TWICE A HERO

by Susan Krinard

  He was not responsible for her.

  Damn it. Damn it. And damn it all to hell.

  He turned and started back.

  * * *

  What a fool she'd been.

  Mac paced the length of the tent and back again, trying to determine where to begin her search. Her watch had to be somewhere in this tent, and by God she was going to find it and be out of here before Liam decided to come back.

  She paused in her furious strides to survey Liam's shaving supplies, laid out on the folding camp desk. Razor, antique bottles filled with pungent lotion, a comb and scissors. No wristwatch. She would not think of the way Liam had looked with the sun on his hair, shaving down by the lake.

  Or remember how he'd reacted when she'd given him Perry's watch. She hadn't imagined his vulnerability then—or his need.

  When he'd kissed and caressed her, she'd lost herself, felt the borders between two bodies melt and merge. She'd felt his need as something limitless, becoming part of her own.

  His body was no more capable of lying than hers was. For a time he had truly wanted her. For a while the vast gulf between them had ceased to exist.

  Now it was as wide as the Grand Canyon. Or time itself.

  She had to get back. Now. Tonight. As soon as she'd found her wristwatch; she didn't intend to leave any part of herself behind.

  She dropped to her knees beside the trunk that contained his clothing; the lid had been closed over the trailing arm of a shirtsleeve, and the contents were in disarray. She didn't bother to be neat in her exploration. Shirts, trousers, a belt, socks… underwear… she tossed those aside sharply, hoping they landed someplace where stinging insects would make a nest in them.

  No plastic waterproof wristwatch. Only a flat paper folder at the very bottom of the trunk, buried under everything else.

  Inside was an envelope, neatly printed with Liam's name and a San Francisco address. Postmarked 1884. She couldn't resist opening it.

  A swirl of perfumed scent rose from a sheet of fine stationery. Elegant lines of script flowed across the page; a woman's hand, delicate and feminine.

  Dear Liam, the letter began.

  Mac's gaze drifted to the bottom of the page, to the demure signature so perfectly placed.

  Caroline Gresham, it said. Caroline. The name was extremely familiar. In fact, it made her think of…

  Her blood seemed to drain from her fingers and toes and head all at once, leaving her giddy and dazed.

  She began to read again.

  Dear Liam,

  I write this letter in haste, because I know that you and Peregrine are shortly to leave for the jungles again. Oh, how I wish I could go with you! Peregrine says that someday I will have just such an adventure. Peregrine has also promised to bring me a trinket. I shall wait to see which of you brings me the better one. Until you return, I shall keep you both in my prayers.

  Your affectionate friend,

  Caroline Gresham

  For a moment Mac simply held the letter. Good Lord. Caroline Gresham was the woman Perry had married—Mac's own great-great-grandmother—the daughter, Mac remembered, of a wealthy San Francisco businessman.

  Mac looked inside the envelope again and found what she'd missed the first time. A photograph, new enough looking to have been recently taken. A photograph of a beautiful young woman with pale curling hair and flawless features and limpid eyes. She was almost too perfect to be real. And this was Liam's "affectionate friend."…

  "What are you doing?"

  Mac scooted around to face Liam, the letter and photo still in her hand.

  "Who's Caroline?" she demanded.

  He stopped in his charge across the tent. "Caroline," he said between his teeth, "is the woman I'm going to marry."

  Mac stared at him as the ramifications slid into place in her mind.

  "Give me the letter," Liam commanded.

  Her hand was shaking when she complied. "So that's why you fought," she said unsteadily, "—why your friend left you here. It was over her."

  The delicate paper crackled in his grip. "Don't play innocent, Mac. It's a little too late for that." His voice was deadly calm. "What were you looking for? Any money I'd left lying around? Or was it simple spying this time?"

  She shook her head. "Two men in love with the same woman," she said, trying to keep control of her rising alarm. "They fight, and one…" Tries to kill his rival. Oh shit. "One leaves the other with almost no supplies and goes home to his girlfriend."

  "Perry, in love with her?" he said harshly. "He's in love with her inheritance. He's a damned fortune hunter. But you know that, don't you? As long as she's my ward, he'll get his hands on her over my dead body."

  His words were grotesquely appropriate. Caroline, Liam's ward?

  Oh, Homer, what did you get me into?

  "He didn't succeed in getting me out of the way," Liam continued, oblivious to her shock. "And he'll pay for his blunder."

  Mac felt for the camp stool beside the desk and sat down, weak-kneed. Maybe Perry had tried to kill him. And would have succeeded if not for Mac's intervention.

  Liam was alive when he should have been dead. He was alive to return to San Francisco and marry Caroline Gresham.

  But Caroline and Perry were Mac's great-great grandparents. If they didn't marry, would Mac cease to exist? And what about Homer, who'd inspired so many young minds and uncovered secrets of the past; her father, who'd save an entire platoon of comrades in Vietnam—even Jason, who had made such promising discoveries in his search for new cancer treatments?

  And would this mess even end with her family?

  Greater changes might come from each smaller one, until all of history itself was affected.

  Mac trembled. She'd saved Liam's life, and she couldn't regret it. But now that she knew the dire consequences of her act…

  Only she could set things right again.

  She bent over, sickened. There was no going home anymore. Even if she tried, she might never make it. She might simply disappear, never having existed. Leaving the screwup she'd made still intact.

  If she couldn't go home, what was she going to do?

  The answer to that was obvious. She had to stop Liam from marrying Caroline. Impossible as it seemed, she didn't have any choice.

  The strength flooded back into her body, and she sat up. One by one the implications of her decision raced through her mind. To stop Liam meant being with him. Going with him back to 1884 San Francisco, where his ward-bride awaited him. Going without a plan, without knowing what she faced, alone and out of her own time.

  "You're going back to San Francisco to marry Caroline," she said to Liam suddenly. "And to take revenge on your former partner."

  Crouched by his crates of supplies, he looked at her over his shoulder. "What's it to you, Mac?" he said with a cynical twist of his mouth.

  "Do you love your ward?" she asked flatly.

  "I know what's best for her—" Liam paused, gaze unfocused. "She's a lady. She was meant to be protected all her life."

  "Not only from Perry?" Mac prodded.

  He rose, walked halfway across the tent, and swung around again. "From him, and from all the harshness of the world."

  There was something in his expression along with that fierce determination, something that touched on the vulnerability she'd seen in him once before.

  But he hadn't said he loved Caroline. If there was something other than love behind Liam's relationship with his ward, it was something Mac had to understand.

  "If your curiosity is satisfied," Liam said, "I suggest you pack your things. It'll be dark soon."

  "Pack?"

  "So I can escort you back to the ruins."

  Ah, yes. Now he was willing to believe she had somewhere to go.

  She clutched the pendant in her pocket. "No."

  "What?"

  "No. I'm not leaving."

  "You said you knew your way back."

  "I was wrong. My theory isn't going to work."
r />   "What the hell does that mean?"

  Here goes. "I can't go back to my own time. Not from here. I… have to go to San Francisco to find what I need to make it possible."

  He was very, very still. "When did you discover this, Mac? After I almost had you, or after you read the letter?"

  Her breath caught at the bluntness of his words. "It doesn't matter. You owe me. And you said you'd take me anywhere I choose to go."

  His gaze could have burned through a lead wall. "Do you think I'm so easily hoodwinked? You may have saved my life, but you won't further Perry's schemes by going with me."

  "Even if I told you that I needed your help?" She swallowed her completely irrelevant pride. "Would you leave a lone woman out here in the jungle with nowhere to go? Because that's exactly my situation. And without you, I probably won't survive this place." She held his gaze. "I need you, O'Shea."

  He stared at her, angry and perplexed. Finally, he gave her a bitter, mocking salute. "You're right. I wouldn't leave a woman out here alone, not even one like you. If it's money you want, a boat to hire, I can get them for you. But going with me to San Francisco is—"

  "It's where I have to go," she said, struggling for a remotely plausible explanation. "At least it's a city I know better than any other. I won't be so… lost there." She touched his arm. "Please take me with you. I won't cause any trouble." Except, if I'm lucky, keep you from marrying Caroline and killing Perry, she silently amended.

  "No trouble?" He snorted. "I don't understand what you hope to accomplish, or how you mean to survive, but if it's what you want—" He shrugged. "I'll get you to San Francisco. I owe you that much."

  He turned to the crates of provisions in the corner of the tent. "It's three hundred miles on bad roads, or none at all, to the port of Champerico. A hard trip for a man at any pace, and I'm going to make it a fast one. For a woman—"

  "At least I won't be alone."

  Canvas rustled as he pulled the covering from the crates and checked the contents. "You'll sleep on the ground, in whatever shelter Fernando can devise."

  "I think I'll survive."

  "You'll be lucky to get a cramped cabin on a steamer, once we get to Champerico."

  "I don't take up much space."

  "No. And you won't complain or hold us back, because if you do, I'll—"

  "I can imagine. Don't worry. You shouldn't have any trouble pretending I'm not even there."

  Liam tossed the canvas over the crates again with somewhat excessive force. "You'd better get some food from Fernando, and then sleep."

  She hesitated and decided to try one more time. "You know, I wasn't snooping through your things to spy. I was looking for my watch. The one you stole."

  "You have something of mine."

  The pendant. He knew she'd taken it.

  "Does Perry want it back?" he asked with an indifference that seemed a little too marked to be convincing.

  "I want it. Call it a souvenir," she said. "If you let me keep it, you can have the watch." She was going to need the pendant eventually—at least she hoped so.

  He dismissed her with a shrug. "We'll be leaving at dawn. No more delays."

  "I'll be ready." She held out her hand. "Shall we let bygones be bygones, O'Shea? Until we reach San Francisco?"

  His laugh was caustic and brief. He grabbed her hand, the calluses on his palms and fingertips rough on her skin, enveloping her in warmth and strength.

  "Peace," he said. "Until San Francisco."

  And then, my friend, Mac thought, all bets are off.

  * * *

  Part Two

  Love, all alike,

  no season knows, nor clime,

  Nor hours, days, months,

  which are the rags of time.

  —John Donne

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  It was the best of times,

  it was the worst of times.

  —Charles Dickens

  San Francisco, mid-September, 1884

  THE DAY WAS incredibly, brilliantly clear. No trace of fog lingered over the Bay; Mac could see everything, every detail of the city she'd lived in all her life.

  Except that it wasn't her city.

  Enfolded in a dark woolen cloak Liam had bought from a fellow passenger, Mac stood on the deck of the steamer as it passed through the Golden Gate.

  There was no red-painted span stretched between the Marin Headlands and the Presidio. No TransAmerica pyramid to mark the skyline, no Coit tower, no Bank of America building, no skyscrapers. The silhouette of the city was strangely squat, frighteningly alien. And as the ship rounded the promontory, the vastness of the Bay itself spread before her: Alcatraz island rising bare and rocky out of the choppy waves, the hills of Berkeley and Oakland golden brown and almost unmarked by man, steamers and barges and ferries and great-masted clipper ships plying the unbridged water.

  It could still shake her, the knowledge that all this was real. She'd had proof enough during the journey here—in the Guatemalan port where she and Liam had caught the steamer, aboard the steamer itself. But this surpassed everything else. This she felt like an adrenaline rush through her body, so that she had to grab the railing on the deck to hold herself upright.

  This was San Francisco, and the year was 1884.

  Mac leaned over the rail and watched the water rushing alongside the hull of the boat. At least she hadn't been seasick. Considering the length of the voyage and the journey before that, by foot and mule through the jungles and mountains of Guatemala to the port of Champerico, she had done pretty well.

  Especially considering that Liam O'Shea had been as good as his word. He'd brought her, all right, but he'd kept his distance, which had been just fine with her.

  Fernando had been enough company until they'd left him behind at Champerico, and she'd proved to Liam that she could keep up. In the end, he'd given her grudging respect.

  But no more, except to provide her with this cloak to cover her peculiar clothing, and securing her a tiny cabin to herself on the steamer bound for San Francisco. They'd been in luck that one had been due in port only a few days after their arrival, and that they'd been able to get cabins. The steamer had limited room for passengers on its voyage up from South America. It was only later Mac learned that Liam was part-owner of the shipping company, and he could command more than any mere passenger.

  Just a first indication that they were coming into Liam's world—a world where he was a wealthy man. A world where he knew the rules and she didn't. In the jungle they'd been equals, two people in a vast wilderness. But here…

  "Miss?"

  She turned. The captain's lieutenant, a pleasant young man with a darkly tanned face, touched the brim of his cap. "We'll be docking soon. Mr. O'Shea wishes to speak with you."

  He looked at her expectantly. He wasn't the only one to do so on those few occasions that she'd left her cabin; she'd nearly gone stir-crazy with confinement, but she thought it better not to raise too many questions in such close quarters as the ship allowed.

  They were all curious about her, the crew and small complement of passengers. Well they might be. Liam had put out some sort of story about her being the daughter of an explorer friend, and that she'd been ill and needed quiet and privacy. The only times he'd come near her were when he brought meals or other necessities to her cabin.

  But now he wanted to see her. She nodded at the lieutenant and pulled the cloak more snugly across her chest. "Lead on, Mr. Harvey."

  "He's coming, miss." Mr. Harvey touched his cap again and discreetly retreated just as Liam came into view.

  Strange. It must be a measure of how disoriented she was, this slight wobble in her legs, this leap of her heart when she saw him. Standing on the deck, legs braced and tawny hair whipped by the wind, he was magnificent. Magnificent in the way a pirate is: dangerous, undomesticated, and with a heart as implacable as a machete blade.

  She gave him her coolest smile. "Well, Mr. O'Shea. Long time no see. I'm h
onored by your presence."

  His return smile was biting. "Was the voyage not to your liking? Perhaps you'd have preferred to stay in Guatemala?"

  She studied what passed for the San Francisco skyline. "Not at all. It was very much to my liking."

  "And how does it feel to be home?"

  "It's not the city I left," she admitted.

  "In what way?"

  "The full account would take quite a while. Let's just say that my San Francisco is considerably more vertical and a lot less roomy. And that's only from a distance."

  Voices rose among the ship's crew as they prepared for docking. Wood creaked and water slapped. Liam leaned against the railing in a pose about as easy as that of a jaguar waiting to spring. "You did well on the journey, Mac. Better than I expected."

  Interesting. Such a compliment must have taken considerable effort on his part. "Your expectations were never very high," she said, "but thank you, anyway."

  "You survived the jungle," he went on, ignoring her sally, "but civilization can be a far deadlier place. God knows where you'd end up if you were left to fend for yourself. That is—" He looked back, gray eyes pinning her like a specimen on a board. "That is unless you have someone to go to."

  He meant Perry. Mac casually joined him at the rail. "I don't know anyone in this San Francisco."

  The corner of his mouth lifted. "Of course not. So you'll be entirely alone in a strange city." He put his back to the railing, gaze hooded. "I find I can't just leave you here as we agreed. If something happened to you, Mac, I doubt I could live with myself. I do owe you my life, after all."

  His words were merely badinage, and yet her heartbeat insisted on responding to the rough purr of his voice. "What did you have in mind?" she asked cautiously.

  "Nothing improper, I assure you. The least I can do is see you settled comfortably so that you have all you need to… find your way home."

  "You'll find me a place to stay?"

  "More than that, Mac. Money, clothing—whatever you need. You'll be well taken care of."