Dave grabbed up his bag and my computer before following me inside and then we dropped everything and in between a frenzy of quick passionate kisses, he slipped his shirt off over his head, before helping me to slip my blouse over mine.
“Wait,” I breathed between his fevered kisses. “Dave, let me call Nancy real quick; I need to let her know that I’ll be driving back with you.”
He continued to kiss my neck, my shoulders, my back while I grabbed up my purse and set it on the mirrored desk, turning on a lamp to light my way as I dug for my phone. Upon finding it, I paused, looking into the mirror and in fascination observed Dave as he stood behind me, and as if totally outside of myself, I watched as he lifted my hair out of his way and kissed the left side of my neck tenderly. I was mesmerized by the reflection of his handsome face as the light caught upon the bold planes of his cheekbones, his jawline, while he placed kisses along my shoulder and lightly ran his tongue over my skin. His light-blue eyes lifted, watching me in the mirror, as well, and I couldn’t break the stare; those eyes of his are hypnotic. His right hand reached out, guiding my hand holding the phone toward my ear, as he kissed my shoulder again.
“Nancy,” he reminded me in a husky whisper.
I looked at my phone and hurriedly scrolled for her number, while Dave’s hands worked my pants zipper down and my slacks slid to the floor. Dave disappeared as he bent down to slip off my shoes and guide my feet out of my pant legs just as the call went through.
“Hey, Nancy,” I said, distractedly, turning toward Dave as he straightened upright again but he turned me back around so that I was facing the mirror and his hands slipped around my waist, pulling me back against his chest.
“Ummm—” I mumbled absently. I was so freakin’ distracted that I couldn’t even think straight, “Dave—came up here, so—so—I—” I stammered idiotically. “I won’t need to fly. I’ll drive home with him. I just wanted you to know. Bye.”
I closed the phone, dropped it into my purse, and reached up with my hand to hold the back of his neck, kissing him over my shoulder. Then I turned toward him and he bent and lifted me up into his arms and with my legs wrapped firmly around his waist, he carried me to the waiting bed.
Chapter 25
I have become accomplished at time travel over the last couple of months, almost like it is an effortless intuition, taking in all of the information and figuratively speaking; hitting the ground running—even something as disconcerting as this! Waking up or arriving or whatever you want to call it and finding myself on the back of a moving horse with my arms wrapped firmly around a little girl’s waist. Thank God I’ve been riding horses all of my life in the real world and am comfortable riding bareback. The girl who straddled the horse before me wore a blue-gingham cotton dress and her blonde hair was put up in braided pigtails and bound with blue silk ribbons. I quickly perceived by the landmarks on the road that we were traveling over, that we were heading away from Grandpa Henry Mills’s farm, heading north toward town and by the position of the sun, my guess was that it had to be about mid-afternoon. In the blink of an eye I logged all of these details and assimilated all of the information.
I wished desperately for a mirror so that I could see who I am.
Okay—not happening. You’re going to need to think this through pragmatically, I thought to myself. And use what you have around you to figure this out.
Okay, so also riding double beside us on a chestnut horse are my Wyman cousin Rose, namesake of Grandma Rose, and my grandaunt Lucy Mills. Since both girls had been the same age, I guessed them to currently be likely, fifteen or sixteen years old. I glanced around at the sound of a girl’s laugher and saw two other horses were clomping along at a slight distance behind us. I recognized my grandaunt Joanna Mills and wondered whether the young dark-haired man riding at her side might be her first husband William Olson? I’d never seen a photograph of him, but if Lucy was currently sixteen, then that would mean that Joanna would be nineteen, so it probably was William, who Joanna would marry when she was twenty-years-old.
“We’ll make it just about on time,” Rose said glancing skyward and squinting at the afternoon sun. “Molly, are you hoping that Jackson Worth will be coming this afternoon?”
She was asking me that question! Good, so now I know that I am currently my grandaunt Molly Mills, and one year younger than my sister Lucy.
“I suppose he might be there,” I improvised, not knowing what ‘there’ might be referring to but my answer seemed safe enough and covered a variety of possibilities, whether we were on our way to a party, a school dance or a church outing. What I did know was that Jackson Worth would become Molly’s husband a few years from this time and place.
The girl riding with me turned to take an interested look at me over her shoulder and I was excited to realize that she was Katie McFall. This was my first ever time travel with her but I should have known immediately that it was Katie by her flaxen hair that was nearly white and was dazzling with the sunshine gilding it. Katie was my great-grandaunt Ivy Wyman McFall’s daughter and she was also a mutual cousin of both me and Dave Cameron.
***
As we rode into town, heading west on Main Street, I could easily see what our likely goal was, because there was a lot of activity on North Pine as we approached, centering on what I was sure must be the old town square that Dave had described to me many months ago when we’d dined together during my first week in town. The square is long gone and none of the one story buildings that bordered it exist in present Fremont, so history nerd that I am, I drank in the sight of the buildings ahead as we all now trotted along the dusty dirt road, everyone anxious to arrive.
I could see that the first building that edged the east side of the square was a drugstore and after passing that obstruction the entire pocket of the square was visible and we could see a swarm of activity, with buggies, and horses stretching around the four sides. The grassy center lawn was dotted with people seated on blankets, for the most part, and all of them facing the large white-washed gazebo at the center of the square. The gazebo had ceased to exist about eighty years ago but I could see now that it had been a lovely structure in the shape of a hexagon. There was an eight piece brass band up inside the gazebo warming up and tuning their instruments on its raised stage.
I knew that the 1890 high school must be on down Main Street, just out of sight. In fact, I was able to see just a glimpse of the bell-tower that sat atop the iconic two-story structure to the west but the false-fronts of the merchant shops on the square were blocking a clear view of the school itself. I wished desperately that I could just keep going along the street and get a good look at the school but instead, we all dismounted, leaving our horses tied at the edge of the square along Main as we found an empty place out on the grassy yard facing the gazebo. All of us girls helped to spread out several blankets that had been draped across the withers of Rose’s horse and just as the six of us were getting settled, I saw Wyatt and Jennie heading our way.
Awkward! I thought as they joined us and I looked Wyatt over, feeling a flush of embarrassment warming my cheeks because the last time that I’d seen Wyatt Mills I’d had my hot little hands and my lips all over every single inch of his body which I know intimately and that fact made this more than awkward actually—it made me feel a little dirty and creepy to be honest. I tried to calculate his age and decided on likely seventeen, about a year older than Lucy and so I knew that he and Jennie would be about two years from their wedding night that I had lived through not so very long ago and it seemed just so weird!
Jennie took a blanket that had been slung over Wyatt’s forearm and started to spread it out on the grass next to me.
“Wyatt, help me please,” she asked sweetly, glancing up at him.
I looked up at him too and saw that instead of taking hold of the blanket, Wyatt turned and glanced around as though he thought that she was speaking to someone behind him and I smiled, because he was teasing Jennie and I knew very well t
hat he had the sense of humor that would pull something like this. Jennie straightened up and with a hand on her hip, she gave him what I’d call a no nonsense look, obviously not in the mood for his theatrics. She pushed against his chest with a hand until he stepped back a pace out of the way and she crouched down to adjust the blanket further.
Wyatt just continued to stand above us, making no move to assist and I realized then that he was breathing heavily and I started to get a little concerned about his health as I watched his dilated eyes that were open so wide that I could see the whites all around them and I thought that he looked like a startled rabbit that was about to make a dash for the first handy thicket.
I reached out to smooth the blanket myself. “Here, Jennie, let me help you,” I said, keeping an eye on Wyatt as I did so because he didn’t look well and I just hoped to hell that he wasn’t getting ready to vomit or if he was going to vomit, I’d prefer that it not be while he is standing above me.
“Thanks,” Jennie said to me with an exasperated roll of her eyes as she looked up at Wyatt standing above us.
“Wyatt, sit down,” she directed, tugging at poor, dazed Granduncle Wyatt’s hand and he complied, plopping down as heavily as a bag of bricks, facing Katie and me and blinking at us both, wide-eyed as a demented barn owl. Katie giggled at him, mimicking his face back at him and then she turned to treat me to her rendition of his ridiculous expression.
“I don’t know what’s come over you, Wyatt but I wish that you would stop acting at this foolishness,” Jennie fumed, glaring between him and Katie. “Don’t encourage him, Katie,” she scolded.
Wyatt swiveled his owl-eyes toward Jennie, then gaped at the crowd around us, and all the time, panting, blinking and staring. I didn’t think that he was acting though; I thought that he truly might be coming down with something or giving a very good impression of it. He looked around the grassy square as though observing an invasion of exotic aliens, before he reached up and started to very deliberately run his fingers over the planes of his face, poking his index fingers into his eye sockets, patting his own cheeks and putting his fingers into his mouth and feeling his tongue in the most peculiar examination of one’s own body that one should be conducting in the company of fifty people. He looked like a total idiot and this caused Katie to fall into renewed gales of giggles.
Thank goodness the band started playing just then, which took the attention of the crowd off of our blanket mate but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Wyatt. Something was definitely not right about him today. He glanced over at me again now with his lips pale and with beads of sweat popping out on his wide forehead as he continued to observe all of us uneasily and I had a sudden strange thought occur to me as I watched him. Could this possibly be a, but—no, I chided myself. It couldn’t possibly be another time traveler.
Never knowing how long I might stay in any time warp or what might cause it to come to an end; it was pointless to try to direct anything of importance about the experience, but when Jennie asked Wyatt to go into the drugstore for a fountain drink that they could share—I jumped up like a sprung jack-in-the-box.
“I’ll go with you, Wyatt,” I offered quickly.
The look of sheer relief that broke across Granduncle Wyatt’s face at my declaration was comical. He was obviously thankful to have someone taking point for this expedition and he rose at once and followed me, like a puppy dog or I guess a more likely simile would be like a lifeless zombie, toward the edge of the grass where we walked along a brick sidewalk, side by side. Wyatt kept looking down at his own boot clad feet though and then he started taking these irregular steps, first short, then long, then a high step lifting his knee up almost to his chest and all the while watching himself with interest as he performed these ridiculous gyrations.
“Wyatt, stop acting like a fool,” I finally hissed in exasperation because people were watching and starting to laugh at him. I grabbed his arm to get his attention and growled. “Stop it!”
Just then, my grandpa Arlan approached, stopping on the walk before us and blocking our way as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked up into his older brother’s face speculatively.
“Well, did you finish?” Arlan asked without preamble.
“What?” Wyatt questioned. “I’m sorry, and you are?”
Arlan snorted a bark of affected laughter that made it obvious that he wasn’t amused.
“Funny boy,” he said. “You’d better have fed the stock before you came to town. That was the deal, right? I milk for you tonight and tomorrow morning and you get to sleep in and then you feed the stock and milk old Bess for the next two night’s straight.”
“A—Ummm—I…” Wyatt stammered shooting a helpless silent query toward me and again looking as if the contents of his stomach could be on the way up at any moment.
“Arlan, we have to get inside and back, before Jennie worries about what’s become of us,” I pointed to our group. “Do you see Joanna facing us? We’re all sitting there. We’ll be right back.”
As Grandpa Arlan moved off through the grass to join our group, I faced Wyatt and grabbed him with both hands on his upper arms, as I looked up into his befuddled, confused eyes.
“What’s my name?” I demanded, shaking him slightly before letting go of him.
“Um—you are—” Wyatt began and stopped.
“What—is—my—name?” I growled through clenched teeth, with hands on my hips.
He glanced around us to ensure our privacy before he spoke.
“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.
Interesting, since I am currently inhabiting his own younger sister.
“Who are you?” I asked, tapping an index figure squarely in the center of his chest, lest he have any uncertainty as to who I was referring to.
“Wyatt?” he responded, framed more as a question than an answer.
Oh shit! I thought. I was right. This guy has absolutely no clue about what’s going on.
“Not who you think you should say you are—but who are you really?” I clarified.
Completely without hesitation and obviously extremely happy to be able to, at long last, have a ready answer, he blurted strongly. “My name is Dave Cameron.”
At first I simply goggled at him, blinking idiotically in absolute bewilderment, before taking a deep breath, readying myself for a horror movie worthy scream but instead tamped down that reaction and the next moment, I thought that I might just vomit, which seemed like it would be less than helpful in this present situation. Finally, shaking my head to clear it and probably looking to anyone watching me as if I were horse shaking off a swarm of pesky flies, I sputtered hoarsely, “What the hell?”
Chapter 26
Sitting cross-legged, with my elbows braced upon my knees and hunched over Dave’s supine body as I was; I imagine that I likely resembled a medieval gargoyle perched precariously upon the ledge of some Gothic building. I closely observed his face and marveled at that eerily blank and yet oddly tranquil repose that I’d glimpsed upon my own countenance when I’d recently videotaped my own time travel experience. It was entirely different though, seeing it manifest itself upon someone else’s face.
I’d been back for nearly an hour now and using the time to note the other physical effects of time travel upon the human body, namely Dave’s body, as he has continued to remain unresponsive. Such as the change in his skin temperature, going from heated with a sheen of sweat beading upon his forehead, to a coolness that was a little creepy and corpselike. Both of these were somewhat indicative of him going through non-REM and REM sleep cycles except that there was no movement behind his gently closed eyelids, hinting at any dreaming, even though he definitely appeared to be in a deep enough sleep that he should be dreaming. Also, in spite of his wildly fluctuating skin temperature, his breathing and heartrate continued to remain slow and regular. Even his usual nocturnal tumescence, referred to by Dave as his, ahem—morning glory had yet to arise this day, if you get my meaning and no I ha
dn’t molested the man in his sleep, I’d just looked and with a purely scientific interest.
I was continuing my intense observation of his face when, all at once, Dave’s eyes suddenly popped open, causing me to jump and nearly bite my tongue in half with my trying to stifle an impulse to screech like a banshee. I glanced at the clock to see that it was 9:55 and mentally noted the time that he finally awoke from his first night sleeping over at my house after our long drive back to Fremont from the book signing in Chicago. It appeared to have happened to him exactly as I’d always experienced upon my return, one second dead to the world and then boom—awake.
“Hey, babe,” he said groggily, blinking up at me blurry-eyed, but his perusal sharpened as he focused in on my startled expression.
“What’s up?” he asked, reaching up, cupping the back of my head in his hand and bringing my face down while lifting his head off of the pillow to meet my lips for a gentle kiss.
“Dave,” I began as casually as I could manage when he’d released his hold on me. “Do you remember anything from last night? Did you have any weird dreams?”
He yawned widely, stretching his muscular body languidly before moving to join me in a sitting position, scrubbing his hands over his face and scratching the beard stubble that was shadowing his jaw.
“Oh, gotta whiz!” he realized suddenly. “Hold that thought.”
With an unexpected flurry of motion, he kicked off the covers and rolled his naked self out of my bed and out the bedroom door leaving me sitting in consternation.
***
“You know, I did,” he continued, not missing a beat as he reentered the bedroom and crawled back under the covers. He pulled me down beside him wrapping me up in a full body hug as he gave me a perfect kiss, having obviously found my mouthwash.
“What did you dream?” I prodded, watching his face intently.