Our Time Is Now Read online

  “My Bronco conked out yesterday,” she continued, hoping to get a reaction from him. “But as soon as I get a jump-start, I’ll drive you home, okay?”

  To her relief, Gideon’s eyelids slowly opened. “I am home,” he murmured hoarsely.

  In your dreams, fella.

  On the verge of setting Gideon straight, Jessica instead clamped her mouth shut, thinking it best not to berate a sick man. As his eyelids again draped over his pupils, she surmised that Gideon MacAllister needed to see a doctor ASAP. The man was so far-gone he had no idea as to his whereabouts. Unfortunately, with the Bronco out of commission, she had no way of getting him to a medical office.

  Hit with a sudden idea, Jessica lunged to her feet and dashed to the telephone stand in the hallway. Grabbing the phonebook, she turned on the table lamp and quickly perused the yellow-page listings for “physicians.” The only bit of luck to come her way so far this morning was that the electrical power and telephone service had been restored sometime during the night.

  Although most of the advertisements were for slickly managed health care clinics, she did finally hit upon a listing for a Dr. Raymond Whitecastle, MD. He was apparently the last of a dying breed—a family physician who still made house calls. Fingers crossed, she punched in the number.

  A few minutes later, greatly relieved, Jessica hung up the phone. Dr. Whitecastle’s answering service had informed her that he was currently visiting another patient in the area and would be at Highland House within the hour.

  She next flipped to the S’s in the white pages, locating the listing for “Captain” Bruce Stoddard. Since Gideon had obviously participated in yesterday’s Civil War reenactment, she was hoping that Bruce would be able to give her Gideon’s address and telephone number.

  When the call was bounced to Bruce’s voicemail, Jessica left a brief message asking him to call her with any information pertaining to a Confederate reenactor named Gideon MacAllister. That done, she returned to the library.

  At a glance, she could see that Gideon’s condition had worsened in the few minutes since she’d left the room. Sprawled in the armchair, eyes closed, he labored to pull a ragged breath into his lungs.

  Rushing to his side, Jessica put a hand to his forehead. Even without a thermometer, she ascertained that he was running a dangerously high fever.

  Suddenly feeling an unexpected static charge against the palm of her hand, she hastily removed it from Gideon’s brow.

  “The doctor will be here shortly,” she said in a chipper tone as she knelt on the floor beside Gideon’s chair. Wanting to reassure him that all was well, she awkwardly patted his hand. Not only was it exceedingly warm to the touch, but she experienced another static charge that caused a strange tingling in her fingertips.

  Bewildered by the odd sensation, she moved her hand to the cuff of his uniform jacket. As her fingers lightly traced the frayed trim, she felt as though her digits were enlivened with some sort of hypersensitivity. The sensation enabled her to see in her mind’s eye a woman’s hand as it slowly and precisely sewed several stitches into the garment. Closing her eyes, Jessica was struck with a sudden mental image; she was actually able to envision how the well-worn garment had appeared before it’d gotten into its present “distressed” condition. Stiff gray wool. A bold serpentine pattern of gold braid on the cuff. A row of stamped brass buttons shining brightly in the noonday sun. No sooner had those images flashed through her mind than Jessica saw Gideon, with a warm smile on his clean-shaven face, lean over to kiss—

  Jessica’s eyes popped wide open, and the image instantly vanished. She felt as though she’d just recalled a long-lost memory.

  But how can I have a memory of a man I don’t even know? she wondered, flustered by the weird interlude.

  Just then, Gideon thrashed his head from side to side, frantically grabbing the arm of the chair. “Two will die in the fast, green water! So sayeth the Beast!”

  Given that his eyes were closed, Jessica surmised that Gideon was having a doozy of a nightmare.

  * * *

  Lost in the throes of a dark delirium, Gideon forced the disturbing image of the green water out of his mind. Thinking about it only made his head ache. Instead he focused on the woman, the one with the steadfast gaze, who knelt beside him.

  However, when he turned and looked back, Gideon could see his beloved. Strangely enough, it seemed as though he was peering at the same woman in both directions.

  Had his ravaged heart conjured the mirage simply to mock him? No, he was certain that his beloved was with him. He recognized the touch of her hand, just as he remembered the feel of her lips against his.

  Memories, like warm blood, soon rushed through his veins, warming him, then just as quickly chilling him to the bone. There had been so many endless nights spent without her…

  Yet she was now achingly near.

  Sensing that they were as close to one another as the breadth between two heartbeats, he struggled to rouse himself.

  “Come back to me, Gideon… Come back to me.”

  Hearing her plea, Gideon turned his head, desperately trying to find his beloved in the murky depths. As he did, he suddenly knew that he must cross the Rubicon of his last life in order to reach his beloved on the opposite shore.

  Although he was determined to take the first step, he was halted by the demons of remembrance. After the unforgivable transgression he’d committed, why would his beloved return for him? His words, uttered in anger, had been unjustly cruel. And his agonized torment was that they had been the last words spoken between them. His lament was in knowing that he’d sought forgiveness too late, his plea for repentance muffled by the vagaries of war and the eternal silence of the grave.

  Before him, death beckoned, a siren’s song, luring him with its haunting melody.

  On the verge of surrendering to it, Gideon felt his beloved reach out to him, pulling him away from the Stygian blackness. Taking him by the hand, she led him across the deep, swift flowing waters of time. As they neared the end of their journey, she turned and smiled at him.

  In that instant, Gideon realized that it was the woman with the steadfast gaze who had brought him home to Highland House.

  * * *

  “Exactly how long has the patient been in this condition?” Finished taking Gideon’s pulse, Dr. Raymond Whitecastle next pried open an eyelid and examined a very bloodshot blue eye.

  “Well, he came back yesterday evening from the reenactment looking kind of, um, down and out,” Jessica hedged, still guilt-ridden that she’d erroneously assumed Gideon had been suffering from drunkenness when he first arrived at Highland House.

  “Do you mean to tell me that in such a weakened condition, this man actually attended yesterday’s Civil War reenactment?”

  “Oh, he was there, all right.” Jessica lamely gestured to Gideon’s woebegone Confederate tunic. “That’s why he’s still wearing his uniform.”

  Dr. Whitecastle made a tsking sound as he opened his doctor’s bag and pulled out several metal instruments. “Is this man your hus—”

  “He’s an old family friend,” Jessica interjected. While she hated to tell such a bald-faced lie, she knew that gossip could spread like a mountain brushfire in a rural community. Because she was still a relative newcomer to the area, she didn’t want anyone to know that she was temporarily sheltering some strange man at Highland House. In fact, her plan was to contact Gideon MacAllister’s family and arrange for them to retrieve him with as little fanfare as possible.

  “Why are you doing that?” Jessica anxiously inquired when Dr. Whitecastle began to unbutton Gideon’s jacket.

  “I need to remove some of your friend’s clothing so that I can properly examine him,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “Will you give me a hand with his jacket?”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Jessica reached over to help the doctor remove the well-worn garment, revealing a dark gray vest beneath.

  “You don’t often see a fine, old timepiece li
ke this,” Dr. Whitecastle said admiringly as he plucked a gold pocket watch from the vest pocket and passed it to Jessica. “I’m no expert, but my guess is that’s a very valuable watch.”

  Stepping over to the fireplace, Jessica carefully placed the pocket watch on the mantel for safekeeping. As she turned back around, her breath caught in her throat—Gideon’s vest and white linen shirt were both fully unbuttoned, revealing one of the most incredible upper bodies she’d ever set eyes upon. Absolutely ab-tastic! She’d thought that only Hollywood actors with personal trainers had washboard abs like that.

  Boy, was I ever mistaken.

  “Your friend appears to keep himself in excellent shape,” Dr. Whitecastle remarked off-handedly as he lifted a stethoscope to Gideon’s chest.

  “I’ll say,” Jessica murmured, small rivets of tension pulsing along her spine as she continued to stare at what could only be called a beautiful male torso.

  “Do you happen to know who sutured this chest wound?”

  “Hmm?” Jessica tore her overly avid gaze from Gideon’s bare chest, chagrined that she’d actually been ogling a sick man. One who boasted a very bushy beard. Surely, I’m not that desperate. “I’m sorry, doctor, but I didn’t hear what you just said.”

  The doctor poked his finger at a raw-looking scar located near Gideon’s underarm. “This is new scar tissue. Whoever sewed him up did a very sloppy job of it,” he stated in a disapproving tone of voice. “Why, I’m surprised that anybody could get through medical school with such a crude technique.”

  “Two will die in the fast, green water! So sayeth the Beast!”

  Jessica and Dr. Whitecastle jerked in unison at Gideon’s loud exclamation.

  “Two will die in the fast, green water!” Gideon again bellowed, his body heaving with exertion.

  Concerned that he might come bodily out of the chair, Jessica unthinkingly placed a restraining hand on Gideon’s bare chest. Immediately feeling a tingling heat radiate from his pectoral muscle through her palm and along the length of her arm, she quickly removed her hand.

  Clearing her throat, Jessica peered at the doctor and said, “I should probably mention that Gideon was a little confused earlier this morning as to his whereabouts.” Not to mention, his whenabouts.

  “Given the fact that he’s running a temperature of 104.2 degrees, disorientation is not uncommon,” Dr. Whitecastle informed her. “Once we get his temperature down, his mental state should return to normal.”

  Jessica’s shoulders sagged with relief. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.” It meant that Gideon made those screwball remarks because he’d been in a fevered state of mind. 1864, indeed.

  “Incidentally, your friend is an extremely lucky man. Even with all of the advances of modern medicine, pneumonia can still be a deadly killer if not treated early.”

  “Pneumonia!” she exclaimed, shocked by the diagnosis.

  “No need to worry. It’s not contagious,” Dr. Whitecastle said reassuringly as he removed a small glass vial and a wrapped syringe from his leather bag. “From the preliminary exam, it’s evident your friend is suffering from the early stages of pneumonia, as well as extreme physical exhaustion. Of course, in the old days, before antibiotics, he wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. But with plenty of bed rest and lots of fluids, he should be on the mend soon enough.” That said, he unwrapped the syringe, tipped the bottle upside down, and pierced the protective seal with the syringe’s needle.

  Sympathetically flinching, Jessica watched as the doctor jabbed the syringe into Gideon’s right arm.

  “Speaking of bed rest, does this couch convert into a bed?” Dr. Whitecastle inquired as he inserted the used syringe into a plastic tube.

  “As a matter of fact, it does pull into—” Jessica halted in mid-sentence, belatedly realizing where the conversation was headed. Allowing a man to sleep on her sofa fully dressed was one thing. Permitting that same stranger to recuperate on her sofa bed was an entirely different matter, one that placed her in an extremely awkward position.

  “After he’s recovered a bit, you can move him to a proper bed. I want to him get at least a week’s worth of bed rest,” the doctor instructed in a tone of voice that would brook no argument. “Also, try to get as many fluids into him as you can, because we don’t want him to become dehydrated. And, lastly, keep a close eye on his fever. If it doesn’t come down by tomorrow, give me a call.”

  Tongue-tied, Jessica mutely stared at the doctor. Even though she very much wanted to tell him that she had no intention of playing nursemaid to a complete stranger, for some inexplicable reason she couldn’t bring herself to do so.

  Finished administering the meds, Dr. Whitecastle retrieved a prescription pad from his bag. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Gideon. Gideon MacAllister,” she woodenly replied, watching him scribble something indecipherable onto the pad.

  Ripping off a total of three prescriptions, the doctor handed them to her just as his cell phone began to trill loudly.

  “Excuse me,” he said before taking the call. A moment later, Jessica overheard him say, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  With a discernible frown etched onto his face, Dr. Whitecastle stuffed the mobile phone into his jacket pocket. Muttering something about mailing Jessica the bill, he hurriedly closed his medical bag.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, noticing that the doctor’s demeanor had greatly altered since taking the call.

  “I wish that I could say yes, but unfortunately I’ve just been informed that there’s been a tragic rafting accident on the Greenbrier River. Apparently two rafters drowned and several others have been severely injured.”

  Two will die on the fast, green water.

  Recalling Gideon’s cryptic utterance, Jessica felt the proverbial chill course along her spine.

  Chapter 6

  “I took the liberty of filling your prescriptions,” Jessica said in a breezy tone as she entered the library.

  To her dismay, the announcement was met with a pronounced silence.

  At a glance, Jessica could see that Gideon was still sacked out on the sofa bed. Whatever had been in the injection that Dr. Whitecastle had administered had completely knocked him out. Despite the fact that it was late in the day, the “patient” gave no indication that he would be awakening any time soon. And though Gideon needed his rest in order to recuperate, she desperately needed to learn some vitally important information: his address and phone number, for starters.

  In all honesty, she was halfway tempted to call the county sheriff’s department and demand that they take Mr. Gideon MacAllister off her hands. Why should she be responsible for taking care of him? He was a stranger who’d landed on her doorstep and collapsed on her couch, and now she was supposed to feed, clothe, and care for him? Well, forget it. Nothing doing. Gideon MacAllister would have to find some other sucker to play nursemaid.

  As she placed the prescription bottles on the end table, Buster, reclining in the armchair, gave her a heavy-lidded glance.

  “I just put some fresh kibble in your bowl.”

  Hearing that, the big Maine Coon instantly morphed from drowsy kitty into speeding feline bullet, hightailing it to the kitchen.

  With a weary sigh, Jessica stepped over to the sofa bed. Within micro-seconds, all thoughts of throwing Gideon to the wolves instantly vanished. Along each side of his face, she saw dried tear tracks that meandered down his cheeks before disappearing into his bushy beard. It was a sight that instantaneously kick-started all of her protective instincts.

  Worried that he may have worsened, Jessica sat on the edge of the sofa bed. Leaning over him, she placed the back of her hand against Gideon’s forehead, ignoring the tingling sparks that immediately radiated from his brow.

  To her relief, his skin was cool to the touch.

  “While I know that personal hygiene is a somewhat delicate matter, I went ahead and bought you a new toothbrush, some deodorant, and a bag
of disposable razors. Although from the looks of it, you’re gonna need a pair of garden shears to get rid of that bushy beard,” Jessica muttered under her breath. Gideon seemed unaware of the fact that he was being spoken to.

  Because he was oblivious, Jessica succumbed to temptation, letting her gaze errantly roam across the muscled planes of Gideon’s bare chest. Despite the fact that he was in a weakened condition, Gideon MacAllister possessed the well-honed body of an athlete.

  As she continued to watch his chest rise and fall with each measured breath, she gently laid a hand on his bare skin. The instant she did, she felt another heated tingle in her fingertips, a sensation that was akin to plunging a cold hand into a tub of hot water.

  Unable to stop herself, Jessica let her fingers glide across one of Gideon’s pectoral muscles. Figuring no red-blooded woman would blame her, she next ran her fingers through his chest hair, pleasantly surprised at its soft texture. Then, leaning forward, she impetuously laid her cheek against his naked chest.

  The moment she did, Jessica was hit with a barrage of images. A woman in a hoop skirt. A four-poster bed. A candlelit chamber. The images flashed across her mind’s eye in such fast succession that it was as though she’d glimpsed them through a kaleidoscope.

  With a gasp, she pulled away from Gideon’s chest. Obviously, her all too vivid imagination was working overtime. “I, um… was just checking your heartbeat,” she fibbed, on the off-chance that Gideon was aware of what she’d just done. “And, FYI, it’s beating just fine.”

  My heart, I’m not so sure about, she silently appended, stunned that she could even be remotely attracted to the big, bearded man.

  “I think you ought to know that I, um…” Her voice faded into silence as Jessica worriedly gnawed on her lower lip. Inundated with guilt, she finally drummed up enough courage to say, “I’m really sorry, but I had to pawn one of those gold coins that you had in your saddlebag.”

  Since leaving Bud’s Pawn Shop, she’d come up with every excuse imaginable for filching the coin. But the simple truth of the matter was that she hadn’t had enough cash to pay for Gideon’s three prescriptions with payday still a week away. Whether that justified petty thievery would be for him to decide.