He swore under his breath. “When hell freezes over.”
They were at a stalemate.
It was plain from the look on Dallas’s face that he didn’t believe Angel was innocent of purposefully trying to entice him. But it was the truth. Angel had no explanation for her unusual behavior. Exactly what had happened, anyway? Was it possible the Texas Ranger had cast some sort of spell over her? Had something been invented in the twentieth century to aid in the seduction of innocent virgins? She shuddered at the thought.
“You’re cold,” Dallas said, misinterpreting her reaction. He reached to grab a man-sized towel from the nearby rack, and she stepped back until she hit the tile wall. It wasn’t nearly far enough.
“Keep your distance, Ranger, and we’ll get along fine.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face. “I only thought you might want to dry off a little,” he said, extending the towel at arm’s length.
“Thank you,” she said, taking it from him with exaggerated dignity. “You may leave now.”
Dallas had already turned his back when he realized that she had dismissed him. Perversely he wasn’t about to let her have the last word. He stuck out his hand to catch the door before she could shut it in his face.
“I like that mole on your right breast,” he said.
Angel gasped. “You clunch! How dare you—”
“One day I’ll wash it myself. With my tongue.”
He let go, and the door slammed in his face. Dallas grinned as he listened to the unique imprecations she muttered behind the door. She was stubborn, all right, and opinionated. She also had gumption. That didn’t mean he was going to take any more guff from her. He was responsible for her, and by God she was going to do as she was told!
Angel leaned her forehead against the door, fistfuls of the towel clutched against her bosom. What an impossible man! How could he have mentioned something so personal? She couldn’t stand him! He was horrible! Dealing with him was like being up the same tree as a grizzly. How could she be so attracted to someone so intolerable?
She sighed and turned to look at herself in the mirror. The problem was, sparks flew whenever she got near him. That was going to have to stop. She wasn’t sure how she’d been propelled into the future. But she had business that needed finishing in the past.
Angel reached down and pulled a paper out of the pocket of her trousers. She unfolded it and looked at the image printed there. Across the top of the paper was the caption WANTED. She stared at it for another moment, her lips flattened in a bitter line. Then she folded the poster and put it away again. Likely the Ranger wouldn’t approve if he found out where she had been heading. But what Dallas Masterson didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
She twisted the knobs on the tub the way Dallas had shown her. As long as she was in the future, she might as well take advantage of the opportunity to get a hot indoor bath. Sometime soon she was going to have to go back where she had come from.
3
Dallas paced the floor of the living room most of the night, trying to decide what he should do next. The several times he checked on Angel, she was sleeping like a baby in his bed. It was easy to see how serene she was, because she had asked to keep the bedside lamp on. He wondered why she was so afraid of the dark and whether there was any way to help her get over her fear. The fact he was so concerned worried him. It wasn’t a smart move to get any more involved with her than he already was.
Unfortunately, knowing the smart move and making it were two entirely different things.
When Dallas awoke in the morning, he was draped half on and half off the Victorian sofa. Someone—it must have been Angel—had thrown the quilt from his bed over him. The smell of perking coffee permeated the room. He slowly sat up, stretching kinks out of knotted muscles as he went.
“Oh. I didn’t know you were awake. I borrowed some of your clothes. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
Angel stood before him wearing a western shirt from his closet and a clean pair of his jeans, folded up at the ankle and tied with the same rope he’d seen around her waist the previous day. Her hair fell over her shoulders practically to her waist. She looked more fragile this morning, dressed in his oversize clothes. The feeling of protectiveness arose even stronger than before. He ignored it and focused on the coffee cup she held in her hands. “I see you figured out how to work the stove.”
She grinned. “It sure beats gathering kindling for a fire. The coffeepot was on a back burner, and I found the coffee grounds by opening cupboards and sniffing. Would you like this cup? I can get myself another.”
“That’s all right. I can get a cup for myself.”
Before he could stand, she laid a hand on his bare chest. “Don’t get up.”
Dallas couldn’t have moved if his life depended on it. Even though she was barely touching him, he was distinctly aware of her fingertips on his flesh.
Angel was amazed at how hot his skin felt. She was intimately aware of the crisp hair under her fingers, of the firm muscle that tensed beneath her touch. She withdrew her hand ever so slowly, as though she were escaping a trap that might spring closed if she weren’t extremely careful.
She set the coffee cup on the low wooden table beside the sofa, said “I’ll be right back” and turned to go.
Dallas stood and caught her wrist before she had gone two steps. “Don’t leave.”
Angel glanced over her shoulder and froze at the sight of him. The hair on his chest arrowed toward his belly. Her eyes followed the dark line down until it was cut off by his jeans. The top button was undone, and they had slid down his hips. Beneath the worn blue denim was the unmistakable proof that he was as aware of her as she was of him.
Angel didn’t resist his hold on her wrist, merely poised herself to flee or fight, whichever alternative should offer her the best chance of survival.
Only, to her surprise, Dallas released her.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.
“You didn’t,” Angel lied. She saw him wince as she rubbed her wrist where he had held her.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” He hadn’t, she realized. But she could still feel his flesh on hers. The sensation had been stunning.
They weren’t touching now, but an invisible bond seemed to hold them in thrall. Neither moved, neither broke the spell until finally Angel realized that she was waiting for him to make the first move, to touch her again. That wasn’t fair to him…or to her. She had gone her whole life without being touched by a man as much as Dallas had touched her in the past twenty-four hours. It was foolish to get embroiled in something she wouldn’t be around to finish.
“Can I—” She had to stop and clear her throat before she could continue. “Can I make you some breakfast?”
Dallas smiled. Trust a woman to think of a man’s stomach at a time like this. “A couple of fried eggs and some bacon would be fine,” he said. “I’ll come along and show you where things are.”
Angel hesitated and then nodded.
Once they had something to do, it wasn’t so hard being in the same room with each other. The tension was always there, but they could channel it into action and thus defuse it.
Angel found the contents of the refrigerator a marvel. Imagine the convenience of a dozen eggs in a plastic carton and bacon already sliced and ready to fry! She laughed when Dallas showed her the pre-made biscuits in a cardboard cylinder. They weren’t half-bad.
Dallas didn’t say much while they ate, but it wasn’t a peaceful silence. Angel knew he was agitated. He opened his mouth several times to speak, then snapped it shut again. She didn’t press him. In her experience it was best to let a man do his thinking without interruption. When he was ready, he would talk.
Only, when Dallas finally spoke she wasn’t at all pleased with what he had to say.
“I made a mistake bringing you here, Angel. I should have taken you to San Antonio, to a hospital or somewhere they
can take care of you.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said flatly. “I mean, that I’m from the past.”
His eyes were bleak. “No, I don’t.”
“Then take me back to the cave,” Angel said.
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t solve anything. The tunnel’s gone. If—and it’s a big if—you did come from the past, there’s no going back.”
“There must be another way, another tunnel. I have to get back where I came from,” Angel said, her voice strained with the effort to remain calm. “There’s someone—”
“You said you don’t have any family,” Dallas interrupted.
“It’s not—You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
Angel took one look at the implacable man sitting across from her and realized he wasn’t going anywhere until she talked. “All I can say is that I have business, unfinished personal business, that needs tending to in San Antonio. In the past.”
Dallas wondered whether her personal business involved another man. He felt a stab of jealousy at the thought. “Anything you can share?”
“Believe me, I’d tell you everything if I thought it would make a difference,” she said. “But there’s nothing you can do to help—except get me back to the past.”
Dallas scratched the dark beard on his jaw. He really ought to shave. With that thought came the memory of why he hadn’t shaved, why he had been in the cave in the first place. He realized that somehow his guilt over Cale’s death had eased. Angel had done that for him in the darkness of the cave. So maybe he owed her the chance to prove to him that she was from the past, and perhaps to help her find her way back to wherever she came from.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll go back to the cave. We’ll look for another exit. But if we don’t find it—”
“We’ll find it,” Angel said. “We have to.”
“And if we don’t?”
The air in Angel’s lungs hissed out, but she managed a tremulous smile. “Then I guess you’re stuck with me.”
Dallas liked that idea too much to spend time contemplating it.
They didn’t say anything more, just finished the food on their plates. Angel offered to wash the dishes before they left for the cave, but Dallas grinned and opened a door under the sink. “Automatic dishwasher. All you have to do is stack the dishes inside and the machine does the rest.”
“Now that’s something almost worth staying in the future to have,” Angel said. “Almost,” she repeated, when it looked like Dallas was going to suggest she do just that.
The drive back to the cave was no less harrowing in Angel’s eyes. She couldn’t get used to the speed of Dallas’s truck. Somehow everything in the future seemed geared to happen in a hurry. It was like landing on a bucking bronc. She wanted off. She wanted things to slow down, so she could breathe easily again.
“I lost most of my gear in the cave-in, so all I’ve got is a couple of flashlights,” Dallas said. “We’ll stay together. At least you won’t have to worry about the dark. There’s only one other tunnel I haven’t followed, and that’s because it starts wet and stays that way.”
“Wet?”
“An underground river runs through the tunnel. It’s shallow—what I’ve seen of it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get deeper. Or end up going underground.”
Dallas didn’t believe they would come out of the cave in another century, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He carried all the usual cavers’ supplies—and brought along his gun. He carried the same .45 Colt revolver his father and his father’s father had carried, rather than the automatic weapon the department issued.
“Expecting trouble?” Angel asked as he slipped the gun into a holster at his side.
“Never hurts to be prepared,” he said.
The way back through the cave didn’t seem to take nearly so long with flashlights. Dallas took Angel directly to the spot where the cave had come crashing down behind them.
“There’s no going back that way,” he confirmed. “But over there—” he shifted his flashlight to expose another opening in the rock “—that’s the other tunnel I mentioned to you.”
Angel hadn’t noticed the sound of running water before, but it was clear to her now. “Do you have any suggestions how we do this?”
“I go first. You follow me. I decide whether we keep going or turn back.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Dallas hadn’t expected her to agree so readily, but he was glad she hadn’t argued. He had enough bad feelings about doing this. He didn’t like the idea of heading into the dark in ankle-deep water with nothing more than a couple of flashlights to show the way.
The water was cold, but it stayed shallow for the first half hour. There was a slight current, but hardly enough to cause a ripple. Angel was nervous; the flashlights didn’t provide quite enough light to make her comfortable in the dark. She eased her fear by talking, asking Dallas questions.
“Why did you become a Texas Ranger?”
“The men in my family have been lawmen for generations.”
“What if you’d wanted to do something else?”
“I didn’t.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She just up and left one day.”
“How awful for you. How old were you when it happened?”
“Seventeen.”
“Why did she leave?”
“Don’t you ever get tired of asking questions?” Dallas asked in exasperation.
“No. Why did she leave?”
“You’d have to ask her that.”
“Belinda and I were just kids, babies almost, when we ended up in an orphanage and—”
“Who’s Belinda?”
“Belinda is—” Angel swallowed hard “—she was my sister.”
Dallas stopped and turned back to shine his flashlight on Angel’s face. Her features looked grim in the stark light. “I thought you said you didn’t have any family.”
“I don’t. Belinda’s dead. She was shot.”
“Shot!”
“There was a bank robbery in San Antonio a week ago. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Angel tried shrugging away the tremendous anger she felt at the injustice of it all. For Belinda to have survived everything they had lived through during the war, only to be killed in a bank robbery, seemed a cruel fate.
“Does her death have anything to do with why you were on your way to San Antonio?” Dallas asked.
“What if it does?”
“Her funeral?”
“Too late for that.”
“What then?” Dallas asked.
“It’s none of your business.”
Dallas stared at Angel. The hard set of her jaw, the fierce look in her blue eyes, made him want to shake the truth out of her. She was heading into trouble. He knew it as sure as he knew cactus had thorns.
He turned and started away again, moving fast, causing Angel to have to run to keep up with him.
“Slow down,” she cried. “I—”
All of a sudden Dallas stopped and turned and caught hold of her arms. “There was no bank robbery in San Antonio a week ago,” he said.
“Maybe not in 1992,” she said bitterly. “There was in 1864.”
“Why don’t you give up this make-believe—”
“It’s not pretend! It’s real!” Angel retorted in frustration. “I know it sounds farfetched. I wouldn’t believe it myself, except I can’t argue with these—these gadgets of yours.” She waved the flashlight at him. “You don’t have to believe me. Just get me back where I was. That’s all I ask. The rest will take care of itself.”
“And if you can’t get back?”
“I’d rather wait to worry about that until I have to,” she said.
“Trouble. Nothing but trouble,” Dallas muttered.
Angel arched a brow. “Look who’s talking.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off. She followed hi
m. He walked slower, at least slow enough that she didn’t have to run. But the water got deeper, first to Angel’s calves, then to her knees.
“Let me know if you start to get chilled,” Dallas said.
“I’m fine.”
“If this gets any deeper, I think we’ll have to turn back. I—”
Angel saw the light at the same time Dallas did. “There’s an opening up there,” she said.
“It appears so,” he replied. “Be careful. Don’t get in a hurry. That’s how accidents happen.”
Angel crowded him, but he refused to go any faster. He wasn’t at all sure what he would find out there. Not that he believed it was going to be 1864, but who was to say whether those cowboys might not still be hanging around.
“Wait here,” he said with they reached the opening. “I’ll go first and make sure it’s safe.”
Dallas had been a lawman for a long time. He moved slowly and easily on his feet. His eyes narrowed as he searched the terrain. He listened. All his senses were attuned to any sign of movement. There was no threat to either of them that he could discern.
“All right. Come on out,” he called to Angel.
Angel’s heart was pounding as she stepped over the darkened threshold into the light. She caught her breath when she saw the landscape. It didn’t look familiar. But it didn’t look strange, either. “I can’t tell whether it’s 1864, or not. Can you?”
Dallas was edgy. As much as he told himself he didn’t believe Angel could have been telling the truth, he didn’t like the look of the terrain. He told himself there weren’t any spring flowers here because there wasn’t as much shade on this side of the hill. He told himself the grass was probably dry because it hadn’t gotten as much rain. Everyone in Texas knew the weather was so fickle it could rain on one side of a road and not the other. But he didn’t like it.
“Any suggestions?” Dallas asked.
“We could start walking,” Angel said, “until we come upon something that tells us for sure where we are. I mean, whether it’s 1992 or 1864.”
“I don’t know, Angel. What if—” He’d been about to say, “What if we are in the past? I don’t want to get stuck here.” But he had told her time and again he didn’t believe her story. So what was there to be afraid of? He could surely retrace their trail and find his way back here again. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll walk.”
A Little Time in Texas Page 4