Читать онлайн книгу «The Cowboy from Christmas Past» автора Tina Leonard
The Cowboy from Christmas Past
Tina Leonard
Dillinger Kent is getting ready for a lonely Christmas on his Texas ranch. All that changes the night the widowed gunslinger hears an infant's wails…and is swept into a time and town definitely not his own. After ditching her fiancé at the altar, Auburn McGinnis is on the run, trying to figure out how to hold on to her family's perfume company.The rough-and-tumble stranger who just showed up with a baby girl in tow could be the hired gun–and protector–she needs. At first, all Dillinger wanted was to get back to his ranch. But with the resourceful, enchanting Auburn in his life, the twenty-first century is looking better and better.Have they both found what they're looking for? A love that transcends time?
He was a delicious specimen
Dark hair flowed to the nape of his neck; black brows scowled over denim-blue eyes that seemed confused yet missed nothing.
He was a good six foot four to her five-four, yet he moved gracefully, even holding a baby. She could only hope he looked as good when he took off his costume.
What was it about her and bad boys, the rougher/tougher, the better? She’d snatched him before any other “lady” in the show could—never let it be said that Auburn McGinnis ran from all men. Just the last man. And she planned to keep running, with this baby and her handsome daddy, if her lucky stars were out tonight.
Dear Reader,
I do love writing Christmas stories, and this one is my favorite yet. What fun to write about a man and a woman who find each other through impossible odds and different centuries!
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to experience a different time and place, so getting to put myself into the lives of a hero and heroine in nineteenth-century Texas was a thrilling adventure. I’m a big believer in angels, ghosts and blessings that get passed down through time, so living in Christmas River with Dillinger and Auburn—and Rose and Polly—gave me a special sense of hope and affirmation that the ones we love are always very much with us.
I hope you enjoy The Cowboy from Christmas Past, and spending the holiday season in Christmas River. Blessings to you all at this wonderful, miraculous time of year!
Always much love,
Tina Leonard
The Cowboy from Christmas Past
Tina Leonard
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tina Leonard is a bestselling author of more than forty projects, including a popular thirteen-book miniseries for Harlequin American Romance. Her books have made the Waldenbooks, Ingram’s and Nielsen BookScan bestseller lists. Tina feels she has been blessed with a fertile imagination and quick typing skills, excellent editors and a family who loves her career. Born on a military base, she lived in many states before eventually marrying the boy who did her crayon printing for her in the first grade. Tina believes happy endings are a wonderful part of a good life. You can visit her at www.tinaleonard.com.
Special thanks to Anne Stuart—
brainstorming this idea with you was so much fun!
Many thanks to the members of the Tina Leonard’s
Nightstand newsletter for being so enthusiastic
about this story, and also to Georgia Haynes for
editing. Much, much gratitude goes to the very
loyal readers who graciously and faithfully support
my career. And as always, Lisa, Dean and Tim—
you are the love behind my writing.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, Christmas
season of 1892
For Dillinger Kent, retired gunslinger, life was quiet on his thousand-acre spread on the outskirts of the Texas Panhandle town of Christmas River. Winter with its promise of bitter cold and occasional snow, unlike the rest of the state, made his solitary lifestyle even more remote. Springtime brought fullness to his ranch, with trees and grasses dressing the stark landscape in glorious greens; summer and fall brought their own lustrous hues to warm the countryside.
But the Christmas season was a harbinger of the icy cocoon soon to envelop him for the next three months. It was the middle of December, and deep winter crept closer.
He’d chosen a life of loneliness when he’d lost his wife, Polly Hartskill Kent. They’d made plans for a family out here, a big home to raise them in. Christmas on the ranch, Polly said, would be so much fun with lots of little feet running around. Polly had a beautiful soul and Dillinger had loved her as he would never love anyone again. But his darling wife had taken ill with pneumonia during the last Christmas season, and having a beautiful soul hadn’t saved her.
He picked up a self-portrait Polly had drawn for him, which he’d put in a wooden frame. She was luminous, even in charcoal. Her kindness and grace of spirit was captured in the lines of her likeness. He set the picture down and picked up a pair of small, dangling earrings with tiny golden bells. They were delicate, like Polly. He’d given them to her two Christmases ago, a wedding gift he’d picked up on his last trip to California. She’d been thrilled with them, giggling when they lightly tinkled at her ears. The earrings felt like a tiny memory between his rough fingers. He would never give them to another woman, would never part with them.
Dillinger forced his mind away from Polly. He wondered if he might go crazy one day in this isolated countryside. But he knew it was just the date on the calendar he’d bought at Gin’s Feed Store that was making him maudlin. He’d make it to springtime—he swore that he would. He curled his fingers around the earrings, then set them back on the desk, barely able to turn them loose.
The wind whipped around outside the nine-room home he’d built with his own hands. No chill would seep in—he knew every inch of his house and it was tight against the elements. Dillinger closed his eyes, wondered if he should go check the livestock, which would be huddled in close groups for warmth. They were more than likely fine.
Still, he had the urge to look outside.
Then he heard the wailing.
It came thin at first, carried by the wind. It wasn’t an animal’s cry—it sounded human. But at this time of night, nearly ten o’clock, there would be no people around. His ranch was far from town, hardly a convenient place for someone to stop by.
Yet he heard it again. He buttoned his long oilskin coat, which reached below his knees. Grabbing gloves and setting his cowboy hat tight on his head, he prepared for the gusts of wind that would tear at him. He stepped out and nearly onto a basket that had been laid on his porch. By God, it was a baby, a pink-wrapped thing in a wicker basket.
Dillinger looked in all directions, but there were no footprints in the snow leading away from the house. Yet the baby couldn’t have been there long. “Hey!” he called into the darkness. “You can’t leave this here! Come back!”
The poor woman who had left her child here didn’t understand. He lived alone. He went to town only four times a year. He was basically a pariah.
The gossip mill of Christmas River had turned on him after Polly’s death, and to his shock, it was said that Polly had died of pneumonia after trying to flee from him one cold December night. Her parents had claimed that he was jealous, had become aware that another man wanted to court Polly, and that Dillinger had chased her down, intending to murder her in cold blood.
Now he was a man with no town.
“Come back here!” he yelled into the breath-stealing chill of the snowstorm. But there was no answer, just the cries of the desperate baby at his feet.
So he picked up the basket, cursing it, cursing himself, his life…and found himself in a shootout straight from the Old West. Three gunslingers he’d never seen before aimed pistols at him. Gaudily attired saloon women screamed and ran for cover. With his holster and gun missing, he had no choice but to do what he could to save the baby in his arms.
He jumped off the stage and into a seated throng of clapping women, men and children. Popcorn flew, but there was no time to apologize; he expected a bullet in his back any second. Somehow he had to get the baby to shelter. He ran to the nearest safe place he could find—a theater box with a sign on it that read Security, empty for the moment—and looked down at the baby. Dillinger’s chest heaved, but the infant looked up at him, calm now and gazing at him reverently.
“Hey.” A saloon woman squeezed into the box with him. “You’re going to be in big trouble with Harry.”
He stared at his unwanted companion. Her long, whiskey-colored hair fell in cascading curls, her green eyes huge.
“Harry?”
“Yeah. He’s not going to be happy that you rewrote the script. Nor that you had a baby onstage.”
Dillinger held the infant closer.
“Couldn’t you find a sitter?” she asked. “I know it’s late at night, but surely a teenager would have been willing to watch your baby.”
He couldn’t speak, his world changing so fast he couldn’t take it in. He felt himself shift into survival mode. He studied the woman’s painted lips—a sweet, shiny cherry—and her long, long lashes. He’d never seen a woman wear so much face paint and yet have so little need of it.
Whoever she was—whatever she was—he needed her right now.
She shook her head. “I’ve only been here a few weeks and you’re clearly real new, but if I were you, I’d go to Harry after the act is over, apologize like hell and beg him not to fire you. Six Flags is crawling with people looking for work, even at Christmastime.”
Dillinger frowned. “I wouldn’t beg for anything. And what do you mean, when the act is over?”
“That was the last scene, the grand finale.” She shrugged pale, softly rounded shoulders. “Suit yourself on the begging part, but you can’t perform with the baby.” She cast a glance over him. “You may look like the real McCoy, but Harry’s not going to bend rules even for you, I bet.”
The infant began to cry, a wail that suggested she was hungry and didn’t care to wait. “I’m not in an act. I’m lost,” he said, and the saloon dancer laughed.
“No kidding, cowboy,” she said. “You’re just one egg shy of a dozen, aren’t you?”
“I need help.”
He watched, fascinated, as she pulled a black mole off the skin above her gently curved lips. “Let’s get out of here. I need to wash my face, and we’ll figure out where to find baby formula and Pampers. Unless you’re going to surprise me and say you’ve got some in your car.”
He shook his head, not certain what she had just asked him. She sighed and motioned for him to follow her from the box.
“What about Harry?” He presumed Harry employed her, but maybe there was more to it than that.
“To hell with him,” she said, “we need to feed Princess Squall. I feel sorry for her.” She smiled down at the baby and her face softened. “Thank God I never had one of these or I might not have ever had the courage to back out of my wedding at the last minute. You’re a sweetie,” she said, lifting the baby from his arms. “You should have gummed on Daddy’s nose for forgetting your bottle, honey.”
He watched protectively as she cuddled the infant. The baby stopped crying and Dillinger relaxed slightly.
He needed one person on his side right now. As much as he might not like it, the saloon dancer would have to do, at least until he figured out exactly how the hell he’d gotten here.
OKAY, THE GUNSLINGER WAS an odd bird and she didn’t need drama right now—staying in hiding would be harder with a baby—but he seemed harmless, and if nothing else, at least not a perv. He hadn’t so much as glanced at her low-cut gown—the gaudy yellow polyester thing—so she could do worse than odd.
At the moment, she couldn’t really be picky about who she hung around with. In spite of her tough words, this was her last night in the show. She’d been here a month; it was time to move on if she wanted to stay ahead of her ex-fiancé. After she’d left Bradley in New York City, she’d developed an itch to keep putting distance between them.
She carried the baby like a treasured artifact through the crowds, leaving the man to follow, as she knew he would. The tall, dark, handsome stranger hadn’t wanted to part with the baby, but like any wise female, she employed the carrot-and-stick approach when necessary. The baby was the carrot, and the cowboy stayed glued to her heels.
He was a delicious, if silent, specimen. Dark hair flowed to the nape of his neck; black brows scowled over denim-blue eyes that seemed confused, yet missed nothing. He was a good six feet four, a foot taller than her, yet he moved gracefully, even when running with a baby. She could only hope he looked as good when he took off his costume. What was it about her and bad boys, the rougher and tougher, the better? She’d snatched him before any other “lady” in the show could—never let it be said that Auburn McGinnis ran from all men. Just the last man. And she planned to keep running, with this baby and her handsome daddy, if her lucky stars were out tonight.
They didn’t speak much in the car. He seemed preoccupied and Auburn was relieved when she pulled into the penthouse parking lot twenty minutes later. They’d purchased diapers, formula and sundry baby things, since the cowboy seemed to have nothing with him. She was a tad suspicious that he’d snatched the baby from its mother, but kept her thoughts to herself. He’d flee if he suspected she was going to call the police, and the best thing to do would be to protect the baby. She could watch the news tonight and see if there was an Amber Alert. She’d cast a quick eye at the lighted overhead sign as they’d driven along the highway, which flashed with a description when a child had been stolen.
There’d been no warning.
“What’s your name?” Auburn asked.
The cowboy had been turned around in his seat, staring at the baby in the back, almost as if reassuring himself that she was there. “My name?”
“Yes.” Auburn sighed. “You can relax. She’s not going to disappear.”
Her words seemed to agitate him and he once again stared back at the newly purchased car seat containing the baby. He was edgy, and it began to occur to Auburn that she had to be an idiot for picking up a man who had no car—claimed he didn’t—no diapers or food for a baby—bad sign—and had a major possessive streak going on.
“You’re not that child’s daddy,” she said, blurting out her thoughts as she turned off the car.
To her shock, he didn’t look as if he was about to grab the baby and dash off.
“I know,” he said. “She was given to me.”
“People don’t give away babies.”
“Trust me, I tried to give her back.”
Auburn considered that as she got out of the car. “Be careful when you take her out. Remove the entire carrier and bring it inside. I don’t have a crib, but she can sleep in her carrier if she’s comfortable, at least for the time being. We can make her a nice, soft pallet on the floor if we need to.”
Auburn watched as he picked up the carrier, handling it as if the baby were gold. A deep breath escaped her. Maybe he was telling the truth; most single men probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have a baby thrust upon them. And he didn’t look exactly scary. If anything, he was eye candy, the kind of man women would jump all over to have his child.
Unlocking the door to her apartment, Auburn said, “Back to your name.”
“Dillinger Kent.” He waited beside her, curious as she opened the door. “What kind of place is this?”
“My name’s Auburn McGinnis,” she said calmly, closing the door behind them, “and this is called a penthouse. Is that what you’re asking?”
He seemed overwhelmed. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding tired as he carefully set the baby down. “Have you ever had a dream that felt like it was real?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m going to get out of this costume. Make yourself at home. There’s a powder room down the hall.”
“Powder room?”
Maybe his family called them something else. “A place to freshen up.”
He nodded, saying nothing more as he sank onto the sofa, his gaze riveted on the baby once again. She slept peacefully in her car seat carrier, oblivious to any change in her fortunes.
Auburn went to take off her stage makeup, and when she returned, the cowboy was sound asleep on her sofa, sitting up. He was truly delicious. If a woman liked her men hot, protective and dark-haired, this one had all the right stuff.
He also might be a baby thief. She ignored her sudden awareness of how wonderfully chiseled his features were, locked her bedroom door and went to bed. In the morning, she’d figure out what to do about the cowboy, and the baby.
AUBURN AWAKENED, AWARE of someone in the bedroom with her. She blinked tired eyes, coming straight awake as she realized the cowboy was beside her bed. “Eee!” she shrieked, jumping out from under the sheet and flipping on the light. “What are you doing in here?”
He seemed as startled as she was. “I just came to tell you that the baby wants something.”
Auburn clutched her nightshirt close to her. “How did you get in here?” She was positive she’d locked the door. It was locked now. She turned frightened eyes on the handsome stranger.
“I walked in.” He looked at her strangely. “I’m sorry. I should have knocked.”
“Yes, you should have!” Auburn glared at him. “And why are you telling me that the baby wants something?”
“Because I don’t know what she wants!” he snapped. “I’ve never had a baby before!”
Auburn opened the door and swept past him to pick up the child. “How long have you had her?”
“Just a few minutes before I met you. I think.”
She took the baby from the carrier, handing her to Dillinger, who seemed as surprised as the child. She quit crying for the moment. “Look,” Auburn said over her shoulder as she went to prepare a bottle, “when the baby cries, she wants to be fed, probably about every three hours or so. She’ll want her diaper changed, and you’ll be in charge of that. Then she’ll want to be cuddled and burped, and you’ll be in charge of that, too.” She handed him the bottle. “I’m not in charge of any of this. It’s not my baby.”
“Mine, either, but I like her.” He took the bottle, cradled the baby and sat down on the sofa.
Amber watched, curious. She knew something about the care of children, certainly. She’d volunteered in the church nursery; her family often had toddlers running around from different branches of the family. But this cowboy didn’t seem that well versed in holding a baby or feeding one, because it took him a few seconds to get the bottle just right so that the little one settled down enough to drink.
He wasn’t making it up, Auburn realized. This wasn’t his baby, and there were no Amber Alerts on the news last night. “Who gave her to you?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. She was left on my porch. Which was a strange thing to do, because it had to be all of twenty degrees outside.”
It was fifty-five in Dallas. Auburn shook her head. “Where do you live?”
“Christmas River.”
“Texas?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
She pulled her iPhone from her purse, searching the Internet for the town. A chill swept over. Nothing. It didn’t exist. “There’s no such place.”
He shook his head at her. “Of course there is. I have a ranch there.”
“Is there a nickname the town goes by?”
“It’s Christmas River,” he insisted.
She looked up the name Dillinger Kent, Christmas River. Her heart felt like it completely stopped. On a Web site of a Texas historical society there was a reprint of what looked like an old newspaper article.
Notorious gunslinger Dillinger Kent shot and killed one of the most infamous stagecoach robbers of all time, Harmon Keith, outside of Carson City today.
The date on the article was May 16, 1888. “What’s your real name?”
The baby stopped sucking on the bottle for an instant, then resumed. Dillinger looked at her. “I told you.”
“No, you gave me a name of a gunslinger from the 1880s.” There were no other Dillinger Kents listed, though she could check Facebook next. She tapped the Web address in quickly. Nothing.
“I was a gunslinger,” he said, “but I gave it up when I took a wife.”
Great. He was married. Auburn should have known. The whole story was bogus. He’d had some kind of spat with his wife, snatched the baby and took off.
Auburn backed into the bedroom doorway. This was a complication she totally didn’t need.
Chapter Two
Dillinger was worried. Something was badly wrong. Either he was having a terrible dream or…well, he didn’t know what else this could be. But something wasn’t good. One minute he’d picked a baby up off his porch, and the next thing he knew, he was in another century. And when he’d woken up to the baby’s cries and wondered how to soothe her, Auburn’s name had popped into his mind—although she didn’t seem like the type who would know a whole lot about babies—and he’d found himself inside her bedroom.
Just like that.
Right now she was staring at him with an expression of distrust and maybe even regret, for which he couldn’t blame her. No woman of decent family took a man into her home—a man with whom she wasn’t acquainted—and then was happy he’d materialized in her bedroom.
They were on bad footing here. She didn’t like him, and he needed her.
He had to convince her to help him.
“You’re married,” she said flatly. “Did you kidnap that baby from your wife? Did you have an argument?”
“No. My wife is dead.” He looked to see some sympathy in her expression, but if anything, Auburn appeared even more horrified. She had the same expression on her face that the people of Christmas River wore when they saw him, as if he were no better than a common murderer.
While he might have been known to gun down a man, he had never treated a woman with anything but respect. And he’d handled his beloved Polly as if she were a china doll. “I didn’t kill my wife,” he said dully.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You didn’t have to,” he muttered. The baby in his arms hesitated again, searching his face for a few moments before continuing with her peaceful feeding. Something about the little one calmed him, made him feel a connection he couldn’t quite understand and yet welcomed. This baby had brought him here. “You and me,” he told the child, “we’re sticking together.”
He heard a sigh and glanced back up at the woman framed in her bedroom doorway. She was prettier without cosmetic artifice. He guessed she had to wear it for the theater production in which she performed—another bad sign, of course. Women who made their living on the stage weren’t in the same class as women who married and kept a home for a husband. But as a gunslinger, he’d lived far outside the norms of convention, too.
Still, he wished a woman of high standards had found him, for the sake of the baby. The woman wore a long T-shirt that read I’m Shakespeare’s Girl, which wasn’t possible because Shakespeare had lived and died in a previous time, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If she were, in fact, acquainted with Shakespeare in some way, she’d have to be able to travel through time like a ghost, which simply wasn’t possible.
At least he hadn’t thought it was.
“What are you going to do with that baby? And what’s her name?”
It hadn’t occurred to him that the warm bundle needed a name other than The Baby, which was how he thought of her. He studied her round face, big, blue eyes, sweet button nose. “Her name is Rose,” he said quickly, “and she is my…my daughter.” He glared at Auburn. “I will protect her and raise her as if she’s my very own.”
Auburn shook her head. “You have to turn her in to the authorities.”
Oh, he knew all about the authorities. There’d be no fair shake for him and Rose with them. “Just let me sleep with her on this divan,” he said, “and I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. I need to be moving on myself. However, just a warning, Dillinger,” she said. “The next woman you meet is going to ask the same questions I have. Eventually, you’ll be caught.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Rose finished her bottle, so he lifted her up to his chest. She gave a satisfying, unladylike belch, which also made him laugh. “Wouldn’t that be rich? Hanged because I’m guarding a child?”
“Hanged?” Auburn frowned. “Isn’t that a little dramatic?”
He didn’t know. “I’m tired,” he finally said. Tired of being tempted by long legs and immodest thoughts about a woman who wasn’t his wife. “Rose and I thank you for your hospitality, and your help. We won’t trouble you past the morning.”
“Fine, bud. Whatever you say.” She yawned and grasped the doorknob. “I’d turn you in to the police, but I don’t want to be found right now myself. You seem like you have that baby’s best interests at heart, and enough money to take care of her, so I’m not going to ask any more questions. All I ask is that you don’t come into my room again. Okay? If you need something, you can give a shout, but no more of the lock trick. It’s kind of stalkerish.”
It was his turn to frown. “You’re not my type,” he said. “You need have no fear of anything untoward from me.”
She looked at him. “Glad we understand each other.”
They didn’t, but it wasn’t important. “Good night,” he said, and busied himself changing Rose’s diaper. It was going to be a struggle, but he’d watched Auburn change one, and the plastic tapes didn’t seem as challenging as firing a gun at a moving target. Rose wiggled and he taped her leg, so he had to start over. He tried not to fumble under Auburn’s scrutiny—he could tell the whiskey-haired woman didn’t completely trust him with the baby.
And then he felt the strangest sensation run through him, like cold on a hot summer day, and a tingling that ran all over him in the worst kind of way—as if a ghost had just walked over his grave.
HE HATED DILLINGER KENT. He was going to kill the gunslinger the second he tracked his murdering carcass down. Pierre Hartskill stood in the ranch house where Dillinger lived, eyeing the place where his sister had been trapped in a loveless marriage. A few logs in the fireplace were charred, the embers below still gray and smoldering as if Dillinger had left in a hurry. Maybe he knew Pierre was on his way to kill him. Perhaps a black angel guarded Dillinger from reaping his just desserts, forewarning him of his impending death. Pierre wasn’t afraid of the reputed gunslinger. Fear was not an option, nor was mercy.
He was going to run him down as Dillinger had Polly, and then he was going to put a bullet through him. And no angel was going to save him.
On the writing desk lay a golden earring. Pierre recognized it. Polly had worn them often, loving the feel of the tiny bells as they danced against her skin. He picked the earring up with cold-chapped fingers, and gave it a shake to hear the bells tinkle again.
And from somewhere faraway, yet loud enough to seem as if it came from this very room, Pierre heard a man cry out.
AUBURN GASPED AS THE cowboy let out a yell of surprise and suddenly went airborne. Thank heaven he’d put the baby on her pallet! He tossed around violently in the air before landing on the couch. He lay still, gasping for breath, crumpled in his long duster, his boots hanging over the edge of the sofa.
“Are you all right?” Auburn wasn’t sure if she should touch him or stay far away. Dillinger was a funny color, his face ashen, as if he might be sick any second. She’d be sick if she’d gotten tossed around like that—she didn’t even like to ride the superdizzying rides at Six Flags.
“I’m fine,” he groaned.
“You’re not fine! What the heck did you just do?” He seemed too sick to harm her, so she approached him, peering down at his prone body.
“A lady doesn’t swear,” he said, groaning again.
“And a man doesn’t fly around a room. I suggest you explain that particular magic trick before I decide to call the law on you, buddy,” she said sternly. “And don’t you dare tell me not to swear!”
He tried to sit up, but failed. “No law. Please.”
Well, she wouldn’t call the law on him—not yet—but she didn’t want him doing that weird levitation again. “Hey, do you want a drink of water?”
“Just take care of the baby,” he said quietly. And then passed out.
“Of all the nerve!” Auburn stared at both of them, sleeping like, well, babies, and a little pity slid into her heart. The man was too big to sleep on the tiny rental furniture, and he was pretty tangled up in that duster. He couldn’t be comfortable. Carefully, she tugged his legs off the sofa so that he was on his back, hanging over one edge, sure, but at least he wasn’t in a ball any longer. “You’re weird,” she told him, but he didn’t move. So she dragged the blanket and comforter off her bed and settled down on the floor beside the sofa next to the baby. “You have a scary daddy,” she told Rose, but the funny thing was, Auburn wasn’t really afraid of Dillinger anymore.
She was afraid for him.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER THE sound of knocking startled Auburn awake. If she hadn’t been deeply asleep, she might have thought twice about opening the door, but she was operating on autopilot. She woke up in a hurry when the security guard peered at her.
“You left your car lights on,” he said. “Thought you might want to know.” His gaze widened as he caught sight of the cowboy on her sofa and the baby on the floor.
“Yes, thank you,” Auburn said, hastily trying to close the door. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
He was mentally cataloging the strange scene in her living room. This was trouble, since she didn’t want any details left behind for an ex-fiancé, who surely had people looking for her. “Thank you,” she said again, more curtly this time, and closed the door.
Locking it, she took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Wondered why simply running out on a bad idea like a wedding had to be so worrying. She should never have said yes in the first place, should never have allowed her parents to make her feel that she had to find her Prince Charming.
“What are you afraid of?” Dillinger asked, and Auburn jumped.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, grabbing her keys from her purse. “What makes you say such a silly thing?”
He sat up, shrugged. “Just seems that I’m not the only one with secrets.”
“No, but you are the only one who can make himself spin around in the air.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gazed at him. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
She circled a finger in the air. “Your levitation trick.”
He gave her a strange look, as if he figured she was crazy. “I’ve been asleep on the sofa.”
He didn’t remember. Chills ran over Auburn’s skin. Yet she hadn’t imagined it. “I’m going to go turn off my car lights. Then you and I should probably talk.”
Shrugging again, he pulled his hat low over his face. She took that as a masculine sign of agreement and left to turn off the car lights before her battery died. A dead car was the last thing she needed, because she had a prickly sensation that it was time to hit the road.
The only question left was whether she took companions with her or left them to their own confused journey.
She wasn’t sure she could do that to little Rose.
Chapter Three
Dillinger watched the woman walk out the door to go fix her automobile—or so she said. He wasn’t sure what the petite fireball was up to—maybe she thought she could make him think he was insane with that weird conversation about him flying around—but a woman like that begged for caution. Her quick, soft conversation with the man who’d come to the door worried him, and he hadn’t missed the gleam in her eyes when she glanced at Rose. If there was ever a lady looking for a baby, Auburn was it. It showed in her concern, and her careful handling and her distrust of him. He wouldn’t trust him, either, baby or not—but he could feel her longing for the infant like a man longed for peace and quiet. And she was on the run, another reason he didn’t trust her. Everybody had something to hide—he did, too—but a woman who was used to running might just decide to run with his precious bundle.
He’d looked into the eyes of thieves many a time. They carried a hungry, focused, almost desperate aura, all the while trying to fool you with their calm. He was in a strange place, with things he didn’t recognize all around him. All he knew was that he had to protect the one thing he had with him, which seemed to have brought him here, if he ever hoped to get back home again, home to his ranch and to the memories of Polly. Carefully, he wrapped up Rose’s things in a sack he found in Auburn’s kitchen, snuggled the baby in his arms and slipped out the door.
“Hey!”
He heard Auburn’s sweet-toned voice, tinged with some anxiety. She was at the elevator, not gone long enough to get to her car.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Leaving,” he said, deciding one of them had to be honest. “We’re in your way.”
“Not more than anything else,” Auburn said. “Please don’t go.”
That shocked him. He’d expected a protest from her, but not a gentle request. “We need to.”
“You don’t even know where you’re going, do you?”
He didn’t. Why admit it? “Rose and I will do fine.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, and he hardened his heart.
“You don’t really need to. We only just met you. You’re not our problem. I mean, we’re not your problem.”
She cocked her head. “You’re not a problem, really. Something’s wrong.”
The confusion in her pretty eyes was very alluring. When she wasn’t dolled up, and when she showed her soft side like this, she was quite fetching. She might not have Polly’s innocent beauty, but was enticing nonetheless. Dillinger didn’t let himself recognize the sudden stab of unwelcome attraction he felt for the woman.
“It’s better this way.” He wanted to walk past her to the elevator, to get away before Rose awakened and needed another bottle, but part of him seemed stuck to the floor.
“Hey,” Auburn said, her voice soft, “I really need you.”
His brows raised of their own accord. “Why?”
She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Protection.”
She’d already had one man visit her abode, the so-called security guard. She’d run with Dillinger from a boss named Harry. The kind of protection she needed didn’t seem to require further description. “I—No. I’m not for hire.”
She stepped closer. He could smell her fresh-washed scent, look into her pleading eyes. Automatically, he shut off the part of him that wanted to ask what protection she could possibly need.
“I need help,” she said, “and a hired gun is just what I need.”
He narrowed his gaze. “You didn’t believe me earlier when I told you who I was.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe about you.”
“The sentiment is mutual.”
“I think for Rose’s sake we should travel together.”
He shook his head. “Lady, I know you want my baby, but you’ll never get her from me.”
“I don’t want to steal Rose.”
“You want something. I can feel it.”
She slowly nodded. “Yes. I do. I want you to travel with me to the next place, and be my cover.”
“I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t want to travel again, whatever that means.” Maybe she’d done it. Maybe it was her—the woman—who had pulled him forward through time, and not the baby. He desperately hoped it wasn’t Auburn who had somehow worked a magic spell to draw him to her. He could be stuck with her!
“We’ll just head west,” she said soothingly.
He’d heard that one before. Everyone always wanted to go west, for gold, for open land, for a new start.
“What are you running from?”
“An ex-fiancé. A wealthy ex-fiancé, whom I discovered has a shady past. I’m a little afraid that he’ll find me.” She took a breath. “And I’m not ready for that.”
He held Rose’s carrier tightly in one hand, her sack of belongings in the other. Had Auburn brought him here because she wanted protection from a man? Needed a husband? All he knew was that he didn’t trust this woman and her big eyes at all. “Because?”
“He’ll be embarrassed that I stood him up. And it’s worse because my family owes their livelihood to him. I’ve always enjoyed a privileged lifestyle, but I thought my parents earned their wealth on their own. The week before the wedding, I learned that they had done deals over time with my fiancé. I began to feel uncomfortably like the fatted calf. Which sounds horrible because my family loves me. But I wanted to make it on my own in the world, not belong to someone. Does that sound crazy?”
He didn’t know. Women made agreements to marry for a dozen reasons, most of them complicated, some ridiculous, but they seemed to make sense to the female mind. It was a complex issue. Polly had married him, she always said, because she couldn’t love a man who couldn’t manage her high spirits and her energy. But he hadn’t managed Polly; she’d managed him. He’d enjoyed the light of her spirit, letting it flow over him. She could have married a lot better than a gunslinger, even though he’d changed everything about himself to win Polly. Her family had never forgiven him his past, though they loved her dearly. Shame had been written all over their faces anytime they saw him. They couldn’t believe he had won their daughter’s heart.
He couldn’t believe he had, either.
But right now, this woman was standing in his way. She claimed to need him, and truthfully, he could use her, too, but only if she wasn’t planning to make off with his baby. She struck him as the type who didn’t make easy attachments, though he wasn’t sure why he felt that way. It was just a feeling he had, and he always went with his hunches. “Listen, I like traveling alone.”
She perked up. “So do I! It’s really more economical, isn’t it? You don’t have to share anything, you can go where you want to….” Her face fell. “On the other hand, it can be lonely.”
“I’m never lonely,” he fibbed. He’d been lonely on the ranch after Polly died, desperately so.
“Well, you’re brave.” She shrugged. “You and Rose can take the backseat, if you must feel alone. I’ll be in the front, and we can ignore each other.”
He didn’t think he could totally ignore her, any more than he could ignore a wasp stinging his buttocks. “How far west are you going?”
“I was thinking New Mexico,” she said, her tone breezy. “But you can choose, if you like.”
“I don’t really care,” he said with a growl, stopping himself from saying, but if you try to take my baby, I’ll find you. “One condition,” he said.
“What?”
He took a long, hard look at her, trying to see inside her soul. He had pretty good success with reading people; if you didn’t have that sixth sense, you could wind up dead. “No more mothering this baby.”
She drew herself up, clearly hurt. “Fine, cowboy. You can take care of that child all by your little old self.”
“Good.”
“Fine.” She swept past him on the stairwell. “Let me grab my things. I don’t have much, and I’m paid up through the month here.”
Now was his moment to take off, get away from her and her spell. But she piqued his curiosity in the worst way. What if she was somehow instrumental to his existence in this century? He had to find the key to getting himself sent back. “How do you pay by the month at a place like this?”
“By understanding the travel industry. Anyway, you let me handle the arrangements, cowboy. You mind the angel.”
Fine. He didn’t really want to know any more about her than he had to, anyway.
Only her traveling secret, and she’d just now given herself away. Auburn understood the travel industry, both in this dimension and some others.
He felt pretty smart at figuring her out so easily.
MEN COULD BE IDIOTS. Auburn tried not to swear under her breath as she tossed her Louis Vuitton luggage into the trunk of her car, annoyed that Dillinger had tried to leave her high and dry. Steal his baby? Hah! She wasn’t completely certain that was Dillinger’s child, but he’d turned bearlike, protective of his cub.
She wouldn’t touch his silly old baby, if he was going to be such an ass about it. “Get in the back,” she told him crossly, “and strap that carrier in correctly, please.”
She sounded bossy and she knew it, but he complied, fumbling a bit with the straps before correctly tightening the baby backward in the seat. Auburn smiled a little at Rose, stiffening when she caught Dillinger looking at her. “You’re getting better at that,” she said airily.
“Like you’re an expert at it, yourself.”
Turning on the car engine, she said, “I was trying to give you a compliment. Obviously, you’re the kind of man whose ego won’t let you accept one gracefully.”
“Probably.” The rearview mirror showed him gazing with interest at the buildings downtown as they passed, not paying a whole lot of attention to her as she drove from the city. Auburn picked the highway marked West and pressed the pedal as hard as the speed limit would allow.
THIS WAS LIKE A magic carpet ride, or a train that could go full-speed across the country. Dillinger was fascinated by the way Auburn flew past the cars and signs on the highway. It was amazing! There were things overhead she called airplanes—he didn’t let on that he had barely heard of flying machines—and so much to see that his head was whirling. She was the reason he was here, he was positive.
He had to convince her to send him and Rose back. They were not suited for living like this. First, he had to return Rose to her rightful mother, even if it meant helping them financially. He felt certain no mother would abandon a baby on his porch unless the woman was destitute.
The only thing he couldn’t understand was why the mother had chosen his porch. He was miles from town. He had a bad reputation. He didn’t darken the doorway of a church. And this was no frontier baby. Her clothes were store-bought. Her socks were knit of the finest lace and cotton, not rough country socks made for warmth and work, like his. Rose should be placed with a family of wealth, not stay with him, if he couldn’t manage to find her birth mother. He knew it was imperative that he get the baby home as fast as possible.
What if he could talk Auburn into taking him and Rose back home to the ranch, and going with them? She said she needed to hide away. She’d be safe at his ranch. No one would ever find her there.
But did he want the opinionated woman in his home, where Polly had brought him such warmth and contentment?
For Rose’s sake, he could do it.
He’d opened his mouth to broach the question, when suddenly he felt himself being jerked against the seat belt.
PIERRE TOSSED THE EARRING across the room. He’d fallen asleep in a chair in Dillinger’s den, and had awakened annoyed that the man hadn’t yet returned. The snow outside was piling up, making a mess of the dirt road. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get snowed in and trapped here for God only knew how long. Anger built inside him. He felt outsmarted by the gunslinger, and he hated it. Maybe the man had planned to be gone for weeks, months.
Pierre felt bad for throwing his sister’s earring. He picked up the delicate bauble again, giving it one last shake. His heart heavy, he vowed to return next week, when Dillinger might be home and the snow and ice not threatening to encase the house in a chilly tomb. Why the man chose to live out here when he could have lived in town was puzzling, but he’d had Polly all to himself this way. A beautiful flower like his sister hadn’t deserved to wilt out here in the uncivilized wilderness.
Pierre put the earring back on the writing desk, staring at it for a long time, tempted to take the trinket with him. Maybe the charcoal drawing of his sister would ease the ache in his heart more. But no, it didn’t truly capture the fire Polly had possessed.
He left everything just as it had been, so the gunslinger would never suspect someone had been waiting here, planning to kill him.
Chapter Four
Dillinger tried not to gasp as his body strained against the seat belt. It was as if he were being jerked by a strong, invisible hand trying to tear him from the car. Only the straps kept him restrained.
“Is something wrong?” Auburn asked, staring at him in the rearview mirror.
“No,” he said, grinding out the word.
She checked the road, then glanced back to his reflection. “Are you sure? You don’t look good.”
He unhooked the belt, relieved when the pressure subsided.
“You have to wear that,” Auburn said. “It’s against the law not to wear a seat belt.”
He grimaced at the pain in his stomach and across his chest. “Do you think that’s a strange thing to tell a gunslinger?” He checked the belt again. This time it was acting as it should. Maybe the thing had malfunctioned. Maybe there hadn’t been anything supernatural trying to drag him from this car.
“You know, about that gunslinger business, maybe we should figure out some other livelihood for you, when people ask what you do,” Auburn said, her voice bright.
“Why? Who’s going to care?”
She shook her head. “No one, most likely. But if anyone asks, why don’t you tell them you work for…I don’t know.” Her gaze lit on him in the mirror again. “You can say you’re an unemployed model.”
He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, just say you’re a ranch owner.”
“I am.”
“You are?”
She sounded so shocked that he frowned. “I told you. I own a ranch outside of Christmas River.”
“But I looked that up. There’s no such town.”
“Care to place a wager on that?”
“No.”
She could be quite the shrew. He tried to relax in the magic vehicle, which had a material top that she said pulled back to let in sunshine and fresh air and the feeling of freedom.
“You felt it, didn’t you?”
She’d caught him off guard. “Felt what?”
Auburn moved one finger in the air in a slow circle. “If you hadn’t been wearing that seat belt, you would have gone airborne again.”
Polly wouldn’t have hounded him so. This woman had no qualms about doing it. “The contraption simply malfunctioned.”
“You felt it, and now you know I was telling you the truth.”
He didn’t care. He was so sleepy all he could do was send a fast glance at Rose to make certain she was still happy and nestled in her carrier. Fear suddenly hit his gut. “Do me a favor,” he said, fighting to keep his eyelids open. “If something happens to me, take care of Rose.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Auburn said, trying to sound soothing. “You just have a bad habit of levitating.”
“Promise,” he insisted.
“I’m not really cut out for taking care of a baby. I’ve got problems of my own.”
He couldn’t argue with her any longer. Unconsciousness pulled at him, forbidding him to stay awake, as much as he would have enjoyed telling her that he’d never seen a woman so cut out to be a mother.
Except maybe Polly.
And that worried him, too. He fell asleep, his soul tortured by thoughts of what might have been and what should have been.
WHAT WOULD IT HURT to swing by this place he called Christmas River? Maybe the answers to his problem were there. Auburn punched “Christmas” into her GPS system. They weren’t far from a town called Christy River—maybe he was confused from all the whirling around he engaged in. It was just a fast detour from where they planned to go, but they certainly had no schedule and nowhere definitive to be. Going to such a remote place might even help her put some distance between her and her fiancé. The cowboy wouldn’t awaken, not for a while, so she couldn’t ask him, but she had a feeling he’d be happy to get home.
She knew something was wrong with him, knew he knew it, too. He didn’t want to admit his fear, but for a man who claimed to routinely face down killers, what was bugging him now appeared to be bigger than anything he’d dealt with before.
He’d asked her about taking care of Rose, and for the first time, concern swept through Auburn. She couldn’t take on a baby if something happened to the hunky cowboy. Her eyes went to him in the mirror. He slept with his head tipped back against the seat, an ungraceful position, which had no bearing whatsoever on his sex appeal. She liked her men tall, dark and handsome, with a dash of mystery thrown in, so Dillinger was everything she would never have been able to resist in a man.
And yet she would have forced herself to, which was why she’d chosen the supersafe Bradley Jackson for her fiancé, a dreadful mistake that hadn’t been safe at all. Her parents owned the popular McGinnis Perfumes. She’d proudly worked as a vice president at the company. Bradley had been the CFO.
But three weeks before the wedding matters had gone terribly wrong, and she’d learned things about the company—and specifically her own family—that she’d never known.
It still hurt to think about it. Her parents said Bradley basically owned the company now. They’d hit a snag during hard times and Bradley had financed their debt through his own company. The wonderful perfumes Auburn remembered her grandmother carefully fashioning to enrich a woman’s life were phased out, replaced with cheaply made imitations. Every bottle sold generated huge profit. In this way, Bradley was receiving revenue from the loan, which her parents had never had to pay back.
The debt would have all been swept clean with her marriage to Bradley. She still smarted under the realization that the man she’d loved—and believed loved her—had actually owned her and her family lock, stock and barrel. No woman wanted to feel like that.
“You’re deep in thought,” Dillinger said, startling her.
“You’re awake.”
He grunted.
“Do you feel better?”
“I didn’t feel bad.” He glanced down at the baby. “She sure does sleep peacefully when she sleeps.”
The infant probably derived comfort from Dillinger’s deep voice. Auburn turned her gaze back to the road, vowing not to allow the rearview mirror to continue to lure her to stare at the hunk in her backseat.
“What does it feel like?” Auburn asked.
“I’d like to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about, but since I’m completely at a loss as to what’s happening to me, I guess I’ll just say it feels strange.”
“Like you’re having a hypoglycemic attack?”
“What’s that?”
“Low blood sugar.”
“I don’t know what that is. Sorry, my medical knowledge ends around 1892.”
She couldn’t help it; she stared at him in the mirror. “Part of me believes that you really think you’re from another place and time.”
He just shook his head, and she went back to driving. “Listen, maybe you should see a doctor,” she suggested worriedly.
“You mean you think I’m dangerous. That my mind is addled.”
She refused to meet his gaze; she could feel him looking at her in the mirror. “I don’t know what to think.”
He sighed. “Where are we going?”
“To Christy River.”
“I’m from Christmas River.”
“Can’t it be the same thing? Maybe the Google map has a misprint. It does that sometimes.”
“Google map?”
“Never mind.” She pulled into a Sonic drive-through, ordered a couple of burgers, and by the time they were finished—the cowboy wolfed his—Rose was awake and ready for her bottle. Together they managed the whole burp, diaper, comfort routine. Chilly as it was outside, Rose didn’t mind being put back into her snug carrier for another nap.
“She’s tired from traveling,” Dillinger observed.
“Oh, traveling does that to everyone.” Auburn got into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“I meant, traveling through time.”
She frowned. “Listen, let’s play a little game, okay?”
“I don’t really like games.”
“Who was the most famous person of 1892?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Lord Tennyson died in October. I like his poems. Some of them had to do with the Knights of the Round Table. My wife enjoyed reading to me.”
“Can you read?”
“Of course I can read!” He scowled at her. “It’s a pleasure to have one’s wife read aloud at fireside!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jeez, he could be sensitive about certain things. Auburn didn’t know if Tennyson had died in 1892 or not, but Dillinger sounded pretty knowledgeable so she let it pass. “Who was the president?”
“Grover Cleveland was just reelected. Third term, though not consecutively. He came back to beat President Benjamin Harrison. Other than that, I didn’t pay too much attention. We tend to set our own rules out West. Not sure what he knows about ranching, so I let him run the country and I run my ranch.”
He could have studied 1892 and become well versed in the history. But why did he keep levitating?
What if he really was from another time? Auburn pulled out of the Sonic parking lot. She’d be a fool if she started believing this man’s wild story, she told herself. She’d just discovered how painful it was when someone you trusted lied to you, and she had her guard up. Planned on keeping it up.
“So what really happened to your wife?”
Dillinger’s heart clenched with familiar pain at the topic. He didn’t want to talk about it. Still, he sensed genuine curiosity not borne from meanness in Auburn’s question. “She died of pneumonia. I couldn’t get the doctor out to our ranch fast enough. Don’t know what he could have done, anyway. All those tinctures they give seem pretty useless to me. It started out as a cold, though I kept the house warm as toast. I never left her side.” He shuddered, remembering the fever that had swept through Polly. He’d kept her wrapped, made sure not a draft entered the house. Tried to feed her soup he made himself.
Nothing had helped.
“I’m so sorry,” Auburn said. “I can tell you miss her.”
“I don’t miss her so much that I’m unhinged, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t think that at all!”
“Sure you did,” Dillinger said.
Auburn’s eyes met his in the mirror, but he looked away before he could see the pity there. “She was an angel,” he said, “and now she’s with the angels. I really couldn’t have kept her long. I realize that now.”
“But now you have Rose,” Auburn said.
“But for how long?” Dillinger asked, gently touching the soft, fine hairs on the baby’s head. He was getting awfully attached to a child that wasn’t his. He didn’t even know why her mother had left her with him. No doubt the people of Christmas River would say he’d stolen her, the same way they’d accused him of murdering Polly.
“I hope she’ll stay with me,” he said quietly. “She’s all I’ve got right now.”
“Where would she go?” Auburn asked. “It’s not like she can walk away.”
Dillinger shook his head. Auburn couldn’t possibly understand the demons that drove him, and why this little angel was his only connection to the world he knew.
Chapter Five
They got out of the car in Christy River just a few hours later. Dillinger shook his head. “This isn’t it.”
Auburn was disappointed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Even if everything wasn’t much more modern, changed over and new, he would recognize his hometown. “The topography isn’t even the same.”
She held Rose tucked to her chest, surveying the road where they’d stopped. He liked watching her care for the baby, but he couldn’t get over the astonishing sight of hundreds of cars flying along the highway. “We rode horses over land like this,” he murmured.
She smiled at him. “You’re an old-fashioned guy.”
“I think I’m fairly progressive.”
“What made you become a gunslinger?” she asked softly, and he forced himself to consider the question and give her an honest answer, even if he really didn’t want to talk about a way of life he’d given up for Polly.
“I met one man who didn’t believe in peaceful solutions,” he said. “After that, it seemed I was offered plenty of jobs the law couldn’t handle—or didn’t want to handle—on their own. And the pay was good.” He shrugged. “Let’s get one of those burger things, on my nickel. Being a new father is making me hungry. I want to eat like Rose does, every three hours.”
“We can grab something at that McDonald’s,” Auburn suggested, getting in the car. “It’s pretty non-nutritious food, but I do love their French fries.”
He got in the car, made sure Rose was secure in her seat.
“Would you ever tell me about how you did your job?” Auburn asked as their eyes met over Rose’s carrier.
“No,” he said quietly. “Some stories aren’t good in the retelling.”
She didn’t believe he was from 1892. How could she understand anything about his life? Dillinger let Rose grab his finger, smiling when she held on to it with determination. “She’s a tough little girl,” he said. “A survivor.”
Auburn started the car and pulled into traffic. He was surprised by how comfortable he was, letting her drive him around. Where he was from, the man usually handled the team of horses, drove the buckboard. He couldn’t remember Polly driving anything, although she’d been an excellent horsewoman. Polly had been more delicate than Auburn. It was strange how Auburn had changed since she’d left her employment at the theater; she was softer, more feminine. He wondered about her family, why they didn’t seem concerned about her being off on her own.
A sudden shrill ringing startled him and Rose.
“Sorry,” Auburn said, “I have to take this. It’s my sister, Cherie.”
He watched, astonished, as she pulled a small black box from her purse and began talking into it. She listened, laughed, then talked some more. It was amazing. Everything one wanted to say could be done instantly, not in a letter or handwritten message.
She put the object away. “She’s telling everyone I’ve gone to Florida to think things over.”
“Can I look at that thing?”
“This? It’s an iPhone,” she said, handing it to him. “Don’t you have a cell phone?”
“No.” He stared at it, amazed by all the strange markings. “And you can talk to someone on this.”
“Anywhere in the world.”
He blinked. “Anywhere?”
“Yes.”
He handed it back to her. “How do you know how to reach someone?”
“Usually you know their number and have it in your phone list. If not, you can look it up in a phone book or on the Internet. There are maps of everything, anything you want to know at all, right here.”
He considered that. “So, if there was such a thing as Christmas River, that phone would show it.”
“Right. And there’s nothing listed. I checked.”
So the town name had changed. He was going to have to find out what the new name was, or be forever lost. “I have to know what happened to my town,” he told her.
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Tina Leonard
Dillinger Kent is getting ready for a lonely Christmas on his Texas ranch. All that changes the night the widowed gunslinger hears an infant's wails…and is swept into a time and town definitely not his own. After ditching her fiancé at the altar, Auburn McGinnis is on the run, trying to figure out how to hold on to her family's perfume company.The rough-and-tumble stranger who just showed up with a baby girl in tow could be the hired gun–and protector–she needs. At first, all Dillinger wanted was to get back to his ranch. But with the resourceful, enchanting Auburn in his life, the twenty-first century is looking better and better.Have they both found what they're looking for? A love that transcends time?
He was a delicious specimen
Dark hair flowed to the nape of his neck; black brows scowled over denim-blue eyes that seemed confused yet missed nothing.
He was a good six foot four to her five-four, yet he moved gracefully, even holding a baby. She could only hope he looked as good when he took off his costume.
What was it about her and bad boys, the rougher/tougher, the better? She’d snatched him before any other “lady” in the show could—never let it be said that Auburn McGinnis ran from all men. Just the last man. And she planned to keep running, with this baby and her handsome daddy, if her lucky stars were out tonight.
Dear Reader,
I do love writing Christmas stories, and this one is my favorite yet. What fun to write about a man and a woman who find each other through impossible odds and different centuries!
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to experience a different time and place, so getting to put myself into the lives of a hero and heroine in nineteenth-century Texas was a thrilling adventure. I’m a big believer in angels, ghosts and blessings that get passed down through time, so living in Christmas River with Dillinger and Auburn—and Rose and Polly—gave me a special sense of hope and affirmation that the ones we love are always very much with us.
I hope you enjoy The Cowboy from Christmas Past, and spending the holiday season in Christmas River. Blessings to you all at this wonderful, miraculous time of year!
Always much love,
Tina Leonard
The Cowboy from Christmas Past
Tina Leonard
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tina Leonard is a bestselling author of more than forty projects, including a popular thirteen-book miniseries for Harlequin American Romance. Her books have made the Waldenbooks, Ingram’s and Nielsen BookScan bestseller lists. Tina feels she has been blessed with a fertile imagination and quick typing skills, excellent editors and a family who loves her career. Born on a military base, she lived in many states before eventually marrying the boy who did her crayon printing for her in the first grade. Tina believes happy endings are a wonderful part of a good life. You can visit her at www.tinaleonard.com.
Special thanks to Anne Stuart—
brainstorming this idea with you was so much fun!
Many thanks to the members of the Tina Leonard’s
Nightstand newsletter for being so enthusiastic
about this story, and also to Georgia Haynes for
editing. Much, much gratitude goes to the very
loyal readers who graciously and faithfully support
my career. And as always, Lisa, Dean and Tim—
you are the love behind my writing.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, Christmas
season of 1892
For Dillinger Kent, retired gunslinger, life was quiet on his thousand-acre spread on the outskirts of the Texas Panhandle town of Christmas River. Winter with its promise of bitter cold and occasional snow, unlike the rest of the state, made his solitary lifestyle even more remote. Springtime brought fullness to his ranch, with trees and grasses dressing the stark landscape in glorious greens; summer and fall brought their own lustrous hues to warm the countryside.
But the Christmas season was a harbinger of the icy cocoon soon to envelop him for the next three months. It was the middle of December, and deep winter crept closer.
He’d chosen a life of loneliness when he’d lost his wife, Polly Hartskill Kent. They’d made plans for a family out here, a big home to raise them in. Christmas on the ranch, Polly said, would be so much fun with lots of little feet running around. Polly had a beautiful soul and Dillinger had loved her as he would never love anyone again. But his darling wife had taken ill with pneumonia during the last Christmas season, and having a beautiful soul hadn’t saved her.
He picked up a self-portrait Polly had drawn for him, which he’d put in a wooden frame. She was luminous, even in charcoal. Her kindness and grace of spirit was captured in the lines of her likeness. He set the picture down and picked up a pair of small, dangling earrings with tiny golden bells. They were delicate, like Polly. He’d given them to her two Christmases ago, a wedding gift he’d picked up on his last trip to California. She’d been thrilled with them, giggling when they lightly tinkled at her ears. The earrings felt like a tiny memory between his rough fingers. He would never give them to another woman, would never part with them.
Dillinger forced his mind away from Polly. He wondered if he might go crazy one day in this isolated countryside. But he knew it was just the date on the calendar he’d bought at Gin’s Feed Store that was making him maudlin. He’d make it to springtime—he swore that he would. He curled his fingers around the earrings, then set them back on the desk, barely able to turn them loose.
The wind whipped around outside the nine-room home he’d built with his own hands. No chill would seep in—he knew every inch of his house and it was tight against the elements. Dillinger closed his eyes, wondered if he should go check the livestock, which would be huddled in close groups for warmth. They were more than likely fine.
Still, he had the urge to look outside.
Then he heard the wailing.
It came thin at first, carried by the wind. It wasn’t an animal’s cry—it sounded human. But at this time of night, nearly ten o’clock, there would be no people around. His ranch was far from town, hardly a convenient place for someone to stop by.
Yet he heard it again. He buttoned his long oilskin coat, which reached below his knees. Grabbing gloves and setting his cowboy hat tight on his head, he prepared for the gusts of wind that would tear at him. He stepped out and nearly onto a basket that had been laid on his porch. By God, it was a baby, a pink-wrapped thing in a wicker basket.
Dillinger looked in all directions, but there were no footprints in the snow leading away from the house. Yet the baby couldn’t have been there long. “Hey!” he called into the darkness. “You can’t leave this here! Come back!”
The poor woman who had left her child here didn’t understand. He lived alone. He went to town only four times a year. He was basically a pariah.
The gossip mill of Christmas River had turned on him after Polly’s death, and to his shock, it was said that Polly had died of pneumonia after trying to flee from him one cold December night. Her parents had claimed that he was jealous, had become aware that another man wanted to court Polly, and that Dillinger had chased her down, intending to murder her in cold blood.
Now he was a man with no town.
“Come back here!” he yelled into the breath-stealing chill of the snowstorm. But there was no answer, just the cries of the desperate baby at his feet.
So he picked up the basket, cursing it, cursing himself, his life…and found himself in a shootout straight from the Old West. Three gunslingers he’d never seen before aimed pistols at him. Gaudily attired saloon women screamed and ran for cover. With his holster and gun missing, he had no choice but to do what he could to save the baby in his arms.
He jumped off the stage and into a seated throng of clapping women, men and children. Popcorn flew, but there was no time to apologize; he expected a bullet in his back any second. Somehow he had to get the baby to shelter. He ran to the nearest safe place he could find—a theater box with a sign on it that read Security, empty for the moment—and looked down at the baby. Dillinger’s chest heaved, but the infant looked up at him, calm now and gazing at him reverently.
“Hey.” A saloon woman squeezed into the box with him. “You’re going to be in big trouble with Harry.”
He stared at his unwanted companion. Her long, whiskey-colored hair fell in cascading curls, her green eyes huge.
“Harry?”
“Yeah. He’s not going to be happy that you rewrote the script. Nor that you had a baby onstage.”
Dillinger held the infant closer.
“Couldn’t you find a sitter?” she asked. “I know it’s late at night, but surely a teenager would have been willing to watch your baby.”
He couldn’t speak, his world changing so fast he couldn’t take it in. He felt himself shift into survival mode. He studied the woman’s painted lips—a sweet, shiny cherry—and her long, long lashes. He’d never seen a woman wear so much face paint and yet have so little need of it.
Whoever she was—whatever she was—he needed her right now.
She shook her head. “I’ve only been here a few weeks and you’re clearly real new, but if I were you, I’d go to Harry after the act is over, apologize like hell and beg him not to fire you. Six Flags is crawling with people looking for work, even at Christmastime.”
Dillinger frowned. “I wouldn’t beg for anything. And what do you mean, when the act is over?”
“That was the last scene, the grand finale.” She shrugged pale, softly rounded shoulders. “Suit yourself on the begging part, but you can’t perform with the baby.” She cast a glance over him. “You may look like the real McCoy, but Harry’s not going to bend rules even for you, I bet.”
The infant began to cry, a wail that suggested she was hungry and didn’t care to wait. “I’m not in an act. I’m lost,” he said, and the saloon dancer laughed.
“No kidding, cowboy,” she said. “You’re just one egg shy of a dozen, aren’t you?”
“I need help.”
He watched, fascinated, as she pulled a black mole off the skin above her gently curved lips. “Let’s get out of here. I need to wash my face, and we’ll figure out where to find baby formula and Pampers. Unless you’re going to surprise me and say you’ve got some in your car.”
He shook his head, not certain what she had just asked him. She sighed and motioned for him to follow her from the box.
“What about Harry?” He presumed Harry employed her, but maybe there was more to it than that.
“To hell with him,” she said, “we need to feed Princess Squall. I feel sorry for her.” She smiled down at the baby and her face softened. “Thank God I never had one of these or I might not have ever had the courage to back out of my wedding at the last minute. You’re a sweetie,” she said, lifting the baby from his arms. “You should have gummed on Daddy’s nose for forgetting your bottle, honey.”
He watched protectively as she cuddled the infant. The baby stopped crying and Dillinger relaxed slightly.
He needed one person on his side right now. As much as he might not like it, the saloon dancer would have to do, at least until he figured out exactly how the hell he’d gotten here.
OKAY, THE GUNSLINGER WAS an odd bird and she didn’t need drama right now—staying in hiding would be harder with a baby—but he seemed harmless, and if nothing else, at least not a perv. He hadn’t so much as glanced at her low-cut gown—the gaudy yellow polyester thing—so she could do worse than odd.
At the moment, she couldn’t really be picky about who she hung around with. In spite of her tough words, this was her last night in the show. She’d been here a month; it was time to move on if she wanted to stay ahead of her ex-fiancé. After she’d left Bradley in New York City, she’d developed an itch to keep putting distance between them.
She carried the baby like a treasured artifact through the crowds, leaving the man to follow, as she knew he would. The tall, dark, handsome stranger hadn’t wanted to part with the baby, but like any wise female, she employed the carrot-and-stick approach when necessary. The baby was the carrot, and the cowboy stayed glued to her heels.
He was a delicious, if silent, specimen. Dark hair flowed to the nape of his neck; black brows scowled over denim-blue eyes that seemed confused, yet missed nothing. He was a good six feet four, a foot taller than her, yet he moved gracefully, even when running with a baby. She could only hope he looked as good when he took off his costume. What was it about her and bad boys, the rougher and tougher, the better? She’d snatched him before any other “lady” in the show could—never let it be said that Auburn McGinnis ran from all men. Just the last man. And she planned to keep running, with this baby and her handsome daddy, if her lucky stars were out tonight.
They didn’t speak much in the car. He seemed preoccupied and Auburn was relieved when she pulled into the penthouse parking lot twenty minutes later. They’d purchased diapers, formula and sundry baby things, since the cowboy seemed to have nothing with him. She was a tad suspicious that he’d snatched the baby from its mother, but kept her thoughts to herself. He’d flee if he suspected she was going to call the police, and the best thing to do would be to protect the baby. She could watch the news tonight and see if there was an Amber Alert. She’d cast a quick eye at the lighted overhead sign as they’d driven along the highway, which flashed with a description when a child had been stolen.
There’d been no warning.
“What’s your name?” Auburn asked.
The cowboy had been turned around in his seat, staring at the baby in the back, almost as if reassuring himself that she was there. “My name?”
“Yes.” Auburn sighed. “You can relax. She’s not going to disappear.”
Her words seemed to agitate him and he once again stared back at the newly purchased car seat containing the baby. He was edgy, and it began to occur to Auburn that she had to be an idiot for picking up a man who had no car—claimed he didn’t—no diapers or food for a baby—bad sign—and had a major possessive streak going on.
“You’re not that child’s daddy,” she said, blurting out her thoughts as she turned off the car.
To her shock, he didn’t look as if he was about to grab the baby and dash off.
“I know,” he said. “She was given to me.”
“People don’t give away babies.”
“Trust me, I tried to give her back.”
Auburn considered that as she got out of the car. “Be careful when you take her out. Remove the entire carrier and bring it inside. I don’t have a crib, but she can sleep in her carrier if she’s comfortable, at least for the time being. We can make her a nice, soft pallet on the floor if we need to.”
Auburn watched as he picked up the carrier, handling it as if the baby were gold. A deep breath escaped her. Maybe he was telling the truth; most single men probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have a baby thrust upon them. And he didn’t look exactly scary. If anything, he was eye candy, the kind of man women would jump all over to have his child.
Unlocking the door to her apartment, Auburn said, “Back to your name.”
“Dillinger Kent.” He waited beside her, curious as she opened the door. “What kind of place is this?”
“My name’s Auburn McGinnis,” she said calmly, closing the door behind them, “and this is called a penthouse. Is that what you’re asking?”
He seemed overwhelmed. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding tired as he carefully set the baby down. “Have you ever had a dream that felt like it was real?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m going to get out of this costume. Make yourself at home. There’s a powder room down the hall.”
“Powder room?”
Maybe his family called them something else. “A place to freshen up.”
He nodded, saying nothing more as he sank onto the sofa, his gaze riveted on the baby once again. She slept peacefully in her car seat carrier, oblivious to any change in her fortunes.
Auburn went to take off her stage makeup, and when she returned, the cowboy was sound asleep on her sofa, sitting up. He was truly delicious. If a woman liked her men hot, protective and dark-haired, this one had all the right stuff.
He also might be a baby thief. She ignored her sudden awareness of how wonderfully chiseled his features were, locked her bedroom door and went to bed. In the morning, she’d figure out what to do about the cowboy, and the baby.
AUBURN AWAKENED, AWARE of someone in the bedroom with her. She blinked tired eyes, coming straight awake as she realized the cowboy was beside her bed. “Eee!” she shrieked, jumping out from under the sheet and flipping on the light. “What are you doing in here?”
He seemed as startled as she was. “I just came to tell you that the baby wants something.”
Auburn clutched her nightshirt close to her. “How did you get in here?” She was positive she’d locked the door. It was locked now. She turned frightened eyes on the handsome stranger.
“I walked in.” He looked at her strangely. “I’m sorry. I should have knocked.”
“Yes, you should have!” Auburn glared at him. “And why are you telling me that the baby wants something?”
“Because I don’t know what she wants!” he snapped. “I’ve never had a baby before!”
Auburn opened the door and swept past him to pick up the child. “How long have you had her?”
“Just a few minutes before I met you. I think.”
She took the baby from the carrier, handing her to Dillinger, who seemed as surprised as the child. She quit crying for the moment. “Look,” Auburn said over her shoulder as she went to prepare a bottle, “when the baby cries, she wants to be fed, probably about every three hours or so. She’ll want her diaper changed, and you’ll be in charge of that. Then she’ll want to be cuddled and burped, and you’ll be in charge of that, too.” She handed him the bottle. “I’m not in charge of any of this. It’s not my baby.”
“Mine, either, but I like her.” He took the bottle, cradled the baby and sat down on the sofa.
Amber watched, curious. She knew something about the care of children, certainly. She’d volunteered in the church nursery; her family often had toddlers running around from different branches of the family. But this cowboy didn’t seem that well versed in holding a baby or feeding one, because it took him a few seconds to get the bottle just right so that the little one settled down enough to drink.
He wasn’t making it up, Auburn realized. This wasn’t his baby, and there were no Amber Alerts on the news last night. “Who gave her to you?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. She was left on my porch. Which was a strange thing to do, because it had to be all of twenty degrees outside.”
It was fifty-five in Dallas. Auburn shook her head. “Where do you live?”
“Christmas River.”
“Texas?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
She pulled her iPhone from her purse, searching the Internet for the town. A chill swept over. Nothing. It didn’t exist. “There’s no such place.”
He shook his head at her. “Of course there is. I have a ranch there.”
“Is there a nickname the town goes by?”
“It’s Christmas River,” he insisted.
She looked up the name Dillinger Kent, Christmas River. Her heart felt like it completely stopped. On a Web site of a Texas historical society there was a reprint of what looked like an old newspaper article.
Notorious gunslinger Dillinger Kent shot and killed one of the most infamous stagecoach robbers of all time, Harmon Keith, outside of Carson City today.
The date on the article was May 16, 1888. “What’s your real name?”
The baby stopped sucking on the bottle for an instant, then resumed. Dillinger looked at her. “I told you.”
“No, you gave me a name of a gunslinger from the 1880s.” There were no other Dillinger Kents listed, though she could check Facebook next. She tapped the Web address in quickly. Nothing.
“I was a gunslinger,” he said, “but I gave it up when I took a wife.”
Great. He was married. Auburn should have known. The whole story was bogus. He’d had some kind of spat with his wife, snatched the baby and took off.
Auburn backed into the bedroom doorway. This was a complication she totally didn’t need.
Chapter Two
Dillinger was worried. Something was badly wrong. Either he was having a terrible dream or…well, he didn’t know what else this could be. But something wasn’t good. One minute he’d picked a baby up off his porch, and the next thing he knew, he was in another century. And when he’d woken up to the baby’s cries and wondered how to soothe her, Auburn’s name had popped into his mind—although she didn’t seem like the type who would know a whole lot about babies—and he’d found himself inside her bedroom.
Just like that.
Right now she was staring at him with an expression of distrust and maybe even regret, for which he couldn’t blame her. No woman of decent family took a man into her home—a man with whom she wasn’t acquainted—and then was happy he’d materialized in her bedroom.
They were on bad footing here. She didn’t like him, and he needed her.
He had to convince her to help him.
“You’re married,” she said flatly. “Did you kidnap that baby from your wife? Did you have an argument?”
“No. My wife is dead.” He looked to see some sympathy in her expression, but if anything, Auburn appeared even more horrified. She had the same expression on her face that the people of Christmas River wore when they saw him, as if he were no better than a common murderer.
While he might have been known to gun down a man, he had never treated a woman with anything but respect. And he’d handled his beloved Polly as if she were a china doll. “I didn’t kill my wife,” he said dully.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You didn’t have to,” he muttered. The baby in his arms hesitated again, searching his face for a few moments before continuing with her peaceful feeding. Something about the little one calmed him, made him feel a connection he couldn’t quite understand and yet welcomed. This baby had brought him here. “You and me,” he told the child, “we’re sticking together.”
He heard a sigh and glanced back up at the woman framed in her bedroom doorway. She was prettier without cosmetic artifice. He guessed she had to wear it for the theater production in which she performed—another bad sign, of course. Women who made their living on the stage weren’t in the same class as women who married and kept a home for a husband. But as a gunslinger, he’d lived far outside the norms of convention, too.
Still, he wished a woman of high standards had found him, for the sake of the baby. The woman wore a long T-shirt that read I’m Shakespeare’s Girl, which wasn’t possible because Shakespeare had lived and died in a previous time, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If she were, in fact, acquainted with Shakespeare in some way, she’d have to be able to travel through time like a ghost, which simply wasn’t possible.
At least he hadn’t thought it was.
“What are you going to do with that baby? And what’s her name?”
It hadn’t occurred to him that the warm bundle needed a name other than The Baby, which was how he thought of her. He studied her round face, big, blue eyes, sweet button nose. “Her name is Rose,” he said quickly, “and she is my…my daughter.” He glared at Auburn. “I will protect her and raise her as if she’s my very own.”
Auburn shook her head. “You have to turn her in to the authorities.”
Oh, he knew all about the authorities. There’d be no fair shake for him and Rose with them. “Just let me sleep with her on this divan,” he said, “and I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. I need to be moving on myself. However, just a warning, Dillinger,” she said. “The next woman you meet is going to ask the same questions I have. Eventually, you’ll be caught.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Rose finished her bottle, so he lifted her up to his chest. She gave a satisfying, unladylike belch, which also made him laugh. “Wouldn’t that be rich? Hanged because I’m guarding a child?”
“Hanged?” Auburn frowned. “Isn’t that a little dramatic?”
He didn’t know. “I’m tired,” he finally said. Tired of being tempted by long legs and immodest thoughts about a woman who wasn’t his wife. “Rose and I thank you for your hospitality, and your help. We won’t trouble you past the morning.”
“Fine, bud. Whatever you say.” She yawned and grasped the doorknob. “I’d turn you in to the police, but I don’t want to be found right now myself. You seem like you have that baby’s best interests at heart, and enough money to take care of her, so I’m not going to ask any more questions. All I ask is that you don’t come into my room again. Okay? If you need something, you can give a shout, but no more of the lock trick. It’s kind of stalkerish.”
It was his turn to frown. “You’re not my type,” he said. “You need have no fear of anything untoward from me.”
She looked at him. “Glad we understand each other.”
They didn’t, but it wasn’t important. “Good night,” he said, and busied himself changing Rose’s diaper. It was going to be a struggle, but he’d watched Auburn change one, and the plastic tapes didn’t seem as challenging as firing a gun at a moving target. Rose wiggled and he taped her leg, so he had to start over. He tried not to fumble under Auburn’s scrutiny—he could tell the whiskey-haired woman didn’t completely trust him with the baby.
And then he felt the strangest sensation run through him, like cold on a hot summer day, and a tingling that ran all over him in the worst kind of way—as if a ghost had just walked over his grave.
HE HATED DILLINGER KENT. He was going to kill the gunslinger the second he tracked his murdering carcass down. Pierre Hartskill stood in the ranch house where Dillinger lived, eyeing the place where his sister had been trapped in a loveless marriage. A few logs in the fireplace were charred, the embers below still gray and smoldering as if Dillinger had left in a hurry. Maybe he knew Pierre was on his way to kill him. Perhaps a black angel guarded Dillinger from reaping his just desserts, forewarning him of his impending death. Pierre wasn’t afraid of the reputed gunslinger. Fear was not an option, nor was mercy.
He was going to run him down as Dillinger had Polly, and then he was going to put a bullet through him. And no angel was going to save him.
On the writing desk lay a golden earring. Pierre recognized it. Polly had worn them often, loving the feel of the tiny bells as they danced against her skin. He picked the earring up with cold-chapped fingers, and gave it a shake to hear the bells tinkle again.
And from somewhere faraway, yet loud enough to seem as if it came from this very room, Pierre heard a man cry out.
AUBURN GASPED AS THE cowboy let out a yell of surprise and suddenly went airborne. Thank heaven he’d put the baby on her pallet! He tossed around violently in the air before landing on the couch. He lay still, gasping for breath, crumpled in his long duster, his boots hanging over the edge of the sofa.
“Are you all right?” Auburn wasn’t sure if she should touch him or stay far away. Dillinger was a funny color, his face ashen, as if he might be sick any second. She’d be sick if she’d gotten tossed around like that—she didn’t even like to ride the superdizzying rides at Six Flags.
“I’m fine,” he groaned.
“You’re not fine! What the heck did you just do?” He seemed too sick to harm her, so she approached him, peering down at his prone body.
“A lady doesn’t swear,” he said, groaning again.
“And a man doesn’t fly around a room. I suggest you explain that particular magic trick before I decide to call the law on you, buddy,” she said sternly. “And don’t you dare tell me not to swear!”
He tried to sit up, but failed. “No law. Please.”
Well, she wouldn’t call the law on him—not yet—but she didn’t want him doing that weird levitation again. “Hey, do you want a drink of water?”
“Just take care of the baby,” he said quietly. And then passed out.
“Of all the nerve!” Auburn stared at both of them, sleeping like, well, babies, and a little pity slid into her heart. The man was too big to sleep on the tiny rental furniture, and he was pretty tangled up in that duster. He couldn’t be comfortable. Carefully, she tugged his legs off the sofa so that he was on his back, hanging over one edge, sure, but at least he wasn’t in a ball any longer. “You’re weird,” she told him, but he didn’t move. So she dragged the blanket and comforter off her bed and settled down on the floor beside the sofa next to the baby. “You have a scary daddy,” she told Rose, but the funny thing was, Auburn wasn’t really afraid of Dillinger anymore.
She was afraid for him.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER THE sound of knocking startled Auburn awake. If she hadn’t been deeply asleep, she might have thought twice about opening the door, but she was operating on autopilot. She woke up in a hurry when the security guard peered at her.
“You left your car lights on,” he said. “Thought you might want to know.” His gaze widened as he caught sight of the cowboy on her sofa and the baby on the floor.
“Yes, thank you,” Auburn said, hastily trying to close the door. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
He was mentally cataloging the strange scene in her living room. This was trouble, since she didn’t want any details left behind for an ex-fiancé, who surely had people looking for her. “Thank you,” she said again, more curtly this time, and closed the door.
Locking it, she took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Wondered why simply running out on a bad idea like a wedding had to be so worrying. She should never have said yes in the first place, should never have allowed her parents to make her feel that she had to find her Prince Charming.
“What are you afraid of?” Dillinger asked, and Auburn jumped.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, grabbing her keys from her purse. “What makes you say such a silly thing?”
He sat up, shrugged. “Just seems that I’m not the only one with secrets.”
“No, but you are the only one who can make himself spin around in the air.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gazed at him. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
She circled a finger in the air. “Your levitation trick.”
He gave her a strange look, as if he figured she was crazy. “I’ve been asleep on the sofa.”
He didn’t remember. Chills ran over Auburn’s skin. Yet she hadn’t imagined it. “I’m going to go turn off my car lights. Then you and I should probably talk.”
Shrugging again, he pulled his hat low over his face. She took that as a masculine sign of agreement and left to turn off the car lights before her battery died. A dead car was the last thing she needed, because she had a prickly sensation that it was time to hit the road.
The only question left was whether she took companions with her or left them to their own confused journey.
She wasn’t sure she could do that to little Rose.
Chapter Three
Dillinger watched the woman walk out the door to go fix her automobile—or so she said. He wasn’t sure what the petite fireball was up to—maybe she thought she could make him think he was insane with that weird conversation about him flying around—but a woman like that begged for caution. Her quick, soft conversation with the man who’d come to the door worried him, and he hadn’t missed the gleam in her eyes when she glanced at Rose. If there was ever a lady looking for a baby, Auburn was it. It showed in her concern, and her careful handling and her distrust of him. He wouldn’t trust him, either, baby or not—but he could feel her longing for the infant like a man longed for peace and quiet. And she was on the run, another reason he didn’t trust her. Everybody had something to hide—he did, too—but a woman who was used to running might just decide to run with his precious bundle.
He’d looked into the eyes of thieves many a time. They carried a hungry, focused, almost desperate aura, all the while trying to fool you with their calm. He was in a strange place, with things he didn’t recognize all around him. All he knew was that he had to protect the one thing he had with him, which seemed to have brought him here, if he ever hoped to get back home again, home to his ranch and to the memories of Polly. Carefully, he wrapped up Rose’s things in a sack he found in Auburn’s kitchen, snuggled the baby in his arms and slipped out the door.
“Hey!”
He heard Auburn’s sweet-toned voice, tinged with some anxiety. She was at the elevator, not gone long enough to get to her car.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Leaving,” he said, deciding one of them had to be honest. “We’re in your way.”
“Not more than anything else,” Auburn said. “Please don’t go.”
That shocked him. He’d expected a protest from her, but not a gentle request. “We need to.”
“You don’t even know where you’re going, do you?”
He didn’t. Why admit it? “Rose and I will do fine.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, and he hardened his heart.
“You don’t really need to. We only just met you. You’re not our problem. I mean, we’re not your problem.”
She cocked her head. “You’re not a problem, really. Something’s wrong.”
The confusion in her pretty eyes was very alluring. When she wasn’t dolled up, and when she showed her soft side like this, she was quite fetching. She might not have Polly’s innocent beauty, but was enticing nonetheless. Dillinger didn’t let himself recognize the sudden stab of unwelcome attraction he felt for the woman.
“It’s better this way.” He wanted to walk past her to the elevator, to get away before Rose awakened and needed another bottle, but part of him seemed stuck to the floor.
“Hey,” Auburn said, her voice soft, “I really need you.”
His brows raised of their own accord. “Why?”
She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Protection.”
She’d already had one man visit her abode, the so-called security guard. She’d run with Dillinger from a boss named Harry. The kind of protection she needed didn’t seem to require further description. “I—No. I’m not for hire.”
She stepped closer. He could smell her fresh-washed scent, look into her pleading eyes. Automatically, he shut off the part of him that wanted to ask what protection she could possibly need.
“I need help,” she said, “and a hired gun is just what I need.”
He narrowed his gaze. “You didn’t believe me earlier when I told you who I was.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe about you.”
“The sentiment is mutual.”
“I think for Rose’s sake we should travel together.”
He shook his head. “Lady, I know you want my baby, but you’ll never get her from me.”
“I don’t want to steal Rose.”
“You want something. I can feel it.”
She slowly nodded. “Yes. I do. I want you to travel with me to the next place, and be my cover.”
“I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t want to travel again, whatever that means.” Maybe she’d done it. Maybe it was her—the woman—who had pulled him forward through time, and not the baby. He desperately hoped it wasn’t Auburn who had somehow worked a magic spell to draw him to her. He could be stuck with her!
“We’ll just head west,” she said soothingly.
He’d heard that one before. Everyone always wanted to go west, for gold, for open land, for a new start.
“What are you running from?”
“An ex-fiancé. A wealthy ex-fiancé, whom I discovered has a shady past. I’m a little afraid that he’ll find me.” She took a breath. “And I’m not ready for that.”
He held Rose’s carrier tightly in one hand, her sack of belongings in the other. Had Auburn brought him here because she wanted protection from a man? Needed a husband? All he knew was that he didn’t trust this woman and her big eyes at all. “Because?”
“He’ll be embarrassed that I stood him up. And it’s worse because my family owes their livelihood to him. I’ve always enjoyed a privileged lifestyle, but I thought my parents earned their wealth on their own. The week before the wedding, I learned that they had done deals over time with my fiancé. I began to feel uncomfortably like the fatted calf. Which sounds horrible because my family loves me. But I wanted to make it on my own in the world, not belong to someone. Does that sound crazy?”
He didn’t know. Women made agreements to marry for a dozen reasons, most of them complicated, some ridiculous, but they seemed to make sense to the female mind. It was a complex issue. Polly had married him, she always said, because she couldn’t love a man who couldn’t manage her high spirits and her energy. But he hadn’t managed Polly; she’d managed him. He’d enjoyed the light of her spirit, letting it flow over him. She could have married a lot better than a gunslinger, even though he’d changed everything about himself to win Polly. Her family had never forgiven him his past, though they loved her dearly. Shame had been written all over their faces anytime they saw him. They couldn’t believe he had won their daughter’s heart.
He couldn’t believe he had, either.
But right now, this woman was standing in his way. She claimed to need him, and truthfully, he could use her, too, but only if she wasn’t planning to make off with his baby. She struck him as the type who didn’t make easy attachments, though he wasn’t sure why he felt that way. It was just a feeling he had, and he always went with his hunches. “Listen, I like traveling alone.”
She perked up. “So do I! It’s really more economical, isn’t it? You don’t have to share anything, you can go where you want to….” Her face fell. “On the other hand, it can be lonely.”
“I’m never lonely,” he fibbed. He’d been lonely on the ranch after Polly died, desperately so.
“Well, you’re brave.” She shrugged. “You and Rose can take the backseat, if you must feel alone. I’ll be in the front, and we can ignore each other.”
He didn’t think he could totally ignore her, any more than he could ignore a wasp stinging his buttocks. “How far west are you going?”
“I was thinking New Mexico,” she said, her tone breezy. “But you can choose, if you like.”
“I don’t really care,” he said with a growl, stopping himself from saying, but if you try to take my baby, I’ll find you. “One condition,” he said.
“What?”
He took a long, hard look at her, trying to see inside her soul. He had pretty good success with reading people; if you didn’t have that sixth sense, you could wind up dead. “No more mothering this baby.”
She drew herself up, clearly hurt. “Fine, cowboy. You can take care of that child all by your little old self.”
“Good.”
“Fine.” She swept past him on the stairwell. “Let me grab my things. I don’t have much, and I’m paid up through the month here.”
Now was his moment to take off, get away from her and her spell. But she piqued his curiosity in the worst way. What if she was somehow instrumental to his existence in this century? He had to find the key to getting himself sent back. “How do you pay by the month at a place like this?”
“By understanding the travel industry. Anyway, you let me handle the arrangements, cowboy. You mind the angel.”
Fine. He didn’t really want to know any more about her than he had to, anyway.
Only her traveling secret, and she’d just now given herself away. Auburn understood the travel industry, both in this dimension and some others.
He felt pretty smart at figuring her out so easily.
MEN COULD BE IDIOTS. Auburn tried not to swear under her breath as she tossed her Louis Vuitton luggage into the trunk of her car, annoyed that Dillinger had tried to leave her high and dry. Steal his baby? Hah! She wasn’t completely certain that was Dillinger’s child, but he’d turned bearlike, protective of his cub.
She wouldn’t touch his silly old baby, if he was going to be such an ass about it. “Get in the back,” she told him crossly, “and strap that carrier in correctly, please.”
She sounded bossy and she knew it, but he complied, fumbling a bit with the straps before correctly tightening the baby backward in the seat. Auburn smiled a little at Rose, stiffening when she caught Dillinger looking at her. “You’re getting better at that,” she said airily.
“Like you’re an expert at it, yourself.”
Turning on the car engine, she said, “I was trying to give you a compliment. Obviously, you’re the kind of man whose ego won’t let you accept one gracefully.”
“Probably.” The rearview mirror showed him gazing with interest at the buildings downtown as they passed, not paying a whole lot of attention to her as she drove from the city. Auburn picked the highway marked West and pressed the pedal as hard as the speed limit would allow.
THIS WAS LIKE A magic carpet ride, or a train that could go full-speed across the country. Dillinger was fascinated by the way Auburn flew past the cars and signs on the highway. It was amazing! There were things overhead she called airplanes—he didn’t let on that he had barely heard of flying machines—and so much to see that his head was whirling. She was the reason he was here, he was positive.
He had to convince her to send him and Rose back. They were not suited for living like this. First, he had to return Rose to her rightful mother, even if it meant helping them financially. He felt certain no mother would abandon a baby on his porch unless the woman was destitute.
The only thing he couldn’t understand was why the mother had chosen his porch. He was miles from town. He had a bad reputation. He didn’t darken the doorway of a church. And this was no frontier baby. Her clothes were store-bought. Her socks were knit of the finest lace and cotton, not rough country socks made for warmth and work, like his. Rose should be placed with a family of wealth, not stay with him, if he couldn’t manage to find her birth mother. He knew it was imperative that he get the baby home as fast as possible.
What if he could talk Auburn into taking him and Rose back home to the ranch, and going with them? She said she needed to hide away. She’d be safe at his ranch. No one would ever find her there.
But did he want the opinionated woman in his home, where Polly had brought him such warmth and contentment?
For Rose’s sake, he could do it.
He’d opened his mouth to broach the question, when suddenly he felt himself being jerked against the seat belt.
PIERRE TOSSED THE EARRING across the room. He’d fallen asleep in a chair in Dillinger’s den, and had awakened annoyed that the man hadn’t yet returned. The snow outside was piling up, making a mess of the dirt road. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get snowed in and trapped here for God only knew how long. Anger built inside him. He felt outsmarted by the gunslinger, and he hated it. Maybe the man had planned to be gone for weeks, months.
Pierre felt bad for throwing his sister’s earring. He picked up the delicate bauble again, giving it one last shake. His heart heavy, he vowed to return next week, when Dillinger might be home and the snow and ice not threatening to encase the house in a chilly tomb. Why the man chose to live out here when he could have lived in town was puzzling, but he’d had Polly all to himself this way. A beautiful flower like his sister hadn’t deserved to wilt out here in the uncivilized wilderness.
Pierre put the earring back on the writing desk, staring at it for a long time, tempted to take the trinket with him. Maybe the charcoal drawing of his sister would ease the ache in his heart more. But no, it didn’t truly capture the fire Polly had possessed.
He left everything just as it had been, so the gunslinger would never suspect someone had been waiting here, planning to kill him.
Chapter Four
Dillinger tried not to gasp as his body strained against the seat belt. It was as if he were being jerked by a strong, invisible hand trying to tear him from the car. Only the straps kept him restrained.
“Is something wrong?” Auburn asked, staring at him in the rearview mirror.
“No,” he said, grinding out the word.
She checked the road, then glanced back to his reflection. “Are you sure? You don’t look good.”
He unhooked the belt, relieved when the pressure subsided.
“You have to wear that,” Auburn said. “It’s against the law not to wear a seat belt.”
He grimaced at the pain in his stomach and across his chest. “Do you think that’s a strange thing to tell a gunslinger?” He checked the belt again. This time it was acting as it should. Maybe the thing had malfunctioned. Maybe there hadn’t been anything supernatural trying to drag him from this car.
“You know, about that gunslinger business, maybe we should figure out some other livelihood for you, when people ask what you do,” Auburn said, her voice bright.
“Why? Who’s going to care?”
She shook her head. “No one, most likely. But if anyone asks, why don’t you tell them you work for…I don’t know.” Her gaze lit on him in the mirror again. “You can say you’re an unemployed model.”
He laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, just say you’re a ranch owner.”
“I am.”
“You are?”
She sounded so shocked that he frowned. “I told you. I own a ranch outside of Christmas River.”
“But I looked that up. There’s no such town.”
“Care to place a wager on that?”
“No.”
She could be quite the shrew. He tried to relax in the magic vehicle, which had a material top that she said pulled back to let in sunshine and fresh air and the feeling of freedom.
“You felt it, didn’t you?”
She’d caught him off guard. “Felt what?”
Auburn moved one finger in the air in a slow circle. “If you hadn’t been wearing that seat belt, you would have gone airborne again.”
Polly wouldn’t have hounded him so. This woman had no qualms about doing it. “The contraption simply malfunctioned.”
“You felt it, and now you know I was telling you the truth.”
He didn’t care. He was so sleepy all he could do was send a fast glance at Rose to make certain she was still happy and nestled in her carrier. Fear suddenly hit his gut. “Do me a favor,” he said, fighting to keep his eyelids open. “If something happens to me, take care of Rose.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Auburn said, trying to sound soothing. “You just have a bad habit of levitating.”
“Promise,” he insisted.
“I’m not really cut out for taking care of a baby. I’ve got problems of my own.”
He couldn’t argue with her any longer. Unconsciousness pulled at him, forbidding him to stay awake, as much as he would have enjoyed telling her that he’d never seen a woman so cut out to be a mother.
Except maybe Polly.
And that worried him, too. He fell asleep, his soul tortured by thoughts of what might have been and what should have been.
WHAT WOULD IT HURT to swing by this place he called Christmas River? Maybe the answers to his problem were there. Auburn punched “Christmas” into her GPS system. They weren’t far from a town called Christy River—maybe he was confused from all the whirling around he engaged in. It was just a fast detour from where they planned to go, but they certainly had no schedule and nowhere definitive to be. Going to such a remote place might even help her put some distance between her and her fiancé. The cowboy wouldn’t awaken, not for a while, so she couldn’t ask him, but she had a feeling he’d be happy to get home.
She knew something was wrong with him, knew he knew it, too. He didn’t want to admit his fear, but for a man who claimed to routinely face down killers, what was bugging him now appeared to be bigger than anything he’d dealt with before.
He’d asked her about taking care of Rose, and for the first time, concern swept through Auburn. She couldn’t take on a baby if something happened to the hunky cowboy. Her eyes went to him in the mirror. He slept with his head tipped back against the seat, an ungraceful position, which had no bearing whatsoever on his sex appeal. She liked her men tall, dark and handsome, with a dash of mystery thrown in, so Dillinger was everything she would never have been able to resist in a man.
And yet she would have forced herself to, which was why she’d chosen the supersafe Bradley Jackson for her fiancé, a dreadful mistake that hadn’t been safe at all. Her parents owned the popular McGinnis Perfumes. She’d proudly worked as a vice president at the company. Bradley had been the CFO.
But three weeks before the wedding matters had gone terribly wrong, and she’d learned things about the company—and specifically her own family—that she’d never known.
It still hurt to think about it. Her parents said Bradley basically owned the company now. They’d hit a snag during hard times and Bradley had financed their debt through his own company. The wonderful perfumes Auburn remembered her grandmother carefully fashioning to enrich a woman’s life were phased out, replaced with cheaply made imitations. Every bottle sold generated huge profit. In this way, Bradley was receiving revenue from the loan, which her parents had never had to pay back.
The debt would have all been swept clean with her marriage to Bradley. She still smarted under the realization that the man she’d loved—and believed loved her—had actually owned her and her family lock, stock and barrel. No woman wanted to feel like that.
“You’re deep in thought,” Dillinger said, startling her.
“You’re awake.”
He grunted.
“Do you feel better?”
“I didn’t feel bad.” He glanced down at the baby. “She sure does sleep peacefully when she sleeps.”
The infant probably derived comfort from Dillinger’s deep voice. Auburn turned her gaze back to the road, vowing not to allow the rearview mirror to continue to lure her to stare at the hunk in her backseat.
“What does it feel like?” Auburn asked.
“I’d like to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about, but since I’m completely at a loss as to what’s happening to me, I guess I’ll just say it feels strange.”
“Like you’re having a hypoglycemic attack?”
“What’s that?”
“Low blood sugar.”
“I don’t know what that is. Sorry, my medical knowledge ends around 1892.”
She couldn’t help it; she stared at him in the mirror. “Part of me believes that you really think you’re from another place and time.”
He just shook his head, and she went back to driving. “Listen, maybe you should see a doctor,” she suggested worriedly.
“You mean you think I’m dangerous. That my mind is addled.”
She refused to meet his gaze; she could feel him looking at her in the mirror. “I don’t know what to think.”
He sighed. “Where are we going?”
“To Christy River.”
“I’m from Christmas River.”
“Can’t it be the same thing? Maybe the Google map has a misprint. It does that sometimes.”
“Google map?”
“Never mind.” She pulled into a Sonic drive-through, ordered a couple of burgers, and by the time they were finished—the cowboy wolfed his—Rose was awake and ready for her bottle. Together they managed the whole burp, diaper, comfort routine. Chilly as it was outside, Rose didn’t mind being put back into her snug carrier for another nap.
“She’s tired from traveling,” Dillinger observed.
“Oh, traveling does that to everyone.” Auburn got into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“I meant, traveling through time.”
She frowned. “Listen, let’s play a little game, okay?”
“I don’t really like games.”
“Who was the most famous person of 1892?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Lord Tennyson died in October. I like his poems. Some of them had to do with the Knights of the Round Table. My wife enjoyed reading to me.”
“Can you read?”
“Of course I can read!” He scowled at her. “It’s a pleasure to have one’s wife read aloud at fireside!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jeez, he could be sensitive about certain things. Auburn didn’t know if Tennyson had died in 1892 or not, but Dillinger sounded pretty knowledgeable so she let it pass. “Who was the president?”
“Grover Cleveland was just reelected. Third term, though not consecutively. He came back to beat President Benjamin Harrison. Other than that, I didn’t pay too much attention. We tend to set our own rules out West. Not sure what he knows about ranching, so I let him run the country and I run my ranch.”
He could have studied 1892 and become well versed in the history. But why did he keep levitating?
What if he really was from another time? Auburn pulled out of the Sonic parking lot. She’d be a fool if she started believing this man’s wild story, she told herself. She’d just discovered how painful it was when someone you trusted lied to you, and she had her guard up. Planned on keeping it up.
“So what really happened to your wife?”
Dillinger’s heart clenched with familiar pain at the topic. He didn’t want to talk about it. Still, he sensed genuine curiosity not borne from meanness in Auburn’s question. “She died of pneumonia. I couldn’t get the doctor out to our ranch fast enough. Don’t know what he could have done, anyway. All those tinctures they give seem pretty useless to me. It started out as a cold, though I kept the house warm as toast. I never left her side.” He shuddered, remembering the fever that had swept through Polly. He’d kept her wrapped, made sure not a draft entered the house. Tried to feed her soup he made himself.
Nothing had helped.
“I’m so sorry,” Auburn said. “I can tell you miss her.”
“I don’t miss her so much that I’m unhinged, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t think that at all!”
“Sure you did,” Dillinger said.
Auburn’s eyes met his in the mirror, but he looked away before he could see the pity there. “She was an angel,” he said, “and now she’s with the angels. I really couldn’t have kept her long. I realize that now.”
“But now you have Rose,” Auburn said.
“But for how long?” Dillinger asked, gently touching the soft, fine hairs on the baby’s head. He was getting awfully attached to a child that wasn’t his. He didn’t even know why her mother had left her with him. No doubt the people of Christmas River would say he’d stolen her, the same way they’d accused him of murdering Polly.
“I hope she’ll stay with me,” he said quietly. “She’s all I’ve got right now.”
“Where would she go?” Auburn asked. “It’s not like she can walk away.”
Dillinger shook his head. Auburn couldn’t possibly understand the demons that drove him, and why this little angel was his only connection to the world he knew.
Chapter Five
They got out of the car in Christy River just a few hours later. Dillinger shook his head. “This isn’t it.”
Auburn was disappointed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Even if everything wasn’t much more modern, changed over and new, he would recognize his hometown. “The topography isn’t even the same.”
She held Rose tucked to her chest, surveying the road where they’d stopped. He liked watching her care for the baby, but he couldn’t get over the astonishing sight of hundreds of cars flying along the highway. “We rode horses over land like this,” he murmured.
She smiled at him. “You’re an old-fashioned guy.”
“I think I’m fairly progressive.”
“What made you become a gunslinger?” she asked softly, and he forced himself to consider the question and give her an honest answer, even if he really didn’t want to talk about a way of life he’d given up for Polly.
“I met one man who didn’t believe in peaceful solutions,” he said. “After that, it seemed I was offered plenty of jobs the law couldn’t handle—or didn’t want to handle—on their own. And the pay was good.” He shrugged. “Let’s get one of those burger things, on my nickel. Being a new father is making me hungry. I want to eat like Rose does, every three hours.”
“We can grab something at that McDonald’s,” Auburn suggested, getting in the car. “It’s pretty non-nutritious food, but I do love their French fries.”
He got in the car, made sure Rose was secure in her seat.
“Would you ever tell me about how you did your job?” Auburn asked as their eyes met over Rose’s carrier.
“No,” he said quietly. “Some stories aren’t good in the retelling.”
She didn’t believe he was from 1892. How could she understand anything about his life? Dillinger let Rose grab his finger, smiling when she held on to it with determination. “She’s a tough little girl,” he said. “A survivor.”
Auburn started the car and pulled into traffic. He was surprised by how comfortable he was, letting her drive him around. Where he was from, the man usually handled the team of horses, drove the buckboard. He couldn’t remember Polly driving anything, although she’d been an excellent horsewoman. Polly had been more delicate than Auburn. It was strange how Auburn had changed since she’d left her employment at the theater; she was softer, more feminine. He wondered about her family, why they didn’t seem concerned about her being off on her own.
A sudden shrill ringing startled him and Rose.
“Sorry,” Auburn said, “I have to take this. It’s my sister, Cherie.”
He watched, astonished, as she pulled a small black box from her purse and began talking into it. She listened, laughed, then talked some more. It was amazing. Everything one wanted to say could be done instantly, not in a letter or handwritten message.
She put the object away. “She’s telling everyone I’ve gone to Florida to think things over.”
“Can I look at that thing?”
“This? It’s an iPhone,” she said, handing it to him. “Don’t you have a cell phone?”
“No.” He stared at it, amazed by all the strange markings. “And you can talk to someone on this.”
“Anywhere in the world.”
He blinked. “Anywhere?”
“Yes.”
He handed it back to her. “How do you know how to reach someone?”
“Usually you know their number and have it in your phone list. If not, you can look it up in a phone book or on the Internet. There are maps of everything, anything you want to know at all, right here.”
He considered that. “So, if there was such a thing as Christmas River, that phone would show it.”
“Right. And there’s nothing listed. I checked.”
So the town name had changed. He was going to have to find out what the new name was, or be forever lost. “I have to know what happened to my town,” he told her.
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