Page 20 of Stolen Time

“It’s ten hours a day, six days a week,” he told her. “By the time I get home, all I want to do is eat and sleep.”

Something in her expression clouded as he described his schedule.

Could it be she was unhappy that he had to be at the mine for such long hours, precluding any real chance for him to see her regularly?

No, he wasn’t so puffed up over himself that he thought she would languish if she didn’t get to share his company.

“It sounds hard,” she said, and he had to admit, her tone sounded normal enough, albeit tinged with a note of sympathy. “Why did you decide to work there when your family owns a store here in town?”

A valid enough question, a query he’d faced on more than one occasion. The United Verde wasn’t owned by the clan, which meant anyone who worked there had to be always on their guard lest their civilian co-workers or bosses might detect something strange about their McAllister employees.

“Oh, well,” he said, doing his best to sound noncommittal. “Both my parents and my brother Charles take care of the store, so they didn’t really need me. It just seemed better for me to strike out on my own. It’s hard work at the mine, but it pays well, probably better than working at the mercantile.”

Deborah seemed to absorb this information without any real judgment involved, because she inclined her head toward him without responding at first. Then she said, “I suppose it can be difficult when your family expects you to do one thing and you want to do another.”

Now she sounded almost melancholy, as though she was speaking from personal experience. But how could she be, when she recalled nothing of who she was or where she’d come from?

He wanted to ask…and then decided to let it go. While they were talking quite naturally, he also knew that they’d only recently become acquainted with one another, and it would be rude to probe too deeply. “My parents made a bit of a ruckus,” he admitted. “But after a while, they realized I wasn’t going to change my mind and let it alone. I’ve been there for three years, and now I’m a foreman, the youngest ever at the United Verde.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could take them back. They sounded far too boastful.

Deborah, though, only appeared thoughtful. “Then it definitely seems as if you made the right choice.” She paused there, and again he got the impression that she was speaking of something beyond his personal situation, as though she was comparing it to her own even when she shouldn’t have been able to recall anything about her past.

By that point, they’d made it almost back to Timothy and Ruth’s house. Seth hated that the walk was over so soon, even as he also knew that trying to lengthen it would only let Deborah know he was all too anxious to spend as much time as possible in her company.

As if that wasn’t abundantly clear.

He also wished there were more signs of her past in her appearance. Her fingers had been bare of rings when he found her, which seemed to signal she wasn’t married or engaged. Or was that wishful thinking on his part? After all, she could have been wearing a ring and lost it when she was brought to the mine.

The only jewelry she’d been wearing was a small pair of gold hoops in her ears. Piercings such as that weren’t very common, except among the women in the Mexican families who’d settled in Cottonwood to work the fields there. However, Deborah clearly wasn’t of Mexican descent, so he wasn’t sure what he should think about that particular accessory. He supposed pierced ears might have been a family tradition. Whatever the reason for her having them, he had to admit they added to her attraction, her mystery.

There was so much he didn’t know about her.

So much she didn’t know about herself.

When they came to the walkway that led up to Ruth and Timothy’s front porch, Seth found himself blurting, “I work long hours, but I’m still almost always finished by six-thirty. Would you be interested in going to the English Kitchen with me?”

Her brows lifted slightly. “That’s a restaurant, right?”

“Yes,” he replied. “It’s just down the hill from Main Street — Chinese food,” he added, since he knew the name of the restaurant didn’t give a very good indication as to the actual content of its menu.

A moment of hesitation, one that made him think for sure she was going to turn him down, and then she said, “I love Chinese food. Do you want to meet there, or come get me here?”

“Oh, I’ll meet you here,” he said hastily. While he supposed it would be safe enough for her to go to the restaurant by herself…especially since six-thirty was still full daylight at this time of year…he also didn’t like the thought of her wandering around downtown Jerome on her own, not with so many rough types who would also be out and about around then, looking for their own food.

And drink, even though it was supposedly forbidden.

“A quarter to seven?” he ventured next, and she smiled.

“Sounds perfect.”

Seth slept extremely well, better than he thought he had in a long while. Although he didn’t dream of Deborah Rowe, he knew the realization upon awaking that he would see her again tonight made him smile even as he sat up and stretched and knew he needed to hurry to get to the mine on time.

They were working on a newly opened section that morning, and keeping an eye on everyone and directing traffic — in addition to perusing some new reports from the survey team — kept him busy enough that he didn’t have much of a chance to break away and check on the shaft where he’d found Deborah two nights earlier. However, toward the end of the day he had a brief opening to go take a look and write up a quick memo to the superintendent as to the eventual fate of the shaft…only to find the man himself already there, with a team starting to tack up some sheets of wood across the entrance.

“Mr. Allenby,” he said, doing his best not to sound surprised.

“Ah, McAllister,” his supervisor returned. Lionel Allenby was a tall, thin man with fair hair that always glistened with brilliantine and close-set gray eyes. Despite the dust and the general dirt that accompanied their profession, he was always impeccably turned out, with crisp white shirts and a bewildering variety of tailored waistcoats and silk ties. “I was looking over the surveyor’s reports on this shaft and decided it was time we closed it up. Too much of a liability to simply leave it open like this if we’re not actually going to mine this section.”