She smiled at that.
“And you?” he asked.
“I also am waiting for a friend to return in a month or so,” she said.
At that he smiled as well and they held each other’s gaze for a long minute saying nothing before the waiter brought more of their breakfast meals.
Brice had no idea at all what was appropriate with a woman in this time period. So he flat decided to tell her that.
“I’m not experienced at all with being alone like this around such beautiful company,” he said after they both started to eat. “So please do not hold any inappropriate comments against me.”
She laughed and seemed to relax a little. “Thank heavens,” she said. “I also have no experience at what my manners should be in this situation.”
“So maybe we should hire the waiter to give us lessons?” he said.
Thankfully, she laughed. He loved her laugh, especially when it made it to her eyes. “I think we can just enjoy the company and we’ll be fine.”
“I like the sounds of that a great deal,” he said, smiling at her.
She blushed.
He was starting to really love how easily she blushed.
So they continued to eat and make small talk and he slowly relaxed a little more.
And she seemed to relax a little as well.
As they both finished their coffee, he decided to be bold and ask if she would care to join him for lunch as well.
“I would love that,” she said.
With that she picked up her journal and stood and he stood as well.
“I will look forward to lunch, Mr. Lincoln,” she said.
“As will I,” he said, bowing slightly and smiling. “And please call me Brice.”
“Only if you call me Dixie,” she said.
“It will be my honor,” he said.
She laughed and turned and left the room and he sat back down, somehow managing to not spill the rest of his coffee on his journal.
He sat there for another half hour writing down his impressions of Dixie and wishing for the very first time for a computer to look her up and find out even more about her.
But it seemed that to learn about Dixie, he was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. He was just going to have to talk with her.
And honestly, that sounded wonderful.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
August 22nd, 1901
Dixie’s Timeline
SOMEHOW, DIXIE MANAGED to climb the six flights of stairs to her suite without stumbling. In fact, it felt more like she was floating she was so excited.
Brice Lincoln was more handsome up close than he had been across the room, if that was possible. And he seemed smart and interested in her.
She sat at the oak desk in her suite and wrote in her journal her impressions of him.
Every detail.
She could see his face clearly in her mind, again not something that usually happened with her.
After an hour, she went back to working on the math, double-checking to make sure that anything she did here would stay in this timeline. She filled two more pages of her journal with calculations before realizing that lunch was approaching quickly.
As was normal for her, she could lose vast amounts of time in math, lost in the calculations.
She used a wash cloth to freshen up, changed her dress into a lighter one more suited for the warming temperatures of the day, and then at her normal time, with her journal and pen in her hand, she started back down the stairs to have lunch.
She was mostly expecting that Brice Lincoln would not be there.
But she was so hoping he would be.
As she entered the dining room, Brice was sitting in his normal position writing in his journal.
He was slightly hunched over and seemed very intent on what he was doing. Maybe he was a novelist of some sort. She would have to ask him.
Bonnie had told her that it was normal for a woman of this time to keep a personal journal, so at least she had her cover story on what she was doing.
As she approached his table, she noticed that what he was working on was numbers.
Two steps away she froze.
Higher math.
He was working on higher math, just as she had been doing.
Math that did not exist in this time.
He looked up and slammed his journal closed, clearly stunned that she had gotten so close.
He scrambled to his feet, smiling at her and moving quickly around the table to hold the chair for her.
She barely made it to the chair and sat down.
“I hope you had a pleasant morning,” he said, going back to his chair and moving his journal out of the way. “I’m so glad you could join me for lunch.”
As he took his chair, she looked at him. Perfect teeth, just as she did. A journal just as she had. Working on higher math just as she was doing.
He was from a future, and more than likely another timeline.
Oh, shit, now what was she going to do?
He sat looking at her and as she didn’t respond his smile slowly faded until it looked forced.
“I have a question for you,” she said, her voice as controlled as she could make it.
“Anything,” he said, now looking very worried.
“What is the name of the friend you are waiting for to return?”
Brice seemed stunned by that question and sat back. Then he said, “Duster Kendal.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, shaking her head and staring at the table. “This can’t be happening.”
“I’m sorry,” Brice said, clearly surprised at her language. “I fear I am at a loss.”
She took a deep breath and looked up into the worry covering his face.
“I’m waiting for Bonnie Kendal,” she said. “I caught a glance at what you were working on.”
For a moment Brice just looked puzzled, then slowly she could see a realization come over him.
With a quick glance around to make sure no one could overhear what she was about to say, she said, “I work for Bonnie and Duster Kendal in the year 2016.”
She took her journal and opened it to some of the math calculations she had been doing this afternoon to figure out if she could stay with Brice in this time.
He glanced at her journal and his face went completely white.
Maybe even whiter than her normal skin color.
After a moment he swallowed hard and nodded. He then opened his journal and slid it toward her and there, in it, was almost the same calculations.
She could tell, at a glance, that he had been working to figure out a way to stay with her in this timeline.
“I also work for Bonnie and Duster Kendal in the year 2016,” he said. “Only clearly in a very different timeline.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said softly.
It was all she could think to say.
And Brice said nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
August 22nd, 1901
Brice’s Timeline
ANOTHER TABLE OF three men came in for lunch and sat close, so Brice and Dixie couldn’t talk much at all.
For a few minutes, Brice was happy about that. It gave him some time to get his wits about him.
In another timeline, in an infinite number of timelines, actually, Bonnie and Duster had hired Dixie instead of him to help them with the math problems concerning the lodge.
So that meant she was as smart as he was about math.
Good looking and a math brain. How was that possible?
Somehow they were going to need to figure out together how this happened. In all his work with Bonnie and Duster’s math over the last year, he had never seen anything like this being possible.
Actually, at the moment, he wasn’t even sure what “this” was. They were both from a future, but from futures in different timelines now together in just this timeline.
Across the table from him Dixie sat silently, clearly lost in her thoughts as well.
They both ate lightly, only picking at their food. Normally he enjoyed the grilled chicken and potatoes, but he only ate a little of each and sipped his iced tea.
Finally, as the lunch neared the end and it was clear that the three men close to them were not leaving anytime soon, Brice had to do something.
He took his journal and wrote in it “Lost River Suite. Sixth floor, south corner.”
He slid it open so she could see his note.
She nodded and he took the journal back and closed it.
She took another bite, then took her journal and wrote it in and slid it so he could see.
“Avalanche Creek suite. Sixth floor, north corner. Join me after lunch when the hall is clear.”
He nodded and smiled at her and for the first time during lunch she smiled back.
A few minutes later she stood and thanked Brice for a lovely lunch.
He stood and bowed to her as Duster had trained him to do.
She turned and left, moving toward the lobby and the staircase beyond.
He waited five minutes, sipping his tea, then stood and left, his journal in his hand.
He managed to walk up the six flights and since the wide, carpeted halls were empty in both directions, he knocked lightly on the suite with the brass tag Avalanche Creek on the door.
Dixie opened the door and smiled at him.
Damn he loved that smile of hers, and everything about her, even her short height.
“Mr. Lincoln,” she said, nodding and indicating that he should enter.
“Ms. Smith,” he said in return, smiling as he went past her. Her suite was almost identical to his, only with woman’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe that he could see through the bedroom door.
She closed the door and he turned to face her.
“Holy crap,” he said, “you have any idea what’s going on?”
She smiled. “We’ll figure it out. But first we need to get some basics out of the way.”
He nodded as they stood about five feet apart, staring at each other.
“My real name is Dixie Smith,” she said, “born in Phoenix, Arizona in July, 1988.”
Brice nodded and followed her lead. “My real name is Brice Lincoln, born right here in Boise, Idaho in May of 1988.”
“I have a doctorate in theoretical math from Princeton,” she said.
“I have a doctorate in theoretical math from Harvard,” he said.
“I was hired by Bonnie and Duster Kendal just over a year ago, moved to Boise to work for them, and this is my first long trip into the past.”
Brice nodded. “Same exact thing. Did they show you the lodge and the remains of Roosevelt under the lake?”
“They did,” Dixie said, smiling. “That damn road in there scared hell out of me.”
“Yeah,” Brice said, laughing, “and the one going up to the mine above Silver City was no joy ride.”
She laughed with him on that and then they both stood there smiling at each other.
Damn he found her attractive.
Beyond attractive.
“Then there is one more thing we need to get out of the way,” she said, “before we get down to the brand new math problems our presence here together has seemed to have uncovered.”
“What’s that?”
She walked forward and pulled his head down to her height and kissed him.
He was so shocked at the incredible feeling that it took him a moment to finally kiss her back.
And then, after a few minutes of kissing, he picked her up and carried her into her bedroom and quickly discovered how really impossible women’s clothing of 1901 actually was to remove.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
August 22nd, 1901
Dixie’s Timeline
AFTER A QUICK and intense session of making love (once they got her out of her clothes) they both lay on her feather bed, naked, panting in the warming afternoon heat.
His body was amazing, clearly a runner as she was, and clearly in shape. And as they made love, they fit together perfectly. Never, ever, had she felt anything like that before.
She hadn’t been a prude, but sex and relationships hadn’t really been much of her life before this.
Now she wanted to just roll back on top of him, even in the warmth, and make love to him again and again.
He was just staring at her body as well and she liked that. She hadn’t had a man do that before, just lay naked beside her and stare at her.
“You know,” he said, “you have one of the most perfect bodies I have ever seen.”
“Seen a lot of them, have you?” she asked, laughing.
“A few in real life, more on beaches, and a bunch in magazines. You outclass them all.”
She rolled over and kissed him, then said simply, “That was a sweet thing to say.”
It was. Not only was he smart and amazingly good looking with a smile that would kill, but he was sweet. There had to be something wrong with him.
“It’s the flat truth,” he said. “And for the last few days I’ve been double-checking all the math that Bonnie and Duster did to make sure that if you were from this timeline I wouldn’t cause problems doing exactly this.”
She laughed. “I was doing the same thing. Seems we now need to take that math to the next level and see what this is going to do to our original timelines.”
“Boy, do you have that one right,” he said.
“Did you have a job offer before Bonnie and Duster hired you?” Dixie asked.
“I was looking at Cal Tech,” he said. “And they seemed to be looking at me as well.”
“So was I,” she said, nodding. In fact, until Bonnie and Duster came swooping in with an insane offer of money to do research with them, she had almost said yes to the Cal Tech job.
“How much do you want to bet our alternate selves in our original timelines are teaching there?”
He shook his head. “No bet.”
“How in the world did Duster and Bonnie not see each other before they left?”
“Duster left the day I first saw you in the restaurant,” Brice said. “We had only been here two days and spent almost no time in the hotel.”
Dixie nodded. “Bonnie left two days earlier and I spent two days in this room before getting enough courage to go downstairs to eat.”
“Well, that explains some of it,” Brice said. “But you don’t think they did this on purpose, do you?”
“I don’t see how they could,” Dixie said. “But communication between timelines might be possible, I suppose.”
“Now that’s yet another math problem as well,” Brice said.
Dixie knew that their entire situation was a giant mathematical puzzle. And with luck, together, they would figure it out.
He just kept staring at her white skin, her body, while running his fingers through her long hair. She loved that he was doing that. She didn’t feel exposed at all, lying there completely naked in front of him. That was not something she had ever done with any other man in her life.
She was learning all sorts of new things about herself.
“Maybe together we can figure out why they could remember two timelines after the lodge,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But there’s one thing we have to do first.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, giving him a serious look, but hoping what he was going to suggest.
“This,” he said.
He leaned in and kissed her breast, which sent shivers through her body. He then lifted her over and on top of him.
She giggled, feeling him getting quickly aroused under her.
Thirty minutes later they both decided they needed a cold bath.
Together.
And that, of course, led to more that needed to get out of the way before they could get to work.
Plus a lot of water on the floor.
Finally, by dinner, after a short nap, they were actually ready to get to work.
And both starving and facing the r
eality of the 1901 time period once again.
How could they eat together and talk freely?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
August 22nd, 1901
Brice’s Timeline
BRICE LOVED THAT they were both still naked and lying on the big feather bed as they talked about what to do next. Figuring out dinner turned out to be more difficult than they thought. They both wanted to eat together, but not down in the hot dining room. This time of the day it would be far, far too uncomfortable to eat there.
And more than likely it would be too crowded, so they wouldn’t be able to talk freely either.
In fact, Brice had found it too hot to eat in any restaurant close by in the evening since the temperature was in the nineties each day at least.
“I have a standing dinner order,” Dixie said, “to be brought to my room at 6 p.m. I’m sure you could have an order brought to your room as well, and then we just eat in here.”
Brice climbed out of bed and got his pocket watch from his vest. It was five.
He turned back to her and flat couldn’t speak. She was just laying there, her hair spread out on the pillow, her legs slightly open, her wonderful body comfortable being completely nude in front of him.
He stammered for a moment and then said, “If you don’t cover up some, we’re not going to make dinner at all.”
She laughed and reached down and pulled a sheet up over herself.
“That better?”
“No, not hardly,” he said. “But at least I can think a little.”
She waved the sheet, flashing him, then laughed and pointed to him.
“That naked body of yours isn’t helping the situation either.”
“Sorry,” he said and grabbed his cowboy hat and put it over his crotch. “That better?”
She laughed that wonderful laugh of hers and then said, “Dinner. That’s the topic.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, forcing his mind back on food instead of climbing back in with that wonderful woman naked in bed. “I’ll get dressed and go down and order something to be brought to my room also at 6 p.m. that I can carry easily.”
“Did you bring running shorts, or boxer shorts with you?” she asked.
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