It Had to Be You E-Book

B.G. Thomas

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 108

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Robert Daniels is always dating the wrong guys. He doesn't understand it. Then, one day, on a particularly bad date, he dies… …only to wake up in the body of  a man named Jimmy, who was shot and killed—but in 1927. Along comes Hugh Naylor, the guy Robert has been waiting for all his life. Hugh is perfect—sweet, intelligent, and sexy. The problem? Hugh is in love with Jimmy. Now Robert's falling in love with Hugh, but how can he explain he isn't who he appears? How can he get Hugh to love him, and not the man whose body he inhabits? And who shot Jimmy?

Leseprobe

Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all! … his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes.

It Had to Be You

ATFIRSTit was like someone had hit him in the chest with an invisible sledgehammer. Pain, oh yes, but mostly it was a powerful force that seemed to almost lift him up before driving him back, back, and over the edge of the fountain and into the water. There were screams, but they sounded like they were coming from far away.

He was lying in the cold water, a woman was shrieking, and he was looking up past the statue of the man on a horse—

(… the sculptures of the horses are thought to signify the world’s great rivers, and this one represents the Mississippi… )

—and into the nighttime sky.

He was so cold. Numb. Water was shooting everywhere, and still there was that shrieking woman. It was getting louder. Someone make her stop! Where is Perry?

So cold. Except for a growing fire in his chest. Had he thought it was a sledgehammer? No, it was a ball-peen hammer, one heated to a thousand degrees and then driven into his lungs and—

Abruptly, Perry came into view. There he is…. Perry was looking down at him with huge wide eyes and a face that was so incredibly white and (oh!) it was Perry who was screaming. Not a woman at all. Who would have thought that Perry—pompous ass that he was—could make a noise like that? Not even the pounding jets crashing over the fountain—

(… it’s called the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, but in fact it was originally named The Mackay Fountain….)

—could drown out that horrible screaming. He didn’t know how it was that Perry’s vocal cords didn’t just tear right out of their moorings.

He began to cough. Water was getting in his mouth.

I’m lying in the fountain, he thought. God. I should get up. They won’t like it that I’m in the fountain.

It was only then that he realized he must be sitting up already. His head was above the water, but he didn’t remember actually moving at all. Perry came into focus again, and now he was crying (God, stop, please stop) and his fingers were clenched in his expensive but ridiculous toupee. At least he wasn’t screaming anymore.

Better yet, he wasn’t talking.

(… the fountain was created in Paris by the French sculptor Henri-Léon Gréber in 1910…)

The pain was getting worse now, and when he looked down he saw that he was clutching at his chest and (oh, look!) there was red (blood! that’s blood) pouring through his fingers….

(my blood)

The world swam in and out of focus.

I’ve been shot, he thought dumbly. How? How did I get shot? And then he laughed at the irony of it all. Tried to laugh. God! He’d been standing there watching the water pound over the statues in the fountain, when finally he’d turned to Perry, trying to listen to the man go on and on and on and on—

(… but the fountain wasn’t truly finished, not the way we know it today, not dedicated to Kansas City until 1960….)

—and he’d been thinking, Oh God, just shoot me. Please. Somebody just shoot me.

Someone had.

Then the pain came blazing up and out and the world became an inferno of agony, and then Robert Daniels died.

ROBERT, Rob to his friends, opened his eyes a moment later, and he was lying in the grass. How did he get there? He was looking up into an evening sky, and there was a circle of faces looking down at him. He was surrounded by people, and for some reason they were all wearing costumes. What the hell?

“Help him somebody!” came a man’s voice, and Rob turned his head (the world swam for a second) and saw there was a young man kneeling on the ground next to him. He was wearing a pinstriped suit and a brown hat with a black band. It looked like something his grandpa used to wear. What’s with all the costumes? Rob thought. At least he’s cute. What pretty blue eyes. My God, I am such a fag. I’m lying here bleeding, and I’m still checking out guys.

Rob almost laughed but that hurt, and the world went away again. All black. Then he was coughing and, God, that hurt. He opened his eyes again.

“My goodness!” cried a woman who was wearing a most adorable hat. He knew there was a name for a hat like that, but he couldn’t think of it. It was all close to her head like a tiny helmet, with flowers on the side. She was saying something. What was she saying? “He’s… he’s alive!”

Oh, yes, he was alive, if he could wonder about lady’s hats. Although… God, the pain was coming back!

“Let me through,” came another voice, and a big burly man shoved people aside and then leaned over Rob. A cop. No. A man in a cop costume. No policeman would wear anything like that.

“We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” said the young man next to him.

“He’s been shot,” said the not-cop.

“Yes, he’s been shot, for God’s sake,” exclaimed his unnamed companion. “Do something!”

“Well, don’t cast a kitten,” the not-cop said with a grunt. He pointed at a man in the crowd. “You! Go call an ambulance. Go on! Get a wiggle on!”

“Jimmy, you hold on, you hear me?”

Rob looked up into the cutie’s face. He looked like he was about to cry. God, not another crier. He sure had pretty blue eyes, though.

“Please, Jimmy, don’t you die on me. Hold on!”

“Not Jimmy,” Rob said, or he tried to. He coughed, felt a wetness on his mouth. Touched it. Looked. Red. Blood. My blood.

The world went away again.

THE world came back and left several more times. At least he thought it did. He wasn’t sure, really. Dreams, maybe?

A strange truck-like vehicle with a red cross on its side….

Lying on a table? Moving down a corridor and looking up at the ceiling?

A man in a white coat and thick glasses…. A doctor?

A woman that looked like… like what? Some bizarre dream world’s version of a nurse?

and pain.

a lot of pain.

More blackness….

ROB woke up in a small narrow bedroom; it had just enough room for two beds, a dresser bureau, and a couple of chairs. Seated in the one next to his bed was the cutie who had kept calling him Jimmy. The kid was asleep, sprawled back in the chair, hat in his lap. He looked so sweet all passed out like that. He had a long, slim body, with long-fingered hands. His hair was a dark blond, his face narrow, but handsome. Rob couldn’t see his eyes, but what he remembered of them seemed… kind? Why was he here? The young man didn’t know Rob from Adam. Why wasn’t Perry here instead?

Rob shifted—felt a wave of dizziness and a deep throbbing in his chest. When he looked down all he could see was bandages. He was in a bed, and his torso—his chest, what he could see of it above a blanket—was covered in bandages. God, I’ve really been shot. But where the hell am I?

A woman came into the room, and Rob’s eyes went wide, or as wide as they could with his head floating in a mound of cotton. Good drugs, he thought. Must be. Because it was the woman from his dreams. Am I still dreaming?

The woman, like everyone else lately, was wearing a costume. The most outlandish one so far. Her hair was pulled back and supported the biggest, widest nurse’s cap he’d ever seen. Like something a drag queen would wear. The rest of the outfit was even wilder. She wore an ugly longed-sleeved gray blouse with a huge white sash-like thing that crossed over in front, an apron bigger than any one he’d ever imagined possible, and voluminous skirts that almost made the woman look like she was floating as she moved. He looked again. Maybe she was a drag queen. She certainly was homely enough. Maybe this was a joke? Maybe he hadn’t been shot? Could it be some elaborate joke his friend Tommy—a drag queen himself—was playing on him?

“Mr. Campbell! You’re awake!” The obvious joy that spread over the nurse’s face vanquished any unfair and mean judgment he’d made about her looks (shame on you!), and her voice made it obvious she was indeed a she. The woman glided to his side, and reaching out, laid a hand on his own. “Dr. Thompson worked on you for hours. It was touch and go there for a while, but clearly you’ve made it. We’ve been praying for you, Mr. Campbell. Me. The whole staff. And certainly your friend there,” she added with a nod to the corner of the room.

Rob looked, and of course she’d meant the young man who’d been at his side when he was shot. How long had he been there? Where was Perry? How long had he himself been here? Why wasn’t he in a hospital? Where was here?

“Mr. Campbell, are you all right?” The nurse reached out again, and this time delicately cupped his cheek, then stroked his hair. “Don’t get upset.”

“Not Mr. Campbell,” he managed. He swallowed. His throat was so dry. “Water?” he asked, looking into her clearly concerned face.

“Of course,” she said and quickly slipped from the room. She was back in an instant with a glass (a glass!) of water.

With her help, he took a drink. It wasn’t very cold, but it was cool, and his throat was grateful. “Where am I?” he was finally, comfortably able to ask.

“Why, St. Luke’s Hospital, of course,” she answered, smile sunny and sweet.

St. Luke’s? He looked around the room (and thankfully this time his head stayed clear). It sure didn’t look like any hospital room he’d ever seen. Especially at St. Luke’s. And he’d stayed there just a few years ago when he’d had his appendix out. No, this looked more like the one he and his brother used to stay in when they visited their grandparents when they were kids.

His brother. He needed to call his brother. Paul would be worried about him. And what about his friends?

“You’re confused, Mr. Campbell. I understand….”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” he asked, a strange unease beginning to settle in his stomach.

“J-Jimmy?”

Rob turned to see his sleeping visitor was rousing himself.

“Oh, Jimmy!” The young man jumped to his feet. “You’re awake! Thank God!”

“Mr. Naylor!” the nurse said with a gasp. “Please don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Sorry,” said the young man distractedly and came to the edge of the bed. Naylor. The woman had called him Naylor. “Jimmy, I can’t believe you’re alive. Your doctor said you only had a fifty-fifty chance there for a while. He said ten years ago you’d’ve probably died. If he hadn’t served in the war….”

“War?” Bush’s war?

“Yeah, Jimmy. Your doctor said one thing the war did give us was all kinds of surgical advancements.”

Surgical advancements? War? What was this guy talking about? And, “Why do you keep calling me Jimmy?”

Naylor got a funny look on his face and, silence filling the room, he and the ridiculously dressed nurse exchanged glances.

“What?” Rob asked. “What’s wrong?”

Naylor gave him a long look, shot the nurse a quick troubled expression, and then looked back. “Ah, what do you want me to call you?”

“Well, my name’s Robert. But everyone calls me Rob.”

“Rob?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I… I’m your friend. It’s me, Hughie.”

“I’ll go get the doctor,” said the nurse. “He’ll know what to do.” She fled the room.

Alarmed, Rob sat up fast and felt a rush of dizziness—spots filled his vision. Pain exploded from his chest. What the hell was going on? The world was going gray.

“Mr. Campbell.”

“Jimmy.”

“You mustn’t.”

The voices faded, and then things went dark again.

ITWASa pressure in his bladder that brought him awake. Rob managed to sit up and was pleased to be able to do it without too much pain and with only one wave of dizziness. He looked around the little room. Naylor was gone, and Rob found himself wishing he were here. Naylor was…. Well, Rob didn’t know a thing about him, but he still felt the kid’s absence. Kid. Naylor had to be in his twenties, not horribly younger than he himself.

Pee. Get up and pee.

But as he continued to look around, he didn’t see any door except for the one that led into the hall. What? The room didn’t have a john? His last one had. Hell, he’d joked with his nurses that it was bigger than the one in his apartment.

Pee!

But, God. What if he had a catheter? Oh, he hated those things. Burned when he peed for days after and…. He reached down, groped himself, didn’t feel anything. If he’d had one, they must have taken it out.