Avalanche Creek Read online

  Brice took a seat near the window on the Main Street side, his back to the wall and out of the sun. Not only from there could he see anything in the restaurant, but he could also watch the traffic on the boardwalk outside and in the wide Main Street.

  He opened his journal and titled the page with the date, August 18, 1901, and his location and the time. Then he closed the journal and placed the pen on top of it and just sat back.

  He really, really needed to calm down. But in all his life he had never felt so alone and helpless. He felt more like he had been dumped in a distant country.

  This traveling in time and crossing timelines was very real. And the world around him was very real. The only thing that made it different than his timeline was his presence and Duster’s presence.

  And if neither of them did anything to really change this timeline, it would remain the same as their own completely.

  Of course, with infinite amount of timelines, in some timelines he and Duster would change something.

  But that didn’t really matter. With an infinite number of timelines and every person making thousands of choices every day, no one timeline was the right timeline. Brice knew that from his math.

  But hard to convince his surface mind.

  A waiter soon took his order for a beef sandwich and an iced tea with real ice chipped off of stored ice two stories down in cool cellars under the hotel. It was expensive, but as Duster had convinced him, they could afford it without a problem. Brice needed to act like a man of means.

  You don’t stay for a few months in one of the most expensive suites in the new state and not act the part.

  Brice was about to open his notebook again when a very short, and very stunning woman with bright red hair and light skin came into the restaurant alone.

  She had her hair up and never even looked around, just straight ahead.

  One of the waiters bowed slightly to her, and she smiled and nodded her thanks.

  The smile about took Brice’s breath away.

  He watched her every move as the waiter showed her to a table on the far wall, directly across from Brice, and held the chair for her until she was seated.

  She couldn’t be any more than a few inches over five foot tall, and from what Brice could see, her hair was held fashionably on the top of her head with some decorative barrettes made of some sort of bone.

  She also looked uncomfortable and slightly unsure of herself.

  She had been carrying a small journal and a fountain pen and placed both on the table in front of her.

  Then she took a deep breath that made Brice catch his breath.

  He couldn’t remember when he had had a reaction to just seeing a woman like this. He had had his share of girlfriends through college, but most had found him dull, since his focus was on his studies so much.

  And he had never been much of a drinker and he found parties boring to the extreme. So what few women in college who had made it clear to him that they were interested soon dropped their interest after a couple months of fun sex.

  So this reaction to a woman was unusual for him.

  And then he realized exactly where he was.

  It was 1901.

  This woman had been dead in his timeline for half a century, if not more. She was more like the age of his great-great grandmother.

  And besides that, he would have no idea how to meet a woman of this time.

  He just shook his head and opened the journal and marked down his thoughts.

  He hoped she was staying for at least a few days. Her beauty from a distance would give him the distraction he needed to get calmed down and thinking about math.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  August 18th, 1901

  Dixie’s Timeline

  BONNIE HAD LEFT two days before, heading to San Francisco, and today was the first day Dixie felt brave enough to even leave her room and go down and eat in the hotel dining room on her own. She had decided that lunch would be the safest and less crowded of the times. And so far she had been right. Only a few people were in the dining room and she didn’t look at them.

  She had been taking her meals in her room and just letting herself relax and watch the town and the street below her window. She hadn’t gotten her mind clear enough yet to even think about the math problem at hand, but she had a hunch that given a little more time, she would be bored enough and settled enough to do just that.

  She reached the dining room shortly after it opened and was greeted by a waiter that remembered her from the number of times she ate here with Bonnie.

  Dixie asked for a table facing the restaurant with her back to the wall and he showed her across the room to a wonderful table that also allowed her to see Main Street outside the big windows.

  The dining room was still cool, but she could tell that by dinner it would be too hot to eat here. Until the weather changed, she would take breakfast and lunch here, but not dinner.

  She placed her journal and pen on the table in front of her and took a deep breath to get herself to relax. Then she looked around at the others in the dining room with her.

  An elderly couple clearly of means sat together near the front windows not talking. Two men were engaged in a hushed conversation at another table, more focused on what they were saying than anything else around them.

  And against the far wall directly across from her sat a man with short brown hair and chiseled features that took her breath away. He was bent forward slightly writing in a journal. He had on a clearly expensive suit and wore it like he had been born in it.

  Her breath seemed to catch in her throat and she could feel her heart start to race. Not out of fear, but out of excitement just looking at him.

  She stared at him for a moment, stunned at how strong her reaction to him was. She had to force herself to just take a breath. And she could feel her face getting flushed.

  She had never felt that kind of reaction to just seeing a man before, let alone a man who, in her timeline, had been dead for more years than she wanted to think about.

  Bonnie had given her no pointers at all about meeting men in this time period. And just the idea of that scared Dixie more than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t any good at meeting men in her own time. What would she talk about with a man born in the eighteen hundreds?

  But still, she had never had that kind of reaction to just seeing a man before. She flat couldn’t look away from him, and didn’t want to.

  The waiter approached the man and set down a glass of tea with real ice chips in it. Bonnie had her order that as well every time they had come in here because it was a status thing. Ice in the Old West in the summer was expensive.

  So clearly the man had a lot of money.

  He glanced up at the waiter and smiled and Dixie damn near fainted. The man was more handsome than anyone she had ever seen. And his smile showed perfect, white teeth and reached his eyes, as if he smiled often.

  Then he did what she had not expected. As he took a sip of his iced tea, he looked at her.

  She had no idea what was appropriate, but she just couldn’t look away, and it seemed he couldn’t either.

  Finally, after what seemed like too long a time, and yet was far too short a time, she forced herself to look down at her leather journal. She could see out of the corner of her eye that he almost spilled his tea trying to put the glass down.

  She knew her face was flushed red and that he could see it since she had such damned white skin.

  What was happening? How could she fall at first sight for a man in 1901?

  Did jumping timelines cause sane judgment to fly out the window?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  August 19th, 1901

  Brice’s Timeline

  AFTER THE EYE contact with the stunning woman across the dining room, Brice decided that for dinner his best option was to just avoid the dining room in the hotel and any chance of seeing that woman again. He couldn’t believe how attracted to her he was.

  Never had he felt a
nything like that.

  And when they held each other’s gaze, he felt excited and scared to death at the same time. He desperately wanted to just walk over to her and introduce himself, but he had no doubt that alone might get him kicked out of the hotel.

  He was way over his head even talking with a woman from this time period, let alone being interested in one.

  They had both spent the rest of their lunch writing in their notebooks and avoiding any sort of eye contact. Clearly she had found him attractive as well.

  That seemed very dangerous for her in 1901.

  One thing was for certain, though. She had certainly taken his mind from being alone.

  For dinner he went down the street to a steak restaurant, but the next morning he went down to the hotel dining room just as they opened at six in the morning and took the same seat he had from the day before.

  The huge dining room was almost chilly from the cool summer evening and the open windows. It felt great, since yesterday evening he had found himself stripped down to his shorts with the windows open in his suite to stay even slightly cool.

  And he had taken a cool bath, without any hot water from the staff, and that had felt good as well.

  The entire time, as he was trying to focus his attention on the math problem he faced, he couldn’t get the face of the woman from his mind. He hoped she would be at breakfast.

  And he hoped she wouldn’t be at the same time.

  Since he was one of the first in the door, she was nowhere to be seen. He felt the disappointment and was surprised at that feeling. In fact, he was amazed at himself for having this reaction to a woman, especially a rich woman from 1901.

  Ten minutes after he sat down and ordered his coffee, she appeared, again alone, and was shown to the same table directly across from him.

  As she sat down and took her napkin and placed it in her lap, she looked up and saw him and actually jerked.

  He smiled and nodded to her and she smiled and nodded as well before looking down at her journal. He could tell that her face had flushed again, just as it had yesterday, and that made him smile even more.

  Again, over breakfast, they both wrote in their journals, and he only once caught her looking at him.

  When he finished breakfast of ham and eggs and a wonderful soft toast, he got up and looked directly at her and smiled and nodded.

  Then he left, amazed that he could even walk straight because his stomach was so clenched up around his breakfast. He had no idea how many rules of impropriety he had just broken, but he didn’t honestly care.

  At lunch they did the same thing, nodding and smiling, but looking quickly away. And he worked in his journal as she worked in hers.

  He had not yet gotten to even thinking much about the math problem that Bonnie and Duster had assigned him.

  But what he was working out, mathematically, was the chance that he could meet and spend time with this woman over and over in different timelines.

  His math said it was possible.

  In fact, his math said that he could live here until he died of old age and only have two minutes and fifteen seconds pass in his own timeline.

  So meeting the red-haired short woman was helping him get focused on the math of time and different timelines, but just not on the right problem.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  August 22nd, 1901

  Dixie’s Timeline

  AFTER FIVE DAYS, Dixie was pleased the handsome man had not left the hotel yet. It seemed that he was staying for a time as well, but she had no idea where in the massive hotel.

  During breakfast and lunches in the dining room, they had gotten into a routine of nodding and smiling at each other as they both ate and worked in journals.

  One evening, while eating dinner at the table in her room, she had seen him leave the hotel and cross the street. He had the stride of a man in complete control and in shape. And he wore a cowboy hat and oilcloth long coat over his suit just as Duster did.

  She had spent two days going back over math that she had already checked for Bonnie and Duster about time spent in the past. Because of this man that now really interested Dixie and she figured it was a good place to start.

  Bonnie and Duster had told her that the amount of time spent in the past didn’t matter, and that even dying of old age didn’t matter, since only two minutes and fifteen seconds would pass in the original timeline no matter what happened in this timeline.

  And Bonnie had said that she had stopped counting when she and Duster went past living a thousand years. For the first time, Dixie was starting to understand the reality of that, not just the math.

  But since her brain worked in numbers, she had to put that math back in her head. She could have a relationship here in the past, live here for years if she wanted, and when she returned to the crystal cave in the old mine, Duster would still be doing the dishes.

  So the idea of what she did here not making a huge difference was making her relax some around the handsome man. And now she was hoping she might actually get a chance to meet him. She didn’t know how, but she was relaxing enough to be open to the idea now.

  She had always thought that romance novels where a woman went into the past and fell for a man there were very silly. But this man seemed so different than the others around her. And he had great teeth, something many of the men she had seen so far did not have.

  In fact, his white smile just flat seemed out of place.

  If it took going into the past for her to have a reaction toward a man, then she would spend far more time in the past.

  And thanks to Bonnie and Duster, she could.

  And another thing she found interesting. She didn’t really miss her computer. She was enjoying working the math out with a fountain pen, going slowly, being deliberate. She often did her best thinking at whiteboards, and this journal seemed to be functioning like a whiteboard for her.

  At breakfast, she went down at her normal time and the handsome man was sitting at his normal table. He glanced up and nodded and smiled at her and her heart actually felt like it might pound out of her chest as if she had run a good five miles at top speed.

  The waiter was not close, so she took a deep breath and walked toward the handsome man.

  He looked shocked as she approached and managed to scramble to his feet.

  “Winfred Dixie Smith,” Dixie said, extending her hand. “But everyone just calls me Dixie.”

  She was happy that her voice didn’t crack.

  He took her hand, smiling, but with worry in his eyes. The feeling of his skin against hers sent shockwaves through her.

  He bowed slightly and said, “The honor is mine. I’m Brice Henry Lincoln, Brice to my friends.”

  Damn, not only did his touch send shivers through her, but his voice was perfect and sexy.

  He finally let go of her hand and she felt slightly disappointed.

  “I felt we should finally meet,” she said, “since our schedules seem to match for a few meals each day.”

  “I was hoping for that as well,” he said.

  He glanced around at the almost empty dining room. “I am not sure what is appropriate, so forgive my brashness, but would you care to join me for breakfast? That is, if you are dining alone this fine morning?”

  She looked him directly in the eyes. She could see they were a dark green and she could see he was concerned that he had overstepped his bounds.

  She took a deep breath. “I am alone and I would love company for breakfast.”

  There, she had done it. Dixie wasn’t sure if Bonnie would be proud or not.

  Brice quickly moved around and held a chair for her across the table from him.

  She nodded her thank you and sat down. She placed her journal and pen on the table and noticed it was very similar to his. Then she motioned to the waiter.

  When the waiter approached, she said, “I will be joining Mr. Lincoln for breakfast. I would like my normal.”

  “Very well, Ma’am,” the wait
er said, nodding and turning away.

  When she looked back, Brice was staring at her and smiling like a teenaged kid on a first date.

  And with that she smiled back at him. And damn it all to hell, she could feel that she blushed again.

  Sometimes she really hated having light skin. It gave far, far too many of her thoughts away.

  And right now, the thought of getting to know this handsome man from 1901 was on the top of her mind.

  And getting to really, really know him wasn’t far below the surface of her mind as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  August 22nd, 1901

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE HAD ALMOST passed out from sheer panic when he saw the beautiful red-haired woman walking toward him. Somehow he had managed to get to his feet and do his best impression of a gentleman.

  Her touch had sent electric shocks through his entire body and she was even more beautiful up close than she was from across the room. He had no idea how that was possible.

  She also had a beautiful voice and a perfect smile. And she was shorter up close than she appeared across the room as well, which also surprised him. He bet she wasn’t more than five-foot-four inches tall and she had the most intense brown eyes that seemed to just look through him.

  He couldn’t believe he had gotten brash enough to invite her to have breakfast with him, and he swore he was shaking when she agreed.

  Never, even back in high school, had he had a reaction like this with a woman. He had no idea what was happening.

  Luckily the waiter taking their orders allowed him to bring back a part of his mind, at least enough to talk with her.

  They made small talk about the beautiful hotel and how wonderful Boise was and how it was growing. Then she asked him if he would be staying for a time in the hotel.

  “At least a month,” he said. “I’m waiting here for a friend to return from Arizona.”