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I never wanted to stop kissing her.
Maybe time could just stand still. Just stay right here. Right now. And we could go on kissing forever.
She put her arms around my waist and leaned into the kiss.
With a groan, I deepened the kiss. My tongue light brushed her lips and they opened for me.
I touched my tongue to the roof of her mouth and our breath mingled into one.
“Stay with me,” I said, my lips against hers.
“Yes,” she said and I kissed her again.
I wanted this woman like I’d never wanted a woman before.
I wanted to keep her with me. And I would do whatever it took to make that happen.
Shoving away the lingering questions I had about how that might happen, I lost myself in her lips.
The grandfather clock chimed the hour. Nine o’clock.
It was nine o’clock. Time for bed. If I didn’t stop now and escort her to the guest room, I might never be able to let her go.
But a lady needed her beauty rest and I didn’t want to be anything less than a perfect gentleman with her.
She was far too important to do anything less.
“It’s late,” I said.
“It’s only nine o’clock.”
I kissed her on the tip of the nose.
“You’re not making this any easier,” I said.
“Would you rather?” she asked.
“Unlike your future,” I said, lightly kissing her lips, then pulling away. “I want to take my time. To savor every moment we have together.”
“Okay,” she said, but she didn’t release the hold she had around my waist.
I gently removed her arms from around me.
“As much as I don’t want to,” I said. “I have to let you get some sleep.”
She nodded, but her lips were swelling and her eyes were hooded. No. She was definitely not making this any easier.
“Juliette,” I said.
“You’re right,” she said, as I got to my feet and pulled her with me.
I pulled her against me and, with our arms wrapped around each other, we just held each other.
The crickets chirped, calling for rain and a dog howled in the distance. A door closed somewhere inside the house.
“Juliette,” I said again.
“Hmm.”
“We have the rest of our lives together.”
CHAPTER 44
JULIETTE
George’s words penetrated the haze around my brain.
The rest of our lives.
I took a step back and looked up into his eyes.
It was dark and I could barely see him, but he was smiling at me.
I nodded and swallowed thickly.
This was what I wanted.
It was what I wanted, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself just yet.
Yet he was what I wanted.
I had no doubt about that.
His kiss was gentle and firm and so all consuming.
We couldn’t stay out here all night.
Already, a light fog was settling in and it was muggier than usual.
It would rain tonight.
The rest of our lives.
I needed to sort that out in my head.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand and leading me toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. It was especially loud in the unusual quietness. No distant traffic. No airplanes. No low hum of an air conditioner.
A deafening silence.
“You’re going to sleep in the guest room tonight. It’s not proper for you to sleep in the cottage. Besides, it’s a mess with the renovations.”
I nodded. That made perfect sense.
As we went inside, another rumble of thunder broke the silence.
We walked through the foyer, past the grandfather clock, and up the stairs.
He stopped at the guest room—my room—and true to his nature as a gentleman, took my hands and kissed my forehead.
I closed my eyes, willing him to kiss me again. But he didn’t.
“I’ll see you in the morning, my love,” he said, opening the door.
I opened my eyes and looked into his smiling eyes.
“In the morning then,” I said, stepping through the bedroom door.
He closed the door behind me.
I stood staring at the closed wooden door.
Disappointment washed through me, leaving me spent.
What had I expected?
I’d come all the way back through time specifically to be with this man.
Perhaps I’d expected him to see this as the grand gesture that it was and sweep me away into happily ever after.
I shook my head.
My sister was the romantic. Not me.
Yet I’d fallen into the trap of having high expectations from a man.
He was different from men of the future, yet in some ways he was the same.
Perhaps human nature was human nature, after all. No matter the time.
I walked across the room and fell onto the bed.
George was a most confusing man.
He said we had the rest of our lives together and he kissed me like there was no tomorrow.
Yet he left me standing here as though we were no more than casual friends.
He was only being respectful.
I’d told him he was a gentleman. And he was living up to that.
Had I conveyed too high an expectation?
I pressed a palm against my eyes. I was thinking too much.
This was the kind of thing I’d talk to my sister about.
What would Machala advise me to do about George?
She had supported me in my decision to try to come back in time.
Maybe she hadn’t really believed it was possible.
Maybe I hadn’t really believed it was possible.
She’d supported my decision, but I wasn’t sure she could have stopped me.
CHAPTER 45
GEORGE
I left Juliette in the guest room and went back downstairs to pour myself a whiskey.
Mon Dieu.
I tossed the liquid back and set the empty glass on the counter.
A bolt of lightning flashed in the distance, breaking the darkness for a split second. There was a brutal storm headed this way.
That meant there was going to be clean up tomorrow.
Juliette was not making my life easy.
She was, in fact, making things very very hard for me.
I was trying to be a gentleman. I truly was.
Juliette was my guest. My guest from the future.
She was, of course, more than a guest, but if my mother even remotely suspected that I was being too forward with her, she’d twist my ear.
It did not matter one bit that I was a grown man. She was a strong-willed woman who expected everyone to give their best and if they failed to do that, she set them back on the straight path.
I followed my father’s advice and chose my battles with her carefully. Now that I knew she was from the future, everything made so much more sense.
And now there was Juliette.
I was expected to be a gentleman. Yet at the same time I couldn’t get enough of her.
Her kisses shook me to the core.
Now that I’d gotten a taste of her, I couldn’t get enough.
And I was fairly certain that I would never get enough of her.
So I needed to keep my wits about me. The only way to do that was to keep my damn hands to myself.
I filled my glass again and took a sip, slowly this time. It was good whiskey. Whiskey to be savored.
The kind of whiskey that helped a man sort out his troubles.
I had only one trouble at the moment.
I was besotted with Juliette.
Rain splashed against the window. Hail. It was hailing.
The storm outside mirrored the storm going on in me.
I would not go back to her room.
I would do the gentlemanly thing and let her get her beauty rest. Of course, if she got any more beautiful, I wasn’t sure what I would do.
Standing at the tall French window framed with emerald velvet drapes, I watched the storm raging outside.
There was really only one answer. And it was simple enough.
I’d had the thought before, but now the seeds had taken root and required action.
There was only thing I could do to solve this whole situation.
I was going to have to marry her.
CHAPTER 46
JULIETTE
The storm had seemed to rage for hours.
I’d lain awake listening to the wind, worrying that there might be a hurricane, or even that there might be a tornado.
But after it had occurred to me… finally… that if the house had been blown away, it would have been in the house’s history.
And with the knowledge that the house had not blown away in a storm, I’d fallen asleep.
I’d slept late. It wasn’t unusual for me to sleep late. My family owned and ran a bar after all.
When I’d fallen asleep, it had been muggy.
The house’s air in the past felt different because it wasn’t filtered through an air conditioner.
But now, following the rain, it was what I could only call cleaner. Less muggy.
The grandfather clock chimed the hour, echoing through the house, reminding me that I had slept until nearly noon.
It was odd that George hadn’t come to the door to wake me. He’d said he would see me in the morning.
He was probably just letting me sleep. He was thoughtful that way.
I stretched from head to toe. I had a little bit a headache over my eyes. I could use a good cappuccino from Starbuck’s. But I’d settle for just about any coffee George might have.
Sitting up, I put my feet on the floor.
I needed to—.
Oh no.
I squeezed my eyes together tightly then slowly opened them.
Everything was different.
The armoire was gone.
And there was a door. A closet door perhaps. Where there hadn’t been a door when I’d fallen asleep.
Then I knew what else was different.
There was air conditioning.
Ok. So I was supposed to be in the garçonnière, not the main house.
I had the garçonnière for three days.
I must be in someone else’s room. The receptionist—Stacey—had said there were no rooms available in the main house.
So I was in someone else’s room.
Before going to sleep, I’d put on a long white gown I’d found in the armoire.
Thank God. Since there was nothing in this room for me to wear.
This explained why no one had bothered me this morning and why I’d slept so late.
George.
He was in the past again. Or rather I was in the future.
The sound of a motorcycle in the distance was odd and I almost didn’t recognize it at first.
I’d been in the past for such a short time, yet the quiet peacefulness had started to feel normal.
It was frightening how quickly I’d adapted to it. And how startling it was to be back here.
As far as George went, I’d have to think about that later.
Right now, I had to focus on what I needed to do.
If I started thinking about George, I wouldn’t be able to think about what I needed to do. Whatever that was.
Machala.
If I could get to the cottage, I could call my sister. She’d help me figure out what to do.
There was another problem though.
I had to walk barefoot wearing a long white nightgown through the house and down the path to the garçonnière.
At least, since I’d left my jeans and sweater in the past, I had other clothes at the cottage.
I straightened my shoulders. I had to do what I had to do.
CHAPTER 47
GEORGE
I’d spent longer in the fields than I had intended.
The sun was warm on my back as I rode toward the barn.
Today’s weather was markedly different from the storm that had raged last night.
In fact, that was why I had spent so long outside. Some of the little indigo flowers had been destroyed by the hail.
Enough, though, could be salvaged to make a decent crop.
That’s one thing my father had drilled into my head. Always plant extra. That’s how we’d ended up being the largest indigo provider in the area. Each year we planted extra.
Father was still out in the west field. Said he’d be in shortly.
I left my horse in the stable and walked toward the house.
I looked up toward the guest room, hoping for a sign of Juliette, but surely she would have gotten up by now and gone downstairs.
The better part of the day was already gone anyway.
Going in through the back door, I saw no sign of her in the dining room, the library, or the parlor so I headed upstairs to the guest room.
I knocked on the door and waited.
No answer, so I knocked again.
I cracked the door and called her name.
She wasn’t there. I knew already.
My heart beat hard against my chest as I stepped into the empty room.
Her pants and shirt had been neatly folded and left on the dresser. Not a surprise, since she’d started wearing dresses.
The bed was unmade, the linens left in a disarray.
I put a hand over my chin. Juliette hadn’t seemed like the kind of person who would leave her bed unmade.
I went over to the dresser and picked up her soft shirt. It was thick like a blanket. Thicker than most blankets actually.
As I set it down, I kicked something beneath the dresser.
Her boots.
She’d left her boots.
I had a bad feeling about this, but there was no need to be alarmed.
She was here somewhere.
But I hadn’t seen her outside in the flower garden and I hadn’t seen her downstairs.
I’d been out in the fields too long.
I headed down the hall to my mother’s room.
“Mother,” I said when she opened the door. “Have you seen Juliette?”
“No,” she said. “I thought she was at the garconnaire with you.”
“The garconnaire,” I said. “I didn’t look there.”
She looked at me questioningly and opened the door wide enough for me to follow her inside to her study.
“She slept in the guest room last night,” I said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to spend the night in my cottage.”
Mother sat down at her desk and ran a hand over the leather journal in front of her.
She was going to write this down. Mother wrote everything down. It was just what she did.
A shiver of dread ran down my spine.
“You really like this girl,” she said.
I gripped the back of the wooden chair nearest me.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to marry her.”
I hadn’t meant to tell her yet, much less to blurt it out like that.
Mother nodded slowly. There was something in her expression that told me she didn’t think that marrying Juliette was a good idea.
Mother rarely said negative things to me. She had done a good job raising both me and my sister, but as we became adults, she’d become more and more hands off and rarely passed judgement on our decisions.
At least not verbally. She had other ways of showing her disapproval. Little expressions she used. Or she wouldn’t say anything. That was a sure sign that she disagreed.
“But first I have to find her,” I said.
CHAPTER 48
JULIETTE
Fortunately the house was quiet as I slipped down the stairs.
There were no voices. Just the steady ticking of the grandfather clock.
It could have been really hard to explain and even embarrassing to be caught walking around in a long white gown, especially in the middle of the day.
The surprisingly cool wind whipped the dress around my legs.
I saw a wedding party gathered in a gazebo several yards away.
As I headed down the path to the garconnaire, I was pretty sure they didn’t see me.
A wind gust blew up a swirl of newly fallen oak leaves that crunched beneath my bare feet.
I hurried around the bend, reaching the garconnaire, and stepping inside.
It was warm inside, sheltered from the wind.
Rubbing my arms from the chill of being outside with no clothes other than the thin gown, I looked around the room.
My suitcase was there along with my jacket and my cell phone was on the charger next to the bed.
I didn’t remember leaving it there. Maybe housekeeping had done it for me. The bed had been made and there were fresh towels in the bathroom.
After a quick look around, I grabbed up my cell phone.
I had no calls or messages.
Although I didn’t exactly have an active social life, I expected at least one or two messages.
Maybe my sister or my parents.
Holding the phone, I sat down on the bed.
Machala would have told them where I was. I did not envy her trying to explain the whole time travel thing.
So since I was supposed to be back in time, no one had tried to contact me.
It was a strange feeling. Being back here.
I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be back in time.
With George.
I pressed my phone against my chin.
I wanted to call my sister, but at the same time I didn’t.
What I really wanted was to go back in time again. But I didn’t know how to do that.
I didn’t understand how it had happened to begin with, much less how to make it happen.
I was too out of sorts to think clearly.
Taking a deep breath, I unlocked my phone.
ME: Hey Machala. It worked. I went back in time. But now I’m back here again.
