Project Enterprise by Pauline Baird Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

waif’s…didn’t. She was curious like a woman about him but—and this wasn’t a surprise since she’d been a boy a while—she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
    He felt some sympathy for her. And more for himself. He’d thought he was done with women. Seemed he wasn’t, quite, but he was bad news for her or any woman, which was why he usually kept his distance. Do no harm. Of course, her father was worse than bad news—if he’d done the math right on how long Everly had had the girl traveling about being a boy. He’d shared their life story the first night, some of which might have been the truth, all about his broken heart and taking to the road to forget.
    â€œJoe” knew more than he wanted to about broken hearts, and Everly’s wasn’t that broke. Might be a bit dented, but Everly was too in love with himself for real grief. If he’d been half the man he should have been, he’d have sucked it up for his daughter, given her the life she was supposed to have. Not this.
    No place for a woman with only one crazy old man as protection, but it wasn’t a bad place for a man alone, one who needed to forget. The Paisano Plateau had a sort of raw, bleak beauty that matched the raw, bleak places inside him. During the day, the sky was as blue as the girl’s eyes, at night a blanket of stars lay over the land, giving the illusion of safety, of being invisible. As if to belie the thought, a coyote loosed a long, lonesome howl in the distance.
    Empty had a whole new meaning in a place like this.
    He studied the ghost lights, torn about his reason for riding this way.
    He’d been down by the Rio Grande, a sentimental trip he shouldn’t have taken, when he heard someone talking about the ghost lights outside Marfa. He’d recalled wondering about them when he’d been here in the 1940’s. He knew that when large time events happened, traces of the disruptions could show up in odd ways any where and sometimes any when . Were these lights the traces of time cleaning up after that intergalactic grifter he wanted to forget or remnants of the disruption that took him to the 1940’s?
    He’d had a chance to get back to his own galaxy, though no way to make it to his own time, so he’d passed on it, thinking here would do. Less chance of running into someone he’d pissed off. He knew it fairly well, since he’d been in and out of it more than was right. And truth was, the shorter life spans of this time had some appeal to someone whose life had been unnaturally stretched by the time travel. Didn’t want to live that long with his memories of what he’d lost, what he’d done against his will. He might have gone looking for trouble that would speed that demise when he headed for Texas. And then he found himself near the last place he’d seen Olivia—knowing that she was just ahead of him in time somewhere—and well, he knew it had been a mistake to stay here.
    You can’t have what was never yours.
    It was the one thing he’d done right. It gave him a little peace knowing that. That he’d cared enough to let her go. Didn’t much matter when he went after this, or where, as long as it was far from the temptation to look her up…unless…his gaze slanted back to the girl saddling her mount. Could rescuing a damsel in distress rescue him? His mind called him delusional, but his gut said…maybe…
    Everly fussed around both horse and girl, giving the illusion of helping without doing it. “You’ll be back by sunrise,” he directed.
    Had he processed the fact he planned to send his daughter off with a man he’d known for only three days?
    â€œOf course, Pa.” Her voice was low, pitched to be plausible for a boy, a fact the vulnerable nape of her neck disputed. Strands of blond hair, lifted by the breeze, caressed skin turned to milk in the