Daring Time (24 page)

"Why did you stop that man from beatin' Betsey and me?"

Ryan spun around. He'd been so engrossed in studying the portrait of what must surely be Hope's mother that Mel's question had taken him by surprise. She sat stiffly in a chair near the entryway while they waited for Hope to return, as if she were prepared to bolt at any moment and wanted a convenient location to make her escape. It struck Ryan for the first time that Mel was uncomfortable to the point of prickliness sitting in a room that was almost negligently elegant and grand. Like him, she clearly was not accustomed to being in such a place.

"I have experience with guys like that at my job. You can usually spot them from a mile off." Ryan shrugged. "Sorry I didn't get there before he started hitting you."

Mel gave a bark of laughter. She looked at him as though he were some kind of bizarre alien artifact that had just fallen from the sky and still smoked and sizzled at her feet. It took him a moment to realize she'd been shocked by his apology.

"And then you helped us escape. Why?"

"You mostly have Hope to thank for that. On my part"—he shrugged—"seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

Mel stood slowly and came toward him, her head cocked as she examined him, her squinted eyelids deepening the lines at the corners of her brown eyes. She was still dressed in the robe and riding boots she'd worn to perform in the Slip and Whip. They'd left the rest of the women at the Marlborough Club with a concerned-looking Addie Sampson. The last glimpse Ryan'd caught of Hope's colorful friend she'd been bustling about her private boudoir, barking out orders to maids for towels and hot water and personally seeing to the women's cuts and bruises.

Ryan had asked Hope on their hurried flight to Prairie Avenue to keep their presence secret from the household, including her father, for the time being. She'd agreed, although he thought she was so overwhelmed by the circumstances to question his motives. Hope had snuck them into the house by a side door that Ryan hadn't even discovered existed yet in the early twenty-first century. She'd led them quietly down the back stairs of the darkened mansion, pausing at one point and lifting a finger to her lips as they crossed the foyer. The chandelier in the enormous formal entry hall had been lit, as though to entice the missing mistress of the household back home.

Ryan had seen a light shining beneath a swinging door, which he knew from his own time period led to the kitchen, pantries and back stairs—the servants' portion of the house.

But no one, including the awake, concerned servants, had observed them as Hope led them to the drawing room and whispered for them to wait until she returned.

"Why'd you
really
do all that stuff back there at the Sweet Lash?" Mel asked presently, a small smile playing around her mouth.

"Why'd you stop Diamond Jack from shooting me?" Ryan asked. Mel had given Hope and him a breathless description of what had occurred in the viewing room at the Sweet Lash as the three of them hurried through the dark night, leaving the seedy Levee District behind.

Mel's grin deepened. Ryan realized he'd never seen her smile before—at least in any genuine sense. The single dimple in her right cheek made her look about fifteen years younger. Ryan squinted at her in disbelief.

"Ramiro?"

Mel gave him a "what's your problem, asshole?" look that only confirmed his sudden suspicion that Jim Donahue wasn't the only person he knew who had an existence in Hope's time period.

Son of a bitch,
this was amazing.

"What did you call me?" Mel asked suspiciously.

"Sorry. You just sort of reminded me of someone for a second."

She shook her head. "You're a strange man. Nice, but strange. And to answer your question, I stopped Jack because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

"Guess we're even, then."

"Guess so," Mel replied, suddenly looking more relaxed than Ryan had ever seen her.

They both glanced over when the drawing room door shut softly and Hope hurried into the room.

Ryan's eyes widened in amazement. It struck him for the first time that he'd never really seen her fully clothed. Seeing Hope in the garb of an early-twentieth-century gentlewoman sent another shock wave through him.

"What?" Hope whispered when she saw his face.

Ryan blinked, realizing he'd been gaping. She wore a long, checked tan-and-black skirt with a white ruffled sort of blouse that buttoned all the way up to her neck. Instead of spilling down her back her hair had been affixed to her head. With the black belt highlighting her tiny waist, the few loose curls around her cheeks and the snug, form-fitting white blouse, she looked fresh, feminine and thoroughly alluring.

"Nothing," Ryan replied, clearing his throat.

She drew a long, midnight blue velvet box from a deep pocket in her skirt. She opened the box and took out something that flashed with muted fires in the dim room.

"This is for you," Hope whispered, reaching out to Mel. "I have already told Addie you will bring it to her. Addie has helped me dispose of such things before when I needed funds for various projects. A jeweler she knows will give you a fair price, and you and the others will have some spending money to start anew."

Mel accepted what Hope offered. For several seconds she just stared at her hand. Her brown eyes flickered up to the portrait over the mantel. Abruptly she reached out, using one hand to grab Hope's wrist and the other to return the object into her palm.

; "What?" Hope asked in rising confusion. She gently pushed her hand back toward Mel but the older woman was unwilling to take what she offered.

"I may have been raised in an Indiana cornfield and been stupid enough to believe the lies Jack's man told me when I was sixteen years old, but I'm not a fool, Miss Stillwater."

Hope's gaze flickered over to Ryan uneasily as though asking for assistance in understanding. "I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you mean. I told you I would give you something to help you and the others financially—"

"So you're giving me
that?
Are you
mad,
girl?"

When Ryan saw Hope's slain expression he grabbed her hand and pried back her fingers.

An exquisite platinum, sapphire and diamond necklace lay across her palm like a supple, jeweled serpent— the same necklace that Hope's mother wore in the portrait.

"Hope ...
no,
honey."

Hope looked at Ryan, then at Mel and back to Ryan again. A look of grim determination suddenly overcame her face. She took the necklace from Ryan and shoved it at Mel's belly until she grunted and raised her hands reluctantly.

"Stones.
Rocks.
That's what they are. Do you think they mean more to me than human lives? Don't
tell
me they mean more to you," Hope challenged fiercely when Mel opened her mouth to protest.

"No. Of course not," Mel said after a stunned moment.

When Hope noticed the tough older woman's chastened expression she seemed to regret her aggressiveness. Her cheeks colored in embarrassment. "Don't worry. I still have my mother's sapphire earrings . .. and many other mementos of hers as well. Besides," Hope said, raising her chin proudly. "My mother would have approved wholeheartedly."

"With a daughter like you, miss, I'm sure she would have."

Ryan couldn't have said which woman looked more surprised or embarrassed by Mel's tender words.

"I'd best be getting back to the Marlborough Club, then," Mel muttered gruffly.

"I'll escort you to the coach house. It'll only take a moment for the groom to prepare the carriage—"

Ryan never got his protest off his tongue before Mel spoke resolutely.

"No. It's not a far walk, and I'll keep to the shadows just like we did on our way here. I don't want to make any more bother.
Please ..
." Mel said when Hope opened her mouth to argue. "You've done far too much for us already."

Hope didn't look happy about the proposal, but Ryan said nothing when she looked to him to intervene. He sensed how difficult it was for Mel to sit in this rich room and accept Hope's lavish act of charity. He wouldn't argue Hope's case in this particular circumstance. Knowing what he knew about Ramiro's character made him even more certain that Mel would feel miserable if she were forced to ride in the grand carriage for the twelve blocks to the Marlborough Club.

"Let me at least get you a coat, then," Hope conceded when she saw that Mel wouldn't waver and Ryan would not plead her cause.

Mel met Ryan's eyes and nodded once in thanks before she followed Hope, off to start a different—hopefully better—life than she'd had under the hands of Diamond Jack Fletcher.

When Hope returned a moment later after showing Mel out, Ryan was waiting for her by the door. He grabbed her hand and spun her into his arms.

"Ryan!" she exclaimed softly, her tone slightly scandalized, before he covered her mouth with his.

"Yes?" he said a moment later when he raised his head. He studied her bemused, shadowed face. "Just because you've donned the clothes of a lady doesn't mean I'm not going to kiss the hell out of you every chance I get, witch. I remember what you look like in that excuse for a nightgown. I know what you look like naked—the knowledge is burned into my brain, in fact. So don't plan on getting all proper and ladylike with me now."

Her dark eyes went wide before a grin curved her lips. Ryan couldn't unglue his eyes from the luscious confection of Hope Stillwater's smile.

"The social proprieties between men and women must be very different in the year 2008

compared to now," she said a tad nervously.

Ryan's brow crinkled in puzzlement when he saw her color deepen. "Hope, are you forgetting the things we've done together?"

Her mouth fell open in disbelief, apparently at the fact that Ryan had just been bold enough to mention that they'd had carnal knowledge of one another in the refined atmosphere of the drawing room.

"Are you referring to .. . to . .." When Ryan just stared at her, his confusion probably writ large on his face, she found it in herself to continue in a nearly inaudible whisper. "Those things happened in the bedroom, Ryan. This is not the
bedroom."

He just stared at her in amazement before he grinned. How strange. Hope glanced warily around the room as if she thought

morally upright, scandalized denizens were going to crawl out of the woodwork at any moment, preaching and pointing their fingers at her accusingly. God, it was going to be a bitch of a challenge to take her to the year 2008.

But challenge or not, he needed to get her there.

He nipped at the shell of her ear and felt her shiver.

"I was wondering when you were going to start acting like an early-twentieth-century woman. Is this modest streak the reason you wouldn't allow me to go to your bedroom with you?"

"Ryan, in my day and age, it would be very ungentlemanly for a man to speak of my bedroom. Even to
think
of my private sanctuary would be considered ... unseemly," Hope murmured as she turned her head and nuzzled his cheek while he kissed her ear and neck.

Her soft sigh and warm breath caused his skin to roughen in excitement.

"I've made love to you in your bedroom, Hope. I
live
in your bed-oom. Your bedroom is
my
bedroom," Ryan whispered next to her ear. "Don't you think we might suspend the typical formalities?" The return of the mischievous sparkle to her eyes made him unduly happy. "I suppose so, considering the highly unusual state of circumstances."

He lifted his head and plucked at her upturned lips. "So let's go to your bedroom then."

"Ryan, I can't think about
that
now! I have to go to my father. should go this moment. I saw his lights on when I snuck up to my room and I heard voices coming from his suite. I think he's conversing with the
police.
I'm sure the coachman has long ago in-formed him that I never met him at the carriage. My father must be frantic with worry."

"Hope, listen to me. This is important." Ryan tightened his hold on her, feeling her skirt press against his thighs along with layers of other material beneath it. He would have thought he wouldn't like the sensation of so much fabric separating him from her. Instead he found himself getting aroused by knowing that her warm, responsive body resided amidst all those swishy, feminine ruffles.

As if she were a succulent edible carefully wrapped in silk and lace.

And so much more tasty for it—

He dragged his mind off his dirty thoughts when he saw how Hope solemnly regarded him with her huge, dark eyes. He loved all of her moods, but when she turned all somber on him, she was downright irresistible.

"Let's go to your bedroom first. I need to look at the mirror."

He saw the convulsive movement at her elegant throat as she swallowed. "You . . . you're going to leave now, aren't you?"

"Yes. I have to."
So do you,
he thought privately.

"Would you not like to meet my father first?" she asked hopefully.

Ryan glanced down bemusedly at his bare chest. Addie Sampson had asked one of the men who worked for her to give him his coat, but it was too small for him and he couldn't button it. "I'm hardly dressed for a social call, Hope. And it'd be awkward explaining my presence here. He's likely to believe I had something to do with your kidnapping."

She scowled. "I'd tell him that you saved me, of course! Do you think he wouldn't believe his own daughter? My father and I are very close. We share one mind on most topics."

Ryan ran his hands along her back and side, soothing her pique. "I just don't think it's the ideal time, beauty."

Hope dropped her chin to her chest so that all he could see of her for a moment was the pale part of her hair and the mass of soft, coiling curls pinned to her head. The scent of gardenias wafted up to his appreciative nose.

"No. I don't suppose it is the ideal time. All right, we'll go to the mirror," she whispered weakly.

They extinguished the lights and moved down the darkened