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All right, Annabel thought as she tightly grasped the ferry's railing and stared out over the water, it was time to pull a Scully and come up with a rational explanation for all this . . . this lunacy. Time travel was not possible. Was it?
Of course not. But then how to explain why everyone around her thought it was 1906? And where were the Bay Bridge and the Transamerica Tower and all the other landmarks that she was so used to seeing?
Annabel took a deep breath. Mass hysteria. That had to be it. For some unknown reason, everyone around her had gone delusional, and it was contagious, so she was seeing the same things they all thought they were seeing. But it was all hallucination. She was probably in an ambulance right now, not on a ferry—
Cold spray pelted her in the face.
"Whoa!" Cole Brady exclaimed beside her. "Better step back, Miss Lowell. If we keep on standing this close to the rail, we'll be soaked by the time we get across the bay."
He put his hand on her arm, and Annabel fought down the impulse to jerk it away. She knew he was just trying to help her. There was the fact that he claimed to be a member of the SFFD, too, although he wasn't in uniform at the moment. She didn't want to insult a fellow firefighter . . . even if he was crazy enough to think it was 1906.
"All right," she said. "Let's get out of the spray."
She pried her fingers off the railing and allowed him to steer her across the deck toward the superstructure of the ferry. Round metal tables were bolted to the deck in places, and some of the passengers were sitting at them having drinks. Despite the chill that always hung over the bay, the atmosphere was almost festive.
Cole found an empty table. "Let's sit down."
Annabel hesitated, then nodded. She was aware of the discreet stares being directed toward her, no doubt because of the way she was dressed. Maybe, she hoped, her clothes would be less noticeable if she was seated.
Cole held her chair for her—he was a gentleman, of course; what man in 1906 wouldn't be?—and then sat down across from her. He took off his derby and placed it on a chair. The breeze ruffled his brown hair a little.
She looked at him. He was a handsome man, in a rugged way. Not pretty, by any means; the lines and angles of his face were too prominent for that. His eyes were blue and had a few smile lines around their corners. They weren't really deep-set, but his broad forehead made them seem slightly so. The line of his jaw showed strength and determination. There was a tiny dimple in the center of his chin, so small that it was barely visible. And his ears stuck out a little, not enough to be funny-looking, but enough that Annabel noticed them.
She hadn't paid that much attention to the way he was built while he was standing, but now that he was sitting, and all she could see was the upper part of his torso, she noticed that his chest and shoulders filled the tweed suit coat and white shirt quite nicely. His hands lay at rest on the table, the fingers long and strong-looking, as well as rather blunt on the tips. They were hands that could easily wield an ax or control a fire hose, Annabel found herself thinking. And yet they had a certain delicacy about them, too, as if their touch under the right circumstances could be light and caressing . . .
"Well," Cole asked, "do I pass inspection?"
Suddenly, Annabel felt her face growing warm. True, she probably had been staring at him, but he didn't have to call her on it. She didn't know whether to be angry or embarrassed, and finally settled for a little bit of both. She said, "Hey, don't think I didn't notice you checking me out earlier."
Instantly, he was contrite. "I meant no offense. Miss Lowell—"
She waved off his apology and said, "That's all right. I'm used to it."
That was true. Ever since she had entered her teens, she had been tall and athletic, with the sort of body that naturally drew men's eyes. In fact, she had been told more than once that she was wasting her looks by being a firefighter.
She summoned up a smile as she went on. "Anyway, you pass inspection just fine, Mr. Brady. You said you're a . . . fireman?" She was careful to use his word this time.
"That's right," he said with a nod. "Engine Company Twenty-one. We call ourselves the Eagle Company. Back in the days when all San Francisco had were volunteer fire companies, they all had names like that."
What he was saying sounded familiar somehow, and it took Annabel only a moment to recall that she had heard similar stories from Earl Tabor. Earl knew everything there was to know about the history of San Francisco, especially concerning the San Francisco Fire Department. If anyone was going to go back in time, Annabel thought, it should have been Earl and not her.