Out of the Past (Heritage Time Travel Romance Series, Book 1 PG-13 All Iowa Edition) Read online

  “You look beautiful, Torie,” he croaked and I could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.

  “Thank you,” I purred, smoothing my hand over his side of the bed invitingly. “Come to bed.”

  As he joined me, I pressed him back upon a heap of bed pillows and fluffed them for him, seeing to his comfort, as he reclined. I crawled up beside him, sitting on my heels facing him and gave him my most passionate kiss; first running my tongue gently between his slightly parted lips and into his mouth as it opened to me; his tongue eagerly meeting mine before I fastened my mouth over his.

  He quickly took control of the proceedings while still kissing me, taking me by the waist and moving me over onto his lap. His eyes and his hands moved to my new low slung gown and with the slightest touch of his fingertips, the shoulder of the gown slipped off and down and he kissed my collar bone and the exposed round of my shoulder. His fingertips grazed lightly over the skin at my décolletage and then began to slowly pull at the tail of the bow of white satin ribbon nestled at the center of my deep cleavage and the gown loosened and slipped lower, exposing the upper curves of my breasts.

  I enjoyed watching him as his eyes roam lower and his arms enveloped me, supporting me as he leaned me back so that he could kiss my nearly exposed breasts. He inhaled deeply of my perfume, before tilting me back up straight. His hands worked the gown downward and I slipped my arms out of the sleeves with his assistance, letting the fabric puddle around my waist.

  “Dave?” I said tentatively, smoothing my hands lightly over his ribs in a caress. I had no intention of bringing it up but all at once I had a strong desire to tell him of the fears I’d been pondering since earlier today, maybe to warn him now because he deserved at least that much.

  “Yes, honey,” he whispered, his eyes lifting reluctantly from my breasts.

  “What you said today about two months?”

  “What about it?” he questioned distractedly, reaching out with one hand to touch my hair; lifting a strand of it to his nose in order to inhale the fragrance.

  “I’m infamous for bailing on relationships at two months, Dave.”

  His attention sharpened at once. “What are you saying? Are you considering ending this with me?” He dropped my hair and reached out to stroke my bare shoulders, with a clearly startled and concerned expression clouding his features.

  “No, I’m not, but I’ve never gotten past that barrier with a real, day-to-day, relationship and I feel like we are heading in that direction quickly and I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do this,” I said indicating with a waving hand between our two chests at what seemed like a deep gulf of space between he and I. “I think the problem is that I never saw an example of a successful relationship in all of my growing-up years and although I’m beginning to learn about how it’s done by observing my ancestors, it just isn’t happening fast enough and you and I are already deep into this, at least I am and—”

  “Stop,” Dave said quietly placing his fingers lightly over my lips to halt the flow of crazed insecurities that were spilling out of me. “Tell me what’s scaring you.”

  I took a cleansing breath as he removed his fingers from my mouth and he smiled at me sweetly, waiting.

  “It all scares me; everything about how perfectly this is going, scares me. I guess what I’m trying to say is this,” I said and tried to be as succinct as possible. “If I start to pull back from you, will you try to stick with me and see me through it? Please don’t let me ruin what we have between us, okay?”

  I wasn’t expecting it, but I felt the sting of tears come to my eyes and I thought angrily that this evening was quickly deteriorating into a melodrama, thanks to me, as now my tears were welling up, ready to spill over and they were definitely not part of the sexy vibe that I’d spent the entire day trying to create. I blinked, trying to stem the flow as I waited for Dave’s reaction to my revelations of the last sixty seconds.

  “Hey, I’m not going anywhere, Torie. I won’t let you push me away that easily. I’m in love with you, you know? Two-month barrier be damned,” he said and smoothed his hands over my bare shoulders tenderly. “And,” he continued confidently. “I’ve seen a lot about how to do it right, Torie. My grandpa Joe and my grandma Mary were married for fifty-seven years and my parents, were and are always loving and respectful of each other. If you just let me, I’ll show you.”

  He used his fingertips to wipe away a tear that had fallen from my eye and kissed my cheek gently.

  I kissed his cheek in return and then flattened my breasts against his sturdy, strong chest as I hugged his neck tight. “Okay, I’m not going to worry about it. If I try to bail then…” I said and pulled back to look hopefully into his eyes.

  “Then we’ll work through it together,” he finished for me softly and brought my left hand to his lips, placing a kiss into my palm.

  He continued quietly then as he took that same hand of mine and placed it against his bare chest over his heart. “I only ask that you be careful, Torie, because I’m fragile too, you know? I’m past the point of return and from here on out you’ll break my heart. You have the power to destroy me.” He studied my face as he smoothed his hand over the back of mine where it still rested against his chest and I could feel the thump of his heart, steadily beating under my fingertips.

  “Never,” I promised, as I leaned forward and sealed it with a kiss.

  Chapter 28

  Dave Cameron looked into the rearview mirror and raised his hand in apology to the driver directly behind him, as he punched the gas and pulled on through the intersection. He hadn’t noticed that the light had turned green because he had been deep in thought. Lately he had been in a continuous cloud of muddle-headedness, because he had been staying with Torie every night at her house and the experiences that he had been living every night were really messing with his head. He turned onto the highway now, heading toward Fremont and his thoughts once more went to the time warps as he drove.

  Torie had been helping him as much as she could by using her family tree program and building his family tree, including some old photographs that she’d found from a variety of sources, including his own family photos, as she had helped him to figure out who was who of his McFall ancestors that he had been meeting and learning about during his time travels.

  He had seen his third great-grandfather Samuel McFall again just the night before last, as well as his son, his own great-great-grandfather William McFall. The experience had involved a group of McFall men and their close neighbors, clearing a field of stones, boulders, prairie grass and trees to make way for corn. Even with two four horse teams of draft horses and lots of old-fashioned hard work, the had cleared less than a half an acre of prairie grass and tree stumps by the end of a day’s work.

  It had been backbreaking labor and as a brother to his great-great-grandfather William McFall he had put in his fair share as well. They hadn’t headed home until near dark and then the horses had been cared for and bedded down for the night before any of the men had gone inside to have dinner or see about their own needs, which in his case had included seeing to the cleaning of several cuts that radiated out from a smashed tip of his left index finger, courtesy of a heavy boulder. His third great-grandmother Elizabeth Barbee McFall had cared for his injury and this had given him a clue as to the timeframe because Elizabeth had been fairly young in the warp and he knew that she had died in her seventies and in the year of 1878.

  The farmhouse that they had gone into, had been the home of Samuel and Elizabeth, and had been a house that Dave had never seen before and that no longer existed in current Fremont. He hadn’t even been able to tell exactly what part of the McFall lands it had been situated on because none of the landmarks had been familiar, but of course, it had been more than a hundred and fifty years in the past and the landscape of the area today, looks nothing like it had back then.

  Last night’s warp had been a little trickier and it was causing some minor friction between T
orie and him today and some major good-natured ribbing but he knew that it was his own damn fault—him and his big mouth.

  The warp had been a barn-raising for one of the local war heroes of the Civil War, Octavius Waltman. He’d been one of Fremont’s most legendary soldiers although he had fought with the Forty-Third Ohio infantry, which had been quite often the case, Torie had explained to him just today. Men typically would go back to what they considered their own country to enlist, even though, in Octavius’ case, he had lived in Iowa for years by the time the war had broken out.

  Torie possessed a huge amount of information regarding Octavius’ outstanding service to the Union Army and had chronicled the dozens of battles that he had fought in, during his several enlistments and reenlistments that combined, had spanned nearly three years of the war. Coincidentally, she had been using some of his information for the fictional Civil War romance novel that she had been working on ever since Dave had known her. She had also informed him that Octavius and he were related by marriage because Octavius had married Susan McFall, a blood relative of Dave’s and so their children and grandchildren on down through the generations were all his distant cousins.

  Octavius Waltman had lost a barn during a bad storm and the community, as was usual in small towns, had come together to rebuild it. Dave had totally enjoyed helping out with that and simply watching all of the practices used for constructing and raising the barn, while also getting to see many old tools and how they were used. It had been a great learning experience. None of which was what was causing the problems between Torie and him today.

  The Fremont women had provided an amazing spread of food for the workers, and at the end of the day of work, an impromptu dinner and dance had been held inside the finished structure. Octavius and several other men had provided the music with fiddles, spoons, and washboards, just like in an old hillbilly movie.

  Torie had been there and she’d been a heavyset middle-aged Wyman woman. Dave had found out later that she had been one of Torie’s great-grandaunts, Emily Wyman who’d recently returned to Iowa for an extended visit from Washington State; while Dave had been one of his own distant McFall cousins, and as Andrew McFall; he’d been married to Amelia McFall and SHE was the problem between Torie and him today.

  Amelia McFall had been breathtakingly beautiful and young. He had found out when he had gotten back that she had been just twenty-two-years-old at the time. She’d had long blonde hair, brilliant emerald-green eyes and he’d had to admit to himself that she had possessed a figure that would have caused a man to stop and take notice, whether it was 1908 or today.

  Amelia and Andrew had been newly married, and she had been head over heels in love with her new husband. She had catered to Dave’s every need during dinner and had wanted to dance every dance with him. It was during a break from the dancing, when he had found himself a bale of hay, in a secluded, shadowy part of the barn and had collapsed onto it, in complete exhaustion while trying to catch his breath—that Amelia had quickly found him again. She had immediately taken up residence in his lap, planting some pretty passionate kisses on him and it had been at this most inopportune moment that Torie had walked by them and had absolutely glowered at him. It had been so unlike Torie, because she had always been very good about staying in character, but anyone catching the look on Emily Wyman’s weather-beaten face with her furrowed brows and wrinkled thin lips, pinched tightly shut, would have been able to easily discern that she was a woman in the throes of a jealous rage. Amelia hadn’t noticed though and had pulled Dave to his feet, pardoning herself as she had flitted past Torie’s generously padded swat figure and Dave had nodded politely to her as he had narrowly avoided bumping up against her enormous heavy bosom as Amelia had yanked him along in her wake.

  Things had only gotten worse when, at the end of the night, it had been time to leave. Torie had looked on, as Dave had been helplessly propelled toward the door of the barn readying to take his leave with his wife, and leaving Torie behind. He had only been able to spare a regretful glance in her direction as he had left with Amelia, and had discovered, gratefully, that they had come to the barn-raising with another young couple in their carriage, which had been fortunate because he wouldn’t have had any idea where to go otherwise. The two of them had been dropped off at their modest farmstead just before dark.

  Amelia had been giddy from all of the dancing and activities, and he had soon found out that she was also horny as hell. She had nearly attacked him before they had even gotten inside the house, and he had tried to calm her advances and capture her groping hands without success until finally he had narrowly escaped, by insisting that he needed to go out and check on the livestock in the barn. He hadn’t even known whether they’d had any livestock in the barn!

  He had messed around out there as long as possible; pacing back and forth across the dirt floor of the barn trying to think of what to do next, petting a lone cow that had been placidly drowsing and chewing its cud, but that didn’t object when he had reached over the rails of its stall to scratch it behind the ears. Eventually though, he had resigned himself to the inevitable because he couldn’t stay in the barn all night, as much as he would have liked to. There had really been only one thing he could do and so he had trudged back across the farmyard.

  He had entered the house to find that the front room was dark but he could see a light coming from what was obviously the back bedroom where Amelia had already retired for the night. He had entered the room to find her waiting in bed for him—stark naked! So he had quickly averted his eyes and had taken his time removing his suspenders, boots, pants and finally his shirt, leaving his drawers on as a feeble attempt at protecting his virtue. He had kept hoping and trying to mentally will himself to wake up at home with Torie—but it obviously wasn’t happening and so he had resigned himself to dealing with the situation as best that he could. As he had busied himself pretending to look for something on the tall chest of drawers across the room, he had taken a look at himself in a small mirror atop the dresser and had seen that he had been young, probably about twenty-five or less, with a mustache and longer light-brown hair that had been in desperate need of a decent haircut, but he could pass for good-looking, he had decided.

  Having exhausted every excuse to delay and actually pretty tired from all of the work on the barn and the dancing, he had come to bed, put out the lantern, and climbed in, turning on his side away from Amelia, while bidding her a quiet but firm good night. As he had feared though, she wasn’t about to let it go at that. She had been spooning up against him in no time and then she had begun kissing and lightly biting him at the curve of his neck and rubbing her breasts all up against his bare back.

  “Andy, I want you so much,” she had whispered in the dark.

  “Amelia,” he had huffed ragged and breathless from desire. “I’m—too—tired.”

  “I would say you aren’t too tired,” she had giggled, the truth becoming ridiculously obvious because of an all too eager and traitorous part of Andy’s anatomy. Dave had the definite feeling that Andrew’s desire for Amelia had been fueling his and he had been totally disgusted with himself and had felt as if he were betraying Torie but he couldn’t deny the effect that the woman was having on him, or deny his animalistic desire to take her.

  “Oh dear god, pleeease Andy,” Amelia had begged him, with such pitiable longing in her voice that Dave hadn’t been able to take it anymore and he had turned over to face her and then she had been kissing him and he had been running his hands all over her slim young body and touching her intimately as she had quickly helped him out of his impeding drawers.

  This isn’t really me, had been his last coherent thought before he had succumbed to his lust, because he had really had no choice but to make the most of a situation that had been as unstoppable as a runaway locomotive.

  Chapter 29

  As we watched the final scene of Poltergeist, when the father rolls the TV out of the motel room and onto the balcony while the
credits started scrolling, I clicked off the DVD player.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked excitedly.

  Dave was slouching on the sofa with his bare feet up on the coffee table and my legs across his lap as he absently ran his hands up and down my bare thighs.

  He glanced over at me sidelong. “About what,” he asked.

  “Are you kidding me, Dave?” I said as I sat up, taking my legs off of his lap and tucking my feet up under the edge of his butt, leaning my shins against his hip.

  He shrugged, reached out to take ahold of my shoulders to pull me toward him for a brief kiss, and then chuckled at my look of disbelief at his lack of an opinion.

  “What? So you actually believe that your house is gonna just crumple itself up and be sucked out into the cornfields?”

  “No, silly, not that part. I mean, do you think that this house could have been built on top of hallowed ground, maybe a cemetery or something?” I clarified.

  “No,” he said decidedly. “And even if it were, it would’ve had to of been built on an Indian burying ground which is highly unlikely and even if it was, it would be Indians haunting us, not our own families. And I’m also positive that the only burying grounds for the Fremont residents from the very first death in 1843, has always been Cedar Township Cemetery.”

  “Okay so what if our families are trying to tell us something, you know give us a message for some reason like—”

  “Torie,” he interrupted me tiredly. “Honey, would you please just stop trying to figure it out and enjoy the ride?”

  He sat up and then squeezed my knee as he stood and went around the coffee table and to the entertainment center, ejecting the movie and digging into his jeans pocket for his car keys.

  “Let’s run into Oskie and return this. We can grab some lunch while we’re there,” he suggested, waving the jewel case in my direction. “What do ya say?”

  “What I say,” I tried again. “Is that I think that we need to consider—”