No sex. This had become a particularly tense subject since they were pretending to be married and, therefore, had to share a bed at the Empire Hotel. Rafe claimed his jaw hurt from grinding his teeth all the time, and Helen had taken to ooohming almost twenty-four hours a day.
No money. Their meager supply of gold, earned in Sacramento and replenished slightly with Rafe’s prospecting along the way, was fast dwindling with the exorbitant prices for lodging and food. Rafe had been forced to take a job dealing monte in a local gambling hall when his efforts to set up a law office failed because no one would hire a Mexican attorney.
She was considering taking a job as a “waitress” at the Lucky Dollar Saloon, which pretty much amounted to letting a bunch of lecherous men ogle her in a revealing gown while she handed out overpriced drinks. That was why she’d asked Rafe to come now to the Indiana House for dinner.
She studied him across the table, fiddling with his tin cup of coffee. He wore the usual miner’s garb of red flannel shirt with suspenders and homespun trousers. He’d shaved just before they left the hotel — God, she liked to watch him shave — and his smooth skin only accented the dark circles of worry under his eyes and the bleak dullness in his eyes.
She reached out a hand and covered his on the table.
“No touching, remember?” he said huskily, raising his chin to look at her. At the same time, he turned his hand and twined his fingers with hers. Their gazes held, and the pulse in her wrist beat strongly against his.
“Rafe, Jack Fulton asked me to work in the Lucky Dollar. The pay would be… well, phenomenal.”
He tugged his hand out of their clasp. “Doing what? Corkscrewing?”
She recoiled. “Waitressing.”
“No.”
“But, Rafe, we can use the money, and — ”
“No.” He glared at her icily.
Helen knew Rafe’s pride was at stake. He wanted to be able to care for her himself. But pride could only go so far.
“Maybe we should leave Rich Bar for a while and go somewhere else where I can file a claim. We could leave word with Carlos to tell his brother how desperately we need the parachutes.”
“You know that’s not a good solution.”
“You’re not working for a damned whorehouse.” His face was flushed with anger.
“It’s not a whorehouse. It’s a bar, and there’s nothing wrong with being a waitress.”
“Get real! It may be a bar, but what the hell do you think Rosalinda and Irene do there?”
Rosalinda was married to Carlos. She and Irene were among the half-dozen females in the entire town of five hundred men.
“They’re hookers, sweetie,” Rafe continued more softly, “and Jack plans the same for you, too. If not now, eventually.”
Helen blushed. She’d suspected as much. “Then let’s go back to the landing site. I could probably make a parachute with some canvas material and lightweight rope.”
“Are you nuts? No way am I jumping off a cliff with a homemade parachute. And neither are you.”
She tapped her fingertips on the tabletop, deep in thought. “Rafe, have you ever considered that we might not be able to return to the future? What would we do if we couldn’t go home?”
He pondered her question seriously for several seconds, then smiled. “We’d hit the sack so fast they’d think a tornado had hit town. We’d make love every which way, and then some. We’d set a new world record for multiple orgasms. We’d probably come up for air in about a week, then go down again.”
She propped her elbows on the table and braced her chin in her cupped hands. “What about birth control?”
He shrugged helplessly. “The way I feel, I know I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you. We’d probably have babies coming out of our ears. A dozen, at least.” He shuddered. “It boggles the mind.”
She smiled widely, not as appalled at the prospect as he. “Forget Pablo and the parachutes. Let’s stay.”
His face went white. “Don’t even kid about that.”