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

stood and collected his mug and iPad. Then to David, he said, “I’m ready to go as soon as ye can reserve a helicopter.”

“Do ye want to take Tavis?” Davis asked.

Elliott thought a minute. He wanted to keep this as tight as possible, but Tavis was a former guardian and had a level of insight that neither Elliott nor David had. “Bring him along.”

David pulled out his phone and sent Tavis a text. A few seconds later, David’s phone dinged with a text message. “He’ll be ready in ten minutes.” Another message dinged. “Tavis says Remy is rehearsing with a band and wants to know if he’s needed.”

“Not this time.”

David sent another text, and a few seconds later, another message arrived. “Tavis will get a vehicle and be around the front in ten minutes.”

“I’ve got to talk to Meredith. I’ll meet ye in the car.” Elliott opened the door, glanced back at Penny, and, without saying anything else, nodded to her and left.

He found Meredith in the flower garden picking some nameless—to him—yellow and purple flowers. “Ye going to the spa?”

“In about thirty minutes,” she said. “I’m picking flowers for our bedroom. What are you doing? You’re wearing that expression that tells me you’re up to something, and you don’t want me to know about it.” She put the cutters in a basket and gathered up the handful of flowers. “Am I right?”

“Yes, my dear. Ye’re right. I’ll tell ye about it tonight.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not for me.”

“Great. Just great. Take David and Tavis. And don’t kill anybody.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “I promise not to kill anyone today.” He kissed her. “I love ye. Forever and a day.”

She smiled. “Same here. And I expect a full report tonight.”

He held her close to him for a few more seconds and then let go. “I’ll tell ye everything I know.”

He got as far as the door to the sunporch before Meredith said, “It’s about James Cullen. Isn’t it? I’ve had the strangest feeling all morning. He’s in trouble, Elliott. Go find him.”

22

Elkhorn Ranch (1885)—Ensley

Ensley’s body and mind slowly thawed as she eyeballed the man on the veranda.

That’s Teddy Roosevelt.

And then her new reality hit her with a wallop—not a pinch. She had time-traveled. JC had already told her so, but now there was no denying the truth. So, the question was, to what year?

Since both the ranch house and Roosevelt were here in the Badlands, it had to be the spring of 1885.

Proof positive.

That truth meant she could no longer hang on by bloody fingertips, hoping that the whole time travel bit was an illusion, a dream, a nightmare.

But there’s a trade-off, Ens.

She fastened JC with a hard stare. She’d learned early on to trust her sixth sense or ESP, and in the last few days, JC had voiced her deepest fears and loftiest dreams several times, even when they hadn’t previously discussed them.

With as much time as they spent together, it was inevitable that he’d weasel his way into her thoughts. She’d let him get away with it this time, but she refused to let him reside rent-free in her head. A girl had to have some privacy.

Silently, she said, Yes. There are trade-offs.

The man on the porch would be the twenty-sixth president of the United States—the living, breathing man—a man she could talk to about literature and the Badlands, about the past and the future, about hunting and conservation.

Roosevelt opened the door and stepped aside. “Come in, please.”

She didn’t break stride as she crossed the porch but stopped short of the threshold to use the boot scraper before stepping lightly into the sitting room.

TR closed the door and swept his arm back, welcoming them. “This isn’t as spacious as my residence on Madison Avenue in New York City, but it suits me. My partner likes to tell the story that he cut down fifty-three trees for this house, Dow cut down forty-nine, and I beavered down seventeen.”

“My wife beavered down a sapling. It wasn’t a pretty sight,” JC said.

To have found that sapling, JC must have searched every nook and cranny while following her trail. “Well, I did the best I could with limited tools.”

She pushed thoughts of JC searching for her aside and studied TR, looking for familiar mannerisms she’d seen in old movie clips, but at twenty-six he had yet to grow into the robust man who appeared in them. There was no barrel chest, or booming voice, or fist propped at his hip. He was pale and thin, and JC could easily span TR’s waist with his two thumbs and fingers.

“It’s lovely,” Ensley said. “And for the Badlands, it’s a mansion.” Her sense of smell pinged her brain and stomach with an overload of sensory information. “What’s that divine aroma? Venison?”

“Yes. I shot it this morning.” Roosevelt puffed out his chest. “Field dressed it and brought it back to Mrs. Sewall to slow cook with morel mushrooms and potatoes.”

Ensley’s mouth watered. She loved slow-cooked venison sprinkled with Everglades Cactus Dust seasoning and smothered with mushrooms, onion, garlic, and potatoes. If TR hadn’t already invited them to dinner, she’d have offered to wash dishes for the leftovers. She had one foot turned in the direction of the kitchen, but TR seemed to be lingering, studying JC, or as the saying goes, taking his measure.

She’d been to this site hundreds of times, but she’d only been able to imagine the look and feel—not the smell—of TR’s ranch house. The National Park Service rangers based their spiel on historical texts. According to them, TR’s partners in the cattle business, Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow, built the house over the winter of 1884. But no one knew for sure what had been inside. Now she did, but she couldn’t tell them.

Then write a firsthand account.

Sure. She could do that after dinner. In the meantime, while she waited for TR to finish sizing up JC, she could scribble a few editorial notes. She hoped JC had