Oh, if only…
She looked wistfully at the painting on the wall beside her bed. Zachariah Bolton. His soft sable hair fell across his forehead, his brown eyes gleamed. The narrow black tie hung in two thin ribbons, and his vest was unbuttoned. The top of a gold watch peeked up from a small pocket.
The boy’s resemblance to her own son struck her again, and she figured that might be a lot of the reason she liked the piece so much. The two sat very close to one another, at a wooden table with an oil lamp at either end. Each intent on his own work, but still, somehow, aware of the other. You could almost feel the love between them. Father and son, she’d have known that even without Quigly O’Donnell’s narration. A father whose work meant the world to him, she thought, but who had never once allowed that work to come before his son.
If only Cody could have a father like that one.
Jane sighed, and relaxed deeper into her pillows. It was no use dreaming. She’d never find a man with those century-old values in the nineties. Not even in this nostalgic town. And she wouldn’t settle for less. She didn’t want another man whose career meant more to him than his own child. And she didn’t want an ambitionless bum, or an immature, irresponsible overgrown kid, either.
She wanted…
Her gaze wandered back to the man in the painting. His full lips were parted just slightly, his strong jawline was taut, as if he were grating his teeth, and he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the little boy. The passion in his eyes was for his work. But it was intense enough to make her wonder if it had ever been there for a woman. His wife, the boy’s mother, perhaps?
She smiled and shook her head. She was gifting the mysterious inventor with qualities he’d probably never had. The day after she and Cody moved in, Jane had made a trip to the Rockwell Public Library and borrowed several books on the town’s history. The chapters on Bolton all read much the same. He’d been a notorious womanizer. The Don Juan of the nineteenth century, one author had dubbed him. None had mentioned his wife. Poor, long-suffering woman.
And yet that passion in the eyes of the inventor called to her.
Oh, but all this speculation was silly. The man was no longer living. And that probably wasn’t passion at all in his eyes, but perhaps the beginnings of insanity. Once a man considered to be a genius, and far ahead of his time, Bolton had, the books claimed, crossed that fine line between brilliance and insanity. And from what she’d read, Jane thought the madness had begun to take over long before the death of his precious son. Two accounts said that Bolton had claimed he’d discovered a way to travel through time. He’d been ridiculed for that claim, and soon after he’d refused to discuss it. Some said it was that ridicule that had sent him into seclusion, as much as the loss of his son. Whatever the reason, he’d dropped out of sight in 1890-something, never to be heard from again.
A shame. A crying shame.
“Mom! Mom, hurry!”
The alarm in Cody’s voice pierced straight through every thought, to her very soul. Something was wrong. She jumped out of bed and ran into the hall, down it, and her heart was in her throat even before she exploded through his bedroom door and froze in place.
The moonlight spilled through the window and bathed the two forms in its pale, liquid glow. A rumpled, tousled man knelt on the floor, holding her son in his arms, so tightly she wondered if Cody could breathe. The man’s back was toward Jane, and his shoulders shuddered and convulsed as if he were sobbing. Cody stared at her from the darkness, wide-eyed, as the man rocked him back and forth.
“My son,” he kept whispering, his voice raw and coarse. “My boy, my son. Thank God…”
Jane’s heart seemed to grind to a halt. Without a second’s hesitation, she stepped into the room, snatched the baseball bat from where it leaned in the corner, lifted it and moved forward.
“Mom, no!”
Cody’s shout made the lunatic who held him pause and stiffen, as if just realizing someone else had come into the room. And Jane hesitated. Instead of bringing the bat crashing down on his head, she just held it there, ready, poised. Her throat was so dry that the words sounded raspy and harsh when she said, “Let him go. Let him go, right now, or I swear…”
And he turned very slowly, still hugging Cody tight, to face her. The movement bringing him out of the light, so that his face was in shadow. His brows drew together, and he seemed puzzled. Confused.
“Please,” Jane said, and her voice wasn’t quite as demanding or as confident this time. Her hands shook, and her grip on the baseball bat was none too steady. “Please, take whatever you want. Just don’t hurt my son.”
“Hurt him?” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Tormented, pain-filled, and weak. “No, I could never… I love him. He’s my son, my Benjamin, my…” Blinking as if to clear his eyes, he turned to stare at Cody’s small, frightened face.
Jane lowered the bat, reached out a hand, flicked on the light switch. She saw the man jerk in shock, saw the fearful glance he sent up at the light fixture on the ceiling above him. Then his gaze returned to the top of Cody’s head, because he held him too closely to see much else.
“He’s my son,” Jane said, calmly, gently, and her eyes were fixed to Cody’s. The man was obviously insane. “His name is not Benjamin, it’s Cody. He’s my son. Please…”
The man gave his head a shake. With deliberate tenderness, he clasped Cody’s small shoulders and moved the boy away from him, just a bit. Enough so that he could stare down into Cody’s face.
“You’re…you’re not Benjamin….” he whispered, and the pain in his voice had tears springing to life in Jane’s eyes.
“I’m Cody, mister. Cody Fortune. I had a dad once, but he died when I was a baby. That’s my mom.” Cody pointed. “Her name’s Jane.”
The man’s brows rose. He shook his head slowly, and tears filled his eyes. “Lord,” he whispered. “You’re not… But…I thought…” Blinking repeatedly, he gripped the bedpost, pulled himself to his feet, but remained bent over, his free hand pressing to his forehead. Finally, he straightened, and turned to face Jane fully, right beneath the overhead light.
She saw his face, and her jaw fell. She caught her breath, forced her shock into submission. But then she noticed the clothes he wore, and her heart flip-flopped all over again.
Dear God, he was the image of the man in the painting.
“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down at Cody. Then facing Jane, he repeated, “I’m so sorry I frightened you both. I…” He took a step toward her, but swayed a little, and grasped the bedpost to hold himself up.
“Th-th-that’s okay,” Jane said, and she wiggled her hand at her son. Cody ran to her, and she held him tight, never taking her eyes off the stranger. “Um…look, how did you get in here?”
He frowned, and looked around the room as if for the first time. “It’s…it’s different.” He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
Jane gently pushed Cody behind her, then took a backward step. She forcibly ignored his resemblance to the inventor she’d been mooning over so recently, and refused to think about his clothes. “You’re, um…sick or something, aren’t you,” she said, almost as if to convince herself of it. “You’re disoriented and you wandered in here by accident. I understand, all right? I’m not going to press charges, or anything like that.”
The man’s eyes opened. They were a bit dazed, clouded with pain, but they were also intelligent, perfectly sane and utterly sincere brown eyes. Brown eyes that looked so familiar it was downright uncanny. “What year is this, Jane?”
What year—
Jane swallowed hard and refused to so much as allow the thought to enter her mind. “Nineteen ninety-seven,” she told him, as casually as if it were a question she answered every day. She nudged her son with her as she took another backward step into the hall.
The man’s head jerked up fast and his eyes widened. “Nineteen…” Then he looked above him, at the light fixture in th
e ceiling, and when he lowered his head again, he grimaced in agony. “No… No, I went the wrong way. I came forward instead of going back. This can’t be, I…” Still ranting, he lunged forward, toward Jane, but he never made it. He went down like a giant redwood, in a heap at her feet.
And that was when she noticed the gold wire-rims on the floor beside him. The satchel in the middle of Cody’s bedroom floor. The little black box. She swallowed hard and told herself she was letting her imagination run wild. She bent down over him, reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the pocket watch—the exact same pocket watch she’d seen in the painting. And then she looked more closely at the small black box on the floor. An odd-looking remote control that looked an awful lot like the box the inventor was tinkering with in the painting.
“He asked what year it was. Said he’d come forward,” she muttered. And she mentally revisited what Sheriff O’Donnell, and the library books, had told her about the genius scientist who’d lived here. That he’d claimed to have invented time travel…and then he disappeared.
“But that just can’t be…”
“Mom?”
She rose, and turned to face her son.
“Can we keep him?”
Jane braced her hands on the edge of the bed, bending almost double as she tried to catch her breath. The man was no lightweight, that was for sure. Getting him into the bed had been no easy job. And whoever he was, he could use a shower, a shave and a clean change of clothes.
None of which, she reminded herself, was her problem. All she had to do was go downstairs, call Sheriff Quigly O’Donnell and have this intruder taken away to a jail cell.
Except that she hadn’t placed that call just yet. And she was in no hurry to, for some reason.
“Mom, is he sick?”
She glanced at her son, shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. You’d better go wash your hands, Cody. It might be catching.”
Cody didn’t go. “Maybe he’s not sick, Mom. Maybe he’s hurt.”
Jane slipped her arm around her son’s shoulders and squeezed. “You must have been scared to death.”
“Nah. At first I thought he really was my dad. That he’d come back somehow—even though I know that’s impossible. The way he was hugging me and all.” His chin lowered just a bit. “It was kinda nice.”
Jane’s throat tightened. Time to change the subject. “How did he get in here, sweetheart?”
Cody shook his head. “There was this big light, right in the middle of my room. Round. Like…sort of like a train tunnel, only light instead of dark. Really light. It hurt my eyes.” Jane frowned, but her son kept on talking. “Then the light was gone, and he was laying on the floor.”
“Lying on the floor,” she said automatically, her gaze pinned to the man in her son’s bed.
“That’s what I said. Mom, you think he’s a ghost?”
“No, Cody, I don’t think he’s a ghost.” She frowned at her son. “And I didn’t think you believed in anything as non-scientific as that.”
“I don’t. But what about—?”
“Come on,” she said, feeling uneasier by the second. A train tunnel, indeed. “Let’s go call Sheriff O’Donnell.”
“Mom, we can’t!” Cody pulled his hand free. “He needs help! He’s sick or hurt or something! You can’t go putting him in jail!”
“Honey, he broke into our house—”
“He’s my friend!” Cody crossed his arms over his chest, lower lip protruding.
“How can he be your friend? You don’t even know him.”
“He hugged me,” Cody said firmly. “And he said he loved me. And I’m not going to let you put him in jail.”
Jane closed her eyes and sighed. “Codester, sweetie, we can’t just keep him.”
“Why not? He could help with the tree house I want to build in the backyard. When he’s better, I mean. It would be great. And we could—”
“For all we know, Cody, this man could be a dangerous criminal. We can’t just let him stay. He could be—” She looked down into her son’s huge green eyes and felt like Attila the Hun. “Cody…”
“Please, Mom? We at least have to find out who he is, where he came from. What that flash of light was all about. I think he needs help, Mom.”
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
Cody smiled. Then he yawned and rubbed his eyes.
“Come on. You’d better get some sleep now. In my room, okay?”
“Okay.” Grinning, Cody raced down the hall and shot right into her bedroom.
Jane looked at the man who slept in her son’s bed. There was, of course, no way she was going to let him stay here. She’d simply have to wait until Cody went to sleep to call the sheriff. She’d figure out a way to explain it to him later. Meanwhile, she wouldn’t take her eyes off the guy. If he so much as glanced in Cody’s direction…
She picked up the baseball bat and pulled up a chair. She’d give Cody fifteen minutes to fall asleep. Then she’d place that call.
Zach awoke in the darkened room. His son’s bedroom, of course. He must have tired himself out working today, and fallen asleep reading to the boy. It was a wonder Ben hadn’t shaken him awake to get him to finish the story, the way he usually did.
But where on earth was Benjamin?
He closed his eyes, shook his head. Of course. Benjamin was still visiting his grandparents in Boston. How could he have forgotten?
Well, then, as long as he was awake, he might as well get some work done.
Oh, bother.
Zach poked into his shirt pocket in search of his spectacles, but didn’t find them there. He reached to the small stand beside the bed for an oil lamp, but he must not have left it there. All he had to go by was the moonlight streaming in through the window behind him as he scanned the room in search of the lamp. But what was this? There was an incredibly beautiful young woman asleep in a wooden chair beside the bed. She wore a pale nightgown, with short sleeves that revealed her shapely arms. Her head was tipped sideways, resting upon her shoulder. And her hair rolled in waves of red-brown satin, halfway to the floor. My word, she was something. But what on earth was she doing here? How had she…
Slowly Zach recalled his colleagues Wilhelm and Eli, and their penchant for practical jokes. They’d been teasing him about working too hard, about having no life, no interests, aside from his son and his work. He’d once been something of a rogue, engaging in affairs with some of the town’s most notoriously improper young women. But he’d been slacking off lately, and devoting all his time to the current experiment. One that would change the world, if he ever made it work.
Once, those two clowns had suggested he’d been so long without a woman that he wouldn’t know what to do with one if she showed up in his bed. So they’d decided to hire some doxy to prove their point, had they? My, she was beautiful. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so desperate to prove his manhood that he’d risk disease to do so. He much preferred to choose his own lovers. A shame, such a shame.
He sighed. No doubt she’d report back to those two childish pranksters that he’d failed to show any interest in her…charms.
Well, he could at least avoid the ribbing he’d take over that.
Sliding from the bed, wondering only briefly why he felt so weak and slightly dizzy, he tiptoed to the chair where she slept, nearly tripping over the baseball bat his son must have left lying about. Amazing he hadn’t spotted it before. He shoved it out of the way with his foot and stepped closer to the trollop, and touched that long hair, rubbed it between his fingers. Soft as down. He bent slightly, inhaled her scent and smiled. Oh, they’d gone all out. Must have paid extra for a clean and lovely girl. This one looked as fresh as a daisy, and smelled even better.
As he stood bending over her, she sighed and moved a bit. Her lips parted and her head tipped back. And Zach realized with a pang how very long it had been since he’d kissed a woman. And, aside from the common cold, perhaps, he didn’t fear catching anything by kissing this one.<
br />
So he did. He bent lower, lifted her chin with the tip of his forefinger and fit his mouth to hers. Her lips were warm and moist and pliant, and they felt good beneath his. Better when a gentle sigh escaped them, one he inhaled. He nudged those soft lips apart, to taste more of her, and they opened willingly, easily. She was starting to come awake now. Starting to respond, kissing him back. He slipped his arms around her small waist and pulled her to her feet, cradling her between his legs and against his chest as he deepened his kiss. Her drowsy response ignited feelings in him that he’d long since forgotten. Feelings he hadn’t thought he’d ever know again. Passion flared in his veins, and her body pressed closer, head tilted farther, lips opened to his questing tongue. Her hands crept up his back, clung to his shoulders, and his heart beat a wild tattoo in his chest. No, none of his halfhearted dalliances had produced this strong a response in him.
Not since Claudia…
And then a mighty shove sent him staggering backward, and Zach was too surprised to even wonder why he was so weak that a mite of a woman could send him flying.
She stood panting, glaring at him. “That’s it,” she fairly growled at him. “That’s it. I was thinking about going easy on you, mister, but you’ve pushed me too far.”
“Rough or easy,” he told her, “doesn’t much matter. I’m not interested in having sex with you, Miss, so you might as well be on your way.” It was a lie, of course. He was very interested. If only he had one of those condoms on hand, he might even oblige her.
“Not…interested… Sex?” She blinked as if in shock.
“Oh, it isn’t you, love.” He smiled at her, reached out a hand to smooth her hair out of her eyes. She only stood there, apparently too shocked to move. “Actually, I’m more tempted than I’ve been in a very long time. You’re lovely. But I’ve no wish to expose myself to… Well, you understand.”
A Husband in Time Page 3
