Somewhere in Time (The Crosse Harbor Time Travel Trilogy)

by Barbara Bretton

  The path narrowed as he neared the house. The hedgerows were neatly trimmed along this section of the path and he noted bundles of firewood stacked at equal distances apart. Only a person of great personal wealth would lavish such care on the back end of his property and Andrew found his gut twisting with suspicion. Persons of great wealth invariably found themselves on the side of the British and he prepared himself for a confrontation.

  He had no doubt that the owner would greet him with a loaded musket and questions he couldn't answer.

  #

  Shannon dangled her feet in the swimming pool and waited. The balloon went down somewhere on her property and she knew it was simply a matter of time before the hapless pilot made his way to the house in search of something cold to drink, a trip to the john, and a comfortable place to wait for the spotters to show up. She knew the drill as well as she knew her own name and she dreaded it.

  The fact that she was alone at the house didn't disturb her although she supposed it should. Mildred and Karl, the couple who took care of things, had the summer off and, for a welcome change, the safe houses Shannon maintained for battered women and their children were vacant. Of course that was a temporary condition. In the next day or two another terrified woman would stare down her fears and take that first step toward an independent life, same as Shannon had more than three years ago.

  Walking out the door and leaving the violence behind was how it began for Shannon. Facing her husband across that crowded courtroom and speaking the truth for all to hear had freed her from the last of her fears and she would let no one and nothing intimidate her ever again. Not even the fact that Bryant had been paroled six months ago was enough to rob her of her independence.

  If only it were that easy to conquer the aching loneliness deep inside her heart.

  Every now and again she managed to convince herself that she'd grown accustomed to being alone, to being satisfied that what she had was all she'd ever need. But then she would see a man and woman walking hand in hand or hear the soft laughter of lovers and she'd be struck anew by how the best part of life continued to elude her.

  And probably always would.

  A difficult truth but one she could no longer deny. She was almost thirty. She had been married and divorced. She had learned firsthand that when it came to the rest of your life you didn't settle for anything less than the man of your dreams.

  The fact that the man of her dreams existed only in her imagination was proof positive that she'd end her days alone. She wanted a man of strength and character. A man who could take charge of a situation without losing sight of her needs and desires. A man who would love her above all else and recognize the gift she gave when she loved him in return.

  All in all, she might as well pray for Aladdin's lamp and three wishes because that was the only way she could ever conjure up such a paragon of masculinity.

  She heard a rustle of branches then turned toward her right. A man stood in the shadow of the silver maple tree.

  "Took you long enough," she commented as he moved into the waning sunshine. "I was about to give up on you."

  He strode across the lawn toward her, as if he owned the property and everything on it. He was clad in a scruffy version of some old uniform or something from the Revolutionary War period: faded brown breeches, a rough shirt of tan cloth, a leather waistcoat, and worn boots. As costumes went it was almost painfully authentic. She found herself wishing for a touch less realism and a bit more theatricality.

  He stopped some ten feet away from her and stared down as if he'd never seen a woman before.

  "Doesn't anyone in that blasted balloon club of yours understand the concept of private property?"

  His gaze moved from her face to her breasts and belly and for an instant she wished she was wearing a sedate maillot. She rose to her feet and threw back her shoulders, daring him to challenge her right to make the rules for her own land.

  #

  The lass was nearly naked. She stood there with the stance of a warrior, almost daring him to look at her. Had she no modesty? The sight of her body, barely covered by the narrow strips of yellow fabric, enflamed him with desire unlike anything he had ever known. Heat, dark and dangerous, threatened to overcome years of civilized behavior and turn him into a rutting stallion.

  May the good Lord forgive him, but he wanted nothing more than to strip the lass of her garments and have her right there in full view of God and man.

  Where Emilie had been tall and strapping, this woman was small and finely-made, but he sensed that she was not a woman easily bested in any way. This was a woman a man courted, not one you lay down with then forgot come the morrow.

  With great difficulty he tore his eyes away from the splendor of her ripely curved body and glanced at his surroundings and what he saw made his heart beat even faster. That wasn't a pond as he knew ponds to be. Not only was it a perfect rectangle filled with bright blue water, but a long wooden board extended out over one end. White stripes were faintly visible beneath the water.

  "Haven't you heard a single thing I've said?" the almost-naked lass snapped. He looked back at her, and felt a new rush of desire that rattled him to his bones. "Will your spotters be able to find you?"

  Spotters? What in bloody hell was a spotter? "Nay, mistress," he said with deliberate caution. "I come alone."

  She tilted her head to the right at the sound of his voice. "A Scotsman, is it?" A long and lovely sigh floated on the air toward him. "I suppose no one told you this property was off-limits."

  He nodded. Agreeing with her seemed the wisest course of action until he knew what she was about.

  #

  Something was obviously wrong with the poor man. He seemed incapable of stringing more than a handful of words together at any one time and, truth to tell, he was starting to look a bit the worse for the wear.

  "You're pale as a ghost," she said. "Did you hit your head when you landed?"

  "I have no wish to cause you alarm, mistress. If you would show me the direction to town I will bid you a good night."

  He rolled his r's like a refugee from an old Hollywood costume drama. She'd known a Scotsman or two in her life and they certainly didn't sound like him. Or look like him, for that matter.

  "I'm nowhere near town," she said carefully. "You just flew over my house. You should know that."

  "A post road then," he persisted. He looked up at the sky. "Enough daylight remains to cover considerable ground once I find my way."

  The poor man must have struck his head. He might even have a concussion. She hated to think he was merely dense. "I think you'd better come inside," she said. She'd give him something cold to drink while they waited for his pals to track him down.

  No response from him. Why on earth should that surprise her? The man was silent as the tomb. She turned around to find him squatting down next to the chaise longue. He was staring at the sections of the Sunday Times scattered about the way primitive man must have stared at fire.

  She started to say something flip and funny but the words died in her throat. Dear God, but he was magnificent in his own way. His thick brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail and tied with a strip of leather. His face was craggy, his features rough-hewn. It was the face of a man who had braved the elements and more than one man's wrath. He wasn't handsome by anyone's standards still he was the most compelling male she'd ever seen. His eyes were a golden hazel with flecks of green, unspectacular as eyes went, but there was something else at work, an indefinable something that stole her breath. He was of no more than medium height but he had about him an aura of such solidity, such strength, that an ache began deep inside her heart that felt much like yearning.

  My life will never be the same after today. The thought came to her full-blown, as clear as if she'd spoken the words aloud and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This is the man you've dreamed about. There is no one else like him in the world.

  She pushed aside the ridiculous thought, the sam
e way she'd learned to push aside her fears. What an overblown, ridiculously romantic notion. The man had fallen out of a hot air balloon--and gracelessly at that. He wasn't a knight on a white charger come to rescue her from her lonely life

  They'd go inside, he'd make a phone call, drink some cold water, and then he'd be on his way.

  And Shannon's life would go on same as it had before he walked out of the woods and made her remember how it felt to want something she could never have.

  ~~end of excerpt of TOMORROW & ALWAYS~~

  She's a 20th century woman

  He's an 18th century man

  Dakota Wylie is an unemployed, overweight psychic librarian

  Patrick Devane is an angry, hard-headed spy with a six-year-old daughter who hears voices

  When Dakota leaps from the basket of a hot air balloon to help the crying child, little does she know that she's leaping into history . . . and the family she's always wanted.

  Excerpt from

  DESTINY'S CHILD – Book 3

  Prologue

  Dakota Wylie had spent every summer of her youth in the back seat of her parents' van, wedged between her younger sister Janis, who existed on mascara and diet soda, and her twin brothers, Conan and Tige, whose joint claim to fame was the ability to play Disco Inferno with their armpits.

  Frederick and Ginny Wylie believed that the best education they could give their children was to be found at 60 mph on Interstate 80 as they crisscrossed the country paying homage to every national monument and rest stop they encountered. Other kids went to Camp Winnemukluk and learned how to braid lanyards and smoke cigarettes without inhaling; Dakota learned the location of every Stuckey's between Princeton and the Grand Canyon.

  Her father, a professor of physics, spent the dreary winter months with his desk littered with road maps and notebooks while he planned every step of the summer's journey. He approached the project with mathematical precision and an engineer's sense of efficiency. Getting there wasn't half the fun for Dr. Wylie; it was everything.

  Her mother, a bona fide, card-carrying psychic, indulged her husband's love of ritual and technology but she despaired when she saw those careful traits rearing their heads in her children. Ginny knew life's greatest adventures were the ones that were unplanned and of her four children only her oldest seemed to understand.

  Which was how Dakota Wylie--unmarried, unemployed and overweight--found herself that fine late summer morning in the gondola of a hot-air balloon bound for the 18th century.

  At least that's where Dakota thought they were headed. It suddenly occurred to her that, considering the circumstances, she was taking a great deal on faith.

  When you were about to challenge the laws of nature, you'd think there would be trumpets and fanfare, some kind of celestial sendoff that acknowledged the enormity of what was about to happen.

  It wasn't every day a woman went leaping through time. Except for Einstein, most rational human beings put time travel up there on a par with the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and Easter Bunny. Fun to think about, but not bloody likely.

  For weeks Ginny had told her something was on the horizon, an adventure more amazing than anything either woman could imagine, but Dakota had been so busy trying to figure out what Andrew McVie was all about that the signs had passed her right by until it was almost too late.

  Every time she saw Andrew she'd passed out at his feet, overwhelmed by the force field his presence generated. It hadn't taken her long to realize he wasn't part of the 20th century, and even less time to discover that he and Shannon Whitney, the woman he'd traveled across the centuries to find, had to go back through time to the place where they both now belonged.

  Still, she hadn't figured they'd be taking her with them.

  The basket shuddered as an air current buffeted it from the east, and Dakota glanced around. She was all in favor of adventure but why couldn't it take place at ground level. Shannon and Andrew were wrapped in each other's arms, oblivious to the fact that the only thing between them and instant death was that puny fire that kept the bright red balloon aloft.

  "Sure," she mumbled. "What do you care if I'm a fifth wheel in two centuries?" This was their destiny, after all. As far as Dakota could tell, she was just along for the ride, comic relief to keep them laughing as the decades whizzed by.

  "You won't be here forever," Ginny had said a few days ago. Dakota had thought she meant the library where she worked. Why was it her psychic abilities were able to zero in on everybody else in the western hemisphere with laserlike precision but when it came to her own life, she invariably came up empty?

  For instance, it would have been nice to have some advance warning. If they were really traveling through time, she was going to need a makeover from Martha Washington as soon as they landed because her dusty Levis, worn Nikes, and Jurassic Park t-shirt weren't going to win any fashion awards. Then again, neither was her coiffure. She reached up and touched the close-cropped mop of jet black curls that had probably never been in fashion, no matter the century.

  Next to the beautiful Shannon with her elegant bone structure and glossy tresses, she probably looked like a boy with a severe water retention problem.

  "I have a question," she said to the embracing couple who shared the basket with her. "How do we know if we're going the right way? I mean, this thing doesn't come with a road map. What if we end up back in the 70s or something?" A lifetime sentence of leisure suits and disco. It was enough to make her leap overboard.

  "You are the one gifted with second sight, Mistress Dakota. Do you not know the outcome?" He wasn't a handsome man by any account, but even Dakota had to admit he was quite something when he smiled.

  "That's right," said Shannon. "You're psychic. You should know these things. We were counting on you to keep us on course."

  "Just because I'm psychic doesn't mean I have a sense of direction," Dakota shot back. "You'd think there'd be some way to steer this thing." An odd prickle of apprehension twitched its way up her spine as she had a sudden and clear vision of thick woods and a child too young to find her way home.

  "Dakota?" Shannon's voice reached her as if from far away. "Is something wrong?"

  "I don't know," Dakota said. She shivered as a glimpse of tear-stained cheeks and tangled hair spun past. "I must be flashing on last night." She'd spent the night in the woods with some residents of the battered women's shelter in an Outward Bound experiment, meant to enhance self-esteem and independence. Dakota had spent most of the hours after dark worried that one of the kids would wander away and get lost and she'd have to venture deeper into the bug-infested woods to look for the child.

  "Mistress Dakota has no fondness for nature's wonders," said Andrew. "She was most distressed when a spider took up residence on her arm."

  "You would've screamed, too, if you'd seen the sucker," Dakota said to Shannon. "The darn thing was the size of a blue jay."

  Andrew held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and Shannon laughed out loud. "Now you know everything you need to about Dakota. She hates spiders and loves jelly donuts."

  "Raspberry jelly donuts," Dakota said. "If you're going to spill my secrets, at least be accurate." She patted her hips. "I worked hard for each one of these pounds."

  Shannon executed a curtsy in her direction. "I stand corrected, Mistress Dakota."

  Andrew's head snapped around. "I have not heard you speak thusly."

  "'Tis time," Shannon said. "I must learn to fit into your world, Andrew."

  Dakota watched, a huge lump throbbing in her throat, as the lovers took each other's measure and were well-satisfied. Their auras shimmered like molten gold and Dakota found herself blinking back tears of joy...and envy. They said there was someone for every man and woman on the earth but at times it seemed to Dakota as if she were meant to go through life alone.

  She'd been born with a wisecrack on her lips and cellulite on her thighs and that wasn't a combination destined to bring men to their knees. No, most men l
iked their women straight out of a Victoria's Secret catalog, demure and airbrushed to within an inch of their perfect lives.

  She forced a saucy grin. "You're our time traveling resident expert, Andrew. How long is this going to take?"

  "You are wrong, mistress. I am no expert in such matters. 'Twill take as long as it takes."

  "That's what my father used to say when we were halfway to Disney World and had run out of comic books and candy bars."

  Andrew met Shannon's eyes. "Disney World?"

  "You didn't tell him about Disney World?" Dakota stared at her friend in disbelief.

  Shannon shrugged gracefully, the way she did everything. You'd never believe her life had been anything but blessed. "We covered all major wars, important scientific advances, and why Dick Clark still looks twenty-five when we all know he's one hundred and seven. I had to forget something."

  "An unforgivable gap in your education," Dakota declared to Andrew. "Disney World is a theme park."

  Andrew looked at her blankly.

  "A place where adults and children go to have fun," she explained, "and it all centers around a mouse named Mickey."

  "'Tis a good thing I am leaving your time," Andrew said, shaking his head in amazement, "for your world is a place of uncommon strangeness."

  Shannon went on in great detail about mice in short pants who always had a date for Saturday night, ducks with attitude problems, and amusement park rides whose sole purpose was to make grown men and women lose their lunches.

  "Andrew is right," Dakota said, wiping away tears of laughter. "When you put it that way, it does sound strange. Maybe--" She stopped. "Did you hear that?"

  Andrew and Shannon exchanged looks. It was obvious they had no idea what she was talking about.

  "The magic fire," said Andrew, pointing toward the flame that kept the balloon inflated. "'Tis a distinctive sound."