Page 54 of Stolen Time

As with so many other things in this new world, however, I didn’t comment on that astonishing fact. No, I waited for Seth to come over and help me out of my chair — those gentlemanly little touches were also something I’d had to get used to, although I thought I liked them very much — and then we headed outside to the spot where we’d left the car parked at the curb partway down the block.

Just as he was opening the convertible’s door for me, a green truck passed us by and turned down the alley behind the restaurant. The man driving it had hair a shade lighter than Seth’s, with a remarkably similar profile.

“Was that your brother Charles?” I asked, and Seth startled, then put on a smile that didn’t look terribly convincing.

“It could have been,” he replied while I got into the passenger seat and he shut the door. “We often have to make deliveries here in Prescott.”

At nine-thirty at night?I wanted to ask, but I held my tongue. While Charles’s presence here at this hour might have seemed odd, I supposed it was possible he had to do these deliveries after the store was closed for the day. It wasn’t as if they had a huge staff at the mercantile, just Charles and Molly and Henry McAllister.

Instead, I waited until Seth had gotten behind the wheel before saying, “I hope it’s not too dangerous, driving up and down Mingus late at night.”

Although he was in profile to me, I couldn’t ignore the flicker of relief that passed over his features. Was he glad I’d made such an innocuous comment?

“Oh, it’s not too bad,” he replied as he pulled away from the curb. “We have to be careful in the winter because of the ice, but otherwise, there’s nothing to it.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Although using self-driving cars had greatly reduced overall accidents, the nav systems could still have trouble when a deer decided to run across the road or a monsoon downpour appeared out of nowhere and reduced visibility to almost nothing. And if we still had accidents despite having every modern safety device available to us, I had to believe the twisty route up and over Mingus presented even more difficulties in these noisy, rickety-feeling cars of the 1920s.

But I only nodded, and soon enough, we’d gotten up enough speed that further conversation was nearly impossible. As we drove back to Jerome, though, my intuition wanted to tell me that there was a lot more to Charles McAllister’s presence in Prescott tonight than Seth had let on.

Whether I’d ever be able to find out what he’d been up to, though, was an entirely separate question.

16

CONSORT CONUNDRUM

Seth wantedto curse the remarkably bad timing that had allowed his brother to drive past just as he and Deborah were about to get in the car, but it seemed as if she’d accepted his explanation about making deliveries and didn’t need any further elaboration.

Wasn’t that part of the reason why Charles had thought he could get away with all this in the first place? The mercantile often needed to pick up items in Prescott, although most of those sorts of work trips were handled during normal business hours. Still, his duties with the bootleggers offered enough opportunity for plausible deniability that Charles probably thought it wasn’t too much of a risk.

All the same, the near-miss put Seth on edge. When he’d first proposed this date, he’d thought that maybe he and Deborah could stop at the picnic area on the way home, could possibly take a moonlit walk and share their first kiss. Now, though, with his nerves jangling and his anger at Charles for pursuing such a dangerous means of making extra money resurfacing at exactly the wrong time, he thought it was probably better to take Deborah straight to Ruth and Timothy’s house.

He wanted his first kiss with her to be perfect, and he knew it wouldn’t be tonight.

So he drove back to Jerome and then helped her out of the car before walking her up the steps to the front door. Something about her lovely face seemed almost puzzled, as if she, too, had thought this might be the time they finally shared a kiss.

Doubt crept over him, but he pushed it away. While he wanted to take Deborah in his arms, he knew he didn’t have any desire to share such intimacies on the front porch of his aunt Ruth’s house.

“Dinner was lovely,” Deborah said. “And so was the drive. It was fun to see Prescott.”

If she was disappointed that they hadn’t stopped somewhere to steal a few kisses, it didn’t show in her expression or her tone. Maybe he’d imagined the puzzlement he’d noticed a moment earlier.

But no, there it was again, only a flicker in her clear gray-blue eyes, just enough to let him know she wanted this, even if she wouldn’t attempt to initiate any intimacies.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he replied. “We’ll have to go back sometime.”

Even as the words left his mouth, he hoped he wasn’t being presumptuous. Possibly, he’d misinterpreted that flash of…something…in her face, and she was instead thinking of the best way to tell him that she didn’t believe they should be planning any future meetings.

His worries were dispelled as soon as she replied, however.

“That would be wonderful,” she said. “Or really, anything you can think of. It’s fun getting to explore the area…and to spend time with you.”

And before he could even begin to react, she reached over and gave his hand a quick squeeze, and placed an even quicker kiss against his cheek.

A tingle went through him at that brief touch, one that signaled he was more than happy to get even such a very small caress.

She flashed him a smile, then went inside.

Seth, on the other hand, stood outside on the porch for a moment, then placed his fingers against the spot on his cheek where her soft lips had been pressed only a moment earlier. How could he be so utterly thrilled by a simple kiss on the cheek from Deborah Rowe?

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