by Autumn Piper
“Um. Okay.” Funny. With our bodies so close together, I couldn’t even think of what I wanted to know about him.
“One more thing? You wouldn’t consider staying in Sedona and letting me go back to find your old man, would you?”
“Not on your life!”
“Didn’t think so, but I had to try.”
“Goodman.” I sighed, leaning my head against his shoulder. “It’s probably my only shot at seeing my father. Ever. If there was a chance he’s alive, he’d probably have surfaced after the press conference. And anyhow, would you really want to blast to the past without me, knowing you might never make it home again?” So he’d know I was teasing, I added, “Would it even be worth going on, if you couldn’t be with me?”
“You’re very full of yourself tonight, Ms. Reed. Come on, let’s go look at your wannabe star.”
* * * *
Crickets sang us a welcome in the Feng Shui’s courtyard, but I guessed nobody else knew we’d returned. Parking in the back lot had its advantages. My helmet swung from my right hand, Mitch held the other helmet and my other hand. In the quiet gardens, my ears still rang from the prolonged noise of the motorcycle. Aside from a quick “Come here” and a furtive kiss after we’d removed our headgear, Mitch had been silent since our arrival.
The pool water lay still. Tranquil. Ready. I had a brief notion to suggest we go for a swim, but judging by Mitch’s steps, he seemed eager to get on with the night’s main event. I knew how he felt.
Curling around his body as he drove us home had been exquisite torture. I had to tell myself time and again to not let my hands slip down to his lap. Not while he was driving with such care to make sure we didn’t hit a deer or take a canyon corner too fast. It wouldn’t be cool to distract him that way, but my fingers had itched for one thorough grope.
Mitch halted without warning. Because of his arm tethering me, I ended up performing a rather ungainly stop, sitcom-style, and righted myself.
Lights were on in my room. The door was open and people moved around inside.
“What the…?”
He covered my lips with his fingertips. “Shh. This way.” He tugged me toward that pine tree I’d used while spying on him. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll get closer and figure out what’s going on.”
The strangled sobs wafting out of my room caused me to follow him against his instructions. My heart sank. I knew those sobs. But what the hell were they doing here in Arizona?
Chapter 11
“Mitch, wait!” My stage whisper went unheeded. Not surprising, as fast as he was moving. “I know who it—”
“What are you doing?” He’d ducked behind the bushes in front of my patio. “I told you to stay—”
“It’s my family.” Not bothering to squat as he had, I looked down at him and shook my head. How long would this delay our horizontal activities?
“What? What are they…”
“Miranda! Is that you? Oh my God!” My mother rushed out my door, her arms extended as if I’d been declared Dead in Combat and just wandered home. “Thank God, thank God you’re all right!” She wrapped me in a tight hug. Past my own squished cheeks, I watched Mitch stand up. “You are all right, aren’t you, honey? Oh, thank God.”
I turned my face sideways for air. My sister stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. She looked comfy in her mommy short-alls, unlike Mom, who was still wearing her accountant clothes. Beside her was none other than David, looking tall, dark, and…
Despicable, if that was my journal in his hands!
“What the?” seemed to be the phrase of the night for me. With a determined shove, I escaped my mother’s clutches. “What the hell are you doing with my journal? How did you get in my room? And why are you all here anyway?”
Missy shook her head at me, then put her hands over her eyes.
“What are we doing?” Mom demanded. “You haven’t answered a call all week! We thought you’d been kidnapped or forced into this cult. That you were dead, or brainwashed, or—”
“Mom. I talked to you two days ago.”
“It was not two days ago. It was five.”
“Two,” I argued.
“Two and a half,” Mitch helpfully supplied.
“And who is this, this…person?” Mom looked at Mitch like he was a worm in an apple.
“I’d have to guess,” David butted in, flipping pages in my journal, “Mitchell Goodman.”
“Give me that!” I reached for my notebook, but David thrust it behind his back. “Oh, my God.” I set my helmet down on a chair. “What are you doing here, anyway? Mother, why did you bring him?”
“Well,” she sniffled, “I thought we might need some manpower to pull you from the clutches of the cult.”
“Manpower.” I didn’t even try to hide my anger. “Of all the men, you had to bring him? You couldn’t get John, or Dad?”
Looking smug, Missy said, “Dad wouldn’t take off work because Mom has him convinced you’ve disowned him, and John is actually pretty mellow about this whole thing. He told Mom he’d go back in time too, if he had the chance.”
Times like this, I felt closer to my brother-in-law than anyone else in the family.
Beside me, Mom huffed her indignation.
David cleared his throat. “Didn’t you want to introduce us?”
“Not especially.” I hadn’t meant to voice that sentiment. And the last thing I wanted was to make Mitch feel slighted. “Um. Mitch, Mitchell Goodman, this is my mother, Tina Reed, and my sister, Missy. Melissa. And David Montclair.”
“Her husband,” David added.
“Ex.” I glared at him over his outstretched hand shaking Mitch’s. “And how the hell did you get in my room?” Before he’d even answered, I demanded, “In what universe is it okay for you to go through my things? My very private things?”
“In the universe where we think you’ve gone off half-cocked and joined some group of New Age fanatics, since you don’t return anybody’s calls.” David stepped toward me, shoved the composition book at my chest. “Take it. Trust me, there’s not much in there I care to read again.” He turned his back on me then, possibly to hide his red face. Or maybe he couldn’t stand to look at me. “As for how we got in, you left your window open. Never could remember to lock the door.”
I wanted to yell at him and tell him I hadn’t left my window open. It was closed and locked when I left with Mitch. But the window was not the point. “The Professor sent us—”
Mom humphed next to me. She refused to believe Sudo was a professor because he no longer taught at an accredited college.
“Professor Sudo,” I repeated, “sent us on a backpack trip in the Grand Canyon.”
“So he told us.” Missy’s brows hopped as she looked from Mitch to me. “Did you, ah, get to go really deep in the canyon?” For my sister, who I suspected had always despised David, it had to be great fun to watch my ex squirm at the innuendo.
“Pretty much as deep as you can go,” I replied with a grin. The double-entendre reminded me what I should be doing right now with Mitch.
Time to get rid of all these extra people. “Sorry to give you all a scare, but here I am.” I lifted my arms and spun in an exaggerated circle so they could see all around me. “Safe and sound. So I guess I’ll say goodbye and you can all go home.”
“Mom called the FBI.”
“What?” With a slap, the pages of my privacy landed on the table next to my helmet.
Mom shrugged and wiped a tear—imaginary, or not?—from the corner of her eye. “I reported you kidnapped. What else was I supposed to do? Since the local police found out you were last seen here at noon, they said we couldn’t report you as missing until noon tomorrow. But the FBI said they’ll be here at twelve-o-one.”
“I bet.” Mitch didn’t sound pleased. “I’ve got to…do some things in my room.” He wouldn’t look me in the eye as he scooped up my helmet and left.
My mother must have used any excuse she could t
hink of to get the FBI involved in the hopes of preventing my travel to the past. And judging by the smug look on his face, David was pleased with the fruits of her labor.
My hopes and dreams were on the line. The FBI might pounce on this opportunity and halt Sudo’s program. Which would please Mom and David to no end. Fury flared in my veins.
“Did you guys get rooms already?” I asked in my calmest voice. “Because I think I need to be alone now.” At the feel of her hand on my arm, I snapped, “Mom! Please. You really need to go. Now.”
As they filed out, I could’ve sworn a shadow moved in closer to the big ponderosa. I took a second look, but saw nothing.
Somehow, I needed to calm my anger and go to Mitch. What was he finding out about the FBI’s plans for tomorrow? Maybe he’d contacted his boss’s boss or whoever, and told them not to come.
I made a quick stop at the vanity to brush my hair, then my teeth. A little lip gloss and I felt better. With a glare at the heaps of clothing and my open laptop, I rolled my eyes and headed for the door. Getting out of this room was definitely the best thing I could do at the moment.
Lonnie stood directly in front of my screen door. Yet another delay. God!
I opened the door enough to slip out.
“Hey, Randi.” His speech was slurred, but not as bad as I’d heard it before.
“Hi. I was just on my way.”
“Sure has been quiet around here without you.” He smelled like Jack Daniels this close.
I tried to step away. “Um. Yeah, Sudo sent Mitchell and I.”
“On assignment. He told us. But I was thinkin’ now that you’re back, we could go for that midnight swim you promised me way back when.” Once again, his arms braced on either side of me to stop me from moving away. He had me backed in a corner, literally.
“Look, Lonnie. I really think you misread signals or something.” I pushed against his chest, trying to shove him away. “I’m sure you’re not a bad—” His mouth chased mine, left…right…left…until I ducked under his arm—“guy.”
He grabbed my right arm as I retreated, yanking me back.
“Look, dude! Do you want me to scream?” Mitch would be there in a second, if I only raised my voice.
Bare feet flapped down the sidewalk, then David came into view, ignored the open gate and just vaulted over the railing and pinned Lonnie against the wall with a bit more force than Lonnie had used on me. I’d never seen my ex fight before, but he looked quite natural there, forearms pressed against Lonnie’s chest, one wrist threateningly close to Lonnie’s windpipe.
“Who-who are you?” Eyes round, he looked from David to me and back again. He seemed too startled to fight.
“I’m her husband, chump.”
I wanted to correct him again and say he was my ex, but letting Lonnie think I was married was probably better.
“You need to learn when to take no for an answer. Now, get lost.”
“Jeee-zus,” was all Lonnie said as he staggered out the gate.
“Jesus is right,” David muttered. “God damn it, Randi. What the hell are you doing?”
“Doing?” Some over-amorous guy coming onto me didn’t mean I was screwing up my world. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? You must have been spying on me, to see Lonnie was here.”
“My room is right across from yours. Of course I saw when that hulk showed up at your door. And then he…put his hands on you. Man.” Gently, he turned my arm to inspect where Lonnie had held me. “It’s not very light out here. Let’s go inside, where I can see.”
“No, I—” I was wasting my breath by protesting, because he’d already opened my door and gone in. No way would I leave him alone in my room. Following, I let the screen bang closed behind me. “I’m fine.”
He looked me over, head to toe, then stared at my mouth. “Where were you going, anyway? You’ve got lipstick on.” His eyes accused me, said the things his mouth wouldn’t. After what he’d read in my journal, he must know where I was headed.
“It’s really none of your business,” I said softly, because I really didn’t want to add to the hurt in his eyes.
“It is my business, dammit. Why the hell do you think I agreed to drive your mother down here?”
I turned my head away, waited for him to answer his own question.
“I married you because I loved you, Randi. What the fuck? Now you’re out here with this bunch of freaks on some kinda sci-fi adventure, riding motorcycles in the night with a guy you don’t even know. And you’re planning to sleep with him? I dated you for six months before you’d let me in your pants!”
“It was your ultimatum,” I answered. “You were the one who said it was over if I insisted on time travel.”
“I thought it would snap you out of your obsession with your father. I thought…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “…I don’t know, I guess, that once you saw what this time-travel shit might cost you, you’d give up on chasing the past.”
Someone with his storybook family could never be expected to understand how I felt about my missing father. Never.
“But my plan backfired,” he said. “You chose the past over me. How do you think that made me feel?”
“It wasn’t just this.” I sighed. “It was…everything I wanted to do.” We’d been over it time and again since the separation. I couldn’t go back to having someone run my life. I was a free spirit, and free I would remain. “You didn’t want me getting a pilot’s license. You put a stop to my climbing. For Chrissake, if I’d conceived your baby, you’d have locked me in a sterile room for nine months. As soon as we got married, you thought everything was going to kill me.”
“You know what people used to ask me? If you had a death wish, or what? Why else would a grown, married woman want to try base jumping?”
Old arguments, taking us nowhere. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do have a death wish. Or maybe I have a wild streak that I got from my father. Which is what I intend to find out.”
“Tell you what, Rand. If you do get to see the bastard, tell him ‘thanks’ for me. Thanks a hell of a lot for fucking up our marriage.” His head hung low as he turned toward the door.
I felt like such a jerk, seeing him hurt. “David?”
He turned back.
“Thank you. For driving my mom. I know you meant well. And for getting rid of Lonnie for me.”
“Yeah. I guess you’ll be heading over to Goodbody’s room now. The dreamboat.”
Being reminded of the journal invasion made me seethe again. “You shouldn’t have read that journal. It was private.”
“Not even a week. And you made me wait six months!” His face was red again, and his chest rose and fell in fast, deep breaths.
“It’s not about him versus you.” It’s not about you at all. You’re out of the picture now.
“I wonder if he’d still want you, if he thought you’d been with me tonight?” Before I could figure out what he was talking about, he flopped down on my bed and started bouncing and thrusting. “Yeah, Randi,” he called out. “Yeah, baby.” The headboard banged obligingly against the wall.
I shook my head at the stupidity. When he started making monkey sounds, I’d had enough. “Knock it off!” I yelled over the racket he was making. “Get out of here or I swear to God, I’m calling security.”
He let out one last growl, a stunning imitation of the sound he’d made many times in bed, then stood and smoothed his rugby shirt. “Thanks, babe. You were great.”
“Jackass.”
“Look me up when you get done playing Lost in Space and come back to your senses.” He chucked my chin. “If you make it back.”
Chapter 12
At my knock, Mitch threw his door open. He stood there with a face as red as David’s had been, huffing almost as fast. Then he turned on his heel and walked away. I took this as my cue to enter.
“Hey,” I said, when it appeared he didn’t plan to speak to me. Still silence. “I suppose you heard the stupid show
David put on?”
“Sounded pretty damn real for a while there.” Would he never turn around and look at me?
“He was being territorial. Or something.”
He turned and faced me, arms folded over his chest. “What the hell was he doing in your room, anyway?”
“He showed up when Lonnie was out there, and he just…came in. I guess.”
“Lonnie?”
“God. Didn’t you hear?” Not very observant, this one.
“I was a little, er, busy.” His gaze skipped over to his desk, where, low and behold, my journal sat.
“Jesus Christ on a crutch! Maybe I should publish that thing in the newspaper.”
“I needed to know if you compromised my case.”
“Of course not!” I’d been careful what I wrote in the journal for that very reason.
“Not with the journal.” He glared at me. “But because of you, this case will remain unsolved. As of tomorrow morning, Sudo’s being shut down.”
I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. One day before our scheduled travel date, the rug was being pulled out from under us. And Mitch was pissed—at me! “How is this my fault?”
“You knew your mother was suspicious, but you didn’t bother to call and reassure her.”
“I tried to call her back today. I couldn’t get her. Remember? And I’ve been a bit preoccupied. Which you know all about, I suppose, since now you, too, have read my secret and private thoughts.” How mortifying. Now even he knew I’d been calling him a dreamboat. “You could have asked me if anything in my journal would put you at risk.”
“He read it!”
