The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance by Katherine Logan (comprehension books .TXT) 📗

“I don’t know about that, Ens,” he said. “That goes against everything I know about relationships, both serious and casual.”

She grabbed the Dopp kit, towel, and an antibacterial body wipe. “I know it’ll be a challenge. But you’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.” She marched into the trees, thinking they’d be headed toward a disaster if she still had the hots for him. For now, though, they were just friends, traveling companions, and a faux married couple.

But what if they stayed in the past for months or even years? Would that old spark ignite again?

19

Little Missouri River (1885)—Ensley

For the next two days, they followed the Little Missouri River and skirted the Badlands while they refined their backstories. Since they had JC’s canteen and her leather costrel, they could have taken a more direct route to Elkhorn Ranch, but they weren’t in a hurry.

They fell into a comfortable rhythm, talking about college and old friends. He shared stories about the lawyers in his firm and his office manager’s collection of thimbles, and she shared silly mistakes authors made in manuscripts.

It was easy and fun, and she enjoyed his company, but there was something about his life that didn’t ring true. Maybe she’d edited too many romance novels featuring wounded heroes and heroines, and nothing was black and white to her anymore, only multiple shades of gray. And JC had more shades than any hero she’d met in a manuscript. It wasn’t just the lack of information or the holes in his stories that concerned her. It was the brokenness that swam in his eyes when he stared off at the horizon.

Book editors sometimes had to play pseudo-psychoanalyst to get to the root of either writer’s block or character motivation, and she fell back on that role now.

Of course, she could be completely wrong, but she didn’t think so. Something awful happened to JC, and while he tried to forget it, the repression only made it worse. At least that was her (un)professional opinion.

For now, she’d leave it alone. Sometimes—only in the arms of a loving partner—can wounds heal. Since she didn’t have any firsthand knowledge, she had to rely on how characters in novels dealt with trauma and eventually recovered.

But JC wasn’t a character in a book. He was a living, breathing, sexy-as-hell male. As George Sand said, “Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.” Sand believed men didn’t want women to accept their faults. They wanted women who pretended they were faultless.

As for her, she would never pretend JC was faultless. But he was a good friend—a cool dude with smooth moves—and he proved his friendship hour after hour, mile after mile.

Late afternoon on the second day, they left the river to go around a forest instead of through it, trudged up steep paths on the red scoria buttes, past magpies perched on a buffalo skull, and finally emerged on the endless stretches of nearly level prairie.

JC stopped and consulted his map. Ensley lowered her hat, protecting her eyes from the sun beating down from a cloudless sky. Objects seem to shimmer and dance in the heat of the sun, and distances were hard to judge.

“According to this map, we’re close to the Elkhorn Ranch site.”

“How close?”

“A couple of miles.”

“Oh, Jesus. I’ve got to clean up.” She glanced around, looking for a private spot where she could strip down and wash and brush her hair. “I can’t meet TR looking like this.”

“Ens, you’re in the frontier. There’s no need to clean up.” He handed her the canteen, and after she took a long drink, he took one.

She smoothed down the front of her filthy shirt. She’d tried washing it, but it was so stained now, it would never come clean. “I hope I don’t go all fangirl over TR.”

“If you do, I’ll flip your circuit breaker.” He folded the map and returned it to the saddlebag. “You want an energy bar?”

“Are there any left?”

“A couple more.” He handed one to her. “If I’d known it was your favorite food, I would have packed more than a dozen.”

She broke the bar in half and gave the largest piece to him.

“You eat it. You really shouldn’t lose any more weight.”

She patted her belly while narrowing her eyes at him. She had dropped a few pounds, but how’d he know that? “We haven’t seen each other for a while. How do you know I’ve lost weight?”

He made a show of looking at her ass, grinning. “Your jeans are loose, and, as particular as you are, you’d never wear clothes that don’t fit.”

He was right about that. When she put on the jeans to go to dinner, they’d been skintight. Now they barely hung on her hips. If she lost any more weight, she’d need suspenders to hold them up. “I think they’re just loose because they’re stretched out and dirty.”

He had the decency not to laugh. “Yeah, right. Look, the MREs are supplementing your fish and rabbit diet. But you’re burning up all the calories you’re taking in, so you aren’t putting on any weight. You need to get to a place where you can rest and gain weight. You’ve got to stay healthy out here.”

“You want me to sit around and eat bonbons all day? Forget it. While I’m here, I plan to work.” She finished her half of the energy bar and brushed off her hands.

JC gave her the other half back, and while she eyed it for about two seconds, she took it without objecting.

JC continued, “I agree. You need to work, but that doesn’t mean physical labor. You love to write—or did when you were at Harvard. Write the next Great American Novel, Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands.”

“Several authors have already written that book, including my client.” Her former client, but she wasn’t ready to tell JC about getting laid off.

“Professor Whiteside’s book covered a decade. Yours should focus on something specific, like TR’s interest