Times Change

by Nora Roberts

  “As soon as you’re finished raving,” he promised, then closed his mouth over hers.

  ***

  Sunny threw a small bag into the back of the Land Rover. She’d taken time to grab a toothbrush, a hairbrush, her favorite camisole and a lipstick. “In case we have to stop on the way,” she explained.

  “Why would we?”

  “I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get out of the mountains.” She settled in the driver’s seat. “It’s about five hours after that.”

  Five hours. It took them five hours to get from one part of a single state to another. For the past few days he’d nearly forgotten how different things were.

  She shot him a look, eyes bright, lips curved. “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  It was difficult not to stare as she turned a small key and sent the combustion engine roaring. He could feel the vibration through the floorboards. A few small adjustments, he mused, and even an archaic vehicle could be made to run smoothly and quietly.

  Jacob was on the brink of pointing this out to her when she shoved the Land Rover in gear and sent snow spitting out from under the tires.

  “All right!”

  “Is it?”

  “This baby rides like a tank,” she said happily as they lumbered away from the cabin.

  “Apparently.” He braced himself, finding it incongruous that he should worry about life and limb here, when he had taken countless trips at warp speed. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

  “Of course I know what I’m doing. I learned how to drive in a Jeep.” They labored up an incline where snow had melted and refrozen into a slick surface. Jacob judged the height and breadth of the trees. He could only trust that she knew how to avoid them.

  “You look a little green.” She had to chuckle as they plowed, then fishtailed, then plowed again, making erratic but definite progress. “Haven’t you ever ridden in one of these?”

  He had an image of driving his own LSA vehicle—Land, Sea or Air. It was smooth and quiet and as fast as a comet. “No, actually, I haven’t.”

  “Then you’re in for a treat.”

  The Land Rover bumped over rocks hidden under the snow. “I bet.”

  They forged through the drifts. He nearly relaxed. By all indications, she knew how to handle the vehicle. Such as it was. After the first twenty minutes, the heater began to hum.

  “How about some tunes?”

  His brow creased. “Fine,” he said cautiously.

  “You’re in charge.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the tunes.” She navigated carefully down an incline. “The radio.”

  He eyed a particularly large tree. At their current rate and angle, he estimated thirty seconds to impact. “We didn’t bring it.”

  “The car radio, J.T.” She missed the tree by six or eight inches. “Pick a station.”

  She’d taken her hand from the wheel for an instant to gesture at the dashboard. Eyes narrowed, Jacob studied it. Trusting luck, he turned a dial.

  “It works better if you turn it on before you try to tune in a station.”

  Biting back an oath, he tried another dial and was greeted by a blast of ear-popping static. After adjusting the volume, he applied himself to the tuner. His first stop was an instrumental melody, loaded with strings, that made him cringe. Still, he glanced over at Sunny.

  “If that’s your choice, we’ll have to reassess our relationship immediately.”

  Sound faded in and out as he played with the tuner. He hit on some gritty rock, not too dissimiliar from what might have sounded over the airwaves in his own time.

  “Good choice.” She turned her head briefly to smile at him. “Who’s your favorite musician?”

  “Mozart,” he answered, because it was partially true and undeniably safe.

  “You’re going to like my mother. When I was a kid, she used to weave to his Clarinet Concerto in A Minor.” With the radio still rocking, she hummed a few bars. “For the purity of sound, she’d always say. Mom’s always been big on pure—no additives, no preservatives.”

  “How did you keep food fresh without preservatives?”

  “That’s what I say. What’s life without a little MSG? Anyway, then Dad would switch on Bob Dylan.” She laughed, more relieved than she wanted to admit when they turned onto the first plowed road. “One of my earliest memories of him is watching him weed his garden, with his hair down to his shoulders and this scratchy Dylan record playing on a little portable turntable. ‘Come gather ’round, people, wherever you roam.’ All he was wearing—Dad, not Dylan—was bell-bottoms and love beads.”

  Jacob got an uncomfortable flash of his own father, dressed in his tidy gardening clothes, blue shirt, blue slacks, his hair carefully trimmed under a stiff peaked cap, his face quiet as he hand-pruned his roses and listened to Brahms on his personal entertainment unit.

  And of his mother, sitting in the shade of a tree on a lazy Sunday afternoon, reading a novel while he and Cal had tossed a baseball and argued over strike zones.

  “I think you’ll like him.”

  Dragged back, Jacob blinked at her. “What?”

  “My father,” she repeated. “I think you’ll like him.”

  He battled down the anger that had risen up inside him. It was simple enough to put two and two together. “Your parents live in Portland?”

  “That’s right. About twenty minutes from my place.” She let out a quiet, satisfied breath as they turned onto Route 5 and headed north. “They’ll be glad to meet you, especially since Cal’s family has been so shrouded in mystery.”

  The friendly smile she offered him faded when she saw his expression. When her hands clenched on the wheel it had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with despair.

  “Meeting my parents is not synonymous with a lifetime commitment.”

  Her voice was stiff and cold. If he hadn’t been so lost in his own unhappiness, he would have heard the hurt beneath it.

  “You didn’t mention visiting your parents.” The fact was, he didn’t want to meet them, or to think of them as people.

  “I didn’t think it was necessary.” Her clutch foot began to tap on the floorboards. “I realize your idea of family differs from mine, but I wouldn’t think of coming back to town and not seeing them.”

  Bitterness rose like bile in his throat. “You have no idea what family means to me.”

  “No?” She gave a quick, moody shrug. “Let’s just say I can surmise that you don’t have a problem cutting certain members of it out of your life for extended periods. Your business,” she said before he could retort. “And you’re certainly not obligated to come with me when I go to see my family.” Her fingers began to tap in time with her foot. “In fact, I’ll be happy not to even mention your name.”

  He was careful not to speak again. If he did, too much of what he was feeling would pour out, leaving too much to be explained.

  She didn’t know how he felt. It was all so easy, so straightforward, for her. All she had to do was hop into this excuse for transportation and spend a few hours on what passed for a roadway. And she could see her family. By using the current system of communication she could speak with them over relatively long distances. Even if she decided to travel to the other side of the planet, some element of twentieth-century technology would provide a link.

  She knew nothing of separation, of losing a part of yourself and not knowing why. How would she react if she found herself faced with the possibility of never seeing her sister again?

  She wouldn’t be so damn smug then.

  For the next hour or so, Jacob amused himself by sneering at the other vehicles on the road. Ridiculously clumsy, slow and absurdly inefficient. Carbon monoxide pumping into the atmosphere. Gleefully poisoning their own air. They had no respect, he thought. For themselves, their resources, their descendants.

  And she thought he was insensitive.

  He wondered what would happen if he strolled
into what passed for a research lab in this age and showed them the procedure for fusion.

  They’d probably sacrifice a lamb and make him a god.

  He sat back, arms crossed. They’d just have to figure it out for themselves. Right now, his biggest problem was keeping warm, with all the cold air blowing off of Sunny.

  He frowned when she pulled out onto a ramp. He hadn’t been paying close attention, but he was certain they hadn’t driven for five hours. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to get something to eat and put gas in the car.” She snapped the words off without a glance at him.

  Hugging her resentment to her, she pulled into a gas station, got out and slammed the door behind her. As she reset the self-service pump, she muttered under her breath.

  She’d forgotten how his mind worked. Obviously he was deluding himself into believing that she was luring him into some sort of trap. I want you to meet my parents. How do you feel about a double-ring ceremony? Sunny ground her teeth. It was insulting.

  Maybe she was in love with him—and that was a situation she dearly hoped could be reversed—but she hadn’t done one single thing to pressure him. Or to lead him to believe that her heart was all aflutter at waiting for him to get down on one knee.

  If he thought she’d intended to flaunt him in front of her parents like so much matrimonial beefcake, he had another think coming. The jerk.

  Jacob sat a moment, then decided to get out to stretch his legs. And get a look at his surroundings.

  So this was a refueling station, he mused, studying the gas pumps. Sunny had stuck the nozzle end of a hose into a compartment on the side of the Land Rover. From her expression, she didn’t look too happy about standing out in the cold with her hand on the switch. Behind her, the pump—the gasoline pump, he elaborated—clicked as numbers turned over. The odor of fuel was strong.

  Other cars crowded the pump islands. Some waited in their vehicles for a man in a cap to come out and go through the procedure Sunny was doing for herself. Others did as she was, and shivered in the cold.

  He watched a woman bundle a trio of children around the side of a building that was set farther off the road. The children were arguing and whining, and the woman was snatching at arms. He had to grin. At least that much hadn’t changed over time.

  On the road, cars chugged by. Jacob wrinkled his nose at the stench of exhaust. A sixteen-wheeler roared by, leaving a stream of displaced air in its wake.

  There were plenty of buildings, such as they were. Tall ones, squat ones, all huddled together as if they were afraid to leave too much room between them. He found the style uninspired. Then, less than a block down the street, he spotted something that brought him a pang of homesickness. A pair of high golden arches. At least they weren’t completely uncivilized, he thought. He was grinning when he turned back to Sunny.

  She didn’t respond.

  Ignoring him, she screwed the gas cap in place and hung up the hose. Silent treatment or not, he told himself, he would not apologize for something that was so clearly her fault. Still, he followed her into the building and was distracted by rows of candy bars, shelves of soft drinks and the prevalent scent of crude oil.

  When she took out paper money, Jacob had to stick his hands in his pockets to keep himself from reaching out to touch it. The man in the cap ran grimy fingers over the keys of a machine. Red numbers appeared in a viewbox. The paper was exchanged, and Sunny was given metal disks.

  That was money, too, Jacob reminded himself. Coins, they were called. He was frustrated when she dumped them in her bag before he could get a close look. He wondered how he could approach her for some samples.

  The woman he’d seen earlier herded the three children inside, and the room was immediately filled with noise. All three fell greedily on the rows of candy bars.

  “Just one,” the woman said, an edge to her voice. “I mean it.” She was digging in her purse as she spoke.

  The children, bundled in coats and hats, set up an arguing din that ended in a shoving match. The smallest went down on her bottom with a thump and a wail. Jacob bent automatically to set her on her feet, then handed her the smashed candy bar. Her bottom lip was quivering, and her eyes, big and round and blue, were filled to overflowing.

  “He’s always pushing me,” she complained.

  “You’ll be as big as they are pretty soon,” he told her. “Then they won’t be able to push you around.”

  “Sorry.” Sighing, the woman picked her daughter up. “It’s been a long trip. Scotty, you’re going to sit on your hands for the next ten miles.”

  When Jacob turned to leave, the little girl was smiling at him. And so, he noted, was Sunny.

  “Are you talking to me again?” he asked as they walked back to the car.

  “No.” She tugged on her gloves as she sat in the driver’s seat. It would have been easier to go on hating him if he hadn’t been so sweet with the little girl. “I’m a great deal harder to charm than a three-year-old.”

  “We could try a neutral subject.”

  She turned on the engine. “We don’t have any neutral subjects.”

  She had him there. He lapsed into silence again as she merged with traffic. But he could have kissed her when she turned into those golden arches.

  She followed a sign that said Drive-thru and stopped at a board that listed the restaurant’s delicacies. “What do you want?”

  He started to ask for a McGalaxy Burger and a large order of laser rings, but he didn’t see either on the menu. Once again he put his fate in her hands. “Two of whatever you’re having.” Because he couldn’t resist, he toyed with the hair at the back of her neck.

  Annoyed, she shook his fingers off. She spoke into the intercom, listened for the total, then joined the line of cars waiting to be served. “We’ll make better time if we eat while we drive.”

  They inched forward. “Are we in a hurry?”

  “I don’t like to waste time.”

  Neither did he, and he wasn’t sure how much more they had together. “Sunny?”

  No response.

  “I love you.”

  Her foot slipped off the clutch. Her other slammed the brake pedal when the Land Rover stalled. The car was still rocking as she turned to gape at him. “What?”

  “I said I love you.” It didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. In fact, it felt good: Very good. “I figured we might as well have it out in the open.”

  “Oh.” As responses went, it wasn’t her best. But she was staring straight ahead into the rear window of the car in front. There was a stuffed cat suction-cupped to the glass. It was grinning at her. The car behind her gave an impatient beep of the horn and had her fumbling with the ignition key. Rattled, she pulled up to the service window.

  “Is that all you can say?” Annoyance colored his tone as she turned to blink at him. “Just ‘Oh’?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure what . . .”

  “That’ll be $12.75,” the boy shouted through the window as he held out white paper bags.

  “What?”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s $12.75. Come on, lady.”

  “Sorry.” She took the bags, dumped them in Jacob’s lap. Even as he swore at her, she dug out a twenty and passed it to the boy. Without waiting for her change, she pulled into the first available parking space and stopped the car.

  “I think you singed my—”

  “Sorry,” she snapped, cutting him off. Because she felt like a fool, she rounded on him. “It’s your own fault, Mr. Romance, dropping something like that on me while I’m stuck in a line of cars at a fast-food drive-in. What did you expect me to do, throw myself in your arms while they were adding on the pickles?”

  “I never know what the hell to expect from you.” He reached into the bag, brought out a foil-wrapped burger and tossed it to her.

  “From me?” She unwrapped the burger and took a huge bite. It did nothing to ease the fluttering of her stomach. “From me? You’re the o
ne who started this, Hornblower. One minute you’re snapping my head off, the next you’re telling me you love me, and then you’re throwing me a cheeseburger.”

  “Just shut up and eat.” He shoved a paper cup into her hand.

  He’d bite off his tongue before he’d say it to her again. He didn’t know what had come over him. Gasoline fumes, undoubtedly. No man in his right mind could fall in love with such an obstinate woman. And—no help from her—he was still in his right mind.

  “A few minutes ago you were begging me to talk to you,” she pointed out, sucking on her straw.

  “I never beg.”

  She turned then, eyes smoky. “You would if I wanted you to.”

  He could have strangled her then, for saying what he realized was no more than the truth. “I thought we were going to drive while we ate.”

  “I changed my mind,” she said tightly. The way her insides were shaking, she wasn’t sure she could navigate ten feet. She’d be damned if she’d let him know it. Since it wasn’t possible to kick him, due to their position, she simply turned and stared through the windshield.

  She continued eating mechanically and cursed him for spoiling her appetite.

  Imagine, telling her that he loved her while they were waiting for hamburgers. What style, what finesse. She tapped her fingers on the wheel and bit back a sigh. How incredibly sweet.

  Cautious, she cast a sidelong look at him. His profile was set, his eyes were steely. She had seen him angrier, she supposed, but it was a close call. Something about the way he fumed in frustrated silence made her feel incredibly sentimental. Twenty years from now she would look back and smile over the way he had said those magic words the very first time.

  She scrambled onto her knees and threw her arms around him. He gasped as cold liquid splashed on his knees. “Damn it, Sunny, you’ve spilled it all over me.”

  He squirmed, then stilled when her mouth found his. He tasted her laughter on the tip of her tongue. Hampered by the gearshift, he struggled to drag her closer.

  “Did you mean it?” she demanded, shoving what was left of their lunch aside.

  No way was he going to let her off that easily. “Mean what?”