Bonnie nodded. “We did that math and you’ve reviewed it already.”
“I know,” Brice said. “But I wanted to make sure, so I was doing it again when she came up to the lunch table where I was working and saw my journal.”
“Oh, oh,” Bonnie said, smiling. “I bet that was hard to explain.”
“Well, sort of,” Brice said.
Duster snorted and started laughing.
“What the hell is so damn funny?” Bonnie asked, again looking puzzled.
“The woman knew what I was working on,” Brice said. “She recognized it. Her name is Dixie Smith.”
“How could a woman in 1901 recognize higher math?” Bonnie asked.
Then she stopped, frozen, the only sound in the cavern was the sizzling steaks.
“Dixie Smith?” Bonnie asked. “Short cute redhead?”
Duster laughed even harder.
Brice nodded. “She was there waiting for you to return, just as I was waiting for Duster to return.”
“Oh, shit,” Bonnie said, her face white.
“I get that a lot,” Brice said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
July 8th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
BONNIE WALKED DIXIE back into the big cavern and they put their saddlebags on the empty table near the racks of clothing, then Bonnie walked her toward the kitchen.
Dixie carried her journal in her hand. There was no chance she was going to let it out of her sight at any point. She might even sleep with it under her pillow when she got home, just to have Brice close.
As they entered the kitchen area, Duster turned around and saw that Dixie was trying to not cry.
“She met someone,” Bonnie said to Duster. “She’ll be fine after a shower. But we need something to eat. Maybe a salad and some bread?”
Bonnie pointed Dixie toward the men’s restroom and shower area and Dixie stumbled into it, mad at herself for crying. She wasn’t the crying type, but seeing Brice just vanish into another timeline in front of her had been hard.
Really, really hard.
Impossibly hard.
Dixie had to admit, the shower did help a lot. This was the first shower in two months. She had enjoyed the baths, especially the ones with Brice, but she had missed a good hot shower.
After getting dressed again in her modern clothes and slipping on her tennis shoes, she went back out to the kitchen, her journal solidly in one hand.
Bonnie wasn’t there yet and Duster asked her if she wanted some iced tea as Dixie sat down at the big kitchen table.
“I would love some,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ll be all right. I’ll tell you all about it when Bonnie gets out.”
Less than a minute later Bonnie joined them and touched Dixie’s shoulder before going over and kissing Duster long and hard.
“What was that for?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Been wanting to do that for a few days now,” she said, smiling and winking at Dixie.
Dixie laughed and that made her feel better as well.
“Need some help with a dinner for us hungry travelers?”
“Bread’s warming in the over and I’ve tossed together a salad,” Duster said. “Anything else?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Bonnie said and kissed him again with some passion.
Duster looked puzzled. “Guess I’m going to have to fix salads more often.”
Dixie laughed, as did Bonnie.
“So you want to tell him who you met?” Bonnie said.
Dixie nodded. “Two days after Bonnie left I got up enough courage to go down to the dining room in the hotel for lunch. This handsome man was sitting there by himself working in a journal.”
“You didn’t forget you were in 1901 and go introduce yourself or something?” Duster asked.
Dixie laughed and with each laugh she was feeling better and better. “No chance of that. I saw him every day for five days at both breakfast and lunch. We made eye contact and smiled at each other, but nothing else.”
“Okay?” Duster asked, taking the wonderful-smelling bread from the stove.
“So the next morning at breakfast I decided to go introduce myself. He was a perfect gentleman and asked me to join him for breakfast and I did.”
Dixie didn’t want to tell Duster she had wanted a lot more at that point, but had acted the perfect woman for the time.
Duster brushed some butter on the top of the hot bread and put them in a basket and slid them onto the table, then went back for plates and napkins.
“But as I walked up to join him for lunch,” Dixie said, “I saw what he was working on in his journal. It was the same math I had been working on in my journal.”
Duster put plates in front of them. “Not possible.”
Bonnie was now smiling, enjoying this moment a great deal clearly.
“I know that,” Dixie said. “He had told me he planned on being in the hotel for at least a month waiting for a friend to come back. So after seeing the math, I asked him the name of his friend. He was waiting for you.”
Duster just stood there, his mouth open. Finally he said, “Again, not possible.”
“Very possible,” Dixie said as Bonnie started to laugh. “His name is Brice Lincoln.”
“The guy we almost hired instead of you?” Duster asked, looking panicked at Bonnie, who just nodded.
“So not only did I fall in love with a man in the past,” Dixie said. “He’s also from another timeline.”
“Oh, shit,” Duster said.
“That’s exactly what I said when he told me he was waiting for you,” Dixie said.
Laughing, Bonnie got up and patted Duster on the shoulder. “Sit down, I’ll finish the salad. Wait until she shows you the really amazing equations the two of them worked out on our problem with the lodge, and on how it was mathematically possible for them to meet in the first place, and also a few other nifty things they came up with.”
“The two of you worked together on the math?” Duster said, dropping into a chair at the table.
“We did,” Dixie said. “For over a month.”
“And together,” Bonnie said, “they may be better than we are.”
“We’re pretty good,” Dixie said, smiling at the clear memory of Brice’s face. “And we’re very much in love.”
Damn she loved that man. But she was going to have to get him to love her all over again in his timeline.
The idea of that just scared hell out of her.
Just meeting him again scared her more than she wanted to admit.
How was she ever going to meet a man for the first time that she had already made love to every night for well over a month?
She doubted any dating manuals dealt with that problem.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
July 8th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
AFTER THE WONDERFUL steak dinner and telling Bonnie the full story, they headed out into the early evening air.
As they headed across the trail toward the Cadillac SUV from the mine, Brice realized that he had woken this same morning in the Monumental Summit Lodge. He had been gone for two months, fallen in love with a wonderful woman, and only part of one day had passed.
That was going to take him some time to really understand, even though he knew all the math of it.
They worked on their plan for hiring Dixie on the way back, and how they would even go about it. They all decided that the best thing to do, if possible, was to just hire her to work with Brice in Boise and not say a thing about the lodge or the mine.
Then, after a month, or two months, or a year if it took that long, they would decide if she was capable of handling the mine. Just because she had been able to do that in one timeline didn’t mean she would be in this one.
All of this seemed so uncertain, Brice hated it.
So after he got home to the wonderful condo he was renting in Boise just after eleven in the evening, he logged on and looked up anything he could find abou
t Professor Dixie Smith. And except for one faculty picture at Cal Tech, there was very little.
He just stared at the picture, missing her more than he could ever imagine missing someone.
It was Dixie in the picture, but not Dixie.
But yet it was the same Dixie. Only difference was he had worked for Bonnie and Duster for a year and she had taught for a year. She was Dixie.
Bonnie and Duster said that in their search for an assistant, they had private investigators look up everything they could about her and would send those files to him as soon as they got home.
Ten minutes after Brice started his search, he got the e-mail from Bonnie with the files.
Beside the files, the e-mail said, “Get some sleep. We’ll pick you up at 5 a.m. We’re headed for California.”
Brice knew that there was little chance of sleep, but he was determined to try. He loaded the files Bonnie had sent onto his laptop. He would study them if he had time on the plane or in California. Then with his journal from 1901 tucked under his pillow, he laid down and tried to rest.
In that journal was a note from Dixie to herself in this timeline, written in her own handwriting. It said simply, “Yes, I know this all sounds crazy, but trust this man and Bonnie and Duster. And trust the math.”
He must have dozed some because the alarm woke him at 4 a.m. He took a quick shower and was outside waiting when they pulled up.
“Breakfast is waiting on the plane,” Bonnie said as Brice climbed into the back seat.
Fifteen minutes later, with almost no traffic on the wide Boise streets, they pulled up beside Bonnie and Duster’s private Gulfstream Jet.
Fifteen minutes after that, they were in the air and headed for California.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
July 9th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
AFTER BREAKFAST ON the plane, both Bonnie and Duster stretched out to sleep, but Dixie decided to read over the files Bonnie had sent her last night about Brice.
From what she could tell, everything he had told her about himself over the last month or so was the total truth. Finally, she closed her laptop and put her seat back to think and rest.
Bonnie woke her as the plane was approaching the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. It was the closest airport to Pasadena and CalTech.
Dixie had visited CalTech before accepting the job with Bonnie and Duster and had loved the campus. She hadn’t really been that fond of the LA area, but when on the old, tree-covered campus with all the historic stone buildings, she had felt almost at home.
She just hoped Brice, after a year, didn’t feel too much at home that he wouldn’t want to leave.
A limousine was waiting for them when they got off the air-conditioned plane into the heat of the Southern California summer. The three of them didn’t talk much on the short drive to the campus.
Dixie was starting to get so nervous, she could hardly walk or talk. She had decided that a casual look of jeans, an expensive blue blouse, and her red hair pulled back off her face was the best way to dress. But now she was questioning everything.
Bonnie had on her standard jeans and silk blouse with her brown hair pulled back off her face.
Duster dressed as Duster always dressed, in jeans, an expensive shirt, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and his long oilcloth coat. Even though it was already almost ninety degrees outside, the coat seemed to keep him cool.
On the drive to the campus, Duster did say something that surprised Dixie, but shouldn’t have. “I’ve talked with the president of the board for CalTech,” Duster said. “He’s fine with us being here to talk with Brice about a job.”
She knew how powerful and rich her two bosses were, but sometimes she just forgot that. Now they were putting all the energy and brains behind helping her be with Brice.
She knew they were also doing it for themselves, because she and Brice had proven that together they were better than being apart.
But Dixie felt like they were doing all this for just her. And she had no idea how she would ever thank them.
The limo left them off into the heat at the California Boulevard entrance and Bonnie pointed to the big, square, white-stone building on the right. “That’s the Alfred Sloan Laboratory for Mathematics and Physics. Brice is teaching a small undergraduate class in there this hour and will be done in about twenty minutes.”
Dixie knew the building well and had loved it on her tour here.
“So where shall we wait for him?” Dixie asked.
Duster laughed and strode toward the big building leaving the two women to follow.
“Duster isn’t much for waiting,” Bonnie said, smiling at Dixie and taking her arm.
Dixie was glad she did because she wasn’t sure she would walk that well on her own. So much for being the strong, independent woman. There was no chance she could have come here on her own to meet Brice.
None.
The Sloan building had been built back before the Second World War and had high hallways with stone arches every twenty steps.
“Always loved this place,” Bonnie said, smiling as they followed Duster into the air-conditioning.
“It has a very welcoming feel to it,” Dixie nodded as their footsteps echoed on the tile floor. “Think we can convince Brice to leave it?”
Bonnie laughed. “We convinced you to not come here, didn’t we?”
Dixie laughed. “That you did.”
Ahead of them Duster found the right wooden door with a gold number eighteen on the outside and waited for them to join him before opening the door and letting them go in.
Bonnie went in first and looked around, then slid over to chairs against the back wall and sat down.
Dixie didn’t dare look toward the front of the small, high-ceilinged classroom, so she just followed Bonnie. Duster came in last, letting the door close fairly loudly behind him.
The room was filled with long, scarred-up wooden tables and metal chairs.
Duster sat down beside Dixie and took off his hat.
At that moment Dixie looked up. About ten students were turned, looking at them, and Brice sat on the edge of an older table at the front of the room, looking very surprised.
Dixie just stared at him and he just stared at her.
Brice had on jeans, a blue tee shirt, and running shoes. His hair was still cut short and he was as handsome as she had ever seen him look.
Somehow Brice managed to look away from Dixie’s gaze and at Bonnie and then at Duster.
His face went white as he recognized who they were. He quickly stood from where he had been sort of seated on the edge of the table and managed to get himself together a little.
Dixie was impressed. She hoped that when they came to see her she was able to react as well and not melt into a babbling mess.
“Everyone,” Brice said. “I would like to introduce you to two very special guests who have just joined us. I have never had the pleasure of meeting them, but with us is Bonnie and Duster Kendal, two of the greatest math brains working on the planet.”
Everyone who had been staring at them before now turned again with wide eyes.
“Thank you,” Duster said, waving his cowboy hat. “Just carry on with what you were doing.”
Brice actually laughed. “I think we’re finished for the day. Dismissed.”
Everyone stood, closing their laptops, and Duster and Bonnie and Dixie stood as well.
Not one of the students had the courage to introduce themselves as they left, and honestly Dixie didn’t blame them. She was sure if a student was in this school, sitting in this kind of higher math class, they knew who Bonnie and Duster were.
Bonnie and Duster were legends, basically. It would be like having Einstein walk into the back of the classroom.
Finally, only Brice and Dixie and Bonnie and Duster were left in the room.
Duster walked toward the front of the room and extended his hand. “Great meeting you finally,” Duster said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
>
“It’s an honor and a surprise,” Brice said, shaking Duster’s hand, then Bonnie’s hand.
Dixie could tell he was barely holding it together and she didn’t blame him in the slightest.
“And this is our colleague Dixie Smith,” Bonnie said, introducing Dixie.
Dixie managed a smile at Brice and looked into his wonderful green eyes, the same green eyes she had seen vanish to another timeline yesterday in the crystal cavern.
He took her hand and she could feel the attraction and the electricity.
“Wonderful meeting you,” Brice managed to say, not letting go of Dixie’s hand.
She so wanted to just jump him and kiss him and never let him go, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t want to take any chance of scaring him away.
So she finally reluctantly let go of his hand.
“We’re here for one reason,” Duster said. “We need your help.”
Brice opened his mouth and then shut it.
Dixie understood that reaction completely. When Duster had said that to her, she had done the same fish-out-of-water reaction.
“Sit for a minute and I’ll tell you what we are offering,” Duster said.
All four of them moved chairs out from behind the older wooden tables in the room and sat facing each other. Dixie sat next to Brice, but somehow managed to not reach over and try to hold his hand.
“I’m not sure how much you have followed our work,” Bonnie said, “but we are working on the mathematical theory of alternate universes.”
“Cutting edge,” Brice said, nodding, keeping his focus on Bonnie and Duster.
“We will offer you thirty times what you make here as a salary plus housing and an office in Boise to come work with us,” Duster said.
Again Brice opened his mouth and then closed it, clearly shocked.
“I have talked with the president of this fine institution of learning,” Duster said, “and he is willing to release you from your contract and cover your classes while you work with us. And your job will remain here if you decide to return at any point. You can check with him on that.”
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