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

  Eddie glanced quickly at her sister. She was the only one who knew that Betsy had something very different from sightseeing in mind.

  “I wasn’t all that aware of money when I was nine,” Betsy said, “but it seems to me that its value and the cost of everything we’ll need to buy have gone up a whole lot while we were gone.”

  Moss nodded. “You obviously inherited your mom’s financial good sense, but don’t worry. My dad planned and invested well. You have more than you’ll ever need, even if you decided to live here permanently.”

  “Both of us. Eddie and me. Mom says whatever there is goes to both of us equally.”

  “I can earn my own way,” Eddie protested indignantly.

  “Sure, we can. Both of us. I can tell stories and you can commit history to memory. I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities here for our unique skills,” Betsy said with considerable sarcasm.

  “But Betsy . . .”

  “Half and half. Equal shares. Just the way it was when you and Papa took us in back in Lavender.”

  Eddie swallowed hard. “Family,” she admitted weakly.

  “Family,” Betsy said firmly.

  Zan was beginning to wonder if he was paranoid. In the last few days he’d gone from working in the secure bubble of his own ideas and plans to imagining that people were whispering around him or even going quiet the minute he joined a conversational group.

  Maybe it was just imagination. Maybe it was more than that.

  It was as if he’d suddenly awakened so that for the first time in his life his vision had narrowed down from his wide focus on the universe and how it operated to allow him to actually see the revealing expressions that crossed peoples’ face, to hear the nuances in their speech.

  Always before he could talk over matters that troubled him with his brother, but now he wasn’t even sure he could trust Geoff.

  His brother’s behavior was the strangest of all. His separation from his wife and children now a fact, he’d started dating a rather flamboyant woman several years younger than himself. She was younger than Zan and even he knew that her reputation was not for reliability or job related brilliance.

  He’d even heard other workers wonder how she hung on to her position at the company. She was as different from his sister-in-law as possible.

  Either Geoff was losing his mind, or Zan’s own grip on reality was slipping.

  Any minute now, Zan reasoned, he might start hearing voices and seeing people that existed only in his own mind.

  Not that he believed that for a second. If there was anything he had confidence in, it was his own mental abilities. Even though in some ways it would be easier to believe his own thinking was impaired than to acknowledge that something was very wrong at Alston Adventures.

  So he went to Geoff’s office, expecting he would be busy as always, but determined to talk to him anyway. He had always taken his brother’s role in his life for granted, but for the first time he was really looking and didn’t care for what he was seeing. He thought, perhaps, Geoff didn’t actually like him.

  And he wasn’t so sure he liked Geoff. And yet his brother, along with the parents he rarely saw, was all he had in the way of family.

  The life he had seen at the ranch and a look from large brown eyes in a thin, elegant face had changed the way he looked at everything. Nothing was on the surface now. Everything was deeper down.

  Geoff’s personal assistant tried to keep him from going into the inner office, telling him politely that a business meeting was underway. When Zan just kept going, he then attempted physical restraint, but since Zan was bigger and stronger that wasn’t successful either.

  He pushed open the door and walked into his brother’s opulent office with its huge walnut desk, dominated by Geoff’s larger and taller chair. The other chairs were cushioned, comfortable but considerably less important. Zan, who worked out of laboratories more than offices, had never particularly noticed this arrangement of his brother’s office before.

  Geoff wanted to make it clear that he was commander and chief at Alston Adventures. Not that Zan cared about that. Command had never been one of his goals.

  Now he quickly took in the identities of the two women and three men who were seated on the other side of the desk from Geoff. Because he’d never paid much attention to such things, Zan couldn’t have named a single one of them, but he knew they were all powerful and well known, captains of industry and government. He thought one of the women was a presidential cabinet member.

  Hefty security guards appeared in the doorway behind him, but Geoff waved them off and went over to close the door. He touched his brother’s arm in an affectionate gesture. “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said with an air of conferring a huge honor. “My brother, Alexander Alston, the great innovator himself.”

  In spite of the words, Zan felt a sense of condescension in his brother’s introduction.

  Next Geoff introduced the visitors to his brother, each nodding and smiling in turn. He was too busy trying to analyze the situation to catch the names. They didn’t matter anyway.

  Chapter Eight

  Eddie was mowing the lawn when Zan’s big car came driving up toward his cottage. Mowing the lawn at the ranch meant getting the rather cranky auto-mower going and watching as it swept across the summer-tall grass while you sat in a chair and watched.

  Even though modern machinery was foreign to her, she was quickly discovering a skill for working with it, a task for which neither Moss or Lynne seemed to have much liking. They preferred the ranch’s animals and crops.

  Still she ached for physical activity and decided she would go for a walk through the pastures when the mower finished. Right now she wanted to keep the machine under observance until she was sure the work she’d done on it hadn’t set it so that it would try to mow down the sheep or head down the road to a neighbor.

  She didn’t trust workers with no minds of their own. Personally she thought the sheep should be set to work on the grass, but apparently that wasn’t how things worked here.

  She felt both pleased and suddenly shy when Zan’s car pulled to a stop near her chair and he got out.

  His face looked drained and tired and his usually straight shoulders were slumped. Oh my! Something awful must have happened at work.

  His expression told her little. Zan didn’t show his emotions, but kept them hidden behind his immobile features. And he hadn’t driven straight to the cottage and disappeared inside the way he usually did. He must want company, which was not like him at all.

  “Jerry took Einstein with him when he went riding,” she blurted out. “He didn’t think you’d be back for a couple of hours at least.”

  He sat down on the grass beside her.

  “I could get you a chair,” she offered.

  He shook his head.

  Eddie felt embarrassed at the way she was feeling, afraid he would guess that shivers ran down her back and her hands were trembling. Since she’d been thirteen, she’d watched Betsy fall in and out of love with a train of boys and, eventually, young men. She’d developed her own feelings, but usually for unattainable men several years older than herself, men she could admire, but never dare even approach.

  And now there was Zan and she realized the others had all been illusions. This was real in some frightening way that made her alternately hot and cold and want nothing more than to touch him, or feel his arms around him.

  It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t believe in love at first sight and, no less than Betsy or Lynne could she fail to realize that this was a complicated man who might not even have the ability to love anyone.

  It was as though with his absorption in matters of the mind, he’d left out things involving the heart. Love was a language he’d never learned.

  Now she didn’t allow words to emerge from her mouth until she’d regained some measure of control. She watched as the mower, its task completed, came to a stop and shut down. Her own physical symptoms simmered down from red hot to some
where in the vicinity of normal.

  “Bad day at work?” she asked casually since it was obvious he wasn’t going to speak first.

  “How did you guess?” He seemed disapproving, as though he thought someone had called and told her he’d misbehaved.

  “Just by looking at your face.” She didn’t tell him he appeared as though he’d been pulled through the wringer of a washer. Instead she said, “You seem a little tired.”

  He stared at her in a way that would have been rude coming from any other man. “You look well,” he said.

  “Well, I did get the mower to work,” she said. “That made me feel good. Especially since we don’t have machines like that where I come from.”

  “How do you mow grass?”

  “Mostly we leave that to the browsers and grazers,” she answered lightly.

  He frowned.

  “Animals,” she explained. “Cows, goats, sheep. They eat the grass.”

  He continued to stare. “I like the way you look. Your sister is pretty.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” But her heart had sunk a little. Mostly she didn’t mind being compared to Betsy, but this was Zan, who really mattered.

  “But you’re beautiful. I could just sit and look at you. And, to be honest, I never much noticed faces before.”

  Her own face turned hot and she knew she must be flushing furiously.

  He touched the tip of her nose very lightly with his index finger and smiled. “Where do you come from, Edith? Why is it that your family is just now seeing you for the first time?”

  She swallowed hard. “They’re not exactly my family. Moss is Cynthia’s brother and Cynthia is my stepmother. But after our parents married, Betsy and I became like sisters and we share another sister, Sylvie, who was born to both our parents.” Inside her mind she thought of him as Zan, but the name that came out of her mouth was Alexander. “That’s the whole story, Alexander.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “What is this? An inquisition.” He smiled again and she couldn’t help answering. “Betsy and I, we live with our family in Lavender, Texas only there’s no such town to be found anymore.”

  Lines creased his broad forehead. She guessed you needed a broad forehead to hold so many brains. What a foolish thought! What was wrong with her?

  She’d said too much already so she had to go on. “Back when I was just a baby in 1883 my great-grandfather took Lavender out of time, out of this world, to protect others from a virulent influenza that swept through our community. It takes up only a few thousand acres, the town, a river, several creeks, woodlands and farms and we live there together, unable to leave.”

  She didn’t know how she expected him to react. Surprise, denial, a suggestion that she was out of her mind. Instead he merely looked interested.

  “Your grandfather was a scientist?”

  “A doctor. But I’ve found his journals. He wrote strange things I don’t understand and lots of numbers, some letters too. You know x and y things . . .he also said things about Irish magic coming down the line in his family.”

  Zan’s mouth tightened slightly. He shook his head. “It sounds as though the magic here is science. Though there was a time when the two were mixed.”

  She couldn’t believe his lack of surprise. “You just seem to take this right in as though I hadn’t told you something unbelievable.”

  He looked straight into her eyes, something she knew he didn’t commonly do. “I’ve spent my whole life working with science, trying to understand the wonders of creation. I’ve heard theories of multiple universes, of time standing still, of black holes and exploding suns. Some of the newest ideas in theoretical physics even came partly from my own mind. Do you think I don’t believe it possible that this remarkable grandfather of yours created a pocket in time and tucked your little community into it?”

  Her mouth went dry. She had just come from her home in 1904 Texas. Everything he was talking about was new to her.

  Her picture of the world was a narrow one, the little town of Lavender with its scattering of farms round about. The earth was beneath her feet and above her head were the heavens with their clouds and sky, the sun in the daytime and stars and a moon at night.

  Now Zan was telling her about a world where something like Lavender was not considered impossible.

  As she pondered, she was caught by surprise when he touched his lips to hers in a gentle, but lingering kiss and though neither of them were particular familiar with kissing, they managed very well.

  The enchanted moment was rudely interrupted by Betsy’s cousin, who said, “Aw, cut the mush, you two.”

  They moved apart so quickly that the lightweight chair in which Eddie was seated overturned, dumping her on the ground while Zan straightened like a soldier brought to attention.

  Worst of all, Jerry wasn’t the only one to interrupt their tender scene. Betsy’s Uncle Moss loomed, frowning fiercely, just behind his son.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Betsy announced firmly. The two of them were in the guest bedroom which they were currently sharing. “I adore my aunt and uncle, but they still think we’re about nine and a little kiss is a crime.”

  Eddie peered up from where she’d hidden her face in a fluffy, sweet-smelling pillow, having just confided to her sister the embarrassing moment she’d suffered this afternoon when Moss and Jerry caught her kissing Zan. Where she lived, a kiss meant a probable engagement. One just didn’t go around kissing young men with whom one was barely acquainted.

  “I shouldn’t have kissed him back,” she confessed, sitting up to face Betsy.

  “Why not?” Betsy asked defiantly. “Things are different here. A whole lot more than you’d guess, according to what Jerry’s been telling me.”

  Eddie sniffed. “Your cousin’s only fourteen. What can he know?”

  “A whole lot more than we do. Kissing is no big deal here, I can tell you that.”

  Somehow Eddie felt terribly disappointed. She’d hoped that sweet little kiss she and Zan had exchanged meant a whole lot. That was how it felt.

  “I don’t care if you let Zan kiss you, even if I don’t know why you’d want him to considering he’s so strange and remote. It’s your business.”

  Bravely spoken. But Eddie had known Betsy all their growing up years. She was a terrible flirt and enjoyed the attention of admiring young men, but she’d been brought up to early 20th century values. Only girls of questionable character went around kissing indiscriminately and Eddie was sure that, no matter what her cousin had told her, she was finding these new ideas as shocking as Eddie did.

  “I want to find my dad,” Betsy blurted out. “That’s the main reason I came here.” Her expression changed as she grinned. “And because it was something you always wanted to do.”

  Eddie sighed. “It hasn’t turned out at all as I expected.”

  “You want to go back?”

  Embarrassingly Zan’s face appeared in her mind. “Not yet,” she said hastily.

  “Me either. But I gather it’s expensive to get around. It’s not like we can just hop on one of Uncle Moss’s horses and take off. My uncle is going to arranged to transfer some of Mama’s money for our use. Then we can do what we want. My dad used to live in California so I’d like to go there.”

  In spite of the limited nature of their world, they still had been taught the geography of the larger world. Evan and Cynthia had seen to that. California was near the sea. “I’d like to see the ocean,” she agreed, “and some mountains. Before we go back.”

  Betsy stood slowly. “It’s a plan then. As soon as we have a way to pay for things, we’re off on our own. It’s not like we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.”

  Chapter Nine

  Zan hadn’t gone into work in three days. The only one who was truly happy about this was Einstein. The big golden retriever was in bliss, having his best friend all to himself.

  Zan wasn’t happy because he knew he was avoiding the inevitable. T
he way Geoff rerouted that meeting the day he barged in hadn’t fooled him for a minute. He knew quite well they hadn’t intended to discuss marketing for the new space jaunt in the newly reformed Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics.

  If it hadn’t been obvious, the looks on several of the faces of those attending would have given it away. Not that Geoff would have expected that. He’d known since forever that Zan didn’t read expressions, didn’t pay much attention to faces.

  He couldn’t know that everything had changed. Zan thought wryly that he was a little like the princess in the fairy tale, only in reverse of course. The lovely girl from the hidden world had gazed into his eyes and he’d been awakened to nuances he’d never noticed before. Now there was more to the world he saw than planets and stars. His vision had narrowed in, focused.

  He wanted to think about kissing her, but instead he set out to consider the serious problem that was, to some extent, of his own making.

  No, that little committee in Geoff’s luxurious office hadn’t met to talk about selling space trips to the inhabitants of a friendly nation. And whatever it was they’d gathered to discuss, they didn’t want him listening in on the conversation.

  Geoff had called repeatedly, his expression severe as he looked at the brother who was for the first time in his life thinking on his own. “You’re acting like a spoiled child, Zan,” he’d snapped. “Going off and pouting. Just tell me what you’re upset about and I’ll take care of it.”

  Zan had ended the connection abruptly and refused to take any calls. Geoff might run the business side of their joint venture, but he was the one who make it work. In less than an hour he’d set up perimeters around the Caldecott Ranch that allowed no one other than family members or himself to exit or enter without permission.

  He needed time to think and he didn’t want Geoff or anyone else interrupting that process.