“Stop saying that!” Both of Jesse’s hands went to grasp his hair now.
“What? Skank?” Maybe I was being a little harsh. “Well, okay. But the girl seems like major bad news.”
“No.” Jesse turned around to stare down at me, and I was surprised at the intensity with which his gaze burned into mine. “Your time. The future. You… you… I’m sorry, Miss Susannah. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to get the sheriff after all. Because you are very clearly not right in the head.”
“Miss Susannah!” To my utter horror, tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. But I couldn’t help it. It was just so… so…
Unfair.
“So it’s Miss Susannah, is it?” I asked him, ignoring my tears. “Oh, that’s just great. I come all the way back here, risking major brain cell burnout, and you don’t even believe me? I’m basically guaranteeing myself a lifetime of heartbreak, and all you have to say is that you think I’m not right in the head? Thanks a lot, Jesse. No, really. That’s just fine.”
I broke off with a sob. Suddenly, it was all too much. I couldn’t even look at him, because every time I did, he dazzled my eyes, like he was the most glorious Christmas tree that had ever existed. I buried my face in my hands and wept.
Maybe I had done enough, I told myself. Maybe tipping him off about Maria and Diego’s plan would make him turn around tonight and go home. Even though the tip had come from what he obviously considered an unreliable source. I couldn’t do anything more, could I? I mean, how else could I get him to believe me?
Then I remembered.
I dropped my hands from my face and looked up at him, not caring if he saw my tears.
“Doctor,” I said.
“Yes.” Jesse had fished a handkerchief from somewhere and handed it to me, his anger apparently dissipated. “Let me get one for you. I really feel that, despite what you say, Miss Susannah, you are unwell—”
“No.” I pushed the handkerchief away impatiently. “Not for me. You.”
A small smile appeared at the corners of his lips. “I need a doctor? I assure you, Miss Susannah, I have never felt fitter in my life.”
“No.” I stumbled to my feet. It was the first time I’d tried to stand since he’d untied me, and I wasn’t exactly steady.
Still, I managed to get up without his help. Now I stood in front of him, breathing hard—but from emotion not exertion.
“A doctor,” I said, looking up into his confident, concerned face. He was a good six inches taller than me, but I didn’t care. I kept my chin up.
“You secretly want to be a doctor,” I said. “You haven’t asked him, but you know your father won’t let you. He needs you to run the ranch, because you’re the only boy. They couldn’t spare you long enough for you to get through medical school, anyway.”
Something happened to Jesse’s face then. The glint of suspicion that I’d seen in his eye since I’d shown him the miniature portrait dropped away, and in its place came something else….
Something like wonder.
“How… ?” Jesse stared down at me in utter incredulity. “How could you possibly have… ? I have never told anyone that.”
I reached out and took one of his hands… …and was shocked by how warm it felt in mine. All those times Jesse had held me… all those times he’d stroked my hair and I’d marveled at his heat… I knew now it hadn’t been real, that heat. It had all been in my head. This, this heat was real. This hand was real. The hard calluses I knew so well… they were real. Really Jesse.
“You told me,” I said to him. “You told me in the future.”
Jesse shook his head, but not hard. Just a little.
“That… that’s not possible,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is. You see, what happens tonight is that Diego kills you. But only your body dies, Jesse. Your soul doesn’t go anywhere, because… well, because I think it wasn’t supposed to happen like that.” I gazed up at him tenderly, still holding his hand. “I think you were supposed to live. But you didn’t. So your soul hung around until I came along, about a hundred and fifty years later. I’m someone who helps… well, people who’ve died. You told me you wanted to be a doctor, Jesse. You told me in the future. Do you believe me now? Will you please go away from here and never come back?”
Jesse looked down at our entwined fingers, mine so pale against his sun-darkened skin, so soft against his calluses. He didn’t say anything. What could he have said, really?
But because he was Jesse, he thought of something to say… the exact right thing to say.
“If you know something like that about me,” he said softly, “about my wanting to be a doctor—something I have never told Maria—or any living person—then I must… I suppose I must… believe you.”
“So,” I said. “Now you know. You’ve got to get out of here, Jesse. Just get on your horse and ride.”
“I will,” he said.
We were standing so close, all he’d have had to do was reach out, and he could have cupped my face in his hand.
He didn’t, of course.
But I could feel the warmth radiating from him, not just from the hand I held, but along the course of his entire body. He was so vibrant, so alive, that he made me feel aware of every hair on my head, every corpuscle in my skin. I loved him so much…
…and he’d never, ever know it.
But that was all right. Because at least he’d be able to go on living.
“But not,” Jesse said, suddenly dropping my hand and turning away, “tonight.”
I stood there, feeling as if I’d been kicked. Cool air rushed into all the places that, moments before, had been warmed by his body heat.
“W-what?” I stammered stupidly. “Not what?”
“Not tonight,” Jesse said with a nod toward the barn doors, through which, I could see, the lengthening shadows were gone. The sun had set. There were no shadows anymore. “Tomorrow I will ride to the de Silvas’ ranch to speak with Maria and her father. But not tonight. It’s growing late. Too late to travel. I’ll stay here tonight, and leave in the morning.”
“But you can’t!” The words were wrenched from the depths of my soul. “You’ve got to leave now, Jesse, tonight! You don’t understand, it’s too dangerous—”
An all-too-familiar smile crept across those lips I knew so well. “I can take care of myself, Miss Susannah,” he said. “I am not afraid of Felix Diego.”
I couldn’t believe what was happening right before my eyes.
“Well, you should be!” I practically screamed. “Considering that he kills you!”
“Ah,” Jesse said. “But if I understand you correctly, that was before you came to warn me… for which I thank you.”
I couldn’t believe how badly this was going.
“Jesse,” I said, making one last desperate attempt to reason with him. “You can’t spend the night in that house. Do you understand? It’s way, way too dangerous.”
But Jesse surprised me. Well, why not? He always had.
“I understand,” he said.
“You do?” I stared at him. “Really? Then you’ll go?”
“No,” he said, “I won’t go.”
“But—”
“I will stay here,” he said, nodding to indicate the loft. “With you. Until morning.”
I gaped at him.
“Here?” I echoed. “Here… in the barn?”
“With you,” Jesse said.
“With me?”
“Yes,” he said.
It took me until that moment to realize what he was doing. Here I was, traveling back 150 years to protect him—well, now that’s what I was doing, anyway—and he was trying to protect me.
That was just so pure Jesse that I almost started to cry. Really.
But only almost.
Because his next question distracted me. “I have to ask, though…. Why?” His dark-eyed gaze raked my face.
“Why what?” I murmured, hypnotized as ever by his gaze on
mine.
“Why did you do this—come all this way—to warn me about Diego?”
Because I love you.
Four simple words. Four simple words that there was no way I could say. Not to this Jesse, who was virtually a stranger to me. He already thought I was nuts. I didn’t want to make things even worse.
“Because it isn’t right, what happened to you. That’s all.”
That’s what I started to say, anyway, when a man’s voice called, “Señor de Silva?”
And let’s just say that it wasn’t Mr. O’Neil.
Chapter
seventeen
I felt the blood in my veins run cold.
I knew that voice. Knew it only too well. The man who owned it had tried to kill me once.
“It’s him,” I whispered. Unnecessarily, of course, since Jesse obviously knew perfectly well who it was.
Jesse stood up and moved from the shadows that had cloaked his face. He wore an expression, I was relieved to see, of intense distrust. He was starting to believe me now.
“Who’s there?” he called, lifting the lantern and turning a knob that brought what had been a tiny flame to a more powerful one.
The man below said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand. Except for the last two words. And they were easy enough for even me to decipher.
Felix Diego.
This is it, I thought. There was no going back now.
Jesse said something in Spanish to Diego, who replied in tones that, though I could not understand the words he spoke, sounded too silky-smooth to be trustworthy. He appeared to be inviting Jesse to do something.
And Jesse, for his part, was clearly declining.
“Well?” I whispered anxiously when the conversation ended and I heard Diego finally leave.
Jesse held up a hand, though, clearly not as convinced as I was that the man was well and truly gone.
Then, as the evening turned irrevocably to night and I could no longer see beyond the golden rays shooting out from the lamp Jesse held, he said, “It was Felix Diego. He said his master—Maria’s father—had sent him to see that I had everything I needed to be comfortable and to escort me on the remainder of my journey tomorrow.”
“Has Maria’s father ever done that when you’ve come to visit before?” I asked.
“No” was Jesse’s terse reply to that question.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I was fine,” Jesse said. He was answering my questions, but it was clear from the expression on his face that his mind was a thousand miles away. He was putting the extraordinary tales I’d been telling him together with what had just happened, and not liking what he was coming up with.
“I told him I’d be here all night,” he went on. “Because my horse was sick. He said my horse looked fine to him and suggested I join him outside for a bottle—”
I sucked in my breath. “You didn’t say yes, did you?”
“Of course not.” For the first time, Jesse seemed really to see me as he looked at me. “I think you’re right. I think he does mean to kill me.”
I didn’t reply with a hearty Told you so, because what would have been the point? Besides, Jesse looked upset enough. Not upset really—stunned. And something else, too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on….
At least, not until a second later, when I heard footsteps scrape for a second time on the ladder to the loft. Thinking it was Diego returning, I started toward the ladder, ready to fling the guy’s soul back to kingdom come….
But Jesse stepped in front of me, throwing out an arm to stop me from coming any closer.
And I realized what that “something” was that I’d seen in his eye.
But it turned out the person climbing toward us wasn’t Felix Diego after all.
“Oh, great,” Paul said, when he finally pulled himself up to the top of the ladder and saw us. “Oh, this is just great. What’s he doing here?” Paul was glaring at Jesse, who glared right back.
“He just found me, Paul,” I said. I didn’t mention the part where I’d sort of made him find me.
Paul just glared at Jesse some more. If he noticed how different Jesse looked alive than he did dead, he didn’t exactly mention it.
Jesse, for his part, simply nodded to Paul and asked me, “Is this him? The man who tied you up?”
I should have said no, of course. I should have seen what was coming.
But I didn’t think. I just went, “Yeah, that’s him.”
It wasn’t until I saw Jesse’s hands clench into fists that I realized what I’d done. “No, wait!” I started to cry.
But it was too late. Jesse had launched himself at Paul like a linebacker, tackling him to the floor of the hayloft, and causing an enormous crash that sent the horses below whinnying and thumping around in their stalls.
“Stop it!” I cried, darting forward and trying separate them.
But it was like trying to pull apart a couple of mountains. Paul, at least, wasn’t as into the fight as Jesse was, since I could hear him crying, “Get him off me! Suze, get him off—”
On the word off, Jesse let go of his own accord and backed away, breathing hard. His shirt had gotten unbuttoned a little in the melee, and I caught a glimpse of his strong hard abs. It was impossible, even given the gravity of the situation, not to appreciate the sight.
“What the—” Paul scrambled up from the hay, brushing bits of it off him. “God, Suze. What did you tell him about me? Doesn’t he know I’m the good guy here? You’re the one who was going to let him get—”
“He knows,” I interrupted, quickly.
Paul quit brushing himself and sent me a quizzical look. “He knows?” he echoed. “As in… knows knows?”
“He knows,” I repeated grimly.
“Well,” Paul said, looking intrigued. “What brought about that little change of heart? I thought—”
“That was before,” I said quickly.
“Before what?” Paul found a piece of straw in his hair and pulled it out.
“Before I saw him,” I said softly, not looking at either of them.
Paul didn’t say anything—which for him was unusual. Jesse, of course, didn’t know what we were talking about. He was still mad at Paul for tying me up.
“I don’t know if it’s considered normal in the time you come from to leave women bound and gagged,” Jesse said severely. “But in this day and age, allow me to assure you that such behavior would generally land a gentleman in jail.”
Jesse said the word gentleman like it was the last thing he actually thought Paul was.
Paul just looked at him. “You know,” he said. “I think I like your ghost better.”
I felt it wise to change the subject. “He’s here,” I said to Paul. “Felix Diego, I mean.”
“I know,” Paul said. “I followed him back here.”
“I thought you were going to get rid of him!”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t just walk up to him and suck out his soul in front of everyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because I would’ve gotten shot, that’s why not.”
“But you could just have shifted back to the future—”
“Uh, and left you tied up in Mrs. O’Neil’s hayloft? I don’t think so. I’d have had to come back and rescue you.” His gaze shifted toward Jesse’s. “I didn’t know, of course, that Prince Charming here had come along and done it for me.”
“So what are we going to do?” I asked. Paul looked at Jesse.
“Well,” he said. “What does Wonderboy want to do?”
“Wonderboy?” Jesse glared menacingly in Paul’s direction. “Is this person a friend of mine in the future?” he asked me.
“No,” I said to Jesse. To Paul I said, “I tried to get him to leave, but he won’t go.”
Paul looked at Jesse. “Buddy,” he said. “I’m not telling you this because I like you. Believe me. But if you stay here, you’re gonna get iced. Simple as that. That Di
ego guy? He means business.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Jesse said as if we were morons for not believing him.
“See what I mean?” I said, to Paul.
“Great.” Paul sat down on a hay bale, looking pained. “This is just great. So when Diego comes to kill him, he can take a crack at you and me, too.”
I opened my mouth to insist this wouldn’t happen, but Jesse interrupted.
“If you think I would leave you alone with her again,” he said, his gaze never wavering from Paul’s face, “you don’t know me at all in this future you speak of.”
“Don’t worry,” Paul said, holding up a hand wearily. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from you, Jesse. Well, that’s it then.” Paul leaned back in the hay, making himself more comfortable. “We wait. And if he comes back, thinking you’ve fallen asleep and he can do the job out here, we take him.”
“No.” Jesse’s jaw was set. He didn’t raise his voice. Not at all. His tone was hard as steel, however. “I will take him.”
“Uh, no offense,” Paul said, “but Suze and I, we came here especially just to—”
“I said I’ll do it,” Jesse said in that same ice-cold voice— the one I had come to recognize as the voice Jesse used only when he was truly angry about something. “I’m the one he’s come to kill. I am the one who will stop him.”
Paul and I exchanged glances. Then Paul sighed, lifted the horse blanket, and stretched out across the hay in a dark corner of the loft.
“Fine,” he said. “Wake me when it’s time to shift home.”
And to my utter disbelief, he closed his eyes and seemed to doze off.
I glanced at Jesse and saw that he was eyeing Paul with distaste. When he noticed the direction of my gaze, he asked, his tone less hard than before, “You two are friends in the place you come from?”