A Knight in Central Park(41)
He shook his head. One moment he was going to lecture her for giving away his clothes, and the next he was about to kiss her like there was no tomorrow.
She was purposely seducing him, dammit, and she was good at it. She wanted a husband, maybe even kids, definitely something permanent. The same thing most women wanted. It was written all over Alexandra’s face.
He hadn’t intended to lead her on and give her false hope. He needed to fulfill his promise and then get the hell out of here. As he followed behind, he thought of his assistant, Shelly, and how she might find his situation humorous, or at the very least, remarkable. But there was nothing remarkable about wearing clothes that left nothing to the imagination, nothing funny about smelling like a garden. Next time he found himself falling for one of her seductive ploys, he was going to lay down the law, tell it to her straight, let her know there could never be anything more than a simple friendship between them.
Within the shaded area of the stables, he tried to adjust himself within the snug breeches. It was no use. Five hundred years in the past, an amazing phenomenon, and all he could think about was how he was going to get through the next four weeks without his boxer briefs.
As he came around the stables, it seemed the entire village had gathered to see them off, including Alexandra’s siblings. As he walked along, a dozen young women pointed and giggled. His pants might be a little snug, but he failed to see the humor in his suffering.
Ari, the garment-maker wannabe, was the first to introduce himself, providing Joe with a smile along with a friendly slap on the back. “Glad to see that my clothes fit so well,” he said cheerfully. “Verily Alexandra was accurate when she guessed us to be of the same size.”
Joe grimaced. “I appreciate your generosity, but you wouldn’t happen to have anything a little less confining, would you?”
Ari waved a hand through the air, dismissing Joe’s request. “The finest you have on. Only the best for a knight such as yourself.”
With a silent groan, Joe followed the man to his mount, a fair-sized horse with white mane and tail. While Ari checked the animal over, Joe touched the leather pouch at his side, making sure the stone was where it should be; his ticket out of this nightmare. Until the time came for him to leave, he needed only to concentrate on staying alive. Maybe he’d even luck out and find an interesting artifact to bring home. If he played his cards right, everything might turn out just fine.
As Ari brushed dry mud from the horse’s flanks, Joe crinkled his nose as the pungent odor of sour milk and rotten eggs wafted by, drawing his gaze to a group of women a few yards away. They were in the process of emptying chamber pots and buckets filled with unimaginable stench. Too bad they didn’t think to take the pots a little further downwind.
While Ari bent low to check the horse’s hooves for stones, Joe looked about and saw Alexandra’s siblings staring at him. The girls regarded him with curiosity while Garrett glared at him with open hostility. The boy’s eyes had become steely narrowed slits; the same evil look that had caused Harig to put a blindfold on the kid.
The idea of setting off for the open road was looking more and more appealing. He certainly didn’t want to hang around a bunch of kids. Nor did he have any desire to stay and listen to grandpa sing praises of his beloved granddaughter for the next twenty-nine days. And that wasn’t to say he didn’t like Alexandra. Quite the opposite. He liked her a lot. She was smart, fairly amusing, and she was pretty.
On the other hand, she was opinionated, stubborn and sneaky...very sneaky. Only a sly woman such as Alexandra could manage to get under his skin so quickly. Somehow she’d worked her magic on him, making him yearn to catch a glimpse of her, making him want to kiss her every time he so much as talked to her.
How could he even think about falling for a woman like Alexandra? Never mind that she was from another time. She was a slob for God’s sake. She threw chicken bones on the floor, wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She even snorted when she laughed. It wasn’t really a snort, he mused, but more like a cute little pig noise. He smiled at the thought of it. Damn. He liked her all right. She made him smile. He enjoyed talking to Alexandra when she stayed at his home. More than once she’d managed to make him forget about his work. More than once, she’d made him wonder if life had more to offer.
Joe exhaled as his thoughts turned to her grandfather. The old man presumed to know everything about him, cocksure that Joe McFarland was the man who was going to right all wrongs and save the day, confident that destiny would have Joe married off to his granddaughter when all was well and done.