West

My phone buzzed with Carter's response. I didn't understand why Taylor thought he was supposed to help me or why the other girls before me had sought him out - and then ended up at the bottom of a well. I knew nothing about the man before me. His simple past, that he was raised by the natives, explained nothing about who he was or how he was always around when I needed rescuing.

"Miss Josie! Your father! Is he dead?"

Omigod, asshole. I faced Philip, who dashed up the last two steps of the stairwell down the hall. "He's not dead!" I exclaimed. "Give him some peace, Philip!"

"He wished you wed before he died, and the house servant told me he was nearly gone. I see no other suitors around, cousin," Philip snapped in response without even glancing at the sheriff. He offered a smug smile and strode into John's room.

"How do you do that?" I asked Taylor, watching the jackass of a cousin go to John's bed.

"Do what, ma'am?"

"You're always in the right place and right time." My own words rang in my head, and another possibility trickled into my thoughts. Was the sheriff like me? A time traveler? Someone with special knowledge or a crazy chip in his head that told him things he shouldn't know? The sense was back. Something about him was almost familiar or …

… empathic memory. It had been teasing me, never fully forming but present nonetheless, like a dream that escaped as one woke from a deep sleep. Failing to capture it, I sighed.

If Taylor was anything, he wasn't easy to read. Either he played his part here with zealous devotion or I was grasping at straws. It almost made sense he was a time traveler, but I didn't know why he was sent.

"I'm fetching the preacher!" Nell whipped by us.

"Preacher? Why for?" Philip demanded, trailing her.

I grimaced and resisted the urge to smack him. His pinched features were the last thing I wanted in my life at the moment. His thoughts were not good; he already had a plan to marry me and lock me away permanently in a basement while he enjoyed John's money.

Unable to tolerate the way he thought of John, I spoke without thinking. "Do you not love your uncle for being kind, cousin, instead of for his money?"

"You watch your mouth, cousin. When your father is gone, I will teach you some respect the only way a woman understands it." He hissed for my ears only. His attention slid to the sheriff for the first time. "Sheriff? What are you doing here? This is a family affair. No one has broken the law."