This Time for Keeps

by Maureen Child

  "That," she went on as nicely as possible. There was no point in hurting the man just because his overblown flattery set her teeth on edge. "The 'dearest', and 'my love' and so on. It makes me uncomfortable."

  He looked stricken. "Sweetheart, what do you mean?”

  Well, now she felt like she had kicked a puppy. He looked at her through wounded, confused eyes, and she really couldn't blame him. After all, to his way of thinking, he had only recently had his fiancé returned to him from heaven's gate. He had no way of knowing that his Nora was gone for good.

  She tried to be a tad more gracious. "It's just that, well, I'm not quite myself yet," to say the least, she thought. "And I really think it would be better if we both maintained a certain amount of… decorum." They used that word in 1875, didn't they?

  Cupping her check with his palm, he asked, "Are you saying that you've changed your mind about our marriage?”

  She wanted to shout "Yes!" but she just didn't have the heart. He was probably a nice guy. Hell, under any other circumstances, she even might have been interested in him. But not now. Not while she could remember dying eight times because she'd wanted love.

  There had to be a way to ease them both out of this engagement without hurting him. Too bad she wasn't having this conversation with Murdoch. Now there was a man she wouldn't mind wounding in the slightest.

  "Richard," she said. "I don't think-"

  "Don't say another word," he interrupted neatly.

  "Huh?"

  He smiled gently. Draping one arm around her shoulders, he started for the house. "I shouldn't be pushing you about the future when you're barely out of your sickbed." He shook his head. “We'll say no more about it for now, my love. I can be content to simply be near you. When you have quite recovered, then together, we'll set a wedding date." His smile broadened and Nora's breath caught in an involuntary, purely female response.

  She blinked a moment later and deliberately snapped her jaw shut. Well, he might not be as muscle-bound as Seth, but in his own tidy way, Richard was every bit a steamroller as the other man. Somehow, she was having a hard time imagining the old, shy, quiet, timid Nora with him. Still, if they'd been engaged….

  Her eyes widened slightly as something else occurred to her. Something she had better know before too much longer.

  “Richard, tell me something?"

  "Anything, dear heart. Anything." His amber eyes shone with kindness and consideration.

  "Did we ever…." she let her voice trail off meaningfully.

  "What, my love?" he asked. "Don't be nervous. You can ask me whatever you like."

  That was a relief, anyway.

  Inhaling sharply, she blurted, "Have we ever slept together?”

  “I beg your pardon?" He practically vibrated with shock.

  "You know," she prodded. "Sex. You said we're engaged. Have we done the horizontal hokey pokey?”

  He took a half step back from her, staring at her as though her head was on fire. "I don't know what to say," he finally managed to croak.

  "Just the truth would be good." she told him.

  Richard's gaze slid away from hers as he reached up and smoothed his windblown hair back from his forehead.

  “Are you okay?” she asked and reached for him.

  He turned to face her. Those amber eyes of his glittered with an emotion she couldn't quite identify.

  "I'm fine," he said. "A little surprised at the question."

  She shrugged. "My memory's not quite what it should be.” Now there was an understatement.

  He nodded, then slowly raked his gaze up and down her before saying, "No, I've not had the pleasure— that is to say, we haven't…"

  "I get it," she said and couldn't help wondering why not. She flicked him a quick glance. Polite, well dressed, handsome. What the heck had the old Nora been waiting for, anyway?

  Oh, she knew that morality had been a lot stricter in the nineteenth century. But hanky-panky had been going on for eons. Apparently, though, not with Nora Wilding.

  "Don't you remember anything?" he asked quietly, closing the gap between them.

  "Sure," she lied. "There are just a few holes in the memories.”

  “Unfortunate.”

  “I’ll say." She looked up into those eyes again and was caught in their depths.

  “Perhaps you should lean on me in this trying time,” he offered. “Trust me as you did before.”

  Had she trusted him? According to Seth, she had, and that had made him nuts. This was ridiculous. She could remember eight lives and yet those three nincompoops on the Resettlement Committee hadn't seen fit to give her complete memories of the life she was living now.

  Trust.

  Who should she trust? The man who had wanted her to die? Or the man who wanted to marry her? On the surface, that seemed like a fairly easy question to answer. Too bad it wasn't. Reaching up, Nora rubbed her temples in an attempt to case a suddenly throbbing headache.

  “As to the other,” Richard went on, guiding her toward the house, “I’m more eager than you know for our wedding night to arrive." He ran his hand up and down her forearm. “It seems I've waited forever for you, darling Nora. There is so much for us to share. To enjoy."

  Well, she thought, he'd just have to go on waiting. There wouldn't be any sharing going on. Not if the ticket to the main attraction was a wedding license.

  Wistfully, she told herself that 1875 was going to be a real picnic. She couldn't have sex unless she was married. And she wasn't about to get married to anybody.

  “But until that happy night," Richard said softly, “it would probably be easier on both of us if we simply didn't discuss intimate things."

  Nora sighed.

  Terrific. Not only wasn't she having sex, she couldn't even talk about it.

  It really was a wonderful life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nora slipped into the ranch office and carefully closed the door behind her. Wincing at the soft click of the door latch catching, she held her breath and waited to see if anyone would show up. When a couple of minutes had passed, she breathed easier, turned around, and braced her back against the heavy oak door.

  Something had to be done. She'd actually had to pretend to take a nap, then go sneaking down the stairway like a child running away from home, all to get a few minutes alone. It seemed that everyone was waiting with bated breath for her to die. Again.

  Nora wasn't used to people watching her every move. She had been on her own since she was eighteen. Put herself through college, earned a degree, then landed an entry position at one of the top ad agencies in the country. Within five years, she had worked her way up the ladder until at the time of the bowling accident she had had a partnership within reach.

  And now, look at her.

  Glowering silently, she asked herself how Tom, Dick and Harry could ever have believed that she would be happy here? Where women were treated no better and sometimes worse, than children. She'd never made a good second class citizen. In every lifetime she could remember, she'd fought against the chains slapped on women. Heck, if she hadn't died early every time, she would probably have been strangled by some irate man. Damn it, she'd loved the twentieth century. She was a career woman. And good at it. Used to high-powered meetings, business lunches and an occasional night at the ballet.

  What was she supposed to do on a cattle ranch, for God's sake?

  Mourning all she had left behind, Nora swallowed back a groan as her gaze swept the large, made-for-a-man room.

  Two of the long walls were covered with floor to ceiling bookshelves. Apparently the office doubled as a library. She made a mental note to check out the selection later. Though there wouldn't be any gruesome murder mysteries, maybe she would be able to find something to feed her reading habit. Her gaze drifted over the rest of the room. A massive desk that looked to her discerning eye to be cherry wood occupied the very center of the room, commanding respect for whomever happened to be sitting in the maroon leather chair
behind it. Two brass oil lamps rested on either side of a green felt blotter on the desk's gleaming surface. A huge stone fireplace took up most of the third wall with two easy chairs drawn up cozily to face the now empty hearth. The fourth wall was dominated by a portrait.

  Nora stepped further into the room to study the face of the man looking down at her from the canvas. Dark brown eyes peered out from beneath wild-looking gray eyebrows. Steel gray hair and a sweeping moustache of the same color complimented the man's strong features. His chin lifted defiantly, he looked like the kind of man who went after what he wanted and didn't take no for an answer.

  Tilting her head, Nora examined the painting carefully, certain that this was the old Nora's father.

  Everything Seth had told her about Jake Wilding raced through her mind. Somehow, she couldn't imagine the tough looking, no-nonsense kind of man courting Elizabeth, a woman whose hobbies seemed to be fluttering daintily and swooning gracefully.

  But then, love didn't always make sense. No one knew that better than she did. Smiling slightly, she met the painted stare. "You were probably a hard man, Mister Wilding," she muttered. "But I think I might have liked you."

  It was probably only a trick of the sunlight and shadow, but the man in the painting almost appeared to wink at her.

  Shivering slightly, she turned her back on the portrait and walked determinedly to the oversized desk. Dropping down into the too big leather chair, she yanked open the top drawer and stared at the neatly arranged contents.

  As she pulled out heavy linen paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink, she glanced at the face on the wall. "Don't worry about it. Pop," she said. “I happen to be a whiz at numbers. Nothing I like better than a good spreadsheet. Why, I'll probably do a better job at the book end of the ranch than you ever could.”

  Closing the first drawer, she opened, then closed the others, looking for a copy of the ledgers. She had been promised wealth and by heaven, she wanted to know if her diabolical trio had tricked her there too.

  Finally, in the last drawer, she found two long, leather account books.

  Lifting them to the desk top, she opened the bottle of ink, picked up her pen, and got down to business.

  The next time she looked up, she had a cramp in her neck and her eyes ached with the strain of working with too little light. The sun had long since passed overhead. She had been forced to light the oil lamps more than an hour ago. Nora rolled her shoulders, wincing as her tight muscles stretched. Candle and lamplight might be nice for a romantic dinner, or for emergency lights when the electricity blew, but a person could go blind trying to read rows of tiny numbers by the wavering glow of a dancing flame.

  Sighing, she leaned back in her chair and glanced at the sheets of paper in front of her. She hadn't made much progress. Of course, whoever had been doing the books had such crabbed handwriting that she felt as though she was studying hieroglyphics. Nora rubbed her eyes with her fingertips and told herself to be patient. There was no way she could go through a couple of years’ worth of books in one afternoon.

  But, oh, how she missed her calculator.

  The door opened suddenly and she jumped, startled.

  "Nora," Richard said in a tone usually reserved for a kid caught stealing cookies before dinner. "You told me you were going to rest. How long have you been in here, dearest?”

  “I couldn't sleep," she said and picked up her pen again. "I thought I would go over the books. Refresh my memory." There. That sounded reasonable, didn't it?

  "You've never been interested before," he said, stepping into the room. "You told me yourself that you were never very good with numbers.”

  Perfect. Forcing a tired smile, she said, "It's really not as difficult as I had thought it would be. Richard. In fact, I'm actually enjoying familiarizing myself with the ranch workings."

  He came around the desk to stand beside her chair.

  “You've always told me you hated the ranch, Nora," he said softly.

  So, she thought, she did share something with her predecessor.

  "Why would you suddenly be so interested in how the place works?”

  “Let's just say I'm interested in how my money's made.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted slightly as he gave her a brief nod. "Another difference, then," he pointed out.

  Nora leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and studied him. His blond hair was neatly swept back from his forehead, and he had removed his suit jacket, but he still wore a buttoned up vest over his starched white shirt.

  Altogether a perfect cover model for GQ circa 1875. Back in the twentieth century, he was just the type of guy she usually dated. So why wasn't she interested now? Certainly, he looked a heck of a lot more respectable than Seth Murdoch did.

  She shook that thought off immediately. She wasn't interested in Murdoch either.

  "Look Richard," she started, "if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to these books."

  One blond eyebrow lifted. "This isn't like you at all, Nora."

  "People change," she said.

  "You certainly have," he told her and leaned one hip on the edge of the desk. Lifting one hand, he touched her cheek briefly. “So familiar and yet… so different."

  "You mean that in a good way, I hope."

  He smiled and Nora blinked. Oh yeah, he was way too good-looking to be trusted.

  Reaching over, Richard Hipped the ledger book shut.

  "I wasn't finished with that."

  He shook his head slowly, as if disappointed greatly in her. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea? Try to relax a little?"

  "No thanks," she said, "I feel fine and I don't like tea."

  "But I insist." He gripped her upper arm and pulled her up from her chair. "You've barely left your… sickbed."

  She knew he meant "deathbed" but was too polite to say so.

  "You need to conserve your strength." Richard smiled at her, giving her the full effect of brilliant white teeth. "If not for yourself, than for those who care about you.”

  That was a low shot. Guilt was a powerful weapon. Still, she resisted.

  "I am perfectly healthy," she told him and tried to pull her arm free. Unfortunately, though he lacked Seth's broad shoulders and work-hardened muscle, Richard was still stronger than her. His grip tightened a bit as he pulled her around the desk.

  She tried again to pull free only to feel his long fingers dig into her upper arm more firmly.

  "Hey," she complained, “that hurts."

  Instantly, he released her. Staring down at her, his eyes wide and shining with remorse, he said, “I'm sorry, my dear. I didn't realize…" His words faded off and he took a deep breath before continuing. "Are you injured?"

  "It's not broken," she told him, rubbing at the throbbing part of her arm. At his relieved look, she added, "But I'm sure I'll have a heckuva bruise."

  "Can you forgive me?” he asked, reaching for her, then letting his hands drop to his sides. "I'm an unthinking beast. I never imagined that I was hurting you. You must believe me.”

  She did. That glimmer of shame in his eyes wouldn't have been easy to fake.

  "It's okay," Nora told him. “No harm done."

  He smiled. "And you forgive me?"

  She didn't have the heart not to. "Sure."

  That gorgeous smile of his widened as he stepped aside and waved her ahead of him. "Will you join me for coffee in the other room?"

  “I'd really rather not," she started, but he cut her off.

  "A slight rest before dinner would serve you well my dear.” Determination was etched into his features.

  Arguing wasn't going to do any good, she thought. He wouldn't listen. What was it about handsome men, she wondered. Were they born with an ingrained self-confidence? Or did they learn it as legions of women fell at their feet?

  It was easier to just go along with him. Besides, at the moment, coffee sounded pretty good.

  He led her to the closest chair and gave her a nudge into
it. As she plopped against the cushions, she looked up and asked, “Are you always this pushy?”

  "Pushy?” He reached up and straightened a perfectly straight necktie, tugged at the sleeves of his well-tailored shirt, and said. “If you consider it pushy of a man to see that his fiancée rests and takes proper care of herself, then, yes, I suppose I am.”

  "You hurt me," she said calmly, wanting him to remember so he wouldn't try it again.

  "And I have apologized,” he countered with a nod. "It was not my intention to harm you, Nora. But really, you must trust that I have only your best interests at heart."

  She looked at him, trying to read what was in his mind. He seemed nice enough, but for the fact that he'd bruised her arm, and that could have been an accident. But how could she trust a man she'd just met? Especially when Seth Murdoch's opinion of him was so low.

  Of course, why should she trust Murdoch either?

  #

  Elizabeth twisted her lacy scrap of a handkerchief between her hands and sighed heavily. Her fifth dramatic sigh in as many minutes.

  Seth cringed. Apparently, the tack room inside the barn was no longer a safe haven for him. Bending his head to his work, he tried to ignore the woman's presence by concentrating on rebraiding a rawhide bridle. Though ignoring a woman who sighed and half-moaned with every breath was easier said than done. Short and slightly plump in all the right places, Elizabeth was the kind of woman who sent most men's hearts racing. Her wide brown eyes looked as innocent— and as empty— as a doe's. There was a sprinkling of fine lines at their corners, a fact she tried valiantly to disguise with face powder. Her long blond hair was dressed in curls that tempted a man to twine the silky strands around his fingers.

  But it was her grasping nature that made Seth want to hop onto his horse and hightail it to the next county. That and the fact that she seemed always to be silently watching him.

  “I just don't understand," she said again. "Nora is so, changed. So…" she searched for another word but obviously couldn't find one as she muttered "changed" once more with feeling.

  Yes, Nora had changed. But Elizabeth Bonner surely hadn't. She was as bothersome as she had been the day she started keeping company with old Jake. Seth still wasn't sure what his former boss had seen in the woman— beyond the obvious physical comforts. But hell, maybe those had been enough for Jake.