A Little Time in Texas (6 page)

If he was being honest with himself, the truth was he felt something different with Angel than he had felt with any other woman. Maybe it was the protective instincts she aroused in him. Or the way she constantly challenged him and refused to knuckle under to his opinion. There was no doubt about it—she was different. What bothered him most was that he had actually thought once or
twice about what it would be like to have her around all the time. Angel had made him yearn for something he had professed not to need—a closer relationship with a woman.

Somehow, in the darkness of that cave, he had formed a bond with Angel that he was finding difficult to untie. He had kept other women at bay with word and deed; Angel had simply slipped past all those fortified walls like fog slips through the mountains.

Dallas hit the brakes, and the truck skidded to a stop as he observed the scenario at the opening of the cave.

“What the hell?”

He reached instinctively for his Colt revolver and swore heatedly when he realized that in his frantic concern for Angel, he hadn’t picked it up from beside the bed.
Never, never
had he forgotten his gun!
That’s what comes of letting yourself get involved with a woman
, he thought bitterly. The gun would have helped. But it didn’t really matter. He wouldn’t mind busting a few heads together.

Angel took one look at the leering face of the man as he waved his flashlight back toward his friends, and she reached for the knife in her pocket. In the time it took him to refocus the
flashlight on her, she was standing before him with her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, the knife held loosely in her hand. A stench, a sickly sweet smell emanating from the man, curled her nostrils. He was wearing some sort of sleeveless denim jacket that hung open. There was a great deal of flesh visible from the waist up, all of it hairy.

“Now, now,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt, do we?”

“No,” Angel agreed. “So I suggest you start backing up.”

The man just laughed. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Me and my buddies just want to have a little fun.”

“Like shoats in a pigpen,” she muttered.

“What was that?” he demanded. “You say somethin’ about pigs?”

“I’m telling you to back up,” she said. “Or face the consequences.”

He chuckled. “Little thing like you ought to know better than to try talking back to a big fella like me.”

Angel moved without warning, slicing at the big man’s naked arm. The cut was shallow, but the stranger yowled as if she’d gutted him, and he dropped the flashlight to clutch his wound.

Angel grabbed the light and ran while he was still grappling with his bloody arm.

“She’s comin’ your way!” the man shouted to his friends. “Stop her! That bitch cut me with a knife!”

Knowing she was armed kept the other three men at a distance. Angel never slowed down, just waved the knife at them, feinted as though she were going to attack, and then ran like the devil. By the time she reached the cave opening, the man she had wounded had reached his friends, and she could hear him exhorting them to go after her, ranting at them for their cowardice in the face of “one tiny little woman.”

Once out of the cave, Angel used the flashlight to search for Red. He had drifted off a ways, munching grass—near four strange, menacing machines that she had not noticed in the shadows when she’d arrived. She edged warily around them to reach Red, then threw herself into the saddle and lit a shuck out of there, back toward Dallas and safety.

Mere seconds later she looked over her shoulder to see that the men had mounted the machines as though they were horses. The roaring sound behind her was more terrifying than the scream of a cougar. She looked back and saw that the heads of the four men had been completely en
cased in large, dark objects, becoming featureless. Indeed the men and machines seemed like exotic one-eyed beasts chasing after her.

It became very clear, very fast, that she could not outrun them. When Angel saw a set of headlights, she veered toward them. Hopefully this was someone who would help her; she was no worse off if it wasn’t. She was counting on providence to arrange for her rescue. Otherwise she would fend for herself. These four men might overwhelm her, but they would pay dearly before they did.

Dallas took one look at Angel riding hell-bent for leather on Red, chased by four rough-looking men on motorcycles, and reached for his gun. When he found it missing, he realized he was going to have to rely on cunning and intelligence—and luck—if he hoped to get Angel out of this without anybody getting hurt. Of course if he ended up having to use a little muscle along with his brain, he wasn’t going to mind one bit.

He stepped down from the cab and went to stand just beyond the front lights of the pickup, which he had left on after he killed the engine.

Angel yanked Red to a sliding halt, threw herself out of the saddle and headed toward the truck on the run. “Help!” she cried. “I need help.”

“Over here, Angel,” Dallas said in a quiet voice.

She flew into his arms and he gave her a quick, hard hug before putting her away from him. “Go stand over by the truck, but stay out of the light.”

The appearance of the truck had changed things for the men on motorcycles. They skidded their bikes to a stop on the fringes of the light and revved the engines threateningly.

“This is none of your business,” the wounded man shouted from the darkness. “Get back in your truck, mister, and get outta here.”

“I’m making it my business,” Dallas said. “You can make something out of it if you want to, but I won’t go down easy. Any of you boys wants to try me, come ahead.”

Finally one of the motorcycle engines went dead, and the man Angel had wounded with her knife stepped into the light.

“I’ve got me a grudge to settle with that bitch, even if I have to go through you to do it.”

For the first time, in the light from the truck headlights, Angel saw the face of the huge man who had confronted her in the cave. He had a mustache that hung down and hid his lips. His nose was too big for his face and his eyes too small. His hair hung limp and greasy.

Her gaze drifted down over the rest of him.
Obscenities were written on his denim jacket, and his hairy belly hung down over jeans that had some kind of metal studs along the outside seam. There were tattoos on his arms, like the black markings she had sometimes seen on the slaves—now freed by President Lincoln—who had come from Africa. He looked mean and in no mood to be reasonable.

“You and me,” the wounded man said. “Winner gets the girl.”

Dallas felt the killing rage rise up inside him and controlled it. This man had threatened Angel, frightened her, wanted to rape her. The hair stood up on his nape; he was a feral animal challenged for his mate. “Fine,” he said, his voice cold and hard. “You and me. Winner gets the girl.”

Dallas stepped into the light.

Angel saw the sudden wariness in the biker’s face. He clearly hadn’t been expecting to face someone of Dallas’s stature. He still had the advantage of reach and weight. He stepped forward, hands fisted and held up to protect his face. Dallas lifted his hands into daunting fists, as well. Angel watched the two men circling each other, looking for weaknesses and an opening to attack.

The biker struck first.

Dallas dodged the blow but felt knuckles graze his cheek as he hit up under the biker’s chin. He
heard the man’s teeth click as his head rolled with the punch. He managed a solid hit to the ribs before the biker closed on him. The man was huge, and his bearlike grip was squeezing the breath and the life out of Dallas. Desperate, he kicked the biker in the shin. Dallas slipped out of the man’s grasp as the biker limped backward in agony.

Dallas didn’t give the man a chance to recover, but moved inside his guard with a quick right to the eye and a left to the solar plexus.

The biker gasped as Dallas’s punch forced the air out of his lungs. He swung wildly, and Dallas ducked and came up punching again.

It was over quickly, as the biker dropped to his knees, then sagged to all fours. “Enough,” he gasped, blood dripping from cuts on his mouth and cheek.

Dallas grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him to his feet. “If I ever see you around these parts again, I’ll make sure you spend your time here in jail. Is that clear?”

“Yeah,” the biker mumbled.

“Now you and your friends get on your bikes and get out of here.”

Dallas waited while the bikers revved their engines and then took off, wheels spinning. As the roar faded and the quiet took over, he turned to Angel. He had worked off some of his anger in
the fight, but his adrenaline was still pumping. He stalked over and stood spread-legged in front of her. He wanted some answers.

Angel had crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. She looked vulnerable, and suddenly he realized what might have happened to her if he hadn’t arrived in time. He grabbed her shoulders and demanded, “Are you okay? Did any of them hurt you?”

“No. I’m fine.” She reached up and gently touched the bruise forming on his cheek. “I think you’re the one who came off a little the worse for wear.”

He was furious because even now, angry as he was, frightened as he’d been for her, he wanted her. “Do you realize what would have happened to you if—”

She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “Nothing happened.”

“Because you were damned lucky!” he said. He wanted her to stop touching him; he wanted her to touch him a helluva lot more. “What were you doing in that cave?”

She straightened the collar on his shirt. “Exactly what you think I was doing.”

His hold tightened on her arms. “You have no business in that cave. I want you to stay out of there.”

“No.”

Exasperated, he shook her. “Stop being stubborn.”

She put her hands flat against his chest and looked up into his fierce eyes. “Don’t you understand? This is your world. I have to return to mine.”

All he knew was that he didn’t want her going anywhere without him. “Don’t go back,” he said. “Stay here with me.” He didn’t know where the words had come from. He wished he hadn’t spoken them, but he had. He waited with bated breath for her answer.

“I have to go back.”

“Why? What’s back there that’s so important to you?”

She reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a piece of folded paper and extended it to him.

Dallas had to let go of her to take the paper. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t a WANTED poster. “Who is Jake Dillon to you?”

“My brother-in-law. He married my sister, then talked her into helping him rob a bank in San Antonio. She was killed and so was a bank teller. The posse caught up to Jake in Del Rio. He’s being hung on Saturday. He’s the reason my sister is dead. I want to be there to see him hang.”

“Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?”

“How would you feel about a man who was directly responsible for the death of someone you loved?”

He already had his answer. He had wanted to kill. Could he condemn her for wanting to see vengeance done by the law?

Dallas suddenly realized that what he was holding wasn’t a copy, that it appeared genuine. Yet it wasn’t old and yellowed. The date on the poster was 1864. Here was the proof he had lacked. He could have the poster checked to make sure, but he didn’t want to have to make any explanations to any authorities. If she really was from the past, perhaps she deserved one last chance to get back.

He sighed. “All right. We’ll go back through the cave one more time. But I want your promise that if we don’t find what we’re looking for, that’s it. No more sneaking off in the middle of the night. You’ll stay with me until you learn what you need to know to survive in this century. Agreed?”

She looked up into his eyes and said, “All right. It’s a deal.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth.

Dallas put his fingers to his lips, surprised at
how much they tingled from such a slight touch. “What was that for?”

“That was to thank you for coming to the rescue.”

He leaned down and kissed her back, just a slight touch of lip to lip, leaving them both yearning for more.

“What was that for?” she asked breathlessly.

“I was sealing our bargain with a kiss,” he murmured against her lips. “There’s no backing out now.”

“No backing out,” she agreed.

D
allas emerged from the darkness of the cave into the sunlight with somewhat less care this time. He had been here once before and found nothing. He was nearly certain they would not find a portal to the past. But he had promised Angel he would bring her here. So he had.

He reached out a hand to her. “Let me help you.”

Angel allowed Dallas to pull her the last few feet up out of the stream within the cave and onto dry land. “It looks the same as it did before,” she said as she studied the surrounding terrain.

Dallas narrowed his eyes against the glare of the noonday sun. He had that same eerie feeling that things weren’t quite right. The grass was yellow, not green, and crackled under his boots. It seemed more like late fall than spring. But then, he had been through all this before. He looked up at a cloudless sky, expecting any moment to see a jet contrail. However, the sky was a clear blue as far as the eye could see.

“Which way should we go?” Angel asked.

Dallas shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” He pointed west. “That’s the direction of the cave opening that got dynamited. I suppose we might as well head that way.”

Angel nodded her agreement and Dallas took off, not waiting to see if she followed him. He couldn’t describe his feelings, exactly. He felt foolish, of course, because he simply couldn’t believe they were going to find themselves in the past. He also felt frustrated that Angel seemed so desperate to return to her life before she had met him. And he felt anxious. His intuition had kept him alive in more than one dark alley. And his intuition told him they were heading into trouble.

“Dallas?”

He paused and turned to Angel. She was pointing at something in the brush to the left. Her eyes were wide and she had her lower lip clasped in her teeth. He followed the extension of her hand and felt his flesh get up and crawl at what he saw.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

Angel nodded. “It looks like my rucksack all right. Or what’s left of it.”

Dallas unconsciously touched the Colt .45 at his hip as they moved together toward the leather bag. His eyes scanned the horizon looking for an enemy he could only imagine. A band of raiding
Comanches? Outlaws? Renegade Confederate soldiers? Every muscle in his body was tensed for action. He knew enough history to have a healthy respect for the dangers of the past. If that was where they were.

Angel knelt to examine the scraps of leather. All around were pieces of shredded paper that had been her pencil drawings and rags of cloth that had been her clothes. “It’s mine,” she said in a quavery voice. “They’ve destroyed everything.”

Dallas put his hands on her shoulders and raised her up. He watched her fight the tears pooling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Angel. You can always replace what they ruined.”

She met his gaze and said, “They destroyed all my drawings of my sister and my fiancé.”

Which were not replaceable, he realized. Dallas felt a sudden rage at the men who had done this, who had attacked Angel and destroyed without thought the things that meant so much to her. The ragged sound of Angel’s voice tore him from his thoughts.

“Do you think finding my rucksack means we’re in the past now?”

Dallas frowned. “I don’t know. If we did somehow manage to make our way into the past, why did it happen this time and not the last? We didn’t do anything differently that I’m aware of.”

Angel gnawed on her lower lip, trying to find an explanation for the inexplicable. “Does it really matter how we got here, so long as we’re here?”

“It does if we—I—hope to go back.”

“Oh.”

Dallas put up a hand to shade his eyes as he looked back the direction they had come. Suddenly, nothing looked familiar. He felt a stunned breathlessness as he realized the darkened cave opening was no longer there, only a blank wall of stone. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Angel asked.

Dallas nodded toward the spot where the cave entrance had been.

Angel gasped. “How could it just…disappear like that?”

Dallas fought the urge to walk over and put his hand on the stone to physically experience what his eyes told him had happened. He felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. This was too weird for words. If what he suspected was true, he and Angel had passed through some portal of time
and it had closed behind them
.

Dallas’s mouth flattened into a thin line. He hadn’t believed they would end up in the past, and he certainly hadn’t counted on having a problem finding his way back to the future. He took a
step back toward the stone wall, then stopped. Closer examination was not going to reveal what plainly wasn’t there.

His inclination was to stop right now and figure out how to get back where he had come from. But if the portal was there—and he refused to believe it wasn’t—then it would still be there after he had escorted Angel to San Antonio for the hanging. That was a deadline that they knew was finite. After the hanging he could come back and figure it all out.

He met Angel’s blue eyes with a somber stare. “It looks like you got your wish, Angel,” he said. “Apparently we’ve crossed over some portal to the past. Now what?”

“There’s probably some good explanation for why the cave opening isn’t there any more,” Angel said in a placating tone. “As soon as we can figure out what we did to get here, we’ll know how to get back. Or rather, how to get you back. As long as we are here, why don’t we head for San Antonio. We can think just as well while we’re walking.”

Dallas’s mouth twisted wryly. “I suppose that makes sense.” He looked over at the solid stone wall one last time. “Standing around here isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

This time, Angel led the way. “I’ve been to
San Antonio a couple of times,” she said. “It’s not a bad walk from here. Maybe sixty miles.”

That was an hour’s drive in Dallas’s truck. And two long days on foot. At least they had supplies, food and water that he’d packed as a precaution before they went into the cave. And he had his gun. Dallas told himself he was just taking a little camping trip. Nothing to it. They would be fine. And when they got to San Antonio…

The enormity of his situation hit Dallas all at once.
He was in the past!
As fantastic as it seemed, Angel had been telling the truth about where she had come from. Dallas felt exhilarated. He was living an adventure that most men could only dream about. He would see San Antonio as it had been near the end of the Civil War. He would witness a public hanging in the town square. That is, if they ever reached San Antonio.

Dallas dismissed the possibility that they wouldn’t make it. Angel certainly didn’t seem to be entertaining any fears about the forthcoming journey. But he couldn’t help asking, “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

She grinned. “For the first time in nearly a week I know exactly where I am.”

Dallas was willing to follow where she led. He was impressed that evening as he watched her
choose a campsite along the Guadalupe River and start a fire. “You’ve done this before,” he said.

Angel smiled at him. “Dozens and dozens of times. You forget, this is my world.”

Dallas felt a stab of regret. Angel seemed perfectly happy here. It certainly didn’t look like she had any plans to return with him to the future. Assuming that he could return. He didn’t want to think about that right now. Or about what his life would be like in the future without Angel in it.

Dallas had done some camping, but this was different. There was no civilized town over the horizon, no escape from the elements or the dangers of this land. He knew he ought to be afraid, but somehow the fear never came. Instead, he felt solace, a kind of peace he had never experienced in the future. Which was crazy. He didn’t try to explain it; he simply enjoyed it.

After supper, Dallas sat back against a sun-warmed stone with a tin cup of coffee in his hand and realized he had never felt so content. “This is really wonderful,” he murmured.

Angel sat cross-legged near the fire, her coffee cup warming her hands in the evening chill. The night sky was filled with stars that seemed timeless. “I missed this when I was in the future,” she admitted. “The spaces without people, I mean. And the quiet.”

A coyote howled in the distance and was joined by a chorus of mournful yelps.

“That doesn’t sound so quiet to me,” Dallas said.

Angel smiled. “The sounds in my time are natural. Crickets and frogs. The rustling of leaves. Even the coyotes. They’re not as harsh to the ear as the ring of a phone, or the whine of a motorcycle.”

Dallas opened his mouth to agree with her, but froze when the quiet was pierced by a gunshot. He dropped his coffee cup, leaped up and kicked sand into the fire, then grabbed Angel around the waist and headed for cover. Their peace was gone. The clamor of a dangerous civilization had intruded.

“You expecting company?” Dallas hissed into Angel’s ear.

“No.”

“Any suggestions who that might be?”

“No.”

“Then I suggest we pack up and get out of here.”

They matched actions to words and quietly and efficiently returned what they had removed from Dallas’s backpack and set off in the dark toward their destination. Dallas hadn’t realized how complete the darkness would be. There was no distant
halo of light that signaled a town. There was only the light from the stars and a rising moon to show them where to step.

Suddenly Dallas felt a surge of admiration for the woman who followed in his footsteps, the woman whose hand he held tightly in his own. He knew her fear of the dark was genuine. Yet she seemed unperturbed by the vastness of the land over which they walked, the immense nothingness that was Texas before man had conquered its untamed reaches.

They walked for several hours in silence, until Dallas was sure they weren’t being pursued by whatever danger lay behind them. At last he slowed and finally stopped in the hollow of a hill. “We’ll rest here.”

“I’m not tired,” Angel said.

Dallas grinned wryly. “I am.” He dropped the heavy pack he carried and sank to the ground near a lone mesquite tree, pulling her down beside him.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

She shivered in response.

Dallas lifted her into his lap and enfolded her in his arms. She laid her head on his chest and snuggled up closer to him. Dallas smoothed the hair away from her forehead. “Do you think you can sleep?”

She yawned. “Umm-hmm.”

He settled himself back against the tree and pulled her close. It felt good to hold her in his arms, and he realized he’d been wanting to do it for a long time. Maybe this would be the last time. Tomorrow when they arrived in San Antonio she would take her leave of him. He would have to find his way back to the future alone. Somehow, that didn’t frighten him. What frightened him was the thought of a lifetime without the woman he held in his arms.

He thought about making love to her, awakening her to the physical pleasures he knew a man and a woman could find together. Yet how could he take her virginity and leave her to face the consequences alone? A fallen woman. A pariah in her time. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that to her.

Dallas tightened his arms around Angel and groaned as her soft breasts nestled against him. It was going to be a long night. He closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep, knowing it would be a long time before he found respite from the knowledge of what had happened to him today.

Angel wasn’t sure what woke her. Perhaps the trill of a mockingbird flying overhead. Perhaps the ray of sunlight that glimmered over the hill. Perhaps the contrasting warmth of Dallas’s breath against her brow in the chill morning air. She only
knew she had awakened with a sense of rightness in this man’s arms.

The signs of a violent life marked Dallas’s face even in sleep. Angel was convinced he would do very well in her time and wondered whether she should try to convince him to stay. She tried to imagine him living without the modern conveniences she had learned so much about. And had to admit it would be harder for him to adjust to living without, than for her to accept the luxuries the future provided.

Angel frowned. Why was she thinking at all about the future any more? She belonged in the past. It was her world. There was no sense contemplating a life somewhere else.

Only it wasn’t the conveniences Angel knew she would miss. It was Dallas. She felt a rush of tenderness as she perused the face of the man who held her in his arms. Those ridiculous curly lashes. Chestnut hair shot with golden sunlight. His broken nose. Lips that could be hard, or oh, so soft and giving.

She reached out a fingertip and traced the width of his mouth. Intent on what she was doing, Angel didn’t notice as Dallas’s lids lifted to reveal watchful hazel eyes. When his lips parted, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his. And was astonished at the reaction she got.

Angel let her eyelids sink closed as Dallas’s mouth molded itself to hers. His tongue slid along the edge of her lips until she opened to him. She felt a sense of urgency that grew from the knowledge that their time together was coming to an end.

Angel felt the pull of desire so strong it frightened her. She put her hands against Dallas’s shoulders to push him away, but they quickly slid up around his neck and tangled in his hair. She wanted this. She needed this.

For long moments, Angel was lost in the kiss. She wasn’t aware of the exact moment Dallas turned her beneath him. She yielded easily when his knee nudged her thighs apart and he settled himself between her legs. It was not until she felt the thrust of his hips that she realized how far she had let things go.

She turned her head away from his seeking mouth, and in a raspy voice said, “This is wrong. Dallas, we can’t do this.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

His eyes were heavy-lidded, darkened by desire. Angel realized she had been unfair to let Dallas believe she was willing to give herself to him when she was not. But in the beauty of the dawn she had wished…

“Because I’ll be staying here,” she said in a
steady voice. “And you’ll be going back. It’s better if we don’t—”