Leaving Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 3) Read online

  “I was never so glad to see someone in my whole life,” Lynne announced, tears in her eyes while her husband said gruffly, “Welcome home, Eddie.”

  The smell of something burning on the stove sent Lynne running for the kitchen and the other three followed her as though they couldn’t bear to be separated by as much as the distance between the rooms.

  Lynne managed to rescue most of the green beans she’d been heating for supper. “They’re better cooked a little crisp,” her husband assured her loyally and they sat down at the kitchen table for a celebratory country meal complete with homemade cornbread.

  They were full of questions as to why she hadn’t returned as expected, but she skirted that issue to come right out and ask if it was all right if she and Zan got married Saturday evening here at the ranch.

  The two adults stared at her, though Jerry continued munching his second helping of blackberry cobbler. “Married?” Moss asked weakly. “What would your mother say?”

  “Come on, Moss,” his wife chided. “Surely you knew it was because of Zan that she didn’t go back with Betsy. She will have told them all about the romance.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “You’ll need a dress and a veil. There’s not time to order a cake, but I can make a fairly fancy one myself. And it’s so cold, how about coffee and hot spiced punch and we can make some little sandwiches and get some of my homemade soup out of the freezer. You know I make gallons of it at a time.”

  Eddie couldn’t help laughing. “A very simple wedding,” she said. “Just us and Zan’s brother, of course.”

  “And his mother and dad,” Lynne reminded her.

  “And at least half a dozen guards,” Moss added cynically.

  His remark sobered Eddie. “His parents have already returned to their home. They don’t seem like a close family,” she added by way of explanation. She didn’t say anything about the guards. No doubt there would be at least the half dozen he’d mentioned.

  She sighed. “We’d prefer that word not get out in advance, so any arrangements we make will have to be simple. I’ll just wear a regular dress and the food sounds wonderful, Lynne.”

  “I’d love for you to be married in my wedding dress, but I’m inches shorter than you. We were married here.” She looked lovingly at her husband. “Oh, wait, I have an idea.” She got up so quickly her chair nearly fell over and raced from the room.

  “Zan’s a good guy,” Jerry finally had finished his cobbler and was free to comment on lesser matters. “Even nicer since he fell for you, Eddie. You’ve changed him somehow.”

  “She’s humanized him,” Moss added. “Before Eddie came, there were whole days when we could hardly get him to say a word. He lived almost entirely in his own mind.”

  Jerry left to take Einstein for his walk and, looking rather thoughtful, Moss got up and began to stack the dirty dishes. When Eddie would have assisted him, he motioned her to stay seated.

  “A whole lot’s going on here that you’re not telling us about, Eddie?”

  She could not lie to Betsy’s Uncle Moss, nor could she tell him much of the truth. It didn’t seem likely that Geoff and his friends could hear what they said way out here in the country miles from the spaceport, but she couldn’t take any chances when it came to Zan. The things these scientists could do were like magic to Eddie.

  “Can’t you tell us, Eddie? We want to help. You’ve become a second niece to us since you’ve come here.”

  “And you are family. I told Zan that since he cannot ask my father for my hand, then he would have to ask you.” She stared down at the table. “He would do that, if he could.”

  “He’s virtually a prisoner, isn’t he?”

  Her eyes begged him not to demand an answer.

  “Dammit, Eddie, we can’t let them take you off like this without even knowing what’s going to happen to you.”

  “Uncle Moss, There not anything you can do about it, but trust Zan and me. Between us we are resourceful.”

  His face relaxed only slightly. “I do believe that, Eddie.”

  When Lynne came back, she held a delicate ivory colored gown in her hands. She wouldn’t spread it out for view in the kitchen for fear something would spill on it, but made them go into the living room where she draped it across the back of the sofa.

  “It’s a wedding dress,” she said. “We found it carefully packed away not long after we first moved here. It’s the dress that Maud’s daughter wore when she married.”

  The dress was lovely and simple, its pure white turned to ivory with age. It had a long, delicately flared skirt and dainty lacing edged the high neck. “I believe it will fit you. From the look of her wedding portrait, Jenny was about your size.”

  Jenny’s dress. Eddie stared at it with awe, acutely aware of the lanky little girl she’d seen sleeping in this very room not so many hours ago.

  Lynne laughed nervously, glancing at her husband. “The woman who left this place to Moss, his great-grandmother . . .”

  “More than one great, I suspect,” Moss took up the explanation, “but maybe we’ve already told you this. Anyway she was a writer and lived much of her life alone on this ranch in days when the work was much harder. Jenny was her only child.”

  “I would love to wear Jenny’s dress,” Eddie said softly. “I can not imagine anything I would like better.”

  Zan could feel the increasing power of the drugs they injected into his system. He suspected now that they’d been building his health these last few weeks just to increase his chances of surviving what they were doing to him now.

  His heart didn’t just beat, it jolted, and his mental state was a kind of controlled hysteria. He felt like shouting everything he knew to the world at large and it was only the thought that tomorrow, if he could stay alive long enough, he would be marrying Eddie that kept him under any kind of control.

  They were trying to use her against him. Instead she was giving him strength. And now was the time to dismiss all hope. For Eddie’s sake, that had to happen.

  Conscious as always that he was being followed, he went to his laboratory, something he often did these days.

  Nothing seemed to go right that morning. Having spent a sleepless night, Eddie got out of bed to hear the sound of rain falling against the roof of the ranch house. When she looked out the window, she saw that where yesterday had been a bright, sunny day now she could only see gray sheets of rain.

  She couldn’t help remembering the old saying, ‘Happy is the bride the sun shines on.’

  Well, any woman lucky enough to be marrying Zan Alston would be happy no matter what the weather decided to do.

  At Lynne’s urging she managed to eat half a slice of toast, spread with homemade strawberry jam, keeping Jerry company while he consumed pancakes and sausage and two glasses of milk. Moss and Lynne had already eaten and he was out seeing to the horses while she finished frosting the huge chocolate cake she’d made for the wedding. “Everybody likes chocolate,” she’d announced yesterday while it was baking.

  Eddie certainly did not want to tell her that she was the exception to that rule. It didn’t matter anyway. It was a beautiful cake and the others would enjoy it, particularly Jerry.

  She didn’t know much about what Zan liked to eat, but she hoped chocolate was not high on his agenda because not much of it would be available in his future.

  Somehow she had to get him out of here and home to Lavender. He could worry about all his scientific plans to save others when she had made sure he lived another day.

  The trouble was she just could not sure how to work it out. How could they possibly cover the distance between here and the hidden little town in Texas when every word they said to each other was overheard, when every step they took was monitored.

  After her token breakfast, she meant to take a hot bath, but when only lukewarm water came out of the tap she wasn’t surprised when Moss yelled to her through the door that the hot water heater had quit working for some unknow
n reason.

  So she took a quick, rather chilly bath and was shivering by the time she dried off with a huge, soft towel and then pulled on her jeans and shirt.

  When she emerged, she found Jerry and Moss about to leave the house, while Lynne worried out loud, “How can we get ready for the wedding without any hot water?”

  It turned out Moss had larger problems. His favorite mare was having trouble giving birth and, though a vet was on his way, he and his son were headed out to do what they could to try to save mother and colt.

  Eddie immediately grabbed her coat and went with them, ignoring Lynne’s protests. “I once worked on a farm,” she called over her shoulder. “Maybe I can help.”

  Somehow she couldn’t bear the thought that they might lose the mare and her little one on her wedding day.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Everything had been prepared the day before and he considered it a plus that he’d actually woke up this morning, still alive. Though he supposed if he’d been dead, he wouldn’t have awakened at all.

  Not that he wanted to die. Not with Eddie waiting out at the ranch for him. But that didn’t count, he couldn’t go to her. If he did they would have her under their control.

  But he sure as hell wasn’t suicidal. He would fight to live and someday he would find her again.

  If he survived. This was all experimental. Considering the drugs they’d given him and what he was about to do, the risk was high.

  They didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were following him. Not anymore. He figured they kept remote track of his blood pressure and pulse rate. There wasn’t much about him they didn’t know.

  And by now they’d figured out he was resistant to their medicines and even probably that he was doing something to make that happen.

  They weren’t stupid. They were some of the brightest people around and they kept letting him go to his lab because what he did there was more information they wanted for their own purposes.

  So far he’d managed to keep them from finding out and after today, one way or another, it wouldn’t matter.

  Today he was his own guinea pig. He would be trying out a formula he’d been working on for years in a largely theoretical way. It not only hadn’t been tried out on a human before, he would have been reluctant to give it to an animal. He didn’t like working with lab rats of any form.

  So today he was the lab rat and he was doing this because it seemed the only possibility left.

  His keepers wouldn’t break in on him in here. His carefully staged tantrums on previous occasions had ensured him a limited amount of privacy. Of course they had listening devices, cameras and other gauges of his activities, but he knew how to work with those.

  He followed the routine he’d established these last few weeks, doing first this and then that. Some of his actions were highly significant, others meant nothing. Once they started going over the lab, it would take them a while to figure which was which.

  When he finished he had three beakers of liquid before him. One was golden in color, another blue, and the third as colorless as water. He then set up his illusions, the hologram that would make it look like he was still present, the gadgets would continue to report on his bodily functions, including the heat he should be emitting.

  There was a very real reason he had never gone any further with this particular research project. The possibilities for its use had been obvious even to his former rather idealistic self. This was another weapon he didn’t want to hand to humanity.

  Besides, he wouldn’t risk any life other than his own. Quickly, knowing his devices would trick the observers for only a limited amount of time, he drank what he thought of as his Mr. Hyde concoctions, one after the other, down to the last drop.

  Then he slipped out the back entrance, walked past the guards waiting for him to come out, moved as silently as possible through the grounds of the port, went through the gates with others who had been stopped to be scanned.

  As far as the technology was concerned, neither he nor his ID chip existed. He was nowhere. He was nobody.

  He stole an auto from the parking lot outside the base, quickly adjusting its program so that it responded to him rather than its legitimate owner. Nobody would think anything if they saw him speeding past. They would just think the passenger had laid back in the seat to take a nap while his car headed for its destination.

  It wasn’t a wise thing to do, he knew that, but he had to see her for just a few minutes. He couldn’t leave her not knowing what had happened to him.

  “Mother and baby doing fine,” Eddie announced late that afternoon as she entered the house which smelled of cake and flowers. The roses placed in various vases throughout the living room looked damp and a little windblown, but they were particularly gorgeous and their scent was absolutely heavenly.

  “And it has finally stopped raining.”

  “You haven’t much time,” Lynne, who was accustomed to farm emergencies if not to wedding preparation, said calmly. “I got the water heater going, so you can have a bath and your clothes are laid out on your bed.”

  Eddie bathed quickly in scented warm water, luxuriating in the ten minutes she allowed herself. She didn’t want to use up all the hot water. After a day spent in the barnyard, Moss and Jerry would need a wash-up as much as she did.

  She admired Jenny’s dress and veil, which had been placed with her prettiest lingerie and a pair of dress heels she hadn’t bothered to wear before, on her bed.

  Then she smoothed her face with powder and put on some lip color, grinning to think what Mrs. Myers would think if she knew the child she had raised was actually wearing makeup. After she was dressed and admired her much changed appearance in Jenny’s lovely old dress, Lynne came knocking on the door and offered to do her hair.

  She styled Eddie’s long auburn tresses into an upswept hairdo that would have been appropriate to a grownup young lady back in Lavender, than gave her a quick kiss on her powdered cheek. “You look lovely, Eddie. We’re running a little late and the groom is probably already in the living room waiting for you. But, hey, the wedding can’t start without you.”

  Lynne looked beautiful in a rose-colored dress and heels that brought her five-foot-two frame into a higher stratosphere. “I appreciate everything you and Moss have done for me,” Eddie said awkwardly. “I can not find words enough to express what I’m feeling for the two of you. And for Jerry, too, he is like a little brother to me and Zan.”

  Lynne’s big brown eyes sparkled with tears. “It’s been a pleasure, Eddie. We wish you and Zan all the happiness in the world and I just want you to know that from experience I learned love has a way of working things out, even when it seems impossible.” She stopped, her thought obviously not completed. She grinned wryly. “I can’t seem to find the words either.”

  She opened the door that led into the hall. “Come on, Missy, let’s get the two of you married.”

  Her heart seeming to miss a beat every now and then, Eddie followed her down the hallway .She thought the house was awfully quiet considering that the men should already have arrived. She was surprised that Jerry was not whooping it up over finally seeing Zan again.

  The only ones in the living room were Moss and Jerry, both of them dressed with unusual formality, and, on Moss’s part at least, looking rather worried.

  “Where’s Zan?” Lynne asked, her heart seeming to have stopped beating entirely. She should have known something would go wrong. Geoff would never really let them get married.

  “It’s half an hour past time for the ceremony,” Lynne added.

  Jerry shrugged. “Not seen hide nor hair of any of them,” he said.

  “Traffic must be bad,” Moss tried to be reassuring, though all of them knew that the vehicles from the spaceport would have priority no matter who or what was on the roadway.

  Fear rose up the back of Eddie’s throat, choking her. “Nobody has called even?”

  Moss shook his head.

  “Cars
driving up and down out on the road in front of the ranch,” Jerry said, not seeming to see that his father was frowning at him as though he were giving out too much information. “And there’s a couple of choppers overhead.”

  Choppers? It took Eddie a minute to realize he meant those low flying aircraft with whirling blades that made a soft purring sound.

  “Do you think we should call the sheriff’s office?” Lynne asked.

  Her husband put an arm around her. “Sweetheart, I’m afraid that might not be a very good idea under the circumstances.”

  He looked over her head at his son. “Might be a good idea if you go get the shotguns out of the case, Jerry.”

  The boy hurried off. “I can shoot a gun,” Eddie said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own.

  The knock sounded at the door so softly they wouldn’t have heard it if they hadn’t been in the front room. Jerry wasn’t back with the guns yet and Moss motioned to the two women to step back while he opened the door a crack. Suddenly Einstein burst into the room from the direction of the kitchen, whining eagerly. He pushed Moss aside and jumped at whoever was standing in the doorway, his tail going like it was caught in a high wind.

  Only nobody was standing in the doorway. The crack opened and Eddie heard the sound of footsteps entering. Jerry came running back in, a shotgun braced against his shoulder and pointed at the empty air on the other side of the door.

  “I give up,” a familiar voice said.

  “Zan!” Eddie threw herself confidently into the space at which the dog was jumping and was caught up in strong arms. “I was so afraid something awful had happened to you.”

  “Close the door,” Moss urged. “Jerry, put down that gun.”

  Moss had to close the door himself because Zan was occupied with kissing and hugging Eddie.

  “You’re messing her hair up,” Lynne complained irritably.

  Eddie, stepping back as though she could see him even though she could not, was impressed that Betsy and Cynthia had such an unusual family. A man they could not see had just walked into the house to be greeted by his dog and his girlfriend and neither Moss or Lynne acted even slightly confused.