Page 3 of Yuletide Cookies (Christmas Card Cowboys #1)

Chapter Three

Wyatt slid the painted card onto a lower shelf and fenced it in with a roasting pan, careful-like, the way he might pen an untamed horse.

“I ain’t touching it again,” he said. “Not till I know what sets it off.”

Eliza nodded. The scraper in her hand pointed down now, not up, but she still kept hold of it. Smart.

He searched for the lantern shining light on them and found a square of white glare in the ceiling that hummed like a beehive. Odd.

“What did you say,” he asked, “right before I showed?”

“I wished someone would show me how to keep the bakery alive.”

He believed her. The room still carried the shape of her wish, the edges steady again but not settled. He crouched near the card, studying the painting. Short, sure brushstrokes on his sleeve where the boar’s hair bristle split near the tip. Shadows fell left, not right.

“I know this hand,” he said. “Jeb Ortega painted it.”

Her gaze caught on him. “Who’s Jeb?”

“An odd jobber who joins our outfit from time to time. Jeb also letters windows and painted signs around town. Sketches camp life too. He catches a man mid-reach like this. He also painted the cattle drive mural inside the courthouse.” He tapped his own forearm rather than touch the card.

“Jeb always set the light from the right.”

She leaned closer, careful. “But there’s no signature.”

“He’d tuck a mark somewhere.” Wyatt squinted where a rope coil crossed the wagon wheel. Two crosshatches lay hidden where strands met, small as gnats. “There. That’s Jeb.”

He eased back. Knowing didn’t fix the not-knowing. It made a new branch of it. “So this card Jeb painted must’ve turned into a doorway from my time to yours.”

“Does knowing that help anything?” she asked.

“Suppose not,” he said, seeing her logic. What did it matter who’d painted the Christmas card? He was stuck far in the future.

The year she’d named, twenty twenty-five, still thundered in his head. He couldn’t square it. So, he studied her instead.

Eliza Foster.

Her hair was the color of wildflower honey, smooth as river reeds, and caught back from her face in a way that wasn’t weighed down by pins or a bonnet. Her eyes, sky blue and clear, didn’t skitter away when he met them.

And her clothes.

No corset, no layers of skirt. Just trousers that hugged her legs like a second hide, a plain shirt of some fabric too fine-woven for his day, sleeves pushed neat at the wrists, and a red and green apron with cookies on it. Not a farm wife’s gingham, not a town lady’s lace, nothing familiar at all.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

He almost laughed. How did a man explain being hauled through painted paper and dropped a century and a half ahead of his last sunrise?

“Like I’ve been thrown from a horse I never mounted,” he said. “Rattled, but on my feet.”

The truth weighed heavier. He didn’t know the way back home or why he landed here, but the fact she hadn’t run, hadn’t screamed, calmed him.

He glanced at her left hand. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band, but she was too pretty to be a spinster. A widow maybe?

“Where are your menfolk?” He didn’t want some fella busting in, guns blazing, asking who in tarnation was after his woman.

“Um…” she moistened her lips. “I’m on my own.”

“Your man die?”

“No, no.”

“You’re an orphan then?” Like me?

“I have parents, and an older brother, but they live in Florida.”

“Florida? That’s a far piece away.”

“It is.”

“They just up and left you here on your own?” He was still trying to figure out the rules of this strange land.

“Things are different now. Families don’t always live near each other.”

He puzzled on that. “Dontcha miss ‘em?”

“I do.” She nodded. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds. We have phones and the internet and FaceTime and airplanes…” She stopped, waved a hand. “That’s a lot to explain. For now, how can I help you be more comfortable in twenty twenty-five?”

“You’re downright accommodating, Miss Foster.” He tipped his hat. “I do sure appreciate your calm ways.”

“Oh, trust me. Inside I’m a basket case.”

Wyatt frowned. “What’s that?”

“Oh boy, we’ve got our work cut out for us,” she said under her breath. “Let’s focus on your needs for now. How can I make this situation easier for you?”

“It ain’t your problem to fix. The way I see it, I can hunker down here in your place like a calf staked to a post, jumping at every sound and waiting for the card to take me home.

” He paused. “Or I can step out that door and see what’s become of the world.

I need to know if my outfit’s camp is where I left it, though I’m guessing it ain’t. ”

“If you go,” she asked, and the hesitation in her voice made him look closer, “will you come back?”

The question sat between them. She had no cause to trust him, this woman with worry in her eyes, but she was asking anyway.

“I aim to, but I don’t know what dangers lurk out there.” He cast a sideways glance at the card. “Or what this painting might do.”

“Do you want company?” The offer surprised him, sweet as water in drought. This slip of a woman, scared as she was, willing to walk into the dark with him.

“I reckon not, ma’am. But it’s right kind of you to offer. This is something I need to look in the eye my own self.”

“Please be careful,” she said.

“I’ll do my level best.”

“This way.” She led him from the storeroom through the kitchen and into the front of the bakery. He felt better instantly, recognizing something he knew. Things had changed, but this was Maggie Foster’s bakery. He’d been inside it dozens of times.

“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“No need to hover. I’ll be fine.” Honest truth? He needed a deep breath of cold December air to shake this off.

The bell above the door gave out a thin jingle that sounded wrong somehow, too bright and cheery for this strange moment.

Outside, the street that was once dirt ran flat as a griddle and midnight black, some kind of stone or tar scraped smooth. No ruts to read, no horse droppings, no wagon tracks pressed into mud. His boots found no purchase on it, sliding like he was walking on plate glass.

He stepped onto the road, testing the black ground with one boot. Would it hold or give way? Solid. Whew. The camp should be about five miles north of here. His wagon, the remuda pen, bedrolls around the fire. His outfit. But how would he get there? He had no horse.

All around him stood buildings he didn’t recognize, with straight lines and too much glass, lit from inside with cold white lights that didn’t flicker. Foster’s Bakeshop was the only structure from his time.

A deep loneliness ran through him, but he pushed it aside. No time to feel sorry for himself.

He took another step into the street and wondered if the road ran to his encampment. He could easily walk five miles, but it was dark and cold in wolf country.

A roar built behind him, growing like a thunderhead fixing to break. His pulse jumped hot and fast, and he turned. Yellow light swung around the corner, two beams of it bright as staring into the sun.

A rapidly moving carriage.

No, not a carriage, some devil machine.

It came at him fast as a cavalry charge. Low to the ground like a predator, red as fresh blood, with a growl in its belly that shook Wyatt’s bones.

No horses. Nothing pulling it. Just that terrible noise and those eyes cutting through the dusk straight at him.

His body knew danger even if his mind couldn’t parse it, but his boots, those durn boots on this slick ground, wouldn’t grip. He pushed off, tried to dive sideways, but his feet went out from under him like he was skating on river ice.

The machine shrieked, a sound like a branded calf but louder, mechanical.

This was it. He’d survived stampedes and range fires and a lightning strike that killed two horses, only to die under some crazed carriage in a year that shouldn’t exist?—

Arms grabbed him.

Yanked.

He tumbled backward, his shoulder hitting the hard ground.

The machine whizzed past, so close the wind of it grabbed his hat and sent it rolling. Heat washed over him, and that stink like hot metal and rotted eggs spawned something unholy.

The red demon machine stopped twenty feet past, sitting there growling. A window rolled down. How did glass move like that? Someone shouted words he couldn’t make sense of, angry sounding. Then it snarled away, red lights winking at its backside like burning coals.

He was on his back, breathing hard, and Eliza Foster was on her knees beside him, her hands fisted in his coat. Her face drawn, eyes wide.

“Cars,” she gasped. “They’re called cars. And you can’t… you can’t just walk into the street. They’ll kill you.”

His heart hammered against his ribs as if it meant to break free and fly back to 1878 without him. His hands shook. Fear coursed through him. Dang it. He’d faced down gunslingers in his time but this thing was something he knew nothing about.

“Cars.” He tasted the word. Short and hard, like the thing itself. “How in the Sam Hill does it move without horses?”

“Engine. Motor. I—” She was still gripping his coat. “Never mind. But you can’t go out here alone. Not until you understand what you’re up against.”

Wyatt blinked up at her. Golly, she sure was pretty. It was hard not to stare.

Eliza looked down at her hands as if she just realized she was still holding onto him and let go. “The world’s different now. Everything’s different. Speed and metal and… God, you almost?—”

“Huh?”

She stood up fast, brushing her hands on her apron. “Come back inside. Please.”

“All right, you tell me the rules, I’ll heed them.”

He sat up, watching another one of those car-things rush past, white as bone, keeping to its side of the road like there were invisible walls.

The bitter stench lingered in his nose. In the distance, he could hear more of them, howling like a pack of metal wolves.

“My hat,” he said, because it was something normal to say when nothing else was.

She fetched his Stetson from where it had rolled against a pole and dusted it off careful-like. “I need to teach you about traffic lights and crosswalks and—” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “This is insane.”

“Yes, ‘um, it surely is.” He took his hat, settled it back where it belonged, and got to his feet, legs unsteady as a newborn colt’s.

He was lost. Lost in a way that had nothing to do with direction and everything to do with time itself. A hundred and forty-seven years from home with no map back.

And his only lifeline was Eliza Foster.