Houston looked quickly at Mark, then at Quinn. Before Quinn had proven himself to be a computer whiz, Mark could barely tolerate the man. Now he wanted him to move in. This was obviously more serious than she had thought. And it was of course totally out of the question.
Quinn met her eyes and she could tell he recognized her dilemma. He smiled and said, “This recipe definitely goes into my collection. Has it been handed down through your family?”
She recognized his attempt to change the subject and was grateful for it. But she couldn’t take the opportunity for evasion he offered; she had always tried to deal with Mark more honestly than that.
“Mark, I’m afraid that really wouldn’t work out.” She turned back to Quinn. “I got the meat-loaf recipe off the back of a box of onion soup mix. My mother’s not exactly the kind to hand down recipes—or anything else as a matter of fact.”
“Why not?” Mark asked.
Houston looked at him, a little surprised. He usually didn’t pursue a subject past the first no—unless it was something he really, really wanted. She was a little flustered.
“Well, Mark, it just wouldn’t, that’s all. The place hasn’t been used in years, and it’s too small, and it’s a mess. There’s no shower, and—well, it just wouldn’t be comfortable for a grown man.”
“I could clean it up,” Mark offered.
For Mark, he was being positively obstreperous. But that was not the problem. The problem was that Houston was actually considering it.
She was actually considering renting out her garage apartment to a stranger she’d picked up on the side of the highway. A stranger whose behavior had, on more than one occasion, been a little odd.
She said, as firmly as she could manage, “I’m sure Quinn would prefer to be closer to town, Mark.”
That was Quinn’s cue to respond that he would, indeed, prefer more urban accommodations. Houston was a little unsettled when he did nothing but take another bite of mashed potatoes. When he did speak it was to say, “You’re right, Mark. Your mother makes great mashed potatoes. Do you cook?”
Mark looked surprised. “Who, me? Nah, that’s girl stuff.”
Though Houston hardly approved of the sentiment, Mark was sufficiently distracted from his campaign to establish Quinn in the garage apartment. She was grateful for that, and was impressed by the subtlety of Quinn’s touch…and a little sorry the subject was closed. That disturbed her.
“Is it, now?” Quinn asked thoughtfully.
Mark was a little defensive, but mostly curious—which only illustrated to Houston once again how difficult it was for a boy to know who he was supposed to be when there was no man to show him. “Isn’t it?”
“Where I come from,” Quinn said, “there’s no such thing as ‘woman’s work.’”
“Where Mark comes from, too,” Houston said. Turning to her son she added, “I can’t imagine where you got an idea like that, anyway.”
“From Dad,” Mark replied. “He always said kitchen work was woman’s work, remember?”
Houston clenched her fists under the table and counted to ten. When she felt she could do so without choking, she took a sip of water. Then she said, “Did you finish your homework, Mark?”
“Yes, ma’am. Quinn helped me. I’m finished. May I be excused?”
“Take your plate to the sink.”
He did so, making all the normal noise of a ten-year-old in the process. He turned to Quinn. “Do you want to play some video games?”
“Thank you, Mark,” Quinn said politely. “But as a guest, the least I can do to repay your mother for this fine meal is to help with the dishes.”
“We have a dishwasher,” Mark pointed out. “She doesn’t need any help.”
“Nonetheless,” Quinn said gently but firmly, “I’d like to help.”
Mark shrugged. “I’ll be upstairs if you change your mind.”
When he was gone, Houston commented, “You’re really very good with him. You must have children of your own.”
Quinn dropped his eyes. “No. I don’t have a family.”
The subject seemed a little painful for him, and Houston didn’t want to pursue it. But she had to add, “You’ve made quite an impression on Mark. That’s not easy to do.”
He seemed to relax. “He’s an interesting young man and I enjoy his company.” He hesitated. “I was confused by his references to his father, though. Does he live here?”
“No. We’re divorced.”
He considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Who helps you?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“With Mark. The rest of your family, your friends…the people who play a part in his physical and spiritual development.”
She gave a little half laugh and a shake of her head. “If you knew my parents—and my ex-husband, for that matter—you’d know how ridiculous that sounds. We have friends, of course, but…” And now it was her turn to shrug. “Mostly it’s just Mark and me.”
He looked genuinely astonished. “But raising a child is the most important thing anyone can do. For society, for the species as a whole—you can’t mean to say you’ve just been abandoned to do the best you can, all alone?”
“Well, I never thought of it quite like that before.” And she didn’t like to think of it like that, either. In fact, she was beginning to find this entire conversation rather strange. “I mean, it sounds great, and I suppose there should be someone—godparents or someone—who’s responsible for that kind of support when the family breaks down, but I’m not really sure that would work in this day and time, are you? I mean, life is so uncertain—who can you really count on to feel that kind of responsibility for a child who isn’t theirs?”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and she could imagine him quoting her in his next paper…only the truth was, it wasn’t so easy to imagine his writing anything. He didn’t look like a scholar. He looked, in his jeans and work shirt, with his tanned skin and tousled curls, more like an adventurer, a swashbuckler…
Suddenly she smiled. “I just realized who you remind me of,” she said.
“Who’s that?”
“Indiana Jones!” she declared. “It’s been bothering me all day, and I just now got it!”
He looked interested but unimpressed. “Who’s that?”
“You know, the movies—Harrison Ford—snakes, whips… I can’t believe you never heard of Indiana Jones!”
He lifted his shoulders apologetically. “But I’ve got to tell you, if it has anything to do with snakes, I’d rather not. I hate snakes.”
She laughed. “You are an interesting man, do you know that?”
The smile he returned was amused and secretive. “I’m not half as interesting to you as you are to me, believe me on that.”
Houston was not sure whether that was a come-on, and decided she didn’t mind if it was. It had style.
She gestured to his empty plate. “Will you have some more?”
“Thank you, I’d like to,” he admitted. “But I won’t. I’ll keep my word and help you with the dishes, however.” He picked up his plate and utensils. “Tell me about this dishwasher of yours.”
Again she chuckled. “Just your ordinary off-the-assembly-line dishwasher. No, I take that back. It’s over five years old and I’ve only had one repair bill on it. That makes it extraordinary, I think.”
She swung open the door and started stacking the plates in the rack. He watched her with such intense interest that she glanced over her shoulder at him. “You have seen a dishwasher before, haven’t you?”
The twinkle was back in his eye; his response was smooth and flirtatious. “I’ve never seen you putting dishes into one before. It’s worth watching.”
Houston’s cheeks warmed pleasantly. That, she decided, was a come-on. But stylish.
He returned to the table for more dishes, adding casually, “If you have a technical manual, though, I’d like to see it.”
It took a moment for her to
understand what he was talking about. “On the dishwasher? Why?”
“I collect them,” he told her. “Like recipes.”
Perhaps one of things that most fascinated her about him was that she was never quite sure when he was kidding.
It took the two of them only moments to clear the table. When they finished, Quinn said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take Mark up on his offer before his bedtime.”
Houston closed the dishwasher and locked it, turning slowly. She hated herself for what she was about to say. She wiped her hands on her jeans and began carefully, “I don’t want you to misunderstand this, but there are some men who might try to, well, get to the mother through the child.”
His expression showed no surprise, anger or hurt. He merely said, “Perhaps I should just say good-night, then.”
“No, please, I didn’t mean—”
He held up a hand. “There’s no need to explain.”
“It’s not that you haven’t been a perfect gentleman,” she insisted. Miserable heat stained her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to sound like I thought you were—”
“Don’t apologize. You’re perfectly within your rights.”
“I mean, I know it sounded conceited and self-centered and I know you haven’t done anything to make me think you found me even the least bit attractive…” She was wading deeper and deeper into a quagmire from which she couldn’t begin to extricate herself. Why had she started this? Whatever had possessed her to say anything at all?
Quinn’s smile seemed to echo sympathy for her predicament. “You didn’t sound conceited, and if you had it would have been with good reason. And it’s beginning to look to me as though I’m the one who should apologize—for not doing anything to make you think I find you attractive. I’d have to be blind not to.”
With an effort, Houston tried to relax. The embarrassment that prickled her cheeks seemed to ease into a more pleasant warmth, yet her pulse skittered a little at the smile in Quinn’s eyes. She took a breath and released it slowly.
“Forgive me,” she said simply. “I have this tendency to turn into a raving lunatic now and then, but I recover quickly. It’s congenital. All I meant to say is that I don’t usually pick up strangers off the street and invite them to dinner, and the whole business makes me a little uncomfortable. Maybe I’m too protective of Mark, but I have to be careful. And I don’t think he realizes that you’re just passing through.”
Quinn looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and she had a feeling that what he eventually said was not what he had originally planned. “It’s your job to be protective,” he said. “And you should be careful. You live in violent, disordered times when anything can happen. And with that said…” He smiled ruefully. “I have a favor to ask you. Might I camp in your meadow tonight? As I told you this morning, I lost something there and I’d like to go over the ground one more time in the morning before I move on.”
There was no way Houston could refuse such a simple request. There was no way she wanted to.
In fact, she was so relieved that she grinned and said, “That would be fine. Now, why don’t we go say good-night to Mark?”
They were drawn into a three-way video-game challenge, with Houston trading off turns first with Quinn and then with Mark, until they moved up to levels that were too complicated for her to follow. She then sat quietly in the background and enjoyed their interaction.
It wasn’t so absurd, after all, to think a man might be nice to a child just to impress the mother. It had happened to Houston more than once and she hated it. But she should have known—she had known, really—that wasn’t the case with Quinn.
He was nice to Mark because he liked Mark. He was nice to her because he wanted to be. And he was fascinating because he was Quinn.
He went downstairs while Houston helped Mark get ready for bed.
Mark said, buttoning his pajama top, “I don’t see why you don’t want him to rent our garage.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want him to. I said it probably wouldn’t be convenient for him.”
“Did you ask him?”
“And anyway, I wanted to talk to you about that. It was presumptuous of you to bring up the subject at the dinner table without asking me first, and a little rude. You put both Quinn and me in an awkward position.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he admitted. “It just seemed like a good idea.”
Houston turned back the covers of his bed. “Well, no harm done. Just ask next time, okay? We’re a family, and we discuss things.”
“Okay.”
As Mark got in bed she added, “You like him, don’t you?”
Mark’s answer was carefully nonchalant. “Yeah, sure. He’s okay. Kind of interesting.”
There was a little clutch in Houston’s chest at the reminder that Mark’s faith in people was such that he could not even openly admit to liking someone. Much like his mother.
And Houston had to add gently. “Because he’s a stranger, Mark, and he won’t be staying for long. We don’t know anything about him.”
Mark took off his glasses and placed them on the bedside table. A small frown wrinkled his forehead as he settled back, pulling the covers under his arms. “But you know what, Mom? That’s the thing. He doesn’t seem like a stranger to me. I’ve been thinking, and it seems like I’ve seen him somewhere before. I just can’t remember where.”
Houston’s frown matched her son’s. “I know what you mean,” she murmured. She only hoped that the place they had seen him before was not on a Wanted poster.
Mark shrugged. “Anyway, I just thought it would be kind of cool to have him around. There’s something kind of strange about him—not bad strange, just weird. And it’d be easier to keep an eye on him if he were close by.”
Houston hid a smile as she she tucked the blankets under his arms and leaned forward to kiss him good-night. Apparently Mark’s latest interest was espionage. “Well,” she said, “if it makes you feel any better, he will be around for one more night at least. He’s camping out in our meadow.”
“Oh yeah?” Mark looked interested. “I didn’t see any camping gear, did you?”
As a matter of fact, Houston had not.
She kissed Mark again, and stood up. “Good night, sweetie.”
He had already closed his eyes. “’Night, Mom.”
IN QUINN’S WORK, there were certain unbreakable rules. There were the rules of physics, defining how and where one might travel. There were rules of technology that defined to a certain extent the comfort and safety in which one traveled. There were rules of ethics governing one’s behavior in the past, and rules of noninterference that stated, among other things, the imperative for keeping one’s identity secret and being certain to leave nothing of the future—particularly technology—behind. There were the rules of safety that dictated how long he could stay and how many trips he could make and how long he must wait between each one. They were all good rules.
In addition, Quinn had rules of his own. Primary among them was to never stay more than a few days in one location, because his time in the past was far too limited to see only one small section of what this incredibly diverse planet had to offer. And second, even more important, was to never form a relationship of any kind with anyone from the past.
Sexual liaisons were out of the question, of course, and were fully covered under Rules of Behavior for Travelers in Time. Applicants were carefully screened before being accepted into the program, and if they showed any signs of promiscuity, excessive emotionalism or a lack of self-control, they were dropped immediately. Moral implications aside, the psychological damage that could be wrought on the Traveler when he or she returned to his or her own time period could be devastating. This was easy to understand.
But no one had warned Quinn that the same dangers might apply to simple friendships.
The life of a Traveler was of necessity a lonely, sterile one. The choice was made when one entered the program. The Travelers were
pioneers, trailblazers, the few and the chosen. They were also eccentric, self-absorbed and consumed by their work. Few were able to maintain friendships in their own time period. None had families, of course. They lived segregated, insular lives, forever set apart from the rest of society, and even each other, by what they had seen, where they had been and who they were that enabled them to survive. They were the heroes of their time, yet a surprising number of them succumbed to some form of mental or emotional illness by the time they were thirty-five.
The only real friend Quinn had ever had had been from the past. There was nothing more painful than awakening one morning to realize that the man you had been laughing and drinking with only yesterday had been dead for three hundred years.
Quinn did not intend to become a statistic. He did not form attachments to people from the past.
Yet he had been set down here in the middle of the most exciting decade in history and presented with the one thing he could never have, and it was hard, very hard to remind himself that none of it was real, none of it was his.
He had big problems—he knew that. He might well be stranded here, and he could only survive a short time outside his own time period—twenty-three days, to be exact. He certainly had more important things to think about than Houston Malloy with her bouncy red hair and rounded bottom that filled out the faded pockets of her jeans so nicely. Or Mark with his bright observant eyes and quick questions. Or this great old house that looked as though it had been standing here all these years, waiting for him to find it….
But Quinn was an optimist. He couldn’t have survived for long in his line of work if he was not. Every time he left home the odds were against his returning. The technology governing time travel was imperfect—as he had discovered for himself today—and there were still a certain number of grotesque fatalities. His field of expertise was one of the most violent and dangerous segments of history—the last half of the twentieth century. Every time he went back he took a chance on meeting with a fatal accident or random act of violence. He had long ago resigned himself to a somewhat shortened lifespan, and had learned the value of living in the moment.
Quinn's Way Page 4
