Falling into Your Arms (Love in the Old West Book 3) Read online

  FALLING INTO YOUR ARMS

  Bess McBride

  Falling into Your Arms

  Copyright 2020 Bess McBride

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover art by Tara West

  Contact information: [email protected]

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To southeastern Arizona.

  I miss you.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Bess McBride

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing Falling into Your Arms. Falling into Your Arms is Book Three of the Love in the Old West series, which began with Caving into You. Falling into Your Arms is not a continuation of a particular story line but is set in the same era and the same location as the other books in the Love in the Old West series.

  Sarah Chilton, on a cross-country trip via train from the East Coast to the West Coast, gets off the train to stretch her legs in the sleepy desert town of Benson, Arizona. A nearby derelict Victorian-style building across the road from the station catches her eye, and she heads that way to peek in the windows of what looks like an old hotel. Finding the door open, she steps into a building whose beauty is buried under years of dust and cobwebs. With only a few minutes to spare before she has to get back to the train, she finds the door had sealed behind her. In an attempt to break a cracked window, she loses her balance and falls.

  Jeremiah Stone, owner and proprietor of the Benson Arms Hotel in Benson, Arizona, catches the wild woman who is trying to break his window, before she does too much damage. He summarily ejects her from his hotel but relents when two kindhearted ladies bring the lost and confused traveler back inside for shelter as she awaits the next train due in a few days.

  Sarah discovers that she has traveled through time to the Old West, to 1890 Benson, Arizona, but her plan to return to 2020 may be thwarted by missed trains, bandits, and the love of a man who belongs to the past.

  Chapter One

  With two shrill toots of the whistle, the rhythmic dinging of a bell and the piercing screech of brakes on steel wheels, the train came to a stop in Benson, Arizona. Out of mild curiosity, Sarah had already checked the population—3,100. An interesting bit of information, but little more than that. Benson wasn’t her final destination. She was on her way to Los Angeles, there to turn around and fly back to Richmond, Virginia.

  Bored and restless at her state job in the business licensing department, she had been longing for a road trip. Driving alone across country hadn’t appealed to her, but she had often heard the beckoning sound of a train whistle from her condo, and she had promised herself that one day she would heed that call and hop aboard a train.

  Sarah’s naval chief petty officer father had retired to the Richmond area some ten years before, but raised in multiple military bases and countries overseas, Sarah had never really felt she could call Richmond home. Her mother had died when she was fifteen, and her father passed away two years ago. She had acquaintances at work but no one really close in her life since her father’s death. Boyfriends had come and gone, but none had stolen her heart, not really.

  Restless to stretch her legs even more than the hallways and connecting cars of the train allowed, Sarah jumped up, trotted down the length of the car and stepped down from the train onto a paved walkway flanked by the gravel bed that hugged the tracks. Warm air wafted around her, the sort of warmth that a blow dryer on the lowest setting emitted. February in southeastern Arizona certainly felt better than cool, wet Virginia.

  As a first visit to Arizona, it wasn’t bad, Sarah thought. Her mother had talked about Arizona with affection, having been born and raised in nearby Fort Huachuca as the daughter of an army officer. Reveling in the mild temperate air, Sarah regretted that she hadn’t decided on an overnight stop. She promised herself then and there that she would return to Arizona at some future date. Her mother would be pleased. She had always wanted to show Sarah southeastern Arizona, but they hadn’t managed to fit it into their travels. Her mother had loved the desert and the mountain ranges that surrounded what she had called the San Pedro Valley. Sarah had appreciatively admired the purple-and-golden-hued panorama as the train had rattled across the desert through Arizona.

  Keeping one eye on the conductor so the train didn’t take off without her, Sarah passed two metal benches positioned under a shelter and turned left to walk through a parking lot to the station. Before her stood a one-story sandy peach and brown-trimmed building. A sign read “Benson Visitor Center.”

  She tried the door, but it was locked. She crossed to some windows to peek in. The visitor center—no longer a working train station apparently—had been set up as a museum. Historical black-and-white photos and other displays lined walls, wooden cases held a multitude of brochures, and an attractive six-person wooden bench centered the room.

  She turned away and spotted something she had missed. Beautifully colored and crisp murals had been painted on small walls at the end of each parking spot. The murals depicted Benson’s obvious flourishing history with trains and featured steam locomotives, cabooses, railway route icons and depictions of the train station in its heyday.

  What a bustling railway town Benson must have once been! Cars passed by on the road, but from what Sarah could see, Benson had quieted in the intervening years. The train station was nothing more than the two benches she had seen under a metal shelter.

  She hurried back to those benches and saw that the conductor still moved from car to car but had not called the “All aboard.” Oddly reluctant to reboard until absolutely necessary, she wished again that she could spend more time in the area.

  A row of neglected o
lder buildings lined the opposite side of the street. One caught her eye—a two-story faded blue-gray wooden structure nestled between a convenience store and an ice cream shop. It looked vacant, abandoned even, and a for-sale sign had been taped to a first-floor window. Whimsically, she imagined what she might do with the building if she owned it. Her mother would be happy enough. Would she sell quilting materials? She didn’t quilt. An art studio or gallery? She didn’t paint or sculpt, though she wished she did.

  A glance over her shoulder showed the conductor still moving about. Compelled by an urge she couldn’t resist, Sarah dashed across the street, dodging a single slow-moving car, to reach the building. Wooden double doors with glass window inserts had been coated with the same odd battleship blue-gray paint as the rest of the clapboard-sided building, much of it chipped and peeling. Sarah thought it a shame to have painted the doors.

  A cracked concrete sidewalk faced the building, but she imagined that a wooden boardwalk must have once run along the front. Two windows were screened, though those were sagging. Another had no screen, but the glass was cracked. It was through this one that Sarah peeked.

  Cobwebs clung to the glass, but she managed to see into the shadowed interior. The first floor resembled a lobby. A large wooden counter flanked one side of the room, and a stone fireplace hugged the opposite wall. The room was empty of furniture, but Sarah spotted a large ornate wooden staircase rising to a second floor. Several decorative bronze chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Even from here, she could see the interior had been painted with a dreadful shade of olive-green paint that peeled to reveal papered walls.

  She stepped back from the window to survey the building again, with attention to the upper floor. Six windows faced the street, suggesting they were probably guest rooms. She suspected this had been a hotel at one point.

  Her eyes dropped to the for-sale sign again, and she memorized the phone number for no good reason at all. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if she changed up her life, moved to Benson and opened a hotel? Could she? Would she? Wouldn’t her mother be pleased? Sarah smiled. Her mother would have loved to “go home again,” as she had put it.

  Another check of the conductor’s whereabouts revealed that he still did not appear on the verge of leaving. In fact, several men pushed a cart up to the train as if they were loading supplies or goods for transport.

  A creak caught her ear, and she turned toward the sound. One of the painted doors stood slightly ajar, though Sarah felt no wind. She was certain both had been closed when she arrived. She grasped the tarnished brass handle and pulled the door open farther to peer inside. The interior of the door revealed it was oak under the dismal exterior paint.

  “Hello?” she called out. Thick dust and more cobwebs coated much of the interior, and she sneezed. She heard no response to her greeting though.

  “Hello?” she called out again. “Anyone here?”

  Still, no response.

  “Hello? Can I come in?” she asked after stepping inside.

  Dusty floors, probably highly varnished oak at one time, showed no sign of disturbance, no footsteps other than hers.

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” she called out. She sneezed again and covered her nose and mouth. She wanted to venture even farther inside to explore the building but knew that she was trespassing. The train blew its whistle behind her, and she whirled around to see the conductor waving his arm, signaling the all aboard.

  “Whoops!” she cried out. Just then, the door slammed shut, and she grabbed the brass handle. The door didn’t budge, and she took hold of it with both hands.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered. “You are going to open!”

  But the door seemed sealed shut in some inexplicable way, as if it hadn’t been opened in years.

  “No! You were just open! Don’t stick! Come on!” She braced her feet and pulled with all her might. Nothing!

  Sarah ran to the cracked window nearest the counter and looked out. The conductor was stepping inside the train. That was it! The kiss of death. Once the conductor was on, the train would move.

  “Hey!” she screeched through the crack in the window. “Wait!”

  She ran back to the door, grabbed again and pulled. Anxiety robbed her of air, and she felt a bit lightheaded. She ran back to the window and slapped at it with the palms of her hands.

  “Hello! Hello! Let me out of here!”

  Sarah hurriedly contemplated breaking the window, but she didn’t know the legal liability of doing so. If she broke the window, jumped out, ran across the street and hopped onto the train, she would have broken more than one law. She supposed she could call the phone number she had memorized, explain the situation and offer to pay for the damage. Or offer to buy the place. Her purse was on board the train, and her phone was in her purse. She couldn’t be stranded!

  The train whistle blew.

  “No!” she shouted. “Help!”

  Sarah looked at her elbow, covered in a long-sleeved flower-printed cotton shirt. She pointed it toward the crack and thrust forward to ram the window. Expecting to make painful contact, if not cut herself on the glass, she felt nothing but air. She lost her balance and fell. But she didn’t hit the hard surface of the oak flooring. Instead, she drifted into a cloud of dust that seemed to turn to fog—a dry swirling fog that resembled nothing that she’d ever seen before.

  Suddenly the fog thinned, and she heard a husky voice near her ear, felt herself encased in a pair of strong arms as they steadied her on her feet.

  “Miss! What on earth do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded.

  Caught from behind, she felt trapped more than supported.

  An image of ruby-red velvet curtains framing a window barely registered as she twisted in the man’s arms to face him. His face loomed so close to hers that she could only take in his eyes—the color of rich brandy as they regarded her beneath black eyebrows that met above his nose. She jerked her head backwards to escape his nearness.

  “Let go!” she cried out. “I’m up! Let me go!”

  He didn’t release her but kept his hands on her shoulders. Sarah struggled in his grasp. Well-groomed wavy black hair with glossy brown highlights framed his face, ending just below his ears. Clean shaven, his sideburns extended to the edge of his chin. A wide mouth hardened into a frown above a handsomely dimpled chin.

  Sarah shook off an instant attraction.

  “Not until you assure me that you will desist with your efforts to break my window!” he barked in a baritone.

  “What?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the window. She had seen correctly! Red velvet curtains with gold trim framed the six-paned window now free of cracks or cobwebs.

  “My window. You were trying to break it with your elbow, though why I cannot imagine. You are free to use the door if you wish to leave the premises. In fact, I think that is what you should do at once!”

  “Wait!” Sarah cried out in confusion. Behind him, she saw images of ruby-red and forest-green sofas and chairs throughout the lobby, deep-red striped wallpaper, and rich wood paneling and flooring under colorful carpets. No cobwebs. No dust.

  But the tall man wearing a well-fitting charcoal-gray pinstripe suit opened to reveal a pale-gray vest was physically maneuvering her to the door. He held her around her shoulders with one hand and opened the door with the other, giving her a gentle push outside.

  “I don’t understand,” Sarah whispered. The door shut behind her, and she looked across the street toward the train station. No sleek silver passenger liner waited for her. The tail end of a red caboose vanished, heading west. A cloud of black smoke shot up into the sky somewhere in the distance. The sound of a mournful whistle, different from the sharp shrills of her train, drifted away in the same direction as the smoke.

  Across the road, several horse-drawn wagons maneuvered away from the visitor center, as if they had loaded supplies from the train that had just left. The old train station looked vastly different than it had only moments ago. It
was much longer, with a warehouse-style appearance to it. Only the colors were similar.

  Sarah’s knees weakened as a two-horse carriage rolled by on the dirt road between her and the train station. Unable to move her feet, she sagged against the doorway. Another carriage lumbered the opposite way. She gave up and slid down to the wooden boardwalk.

  What was happening? Was she dreaming? Nothing was as it had been, as it should have been. The main street through Benson seemed much busier than it had previously. Wider than she remembered, asphalt had been replaced with packed dirt. People decked out in ankle-length dresses and men sporting straw boater hats walked across the street, as if she witnessed a reenactment or a movie.

  “A movie! Are they filming?” she asked aloud. She looked up and down the street, losing all hope of a rational explanation. No cars were parked nearby, not even trucks for a film crew.

  She pulled her blue-jeaned knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, rocking from side to side as she tried to tamp down nausea. She heard footsteps on the boardwalk, barely noting that the concrete sidewalk seemed to have vanished. Two women approached, both in long dark skirts with matching jackets that nipped in at the waist. White blouses featured big bows at the neck. Large festooned straw hats topped their heads, the entire outfit reminiscent of Victorian fashion.

  “My goodness! What has happened to you? Are you all right, my dear?” one of them asked, stopping beside her.