A Little Time in Texas Read Online Free Page A

looked confused.
    She winced as her fingertips found the wound on her forehead. “I wasn’t dreaming?”
    He shook his head ruefully. “I’m afraid not, Angel.”
    Angel’s attention had been focused on the man; now it shifted to her surroundings. Her jaw dropped in amazement. She swallowed hard and said, “We’re moving awfully fast.”
    “No more than sixty miles an hour.”
    “That isn’t possible! What’s making this…truck…go?”
    “Nowadays the horses are under the hood,” Dallas said with a wry smile. He caught a glimpse of Angel’s horrified expression in the mirror. This was no time for an explanation of the internalcombustion engine, so he said, “A mechanical contraption inside the front of the truck makes it go.”
    Angel waved a hand at all the dials and knobs in front of him. “What do all those buttons do?”
    Dallas punched a knob and a country and western tune started playing. “Radio,” he said.
    Fascinated, Angel asked, “How does it work?”
    “Don’t ask me,” Dallas said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand the innards of most of the modern conveniences I use.”
    He punched another button and a blast of cool air hit Angel in the face.
    “Air-conditioning,” he explained.
    Another button made windshield wipers scrape across the bug-spattered glass; yet another sent water spraying up to clean off the bugs.
    “Things have certainly changed a lot,” Angel said, in perhaps the understatement of the century.
    “Lady, you don’t know the half of it. Why, we can fly across the entire country in a couple of hours.”
    Angel’s cheeks flushed with anger. “Now you’re making fun of me. We both know men can’t fly.”
    “Men can’t. Airplanes can.”
    “Airplanes?”
    “Another mechanical contraption, like a truck with wings, only it moves in the air.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. Stay around long enough and I’ll show you one. Hell, I’ll even take you up in one!”
    “No, thanks,” Angel said vehemently.
    “Whether you can accept it or not, there’s been a lot of progress in the past hundred and twenty-five or so years.”
    “The clothes you’re wearing are the same,” she protested.
    Dallas looked down at the chambray shirt, jeans, and boots he was wearing. “Maybe men’s fashions haven’t changed much. But women show a lot more skin than they used to. Come to think of it, that outfit you’re wearing doesn’t fit my image of what a woman in 1864 ought to have on.
    “In Gone with the Wind Scarlett O’Hara was wearing something a little more feminine than that getup, as I recall.”
    Angel wondered who Scarlett O’Hara was. She fingered the top button of the striped cotton, round-necked man’s shirt, its sleeves folded up to reveal her slender forearms. A hemp rope held up the too-large, patched wool trousers. On her feet she wore knee-high black boots. “I was travelingdressed as a man, so I wouldn’t be harassed on the road,” she explained.
    Dallas glanced at the silvery blond hair that fell practically to her waist and said, “You’re not going to fool too many men with hair like that.”
    “My hair was tucked up under a farmer’s hat. I had it off because I’d stopped for a drink of water at that pond near the cave opening. That’s when those piss-poor excuses for cowboys rode up and—” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”
    “I guess the question now is, what am I going to do with you?” Dallas murmured to himself.
    Angel bristled. “You don’t have to do anything with me. I can take care of myself.”
    Dallas drove through a gate and across a cattle guard that led onto his property. “Maybe in 1864 you could have managed by yourself—although even that’s doubtful, considering the situation I found you in. Here in 1992, you’re as naive as a newborn. You wouldn’t last ten seconds on your own.” Dallas pursed his lips in disgust. “I guess I’m stuck with you, all