She nodded again. "It does."
He started to turn away, then paused and gestured at the empty plates. "Thank you for breakfast," he said. "It was excellent." An idea occurred to him, and he added, "Perhaps you could get a job as a cook."
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Annabel's lips tightened, and her eyes began to blaze.
"There's nothing wrong with being a servant, you know," Cole said quickly. He didn't believe she was a snob, so maybe if he appealed to her sense of egalitarianism, he could head off some of her anger.
"Of course not," she said. "I just happen to have talents I can put to better use elsewhere."
Again he held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "We'll talk about this later."
"I'm certain we will," Annabel replied coolly.
Cole had the sense not to say anything else. He got out of the kitchen while the getting was good.
Chapter 8
Annabel sat at the kitchen table fuming for quite a while after Cole went upstairs. How dare he act so superior! She was just as good a firefighter as he was. Probably better, since she'd had the advantages of modern-day training and technology.
But this was a different time, she reminded herself. All the gains women had made during the twentieth century were still to come. Many of the things Cole found to be so far-fetched would come about, Annabel knew . . . but not for some time.
Well, she told herself, maybe she would just have to hurry progress along a little.
But she had to be careful. She didn't want to wind up in an asylum, and that might well be the result if she started talking too much about what was going to happen in the future.
She heard water running in a bathtub upstairs and imagined Cole lowering his tired, aching body into the tub.
Even though she was still a little angry at him, she let herself slide into a fantasy of stepping into the tub with him, settling down into the warm, soapy water, and reaching out to explore his strong, muscular body.
Her eyes snapped open and she realized she was tightly clutching the edge of the table—so tightly, in fact, that she had pulled the tablecloth several inches toward her, bunching it up in her hands. It was the rattle of china and silverware as the cloth slid over the table that had broken the erotic spell. She took a deep breath and blew it out. "Whoa."
Maybe it would be better not to think about such things, she told herself. He had been really kind and generous to her so far, but unless he was going to treat her as an equal, there was no point in fantasizing about him.
Besides, what kind of future could they have together? They were from different eras. Sooner or later, she would have to try to find a way back to her own time. And if she couldn't, she would always be a misfit here, not the sort of woman that a man like Cole Brady would want for a long-term relationship.
"Give it up, girlfriend," she muttered. "It's not going to happen."
Now, if only her mind could convince her heart of that.
****
"There's a good rooming house on Vallejo Street, over in Pacific Heights," Cole said as they left the house that afternoon.
He had slept for several hours and awoken to find an excellent lunch waiting for him. Sally Higgins, his stout, gray-haired cook, had been distinctly frosty to him, however, and he knew it was because of Annabel. More specifically, because Annabel had cooked breakfast. Sally referred to her as "that young lady" in a tone dripping with scorn. Upon finding Annabel in the house when she arrived, Sally clearly thought she was some loose woman Cole had picked up. Cole had subtly tried to set her straight about that, but he didn't know if he had succeeded or not.
For her part, Annabel was just as chilly toward Sally. All of it made Cole uncomfortable. The last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of a couple of feuding women.
So the best thing for all concerned, he had decided, was to find Annabel her own place as soon as possible.
"Isn't Pacific Heights an awfully expensive neighborhood for a boardinghouse?" Annabel asked during the cable car ride.
There it was again, Cole thought, her uncanny knowledge of San Francisco. He said, "Many of the people who live there are very well-to-do, that's true. They've inherited fortunes from the Comstock Lode and things like that. But fortunes get away from people sometimes, and I'm told that one silver widow who lives over there has begun taking in boarders."
"Where did you hear about that?"
"Patsy told me at the firehouse last night." Cole chuckled. "Patsy knows just about everything that's going on in the city. He's an invaluable resource."
"I'll have to meet Mr. O'Flaherty sometime."
"I don't know about that," Cole said with a shake of his head. "With his eye for a pretty girl, he'd swoop down on you right away."
"Is that so?" Annabel asked. "You believe I'm pretty?"
Cole cleared his throat. "Only a blind man could ever think otherwise. And even he would change his mind once he heard you speak."