A Crack in Time
Catherine St. James
Genre: Paranormal Western Romance
(Gold Rush Time-Travel)
Date of Publication: November 17th, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1518781643
ISBN-10: 1518781640
ASIN: B01430HCSA
Number of pages: 206 (paperback)
Word Count: 52,129 (paperback)
Cover Artist: Rogenna Brewer
Book Description:
Their love may be trapped forever between the past and the future…
Sara Witherspoon is a beautiful and brilliant research microbiologist who calls herself “a crackerjack gene-splicer;” she’s about to marry Bruce Rule, a high-flying commodities broker.
But while visiting St. Elmo’s Fire, Vermont, Sara encounters an anomaly in the space time continuum and falls through a crack in time to the 1870’s gold rush town of Bury-Me-Quick Colorado, where she meets Clay Dunhill, a soft-spoken, gentlemanly outlaw awaiting trial for murder.
At first, Sara thinks she’s hallucinating - prenuptial jitters, stress or an endocrine system malfunction - but she quickly finds out the bullets are just as real as her growing love for Clay…
Excerpt:
Sara sat up and
looked around. It was daytime and she was sitting on a grassy slope next to a
road. There was a mild, tingling sensation where the spark had hit her in the
forehead. She stood up, feeling lightheaded. She could see a haphazard cluster
of buildings‚ tents, lean-tos, and shacks stretched out along a tree-lined
creek bed about half a mile away. A blue cloud of smoke hung in the air. And
beyond was a majestic, snow-capped mountain range.
How could this
be? A moment ago she was in Vermont with her aunt and Bruce. She obviously
wasn’t in Vermont any longer. There were no mountains like this in Vermont.
She heard something
approaching along the road. She turned and saw a horse-drawn buggy driven by a
white-haired man. The driver stopped next to her. He was dressed in a black
suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, a string tie, and a black-brimmed
hat. Sara’s first thought was that he was Amish. Was this Pennsylvania? How did
she get to Pennsylvania? But how could this be Pennsylvania? They didn’t have
any high mountains like this in Pennsylvania, either.
“You all right,
miss?” the man in the buggy said.
“I don’t know.”
“Your horse
throw you?”
“Horse?”
“You look a
little dazed. I’m Doc Clifford. You want my professional medical opinion, I
think you should get in out of the sun. Get aboard, I’ll give you a ride into
town.”
She got into the
buggy and, with a flick of the buggy whip, the buggy lurched forward.
He leaned over
and looked closely at her eyes. “When we get to town, maybe I ought to give you
a good examination. Looks like you got a pretty good bump right in the middle
of your forehead. Jarred your senses.”
He blinked at
her, then flicked the reins of the horse. It sped up. “I think you might have a
bad concussion there.”
“I do feel a bit
woozy.”
The rough dirt
road curved around the slope of the hill and carried them into town. There was
a lot of construction going on and at first Sara thought it might be a movie
set. The main street was curved upwards, with short side streets—little more
than alleys—shooting off from it. A cluster of buildings in the center had
board sidewalks and porches and a line of skinny poles holding up a single
wire.
Smoke from a
dozen cook fires and chimneys lay over the town like a blanket.
The buggy had
slowed as they entered the town. The streets were crammed with wagons,
carriages, mules, donkeys, and people‚ mostly men in flannel shirts and jeans
and cowboy hats. A medicine man on the back of a garishly painted wagon was
hawking his wares to half a dozen men and a couple women dressed in long skirts
and bonnets and carrying parasols.
“What is this?”
Sara asked. “Are you having frontier days or something?”
“I don’t catch
your meaning. This is Bury-Me-Quick, Colorado.”
“How did I get
here?”
“Probably took
the train to Denver and the overland stage from there. That’s how most folks
get here.”
They were
passing the jail. The gallows were under construction next to it.
“Stop!” she
said.
“Whoa!—What is
it?”
“Who are they
getting ready to hang?”
“Some gambler.
Shot an unarmed man, so six witnesses said. Me, I wouldn’t believe any of them
six witnesses if they swore the sun was high in the sky at noon.”
The horse had
stopped. Sara got off the buggy.
“Young lady, you
best come to my office!”
“I have to check
something out.”
She went into
the sheriff’s office at the front of the red brick jail building. Inside were a
roll-top desk, a gun rack, and a pot-bellied stove. The walls were papered with
wanted posters. Behind the desk, opposite the door, sat a fat, bewhiskered man
in a rumpled suit with a striped vest. He stood up.
“Afternoon,
siss. What can I do for you?”
“The man you’re
going to hang. I’d like to talk to him.”
“Are you a
friend?”
“I think so. I’m
not sure.”
The sheriff
smiled. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. A shame Clay got himself into this
braggadocio, but I got to do what my sworn duty says I got to do, and that’s
hang him at dawn tomorrow.”
“I wish I knew
what’s going on around here,” Sara said. “Are you folks making a TV show or
something?”
“I’m afraid I
don’t know how to answer that, ma’am. You want to see Dunhill or don’t you?”
“I guess I do.”
Sara felt a shudder of fear, as she sometimes did when she had to give a
presentation. Her skin tingled.
The sheriff led
her through a door to the back room. There were two small cells, one on the
left, one on the right. A young deputy sat on a high stool against the wall
opposite the cells with a shotgun in his lap. He nodded to her as a greeting
and spat some tobacco juice into a spittoon.
“Afternoon,
ma’am.”
The only inmate
was sitting on a bunk tossing cards into his hat, humming a tune. He turned
around. It was the man Sara had seen in the crystal ball, with the same cocky
grin. His dark eyes lit up when he saw her.
“Well, now,
who’s this?” He squinted at her. “Do I know you?”
Sara felt a rush
of confusing emotions. Her heart fluttered. She was dizzy. She touched the spot
on her forehead where she’d been hit with the spark. This was all some kind of
crazy dream, she decided. That was the only explanation.
“I hope you
don’t find me too forward,” Clay Dunhill said, “but could I know your name?”
“Sara
Witherspoon.”
“A fine name.”
“Do I know you,
Mr. Dunhill?” Sara asked‚ approaching the bars to his cell. His gaze seemed so
deep and he looked at her with such intense warmth and tenderness she couldn’t
quite catch her breath. She was excited, yet frightened—she’d never felt this
way before.
Clay Dunhill
touched her hand through the bars. A jolt of electricity went through her and,
in its wake, a warm sensation spread throughout her being. Her heart felt as if
it would burst. Looking into his dark eyes stirred something deep within her
and turned her incredibly soft inside.
But how could
she feel anything for a complete stranger? Maybe she had inadvertently taken
some kind of drug. She had read about fungi that caused people to hallucinate.
Yes, that was it, that had to be it. She had taken some hallucinogen by
accident. Maybe it was the lunch she had at a roadside diner in a little
Massachusetts town she and Bruce had driven through.
“My old
grandmother said once I was destined to meet a woman who would steal my heart.
You might just be the one. Too bad I’m about to be hung.”
About the Author:
Catherine St. James wanted to be a writer as soon as she learned to read at age four. She has an adventurous spirit and has traveled widely, including time in Ethiopia where she spent some months in a Coptic monastery praying, fasting, chanting, and meditating. She's an award winning short story writer and lives on a 28 foot sloop, Write-on!, in Northern California with her cat, Rascal. Recently she's met the love of her life and has yet to discover where this adventure might take her, and is eager to find out.
Catherine writes romance and mystery.
To hear about her latest books first, sign up for her exclusive New Release Mailing List here: http://eepurl.com/bDTxLv
Website: https://about.me/catherinestjames
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