Here and Then

by Linda Lael Miller

  Farley reached for her bowl and carried it to the stove. “What you need,” he said, “is some more stew.”

  Rue watched him with a hunger she would have been too embarrassed even to write about in the privacy of her journal, and she swallowed hard. “Stew,” she said. “Right.”

  Chapter Seven

  The stew was remarkably good, hot and savory and fresh, and Rue consumed the second helping without quibbling. She was fiercely hungry, and the food eased her low-grade headache and the shaky feeling that invariably overtook her when she failed to eat regular meals.

  After supper, Farley heated water on the stove, and Rue insisted on washing the dishes. It was fun, sort of like playing house in an antique store.

  The lean-to was a small place, though, and when Farley poured himself a cup of coffee and then lingered at the table, flipping thoughtfully through a stack of papers, Rue was more painfully conscious of his presence than ever. She tried not to think about him, but it was an impossibility. He seemed to fill the little room to its corners with his size, his uncompromising masculinity and the sheer strength of his personality.

  In Rue’s opinion, the effect on her nerves, her muscles and her most-secret parts was all out of proportion to the circumstances, strange as they were. She felt like a human volcano; lava was burning and bubbling in the farthest reaches of her body and her spirit. Simple things like drying the chipped crockery bowls they’d eaten from and setting them on the shelves took on the significance of epic poetry.

  She was wrestling with the enormous enamel coffeepot, trying to pour herself a cupful, when she felt Farley looming behind her. He displaced her grip on the pot’s handle and filled her cup.

  He was only standing at her back, it was nothing more dramatic than that, yet Rue felt a devastating charge radiate from his body to hers. In the next moment, the invisible field, woven of lantern light, cosmic mystery, half-forgotten dreams and stardust enfolded her, and she sagged backward against Farley’s steely stomach and chest.

  Farley made no sound. He simply took the cup from Rue’s hand, set it on the stove and closed his strong arms lightly around her waist. For all that she had never been in such trouble, even on her most memorable assignments as a journalist, Rue felt as though she’d stumbled upon some magical sanctuary where nothing and no one could ever hurt her.

  In the meantime, the seismic tumult was building inside Rue, gaining force moment by moment. She knew the inevitable eruption would be more than physical; it would be an upheaval of the soul, as well. And she wanted it despite the danger.

  Presently—whether a minute or an hour passed, Rue could not have said—Farley raised his hands slowly, gently, to weigh her breasts. When his thumbs moved over her nipples, making them harden and strain against the fabric of her dress, Rue groaned and tilted her head back against his shoulder.

  He touched his lips to her temple, warming the delicate flesh there, and then he bent his head slightly to nibble the side of her neck. Rue would have throttled any other man for taking such liberties, but her need for Farley had sneaked up on her, and it was already so pervasive that she couldn’t tell where the craving stopped and her own being began.

  When he lifted her into his arms, Rue’s logical left brain finally struggled to the surface and gurgled out a protest, but it was too late. The fanciful right side of her brain was hearing rapturous symphonies, and the notes drowned out all other sounds.

  Farley carried her out of the kitchen—Rue was vaguely aware of the fire as they passed the hearth—then he took her behind the Indian blanket that served as a curtain. There was a look of grim resignation on his face as he laid her on the neatly made bed and stood gazing down at her for a long moment. It was as if he thought she’d cast a spell over him and he was trying to work out some way to break it.

  She couldn’t tell him that she was under an enchantment, too, that she had never done anything like this before. All she could do was lie there, all but the most primitive essence of her identity seared away by the heat of her desire, needing him. Waiting.

  He took off her funny, old-fashioned shoes and tossed them aside, then began unbuttoning her dress. Only when she lay completely naked on his bed, totally vulnerable, did he speak.

  “God help me,” he said in a raw whisper, “I’ve wanted to see you like this since that day I found you wandering in Doc Fortner’s house. I’ve wanted to touch you….”

  Rue took his hand in hers, emboldened by the turquoise fire in his eyes and the frantic fever in her own spirit, and pressed his palm and fingers to her breast. “Touch me,” she said softly, and the words were both a plea and an affirmation.

  Farley complied for a long, torturously delicious interval, then while Rue waited in sweet agony, he withdrew. She watched, dazed, as he removed his clothes.

  His body had the stealth and prowess of a stalking panther as he stretched out beside her on the rough, woolen blanket that served as a bedspread. Then he kissed her, first caressing her lips with his, then commanding her mouth to open for the entrance of his tongue.

  The conquest was a triumphant one, far more potent than any ordinary kiss. Rue’s body arched beside Farley on the bed, and he reached beneath her to cup her bottom in one hand and press her close against his thighs and the solid demand of his manhood.

  She was afraid when she felt him, terrified of his size and power, and yet this knowledge did nothing to stem the furious tide of her passion.

  Farley kissed Rue, again and again, all the while caressing and shaping her with his hands, until she was in a virtual delirium of need. Perspiration shimmered on every inch of her flesh, and tendrils of her hair clung wetly to her neck and temples.

  At last, Farley positioned himself between her legs, then put his hands under her shoulder blades and raised her breasts for conquering. When he captured one eager nipple with his mouth, Rue cried out in despairing surrender, begging him to take her.

  For all her travels, for all her reading and her sophistication, when Farley entered her, Rue was startled. There was pain, and it lingered, but it was also promptly overshadowed by a consuming, joyous rage made up of heavenly light and dragon’s fire.

  Rue pressed her hands to Farley’s back, and the play of his muscles under her palms was as much a part of their lovemaking as the ferocious rhythm of joining and parting that was even then transforming them both.

  For all the breathless promise of the past half hour or so, when Rue finally achieved satisfaction, she was all but swept away by the force of it. She strained beneath Farley in wild, glorious and totally involuntary spasms, her teeth clenched against the shouts of triumph rattling in the back of her throat. She was just settling back to the bed, breathless and disoriented, when Farley clasped her bottom hard in his hands, pressed her tightly against him and made a series of deep, abrupt thrusts. To Rue’s surprise, she reached another climax when Farley had his; her release was a soft, languid implosion, like a blessing on the tempest that had preceded it.

  When he’d finally spent the last of his energy, Farley collapsed beside Rue, his breathing hard and raspy. She pressed her face into the taut, moist flesh on his shoulder, at once hiding from her lover and seeking him out.

  “I knew it would be like that,” Farley muttered after they’d lain entwined for a long time, listening to the beating of each other’s hearts, the crackle of the fire and the night sounds of the lively timber town beyond the cabin walls.

  Rue’s eyes filled with tears, but she wasn’t mourning the time before, when she and Farley had been innocent of each other. No matter what happened, whether she lived the rest of her life with this man or without him, in this century or another, she’d given herself truly and totally to Farley Haynes, and she would never forget the splendor of it.

  “I thought it was a lie,” she finally confessed. “What people said about making love, I mean. I never knew—until now.”

  Farley sighed and raised his head to look through her eyes, as though they were clear as wi
ndowpanes, and straight into her soul. He kissed her forehead and then rested his scratchy chin where his lips had just touched. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “I offered you safe haven here, and then I took advantage.”

  Rue had just been transported to a whole other plane of womanhood, and the journey had had just as great an impact on her senses and emotions as being tossed from one time period to another. She was incapable, for the moment, of working out whether Farley’s apology was appropriate or not. “It’s not as though you threw me down on the bed and forced me,” she pointed out, loving the feel of his back, supple skin over firm muscles. “I wanted you.”

  Farley drew back to search her eyes again, and the gesture made her feel more naked than she had earlier when he’d methodically relieved her of her clothes. “You are the most forward-thinking female I have ever encountered,” he said somberly, but then a grin broke over his face. “I think I like that about you.”

  Rue swallowed, and her ability to think in rational terms was beginning to dissipate like fog in bright sunshine. Farley was joined to her, and he was getting hard again, and she didn’t want him to leave her. “Stay inside me, Farley. Please.”

  Bracing himself by pressing his hands on the mattress on either side of her, Farley began to move slowly. “I’ll find out the truth about you,” he said, his words growing short and breathy as he increased his pace, “if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  Pressing her shoulders deep into the feather pillows and tilting her head back in magnificent surrender, Rue gasped out, “I’d love to tell you—I’d love to show you the place I came from….” And from that moment on, Rue was beyond speaking.

  Farley dipped his head to lave one of her distended nipples with his tongue. His attentions were merciless and thorough, and soon Rue was pitching under him like a wild mare trying to shake off a rider.

  Once that session had ended, Rue cuddled against Farley’s side—his rib cage had about as much flexibility as the staves of a wooden barrel—and promptly drifted off to sleep. When she awakened, the Indian blanket that separated the bed from the rest of the cabin was framed in silvery moonlight and Farley’s side of the mattress was empty.

  Rue scrambled off the bed, found one of Farley’s shirts hanging from a peg in the wall and shoved her arms through the sleeves. The clock on the plain, board mantel over the fireplace read 3:17 and despite the fact that she had no claim on the marshal’s time, a sense of alarm crowded her throat.

  Obviously, Farley had gone out for some reason—maybe there had been shouts or a frantic knock at the door or even shots fired, and she’d been too drunk on lovemaking to hear. In fact, she hadn’t even noticed when Farley left.

  Rue’s imagination tripped into overdrive. She’d seen enough Clint Eastwood movies to know what awful things could happen to a lone lawman. The difference was that now she wouldn’t be able to toss away her popcorn box, fish her car keys out of her purse and go home to an apartment filled with modern conveniences. This was the real thing, and she just happened to be hopelessly in love with the peace officer in question.

  On some level, Rue had known from the moment she met Farley that something significant was going to happen between them. But she hadn’t expected the event to be on a par with the destruction of the dinosaurs or the formation of the Grand Canyon.

  Rue groped her way into the lean-to kitchen, blinded by her emotions rather than a lack of light, and looked at herself in Farley’s shaving mirror. Except that her hair was tangled and she was wearing a man’s shirt, she seemed unchanged. Inside, however, Rue was wholly different; she’d been converted, not into someone else, but into a better, richer and more genuine version of herself.

  Trembling, Rue poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove and sank into one of the two chairs at the table. Since it had been sitting on the heat for hours, the brew was black as coal oil and only slightly more palatable. Rue figured there was probably enough caffeine in the stuff to keep her awake well into the next century—be it the twentieth or the twenty-first—but she took a second sip anyway.

  Through the closed windows and thin walls of Farley’s house, Rue could hear the sounds of laughter and bad piano music and an ongoing argument between a man and a woman. She was overwhelmingly relieved when the door opened and the marshal himself walked in.

  He set his rifle in the corner, hung his hat and long canvas duster on their pegs and then began unfastening his gun belt. All the time, he watched Rue in the dim, icy glow of the moonlight.

  Rue didn’t want to express her relief at seeing him; she didn’t have the right. “I hope I didn’t keep you from your work,” she said with as much dignity as a person wearing only a man’s shirt and a glow of satisfaction can be expected to summon up.

  Farley didn’t answer. He simply came to the table, took Rue’s hand and brought her to her feet. He took her back to the bedside, and she crawled under the covers, her heart turning to vapor and then gathering in her throat like a summer storm taking shape on the horizon.

  She watched as Farley took off his clothes for the second time that night, more shaken than before by his magnificence and quiet grace.

  He stretched out beside her under the blankets and with a few deft motions of one hand, relieved her of the long shirt she wore. Having done that, Farley curved one arm around Rue and arranged her close against his side, her head resting on his shoulder.

  Farley did not make love to Rue; instead, he simply held her, sheltering her in his solidity and strength. For Rue, the experience was, in its own way, just as momentous as full surrender had been earlier. The simple intimacy met fundamental needs that had not only been unsatisfied before, but unrecognized.

  Rue slept soundly that night and awakened with the first light of dawn, when Farley gently displaced her to get out of bed.

  “What do I do now?” Rue asked softly. Sadly. “I can’t stay here. The whole town will know if I do.”

  “The whole town already knows,” Farley answered, pulling on a pair of dark trousers and disappearing around the edge of the blanket curtain. “There aren’t many secrets in a place like Pine River.”

  Rue slipped under the covers with a groan of mortification, but she could still hear the clatter and clink of stove lids, the working of a pump handle, the opening and closing of a door.

  Presently, the smell and sounds of sizzling bacon filled the air, along with the aroma of fresh coffee. Rue got up, struggled back into her clothes and peered around the blanket.

  She could see Farley in the lean-to, standing at the stove. The sight of him, with his hair wetted down and combed, a meat fork in one hand, filled her with a tenderness so keen that it was painful.

  Rue approached hesitantly. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to say.

  Farley turned a strip of bacon in the black skillet and ran his turquoise eyes companionably over her length. For an instant, Rue was beneath him again, in the throes of complete physical and spiritual communion, and the sensation left her disconcerted.

  The marshal made short work of her poetic mood. “If you’re sore,” he said, “I’ve got some balm out in the barn.”

  Rue sighed. This was the same man who had evoked such violently beautiful responses from her the night before and had later held her snugly against his side, making no demands. Now he was offering her the same medicine he would use on a cow or a horse.

  “Thanks,” she answered belatedly, “but I’ll be fine.”

  Farley shrugged, took two plates down from a shelf and began dishing up breakfast.

  “Interesting,” she murmured thoughtfully, pulling back a chair.

  He set a plate filled with fried food in front her. “What’s interesting?”

  “You,” Rue reflected. “You’re a nineteenth-century male, and here you are cooking for a woman. Even waiting table.”

  Farley arched an eyebrow. “It’s that or risk letting you do the cooking,” he replied.

  Rue laughed
, but her amusement faded as daylight strengthened the thin glow of the lanterns and reality settled in around her. It was morning now; the enchanted night was over and she was stranded in the wrong century, with the wrong man.

  “Farley, what am I going to do?” she asked again. “My money is gone, I don’t have anywhere to stay and it’s beginning to look like my cousin and her husband are going to make their home in San Francisco and never contact anybody in Pine River again.”

  “Jon and Lizzie will come back when they’re ready,” Farley said with certainty. “And you can stay here with me.”

  “Oh, right,” Rue snapped, irritated not with Farley for making the suggestion, but with herself for wanting to go on sharing his life and his bed for as long as possible. “The good women of Pine River will love that.”

  Farley grinned. “No, they won’t.”

  “You’re being pretty cocky right now,” Rue pointed out, annoyed, “but the truth is, you’re afraid of those women, Farley Haynes. They have the power to make both our lives miserable, and you know it.”

  Farley’s smile tightened to a look of grim obstinance, and Rue wondered hopefully if the night before had worked some ancient, fundamental magic in the deepest parts of his being, the way it had in hers.

  “Those old hens will just have to do their scratching and pecking in somebody else’s dooryard,” he said.

  “What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Rue countered, reaching for another slice of crispy bacon. The man made love with the expertise of a bard taking up the pen, and he had some pretty modern attitudes, but sometimes he talked in cowboy riddles.

  Farley got up to refill his coffee mug and Rue’s. “Hell,” he grumbled, “even the prissy Eastern lieutenants and captains I knew in the army didn’t boss a man around the way those old biddies do.”

  Rue stifled a giggle, but said nothing.

  Farley came back to the table, set their mugs down and shook an index finger at her. “Mind you don’t take to carrying on the way they do, because I won’t put up with it.”