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Auburn considered that as she got out of the car. “Be careful when you take her out. Remove the entire carrier and bring it inside. I don’t have a crib, but she can sleep in her carrier if she’s comfortable, at least for the time being. We can make her a nice, soft pallet on the floor if we need to.”
Auburn watched as he picked up the carrier, handling it as if the baby were gold. A deep breath escaped her. Maybe he was telling the truth; most single men probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have a baby thrust upon them. And he didn’t look exactly scary. If anything, he was eye candy, the kind of man women would jump all over to have his child.
Unlocking the door to her apartment, Auburn said, “Back to your name.”
“Dillinger Kent.” He waited beside her, curious as she opened the door. “What kind of place is this?”
“My name’s Auburn McGinnis,” she said calmly, closing the door behind them, “and this is called a penthouse. Is that what you’re asking?”
He seemed overwhelmed. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding tired as he carefully set the baby down. “Have you ever had a dream that felt like it was real?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m going to get out of this costume. Make yourself at home. There’s a powder room down the hall.”
“Powder room?”
Maybe his family called them something else. “A place to freshen up.”
He nodded, saying nothing more as he sank onto the sofa, his gaze riveted on the baby once again. She slept peacefully in her car seat carrier, oblivious to any change in her fortunes.
Auburn went to take off her stage makeup, and when she returned, the cowboy was sound asleep on her sofa, sitting up. He was truly delicious. If a woman liked her men hot, protective and dark-haired, this one had all the right stuff.
He also might be a baby thief. She ignored her sudden awareness of how wonderfully chiseled his features were, locked her bedroom door and went to bed. In the morning, she’d figure out what to do about the cowboy, and the baby.
AUBURN AWAKENED, AWARE of someone in the bedroom with her. She blinked tired eyes, coming straight awake as she realized the cowboy was beside her bed. “Eee!” she shrieked, jumping out from under the sheet and flipping on the light. “What are you doing in here?”
He seemed as startled as she was. “I just came to tell you that the baby wants something.”
Auburn clutched her nightshirt close to her. “How did you get in here?” She was positive she’d locked the door. It was locked now. She turned frightened eyes on the handsome stranger.
“I walked in.” He looked at her strangely. “I’m sorry. I should have knocked.”
“Yes, you should have!” Auburn glared at him. “And why are you telling me that the baby wants something?”
“Because I don’t know what she wants!” he snapped. “I’ve never had a baby before!”
Auburn opened the door and swept past him to pick up the child. “How long have you had her?”
“Just a few minutes before I met you. I think.”
She took the baby from the carrier, handing her to Dillinger, who seemed as surprised as the child. She quit crying for the moment. “Look,” Auburn said over her shoulder as she went to prepare a bottle, “when the baby cries, she wants to be fed, probably about every three hours or so. She’ll want her diaper changed, and you’ll be in charge of that. Then she’ll want to be cuddled and burped, and you’ll be in charge of that, too.” She handed him the bottle. “I’m not in charge of any of this. It’s not my baby.”
“Mine, either, but I like her.” He took the bottle, cradled the baby and sat down on the sofa.
Amber watched, curious. She knew something about the care of children, certainly. She’d volunteered in the church nursery; her family often had toddlers running around from different branches of the family. But this cowboy didn’t seem that well versed in holding a baby or feeding one, because it took him a few seconds to get the bottle just right so that the little one settled down enough to drink.
He wasn’t making it up, Auburn realized. This wasn’t his baby, and there were no Amber Alerts on the news last night. “Who gave her to you?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. She was left on my porch. Which was a strange thing to do, because it had to be all of twenty degrees outside.”
It was fifty-five in Dallas. Auburn shook her head. “Where do you live?”
“Christmas River.”
“Texas?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
She pulled her iPhone from her purse, searching the Internet for the town. A chill swept over. Nothing. It didn’t exist. “There’s no such place.”
He shook his head at her. “Of course there is. I have a ranch there.”
“Is there a nickname the town goes by?”
“It’s Christmas River,” he insisted.
She looked up the name Dillinger Kent, Christmas River. Her heart felt like it completely stopped. On a Web site of a Texas historical society there was a reprint of what looked like an old newspaper article.
Notorious gunslinger Dillinger Kent shot and killed one of the most infamous stagecoach robbers of all time, Harmon Keith, outside of Carson City today.
The date on the article was May 16, 1888. “What’s your real name?”
The baby stopped sucking on the bottle for an instant, then resumed. Dillinger looked at her. “I told you.”
“No, you gave me a name of a gunslinger from the 1880s.” There were no other Dillinger Kents listed, though she could check Facebook next. She tapped the Web address in quickly. Nothing.
“I was a gunslinger,” he said, “but I gave it up when I took a wife.”
Great. He was married. Auburn should have known. The whole story was bogus. He’d had some kind of spat with his wife, snatched the baby and took off.
Auburn backed into the bedroom doorway. This was a complication she totally didn’t need.
Chapter Two
Dillinger was worried. Something was badly wrong. Either he was having a terrible dream or…well, he didn’t know what else this could be. But something wasn’t good. One minute he’d picked a baby up off his porch, and the next thing he knew, he was in another century. And when he’d woken up to the baby’s cries and wondered how to soothe her, Auburn’s name had popped into his mind—although she didn’t seem like the type who would know a whole lot about babies—and he’d found himself inside her bedroom.
Just like that.
Right now she was staring at him with an expression of distrust and maybe even regret, for which he couldn’t blame her. No woman of decent family took a man into her home—a man with whom she wasn’t acquainted—and then was happy he’d materialized in her bedroom.
They were on bad footing here. She didn’t like him, and he needed her.
He had to convince her to help him.
“You’re married,” she said flatly. “Did you kidnap that baby from your wife? Did you have an argument?”
“No. My wife is dead.” He looked to see some sympathy in her expression, but if anything, Auburn appeared even more horrified. She had the same expression on her face that the people of Christmas River wore when they saw him, as if he were no better than a common murderer.
While he might have been known to gun down a man, he had never treated a woman with anything but respect. And he’d handled his beloved Polly as if she were a china doll. “I didn’t kill my wife,” he said dully.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You didn’t have to,” he muttered. The baby in his arms hesitated again, searching his face for a few moments before continuing with her peaceful feeding. Something about the little one calmed him, made him feel a connection he couldn’t quite understand and yet welcomed. This baby had brought him here. “You and me,” he told the child, “we’re sticking together.”
He heard a sigh and glanced back up at the woman framed in her bedroom doorway. She was prettier without cosmetic artifice. He guessed she had to wear it for the theater production in which she performed—another bad sign, of course. Women who made their living on the stage weren’t in the same class as women who married and kept a home for a husband. But as a gunslinger, he’d lived far outside the norms of convention, too.
Still, he wished a woman of high standards had found him, for the sake of the baby. The woman wore a long T-shirt that read I’m Shakespeare’s Girl, which wasn’t possible because Shakespeare had lived and died in a previous time, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If she were, in fact, acquainted with Shakespeare in some way, she’d have to be able to travel through time like a ghost, which simply wasn’t possible.
At least he hadn’t thought it was.
“What are you going to do with that baby? And what’s her name?”
It hadn’t occurred to him that the warm bundle needed a name other than The Baby, which was how he thought of her. He studied her round face, big, blue eyes, sweet button nose. “Her name is Rose,” he said quickly, “and she is my…my daughter.” He glared at Auburn. “I will protect her and raise her as if she’s my very own.”
Auburn shook her head. “You have to turn her in to the authorities.”
Oh, he knew all about the authorities. There’d be no fair shake for him and Rose with them. “Just let me sleep with her on this divan,” he said, “and I’ll be on my way tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. I need to be moving on myself. However, just a warning, Dillinger,” she said. “The next woman you meet is going to ask the same questions I have. Eventually, you’ll be caught.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Rose finished her bottle, so he lifted her up to his chest. She gave a satisfying, unladylike belch, which also made him laugh. “Wouldn’t that be rich? Hanged because I’m guarding a child?”
“Hanged?” Auburn frowned. “Isn’t that a little dramatic?”
He didn’t know. “I’m tired,” he finally said. Tired of being tempted by long legs and immodest thoughts about a woman who wasn’t his wife. “Rose and I thank you for your hospitality, and your help. We won’t trouble you past the morning.”
“Fine, bud. Whatever you say.” She yawned and grasped the doorknob. “I’d turn you in to the police, but I don’t want to be found right now myself. You seem like you have that baby’s best interests at heart, and enough money to take care of her, so I’m not going to ask any more questions. All I ask is that you don’t come into my room again. Okay? If you need something, you can give a shout, but no more of the lock trick. It’s kind of stalkerish.”
It was his turn to frown. “You’re not my type,” he said. “You need have no fear of anything untoward from me.”
She looked at him. “Glad we understand each other.”
They didn’t, but it wasn’t important. “Good night,” he said, and busied himself changing Rose’s diaper. It was going to be a struggle, but he’d watched Auburn change one, and the plastic tapes didn’t seem as challenging as firing a gun at a moving target. Rose wiggled and he taped her leg, so he had to start over. He tried not to fumble under Auburn’s scrutiny—he could tell the whiskey-haired woman didn’t completely trust him with the baby.
And then he felt the strangest sensation run through him, like cold on a hot summer day, and a tingling that ran all over him in the worst kind of way—as if a ghost had just walked over his grave.
HE HATED DILLINGER KENT. He was going to kill the gunslinger the second he tracked his murdering carcass down. Pierre Hartskill stood in the ranch house where Dillinger lived, eyeing the place where his sister had been trapped in a loveless marriage. A few logs in the fireplace were charred, the embers below still gray and smoldering as if Dillinger had left in a hurry. Maybe he knew Pierre was on his way to kill him. Perhaps a black angel guarded Dillinger from reaping his just desserts, forewarning him of his impending death. Pierre wasn’t afraid of the reputed gunslinger. Fear was not an option, nor was mercy.
He was going to run him down as Dillinger had Polly, and then he was going to put a bullet through him. And no angel was going to save him.
On the writing desk lay a golden earring. Pierre recognized it. Polly had worn them often, loving the feel of the tiny bells as they danced against her skin. He picked the earring up with cold-chapped fingers, and gave it a shake to hear the bells tinkle again.
And from somewhere faraway, yet loud enough to seem as if it came from this very room, Pierre heard a man cry out.
AUBURN GASPED AS THE cowboy let out a yell of surprise and suddenly went airborne. Thank heaven he’d put the baby on her pallet! He tossed around violently in the air before landing on the couch. He lay still, gasping for breath, crumpled in his long duster, his boots hanging over the edge of the sofa.
“Are you all right?” Auburn wasn’t sure if she should touch him or stay far away. Dillinger was a funny color, his face ashen, as if he might be sick any second. She’d be sick if she’d gotten tossed around like that—she didn’t even like to ride the superdizzying rides at Six Flags.
“I’m fine,” he groaned.
“You’re not fine! What the heck did you just do?” He seemed too sick to harm her, so she approached him, peering down at his prone body.
“A lady doesn’t swear,” he said, groaning again.
“And a man doesn’t fly around a room. I suggest you explain that particular magic trick before I decide to call the law on you, buddy,” she said sternly. “And don’t you dare tell me not to swear!”
He tried to sit up, but failed. “No law. Please.”
Well, she wouldn’t call the law on him—not yet—but she didn’t want him doing that weird levitation again. “Hey, do you want a drink of water?”
“Just take care of the baby,” he said quietly. And then passed out.
“Of all the nerve!” Auburn stared at both of them, sleeping like, well, babies, and a little pity slid into her heart. The man was too big to sleep on the tiny rental furniture, and he was pretty tangled up in that duster. He couldn’t be comfortable. Carefully, she tugged his legs off the sofa so that he was on his back, hanging over one edge, sure, but at least he wasn’t in a ball any longer. “You’re weird,” she told him, but he didn’t move. So she dragged the blanket and comforter off her bed and settled down on the floor beside the sofa next to the baby. “You have a scary daddy,” she told Rose, but the funny thing was, Auburn wasn’t really afraid of Dillinger anymore.
She was afraid for him.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER THE sound of knocking startled Auburn awake. If she hadn’t been deeply asleep, she might have thought twice about opening the door, but she was operating on autopilot. She woke up in a hurry when the security guard peered at her.
“You left your car lights on,” he said. “Thought you might want to know.” His gaze widened as he caught sight of the cowboy on her sofa and the baby on the floor.
“Yes, thank you,” Auburn said, hastily trying to close the door. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
He was mentally cataloging the strange scene in her living room. This was trouble, since she didn’t want any details left behind for an ex-fiancé, who surely had people looking for her. “Thank you,” she said again, more curtly this time, and closed the door.
Locking it, she took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. Wondered why simply running out on a bad idea like a wedding had to be so worrying. She should never have said yes in the first place, should never have allowed her parents to make her feel that she had to find her Prince Charming.
“What are you afraid of?” Dillinger asked, and Auburn jumped.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, grabbing her keys from her purse. “What makes you say such a silly thing?”
He sat up, shrugged. “Just seems that I’m not the only one with secrets.”
“No, but you are the only one who can make himself spin around in the air.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gazed at him. “Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
She circled a finger in the air. “Your levitation trick.”
He gave her a strange look, as if he figured she was crazy. “I’ve been asleep on the sofa.”
He didn’t remember. Chills ran over Auburn’s skin. Yet she hadn’t imagined it. “I’m going to go turn off my car lights. Then you and I should probably talk.”
Shrugging again, he pulled his hat low over his face. She took that as a masculine sign of agreement and left to turn off the car lights before her battery died. A dead car was the last thing she needed, because she had a prickly sensation that it was time to hit the road.
The only question left was whether she took companions with her or left them to their own confused journey.
