standing-in-the-sun

Standing in the Sun

Paranormal Romance

As the daughter of a third generation farmer, I have the deepest respect for the hardworking individuals who manage to encourage life from the ground, usually while fighting against both man-made obstacles and

Mother Nature. The idea for this story came after a summer storm whipped across a field ...

plus, what's not to love about scarecrows.

1898. Nathan Willis didn't waste any time making his way across the open field toward the shelter of the barn. The black clouds swirling around the sky pressed down ominously, jagged streaks of lightning flashing with ever increasing frequency.

Breaking into a flat run, he splashed through the puddles that formed as the clouds opened. He was soaked in seconds. His thick, blonde hair stuck to his skull and the heavy flannel shirt and denims weighed him down.

The day had been sunny, though surprisingly chilly, for the fifteenth of June. The eerie storm had blown in rapidly, completely covering the early morning sun within minutes of sweeping over the horizon.

Twenty feet from the barn, a tremendous gust of wind picked Nathan completely up off the ground. He spun through the air, as if filled with straw rather than nearly two hundred pounds of muscle and bone.

Covering his head with his arms for protection, he crashed into the rough, wooden planks of the barn, hearing them splinter on impact.

He fell to the ground. Pain exploded in him, stealing his breath. The black wave of unconsciousness closed over him.

"You're trespassing, mister."

Nathan fought his way through the fog in his brain, opening his eyes a crack to look at his accuser. His eyes widened in shock at the woman standing over him.

Uncomfortable heat spread over his neck and face and his heart began to pound. His startled gaze went from her unruly, black hair, narrowed blue eyes and full, unsmiling lips to travel over her slender body.

Nathan realized with a jolt that her full breasts and gently flaring hips were covered by no more than a man's thin, cotton undershirt and denims much like his own; both of which hugged her form indecently.

"Finished?" she asked, her soft voice tight with contempt.

"Not yet," he answered. His gaze moved back up to clash with hers.

Getting to his feet, he swayed slightly. His whole body ached.

Nathan had known from his prone position that the woman was tall. Drawing himself to his full six-feet, he found it momentarily surprising that her defiant, blue eyes were nearly level with his own green ones.

Then he remembered what she'd said to him.

"Who are you, lady? Are you lost?" he asked. "I'll hitch up the team and give you a ride back to town."

"My name is Hannah." Her black brows drew together in obvious confusion. "Team?"

He figured she must be somewhat dull-witted. "Horses. A team of horses," he explained.

"Look, mister, I don't know where you came from, but I've got one horse. Since you obviously don't have a car," she pointed down the long, gravel driveway and said, "You can thumb your way to town."

Thumb his way? Nathan thought, at a loss by the strange term. Before he could say anything, she turned to walk up to the house. His house.

She strode up the steps leading to the covered porch. Then, without waiting for him or an invitation, went through the screen door and into the kitchen.

By the time he caught her, she cradled what Nathan presumed to be a telephone handset against her ear -- though it didn't look like the one installed last year at the large mercantile in town -- her other hand punched furiously at the buttons on a box hanging on the wall.

"Hello, I'd like to repor -- hey, what are you doing?!" she exclaimed, as Nathan reached past her and tore the box off the wall, dropping it to the floor.

Eyes wide and fearful, she dropped the handset. Backing away from him, she bumped against one of the four spindle-back chairs surrounding the table in the kitchen. She stared at him in a most peculiar way.

Uneasily, he looked around his home. A prickly dread filled him when he saw the strange things in the kitchen and, through the archway, in the living room. In one corner, angled toward the sofa, stood the pine kitchen safe.

The tall cupboard that usually held dry goods now contained different sized black boxes. The largest looked like a darkened window. Nathan hadn't a clue what any of them were or where they had come from.

Looking around frantically, he spotted his open, slant-front desk along one wall. After reaching it, he realized he didn't recognize any of the objects scattered around the surface.

Turning on the woman, who hadn't moved, he grabbed her arms. Shaking her none-too-gently, he growled between clenched teeth, "What is this?"

"S-stop, please, you're scaring me." At the whispered plea, Nathan released her abruptly, guilt gnawing at him. He'd never touched a woman with anything less than tenderness, yet here he was mauling a stranger.

Disgusted with himself, he turned on his heel and headed for the stairway leading to the second floor, taking the steps three at a time.

In the bedroom, he was relieved to find his low-posted, maple bed still dominated the room, but dismayed at the crisp, green sheets and thick blanket covering it. Where was the coverlet his grandmother had made? He turned and spotted it, stretched on a rack of sorts, hanging on the wall opposite the bed.

All around the room, hints of him lay scattered among things he'd never seen before. His dresser stood along the wall beside the window, but the oddities cluttering the top did not belong to him.

He felt the tips of his ears grow warm as his eyes strayed again to the bed. A long, white, cotton nightgown lay along the foot. Nathan shifted uncomfortably at the image of Hannah stretching sensuously on his bed, her lush curves filling the simple gown.

Aware of her presence in the doorway behind him, he tensed. His thoughts made him ache in ways he'd never imagined before.

"What's your name?" she asked, her voice tight.

Unable to comprehend what was happening, he replied numbly. "Nathan Willis."

Her sharply indrawn breath told him that she recognized his name and he turned around. Her startled expression knotted his stomach with unqualified fear, erasing all evidence of his desire.

Her face lost any color it may have had, making her wide, blue eyes huge in contrast. "That's impossible," she whispered.

Anger flashed in him. "I think I know my own name," he said, each word bitten off. "What I don't know is why someone else's belongings are in my house."

"You're dead."

Her statement, uttered with such certainty, combined with the absolute terror on her face, almost made him believe. Could it possibly be as she said? Was this hell? Eternal dread.

But he didn't believe her.

"What are you talking about?"

"Nathan Willis died of exposure in eighteen ninety-eight."

He remembered the storm, unlike anything he’d ever experienced.

"That's insane!" he said, but heard the desperation in his voice.

She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands along them, her obvious anxiety fueling his own. Her frightened gaze locked with his. "One hundred years ago today."

"Are you trying to tell me it's now nineteen hundred ninety-eight? Do you know how absurd that sounds?" he demanded.

Unable to stand there in a bedroom that was he, yet didn't belong to him, he went downstairs and outside again.

Standing in the middle of the porch, he rubbed his hands over his face wearily. A hundred years? Time travel?

"How did you come to live here?" he asked. All too aware of her quiet presence close behind him.

"Nathan left--" she paused. "You left this land to my great-great-great grandfather, Frank Myers, when you--" she broke off, as if still uncertain whether he was alive or not.

"Died?" Nathan supplied. Spinning around quickly, he pulled both of her hands against his chest, holding them over the strong, rapid beat of his heart. "Do I feel dead, Hannah?" he rasped, bending toward her soft mouth.

As his lips closed over Hannah's, a wave of desire rippled through him. When he felt the tip of her tongue smooth along his lips, Nathan nearly dropped to his knees in agony. Following her lead, he deepened the kiss, stroking gently into the sweet recess of her mouth.

Unable to bare the torment, he lifted his head. He wondered if his expression mirrored the dazed one she wore.

Then she smiled at him for the first time. He felt his heart stop for a moment, and then accelerate.

"I'm not an expert, Nathan, but I would have to say you are very much alive."

"I never doubted it," he said. Not adding that if he'd had doubts, that kiss had alleviated them. "But that leaves no explanation for what has happened to me."

She pulled gently at the hands he still held captive. When Nathan reluctantly released them, she asked, "What's the last thing you remember?"

It wasn't difficult to recall, for him it had just happened. "I was out in the field, checking the corn I'd planted. This incredible storm blew in from nowhere. I remember feeling weightless, without substance." He shuddered. "I was picked up and thrown against the side of the barn."

"That's weird," she said. Nathan again puzzled over her strange manner of speech.

They had been walking in the direction of the barn. Nathan could hardly believe how deteriorated the structure appeared. He'd just built it two years ago.

Hannah looked around, obviously searching for something.

"This morning," she said absently, "a storm whipped up here in much the same way. The winds were so strong the house shook. I thought the roof would come off."

"What are you doing?" Nathan asked. Watching curiously as she wandered around the weathered barn.

"The scarecrow is gone."

"Hannah, don't you think we have bigger mysteries to solve right now?"

"You don't understand," she said, coming back to him. "I made that scarecrow from clothes I found in the house. Old things that had been packed away in trun--” She ceased abruptly, cutting off the callous words.

She didn't have to add that those "old" things were his. The everyday articles of his life that he'd never really thought about, but used nonetheless.

His personal items had been hoarded away by someone, probably Frank, only to be picked through later, by his granddaughter. No, Nathan thought ruefully, not just Frank's granddaughter. His great-great-great granddaughter!

Nausea rose quickly, nearly choking him.

Laying her hand on his forearm, she said, "I inherited this land from my grandfather three years ago. Though I'd lived with him all my life, he'd never told me about it." Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. "When I entered the house the first time," she said, gazing at the house, "it was like I belonged there."

Hurt and not understanding why, Nathan lashed out. "So you rifled through my life, picking and choosing objects at random, discarding the remains."

"I never discarded anything," she said softly, shocking him.

Taking his hand, she dragged him back toward the house.

In the kitchen, she said, "There have been renovations through the years. Water, electricity, and gas lines have been run into the house." She walked to the stove and turned a knob. A circle of flames appeared for a moment, then extinguished when she turned the knob again. Next, she opened the large, two-door cabinet he'd wondered about earlier, and Nathan gazed in awe at the lighted interior filled with food. She stood with the door open and it started humming quietly. "That's the compressor coming on. It keeps the refrigerator at the temperature I've set it at," she explained, closing the door again.

He followed Hannah through the house. She pointed out the items she'd added and moved, but he realized it hadn't really changed that much. His things were still there, enhanced by her unique, feminine touch.

"These objects represented you, Nathan. They gave me a sense of knowing you and belonging here, because of you."

The thought of Hannah sifting, sorting and using his memories, now aged and tattered, left Nathan bewildered and humbled.

"Yes, I made the scarecrow out of your things, but it wasn't something I'd done lightly." Her eyes shone brightly. "That lone figure represented the man whose life had been cut short. The parallelism of the storms, possibly combined with the intense feelings I had for you and this place, brought you forward in time." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Switched you with the scarecrow."

"Feelings you had for a man you knew to be long dead," he said softly. "What of the flesh and blood man standing before you now, Hannah?"

"When you kissed me, I felt whole for the first time." A tender smile curved her mouth, sending desire coursing through him at the reminder of the brief sample of her lips. "No one ever made me feel the way you did with a single kiss."

Over the following months, and many visits to the local library, Nathan learned of the overwhelming advances made in the world.

Men walking on the moon, organ transplants, machines called computers than did unbelievable tasks. He learned about the black box in the living room called a television and it still amazed him.

He was saddened to hear of the wars that had been fought and shocked at the random acts known as "terrorism" that seemed so prevalent in this modern world.

Hannah taught him how to drive a tractor and an automobile she referred to as a pickup truck. They harvested the crops she'd planted, astonishing Nathan at the speed in which the modern equipment allowed them to complete the task.

During one of the library visits, with great trepidation, he and Hannah looked up newspaper articles from June 1898 and after. They read with wonder of the mysterious disappearance of local farmer, Nathan Willis. It seems the case baffled authorities for years, before they finally gave up.

On this late November evening, after sharing a meal they had prepared together--a custom Hannah assured him was quite normal, they lay together on the floor in front of the fireplace.

"Nathan, this is such a beautiful quilt." Running her hands along the coverlet he'd convinced her to take off the wall, Hannah said, "I'd hate to ruin it."

The flames danced along the inky, black curls around her face and Nathan was struck anew by her beauty. She lay on her stomach beside him. He gently rolled her onto her back, sliding his thigh between hers.

Touching her lips lightly with his own, he nibbled down her neck. Moving aside the collar of her sweater, he bit gently at the taut skin covering delicate bones. A deep shudder ran through her, and Nathan trembled in response. "Thank you," he whispered.

Surprised, she opened her eyes. "What for?" Her husky voice echoing the desire raging in him.

"Until now, I didn't really know what it felt like to be needed." Running his hand beneath her sweater along her abdomen, she inhaled sharply. The muscles contracted as his fingers continued lazily upward. "To hunger for someone so much, you place their desires above your own." Covering her unconfined breast, she moaned. Arching her back, the hardened tip pressed against his palm. His heart pounded heavily and he couldn't get enough air. "Only to realize that they feel the same aching hunger that you do."

"I love you," she said. Pulling his mouth down to hers, she cradled his head between her hands. "Make love to me, Nathan. You've come a long way."

All these months they had learned each other, their desire increasing daily. Hannah was inviting him into her heart and her body, and Nathan couldn't refuse.

In a way, he'd been like the scarecrow, standing alone. Now he had Hannah. Strong, confident, intelligent, and she loved him. He felt her warmth surround him as he kissed her, loved her.

Like standing in the sun.

The End