Desperado

  “Well? Aren’t you going to take it? It’s a gift for you.”

  “What?” he blinked, feeling like a blundering idiot.

  She held her open palm out in front of him, offering him his gold crucifix and chain. His heart stopped, then started beating so fast he thought it might explode. Chug chug chug chug . . . He was pretty sure tears were welling in his eyes.

  As if understanding, Helen pulled his hand forward, opened the tight fist, and placed her “gift” in his hand.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. Then, “Why?”

  She shrugged and went to the other side of the room, packing their few extra garments into her backpack. “I could tell how much it meant to you, and you were willing to give it up for us. It was the least I could do.”

  He forced the lump back in his throat as he put the chain around his neck. Other than his mother, no one had ever done such an unselfish thing for him. If he’d had trouble getting Helen out of his system in the past, how would he ever forget her now? Even if he survived this time-travel fiasco, he would never be the same. Never.

  “Did you take some gold to pay for it?” he asked finally.

  She nodded, her back turned to him.

  “How much did she charge?” Rafe hoped it wasn’t too much. They were going to need a hell of a lot of gold to outfit themselves for the mining camps.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Helen?”

  “Well, actually,” she said, turning slowly, her face pink with a becoming blush, “Lily wouldn’t take any gold.”

  He tilted his head in question. “She didn’t charge you?”

  “Oh, she charged me all right.”

  Rafe noticed her arms folded over her chest then, and suddenly he understood. With a hoot of laughter, he guessed, “Your bra, right?”

  “Yes. Can you believe it? Apparently word spread about your card game last night. And my bra was a hot commodity. Also . . . Oh, never mind.”

  “What?” he prodded.

  Her face grew pinker and she fidgeted uncomfortably.

  “Spill it,” he demanded.

  “I sold her my panties for an extra fifty dollars,” she admitted. “And I don’t want to hear one single snicker, do you hear?”

  He gaped at her. Then a horrifying thought occurred to him. How in God’s name was he going to travel with her for days, maybe weeks, knowing she was wearing no underwear? With the memory of her scorching kisses still branded on his lips? With the picture of her naked body impressed forever in his libido? With three lousy condoms in his wallet?

  Maybe he had died and gone to hell, after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Let’s make a deal . . .

  After leaving the hotel, they argued back and forth about their next course of action. Rafe decided that arguing was the second best thing he and Helen did together.

  “Of course, we’re going back to the landing site,” she declared.

  “Over my dead body,” he asserted, repeating his intention to join the Gold Rush.

  The only thing they agreed upon was the need to leave Sacramento as soon as possible.

  “I thought you’d accepted the fact that we’re headed north to the mining camps,” he finally snapped. “Besides, there’s a reason why we have to head north, if you’d only listen for a min—”

  “What would make you think that I’d agreed to go north?” Then she gasped as something suddenly seemed to occur to her. The color drained from her face, and her fingertips fluttered to her mouth reflexively in dismay. “Oh, no! How could you?”

  He frowned with confusion, especially when Helen backed away from him.

  “That’s what last night was all about, wasn’t it?” she accused in a wounded shriek. “You seduced me deliberately. Manipulated me.”

  “Huh?”

  “You are the same old Rafe. No ethics. Any end justifies the means.”

  At first, he didn’t understand. When he did, he lifted his chin angrily. What a low opinion she had of him!

  “And I was so easy. Lord, you must have been laughing inside. Prissy Helen. She’s so hard up. Give her a quick tickle and she’ll follow like a sheep.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Was she really that dense? Even a blind person could see how much he wanted her. But he’d be damned if he’d explain himself to her. And tickle? Hah! He’d like to show her a tickle. Forcing himself to remain calm, he commented, “Frankly, your nagging is beginning to sound exactly like the bleating of a sheep.” Then, he walked stiffly away.

  She rushed to catch up. “Don’t walk away from me, you jerk. I’m talking to you.”

  Stopping abruptly, he faced her. “No, Helen, you’re not talking. You’re lecturing. Well, I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with your stupid assumptions and low opinions of me. Find someone else to be your whipping boy.” He pointed to the dozen miners who followed her like horny hound dogs after a bitch in heat. It was barely seven A.M., and already she had an entourage.

  “Is she yer intended?” one man asked Rafe.

  “Oh, yeah, I intend—”

  “Shut up, Rafe,” she snarled.

  “Hey, lady, I’ll give ya a hundred dollars if you’ll let me sniff yer skin,” another guy yelled.

  Helen gave the poor dimwit a look that would blister paint, and he shuffled off with his tail between his legs. Rafe laughed and strode away from her, too.

  She followed him to where he stood in front of the newspaper office of the Sacramento Transcript. Her fan club skidded to a halt behind her. Really, this ménage à mob was becoming a bore.

  Rafe turned on the salivating miners and drew one of his pistols from its holster. “Get lost, guys. You’re annoying my wife.” He shot a bullet in the air for emphasis.

  The miners jumped with surprise.

  “Is the lass really yer wife?” one red-haired man with a heavy Irish brogue asked, completely unfazed by the gunshot.

  “Yes, I’m his wife. So, go away.”

  That got Rafe’s attention—Helen agreeing to be his wife. He wondered if her eyes were rolling with horror at such an admission, and couldn’t resist checking.

  Nope, her eyes stared straight ahead, murderously. And he was the target.

  “Are you still here? I thought you’d left town already. Hiked on back to the landing site and Colonel Sanders.”

  “Stop being sarcastic.”

  “Stop talking. I’m in a bad mood, and you’re giving me a headache.”

  “Ooooh, I’d like to . . . to . . . to . . .”

  “Lost for words, Prissy?”

  She gritted out, “You’re not going to abandon me, Rafe.”

  Her voice droned on shrewishly, but Rafe tuned her out.

  “. . . and I know what you’re up to here.” She was still babbling on . . . blah, blah, blah . . . unaware that he wasn’t listening. “You figure if you start an argument with me, that gives you an excuse to just walk off with no regrets.”

  “Listen to yourself sometime, Helen. First, you claim I seduced you so you’d follow me. Now you say I’m deliberately trying to get rid of you. Make up your mind.”

  “Well . . . well, you’re not leaving me here alone, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Alone?” he scoffed. “Look around you. There’s about a hundred men willing to take my place. And every one of them would like to get in a good ‘tickle.’”

  “Stop being an ass.”

  “Stop being a shrew.”

  “I’m sick of your teasing. I’m sick of your sexual advances. I’m sick of your crudity. I’m—”

  “So, Helen, why don’t you tell me how you really feel.” Lord, if he wasn’t half-hard for the woman all the time, if his heart didn’t ache sometimes when he looked at her, well, her waspish nature sure would turn him off.

  “I swear, when we get back, you are going to be court-martialed for insubordination. More than anything, Captain, I am sick of your total lack of regard for military conduct.”

  “And I’m sick of your trying
to pull rank every other minute. This is the nineteenth century, and you are not in the Army anymore, babe. The only rules here are those between a man and woman. Did you hear me? Male and female.”

  “Oh, here we go again with the sex stuff!”

  “You bet your sweet ass. Damn it, why don’t you be honest with yourself, Prissy? The only reason you’re so mad at me is ’cause we didn’t do the deed last night. Frustration, that’s what this is all about, pure and simple.”

  Bright red color blossomed on her cheeks. Then she swung her arm in a wide arc, slugging him in the stomach. “I’m going to kill you. I swear I am. You lowdown, egotistical, male chauvinist horse’s patoot.”

  He saw her attack coming and managed to step back slightly. The punch hardly hurt at all, but he winced, anyhow, just to make her feel guilty. “What do military rules say about an officer striking a soldier? Or using language unbecoming to an officer? Sounds like court-martial grounds to me. Hey, maybe we could get court-martialed together.”

  Through the storm of Helen’s rage and his quick rejoinders, he realized they still had an audience.

  “The two wee angles mus’ be havin’ a lovers’ quarrel,” the Irishman was explaining to the miners around him.

  “Is it true she’s Elena?” one man asked.

  Several others gave resounding shouts of “Yes.”

  “Mebbe she and her husban’ will go thar separate ways since they don’t hardly seem ta be gettin’ along. Mebbe she’ll set up her own corkscrew tent here in Sacramenty. Mebbe she’ll—”

  Helen grunted with disgust, muttering, “E-nough!” Spinning on her heel, she whistled loudly between her teeth to gain their silence.

  Rafe’s headache bloomed into a class two ear ringer.

  “I’m going to say this just once, real slow. So, listen carefully, you thick-headed fools. I . . . am . . . Helen . . . Prescott. Major . . . Helen . . . Prescott. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a prostitute. I have no idea what a corkscrew is. So, I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever done it, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t. I am not interested in finding another man. The one I have now is more than I can handle.”

  Rafe tried to put an arm on her shoulder, and she shrugged him off.

  “Yer not a whore?” the Irishman asked. Barely pausing, he added, “Well then, when you get tired of the greaser, will ya marry me?”

  Several men protested, chiming in with their matrimonial offers.

  Chuckling, Rafe turned back to the broadsheet pasted on the outside of the newspaper office. A headline on the paper displayed outside the tent-office announced the discovery of “pound diggings,” or paydirt that yielded a pound of gold a day, at Devil’s Bar on the North Fork of the American River.

  Hmmm. Maybe he’d head there. He could ask for directions once he got to the general store.

  But, no, there was another, even more interesting article about hundreds of miners scurrying north, lured by rumors of a lake of gold. A lake of gold? Sounded good to him. Even better than the pound diggings.

  “Rafe! Are you listening to me?”

  He turned back to Helen, who stood with hands on hips, having succeeded in getting the grumbling miners to drift off. She tapped a foot impatiently, waiting for his response. His eyes shot to the front of her camouflage blouse, which she’d left unbuttoned over her T-shirt. He saw right off that her foot tapping had set her bare breasts to jiggling.

  Helen was right. He was developing a one-track mind. He should be ashamed of himself.

  Instead, he was enjoying himself immensely.

  “What now?” He pretended to be still annoyed with her.

  “I said that I just thought of something. Where are the harness and parachutes?”

  “That’s what I tried to tell you earlier, Helen. Remember, way back before you started spouting off about tickling, I tried to tell you there was another reason why we had to head north. The parachutes and harness were on Pablo’s horse, and I found out last night, when you were taking a bath, that Pablo rode out of town. And he was traveling north.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me before?” Her face was red with chagrin. Between her continual anger, and her sunburn, she was starting to resemble a beet.

  “Helen, Helen, Helen, remember how you attacked me the minute I entered our hotel room? I plum forgot.”

  “You’re plum nuts. How could you have let him go?”

  “Don’t start on me, Prissy.”

  Her face fell. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to go prospecting,” he offered, real quick. “The guy who was in line to take a bath last night told me that Pablo has a brother at Rich Bar. That’s one of the northernmost diggings.”

  Frowning, she considered all that he’d told her.

  “And check out this newspaper article about a lake of gold being discovered in that region. See, it’s fate. God must want us to become gold diggers.”

  “A lake of gold? God? Fate?” she sputtered out. “I’ll show you fate.” She swung her arm in a wide arc, about to punch him in the stomach. Again.

  He ducked aside with a laugh. “Really, Helen, you’ve got a vicious side to you.”

  She clenched her fists at her sides and appeared to be counting to ten. When she was done, she tried a patient tone. “This is serious, Rafe. Whether we go digging for gold or not, we need those parachutes to get back to the future.”

  “You’re right, Helen. Tell you what. We’ll go search for Pablo. But, once we recover the parachutes, you have to agree to go prospecting with me afterward, before we go home.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she studied him suspiciously.

  “Is it a deal?” he asked.

  “For how long?”

  “Probably only a few weeks.”

  “Do you promise? On your honor? We’ll go back then?”

  “I promise,” he swore.

  She extended her arm and shook hands with him. “A deal.”

  He held onto her hand when she was about to pull away. Pulling her closer, he whispered, “How about another deal? How about if, on our last night here in the past, you and I break in those three condoms?”

  “Is that all you can think about?” She yanked her hand out of his grasp with disgust.

  “Actually, yes.”

  She cut him one of those you-are-a-maggot, I-am-superior smirks.

  “Think about it, Helen. If I had that to look forward to, it’d probably take me half as long to finish here. I’d probably work twenty hours a day with you as my incentive. I’d probably settle for a lot less gold than—”

  “At least you’re being honest about your motives now. None of those flowery words or I’m-dying-for-you-baby lines. Any woman would do for your purposes.”

  “You really believe that I deliberately set out to seduce you? That it’s not you, and only you, that I wanted last night?”

  She nodded emphatically.

  He shook his head. “You don’t have much confidence in your own sexual attraction, do you, babe?” But maybe that was for the best. If she knew how much he wanted her, she’d be the one manipulating him. He’d be back at that landing site faster than he could get his pants unzipped.

  “Maybe I just don’t trust you, Rafe, and never have.”

  That hurt, and he lashed out, “Well, fine. I’ll stay away from you. But you’d better not try to seduce me, either.”

  “Get a life!” She started to walk away from him, headed toward the mercantile.

  He hurried to catch up. “You wanted me last night,” he reminded her.

  “I was suffering from intellectual exhaustion.”

  Rafe bit his bottom lip, making a mental list of about fifty ways to exhaust her intellectually over the next week or so. Fifty ways to prime her pump. He smiled with anticipation. Not that he was going to make love with her. Uh uh, not with three lousy condoms. Except for their last night together in this time warp. Then—man, oh, man—she’d better beware.

  Helen s
tomped on ahead of him, oblivious to his devious plans. Knowing she would be annoyed, he took particular delight in studying her rear end, which bounced rather nicely. Despite her rigid demeanor, she had a real hot-cha-cha kind of walk. Yep, next to her breasts, he was definitely partial to her ass.

  “Hey, Helen,” he called out to her departing back. “I hear there’s a Chinaman down by the levee who does real good tattoos. What say we have matching tattoos put on our other cheeks, as a remembrance of this journey?”

  Her step faltered.

  He didn’t like being ignored. No, he did not. “Maybe halos to match our angel wings,” he suggested as he caught up with her. “Or clouds. Yeah, clouds that move when the butt muscles flex. They would be nice.”

  She slanted him a scowl of exasperation. It was obvious she exercised restraint, trying not to react to his baiting.

  He didn’t like restraint, either. “Betcha miss your clipboard real bad, don’tcha, honey?”

  She made a hissing sound of pure malice.

  Checkmate! He’d obviously won that round.

  But, just in case, he decided to watch his back for the next hour . . . or year.

  Grocery shopping, and not a supermarket in sight . . .

  Helen stood near the counter of Collis Huntington’s general store, waiting while Rafe handed over more and more of their precious gold nuggets and dust. He watched the storekeeper carefully to make sure his thumb didn’t tip the scales.

  She shifted uncomfortably in the long, green calico dress Rafe had bought for her, insisting she drew too much attention in her slacks. The short-sleeved gown had a scooped neck and hung down to her ankles, but she wore her slacks under the dress for ease in riding.

  “I must look ridiculous,” she grumbled, glancing at her heavy military boots peeking out from under the gown.

  “Yeah,” Rafe agreed brightly.

  The rat! “I think you deliberately picked out the ugliest dress in the store,” she muttered, while the storekeeper weighed out their gold.

  “You noticed, huh?” He grinned at her, then chucked her under the chin. “Helen, you’d look good in a sack.”

  “This is a sack.”

  “Exactly.” His smile would melt butter.