baby was due.
The search for the prisoners was called off.
Two days after that, Lame Owl sent Myles a message.
It was time for the ceremony. Myles would bring Paige as far as the Indian village, and then he must leave her.
The night before the trip, Paige talked for hours after they'd finally gone to bed, fighting sleep in the darkness of the room, trying to draw word pictures for Myles of where she'd be, what things would be like in the world she'd inhabit should Lame Owl's magic work.
Myles knew she was using words as a shield against the pain of emotion, the fear of the parting so close now.
"... and I never told you about disposable diapers, did I?"
"What about them, love?" Myles lay with her in his arms, her hand circling his waist, his arm underneath her head, their bodies pressed as close together as her swollen stomach would allow. The unborn child cradled between them kicked and somersaulted in his warm cocoon.
They'd been celibate for several weeks now, but there was a deep sensuality in lying together this way.
Myles rubbed her back, trailing his fingers along the curve of her spine, letting his hand cup her swollen breast, too large now with pregnancy to fit into his palm. He ran a finger along her temple, tracing the high cheekbone, the straight nose, the stubborn chin, the soft throat.
Memorizing her, for all the empty nights to come.
"They do away with so much washing, they're soft and easy on the baby's behind, but they're not biodegradable. The flannel, pre-formed ones are better. They close with Velcro, did I ever tell you about Velcro?"
He hadn't any idea what she was talking about. He hadn't listened to the words for some time now. Instead, he was absorbing the cadence of her voice, the timbre, the way she emphasized certain syllables. She was falling asleep, he could tell by the way her muscles slowly relaxed and her voice grew soft and fuzzy.
"It's this sticky stuff...." She burrowed even closer to him. "You just press it together." She sighed and slipped into sleep as the deep weariness of advanced pregnancy overcame her.
Against him, the child inside her moved restlessly.
His child. He put his palm over the solid flesh of her abdomen.
Know that I love you, dear one. Know that you have a father who loves you, who loves your mother.
He held her, accommodating her restless slumber, moving when she moved so she always had enough room, enfolding her again as soon as her breathing deepened. He held her as the moon waned and the small hours of the morning grew. Dawn broke, and he leaned on an elbow and studied her sleeping face in the first gray light.
Ebony curls, wild as the prairie wind, strewn across the pillow. Golden skin, with tracings of freckles across the straight nose. Deep set eyes, as green as the first spring grass. Long, curling lashes, gold tipped from the hot sun, sooty at their base.
A stubborn chin. A wide, pink mouth, relaxed now in sleep, a mouth whose contours he knew as well as he knew his own, having traced every inch with his lips and his tongue.
His woman. His wife. His very life.
He hated waking her, but the sun was already up.
He bent his head and kissed her lips, and before her eyes opened her arms came up and clasped him to her.
"I love you, Myles." The sleepy murmur tore his heart nearly to shreds.
Later that morning, on the outskirts of the Indian village, they said goodbye. Tahnancoa had walked out to meet Paige, and she stood a polite distance away, waiting, her son securely strapped to her back.
They kissed, twice, three times, neither of them daring to speak, and when the final moment came, Paige lost her nerve. She clung to him, too devastated even to cry, her arms trembling, locked around his neck.
"I can't, Myles." Her whisper was frantic. "I can't leave you."
"Yes, you can. You must. Courage, my dearest love." He put a hand on her stomach. "Kiss my son for me, won't you? I'll see you both when you get back, in the spring." He drew a leather pouch with a drawstring out of his pocket and looped it around her neck, over the locket she wore. The weight of it made her gasp.
"You told me once that the money we use is different than in your time, but that gold was still of value. These are gold coins, for you and our child."
His thoughtfulness, his quiet strength, filtered through to her, and by some strange kind of osmosis she became calm.
He helped her down from the carriage, and in a poignant gesture, took Paige's hand and placed it in Tahnancoa's. He saluted formally, and he smiled with easy confidence, as though he were leaving her to visit with Tahny for the day and would come and get her when evening came.
He climbed in the buggy, shook the reins, and rode off across the faint trail marked in the prairie grass. Paige watched the outline of his head and shoulders grow smaller and smaller, silhouetted against the intense blue of the morning sky.
The ceremony would be at sunset. Paige spent the day in preparation and in sleep.
She was taken to a tent where Tahnancoa helped her bathe, and then her skin was rubbed with fragrant oil. She was dressed in a loose white buckskin smock that came down to her ankles, a comfortable, soft garment, made incongruous by the worn Nikes on her feet.
Myles had knelt at her feet and laced them on that morning. "They're good luck," he'd told her. "They brought you to me, and they'll bring you safely back."
Paige was given a huge bowl of stew to eat. Then she was shown to a pile of buffalo skins and told to rest. She was far too nervous to even lie down, until Tahny gave her bitter tasting tea to drink. It must have had a narcotic in it, because Paige didn't awaken until late in the afternoon.
She felt logy and disoriented as Tahny led her and ten other women out of the village, a long, meandering, hot walk that
seemed to Paige to lead straight across a barren strip of prairie. The women chatted softly to one another.
The sun was almost setting when they reached a large, circular depression in the ground.
Lame Owl was sitting cross-legged on a blanket in the deepest section of the hollow, and she motioned to Paige to join her. An exact circle had been inscribed in the long prairie grass in an eight-foot circumference around the blanket. Inside the circle was a triangle, and a shiver of recognition skittered down Paige's spine.
It was a replica of the crop circle that had brought her here two long years before.
Awkward and heavy with her pregnancy, Paige sat beside Lame Owl, trying to find a comfortable position, the bag of gold coins heavy on her neck.
Lame Owl instructed her. "Look inside your soul and see the world you wish to enter. Make certain of the doorway, and when the time is right, go through it."
"But how will I know?" Paige felt both ridiculous and fearful, heavily pregnant, crouched like a frog inside the triangle and the circle.
Lame Owl gave her a disgusted look. “Trust your senses."
Paige reached out and gripped the old woman's sleeve. "I must know exactly what to do to come back again. You must bring me back, Lame Owl. Promise me, please."
Her face bland and impassive, the old woman gave her characteristic shrug, and Paige felt like punching her. "It is for the gods to decide who comes and goes."
"But at least tell me what to do."
Lame Owl was annoyed. "In the spring when the sun is warm again, find one of the gates and sit as you are now," she snapped. "See the time and place, make certain of the doorway."
Paige couldn't trust her. "But you'll work from this end to help me come back? Please?"
Lame Owl scowled at her. "I have given my word. I will do as I said. Be still now. Go into your mind." Lame Owl rose, moving several feet outside the circle.
The women joined hands, and Lame Owl led them in a guttural, monotonous chant.
The sun had dipped to the horizon, and it sat poised, a fiery bubble, dropping slowly into the earth.
Paige tried to do as Lame Owl had instructed, but she was uncomfortable. She closed her eyes and in her mind, she visualized the calendar she'd always kept on her desk in her office, and with a red marking pen she circled the day, the year.
Nothing happened. She was aware of the women chanting, of the choking heat of the afternoon. A slight breeze arose that only occasionally cooled the sweat on her forehead.
Time passed, and the fear slowly faded to boredom. Her bottom ached from the hard ground. How insane it had been of her and Myles, to think that superstitious natives could pull off anything like time travel.
She yawned. She'd have to send a message, have Myles come and get her.
The women's humming was both hypnotic and haunting. Her head jerked as she dozed. The baby moved languidly inside her, and she folded her hands over him and smiled to herself.
Against her closed eyelids the light became scarlet and then gold and orange. She imagined the calendar again and nodded, more than half asleep.
A hot wind blew over her, and she shivered with its searing heat and waited for it to subside. But it grew more intense, filling her ears with a whirling noise so loud it drowned out the voices of the women.
Startled, she opened her eyes and cried out. The wind swept around her, flattening the long prairie grass in its strange, circular pattern. She could see the women, but they shimmered in the wind, and she tried to call out to them, but the wind grew even stronger, snatching her voice away, whirling her into black nothingness.
A motor was running somewhere nearby.
Paige opened her eyes. She was on her back in the middle of a field. The familiar canopy of prairie sky stretched above her. She turned her head to the side and discovered tall stalks of grain surrounding the crop circle in which she lay.
The women were nowhere to be seen.
Her heart began to hammer. She struggled to sit up. The blanket was gone, but the leather bag was still around her neck. The grain immediately surrounding her was flattened in an exact, concentric pattern. She lumbered to her feet.
In a nearby field, a huge black tractor with an enclosed cab was pulling a machine that cut the tall grain in smooth, even swaths.
In the distance was a highway. Paige watched in wonder as a transport truck passed a blue car.
She could see power poles, stretching in long, unbroken lines into infinity.
"Myles." The tormented whisper died in her throat.
Myles was long ago and far away, and if she let herself think about him, she'd die from the pain.
She started walking slowly toward the tractor. She needed to find a telephone.
Now and Then: Chapter Twenty-Three
"This is a big kid you're hatching, Paige." Sam Harris had his ample backside propped against his desk where the folder with all her test results lay open, and he tapped them with a finger.
"You can read these as well as I can. Your pelvis is definitely too narrow to deliver vaginally, so we go with a c-section. And because of the first stillbirth, I've got a neonatal specialist standing by, the best guy in the city. His name's Marvin Kent. And I don't have to tell you that things have changed a hell of a lot since you had your first baby. We're gonna make sure every last bit of technology is available, should you or this bruiser of a kid need it." He winked at her. "I've got a reputation to uphold, so don't think for a minute you'll get away with anything kinky."
"Thanks, Sam. You're the best, and that sets my mind at ease." Paige shifted uncomfortably on her chair. She really was huge. She'd told herself a dozen times these past few days that it would be a great relief to have this baby, even while some other part of her held back, insisting that only as long as her son was still inside her was he safe. The ultrasound results had confirmed what she'd thought all along, that the child she carried was a boy.
I told you so, Myles Baldwin.
"So go check into Grace tonight and first thing tomorrow morning we'll do it."
“Tomorrow?" Her heart gave a jolt and began pounding hard against her ribs. "I've got a million things to do tomorrow, Sam. Why not Wednesday, or—"
He shook his head and grinned at her. "Why is it doctors are always the worst when it comes to being patients? You're so close to delivering, tomorrow's even pushing it. I oughta drive you over there this minute, never mind tomorrow." There was both affection and concern in his brown eyes, and Paige was reminded again of how much Sam reminded her of Rob Cameron. They were physically alike, but it was this warm affection that made her remember Rob when she was around Sam.
"Okay, it's a date, see you tomorrow." She heaved herself to her feet, sounding far more nonchalant than she felt.
She turned to the door, dreading the moment when she'd have to pass the office that had been hers, and which now had someone else's name on the door.
"Paige, hold it." His hand on her arm stopped her. "How about some lunch? The deli down the street still makes those great subs, and I'm famished. No breakfast because one of my moms decided to deliver twins this morning, and then I had to race over here. And don't forget, this will be your last chance for solid food until after we get your kid out. 'Nothing by mouth after five,' " he quoted in a stern voice.
"Okay, Sam. Sure." Lunch would make one less hour to stare at the television in the small apartment she'd rented. "I can't remember, does the deli have decent chairs or only those little stools? Because if it's stools…..” She patted her hips and shook her head.
Sam laughed and steered her quickly past the office that had been hers. "Chairs, guaranteed," he assured her.
The deli was crowded, but he found them a tiny table complete with the chairs he'd promised, and they ordered.
"So how're things going?" Sam took a gigantic bite from the foot long sandwich and washed it down with a gulp of coffee.
"Not bad," she lied, nibbling at her own sub even though she wasn't at all hungry. S
he hadn't been really hungry since she'd come back, in spite of the convenience foods she'd longed for in Battleford. "I've got an apartment in Kerrisdale, all my things are now out of storage, and I rented a nice little red car. I call it Minnie."
She thought of her horse and smiled wistfully.
Sam chewed and swallowed. "Your sister-in-law still driving your Sunbird?"
"Yeah." Paige didn't meet his eyes. "I told her to go on using it for a while."
She didn't tell Sam that Sharon also had most of her clothes and the few pieces of jewelry she'd owned. It had been a shock to find her sister-in-law using her things, and even more of a shock to find that her brother condoned it.
She told herself it didn't really matter. She'd be going back to Myles in the spring, wouldn't she? And she couldn't exactly take her car and a U Haul along.
"Talk to your brother much? And by the way, give me his number, I'll get in touch with him the minute the baby's out."
"No, thanks." Paige shook her head and avoided Sam's questioning blue gaze. "I'll get in touch with him later. Maybe."
He lifted an eyebrow. "I thought you and Tony were real close. What's going on?"
"We were close." Paige frowned. "At least, I thought we were. But I was gone two years. He figured for sure I was dead. It changed things." More than she'd ever imagined. "He managed all the legal stuff, cleaned out my apartment, put my things in storage, listed me as a missing person—I guess it was really tough for him, and I think he got used to the idea of me being dead," she said slowly, trying to understand it all herself. "Then when I turned up again, and tried to tell him what had happened to me, he just couldn't accept it. He treats me as though I've had a major mental breakdown, and he told me straight out he doesn't want me filling my nephews' heads with what he considers my hallucinations."
That had hurt worse than anything. "Lord, he was absolutely terrified some paper or television station would get wind of me and want an interview during those two days I spent there. He begged me not to say a word to anybody." She shoved her sandwich over toward him. "I can't eat this, Sam, you have it."
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 34
