A Trespass in Time (2 page)

             He was pawing at the open cash drawer with one hand while pointing a large black gun directly at Ella.

            Ella took a step backwards and the man raised the gun to follow her.

            “Don’t move!” he snarled. Ella looked at the face of the poor cashier, a chubby high school girl who was crying without making any noise.

            Strong, rough hands grabbed Ella’s purse and jerked it off her shoulder. Her instinct was to hold onto it and to turn to face her assailant. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed him before; the smell was overpowering at this close range. When she turned, the man backhanded her and she felt the café begin to melt away into darkness with the crash of pain but he held her firmly so that she didn’t fall away from him. In the back of her mind, she could hear the two men speaking to each other in Spanish. Now she could hear the girl’s sobs, too.

            The left side of her face was an explosion of pain and fire and she thought she could taste blood in her mouth. She had no idea how it could be that she was still standing. She knew she was breathing rapidly, she could hear her own panicked breath coming in jagged rasps.  The desire to get away, to shrink away was overwhelming. She heard herself gasping as if for breath and realized the man holding her—an angry cartoon of facial hair and broken teeth—was screaming at her. Ella closed her eyes as if by blotting him out she could make him disappear.

            “
Lievar su
!”

            Ella’s rudimentary high school Spanish came back to her as if from another world.
Bring her
. The man who held her tightened his grip and pushed her in front of him. As she stumbled toward the front door, she saw that the café was indeed full of people—all of whom were crouching or cowering by their tables.  

            Dear God, would she survive this day?  

            Ella clutched at her jacket lapels as the thug with the bag full of cash brushed past her. The other robber propelled her roughly forward from behind. The glimpse of the sunny day outside the front doors seemed such a lie to Ella as she staggered forward, her skin clammy with fear. 

            The moment the doors were kicked open, the sunlight blinded Ella. She clenched her eyes closed but continued moving, feeling the warmth of the late afternoon on her face. When the man holding her slammed to a stop, her eyes flew open. There was an incoming customer standing in front of them on the sidewalk outside of the front door as if he’d just materialized. Ella wanted to tell him to run. She wanted to tell him not to come near. She wanted to beg him to help her.

            The customer on the sidewalk spoke: “You boys helping my wife home again tonight?”

            “Fuck off,
chorra
,” the thug in front snarled. He made what looked like a feigned lunge at the man, but a second later, he was on his hands and knees retching up his lunch on the sidewalk. Ella stared at the vomiting man and the bag of money dumped on the curb at his feet. She looked up at the customer who had put him there.

           
It was cute cowboy guy.

           
The cowboy
plucked the gun off the man on his knees and aimed it at the man behind Ella. He instantly let her go. As she slowly collapsed to the ground, she realized he had been supporting her more than guiding her.

            “Okay,” said the cowboy. “Stand over there by the dickhead,
mouchouchou,
and put these on.
Comprendo
?”

            Ella didn’t know what the guy said or did that prompted the cowboy to shoot in the air near his head. But whatever the reason, within a minute, her rescuer was crouching next to her and helping her to a sitting position. She could see that the two thugs were plasti-cuffed to each other.

            She looked into his eyes and her own eyes filled with tears. Struck mute by how fast everything had happened, she simply sat and stared at him stunned to find herself thinking his was quite possibly the handsomest face she had ever laid eyes on.  

            “It’s okay,” he said, pulling out his cellphone. “You’re okay, now.” He spoke into the phone and she watched him as he spoke. He smiled briefly, reassuringly, at her.

            “Anybody hurt inside?” he asked.

            She shook her head slowly although she didn’t really know.

            “Okay, hold on,” he said. “Cops’ll be here in a second.”

            Ella found herself reaching out to touch the sleeve of her rescuer as if to prove to herself that he was real. He looked at her and grinned when she did.

           
Who was this guy?
 

Chapter Two

            The handsome cowboy handed her a large mug of coffee while the police were questioning the
Starbucks
customers and employees. Ella was surprised that someone was still brewing and serving coffee during all this. It occurred to her that the cowboy seemed so capable, he could easily have whipped it up himself. The two of them sat at an outdoor table. Ella didn’t have the stomach to return to the inside of the café. She noticed as she lifted the coffee to her lips that her hands were still shaking.

            She watched him as she sipped her coffee. He had such a charismatic, commanding way about him.
How had she not noticed that when she’d met him the other day?  

            “No way. You’re a US Marshal?”

            “Deputy US Marshal, yes ma’am.”

            “How did you know what was happening? Were you following me?”

            “I can see how you might think that, but no. Totally coincidental. In fact, the whole reason I was at this Starbucks was to give you some space at our neighborhood one.”   

            “You totally saved me. When I think what nearly—” She shivered and wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup as if for warmth.

            “Well, don’t think about it,” Rowan said. “But if you won’t let me see you home, at least have dinner with me tonight.”

            For a moment, she entertained the idea of saying no. She was going to be on an airplane heading to her new life in Germany in exactly three days from now and she didn’t need to begin anything complicated that would stall that.

            But he looked so cute and sexy with his crinkly blue eyes. And he
did
just save her life.

            What could one dinner hurt?

            Six hours later, Ella gave her apartment a quick last look before locking the door and stepping out into the hallway.  Most of her furniture was in storage, the bulk of her wardrobe already boxed and sent to her new place in Heidelberg. So eager was she for the next exciting chapter of her life to begin, she had been living out of her suitcase for the last five days. Her father hadn’t been thrilled with the new overseas job posting but he agreed that she should take advantage of opportunities while she was young. Plenty of time for mortgages and putting down roots when she was older. She hadn’t told her dad that she was happy to think of this Germany gig as permanent. She needed a change from the day-in-day-out rut she was in with her job and figured there was nothing like struggling to order a coffee in a foreign language to help with
that
.

            It wasn’t until today when she got a good look at her cowboy cop that she had faltered in her excitement to leave. And she didn’t like faltering. As pleasant as it was to meet someone new, it was positively annoying to have her plans dimmed. Heidelberg and all the promises of an exciting new life that it guaranteed had been nothing but one hundred percent thrilling for her—before she met Rowan.

            As she slid into the driver’s seat of her car and adjusted the rear view mirror, she caught a glimpse of herself and frowned. What was the point of this? She was
leaving
.

             
Well, one thing was for sure,
Rowan thought as he rinsed his razor in the sink,
this would go down in history as the most incredible beginning to any first date, anywhere, ever
.

           
Drawing a weapon to get the attention of the girl of your dreams was, to say the least, an inauspicious beginning
. He squinted at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Did he really think she was the girl of his dreams?

           
This is why love sucks
, he thought.
It makes you sound like a damn idiot.
But when he looked in the bathroom mirror, he had a goofy smile plastered across his face.

            When the cops showed up to remove Heckle and Jeckle, Rowan knew he had bought himself a long afternoon of paperwork—not just in Atlanta but back in Dothan, too. While it was true he hadn’t pulled his piece, everything still had to be laboriously documented even though, technically, he was still on leave. In his opinion, Ella hadn’t seemed in any condition to be driving herself home but she insisted she was fine. Like a lot of people, she registered the shock of being attacked as worse than the actual attack. At least she had agreed to have dinner with him. Even if she did insist on meeting him at the restaurant.  

            Why was he always meeting women with trust issues?

            “I like the hat.”

            Ella tucked her feet up under her on the outdoor sofa and reached for her water goblet.

            “Thank you, ma’am,” Rowan said, tossing it onto the spare chair at the table. “All part of the brand.”

            “I can see that.”

            The night air felt like a light layer of velvet on her skin. By day, the Atlanta summer was oppressive. But tonight was proof that, under the right circumstances, a summer evening could be pretty magical. She looked around the outdoor restaurant.

            “How is it I didn’t even know this place existed?” she asked, relaxing into the cushions of the couch.  

            “My folks told me about it,” he said. “They’re retired. Plenty of time to read the reviews of every restaurant in town.”

            “You’re staying with them until your medical leave is over?”

            “That’s the plan.”

            “How’s that going?”

            “The healing or the living with the folks?”

            Ella laughed.

            “I’m a little sore,” Rowan said patting his side, “but I can still kick down the door to Starbucks to rescue distressed damsels when called upon. How about you? Any effects from being bounced against a sidewalk today?”

            Ella shook her head. “I’m good.”

            “You are that,” Rowan said, looking at her with what Ella could only describe as hunger in his eyes.  

            He didn’t dress or look like anyone she had ever known. Athletic, tall, rugged good looks. Check. Individualistic…she glanced at the cowboy hat on the chair. Check. And a US Marshal.  Triple quadruple
Check
. She smiled at him, hoping she didn’t look as obvious that she wanted to eat him up too.

            “There’s no way I’m going to be able to eat all this food,” she said. “And I have a world class sweet tooth so dessert is a given.”

            “Not to worry. Go ahead and eat the dessert first and we’ll save the main course for our next date, how’s that?”

            “You’re awfully sure there’ll be a next date.”

            “Yeah, I’m sure.”

            “Yeah, me, too,” she said. “And probably breakfast.”

            “What?”

            “What?”

           
Dear God, did she just say that out loud?

            “Did you just say…?”

            “Oh, hi, there,” she said to the approaching waiter. “I’ll have a very large glass of your house Pinot Grigio. Thank you.”

            Rowan laughed heartily to her complete embarrassment and the waiter’s confusion.

            God, even his laugh is sexy.

            “Okay, tell me everything,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a glass of beer. “You know who I am. What do you do?”

            “I work for a business intelligence firm doing background investigations,” she said.

            He frowned. “Sounds…fun?”

            She laughed. “No, it’s pretty much as boring as it sounds, but I’m good at it and the benefits are really great. My parents were both CIA operatives,” she said. “So I really wanted something nonexciting.”

            “Wow. Your folks were
both
spies?”

            “It’s not as exciting as it sounds. My dad always called it the most boring job on earth—interrupted by brief moments of sheer terror.”

            “Your dad sounds like he’s got a sense of humor. They retired now?”

            “My dad is,” Ella said. “My mom died when I was five.”

            “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rowan said. “Growing up without a mother must have been tough.”

            “It was,” Ella said.

            “You an only child?”

            “I am. How could you tell?”

            Rowan laughed. “Only children tend to act…differently,” he said.

            “More selfish? More independent?”

            “Something like that.”

            “I guess you had hoards of siblings to make you so well grounded as an adult?”

            “I’m the eldest of four,” he said, nodding. “My folks are pretty dull compared to yours. My dad just retired from AT&T here in Atlanta. My mom was a homemaker.”

            “What made you want to be a US Marshal?”

             “No one thing, really,” he said. He unbuttoned his top shirt button and pulled out a pair of dog tags. “My uncle’s,” he said. “He died in the Gulf War.”

            “You were close?”

            “I was only ten,” Rowan said, stuffing the dog tags back in his shirt. “But he made an indelible impression. On all us kids, really.”