Home In Time For Christmas. Heather Graham
blond like Swedes, dark and romantic like Italians or Spaniards. Did they dress up in colonial costume?
“Let’s get out of the snow,” she said. She started walking. He followed her.
“You have no horses,” he said.
“It’s a car,” she said. “It has an engine, a battery… pistons. I don’t know, I’m not a mechanic, I have the oil checked and leave it with the Ford people.”
“The Ford people?” he asked.
She gritted her teeth. “Stop it! Enough. You look great. I don’t own or manage any of the historical museums around here. You don’t need to keep up the act.”
He stopped short, looking at her with indignation again. He stood very straight, and he was handsome and imposing, like a hero out of an adventure book. “My dear young woman, I assure you, I am not performing in any manner. I don’t know where I am, nor do I understand this fascinating mode of transportation you refer to as a car. I…” His voice trailed off. He staggered forward, his knees buckling. She caught him, and he regained some of his strength, coming back to a full stand, but still leaning upon her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
If he was acting, his work was worthy of an Academy Award. Melody was afraid she had managed to give him a good clip to the head with the front bumper, and that he was suffering some kind of dementia because of it.
“Let’s get to the car, and hope that I can get us out of this snowbank. My cell phone isn’t working.”
“Your cell phone?“ he said.
“Oh, God!” she groaned. “Never mind. Let me just get you home.”
She managed to get him to the car, she climbed in across the passenger seat.
He jumped as she revved the engine.
“It’s all right, that’s the engine,” she said. “Please, just get in, and fasten your seat belt.” Before he could ask, she added, “The harness, right here. It saves lives, trust me.”
He got in and, with her assistance, put on the seat belt.
She forced herself to move slowly, patiently, and she managed to back out of the snowbank. Cautiously, she began to drive on the road again.
“Unbelievable!” he murmured.
She shook her head. “Okay, you don’t know where you are. But where were you before I hit you?”
He stared at her. His handsome features knit in thought, and then confusion.
“New York,” he told her. “I was standing on the gallows, a rope around my neck.”
Great! He was crazy. He was a homeless lunatic.
Either that, or he’d somehow hit his head really hard when she’d struck him.
She narrowed her eyes, staring very carefully at the road, wondering if she hadn’t completely lost her mind. She had picked up a madman.
“I don’t want to know what part you were playing,” she said, trying to keep her tone even. “I need to know who you really are, and what you really do.”
“Well, in actuality, I write,” he said.
“Great. Very good. Who do you write for? Were you involved in a publicity stunt?” she inquired. Talking to him was like pulling teeth.
“A publicity stunt?” he inquired, confused. He had been staring out the window, perplexed. He turned and stared at her instead, handsome features furrowed.
She shook her head. “A publicity stunt. Something to draw the attention of the media. Something to get your name in the papers.”
“My name is in the papers,” he said.
“Okay. Good start. What is your name?”
“Jake Mallory,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“No?” He looked resigned and a little saddened. “I’ve written for the Boston papers and the New York City papers.”
“And I read the papers. I’ve never heard of you. So, what do you write?”
“Treason—according to the British. Well, actually, I haven’t written in quite some time. I wound up being a soldier. I went to war, but I was being hanged for treason.”
“What war?” she asked sharply.
“You should have read a few of my pieces. Some were considered brilliant. Rousing. I’m not a warmonger, not at all. But the colonies couldn’t be used like a Royal Exchequer forever. If we’re to pay taxes, then representation must be absolutely fair. I tried to explain what was happening to us, and why it’s so important that we part ways with Great Britain. I wrote about a central government, and about the rights of each colony. Even General George Washington read what I was writing.”
Lunatic.
“Okay,” she said calmly. “So—you were a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Right before I found you on the road?”
“Right before you struck me down,” he reminded her.
So that was it. In a sneaking and conniving way, he was going to bleed her for what she had done to him.
“Right before I struck you down, yes. You were a soldier. In the Revolutionary War? ”
His eyes hadn’t wavered from her face. She was making a point of keeping them on the road now, but her peripheral vision allowed her to be keenly aware of his steady assessment.
“Yes. Where am I?”
“Gloucester, Massachusetts,” she snapped. “Almost at my house. But I can take a detour to the police station or the mental hospital.”
“I’m very sorry. Truly. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
“Fine. We’ll start over. What were you doing in the twenty-first century?” she demanded.
“The twenty-first?” he asked her.
She let out a long sigh. “Yes, the twenty-first.”
“Who won?” he asked.
She was startled by the sudden intensity in him; she didn’t just hear it in his voice, but felt it in the constriction of his body as he leaned closer to her.
“Who won?” he demanded again. He was even closer. Practically breathing down her neck.
Lunatic. Serial killer. A madman–serial killer. She needed to humor him.
“The United States of America. And the federal forces won the Civil War, too.”
He hunched back into the passenger’s seat. “Thank God. Civil War?”
“The American Civil War, or the War Between the States, or, as it was referred to in the South, the War of Northern Aggression. We are one country.”
He stared out the window at the white world beyond the car. “How sad, how excruciatingly sad. We won the Revolution, and fought a civil war.”
“All war is sad.”
“And there is a war now?” he asked sharply.
She hazarded a glance at him. “The War on Terror,” she said. “Oh, there have been lots of wars. Before the Civil War, the War of 1812—those pesky Brits again, though we’re just like this now.” She crossed her fingers for him with her right hand, keeping the left firmly on the wheel. “Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and all kinds of actions. Actually, I don’t think there has been a time when some part of the world hasn’t been involved in an action of some kind.”