OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (31 page)

Welcome to Dodge City.

If I planned to stay—stay alive, that is—it was time to bite the bullet and think survival.

Compared to the purgatory of being
this
kind of prostitute—surely I wasn't this kind, never this kind—were my fragmented memories so frightening? I'd earned more in a week than a cowboy could in a year. I'd worn $85 shoes. I'd had my own condo, and so many clothes I'd needed a small room, a "walk-in closet" for them all—I could remember that much, fragmented or not. If I were smart, if I invested wisely, maybe I would
never
have to end up here in hooker hell. Maybe.

But first I had to have money to invest—and I
'd already learned from talking to Belle and Dixie that I would never do more than survive on the salary of a housekeeper, a cook, or a seamstress... assuming anyone was stupid enough to hire me as any of those. I needed to earn enough to get the hell out of Dodge and go to a bigger city, one where my cultured services could find a better market. Then, perhaps with some careful business decisions....

A niggling bit of doubt challenged my halfhearted plan. What if I
wasn't
a whore at all? But I had to be, because it was logical—just look at what I could remember! Besides, I could sense a single overwhelming alternative looming like a great darkness at the edge of my memory, a larger chunk of reality than any of the rest that had bombarded me this afternoon, and it was even more frightening than this. At least as a prostitute I fit here—not in Dodge City maybe, but
here
. At least it meant I had a past, a future, a
context
. At least it meant I hadn't been....

But even when I
tried
to consider dark, unthinkable alternatives, they roiled away from me like black mist, unable to be touched or viewed full-on. So I distracted myself by trying to remember what life as a high-priced escort might have been like. Not just the fancy dinners, the dancing, the pretty clothes—that much I could remember, though only in weird flashes. No, I tried to imagine selling my body to strangers...

I couldn
't. How much did I charge per customer? Did I demand payment up front? How did I attract business? Did I just ignore the fact that some men would be married, making me an adulteress? Would I be expected to strip, or just to lift my skirts? Alice probably just hiked up her skirts but it seemed to me, logically, that a high-priced courtesan would be expected to strip. And, well….

What did it even feel like?

Maybe it was like riding a bicycle, and I would remember when the time came?

A heavy pounding on the door jump-started my heart into full racing speed. The second battering scared me. I was
not
ready to find out if I was past training wheels or not, especially not in
this
slum!

I darted forward and dropped the little wooden bolt into place, and only then frowned at the strange term, another strange term in so many.
Training wheels
?

Whoever was out there would not take the hint, and pounded again. Looking around the single-room shanty, I grabbed the one thing I could find for a weapon—the chair. "Go away!" I yelled.

He kicked in the door.

I fell back with a cry from the size and
fierceness of the man filling the doorway, back-lit by the harsh afternoon sunlight, radiating fury. Only belatedly did I recognize the Boss—and shoved the useless chair behind me before he could think I would bash him with it. Maybe I should've kept it. Standing there, even dead still, he scared me.

Damn, but he looked pissed. And he was wearing his gun again.

"Might of knowed you'd be here," he accused, disgust thick in his drawl.

I clutched the chair behind me and tried not to flinch. I hadn
't asked him to come here and be disgusted by me. His prudish morality wouldn't help me do what maybe had to be done with my life. "Of course," I said, trying desperately for a brave front. "You know everything."

He didn
't argue that, and I felt his gaze, hot and furious, on where my bodice hung partially unbuttoned. Oh. "Got you decent clothes," he reminded me, like an accusation. "Fed you like a decent woman. Gave you egg money."

"I lost it."

He yanked something out of his coat pocket—my reticule; he'd found my reticule—and wordlessly tossed it to me. I let go of the chair to catch it, poor little bag, trying so hard to be dainty and ladylike. Pretending that my hand wasn't shaking, I opened the drawstring closure and pulled out my little bandana of coins. Maybe I
was
a hooker, but I liked to think I had my own brand of honor.

"Look, I didn
't know when I took this that I was accepting it under false pretenses, but obviously I was. I'd appreciate you giving it back to the boys for me." I stepped forward toward where he still hadn't crossed the threshold—the bravest thing I could remember ever doing, closing that gap between myself and the man who blocked the room's only exit. He was practically vibrating with anger; I could smell it on him, and the hair stood up on my arms and on the back of my neck as if he were generating an electric current.
Electric…?

He stood there, stiff, but he didn
't take the offered bandana.

"
Here,
" I insisted, holding it out again. I didn't like how his nostrils flared with his breath as he glared at me. When he moved, it was so fast that I cried out again and fell back from him, but not fast enough to keep him from claiming the worn bandana from my hand and slinging it across the room so hard that it burst open on impact, coins ricocheting off the dirt wall to the dirt floor.

Then he went back to glaring at me, and I knew I was in deep,
deep
trouble.

I should probably button the bodice of my dress now. But, my back pressed against the sod wall, I couldn
't move. We stood like that for I-don't-know how long, him glaring at me and me staring wide-eyed back, until I heard some whooping from outside, behind him. Garrison reluctantly stepped inside and shut the door. When it tried to swing open again, its latch thoroughly demolished by his entry, he crossed the crib in two steps, claimed the chair, and used it to wedge the thing closed.

Blocking my exit? But no, he kept his distance from me. Nothing so sinister.

"Worried about your reputation?" I guessed, finding my voice.

"Ain
't never been in the cribs," he stated firmly. "Don't plan to return. Recommend the same to you."

"Oh, I definitely do business in finer surroundings than this," I assured him, and could tell by the set of his mouth that he hadn
't meant that. "Come on, Boss. What else could I do? What jobs could I get? You've seen me—I'm lousy at everything. Everything else, I mean. I can't cook. I can't sew. I can read and write, but women don't get jobs doing that, right?"

"You could marry. Whores do."

"Oh, and I suppose you're offering?"

It was a good thing I knew how unlikely that was, or else my feelings would
've been really hurt when he snorted at me. Jacob Garrison, paragon of virtue and clean language, would never marry a whore. He'd had trouble letting a suspected one accompany his livestock long enough to assure her basic survival. He'd only started to treat me nicely when, in my ignorance, I'd started to convince him I
wasn't
a....

Wait a minute.

"I thought whore was a dirty word," I said slowly, starting to tremble inside with something even worse than fear.

"It
's a dirty thing," he drawled, unapologetic.

And that
's when I noticed something else. Garrison still wore his hat. He stood inside a building, in my presence, with his hat on, and he hadn't even touched it—because I really
was
a whore. I was a dirty thing, in his eyes... okay, in the eyes of many. But his eyes, intent and furious, were the ones that counted the most at this moment.

As much as the gesture of doffed hats had amused me, its loss was suddenly a pain deep in my chest, and all my anger at the unfairness of him, of life, of everything boiled up in me.

"Well maybe you've just run across the wrong kind of whores, Boss. Didn't Everett explain to you? I'm an
escort
. I've got standards. Once I get together a better wardrobe, and find my way to a city with a posh-enough clientele, I'll be living the high life again."

He swallowed, frowned, and looked deliberately away from me and my open bodice. So predictable. So moral. "Whore
's a whore."

"In fact, why am I wasting time with you, when I could be rustling up some business?
" I wanted to hurt him with the ugliness of it, just as I'd been hurt. When I laughed at my figure of speech, it wasn't a nice laugh.
Rustle up
. How appropriate. "Benj is supposed to be quite the lady's man, right? Maybe you could let him have a few hours away from the herd tonight, after all. And Murphy seemed kind of interested. Your cowboys aren't my usual class of customers, but I owe you all a favor. Why don't you send a couple of them my direction?"

"I
'll not do that," he warned, which didn't surprise me. Mr. Propriety. Maybe I wouldn't have even made the suggestion if I thought he'd follow up. Sleeping with Murphy. Ugh.

"Well hell," I drawled back, swearing on purpose, just to egg him on. "Maybe I could talk you into buying some yourself, Boss. You said you usually finish what you star—"

Then, at last, Jacob Garrison surprised me.

He snapped a coin, a gold coin, onto the table.

If he'd called my bluff to shut me up, it worked.

That gold piece lay there, catching what little light oozed through the oiled paper on the window, in a silence broken only by the shudder of our breathing.

What to do? He'd made his wordless argument—put up or shut up—and all he had to do now was wait for mine. I could turn tail and he would probably even let me; I hoped I knew him that well, at least.

And yet...if I
was
a prostitute....

I finally considered the possibility—the likelihood—that a great deal of the building tension between myself and the trail boss had been sexual. I know—duh. But at that moment, the realization felt like a hot rush through my veins. I didn
't particularly like the man sometimes, but oh, I did admire him. His power; his work-roughened hands; his silent, shadowed eyes; his unshakeable control....

Maybe I just felt suicidal by now, but I wanted to see that control shaken. So he had a decade or two on me. I must have slept with older men than him, and probably would again. And if I had a lifetime of this ahead of me, I wanted to do it at least once with Garrison.

Besides,
he
was probably just bluffing
me
...in which case I wanted, just once, to get the upper hand.

I started unfastening the rest of the buttons on my dress bodice, and despite my numb fingers, it was almost easy. I saw him gulp—
ha
!—and, belatedly, he took off his hat. He scrunched the brim pretty badly, too, before laying it, crown-down, on the table beside the gold-piece.

I continued unbuttoning, opening the material so that more cool air touched the tops of my breasts, over my camisole...and it began to happen again.

That sense of unreality.

Had
I ever actually done this before?

I tamped down that doubt; obviously I knew
what
to do. I had to have learned it somewhere... and I was almost positive I hadn't been married. Besides, I had more pressing sensations than doubt clamoring for my attention. My skin felt prickly, like a delicious kind of itch, as I finished with the bodice and shrugged it off my shoulders, skimmed the new wrapper to the floor, then tossed it to the chair. It brushed by Garrison's sleeve, en route, and he flinched from the sensation.

So far, so good.
And now I was unwrapped.

I undid the drawstring of first one petticoat, then the second, then the third, dropping and then tossing each of them, one at a time, after the dress. Garrison took a single step to the side, so as not to be touched again—but his eyes hadn
't left me. Now wearing only my camisole, drawers, stockings and shoes, I decided to take down my hair. It fell from my snood to curl softly around my shoulders.

Was I giving him a show worth the price of admission?

From the way he continued to stare, breath short, I suspected I was. That gave me confidence, despite that persistent sense of unreality.

Maybe the sense of unreality gave me confidence as well.

I began to unlace my camisole, a mounting excitement tightening in my own chest, so that my breath matched his. If he was going to back down, now was when he would do it.

I realized, with some surprise, that I hoped he did not.

When my camisole sagged open, not quite revealing my nipples but showing the valley between my breasts, I suddenly decided that I could use a little audience participation. I stepped forward, grasped Garrison's coat by both lapels and pushed it back over his hard, broad shoulders.