Times Change

by Nora Roberts

  She twisted her head to glance at them. She certainly hadn’t felt them. “Are you?”

  He looked back to see her lips curved in what he considered a typically female smile. “No, I suppose I’m not.”

  “Under the circumstances,” she supplied.

  “Right.” He started to speak again, to make some joke, but found himself suddenly and totally at a loss for words. Something in her smile, in her half-hooded eyes, in the tilt of that damn-you chin, turned his brain to mush.

  Ridiculous, he told himself as he continued to stare at her. Absolutely and completely ridiculous. Whatever he was feeling, it couldn’t be love—not the kind of love that caused men to make foolish and life-altering decisions. It was affection, he told himself. Attraction, desire and passion, tempered with a certain amount of caring, perhaps. But love. He had no room for it. And no time.

  Time. Reality struck him like a blow. Time was the biggest obstacle of all.

  He started to push himself away, to put some distance between them until he could think clearly again. Still smiling, she wrapped arms and legs around him. “Going somewhere?”

  “I must be heavy.”

  “You are.” She continued to smile, then traced her lips with her tongue. Her hips moved gently, sinuously, against his. Thrilled, she watched his eyes cloud as he grew inside her. “I was hoping we could do a little experiment.”

  He shook his head but failed to clear it. “Experiment?”

  “Physics.” She trailed a single fingertip down his back. “You know about physics, don’t you, J.T.?”

  He used to. “That’s Dr. Hornblower to you,” he muttered, and buried his face in her throat.

  “Well, Doc . . . isn’t there this theory about an object in motion remaining in motion?”

  His breath was ragged in her ear. “Let me show you.”

  ***

  She ached all over. And she’d never felt better in her life. Bleary eyed, she winced at the intruding sunlight. Morning. Again, she realized.

  She wouldn’t have believed it was possible to spend the better part of a day and all of a night in bed. With only snatches of sleep. With a grumbling sigh, she tried to roll over and met the solid wall of Jacob’s body.

  He’d been busy since dawn, she mused. Busy working her over to the edge of the bed. Now he took up ninety percent of the mattress, along with all of the sheets and blankets. The only thing saving her from sliding onto the floor was the weight of the leg he had hooked around her hips. And the arm stretched carelessly, and certainly not amorously, over her throat.

  She shifted again, met the unmoving line of resistance and narrowed her eyes. “Okay, pal,” she said under her breath, “we’re going to begin as I mean to go on, and I don’t mean to roll onto the floor every night for the rest of my life.”

  She gave him an unloverlike nudge in the stomach with her elbow. He swore and shoved her another inch toward the edge.

  Tactics, Sunny decided. She changed hers by sliding a hand intimately over his hip and thigh. “J.T.,” she whispered, trailing a line of kisses down his cheek. “Honey.”

  “Hmm?”

  She nibbled delicately at his ear. “Jacob? Sweetheart?”

  He made another vague sound and cupped her breast. Sunny’s brow lifted. His movement had cost her another precious fraction of an inch.

  “Baby,” she added, figuring she was running out of endearments. “Wake up, sugar. There’s something I want to do.” Gently, seductively, she brushed her lips down to his shoulder. “Something I really need.”

  As his lips curved, she bit him. Hard.

  “Ow.” His eyes flew open, temper and bafflement warring in them. “What the hell was that for?”

  “So I could get back my share of the bed.” Satisfied, she snuggled into the pillow he’d just vacated. She opened one eye and was gratified to see that he was scowling at her. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a bed hog? And a blanket thief.” She snatched the loose cover and rolled into it.

  “You’re the first one to complain.”

  She only smiled. She was counting on being the last. Frowning, he rubbed the wound on his shoulder. There were shadows under her eyes. They made her look vulnerable. The faint throbbing where her teeth had connected reminded him that she was anything but.

  Inside that angular body was a whirlwind of energy. All wells of passion that he was sure—even with the marathon they’d put each other through—had yet to be tapped. She’d taken him places he hadn’t believed existed. Places he was already yearning to return to. In the deepest part of the night she had been insatiable, and impossibly generous. He’d had only to touch her to have her respond. She’d had only to touch him to cause the need to churn.

  Now, in the full light of morning, she was wrapped in the blankets, with only her tousled cap of hair and half of her face in view. And he wanted her.

  What was he going to do about her? With her? For her? He hadn’t a clue.

  He wondered how she would react if he told her everything. She’d go back to thinking he was unbalanced. He could prove it to her. And once he had they would both have to face the fact that whatever had happened between them during the last spin of the earth on its axis was transient. He wasn’t ready for that.

  For once in his life he wanted to delude himself. To pretend. They would have only a few weeks together at best. More than other men, he had firsthand knowledge of how fickle time could be. So now he would use it, and take what he had with her.

  But how could he? Sitting up, he rubbed his hands over his face. It wasn’t fair to her. It was grossly unfair, particularly if his instincts were correct and her feelings were involved. Not telling her would hurt her when it ended. Telling her would hurt her before it had really begun. And maybe that was best.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked him.

  He was reminded of when she had used the same phrase before, and where it had ended. Now he thought of how he could tell her just how far away he was going. She was an intelligent woman. He had only to give her the facts.

  “Sunny.”

  “Yes?” She ran a hand up his arm. Then, feeling repentant, she rose long enough to kiss his shoulder where she had bitten it.

  “Maybe this shouldn’t have happened.” He saw by the way her smile faded that he’d begun badly.

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t.” Annoyed with himself, he made a grab for her before she could roll out of bed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said stiffly. “When you’ve been fired as often as I have you get used to rejection. If you’re sorry about what happened—”

  “I’m not.” He cut her off with a brisk shake that turned the glazed hurt in her eyes to smoke.

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’m not sorry,” he said, struggling for calm. “I damn well should be, but I’m not. I can’t be, because all I can think about is making love with you again.”

  She blew her hair out of her eyes and swore to herself that she would be calm. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

  “Neither do I.” He released her to tug his fingers through his hair. “It mattered,” he blurted out. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but it, too, was a fact. “Being with you mattered to me. I didn’t think it would.”

  The ice she had deliberately formed around her heart melted a little. “Are you upset because it was more than sex?”

  “I’m upset because it was a hell of a lot more than sex.” And he was a coward, he realized, because he couldn’t tell her that what they had now would end before either of them was ready. “I don’t know how to handle it.”

  She was silent for a moment. He looked so angry—with himself. And as confused as she was by what had grown—no, by what had exploded into life—between them. “How about one day at a time?”

  He shifted his gaze to hers. He wanted to believe it could be that simple. Needed to. “And what happens when I leave?”

  The ice had definitely
melted, because she felt the first slash in her heart. “Then we’ll deal with it.” She chose her words carefully. “Jacob, I don’t think either of us wanted to get involved. But it happened. I wouldn’t want to take it back.”

  “Be sure.”

  She lifted a hand to his cheek. “I am.” Afraid she would say too much too soon, she bundled back under the covers. “Now that that’s settled, it’s your turn to make breakfast. You can yell up the stairs when it’s ready.”

  He said nothing. The thought of what might tumble from his heart to his lips unnerved him. If it was a choice between saying too much and saying too little, he had to choose the latter. He rose, tugged on what clothes came to hand, and left her.

  Alone, she turned her face into the pillow. It smelled of him. Letting out a long, weary sigh, she willed her body to relax. She had lied. Rejections wounded her deeply, left her miserable and aching and full of self-loathing. A rejection from him would hurt so much more than the loss of a job.

  Rubbing her cheek on the pillowcase, she watched the slant of sunlight. What would she do if he ended it? She would recover. She needed to believe that. But she knew that if he turned away from her, recovery would take a lifetime.

  So she couldn’t let him turn away.

  It was important not to push. Sunny was very aware that she demanded too much from the people close to her. Too much love, too much attention, too much patience, too much faith. This time it would be different. She would be patient. She would have faith.

  It would be easier, she knew, because he was as unsteady as she. Who wouldn’t be, with the velocity and force with which they had come together? If they could progress so far in such a short time, how much further could they go in the weeks ahead?

  All they needed was a little time, to get to know each other better, to work on those rough edges. Forget the rough edges, she thought, gazing at the ceiling. Those would take a couple of lifetimes, at least. In any case, she rather liked them.

  But time . . . she was certain she had that right. Time was what they needed to get used to what had happened, to accept that it was going to keep right on happening.

  She smiled at that, her confidence building again. And if that didn’t work she’d browbeat him into it. She knew exactly what she wanted. And that was a first. She wanted Jacob T. Hornblower. If, after he had seen and spoken with Cal, he packed his pitiful little bag and headed back east, she would just go after him.

  What was a few thousand miles between friends? Or lovers.

  Oh, no, he wasn’t going to shake her off without a fight. And fighting was what she did best. If she wanted him—and she was certain she did—then he didn’t have a chance. She had as much right to call things off as he did, and she was far from ready. Maybe, if he was lucky, she’d let him off the hook in fifty or sixty years. In the meantime, he was just going to have to deal with it, and with her.

  “Sunny! This stuff is in the bowls, and I can’t find the damn coffee.”

  She grinned. Ah, the sweet sound of her lover’s voice carrying on the morning air. Like music, like the trilling of birds—

  “I said, I can’t find the damn coffee.”

  Like the roar of a wounded mule.

  Madly in love, she tossed the heap of blankets aside.

  “It’s in the cupboard over the stove, dummy. I’ll be right down.”

  Chapter 8

  Another week of quiet, serenity and nature in the rough would drive Sunny mad. She’d already accepted that. Even love wasn’t enough of a buffer against hour after hour of solitude, punctuated only by the occasional call of a hardy bird and the monotonous drip, drip, drip of snow melting from the roof.

  For variety she could always listen to the wind blow through the trees. When she had stooped that low she realized that she would gladly trade all of her worldly possessions for the good grinding noise of rush-hour traffic in any major city.

  A girl might be born in the woods, she thought, but that didn’t mean you could keep her there.

  Jacob was certainly a distraction, an exciting one. But as the days passed it became clear that being snowbound in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere was no more his definition of a good time than it was hers. The fact that she found that a relief didn’t ease the boredom.

  They managed to occupy their time. Arguing, in bed and out. Two restless personalities stuck in the same space were bound to strike sparks. But their minds were as restless as their bodies and needed stimulation.

  Sunny compensated by hibernating. Her reasoning was, she couldn’t be bored if she was asleep. So she developed the habit of taking long naps at odd hours. When he was certain she was asleep, Jacob would slip out, taking advantage of the bonus he’d found in the shed. Cal’s aircycle. With that he would make a quick trip to his ship and input new data into the main computer.

  He told himself that he wasn’t deceiving her, he was simply performing part of the task he had come to her time to accomplish. And if it was deceit, it couldn’t be helped. He’d nearly convinced himself that what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least for the time being.

  Though he was as restless as she, he found himself storing up memories, images, moments. The way she looked when she woke—sleepy-eyed and irritable as a child. The way she’d laughed, the sun shining on her hair, when they’d built a house of snow under the pine trees. The way she felt, passion humming under her skin, when they made love in front of the fire.

  He would need them. Those memories, those remembrances of each conversation or spat. Each time he returned to the ship he was reminded of just how much he would need them. He told himself he was only preparing to go on with his life. And so was she.

  She had written inquiries to the handful of universities she’d selected. But the weather had so far prevented her from venturing out as far as Medford to mail them. She had read, lost to Jacob at poker, even dragged out her sketchbook in desperation. When she tired of drawing the view of snow and pine trees from the windows, she sketched the interior of the cabin. Bored, she resorted to drawing caricatures.

  Jacob read incessantly, and he’d taken to scribbling in a spiral notebook he’d dug out of some drawer. When Sunny asked him if he was preparing for an experiment, he made noncommittal noises. When she pressed him, he simply pulled her into his lap and made her forget to ask questions.

  They lost power twice, and they made love as frequently as they argued. Which was often.

  Sunny was certain, when she caught herself making the bed for lack of anything better to occupy her time, that if they didn’t do something they would both find themselves in a home for the gently deranged.

  Leaving the bed half-made, she sprinted to the top of the stairs. “J.T.”

  He was currently trying to keep himself sane by building a city of cards. “What?”

  “Let’s drive to Portland.”

  Jacob’s attention was fixed on a particularly intricate arrangement. He thought the structure was beginning to resemble the skyline on Omega II.

  “J.T.”

  “Yeah.” With fingers that were rock-steady, he added another card.

  “I guess it’s too late,” Sunny murmured, and sat down to the west of the city. “He’s already gone around the bend.”

  “Do we have any more of these?”

  She sighed at his dwindling stack of cards. “Nope.”

  “I was thinking of a bridge.”

  “Think shock therapy.”

  “Or maybe a skybelt.”

  “A what?”

  He caught himself and put another card in place. “Nothing. My mind was wandering.”

  She snickered. “What’s left of it.”

  “You were saying?”

  “I was saying let’s get out of Dodge.”

  “I thought Medford was the closest town.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. “Sometimes,” she said at last, “I’m not sure if you belong on the same planet with the rest of us.”

  “It’s th
e right planet.” A portion of his pasteboard roof fluttered. “Breathe the other way, will you?”

  “Jacob. If you could spare a moment of your valuable time.”

  He glanced up then, and he had to smile. “You have the sexiest pout I’ve ever seen.”

  “I don’t pout.” When she caught herself doing just that, she hissed between her teeth and blew down a building.

  “You’ve just murdered thousands of innocent people.”

  “There’s only one person I’m going to murder.” Desperate, she grabbed a handful of his sweater. “J.T., if I don’t get out of here I’m going to start bouncing off the walls.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Just watch me.” She leaned closer. “Portland. People, traffic, restaurants.”

  “When do you want to leave?”

  With a huff, she sat back again. “You were listening.”

  “Of course I was listening. I always listen. When do you want to leave?”

  “A week ago. Now. I can be ready in ten minutes.”

  She sprang up. Though Jacob winced when his city collapsed, he rose with her. “What about the snow?”

  “It hasn’t snowed for three days. Besides, we have four-wheel drive. If we can get to Route 5, we’re home free.”

  The thought of getting out nearly made him forget his priorities. “And if Cal comes back?”

  She was all but dancing with impatience. “They’re not due back for a couple of weeks. Anyway, they live here.” Carelessly she stepped on his demolished city. “J.T., think carefully. Do you really want to see a grown woman turn into a raving lunatic?”

  “Maybe.” Taking her by the hips, he pulled her intimately close. “I like it when you rave.”

  “Then prepare to enjoy yourself.”

  “I am.” He dragged her to the floor.

  She argued—briefly. “I’m going,” she said, undoing the buttons of her flannel shirt.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Right.” He tugged the plain white undershirt over her head.

  She struggled but couldn’t prevent her lips from curving. Giving up, she helped him off with his sweater. “And so are you.”