Wrong Face in the Mirror: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series) Read Online Free
Author: Barbara Bartholomew
was harder than he’d imagined. “I heard you’d taken on the library job.”
She nodded. “Just for a little while I get my bearings. Tommy arranged the job for me.”
He nodded, th an started to continue on past her, but to his surprise she reached out with one slender, long-fingered hand to grasp his arm. “They said . . .that is my brother and his wife told me that we are married?”
It was a question so he answered with an ironical nod, feeling her touch burn into his arm and wishing she would let go before he was driven to say something caustic.
“Why do you hate me?”
Long accustomed to giving away nothing by his expression or body language, he took the jolt only inside himself. Hate her? No, he could never hate her, though his feelings were complex beyond measure.
“That’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself,” he said curtly, pulling his arm free to walk on to his destination.
Hart stood watching the long-legged man stride away from her and felt something she had no right to feel. It was as though she were abandoned by her dearest friend. Since she had no memory of Alistair Redhawk, this did not make any sense.
But even as she watched him wait outside the heavy door for admittance something stirred in her peripheral vision. She glimpsed a rocky narrow opening that seemed to lead into a darkened canyon. She heard the howl of coyotes and smelled gritty nighttime air, but when she turned her head to more clearly see, the image was gone and all she saw was the prison parking lot.
Shaken for more reasons than one, she found her way through the hot September afternoon to her own little Nissan and climbed in, wincing as her hands touched the blistering plastic of the steering wheel and as soon as she’d turned the ignition key, reached to put on the air conditioning.
The car was so hot that only warm air blew on her as she drove through the gate, waving to the guard who had admitted her that morning, and moved slowly out onto the highway. She tried not to imagine that she was losing her mind, seeing impossible illusions, as she drove back toward the town of Mountainside , the granite mountains looming before her.
She relaxed a little when the air in the car began to chill and told herself that she’d been ill or hurt or something. That was why she was seeing things that weren’t there. The doctors had told her she must be patient and let herself recover. But what did you do when you couldn’t trust the evidence of your own eyes?
She knew she should call her doctor and tell him what was going on, but dreaded the possibility of more incarceration in a care facility. That had not been living, but merely waiting. It was time to get on with what she had left of a life.
Surprisingly, however, as she edged through the downtown toward Tommy’s house, the two impossible scenes she had imagined seeing were not what lingered in her mind. Instead she saw Alistair Redhawk’s chiseled face and bronzed skin and the look of pain and disillusion that had come as he looked into her eyes.
What had she been that the man she’d married viewed her in that way?
After a long, frustrating meeting with the prison warden, Alistair responded to a call for assistance in the county where a farmer was missing nearly two dozen head of cattle. Rustling had taken on a modern turn with the current high price of beef and, as in this case, the thieves had pulled a trailer in during the night to take a good many thousand dollars’ worth of half grown calves.
By the time that had been investigated and the proper contacts made, the sheriff drove slowly home, his mind on how people thought there wasn’t much in the way of crime out in the country. His sparsely populated county with only two towns with as many as five thousand residents and thousands of acres of grassland and farms seemed to be seeing more than its share of criminal activity these days. Of course drug use, sale and manufacturing , was high on
She nodded. “Just for a little while I get my bearings. Tommy arranged the job for me.”
He nodded, th an started to continue on past her, but to his surprise she reached out with one slender, long-fingered hand to grasp his arm. “They said . . .that is my brother and his wife told me that we are married?”
It was a question so he answered with an ironical nod, feeling her touch burn into his arm and wishing she would let go before he was driven to say something caustic.
“Why do you hate me?”
Long accustomed to giving away nothing by his expression or body language, he took the jolt only inside himself. Hate her? No, he could never hate her, though his feelings were complex beyond measure.
“That’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself,” he said curtly, pulling his arm free to walk on to his destination.
Hart stood watching the long-legged man stride away from her and felt something she had no right to feel. It was as though she were abandoned by her dearest friend. Since she had no memory of Alistair Redhawk, this did not make any sense.
But even as she watched him wait outside the heavy door for admittance something stirred in her peripheral vision. She glimpsed a rocky narrow opening that seemed to lead into a darkened canyon. She heard the howl of coyotes and smelled gritty nighttime air, but when she turned her head to more clearly see, the image was gone and all she saw was the prison parking lot.
Shaken for more reasons than one, she found her way through the hot September afternoon to her own little Nissan and climbed in, wincing as her hands touched the blistering plastic of the steering wheel and as soon as she’d turned the ignition key, reached to put on the air conditioning.
The car was so hot that only warm air blew on her as she drove through the gate, waving to the guard who had admitted her that morning, and moved slowly out onto the highway. She tried not to imagine that she was losing her mind, seeing impossible illusions, as she drove back toward the town of Mountainside , the granite mountains looming before her.
She relaxed a little when the air in the car began to chill and told herself that she’d been ill or hurt or something. That was why she was seeing things that weren’t there. The doctors had told her she must be patient and let herself recover. But what did you do when you couldn’t trust the evidence of your own eyes?
She knew she should call her doctor and tell him what was going on, but dreaded the possibility of more incarceration in a care facility. That had not been living, but merely waiting. It was time to get on with what she had left of a life.
Surprisingly, however, as she edged through the downtown toward Tommy’s house, the two impossible scenes she had imagined seeing were not what lingered in her mind. Instead she saw Alistair Redhawk’s chiseled face and bronzed skin and the look of pain and disillusion that had come as he looked into her eyes.
What had she been that the man she’d married viewed her in that way?
After a long, frustrating meeting with the prison warden, Alistair responded to a call for assistance in the county where a farmer was missing nearly two dozen head of cattle. Rustling had taken on a modern turn with the current high price of beef and, as in this case, the thieves had pulled a trailer in during the night to take a good many thousand dollars’ worth of half grown calves.
By the time that had been investigated and the proper contacts made, the sheriff drove slowly home, his mind on how people thought there wasn’t much in the way of crime out in the country. His sparsely populated county with only two towns with as many as five thousand residents and thousands of acres of grassland and farms seemed to be seeing more than its share of criminal activity these days. Of course drug use, sale and manufacturing , was high on
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