Anna pointed to the still-pale man moaning on the floor. “That man fondled my bottom every time I walked past him.”
“So?”
“So? Why do I have to be fondled to serve drinks?”
“Anna, come on, I’ll walk you home.” Wes touched her gently on the arm, not quite sure if she’d wallop him, too.
She rubbed her forehead and peered up at him. Part of her curly hair fell around her shoulders, freed from her topknot. A red satin ribbon hugged her neck, a good ten inches from the bodice of the dress that ended above her knees. Anna was, by far, the prettiest woman Jake had ever hired. No wonder the boys were having trouble keeping their hands off her.
“Go with the marshal, Anna. You’re through here.” Jake nodded to the wizened old man behind the piano and the music started up again.
She stiffened. “What about my pay?”
Jake pulled a few bills from his pocket and handed them to her. “Here, now get lost. This ain’t the job for you if you can’t be friendly to the customers.”
Anna snorted and headed for the door, Wes on her heels. Every man in the place found his drink much too interesting to view their exit.
Having recovered from the vision of Anna beating the hell out of the cowboy, Wes’s lips curved into a grin. Never in his life had he seen a woman defend herself like that. The few times he’d had to pull two scrapping women apart, it had always been about yanking hair and rolling on the ground, tearing at each other’s clothes.
“Where did you learn that?” He waved his hand back toward the saloon.
“At the academy.”
He frowned. “You went to an academy that taught young ladies how to fight?”
Anna stopped and she shrugged. “No. The police academy.”
“I don’t understand.”
Anna peered up at him, tears standing in her eyes. What a life she must have lived until now, to find it necessary to defend herself in such a manner. He had the strongest urge to assure her he would fight her battles from now on.
Where did that thought come from? He’d been fighting his own battle for five years. Not successfully, either.
“Welcome to the club. I don’t understand either, but here I am.” She swiped at her eyes, and tucked a curl behind her ear.
They continued on in silence until they reached the hotel. Anna stopped abruptly a few feet from the entrance. “Since I’m no longer employed by the saloon, maybe you could—”
“No.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why not?”
Wes pushed the brim of his hat back with his thumb, then rested his hands on his hips. “Chasing down outlaws is not work for women.”
“You saw how I took that cowboy down.”
“Surprise.”
“What?”
“Surprise. No one expected a slight little lady to haul off like that. Don’t think for one minute word hasn’t already spread. The next man will be ready for you. It will never work a second time.” He grinned at her scowl. “I hear Flossie is looking for someone to help out at the café. Now there’s work suitable for a woman.”
“Oh! You male chauvinist pig.”
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “What?”
“Never mind. It would take too long to explain, and I doubt it would make a difference anyway.” She sidestepped around him and stormed into the hotel.
“Good night, Miss Devlin.”
She ignored him, but he couldn’t overlook the sway of her hips as she marched away. Or the creamy skin on her shoulders and back the skimpy dress didn’t cover. He’d never met a woman like Anna. Bold, outspoken and exciting. The man who caught that tiger would be in for a ride. All the more reason to stay as far away from her as possible. The last thing he needed in his life was excitement.
Anna had been at her new job at the café for two days. The work wasn’t bad, and at least the men kept their hands to themselves. Either they didn’t equate bacon and eggs with lust, or word had already spread that she wasn’t a woman to mess with.
Her reputation was the least of her worries. Time was passing, and her hearing loomed closer each day. Unless time in the past didn’t move at the same speed as normal. She sighed. What was normal? Nothing at all since she’d stepped away from the ‘peace chair.’
She stopped at a table of cowboys. “What’ll it be, boys?” God, she couldn’t believe how she’d already picked up old west phrases. She hadn’t ever called a man ‘boy.’ The PC police would have a ball in this time period.
Her gaze drifted to a man in the corner, his head bent, shoveling food into his mouth. He looked vaguely familiar. This was the first time he’d appeared in the café since she’d started, but something about him nudged her memory. Maybe he was from her time, and had made a visit to the chair too, finding himself hurled into the past.
Wes arrived each morning by seven o’clock for his breakfast. Although she wanted to hate the man, she felt a strong attraction to him that annoyed her. As much as his male superior attitude—so typical for this time period—irritated her, in some ways it drew her in. Men in her time had softened, at least the ones she’d known. Maybe the modern era did a disservice to males. A unique idea, since her focus had always been on female equality.
“How’s the job going?” Wes tossed a few coins on the table as he stood, preparing to leave.
“Okay. Not the kind of work I’m used to, of course.” She smiled sweetly at him.
Wes grinned and her stomach tap-danced. It was all that male testosterone. It oozed from him like a mating call, a signal to every female within range. So different from Robbie. Of course, being a product of his time, she never would have tolerated in Robbie the very things she’d found sexy about Wes. Except when he refused to give her a man’s job. It didn’t help that she told herself she couldn’t have it both ways.
“By the way, you can tell the town they no longer need to pay my hotel bill.” Anna gathered Wes’s dirty dishes.
“You sure?” He reached out and lightly touched her hand.
The concern on his face hit her like a sledgehammer. He cared. He was a male chauvinist, bossy, domineering and frustrating, but there was a soft side to Wes that affected her as much as the rest shouted to everything feminine in her.
“Yes, I’m sure. I can take care of myself.” Why did those words ring so hollow?
“I’d like you to stop over at the jailhouse when you’re through here today.”
“Why?”
“On his way back through town, Slug dropped off a few things he thinks may have fallen out of your pouch. The way he drives those horses, I don’t doubt it for a minute.” Another disarming smile.
She nodded and turned toward a table with three cowboys signaling for more coffee. “See you later,” she flung over her shoulder as she headed in their direction.
Why did I do such a fool thing? Wes’s resolve to stay away from Anna weakened every day. He still didn’t trust her, but that didn’t stop the powerful need to see her, watch her hurry around the restaurant, smile at her customers, touch his hand when she placed his breakfast in front of him.
He could have brought her things with him, instead of inviting her over to fetch them herself. His thoughts drifted to the trinkets sitting in his desk drawer at the jailhouse, the likes of which he’d never seen before. A long slim object, wrapped in paper, with the word tampon stamped on it, and a round disc made of something hard and unfamiliar to him. When he finally figured out how to open it, there was a circle of cardboard inside, with white pills attached to it, days of the week marked alongside each one. Very strange.
No stranger than the woman herself. Her way of speaking, the peculiar clothes she’d arrived in, her ability to bring down a cowboy easily twice her weight. Where did she come from? The name she’d given him−Tulsa−turned out to be false, after a thorough search of Federal court records showed no town by that name.
Wes spent the rest of the day strolling around town, visiting with the shopkeepers, the p
resence of the town marshal providing townspeople with a sense of safety. So far—thankfully—Denton hadn’t been a draw for outlaws, most of them hitting the bigger cities north and south. Even though only a few miles west of the Chisholm Trail, Denton didn’t have the problems other cowtowns in Kansas did. When the cowboys came into town, Wes made the rounds of the saloons, chatting with the boys from the trail, letting them know he had his eye on them. Not being the end of the road, most stops were brief before they continued north.
He was sitting behind his desk, going through the new batch of ‘wanted’ posters he’d just picked up from the post office when the jailhouse door opened and Anna entered. He stood and cursed the swift reaction his body underwent. Dry mouth, thumping heart, and a definite stirring below his belt.
She paused and smiled. “Is this a bad time?”
Wes cleared his throat. “No, not at all. Finished for the day?” He waved at the chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”
He considered the two bright red dots on her cheeks and the hitch in her breathing. Could she be having the same reaction to him? He quickly recoiled from that thought. She was a complete mystery, possibly here for dishonest reasons, and the last thing he needed to add to his already muddled life was a woman, particularly with the lure of this one.
“So, what do you have?” Anna fussed with her dress, not meeting his gaze.
Wes opened the desk drawer and withdrew the two objects. Anna drew in a sharp breath and grabbed them, fisting them in her lap. The two red dots spread until her entire face appeared to be on fire.
She couldn’t believe it. Of all the things that could have fallen out of her purse and found their way to the marshal, why did it have to be a tampon and her birth control pills?
“Can I ask you a question?” Wes’s forehead creased, but the mirth in his eyes convinced her he knew his question would annoy her.
“Sure.” Maybe she could get through this by acting nonchalant, certainly far from how she felt. She fingered the plastic container of pills. If he wanted to know what they were, she sure as hell couldn’t tell him unless she was in the mood to be dragged off to the local preacher to confess her sins.
Wes nodded toward her lap. “What are they?”
“What?” She blinked, tilting her head. Maybe using innocence would work.
“The round disc with pills.”
“Um. Medicine I take for headaches.”
“Why are the days noted?”
“I forget to take them occasionally.”
“You have a headache every day?” His eyebrows rose to his hairline.
Apparently innocence wasn’t going to work. Anna stood. “Well, I want to thank you for returning my personal property. Have a nice day.” She turned to leave.
“Wait a minute.”
She swung her gaze back to him, and focused on the ‘wanted’ poster sitting on his desk. Her eyes widened and her pulse picked up. Staring back at her was the man from the café scarfing down his breakfast that morning. No wonder he’d looked familiar. She must have seen him on the wall over the post office counter in the mercantile. Quickly, she skimmed the information. A two hundred and fifty dollar reward. Here was her way to make a little bit more money and prove to Wes she could do more than sling hash. If she was going to be stuck here for any length of time, she might as well do something more interesting.
She brought her attention back to Wes. “What?”
“You did it again.”
She tilted her head, questioning.
“You use strange words, strange sentences. Personal property?”
Anxious to leave to see if she could track down Benny Coats, a/k/a Big Ben−how original−she needed to leave quickly.
“Um, it’s from that academy I went to.” She backed away. “See you later.”
Wes said something lost in the sound of the door closing. Anna hurried away and stopped a few steps from the jailhouse. How in heaven’s name did someone in the eighteen seventies track down an outlaw?
Well, if Big Ben was still in town, he’d most likely go to the café for his supper. Making an abrupt right turn, she headed back to the restaurant.
Although she’d kept vigil all evening, the outlaw never entered the café. Once Flossie had blown out the last oil lamp and hung the ‘closed’ sign, Anna dusted the dirt from the seat of her dress and left the spot where she’d sat behind the blacksmith shop.
She hurried down the boardwalk, head lowered, deep in thought, when she ran smack into a wall of muscle.
“Whoa.” Wes captured both of her arms as she slammed into his warm chest. “Where you going in such a hurry?” The moonlight caught his expression as he frowned. “And what are you doing out on the streets this late at night?”
Anna bristled. “Is there a law against it, marshal?”
He grinned.
Why did she always feel like a little girl when she locked horns with this man?
“No, ma’am. I’m just trying to protect the people of the town. Especially from women who can clobber a fella without raisin’ dust.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
He held both hands up in surrender, his lips twitching. “Not me.” He cupped her elbow. “Allow me to escort you to the hotel, Miss Devlin.”
She slanted him a glance. “My, how chivalrous.”
Slowly, he slid her arm into the crook of his elbow and rested his hand on hers. “Seriously, Anna, you shouldn’t be running around town after dark. Life can be dangerous. You never know . . .”
Something in his voice made her look sharply at him. The lines bracketing his mouth had tightened, and she could feel the tension in his arm. What secret memories did this man harbor? Or was this merely the male protectiveness of a lawman in the eighteen seventies?
They strolled along the boardwalk, neither one speaking, but a sense of being in the right place at the right time quietly stole over her. Which was nonsense, of course. This was definitely not the right time, or place.
Wes positioned his hand on her back as they approached the door of the hotel. “Anna.”
“What?” She leaned her head back so she could meet his eyes.
“Don’t be fooled into thinking you can take care of yourself.” He raised his hand and ran his knuckles down her cheek, leaving a trail of fire. One finger slipped under her chin and he eased her head up. “I don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
Her breath hitched, and after coming to a complete stop, her heart started up again, thundering in her chest. The closeness of their bodies, the dark quiet night, the millions of stars in the sky that she’d never seen in her time, created a cocoon of intimacy. No one else existed, just the two of them, man and woman. A hint of clean cotton, leather and the unique scent that she’d identified as Wes battered her senses.
She lowered her lashes as his head moved closer and his fingers slid to the back of her neck, tugging her forward. The touch of his lips on hers was quick, soft and warm. He pulled back, the torture in his eyes evident.
Before she could question him, he touched the brim of his hat. “Good night.”
Anna brought her clasped hands to her chest and watched Wes disappear into the darkness.
Chapter Five
The young girl’s huge brown eyes pleaded with Wes, fear making her breath come in gasps. His commanding officer, Corporal Otis Letterman, had her on the ground, lying between her spread legs. He pushed up her dress as she struggled and pounded him with her fists.
“Sir, please leave the girl be. Let’s be on our way,” Sergeant Wesley Shannon pleaded.
“Shut up, Sergeant. I’m having enough trouble with the bitch without you complaining.” Otis grunted when the girl’s fist connected with his eye. He reached into his holster and withdrew his pistol, aiming it at the girl’s head.
“No!” She and Wes cried out at the same time.
Otis leaned into the girl’s face. “If you make one more sound, I’ll kill you.”
Tears ran down her
cheeks, and she bit her lip so hard it bled.
“Sir, please. Let the girl go.” Wes stepped forward as Otis unhitched his belt with his other hand, the gun still firmly pressed against the girl’s head.
“If ya try and stop me, Shannon, I’ll put a bullet between her eyes. Now shut up! You can have a turn when I’m done.”
Wes turned away, bile rising in his throat. He stared at a spot about a hundred feet away, his entire body shaking as he heard the sound of the girl’s whimpering and Otis’s grunting. No sooner had Otis shouted his release than the sound of a gun discharging thundered in the morning air. Wes swung around.
The girl lay dead on the ground, eyes still open, her dress shoved to her waist. Blood seeped from between her thighs, and the hole in the side of her head.
Wes bent over and emptied his stomach. When he finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and faced Otis. “You said you would kill her if I tried to stop you.”
Otis fastened the flap of his pants and shrugged. “No witnesses.” He stared at Wes. “Except you.” He re-holstered his gun. “But then you won’t report anything, soldier, or I’ll say you did it.” He slid his boot into the stirrup, and swung his leg over his horse. “Now who do you suppose they’re gonna believe back at the fort? You−or me?”
Wes shot up from the pillow, his body drenched in sweat, his heart galloping in his chest. With shaky hands he ran stiff fingers through his hair, then dropped his head into his palms. It had been months since he’d had the dream. And it didn’t take much for him to know who had triggered it. Anna.
Where did she come from that she thought wandering around by herself in the dark was safe? Sure, her ability to thrash the cowboy saved her that one time, but she’d never get away with it again.
He tossed the light blanket aside and swung his legs over the edge of his bed. Experience had taught him there would be no more sleep tonight, and most likely he’d spend the day tensing up every time someone walked up behind him.
A Tumble Through Time Page 5