Perfect Timing: Those Were the Days / Pistols at Dawn / Time After Time

“I needed to feel alive,” she said, only realizing as she spoke the words that they were exactly true. And that it had worked. The kiss had worked a magic on her, sending electric currents through every part of her body. Making her feel safe and alive and grounded.

She drew in a breath, still unsteady from the rush of desire. “Tucker, what day is it?”

“September tenth,” he said. “What day is the last you recall?”

“What year?” she asked, ignoring the second part of his question and tightening her hands into fists as she steeled herself for his answer.

“Nineteen twenty-three,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

But once again, she didn’t answer. Because even though she’d told herself that had to be the explanation—even though she’d expected to hear from his lips that she’d somehow traveled back in time—now that he’d said the date aloud she knew that she couldn’t open her mouth. Not right then. Not yet.

Because if she did, she’d surely scream again.

CHAPTER FOUR

DR. WILLIAMS bent over the girl, his hand clutching her wrist, his focus directed solely at his pocketwatch. The woman, Tucker noticed, also had a watch. Hers was strapped to a pink strip and wrapped around her wrist. An usual piece of adornment, to be sure. Like nothing he’d seen before, either among the women of Beverly Hills or during his European travels.

He’d almost pointed it out to Talia and Blythe, but something had caused him to hold his tongue, and by the time Blythe had looked at him, her eyes questioning and concerned, the timepiece had disappeared under the sleeve of the girl’s strange garment.

“Doctor?” the girl said. “Am I okay?”

Dr. Williams stood up, stroking his chin. “Your pulse is a bit fast, but not of a level to raise concern. Your pupils are responding properly to light and your reflexes are perfectly normal. Except for your dizzy spells and your inability to remember how you got here, I’d have to say you seem like a perfectly healthy young woman.”

“Thank you,” she said, with obvious relief.

“I do need to ask you some questions now, though. I conducted the physical examination, first, to rule out any injuries or illnesses. But now—”

“You want to check my head. I get it.”

Williams’s smile was gentle, and Tucker found himself grateful he was treating the woman with such care. Intellectually, he knew that was a ridiculous reaction. The woman had appeared mysteriously in his drawing room, dressed in dark clothes and unknown to any of his friends or guests. A logical guess was that she intended to steal from them, just as Jonathan had suggested. Their kiss, however, had told him otherwise. The press of her lips against his had been a reaction filled with need and desire, but also with honesty. And the longing that had fired his blood had been like nothing he’d experienced before.

Logic, therefore, had very little hold on Tucker at the moment. He was, quite simply, infatuated. More, he knew—from her face and from her touch—that she did not intend any harm for him or his family. She was in trouble. She needed him.

And, in truth, he needed her, too. He didn’t understand the depth of feeling that coursed through him, but he knew that it was real.

“Ask me anything,” the girl was saying to Dr. Williams.

“Do you know what your name is?”

“Sylvia,” she said, and Tucker couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t volunteer her last name.

“A pleasure to meet you, Sylvia,” Dr. Williams said. “Do you know our president?”

The girl laughed, a little nervously. “Do I look like a girl who moves in those social circles?”

Tucker laughed, and the doctor joined in.

“I don’t mean to be flip,” Sylvia said. “But I’m fine. Truly. Just a little dizzy. I was disoriented, but I’m better now.”

“But you came for Louisa,” Blythe said. “And we don’t know a Louisa.”

“I met her at a party,” Sylvia said. “Perhaps I misunderstood her last name. Or perhaps she was playing a trick on me.”

“Why would she do that?” Tucker asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you stand?” That from the doctor.

She drew in a breath. “I think so.” She started to climb to her feet, taking Tucker’s outstretched arm when he offered it to her. “Yes,” she said. “See, I’m much better.” She kept clinging to his arm, though, a fact that didn’t trouble Tucker at all.

“And do you know where you live, my dear?” the doctor asked.

“Doctor, of course. You’re acting as if no one has ever fainted before,” she said with a charming smile. To Tucker’s eyes, though, the smile didn’t seem to reach her core. She was, he realized, lying. Or at least not telling them the full truth.

“How’s your head?” he asked. “Anna will have made a place for you by now in one of the guest rooms. We should let you get some sleep.”

“Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t. I mean, I should…” She trailed off with a frown.

“You should?”

“I was just going to say that I should go home. But—”

“Later,” he said, determined to keep her there. “It’s late, and I wouldn’t feel right letting you travel in your condition. She should stay for the night, shouldn’t she, Blythe?”

Blythe’s eyes shifted with remarkable speed from surprise to delight. “Absolutely,” Blythe said. “You can stay as long as you need until you’re feeling better.” She took Sylvia’s other arm and shot a triumphant smile toward Tucker.

He wanted to tell her not to be melodramatic. He was simply concerned for the girl. He was acting out of chivalry, not romance.

But even had they been alone, he couldn’t have said any of that. Because the truth was that from the first moment he’d seen her on his floor, Sylvia had fascinated him more than any of the women giggling and dancing in his ballroom or on his veranda. Until he knew why—until he’d explored the possibilities with this woman—Tucker didn’t intend to let her get away.

TIME TRAVEL.

Sylvia sat at the foot of the bed, her silk-clad knees hugged to her chest, as she let the words flit through her head one more time.

Time travel.

Could it really be possible?

Considering she was sitting here in a bedroom of the Greene mansion—which was clearly not doubling as a museum—wearing silk pajamas and listening to the dying strains of “Has Anybody Seen My Girl” played on a scratchy phonograph somewhere in the house…well, she had to admit that the idea of time travel was feeling pretty damn plausible.

She got up and paced, loving the feel of the soft pajamas against her skin. Blythe had told her to help herself to anything in the room, and she’d taken the girl at her word, pulling on the decadently soft outfit, like something she’d find in a vintage-clothing store, and certainly not like the ratty T-shirt and panties she wore to bed in her own time.

No, these pajamas made her feel feminine. Sexy even, and she felt her cheeks heat at the thought—and at the image of the man that flashed into her head. Tucker Greene. And not the vague concept of him, either, as some force in Hollywood. No, this Tucker Greene was flesh and blood and devilishly sexy. Their kiss had fired her blood, heated her soul. And although she’d not been thinking clearly when she’d put her mouth to his, now her thoughts were focused and clean. She wanted him. She wanted him with a fury like nothing she’d ever felt before.

She’d been attracted to many men in her life, but none so strongly—or so instantaneously—as Tucker. Under the circumstances, the attraction seemed bizarre. After all, she was time-traveling here. Sex should be the last thing on her mind. And, honestly, it was. But even through the haze of confusion, her body had tingled with his proximity, and she’d mourned a little when Blythe and Anna had escorted her to this room.

“God, you’re as bad as Tina,” she whispered to herself, getting up to pace the room and force the prurient thoughts from her head. She was in another decade. Another millennium, for that matter. Best she focus on that, and forget about the supersexy man of the house. At least for the moment.