He might have decided to take another room, though. Worry jumped inside her. She didn't want him to do that.
"And why don't I?" she asked herself. "Am I just a wee bit too interested?"
It was dumb. Grabbing some clothes from her suitcase, she dressed quickly. If she was starting to get a soft heart for the man, she was heading for trouble.
The door unlocked, then opened. She jumped to her feet, glad she'd pulled on her clothes. "Where did you go?" she asked, hating that she sounded interested. As if I can't bear for him to leave my sight even for a second.
"Rose and I took a little stroll. She told me she needed some fresh air, and I told her I needed to clear my head."
He'd put his clothes back on, including the duster. It was cold outside, so it made sense; still, Auburn missed seeing what was underneath the long coat.
"Hey," she said, "I owe you an apology."
He looked at her. "Why?"
"Because I've been rude. I said things I shouldn't have."
He shook his head. "I offer the same apology to you."
"Okay." She took a deep breath. "Flip you for the bed."
His brows shot up. "I'll take the roll-up bed."
"You and Rose might be more comfortable in the king."
He kissed the baby's cheek. "We're comfortable anywhere together. Aren't we, pumpkin?"
Auburn's heart shifted. "You're getting very attached to her."
He nuzzled her cheek. "She's lured me in."
Auburn turned away. "Are you ready to turn in? Or are you a night owl?"
"We're both ready."
Auburn helped him pull the rollaway apart, straightened the sheets. He and the baby lay down on it, facing each other. Slowly, he ran a soothing palm over the child, and Rose relaxed.
"This is silly," Auburn said, looking at his boots hanging off the end, and hearing the springs creak. "We'll all sleep in the king. There's plenty of room. Rose in the middle."
He raised his head. "I don't need to keep that close of an eye on you."
She rolled her eyes and jerked his pillow from under his head. "I'll sleep better knowing you're not going to squash Rose by rolling over on her in that small bed."
He followed his pillow, which she'd tossed on the far side of the bed. "Baby in between," she said, and he complied. "See? We're as far apart as California from Tennessee."
"It's still not proper," he hedged. "Ladies don't sleep in a bed with a man they don't know."
"Don't you worry about that," Auburn said, snuggling down on her side, grateful for the soft pillows and warm blanket. "I won't tell on Rose if you don't."
She leaned over and gave Rose a tiny kiss on the forehead, just to feel the satin of baby skin under her lips. Just once.
And then she realized how hard it would be to say goodbye when it was time for Rose and her cowboy to go back to wherever it was that they came from.
Closing her eyes, Auburn listened to Dillinger breathing deeply, unable to sleep herself. She was taunted by one nagging question: what would it feel like to sleep all night in such a drop-dead-sexy man's arms?
Divine, probably. Sinfully divine.
Chapter Seven
Auburn was pretending that she was asleep, but Dillinger knew she wasn't. He certainly couldn't sleep. His thoughts kept running around Auburn's incredible description of his home, and his wife. How could she have seen it so clearly, described it so well? The fact that she had spooked him, made him crazy. She claimed she had nothing to do with his appearance in this time and realm, and yet she knew all about his life.
The baby slept between them, content now. She wouldn't awaken for a feeding for a bit. He should sleep.
But sleep wouldn't come.
"Hey," a voice whispered in the darkness. He automatically stiffened, not certain he was ready to talk.
"What?"
"How old do you think Rose is?"
He had no idea. "About three months, maybe."
"That's what I was thinking."
"Why are you thinking about her age?"
He felt Auburn shift in the bed. There seemed to be miles between them, and yet not enough distance.
"I can't imagine a person leaving such a small baby on a porch step in bitter cold and snow."
Goose bumps ran over his skin. What if he hadn't opened the door? "I try not to think about some poor soul being that desperate. When I get back, I'll try to figure out who her mother is, see if I can help in some way." He had no idea how he would do that, but he could try.
"Wasn't there a church in town where she could have been left?"
"It's very far from my ranch. Whoever it was had to have been on foot. I didn't hear horses or any type of sleigh. Of course, I wasn't really listening. Rose was wailing, and I picked her up—and then I was here."
"Weren't you scared?"
"It happened too fast." Of course he'd been scared, totally panicked about being left with an infant.
"What did it feel like?" Auburn asked, her voice soft. "Traveling through time?"
He sat up, looked over at her in the darkness. "You really do believe me now, don't you?"
"Yes. I do. As crazy as I must be, I know you're telling the truth."
He sighed, relieved. "It felt like wind was tearing at every piece of me, and yet I felt no pain. I held the baby tight, and it seemed only a second passed before I was at your Six Flags." He frowned. "Why were you working there, anyway? You clearly have enough money for your needs."
"It's an adventure. All my life I wondered what was outside of my world. People always seemed like they were having so much fun at places like Disney World and Six Flags. I admired actors and actresses in stage plays, musicians in orchestras. I could never do any of those things, so I wanted to know. And I liked dressing up for a few hours and being someone else."
"You don't like your family? Your life?"
"I do," she said carefully, "but I need to rethink it."
"How much longer will you rethink?"
"Once Christmas is past, I'll probably go home."
He heard the hesitation in her voice and wondered. "I'm sure your parents are worried."
"I call them every once in a while. The conversation is short, but they know I'm safe."
"Will they be all right?"
"Yes. Apparently, my ex-fiancé still thinks I'll come to my senses and return to him, so he's not asking my parents to pay back any of the loans he's carrying for them." She let out a long sigh, and Dillinger could feel her worry for her family. "Banks aren't loaning money for anything. I suppose my folks had nowhere else to turn. But I got angry when I realized they felt me marrying him was good for their business relationship. It just didn't feel right. Not when you think you're marrying for love."
So she'd been in love with him. Something strange and unfamiliar smote Dillinger, making him question his feelings about this woman with whom he had nothing in common. Why would he be anguished that she'd had her heart broken? Had he hoped she'd been marrying for money, as she seemed to think her parents wanted? It wasn't the first time people would marry for financial considerations; it happened all the time, in every century. He doubted this era was any different than others.
"I'm sorry," he finally murmured, not knowing what else to say.
"Don't be," Auburn replied. "I'm in a better place now. Good night."
And that was all she intended to say on the matter, he realized. He admired her spunk, her sense of adventure. If he had to rely on a woman to help him, he was glad it was Auburn. She was kind and caring, and if she was a little unusual, it was probably because women were a bit different in this time.
He didn't like knowing so little about her, though, when she'd seen inside his home, his life and his marriage. She was still a stranger to him.
* * *
BRADLEY JACKSON DIDN'T like anyone making a fool of him, and his fiancée leaving right before their wedding had humiliated him. He didn't love Auburn, but he'd believed he was getting a good deal with h
er. Their marriage would be one of mutual respect—or so he'd thought.
Clearly, she hadn't respected him very much. There was only one way to save face, something very important to him, not just for his own name, but for the reputation of McGinnis Perfumes. He intended to explain that just as soon as he caught up to her, which wouldn't take long, thanks to excellent private investigators. And when he found her, he was going to spell out in language she couldn't misunderstand just what would happen to her company if she didn't return. And then let everyone know she'd gotten a case of cold feet, which would by then be hot to trot right up to the altar.
She owed him that much. She owed him a lot more, but making her understand her end of the business transaction was important to Bradley.
It was easy to get the information he needed from the security guard at the penthouse where she'd stayed—a dreadful, run-down place, in his opinion. But thankfully not so run-down that they didn't take credit cards, which his P.I. had traced.
"She was with a man and a baby," the guard told him after Bradley gave him a crisp hundred-dollar bill. Blood boiling at the thought that Auburn might have jilted him for another man, he decided he would be more than happy to ruin the company if she didn't play his way, and fast. He headed west, because the guard thought he'd heard something said about Christy River, which would be a stupid place for her to go. There'd be nothing for the citified, globe-trotting Auburn McGinnis in a two-bit town. A McGinnis should only be seen in the best places, such as Aspen and Dubai. He hoped she remembered who she was while she was sightseeing all over Texas, clearly not thinking about what she'd put him through.
What if she'd planned all this? The job at Six Flags—which horrified him—and the road-tripping with another man? Bradley would kill him, plain and simple. He doubted straitlaced Auburn would pick up a stranger, so it had to be someone she knew. Clearly someone who was married and who had a child, which necessitated the running and hiding.
And which also meant she was probably sleeping with the stranger, something she'd never done with Bradley. He would kill her because she'd made him wait while he was playing the diligent, if not entirely faithful, suitor.
Maybe he would hire some of his thugs to dispose of them neatly. The trail would have grown cold by the time the McGinnis family decided to send their own team of private investigators to look for their daughter, and to be brutally honest, the McGinnises didn't have that much money left.
Bradley would kill her if he caught her with another man. Especially a man with a baby, if the security guard had been right. Because Auburn had always told Bradley—insisted, even—that she never, ever wanted children.
Surely she didn't think she could pull a trick on him the size of Texas and expect not to pay dearly.
These were his fantasies, though he knew he'd never really harm her or anyone else. But it hurt like hell to get jilted by a woman who owed him big-time.
* * *
"THERE HAS TO BE A way to get you home," Auburn whispered so they wouldn't awaken Rose, whom they'd just fed and soothed back to sleep. The three of them lay in the dark, and the only one slumbering away was the baby. Auburn's mind was running in circles, and she wasn't certain if it was because she couldn't stop thinking about how warm and comforting it would be to snuggle up to Dillinger, or because sudden nerves that she couldn't explain had swept over her.
She was jumpy in the worst way.
"I can't imagine what brought me here in the first place," he replied, his voice deep and husky in the darkness. They'd quickly discovered that once Rose was asleep, nothing disturbed her. "If I can figure that out, I'll do everything in my power to reverse whatever happened, and hopefully get us back to Christmas River."
"You might send yourself further into the future. Or back to the time of pharaohs."
"That's a bit fanciful," Dillinger said.
"Why? How do you know this is where you were supposed to be in the first place?" She worked at the puzzle tenaciously, her nerves making her restless enough to pull apart a Rubik's cube. "There was a television show called—"
"Television show?"
She blinked. He would really freak when she turned on a television set for him. As overwhelmed as he was by automobiles, airplanes and highway traffic, he'd probably be fascinated by a TV. All men were. Then again, maybe she wouldn't introduce him to that particular pleasure just yet, Auburn thought with a giggle.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing," she said. "A television show is like a stage show, but in a box. Did you see that box in the cabinet?"
"Yes."
"It plays pictures."
"How?"
"Beams and signals and things I'm not all that good at explaining. From a television station, they get sent all over the world, and are broadcast in homes where they have a television."
"So there are people in the boxes?"
"Pictures of people, really."
"And like those airplanes we saw, the people can get in them and go wherever they want."
She could feel his excitement, knew what he was asking. "But you can't travel through time in them, only across time zones, which is different."
"There's something here that will send us back," he insisted.
"I know," she said. "We'll figure it out."
She didn't know how. She sold perfume for a living; what did she know about time travel? She'd barely read any science fiction in school. "Maybe it was your thoughts that brought you forward?"
"Then I could think my way back? I doubt it. I'd already be home by now."
For some reason his words opened a painful place inside her. He wasn't ever going to stop thinking about the ranch where he'd lived with his wife. "Okay," she sighed, rolling over to look in his direction, even though she couldn't see him. "It all comes back to the baby, then."
"I don't see how a helpless baby can be responsible. She can't even speak."
"But you picked her up and found yourself here," Auburn pointed out.
"That's true."
Auburn reached out in the darkness to smooth a hand over Rose's head, accidentally met Dillinger's hand doing the same. They both drew back instantly.
"Sorry," she murmured.
"Don't be. Maybe she's a good luck charm, and if we rub her the right way or often enough, she'll reveal the hidden passageway."
"Oh, wow," Auburn said, then laughed. "Who would have thought you'd have the gift of fantasy fiction inside you?"
"I told you," he said stiffly, "my wife read to me often. Arabian Nights, tales about the Knights of the Round Table…we had books in the nineteenth century, you know."
"I know," Auburn said. "It's just that you seem like such a tough guy to be interested in Arabian stories."
"I liked them very much, and Shakespeare, and anything we could find in the town library. Arabian Nights caused quite a sensation when it was translated into English just a few years ago."
She blinked. "Wasn't it older?"
"Of course. But the English translation was new."
She thought about stories and magic carpets and jumbo jets, and wondered how she could help him.
"So about this television show you were going to tell me about—"
"Never mind." She shook her head. "It was just a story, like those in Arabian Nights. It won't help us."
"Anything's possible," he said. "The fairy tales I plan to read to Rose will always have a happy ending."
"Those involve kissing, usually," Auburn said, "and a kiss didn't bring you here, so a kiss won't send you back."
He laughed. "That's funny."
"What? Kissing to make you travel through time?"
"Yes."
"Maybe. Kissing Rose hasn't exactly worked for you."
"No, but I like it. She's a sweet baby."
"I still think she's the charm." Auburn stared up at the ceiling in the dark, wondering about how charming and magical it would be to kiss the cowboy.
Suddenly, she sat up. "It's the earring!"
<
br /> "What?"
"I saw your home when I held the earring. The earring is the key!"
The Cowboy from Christmas Past Page 6