West

"I don't care about my inheritance!" I snapped, amazed they thought of money at a time like this. "I care about my father surviving the night. What sense does it make to have a wedding when he needs me by his side?"

John squeezed my hand. "It will give me great pleasure to know you are cared for before I go, my Josephine."

His words deflated my resistance. Only a few more days, I reminded myself. This wasn't my mission. Whether or not John died made no difference in what I was dropped into the past to do.

But sitting next to him, running my fingers over the bulging blue veins and knobby knuckles of his hand, listening to him wheeze …

He was too real. In my time, John had been dead for almost two hundred years. The disconnect between a name I might've seen on a tombstone and the man it belonged to dying before my eyes made me dizzy once more, as if fighting my presence in the past shorted out my brain.

"Miss Josie!" Nell took my shoulders. The doctor was bent over in front of me, peering into my face. I blinked him into focus.

I straightened. I was sagging on the bed, close to passing out once more. "I'm okay," I said. "Just a little distressed."

"I'll send for the sheriff," Nell said and scurried away.

"I'm already here." The man I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to see stepped into the room, hat in his hands. "I had hoped to have a moment with …" His eyes went to John.

The dying man was sleeping, his breathing harsh and shallow.

"Did you follow us here?" I asked with a quick glance at John. If my pretend-father saw him, he'd insist on an immediate wedding, which was the last thing I wanted.

"No, ma'am. I left after speaking to the judge again. Do you have a minute?"

I left John's side and went to the door, joining Taylor in the hallway. "You should probably not be here," I told him, distracted by the fear John might awaken and reach out for me again.

"Didn't he want me here for the wedding?"

I gave an exasperated sigh. "If you aren't here, there can't be one!"

The sheriff smiled faintly. "Ma'am, I came to tell him I changed my mind about marrying you."

"You did?" I focused on him, surprised. "Why?"

"Why? This isn't … right."

"You're the first man with any sense around here." His expression mirrored what I felt. I smiled in puzzled curiosity. "Then why did you agree at first?"

"How better to help you, if I'm with you every day?"