She hurriedly put on her sleep shirt. She was bent over the washbasin scrubbing her face when they came into the room, and from there she went straight to her pallet, pulling the quilt up to her chin while Daisy and Elvira got themselves ready for bed.
“He’s a handsome young man, that McGraw.” Elvira was pulling on her pink pajamas, studiously not looking at Hannah. “He reminds me of a young Clark Gable, don’t you think so, Daisy?"
Daisy was brushing her teeth, and she made a garbled sound.
"He’s very charming, too, but we need to keep in mind that we’re going to find a way back to our own lives, and that our time here is just like a dream we’re going to wake up from,” Elvira pronounced. "So we shouldn't get too involved in anything because we'll be leaving before long."
Hannah screwed her eyes shut. Elvira was about as subtle as a freight train, warning her about Logan. Part of her felt like sitting up and telling the older woman to mind her own damned business. But another part recognized that Elvira cared for her in her own way; she’d been Daisy's friend for years, and she’d watched Hannah grow up.
What she was really telling Hannah was not to get hurt. As if she needed to be told, Hannah fumed. As if she didn’t know that kissing Logan was playing with fire.
Klaus came over and sniffed at her as if he could smell smoke, and she glared at the little dog from under slitted eyelids. He growled at her and took refuge on the end of the bed, on Daisy’s side.
It wasn’t until the lamp was out and the other two were sleeping that Hannah allowed herself to really admit what had almost happened in the toolshed. If Daisy hadn’t interrupted, she knew she would have made love with Logan then and there, if that was what he’d wanted.
She certainly had wanted it. Her body tingled and throbbed, remembering. He'd wanted it, too, just as much as she. We’re only just beginning, he’d told her.
She’d sensed from the first moment she met him that there was dangerous, dark sexuality in Logan. What she'd never suspected was that it was also there in her. Her engagement ring felt as heavy as sin on her finger. She turned it round and round, trying to feel guilty about going so willingly into Logan's arms.
After all, there was the matter of loyalty to Brad to consider, she reminded herself. But Brad was almost a hundred and fifty years away, and Logan was sleeping just outside.
Logan wasn’t sleeping.
Angus was snoring. He was a world-class snorer, too. The sound rose and fell in the darkness of the toolshed, but it wasn’t the noise that was keeping Logan awake.
He lay on his back, bare arms folded under his head, blood pounding through every vein in his body. He was angry with himself, too angry to sleep, and along with the anger there was this tearing lust, the vivid memory of Hannah in his arms, her swollen mouth warm and eager for his kisses, her lush body pressed against him, wordlessly begging for what he longed to provide.
He’d been lonely most of his life. He’d dreamed of finding a woman to ease that loneliness, but why had she come at this particular time?
There was also the confusing issue of where she’d come from. It was madness even to consider that the story the women told was the truth, but what was the alternative? Logan had racked his brain searching for a logical explanation, with no success.
Wherever Hannah had sprung from, he wanted her with an urgency that troubled and surprised him. He’d wanted women before, but never with the overwhelming need he felt for this one. It went beyond need, too. She constantly challenged and surprised him, both intellectually and emotionally. She made him laugh, and he hadn’t laughed much in the past year. He found himself confiding in her in a way he’d never done with anyone, as he had tonight, and at this particular moment in his life, he shouldn't be revealing himself to her or anyone.
He couldn't afford to be distracted right now by a woman. He’d come to Barkerville with one single purpose in mind: to find Bart Flannery and kill him. Flannery had seduced Nellie and made her pregnant, and then he’d deserted her, probably because she wouldn't agree to become one of his prostitutes.
Logan now knew a great deal about Flannery. He’d made it his business to find out everything he could. He knew that Flannery had used a comparable method with numerous other women. Logan had tracked several down and convinced them to tell him their stories.
Each story was different, but there were similarities. Flannery was sophisticated and very clever. He obviously took pleasure in seducing innocent young women, introducing them to sex, and then using their new-found passion as a way of controlling them.
Nellie had been slow-witted, but many of the women weren't.
Flannery was good at what he did. He often hinted at marriage and instead gradually lured girls into prostitution. If they became pregnant, all the better. It had happened to three of the women Logan searched out, and in each case Flannery used the child as a powerful tool to control the mother. He was evil, and he was also dangerous.
In the war, Logan had seen innocent young men slaughtered, men who didn’t deserve to die. In Logan’s opinion, Flannery didn’t deserve to live. When the time came, Logan would have no qualms about murder.
Death was no stranger to him, and although he'd never killed anyone deliberately, he knew he was capable of it, but he also knew he needed a clear head to carry it out. It would be tricky, killing Flannery here in Barkerville. There was only one constable, but there was also only one road out.
When he was around Hannah, his head was anything but clear. He’d wanted her from the very first night he'd met her, from the moment he’d seen her standing in that wagon in her outrageous pants, accusing him of being an actor. But wanting and taking were two different things.
Tonight, holding her in his arms, kissing her, he’d sensed that if he’d carried her here to his cot, she'd have stayed willingly. Her need was every bit as urgent as his own.
It would be wrong of him to take advantage of the desire between them, he argued with himself. There could be no future to it. When he killed Flannery, there was a chance he’d end up in Judge Begbie’s courtroom accused of murder. If that happened, he’d hang.
It wasn’t fair to involve Hannah in his life. Whoever she was, wherever she came from, she could be hurt in so many different ways from knowing him. And more than anything, he didn’t want to hurt her.
At seven the following morning, Hannah walked through the front door of Joe Pandola’s General Store to begin her new job.
She was wearing one of the outfits she’d bought the day before, a long-sleeved, high-necked white shirt with tucks all down the front, and a navy-blue serge skirt that came down to her ankles. Even at this early hour, she felt unbearably hot and weighed down by the yards of fabric.
At least she hadn't put on the corsets and layers of petticoats, the long, hot stockings and high laced boots other women in this era wore.
She had her sandals on, but she'd pulled on a pair of white sports socks to hide the sight of her bare ankles, which apparently were erotic enough to drive every man who glimpsed them into a frenzy.
Men in this era must be a lot easier to arouse than they were in her time.
She felt absolutely ridiculous, as if she were in costume for a play. She had noticed, however, that she didn’t attract quite as many bold stares this morning from the men on the street as she walked to work.
"Good morning, Mr. Pandola."
She smiled at her employer, a short, dark man with flashing black eyes, a little round pot belly, and a bald head.
He eyed her clothing and nodded in evident approval.
There was just no accounting for taste, she thought.
"What would you like me to do first?"
"Sweepa the floor." He pointed at a broom in the corner. “Then washa this basket of eggs. Puta that box of cans on the shelf. Cleana the windows. There’s so mucha dust nobody cana see in. Then you refill the barrels witha flour and sugar from the storeroom outa the back.”
No wonder he’d been concerne
d about her muscles, Hannah thought morosely as she set to work. She couldn't help thinking nostalgically of her cozy office at the hospital, of early mornings spent in professional meetings with colleagues, where coffee and fresh fruit and muffins were laid out for everyone’s enjoyment and an invisible cleaning crew had mopped the floors and dusted during the night.
Maybe she hadn’t appreciated it all enough, she thought as she mopped sweat from her forehead and traded the broom for a wet rag.
She began washing straw and manure from a small mountain of eggs and her stomach heaved. She’d never realized that this was the way eggs looked when they first came from chickens.
By the time she’d washed three dozen of the disgusting things, she wondered if she’d ever be able to eat one again, and there was still a mountain of them.
The minutes ticked past in slow motion, and the heat in the store increased.
A young man came in. He wore rough miner’s clothing, but his face and hands were clean and his carroty hair showed the marks of a recent wet combing.
“Whata can I do for you today, young man?" Pandola’s tone was ingratiating.
The customer's eyes rested on Hannah. He moved past Pandola as if he were invisible and made his way over to her.
"Miss—?”
She smiled at him. "Hannah."
He ducked his head in a little bow. "Miss Hannah, I wonder if you could please help me? My name’s Sandy Walsh. I’ve just staked a claim out on Keithley Creek, and I need provisions."
Hannah set the rag and the egg down, relieved to be rescued.
“Sure. What do you need, Sandy?”
His gaze was bashful but admiring. "Oh, I guess flour, bacon, beans, salt."
Pandola was hovering. “She’s’a new here, she's notta familiar witha my store.”
"I bin in before. I can show her." Sandy grinned at Hannah. “I got lots of time. I'd be honored to help. Here’s the flour, Miss. Here, let me lift that for you." His pink face grew even pinker, and he stammered out, “I hear you're new in town, and I wondered—that is, would you do me the honor of taking dinner with me at Wake-Up Jake’s to- night?"
Hannah thanked him and declined without hurting his feelings.
He bought an enormous amount of supplies, and she added his bill carefully, longing for a calculator. At least there was no sales tax to factor in.
Sandy left reluctantly, assuring her he’d be back soon.
After Sandy, there were four more male customers during the next hour. Like him, they doffed their caps and smiled and talked only to her, ignoring Pandola’s offers of assistance.
Unlike him, none of them left.
More came in, slipping in the door as if Pandola were giving groceries away today.
Some looked at her directly, some were more furtive, but Hannah soon realized that she was the star attraction.
Pandola ran around like a nit in a fit, and all the men ignored him.
Some were shy, some bold. She had offers of rides in buggies, visits to gold mines, meals at restaurants, and two outright proposals of marriage from men she’d never laid eyes on in her life, both of whom assured her they’d struck the mother lode and she’d never have to work again in her life.
It didn’t take long to figure out that she was very good for Joe Pandola’s business. It was evident that a lot of these men weren’t regulars in the store; unlike Sandy, they had no idea where anything was, and they didn't seem to have a clear idea what they wanted, either, except for her.
They bought chewing tobacco, dried beef jerky, several bags of beans, half the mining equipment in the store, and all the chocolate, which she received as gifts once they’d paid for it.
She refused all offers, but she did so graciously, because the men treated her with such obvious respect.
It was much more pleasant than washing muck off eggs or filling shelves and bins.
Pandola was no fool. By ten o'clock, he was restocking the shelves and cleaning the eggs himself, and Hannah was adding up bills and making change out of the antiquated cash register.
By noon she'd hit him up for a raise and received it.
A plump woman in a green bonnet with cabbage roses on its crown came into the store just after noon, and Hannah tensed. It was Mrs. Heatherington, and Hannah remembered her clearly from the first morning in Barkerville when the woman had crossed the street rather than say hello.
Today was different. After looking her up and down, Mrs. Heatherington smiled and greeted her warmly, asking where she was from and how she liked Barkerville.
"I’m visiting from Victoria," Hannah replied, being sarcastic when she added, "Barkerville seems a friendly town.”
Apart from would-be rapists and snobby women.
“Oh, what we lack in culture we make up for in congeniality,” the woman gushed. “May I in- troduce myself? I’m Prudence Heatherington, wife of Gordie the bootmaker.”
Hannah repeated her own name, and they shook hands.
"I understand your mother and aunt are here with you. Miss Gilmore?”
Gossip was obviously alive and well amongst the women in town, and if Elvira had become her aunt, that was fine with Hannah.
"Mother has taken a job as cook at the Nugget, and Elvira is a nurse. She’s just started working at the hospital.”
“Why, how very enterprising of you all," Prudence gushed. "You must join our reading circle, all three of you. We meet at the library at seven on Sunday evenings. We take turns bringing refreshments. And if an Anglican service suits you, Reverend Reynard holds services each Sunday at ten, in the schoolhouse. We are a small but devoted group, and would welcome three new members to the congregation."
Prudence's new attitude towards her had everything to do with what she was wearing, Hannah realized. It was worth the discomfort if clothing was all it took to be accepted by the female side of Barkerville society.
The afternoon was even hotter than the morning had been, but the heat didn’t deter the dozens of men who filed in and out of the store. Hannah smiled and made change and deflected still more invitations and proposals, wondering if she was going to die from heat prostration before the endless day was over.
When seven o’clock finally came, and Pandola locked the door and swung the sign around to CLOSED, Hannah wearily made her way back to the Nugget, sweating profusely, aching in every limb from the long hours on her feet. She was also aware of the bruises on her hips and back from Slater’s attack the night before.
She made her way along the boardwalk, thinking of the previous night and Logan. All day, thoughts of him had come into her head even though she’d tried to keep them away. The memory of his kiss sent ripples of pleasure along her nerve endings, and she felt nervous and decidedly shy about seeing him again.
When she got to the Nugget, she hurried around to the back door, hoping against hope that he’d be busy in the saloon at this time of the evening. Supper would be over. Logan had explained that miners liked to eat early, so as to leave as much time as possible for drinking, and Daisy was pleased to have her job finish early in the day.
"Hi, everyone," Hannah called.
The kitchen door was open, and Daisy and Angus were sitting at the table with a fragile girl whose hugely pregnant stomach seemed grotesquely large for her thin body.
“Miss Hannah, my sister’s here,” Angus announced in an excited tone. “This here’s my Jeannie," he boomed, and Hannah was touched by the pride and pure joy in the boy's voice.
Yesterday’s Gold: Chapter Sixteen
The girl's mass of inky black curls and her huge blue eyes made the physical resemblance between her and her brother startling.
Daisy introduced them. “Hannah, this is Jeannie Chalmers. Jeannie, this is my daughter, Hannah Gilmore."
"Hi, Jeannie.” Hannah smiled and extended a hand towards the girl, noting a fading purple bruise on her right cheek.
When Jeannie bashfully extended her hand, the thick calluses on her palm spoke of hard physical work. Her
hands were terribly chapped and raw-looking. The faded blue gingham dress she wore was clean but threadbare, stretched to its limit across her belly. It was obvious that Jeannie understood hard work and poverty.
Hannah felt compassion swell within her for this child-woman. She wondered how old Jeannie was. She couldn't be more than fourteen or fifteen, and yet she was already married and about to become a mother.
“It’s really great to meet you," Hannah said with a smile, wanting to put the girl at ease. "Angus has been such a help to us since we got here.”
Jeannie smiled with obvious pleasure, but she didn’t say anything. She was visibly shy, and very tense.
“Jean, ya gotta see this little doggie. Klaus, c’mere boy, c'mere.”
Angus successfully coaxed the dog out from behind the stove, where Daisy had put a blanket down for him.
"Ain’t he a nice little doggie, Jeannie?" It was patently clear that Angus worshipped his sister. His love showed in his eyes when he looked at her, and when he sat down again he took her hand and clasped it tightly in his own.
"Angus says you live quite a way out of town,” Hannah said. "It’s nice that you’re able to come and visit.”
“I cain’t stay long.” Her voice was soft and husky, with an undertone of anxiety. "I just wanted ta see Angus fer a minute."
Daisy said, "Oh, you must stay and have something to eat with us, Jeannie. There’s lots left over from supper. Hannah hasn’t eaten yet and neither have I.”
Angus leaned towards his sister. "Stay here, okay, Jeannie?" His tone was urgent, and it seemed he was urging his sister to move in instead of just to stay for some food. "It’s real good here. Miss Daisy’s a real good cook, you’d like it lots. Boss won't mind.”
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 52