It's About Time

by Charlotte Douglas

  She tried to calm her whirling thoughts. Had she dreamed his appearance? The maids must have removed the bloodstained facecloth, but on the desk beside the telephone, she found his checkbook. Rand had been in her room, all right, but now he’d disappeared.

  Had the time warp that brought him winked again and carried him away? She shuddered at the thought. Would she have been whisked away with him if she’d been in the suite at the time?

  Horror over her near-catastrophe turned her insides to ice, chilling her until she couldn’t think straight, while outside, the blazing Florida sun drove the temperature upward.

  She stripped off her clothing and pulled on her swimsuit and cover-up, anxious to escape the strange atmosphere of the hotel room and thaw her numbed brain so she could figure out what to do next. She grabbed the bestseller from her night table and fled downstairs.

  Choosing a spot unshaded by palms and flowering trees near the pool, she stretched out on a lounge chair. As the sun baked the chill from her body, she thought of Randolph Trent, hoping he’d made his way safely back to 1897, trying to deny her disappointment at not saying goodbye.

  Wherever he was, he was in control. From the moment she’d encountered him in her dream, she’d recognized him as a man to be reckoned with. A man like her father.

  Thornton Caswell had been a take-charge person who’d run his medical practice with an iron fist. His no-nonsense approach had inspired confidence in patients about to undergo his surgery, but that same attitude had encouraged her mother to rely on him for everything, leaving her helpless after his heart attack.

  Tory had stepped in to handle insurance agents, attorneys and accountants, while her mother had turned her face to the wall and died from grief.

  She sighed. As attractive as Rand was, he’d been too much like her father. Just as well he’d gone back where he belonged. He had no future with her.

  But the threat of unstable time in Room 131 remained. According to Emma, the hotel was booked solid, so obtaining a room change seemed unlikely.

  Slowly the sun drew the tension from her muscles and relaxed her with its warmth. As she plopped over on her stomach to allow her back to tan, she considered returning to dismal, gray Atlanta. But the account for Benson, Jurgen and Ives lay waiting for her, square in the middle of her desk, and she still hadn’t a single idea for a promotional campaign for the premier Southern investment firm.

  What she needed was more time in the sun to recharge her creative batteries. She’d leave the Bellevue that afternoon and head across the state to Daytona. Two weeks on the beach should banish all memories of Randolph Trent.

  * * *

  TINGED WITH SUNBURN and sated by a sinful cheeseburger at the poolside grill, Tory returned to her room to pack, anxious to leave Room 131 behind for good.

  When she unlocked the door, Randolph Trent greeted her from the sofa, where he relaxed with his boots crossed before him on the coffee table.

  “Enjoy your swim?” His eyes widened as he surveyed her from head to toe.

  Conflicting emotions vied to control her. Anger won. “I’d thought you’d gone for good. Where have you been?”

  A slow, easy grin, the look of a man well pleased with himself, lifted the handsome contours of his face. “Liquidating my assets. I’ll need your help in cashing this.”

  He waved a piece of paper toward her. She snatched it angrily, provoked by the worry he’d caused her and resentful of the warm coil of pleasure spreading deep within her, triggered by his reappearance.

  “My God, what have you done?” she gasped. The sight of the cashier’s check for one hundred thousand dollars had driven the air from her lungs.

  His grin broadened as he watched her reaction. “I needed money for clothes and other necessities.”

  “But how—”

  “Making money is my business. Obtaining funds in an unknown environment proved challenging but not impossible.”

  Handling the check as if expecting it to bite her, she placed it gingerly on the coffee table and sat down across from him. “A hundred thousand dollars in a few hours? You must have used magic.”

  “No magic.”

  “You didn’t rob—”

  “Nothing illegal.”

  “Then how?”

  “A resort like this one always has a most accommodating concierge.”

  She stared at him. “Not accommodating enough to lend you a hundred thousand dollars.”

  He shook his head. “I asked the concierge for the name of a bookstore and reputable coin shop, then requested he call me a cab.”

  He stretched lazily, lacing his fingers in the air before placing them behind his head, making his muscles ripple beneath his jacket.

  She pulled her gaze from his handsome frame to the check. “Books and coins? You’ve lost me again.”

  “The cab drove me to a stationer’s, where I located a book on the latest coin values. After I gathered the information I needed, the cab, which I’d asked to wait, then drove me to a large coin and jewelry shop not far from here, where I sold the contents of my pockets—including several now antique coins in both silver and gold, and my grandfather’s gold pocket watch with an extremely rare seventeenth-century gold piece embedded in the fob.”

  “A few coins and a watch were worth that much?”

  “The total was a few hundred more, actually, but I requested the difference in cash. I needed money to pay the taxi—and tip the concierge.” He spoke in a reasonable tone, as if acquiring a hundred thousand dollars was an ordinary occurrence.

  She studied him between narrowed lids. A man to be reckoned with, all right. She’d felt sorry for him earlier, a helpless traveler from the past. Yet he hadn’t been there an entire day and already had accumulated a small fortune. What could he accomplish in a week?

  Her name jumped out at her from the check on the table. “Why is the check made out to me?”

  He shook his head. “You haven’t thought this through. The shop didn’t have that much cash on hand, so I had to take a check.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “How could I, with no identification in the present, convert such a large check to cash? You have the necessary credentials, hence the check in your name.”

  She sighed. He’d thought of everything. “Now that you have the money, what do you plan to do with it?”

  He glanced at his suit and smoothed the wrinkles in his sleeve. “As soon as I find a suitable haberdashery, I’ll shop for clothes appropriate to the present.”

  Like a flashbulb exploding in her brain, she pictured Rand, wearing his Edwardian suit, seated behind an antique desk, looking directly into the camera with his piercing gray eyes, spouting lines like, “Making money is what I do. I won’t apologize for it.”

  The entire Benson, Jurgen and Ives campaign began to unfold in sequence in her imagination. If Rand was stuck in her time, she could at least give him a job—and provide her firm with the most compelling advertising model since the Marlboro Man.

  A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Rand, I think it’s time I introduce you to the shopping mall.”

  Chapter Four

  After changing her swimsuit for casual clothes and loafers, Tory gathered up her handbag and car keys. Rand sat in front of the television, mesmerized by a soap opera.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  He dragged his attention from the writhing couple on the screen. “We’ll have to cash my check before I can make any purchases.”

  “No problem. There are banks all over. I’ll stop at the nearest drive-through on our way to the mall.”

  He stared at her as if she was speaking Swahili. Incomprehension clouded the brilliance of his eyes. “Drive-through?”

  “You’ll see.” She jingled her car keys at him. “We practically live in our cars. They’re so important to our lives that our last war was fought over oil.”

  “Last? Have there been many?” Curiosity colored his words as he accomp
anied her down the long corridor toward the main lobby.

  She counted on her fingers. “Since your time, there’s been the Spanish-American, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. That’s only the ones America’s been in on.”

  “Six wars in a century? God, we’re a bloodthirsty people.”

  The revulsion in his voice gave her goose bumps. Humans did have a penchant for violence. So why was she going off alone with one she knew absolutely nothing about?

  She cast a surreptitious glance at the man beside her, searching his chiseled profile for sinister signs. She found none, but what she observed was disturbing. The rugged beauty of the sharp planes of his jaw and cheekbones created an irresistible desire in her to trace their contours with her fingertips.

  The doorman’s greeting as he pulled open the massive doors with their antique beveled glass saved her from succumbing to the urge to touch the man beside her.

  She halted on the veranda and drew in a deep gulp of air redolent with the tang of salt, clearing her head of fantasies. Rand Trent seemed like a nice guy. She’d help him shop and acclimate himself to the 1990s. She’d even try to sign him on as a model for her ad campaign. But she had no place in her personal life for a man with the looks of Adonis and the heart of Midas.

  He stood beside her on the hotel’s veranda, looking past its wicker furniture and gingerbread trim to the wall of high-rise condominiums that stood between them and the water, and shook his head sadly.

  “They’ve ruined the landscape. Yesterday I stood in this same spot and had an unobstructed view of the islands and the gulf.”

  She grimaced. “We call it progress.”

  They descended the broad, carpeted stairs, crossed the driveway that ran beneath the portico and skirted beds of brightly colored petunias before reaching her new silver gray Toyota.

  Recalling the pictures in the hotel’s historical exhibit of men in stuffy clothes and women in long-skirted, high-necked dresses taking tea on the veranda, she giggled at the expression on Rand’s face as a couple, carrying beach towels and dressed only in brief swimsuits, climbed into a red convertible in the parking lot.

  “Progress?” He grinned at her with a devilish look.

  She smiled and shook her head. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  She unlocked her car and demonstrated the seat belt to Rand, leaning across him to fasten the clasp. The nearness of him rattled her usual calm. Abruptly, she started the engine and pulled off down the broad driveway lined with towering palms and through the wrought iron entrance gates, leaving a cloud of sandy dust behind her.

  In the intimacy of the car’s close quarters, she struggled to keep her mind on traffic. The recirculating air of the car’s cooling system filled her nostrils with the scent of leather, sunshine and sandalwood, a pervasive reminder of the man at her side.

  As they drove through the city, heading for the highway that would take them north to the shopping mall she and Jill had discovered on previous visits, Rand’s head snapped from side to side, taking in the tall office buildings with glass sides that reflected the Florida sky, the multiple lanes of traffic, the montage of restaurants, hotels, car lots, blinking traffic lights and strip malls.

  “Only yesterday this was a small fishing village with dirt streets,” he said.

  “Now you have traffic gridlock and almost a million people.” She tried to imagine what her passenger was experiencing, but the concept escaped her.

  He twisted his neck, looking upward as they passed a bungee-jump crane amidst a group of carnival rides. “What’s that?”

  “People ride to the top of the crane, attach elastic ropes called bungee cords to their ankles and dive off.”

  “On purpose?” His voice reeked with skepticism.

  She laughed. “For fun.”

  “Suicide—for fun?”

  “They don’t hit the ground. The bungee cord yanks them upward at the last minute. Most of the time.”

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  “Remind me sometime to tell you about skydiving.”

  Reluctantly she pulled her gaze away from eyes like mountain mist back to the six-lane, traffic-clogged road, glad her sunglasses hid her eyes, afraid her interest might shine too visibly there.

  A red and blue sign indicated the bank she’d been searching for, and she pulled into the drive-through lane.

  “How much of this do you want in cash?” She endorsed his check with her name and account number.

  “I don’t know what things cost in your time,” he admitted. “Will ten thousand buy what I need?”

  She quashed a grin. “I think you can squeeze by on that. But what will you do with the rest?”

  “Deposit it in your account.”

  “You’re taking quite a chance, aren’t you? I could skip back to Atlanta with your ninety thousand and leave you penniless.” She searched his face, wondering at his motive. He may have been an astute businessman in his own time, but with such a trusting attitude he’d never survive the dog-eat-dog world of the present.

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  The warmth of his tone brought a flush to her cheeks. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you’re different from any woman I’ve ever met. I trust you.”

  “Ouch,” she joked, uneasy with his compliment. “That doesn’t say much for the women of the 1890s.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He thought of Selena and her fascination with his money and the power that accompanied it. The difference between Selena and Victoria Caswell was as wide as a hundred years.

  He studied the woman beside him, remembering the long, slender legs and bare midriff exposed by her bathing costume when she’d returned to her suite earlier. Her trim waist above gently swelling hips was a real waist, not one artificially nipped in by torturous corsets. He pulled his gaze away and attempted to concentrate on the gaily lighted signs that lined the highway. He couldn’t afford to fall in love. Selena had proved it wasn’t profitable.

  * * *

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Tory massaged an aching foot as she sat at a table in the food court, watching Rand make the circuit. He’d begun with a gyro, Greek salad and a slice of pizza, while she ate frozen yogurt. Then he’d consumed a bear claw, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies and a large Coke. The man ate as if he had hollow legs.

  And what legs. The trim jeans they’d purchased for him to wear while they shopped revealed the powerful muscles of his thighs and sat snugly on lean hips below his narrow waist. A striped rugby shirt hugged the contours of his muscular chest, and a London Fog windbreaker and deck shoes completed his transformation to modern fashion. Except for his astonishing good looks, he blended in perfectly with the afternoon crowd at the mall.

  He settled at the table across from her, finishing the last of the cookies. “Is that all you’re eating?”

  “Some of us have to watch our weight.” She could hate him if he hadn’t been enjoying himself so conspicuously.

  His gaze raked her body with an assessing eye. “You don’t seem to have a problem.”

  “And I intend to keep it that way.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’m taking you to dinner tonight to repay you for the trouble I’ve been, and I expect you to make the most of it. I understand the hotel chef is one of the world’s finest.”

  He reminded her of her father, expecting others to jump when he snapped his fingers. “How do you know about the chef?”

  “Emma told me.”

  “Ah, the ubiquitous Emma. My life was calm and ordinary until she appeared. Since then I’ve encountered a ghost and a time traveler. Who knows what’s next?”

  He wiped his lips with a paper napkin, pushed back from the table and stood. “Do I have everything I need?”

  She surveyed the mountain of packages and shopping bags that surrounded them. “Cords, more jeans, sports shirts, running shoes, dress slacks and jacket, a suit, shirts, shoes, silk ties, underwear, pajamas an
d robe, shaving kit, toiletries—what else is there?”

  “We can always come back tomorrow.” He began gathering up packages and piling them into her arms. “Now there’s one very important errand to run before we return to the hotel.”

  She peered at him between the bags that blocked her vision. “I’ll be lucky to make it as far as the car.”

  He relieved her of the packages that obscured her eyes, stuffing them beneath his arm before picking up a trio of shopping bags in each hand. “The next stop won’t take long. I want to borrow some books on time travel from the local library.”

  She waited until they’d loaded their packages in the trunk and headed toward the hotel before confronting him. “The only books you’ll find on time travel are in the fiction section. I told you, it isn’t possible.”

  He turned halfway toward her before his seat belt restrained him. “I’m here, so it has to be possible. And the library should have the names of the leading authorities in the study of time. I’ll contact them all if I have to, to find out how to return.”

  She admired his persistence but knew it wouldn’t get him what he wanted. She removed one hand from the wheel and laid it on his knee in a consoling gesture. “Things aren’t so bad in the 1990s. Maybe you’d better get used to them. I think you’re going to be here a while.”

  “Not if I have any say in the matter. If there was a way to get here, there has to be a method to go back.”

  She jerked her hand away and struck the steering wheel. “Dammit, this isn’t one of your financial deals you can force by the strength of your will. You’d better expend your efforts on finding a place to live and earning a living. You can stay with me for now, but in less than two weeks I’ll be going home. Then what will you do?”

  The line of his jaw hardened as if sheathed in steel. “If you don’t want to drive me to the library, you can let me out here and I’ll call a taxi.”

  She breathed deeply to control her anger, gripping the wheel as if throttling his neck. Rand Trent was without a doubt the most pigheaded man she’d ever met.