“Don’t worry about that.” She was wearing a blue dress today, Tom noticed, and her hair was rolled into a loopy ring around her head. As usual, it wasn’t staying put, and curly bits were floating over her ears and forehead. He liked the clean, scrubbed look her face had, devoid of the makeup he was so accustomed to women wearing.
“I’m going to keep an eye on things over there,” Tom said with grim determination. “I warned that bully what would happen if he tried anything like this again.”
Zelda’s brown eyes were eloquent with gratitude. She reached out and put her hand on his bare forearm, giving it a grateful squeeze with her long, warm fingers.
Tom’s reaction to that innocent touch amazed him. Heat shot through his body, and he had the insane urge to reach out and draw her close to him, just so she’d have to touch him again.
Lord, Chapman, what the hell’s wrong with you? You been altogether too long without a woman, that’s what it is.
“Sit down. Supper’s getting cold,” Jackson ordered, and Tom drew a deep, relieved breath when Zelda moved away. He ignored the knowing wink Jackson shot him. Very little ever escaped Jackson’s lazy gaze.
Dinner was pleasant in spite of the flaming red mark that blazed like a flag on Isabella’s cheek. She was quiet and very shy, and she was good with her children, strict, but loving.
When Zelda introduced her to Tom, she looked up at him through her long lashes in the exact way her small daughter had done.
“T’ank you,” she whispered, her hazel eyes flooding with tears. “I am sorry for cause you trouble.”
Tom awkwardly patted her shoulder, again at a loss for words.
After they all finished eating, the women cleaned up. Tom and Jackson went out to the barn with Eli to feed the horses and throw grain to the chickens.
“Did you beat the living tar out of Nestor, Tom?” The moment they were alone, Eli, was full of eager questions. “Did you punch him good? He deserves it. My dad says he’s nothing but a common bully. I think my dad hit him one time, too, when he caught him punching Isabella. I went for the police so I didn’t get to see what happened, but Dad had a real sore hand for a while,” Eli said, almost bursting with pride. “My dad says Nestor Vandusen is a sorry excuse for a man.” The boy was suddenly vehement. “One of these days I’m gonna knock his lights out for him, ‘cause Isabella is a real pretty lady. It’s too damned bad she’s married to such a bastard.” His face turned magenta.
Busily forking hay for the horses, Tom and Jackson exchanged amused glances. It was obvious that Eli was doing his best to convince them he was a tough guy.
Tom explained exactly what had taken place, emphasizing there’d been no bloodshed, but repeating the dire threat he’d made. He added that the last he’d seen of him, Vandusen was scuttling off down the street.
When Eli went to bring a bucket of water for the horse trough, Tom said quietly, “We’ll need to keep a keen eye on that place tonight, Jackson, in case Vandusen comes back drunk and meaner than ever.”
“I sorta hope he does.” Jackson’s voice was grim. “If it happens, I get first licks. One thing I can’t abide, it’s a man hittin’ on a helpless female.”
A little later, Tom and Zelda escorted Isabella and the children home. Tom carried a sleepy Pearl, her tiny arms linked trustingly around his neck. They helped Isabella light lanterns and stoke fires, and while Zelda and Isabella settled the tired children in their beds, Tom went out to the woodshed behind the house and chopped kindling and carried in buckets of coal for morning. He was catching on to the system.
They lingered with Isabella as long as possible, but there was no sign of Vandusen, and at last they left.
It was very dark outside. Tom reached out and took Zelda’s hand in his as they made their way down the back path and into Ralston’s backyard. The skin on her hand was chapped, and he ran his thumb over it tenderly, feeling again the intense physical attraction she roused in him.
He opened the back porch and drew her inside. Lantern light was seeping from under the closed kitchen door, and he could hear Jackson’s deep drawl and then Eli’s voice answering from the kitchen.
She reached out to open the inner door, but Tom stopped her. Temptation overwhelmed him. He blocked her way to the door, and without a word he gathered her into his arms.
She felt both bulky and fragile, bundled as she was into her voluminous skirts and long, heavy coat. She didn’t object to his embrace, but at first she was stiff and unyielding in his arms.
He heard her breath catch in her throat. His heart was hammering.
Her hands came up and rested on his upper arms, not pushing him away, but not holding him close, either.
He brought his hand up to her face, stroking his finger across the velvety softness of her cheek, rubbing his thumb across the fullness of her lips, gentling her before he cupped her chin and tilted it up so he could bend down his head and kiss her.
It was obvious to Tom that she hadn’t been kissed often, and that realization both shocked and excited him. Not since his early teens had he kissed a woman who wasn’t knowledgeable about how to kiss back.
At first, her lips remained tightly closed, and with infinite patience, Tom coaxed them open.
She gasped again, and a convulsive shudder ran through her. Her arms slid up and around his neck, and the tip of her tongue shyly touched his, once, and then once more, confidently this time.
That single, shy contact was like gasoline poured on the fire burning within him. His arms tightened around her, drawing her closer.
Her head tilted to a better angle, and she moaned deep in her throat, inflaming him even more. He slid his mouth over her swollen lips, enthralled with the sensations she created in him. He drew her closer still, frustrated with the layers of clothing between them, aching to feel the thrust of her breasts against his chest, the hollow between her thighs pressing against his heat and hardness. Without conscious thought, he slid his arm down and cupped his hand over her buttocks, moving his legs apart to accommodate her, pulling her tight against him.
His heart slammed against his ribs. He wanted her with a suddenness and an urgency that scared the living hell out of him.
He forced himself to draw back, put distance between them, struggle to regain some semblance of control.
What in God’s name was he doing? Zelda was undoubtedly a virgin. Women weren’t sexually active in this day and age as they were in his time. He was taking advantage of her innocence, and he was a guest in her father’s house.
He had no future here. He certainly had no past. He had no job, no money, no clothing, not even a clean pair of briefs to his name.
He had no business standing in the dark, kissing her and fantasizing about pushing her up against the nearest wall, shoving those long skirts up, sliding himself into her.
But, God, he wanted to.
Oh, how he wanted to.
He drew back, putting the necessary distance between them, and it seemed one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.
A Distant Echo: Chapter Eleven
“I should go in now, Tom,” she whispered, her voice not quite steady. “Eli needs to be sent to bed and Dad will be home right away. I always make him a pot of tea and something hot to eat after his shift.”
“Yeah.” His own voice was thick, his throat tight. “Yeah, it’s getting late.”
“Tom?” Her voice was barely audible.
“I’m here, Zelda.” Control was slow in coming. Unable to help himself, he reached out and ran his hand over her hair. Most of it had tumbled down while he was holding her, and he marveled at how long and soft it was, silky to touch, alive. It clung and curled around his fingers.
“I’m pleased you kissed me, Tom.” Her words came out in a fierce low rush. She fumbled with the door, then bolted into the kitchen and on through the hall, not pausing even to take off her coat.
Jackson and Eli, sitting at the kitchen table with glasses of milk and cookies, stared first aft
er Zelda, then turned to Tom as they heard her feet pounding up the stairs. Both of them looked at him, Eli curious, Jackson speculative.
He returned their gaze and forced himself to give an expressive shrug, holding his hands out to indicate he had no idea what was with her.
“Think I’ll turn in,” he managed to say in a casual tone. “We have to be out at the construction site at six in the morning to see if we’ve got a job for the day. Night, Eli.” He turned and went back out the door, walking slowing to the barn, cursing himself for being a fool.
Kissing Zelda hadn’t been a smart thing to do. She wasn’t at all the type of woman he usually kissed, he reminded himself. He’d always made it his policy to stick to women who were as footloose and fancy-free as he was, so that when he moved on, nobody ended up hurt.
And in this instance, he definitely planned to move on, so he’d do well to stay away from Zelda Ralston and concentrate all his energies on finding a way back to his own time.
Trouble was, apart from her, everything about this place and time depressed him. The very thought of spending the rest of his life at this end of the twentieth century made suicide sound reasonable. Mind you, suicide wouldn’t be necessary if he stayed in this house for another year. The Slide would bury the building and everyone in it.
He looked up at Turtle Mountain and shuddered.
At daybreak the next morning, Tom and Jackson were hired on as laborers at the McVeigh construction camp, but only for one shift. Two of the regular workers had got in a brawl the night before, and were in no shape to do a day’s work.
It was the toughest physical labor either Jackson or Tom had done for years. Their job was to help clear away brush and timber for the laying of a branch line of the railroad to a nearby small town, and the work was both backbreaking and dirty. To make matters worse, a storm came up in the afternoon and rained pelted down, soaking them to the skin, but at the end of the day, they’d each earned $2.75.
Tom worked side by side with a young blond giant named Lars Olsen who’d emigrated from Sweden two years before. He’d only been in Frank for a few weeks, and he told Tom that although he was trying to get on at the mine to earn some money, his dream was to buy land and to farm. Las had come to Canada with very little cash and he knew exactly how to make each day’s wages stretch like good elastic.
Tom listened closely to what Lars told him, and the moment he and Jackson were paid, they raced down the muddy street to Murphy’s Ready To Wear and each bought a change of clothes. The rather baggy denim jeans Lars had recommended as cheap and good wearing cost all of eighty-five cents, underwear, twenty-five cents, and of a design that set Jackson laughing so hard the stuffy clerk took offense and almost refused to serve them further, and serviceable heavy cotton shirts for seventy-five cents.
Carrying their new clothes in a paper, string-wrapped bundle, they hurried to the washhouse at the mine that Lars had also recommended. For a euphoric half-hour and the princely sum of twenty-five cents, they soaked and scrubbed and rinsed in steaming hot water. Then, feeling almost human again, they put on their fresh, decidedly quaint, clean clothes and headed for the grocery. By pooling their remaining sixty-five cents each, they managed to buy enough food to supply themselves and the Ralstons’ with the raw ingredients for a good dinner.
“I reckon we owe we Lars a beer, if we ever manage to get enough money ahead to afford one,” Tom remarked as they walked up the street toward the Ralstons’ house. “At least we’ve got work for another day. The foreman said if we turned up sober at six tomorrow morning he’d hire us on again.”
A buggy passed them, drawn by a team of lively gray horses. A young woman in a brown coat trimmed with fur and a hat that appeared to have an entire nest of birds on its crown shot a provocative look at Jackson, and smiled coyly as she passed him.
“You ever get thinkin’ maybe we’re only dreamin’, Tom? That given enough time, we’ll just wake up in some nice motel with an X-rated movie blaring on the TV and laugh over this nightmare we both had?” Jackson’s tone was wistful. “I mean, look at this confounded place. Horses and buggies and ankle-deep mud everywhere. Women in fifteen layers of clothes. Me wearin’ underwear that would give ole Calvin Klein a coronary, workin’ my guts out just to afford a change of clothes and supper.”
“I think of it all the time. I wish to God it was only a dream. But the longer it goes on, the more I get thinking we’re stuck here, Jackson, at least for the time being. I can’t see anything for it except to bide our time and make the best of it.”
Jackson nodded. “Ask me, the best of this sorry mess we’re in is the Ralstons,” he declared. “It’s mighty good of them to take us in the way they have. I only hope we’re not puttin’ them out too much.”
Tom didn’t say so, but it had crossed his mind that after Zelda had time to think over the way he’d kissed her the night before, she might get spooked. She might give him and Jackson their walking papers. And that could be the best thing that could happen.
Besides his concern about being a burden on the family, part of him was beginning to think he’d be better off far away from Zelda Ralston and the temptation she provided.
“As soon as we can afford it, we’ll move into the rooming house Lars talked about,” he said. “There’s a waiting list, so we better get our names in fast.”
“Good idea,” Jackson agreed.
Tom thought so, too. He needed to put distance between himself and Zelda before things went any further, he knew that. The only problem was, right this minute, he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Zelda’s first waking thought that morning had been of Tom, longing to see him but dreading it as well. She felt nervous as a cat at the prospect, worried about how she’d ever be able to look him in the eye and talk normally again after that searing kiss.
She’d awakened often during the night, her mind blissfully replaying every single instant in his arms, and for once, the voice of reason that always reminded her she was being ridiculous had been strangely silent.
She washed and dressed in her usual plain white blouse and dark skirt, wishing she had a larger wardrobe, a bigger bosom, more manageable hair. But in spite of those serious drawbacks, Zelda Ralston, she told herself in the mirror, grinning like a fool, you’ve been well and truly kissed.
“You’re sure in a good mood this morning, Zel,” Eli commented as she hummed a tune and ladled out his porridge. “Is someone finally coming by for a portrait?”
Normally, the reminder that her photography business was practically nonexistent would have been enough to dampen her spirits, but today Zelda refused to be downcast. “It’s spring. It’s going to be a lovely day when the sun comes up, and I’m going to wash clothes this morning and then go outdoors and take photographs all afternoon,” she answered gaily, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Hurry up and finish your breakfast, I want you to fill the boiler on the stove for me before you leave for school.”
Eli eyed her curiously. “Boy, I never saw you in this good a mood before when you was gonna wash clothes,” he remarked. “I thought you hated washing.”
“Were going to wash clothes,” she corrected. “You must watch your grammar, Eli. You don’t want to sound like a bumpkin when you go East to university.”
He stopped shoveling porridge into his mouth and toyed with the spoon, banging it against the table and sending droplets of milk shooting everywhere. “I’m not sure I want to go to university, Zel. I don’t think I do.”
Zelda refused to let even this old, familiar argument with Eli irritate her this morning. She sipped her coffee and smiled at him. “Oh, of course you do. You certainly don’t want to end up working in the coal mines, and university is the best way to avoid that,” she reasoned.
“Dad works in the mines. He likes it fine,” Eli said in a rebellious tone. “Maybe I would, too.”
Zelda had heard her father coughing again in the night, and her ever-present uneasiness about his health surfaced. “Dad never
had the chance to go to school, you know that,” Zelda said reasonably. “He’s a naturally smart man. There’s no telling what he might have been if he’d had an education.”
“Jackson says he never went to university, either,” Eli said in a sullen tone, not meeting her eyes. “He told me Tom never did, either.”
In spite of her good intentions, Zelda’s temper was rising. “They probably never had the opportunity, and look where it got them!” she snapped. “Neither of them have a penny to their names.”
“They do, too,” Eli’s defense of his new friends was vehement. “Jackson says they have piles of money, but they can’t get at it right now. Him and Tom are adventurers. They go looking for buried treasure and pirate’s gold and everything, and they found enough of it to make them wealthy men, Jackson says.”
Zelda was shocked that Jackson Zalco would fill her brother’s head with such utter rubbish. She was going to have to have a serious talk with him. “Eli, I’m quite sure if you asked him, Jackson would also tell you that he’d much rather be a doctor or---or a lawyer, than an---an adventurer. At the moment, he’s not doing so well, is he? An adventurer must wait for opportunity, but a man with a career always has his training to fall back on in difficult circumstances.”
Eli was shaking his head. “Nope, I asked him, and he says he never wanted to be anything but what he is. He used to be a kind of soldier. That’s how he got his leg hurt, and he said that since he got out of the pile of shi---ummm, that mess, he never looked back. Him and Tom were self-made men, living the good life until they ended up here. That’s what Jackson says.”
Self-made men? Living the good life? Zelda frowned at her brother. He was picking up some of the strange terms Tom and Jackson used. And he was also picking up ideas she didn’t agree with at all, ideas that she didn’t want Eli entertaining. His future was planned, the future she wanted for him, the future they’d all saved for.
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