It's About Time

by Charlotte Douglas

  “No!” Tory’s scream ripped the heavens, scattering the seabirds from the shore and attracting the guests on the veranda. “She can’t die! I won’t let her!”

  Dropping to her knees, she rolled Angelina onto her stomach and pumped on her back, forcing water from her lungs. While Rand watched, she turned the girl over, tipped back her head and pinched her nostrils. Using every CPR skill her doctor father had taught her, she breathed into the clammy mouth, then pressed with the heel of her hand against Angelina’s breastbone.

  “She’d dead, I tell you.” Rand gripped her shoulder. “Let her go.”

  Tory shook her head, not breaking her count to speak. Again and again, she breathed into Angelina and compressed her chest. Suddenly the pale lids fluttered. Angelina coughed up water.

  “Go for a doctor,” Tory told him. “I think she’s going to make it.”

  For a split second, he stared at her, incredulous, then turned on his bare heel and raced up the pier toward the hotel, battling his way through the approaching throng of people.

  Angelina’s head lolled weakly on Tory’s arm, and the girl’s pale blue eyes attempted a smile.

  “Thank you,” she whispered weakly.

  Tory smiled. “Everything is going to be all right now.”

  Jason Phiswick shoved his way through the crowd on the pier and gathered Angelina in his arms. She lay against his shoulder, pale and smiling.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Boating accident. Rand went for the doctor,” Tory said, “but I think she’s going to be fine.”

  The fierce look of love he gave Angelina left Tory no doubt that for those two, at least, love would conquer all.

  As she watched Jason ascend the steep bluff, carrying Angelina, a hand grabbed her wrist. She turned to find Emma standing beside her.

  “No time to waste,” the woman said. “Come with me.”

  “What—”

  But Emma jerked her off her feet before she could finish her sentence, and Tory found herself trotting behind Emma up the bluff.

  “What’s wrong?” Tory asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Emma huffed. “You and Mr. Trent did a splendid job. I can’t thank you enough for saving that poor girl from an eternity of torment.”

  “She’ll be okay?”

  “She and Jason will live a long and happy life. You can meet their great-grandchildren someday,” Emma replied in a breathless voice.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “No time to explain.” Emma yanked her up the veranda steps, into the hotel corridor and through the door of Rand’s room.

  “It’s time,” Emma said, adjusting her bonnet and straightening her bodice.

  “Time?” Tory’s mouth went dry. She knew what Emma meant, but she didn’t want to face it. In her frantic efforts to save Angelina, she’d forgotten about her agreement with Emma—that she’d return to her own time if Angelina lived.

  “But Rand—”

  “He’s gone for the doctor. He won’t be back for hours.” Emma folded her hands at her waist, smiling happily at Tory’s distress. Tory would have hit her if she’d thought it would help.

  Emma pointed to the wall behind her, and when Tory turned, the solid structure dissolved and her own hotel room appeared behind it.

  When the time portal opened, Tory thought of Rand, of never seeing him again. Emma grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the opening.

  “Wait,” Tory pleaded, “I’ve changed my mind—”

  But Emma’s strong hands shoved her through the portal.

  “Bon voyage,” Emma’s cheery voice called as the opening closed behind her.

  Tory stumbled and fell, landing in a heap of black bombazine and petticoats on the floor of the closet. She clambered to her feet and beat upon the closet wall until her hands bled, but the structure held firm. Then she slumped to the floor once more, drowning in her own tears.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rand crashed into Tory’s suite, throwing open the door with such force it banged against the wall.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  Emma, seated at the table in the bay window, put down her teacup and daintily patted her lips with a damask napkin.

  “Gone.”

  The awful finality of the word squeezed the remaining air from his lungs, and he grasped the doorjamb for support. “Gone where?”

  She nodded toward the chair across from her. “Come and sit. I’ll fix you a drink.”

  Like a sleepwalker, he stumbled across the room, collapsed into the chair and accepted the drink she poured from a crystal decanter. But his physical exhaustion provided no protection from the pain. He gulped the brandy, choked on the fiery liquid, then slammed his glass onto the tabletop.

  Reining in his anger at the woman before him, he asked again, hoping his instincts were wrong. “Where is Victoria?”

  “Where she belongs.” Emma sipped her tea and studied him over the rim of her china cup. “You both did as I asked, so I fulfilled my promise and returned her to her own time.”

  He propped his elbows on his knees and supported his heavy head in his hands. After his swim to save Angelina, he’d ridden hell-for-leather into Clearwater Harbor for the doctor, then hurried back as quickly as he could. Now the ache in his heart drove all other sensations from his weary body.

  “I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, to tell her I love her one last time.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I planned it that way. It would have been too distressing, otherwise.”

  Rage flared through his pain. “This is your fault. If you’d done your job in the first place, Angelina would have been safe, and you wouldn’t have dragged us into this mess.”

  “And you would never have known Victoria Caswell.” Emma filled her cup. “Tell me, Mr. Trent. Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”

  He glared at her, wishing looks could kill. “Why have you done this to me?”

  She reached across the table, picked up a folded newspaper and handed it to him. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s time we had a talk about your future.”

  He raised his arm to shove the paper away, but catching the sight of the date on the masthead, he grabbed it from her hands. “January 25, 1930? What is this?”

  Emma clasped her hands in her lap. “It’s your hometown paper. I suggest you read it, particularly the obituaries.”

  “The obituaries?”

  “Death notices.”

  “I know what they are,” he snarled. “But what interest are they to me?”

  She nodded toward the paper crumpled in his fist. “You’ll find a very familiar name in that paper.”

  With a vicious snap, he opened the paper and smoothed the page. A bold, black headline jumped out at him: Chicago Financier Dies Penniless.

  The blood drained from his face when his own name leapt out from the black-bordered box of print.

  “The body of Randolph Cyrus Trent was discovered in a cold-water flat on Chicago’s west side. Death, which occurred over a week ago, was from natural causes,” he read aloud.

  “Tsk, tsk, so sad,” she murmured.

  Wadding the paper into a ball, he threw it across the table at her. “This was your doing! My life would have turned out fine if you hadn’t introduced me to Victoria, then spirited her away. Losing her means losing everything.”

  Dropping two lumps of sugar into her tea, the little woman shook her head. “You have it all wrong, Mr. Trent. That newspaper is from your original future, before you ever knew Victoria Caswell existed.”

  “But it says I died penniless with no family, no friends. How could that happen?”

  She poured him another brandy. “The stock market crashed—will crash in 1929.”

  “Crashed?” He stared at her with glazed eyes. Everything was happening too fast. First Victoria gone, Wall Street doomed to chaos and now his miserable demise forecast.

  Emma nodded. “That crash
ushers in the biggest economic depression in this nation’s history. You won’t be the only one to lose everything. And when you lose your money, your so-called friends will desert you.”

  “Phiswick? Fairchild, too?” He shouldn’t have felt so horrified. He’d always considered them as business acquaintances, not friends. Victoria had been the only real friend he’d ever had.

  Emma stood and placed her small hand on his bent head. “I’m sorry, my boy. What the newspaper article doesn’t say, thanks to a kindly reporter, is that you took your own life. Turned on the gas jets when you couldn’t take the failure or the loneliness anymore.”

  His head snapped up. “Suicide? That’s the coward’s way out.”

  “You had nothing more to live for, I’m afraid,” she said softly.

  “I won’t accept that as my future.” He raked his fingers through his hair and glared at her. “You said that paper tells my fate before I met Victoria. Well, I’ve met her now, and, by God, if necessary I’ll move heaven, earth, and time itself to get her back.”

  * * *

  TORY SHIFTED her weight, banging her elbow on the floor. The pain brought her fully awake. Sunlight streamed through the open blinds of the suite, and she climbed stiffly to her feet. She had fallen asleep on the closet floor, but how long she’d been there, she could only guess. The traitorous Emma had thoroughly scrambled Tory’s sense of time.

  She rang the front desk. “What day is it?”

  “Sunday,” the clerk said, “and I have several messages for you, Miss Caswell.”

  Halfheartedly, she scribbled notes to call Jill and Kristin, then stripped off her clothes and boots and turned on the shower.

  Streaming water mixed with her tears and she soaked away the stiffness in her muscles. God knew if the pain in her heart would ever go away. Rand was gone—forever, dead now for years. She could call the Chicago library and ask about his life and death, but did she really want to know if he’d ever married, had a family, or when he died?

  When she opened the closet to dress, his clothes hung next to hers. She buried her face in them, inhaling the scent of him that lingered there, piercing her with the memories it evoked. The strength of her love and the depth of her loss had the weight of a century behind them.

  She had to get out of the room before she suffocated from grief. After tugging on denim shorts and a University of Georgia sweatshirt, she laced her running shoes. A pain in her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, but eating was impossible with the knot of misery blocking her throat.

  Sunday morning quiet reigned in the hotel corridor as she sprinted toward the main lobby and out into the sunshine. But the air was different. Layers of haze and pollution hung over the bay—what little of it she could see past the high-rise condominiums. And the pier, where only yesterday she’d breathed life back into Angelina, no longer existed.

  Angelina. At least some good had resulted from her misery. Angelina had lived. She wondered if her child had been a boy or a girl? But that child was probably long dead now, too.

  Studying the terrain around her, she tried to coordinate her bearings with what they’d been a hundred years before. If she headed south along the bay front, maybe she could pick up the riding trail she and Rand had taken.

  She started off, pounding the golf cart track with long strides, hoping if she ran fast enough she could elude the hurt, the emptiness. If nothing else, maybe when she hit a runner’s high, she’d ease the pain. Avoiding the early morning golfers, she ran on, not knowing or caring where she headed.

  But she couldn’t outrun her memories. Rand in her arms, her body joined with his, the one last fleeting look of love he’d given her before he raced away to fetch a doctor for Angelina. When the time portal opened again, she’d told Emma she’d changed her mind. Would she have really stayed if she’d had time to consider? Yes, her heart screamed. What good was her life without Rand? Her work couldn’t fill that void, couldn’t warm her at night, give her children, keep her company in her old age.

  When she reached the southern edge of the golf course, she continued onto Bayview Drive, which curved along the waterfront. To her left, luxurious houses enjoyed the water view. On her right, a broad parkway extended from the road to the water.

  Money Man, Money Man, Money Man. The phrase pounded in her brain in rhythm with her feet against the asphalt. She’d call Kristin and cancel the Money Man campaign. They’d have to come up with a new idea for Benson, Jurgen and Ives. She hadn’t the heart to go forward without Rand.

  A sudden cramp in her side made her stop, doubling over to catch her breath. When she lifted her head, the familiarity of her surrounding struck her. The oak grove where she and Rand had made love stretched before her, not nearly as thick and wild as before, but still somehow the same. Hurrying beneath the trees, she realized this place had been her destination all along. The remaining trees were larger, but after a few minutes of study, she located the clearing where they’d shared their picnic and spent the afternoon in each other’s arms.

  And there on the tree before her was Rand’s valentine, blurred by a century of growth, but clearly legible nonetheless—Rand loves Victoria—for all time.

  She embraced the massive oaken trunk and laid her face against the carving in the rough bark. Her tears returned, shaking her body with their intensity.

  “Oh, Rand,” she cried, “I would have stayed. If only I’d had a few more minutes to think, I would never have left you.”

  “Victoria.”

  The wind sighed her name in his voice and her tears surged stronger. The bark scratched her cheek.

  “Victoria,” the wind repeated.

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  She started and turned. Rand stood before her, dressed in a collarless white shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots. Was she dreaming again?

  When he lifted her chin and brushed away her tears, the heat of his skin against hers convinced her he was flesh and blood.

  “I, too, had second thoughts.” He drew her into his arms and kissed her remaining tears away.

  She pulled away, searching his face. “What made you change your mind?”

  “I missed country music and junk food,” he confessed with a laugh.

  But when he kissed her again, she had no doubt he missed her most of all.

  When she finally came up for breath, she clasped his face in her hands, vowing never again to let him go.

  “But how did you get here?” she asked. “And when are we?”

  Had Emma returned her to 1897? She looked toward the barrier islands where resorts and hotels punctuated the skyline. He’d come to her time.

  “You’re here in the twentieth century,” she said with amazement.

  He laughed at the wonder in her feathery voice. “For all time,” he promised before kissing her again.

  Another musical laugh floated through the oak grove. He raised his head to see Emma, in a tourist’s attire of a flowered cotton shift, sandals and a wide-brimmed sun hat, sitting on a bench beneath the oaks, knitting.

  “I’m glad you approve, m’dears,” she called to them.

  “But how?” Tory asked again. “You said you had only one access left to the time portal, and you used that to return me here.”

  Emma counted stitches on the tiny garment she was knitting, then raised her head and beamed at them.

  “What’s the fun of being a fairy godmother if one can’t bend the rules now and then?”

  Epilogue

  Tory spread the last of the white frosting on the birthday cake as “Oprah’s” theme music floated from the television on the kitchen counter. Wiping her hands on a towel, she focused her attention on the upcoming commercial.

  Against a background of Scott Joplin’s music, Rand, dressed much as he’d been the morning he first appeared in her bed, sat behind a huge mahogany desk in a Victorian office.

  “Making money is what I do.” His piercing pewter eyes stared into the camera. “I don�
��t apologize for it.”

  The scene dissolved to a modern high-rise office with the Atlanta skyline visible through the glass walls behind him. Rand, wearing an Armani suit the color of his eyes, sat on the edge of a chrome and marble desk, repeating his motto.

  The camera moved in for a close-up. “If you want to make money, too, consult Benson, Jurgen, Ives and Trent, the investment firm with over a hundred years of experience providing sound advice for its clients.”

  “Yes!” She pumped her right arm in a victory signal as her eyes teared with pride. In less than two years, Rand had parlayed the remaining money from the sale of his grandfather’s watch and coin into a fortune and a partnership with Benson, Jurgen and Ives.

  Reviving the Money Man campaign had been his idea—the first big account she’d created since the birth of their daughter, Stephanie. And, trusting her instincts, he’d insisted on performing in the commercials himself.

  Steph’s laughter rang out in the family room, where she played with her aunt Jill, Uncle Rod and cousin Andy, here from Australia to celebrate her first birthday.

  As Tory seated the large pink numeral amidst the pink roses on the cake, the roar of a giant Harley crescendoed down the driveway. From the kitchen window, she watched Rand park his monster machine in the garage.

  In the mudroom, he handed her a plastic bag, shucked off his leather jacket and gloves, then pulled her into his arms.

  After a few breathless moments, she pulled away, holding up the sack. “You’re melting the ice cream.”

  His grin, even after almost two years of marriage, still made her stomach flip-flop with desire. “That’s because you’re a hot little number, Mrs. Trent.”

  She laughed and put the ice cream in the freezer. “Is that any way for a gentleman to talk? The only hot number is the one you’ll soon light on your daughter’s birthday cake.”

  Pulling her against him, he nibbled her ear. “I’m not feeling very gentlemanly right now.”

  Tory turned in his arms and read the desire in his eyes. “Then I’m afraid you’d better take a cold shower, because it’s time for Stephanie’s party.”