Desperado (15 page)

“But if you have three condoms . . .” she said hesitantly. “I mean, three condoms is surely enough.”

He cast her a frown of utter disbelief. “Babe, three times wouldn't be nearly enough for me. Once I have you, I won't be able to stop at three times.”

“In one night?” Her mouth dropped open, and she hastily clamped it shut.

He laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, Prissy! You are so naive.” With a groan, he turned and pounded his forehead against the wall in frustration.

“Oh, Rafe,” she said behind him.

“Hush up, Helen. What I don't need now is your sympathy. What I need is your hot sex.”

A long silence followed his words.

Eventually, he turned around and saw that she'd already donned the damn nightgown again.

She peeked up at him, her face pink with embarrassment. In a low voice, she homed in irrelevantly on only one part of what he'd said. “My sex is
not
hot.”

He started to laugh then. It was a good thing, too, because otherwise, he might have cried.

H
elen awakened at dawn, as she always did. Her internal alarm clock apparently still operated, even in time-travel mode. Lying on her side, facing the window, she saw a bright orange sun rising on the horizon, portending another blazing day.

Rafe slept soundly behind her. Even with the rolled blanket that separated them, at his insistence, Helen was intensely aware of the man. His heat, his scent, his masculinity.

She couldn't imagine what had happened to her carefully controlled defenses last night, but she couldn't stop thinking about the night's events, either. How it felt to be kissed by Rafe's lips. How she had opened herself for his touch. She tried to remember ever feeling that way with Elliott, or any other man. She couldn't.

Sliding herself quietly off the bed, Helen looked down at Rafe. He slept on his stomach, arms thrown over his head with total abandon, boxer-clad legs spread slightly, face to the side. The long, luxuriant lashes of his closed lids fanned his face. He breathed softly through parted lips.

Helen's heart grew and grew with a strong, new emotion. She was drawn to him, always had been. She couldn't deny that. But why? Logically, there should be more things about him to repel her than attract. His maverick personality. His lack of patriotism. His greed. His crudity and constant teasing.

Oh, he was handsome, no doubt about that, but she was surrounded by men every day, many of them much better looking.

Intelligence? Hmmm. She'd always been drawn to a man with intelligence, and Rafe clearly fit that criterion. His reputation as a top-notch lawyer hadn't come easy.

Sexual chemistry? Yes, there was that. To the nth degree.

But, no, it was something else—perhaps the vulnerability that she always sensed in him over his ethnic background. His extreme sensitivity probably resulted from a lifetime of hurts she couldn't fathom. And the needful, yearning expression in his eyes when he watched her sometimes in an unguarded moment . . . Well, what woman wouldn't be flattered?

Helen shook her head in confusion, not sure she wanted to understand this thread that connected them. He was a dangerous man, dangerous to her well-planned military life, her well-planned future, her very well-being. Taboo. Off-limits. Not to be considered.

Still, Helen had something she needed to do for Rafe this morning, before he awakened. Dressing quickly, she took a few gold coins from the sack, strapped a holster and gun around her hips, and slipped out the door, locking it behind her.

Down on the empty street, she looked about, trying to locate Lily's Fandango Parlor.

“O
ooohm. Oooohm. Oooohm. Oooohm.”

Rafe awakened reluctantly from the best sleep he'd had in days.

Oh, no! Not again
. He buried his head under a pillow, trying to wipe out the sound.

“
Oooohm
. . . Oh, you're awake . . .
Oooohm
. . . Good . . . Oooohm . . . Give me a minute. . . .
Oooohm
. . . I only have two more sets to go. . . .
Oooohm
. . . I brought you coffee and a cinnamon bun. . . .
Oooohm
.”

His eyes shot open.
Where did she get coffee? Unless she'd gone out. She wouldn't! Would she?

He sat up, holding the pillow in his hand.

Helen sat all twisted into a pretzel at the bottom of the bed, facing the window, fully dressed in camouflage pants and green T-shirt, wearing his gun belt. A quick glance at the door showed the wooden brace was not in the same place he'd put it last night.

Yep, Helen had gone out this morning while he'd slept. The realization hit him in the gut like a sickening sucker punch.

“Oooohm. Oooohm. Oooohm. Oooohm.”

Angrily, he pitched the pillow.

“Oooohm. Oooohm. Ooooh—”

The pillow hit her smack in her chanting mouth.
Good!

“Why did you do that? I wasn't done,” she protested.

“Oh, you're done all right.” He stood abruptly.

She dodged out of his path and headed for the washstand, which was all of two feet away. Ignoring his grumbling, Helen took a handful of water from the china bowl and began to gargle, spitting into a brass bowl on the floor.

Gargle, spit. Gargle, spit. Gargle, spit.
“Glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . .”

He felt like fingernails were scraping across his eyeballs.

“Do you think we could buy a toothbrush and toothpowder today?” she asked blithely.
“Glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . . glug . . .”

Rafe crossed his eyes. His frayed nerves would surely break with one more “glug.”

“Glug . . . glug . . . gl—”

He grabbed her by the forearms and shook her, which was a big mistake. Her unconfined breasts moved under the T-shirt, drawing his eyes like an X-rated magnet.

He dropped his hands and turned away, fighting for composure. When he felt sure he could speak above a croak, he demanded, “Where did you go this morning?”

“Lily's Fandango Parlor.”

That was the last thing he'd expected. He jerked about and stared at her in astonishment. She was peering into a small, wavy mirror over the washstand, cleaning her teeth with a twig, oblivious to his outrage.

“What did you say?”

She put the twig down and faced him, a secretive, pleased look on her face. She'd pulled her hair back off her face into a ponytail, tied at the nape with a piece of lace from her gown. She would have looked like a little girl if it weren't for her lush, kiss-swollen lips.

He gulped.

“I went to Lily's. And you were right, it is a brothel.”

Oh, brother!

“Did you know that those women get fifty dollars for something called ‘Hair of the Dog'?”

He put both hands on his hips and grinned, despite his being upset.

Her eyes followed his hands to his hips, then dropped lower. Her head flew up like a rocket and her face turned beet red.

He was very pleased. So was a certain part of his body.

She made a slight coughing sound, then continued. “You should have seen the outfit one of the girls was wearing—pure Victoria's Secret. Anyhow, it was really hard to find Lily's because it didn't have a sign outside, and I had to go to Big John's and wake him up to give me directions. He's the one who gave me the coffee and cinnamon bun. So, you should be really grateful for all the trouble I went to.”

“Grateful? Grateful? Do you have any idea how dangerous it was to leave this room? And why the hell did you go to Lily's?”

Smiling, she reached into her back pocket, which only accentuated the outline of what had to be the most perfect breasts in all creation. He was afraid he might lose it right there on the spot.

“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.

L
et's make a deal . . .

A
fter 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 stomped 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.