Kiss Across Chaos

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “We don’t have to. Tell me the story. It sounds interesting.”

  “Stories with body counts always interest you.” Aran’s brows came together. “You really are trying to wiggle out of telling me. Spit it out, Jesse.”

  She put the glass back on the table and pushed her hands between her knees, feeling suddenly cold. “It’s just…well…” She took a deep breath. “I saw an ad for handmade chocolates this morning, on Facebook.”

  Aran tilted his head. “That’s the stupid bit?”

  She shook her head. “They were advertising for Valentine’s day.”

  Aran sat back. “Okay, now I’m the one who feels stupid. You’ll have to connect the dots for me.”

  Jesse could feel her cheeks warming. “Well, it would be kinda natural to figure that you and I, for Valentines, should…I don’t know…mark the occasion in some way. Only I don’t know that either of us should,” she ended lamely.

  “You don’t want dinner and roses and chocolates for Valentines?” Aran said.

  She couldn’t figure out what his tone meant. Aran was often unreadable. Still often unreadable, despite having examined every inch of him up close and in a very personal way. She didn’t know him well despite hours of conversations that rambled every which way and all through history, too.

  If she’d ever had a relationship that had lasted longer than the next morning, Jesse would have expected that the longer the relationship continued, the better she would get to know the man. Only, Aran still baffled her.

  She would sometimes catch him watching her, with the intent stillness and endless patience of a cat watching a mouse. The second he realized she was looking at him, the expression would vanish. Very soon after that, Aran would distract her with one of his jumps to somewhere exotic, unexpected, or just plain fun. Or he would pull her against him, or pin her to wall and kiss her until she was hot and aching for him to take her. Always, something would happen which would make her forget about those moments until later and by then, it was too late to ask him about them.

  Not that she was sure she had the right to ask, anyway.

  It was those great shut-away swathes of his life, the moments she caught him staring at her in that intense way, and the feeling that she had no right to probe, that made her say now, “No, I don’t think doing anything for Valentine’s Day is right for us.”

  Aran’s expression didn’t change by a millimeter. He just nodded. “Then let’s do something really, really inappropriate, instead.”

  Relief touched her. At the same time she felt let down. Hastily, she grabbed the glass of champagne and drank. “What would be really, really inappropriate?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know.” He sat back and rubbed his jaw. “Mud wrestling in the Amazon basin?”

  Her jaw dropped. “That’s a thing?”

  “I have no idea.” Aran smiled. “We could find out. Or…” He paused. “How would you like to see where those uncut stones come from? I mean, the actual patch of dirt. Maybe do a bit of digging ourselves.”

  Jesse frowned. “Can you do that? Just go have a look around with a shovel under our arms? I’d have thought those territories would be like the gold mining claims. Staked out and highly controlled and secure.”

  Aran glanced around, a casual flicker of his eyes, but she knew he was checking for anyone who might be taking too close an interest in their conversation. “Depends on when you go there,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “Oh…” He meant travelling back in time to a moment before the diamonds had been discovered. “I’m still not used to thinking of that aspect as naturally as you do.”

  “I’d be astonished if you did. I’ve had a lifetime of thinking that way.” He didn’t sound upset and when their meals arrived a few seconds later, the conversation shifted. They didn’t really get back to discussing Valentine’s Day again that night, which was a relief to her.

  And as it turned out, any plans they might have made would have been wasted because the thing, the event that changed everything, the one Jesse had been expecting would happen, finally arrived.

  Only, it didn’t look like the thing that would end everything. Not to start with, anyway.

  Only two days after their dinner in Auckland, Jesse headed downstairs, yawning and looking forward to the first cup of coffee. The French press sat on the island, half-full and still warm enough to drink. Even if it wasn’t, she could run it through the microwave for a few seconds—a habit that made Aran make retching sounds, when he first saw her do it. Yet the coffee was perfectly drinkable, so she wasn’t sure what his objections were. It was better than pouring the other half of the pot out, just because she didn’t drink a pint in thirty seconds the way he could.

  Aran had drunk the other half of this morning’s pot and was who the hell knew where, doing something mysterious.

  As usual.

  Jesse dropped bread in the toaster, drank coffee, watched birds flit about the still half-dormant garden visible outside the kitchen window. Unlike most of the double-glazed and insulated homes in America, she could hear faint twitters and calls the birds made through this window. She watched and listened while running the next scenes of her book through her mind. When the toast was buttered, she took the plate over to the laptop and went through her usual morning check of sites, social networks and news feeds.

  She came to a halt in the middle of her Facebook stream, at a comment that had been posted to one of her author groups very early in the morning, UK time. Which meant it had been late last night for someone in the States.

  She read the post again, her heart screaming.

  Read an alt hist by a complete newbie author—just finished it. One of the best stories I’ve read this year and last year…maybe this century. Going back to read it again. Give it a look yourself.

  And below the text was the cover of her book, with Kiss Across Chaos emblazoned on the top and Jerry Hale in the flourishing script the cover artist had used instead of the upright squared-off font Jesse Hall military thrillers got.

  Beneath the cover was over thirty comments from other authors, saying they were going to check it out or that they had read it already.

  The comments were mostly from the Australian and New Zealand authors, who had already passed through their day. North America was still to wake up.

  The last comment she came to had gone unanswered.

  Who is Jerry Hale, anyway? Anyone heard of her before?

  Jesse didn’t respond. The last thing she wanted was for everyone to know who Jerry Hale was. Yes, it was great that one guy thought it was a good read, but that was just one guy. There were also people who hated Harry Potter, too.

  Her intense curiosity let her do something she rarely did. She checked for reviews on the book.

  It had only been out for just under six weeks and it already had forty-three reviews, ranging from three stars to a staggering thirty-eight five-star reviews.

  She spotted the same question in the reviews. Who is Jerry Hale? She doesn’t seem to exist anywhere but on the book cover.

  Jesse hadn’t bothered with an author photo or even much of a bio. There was one line; This is Jerry Hale’s first novel. She had bought the site domain, JerryHaleAuthor.com, purely to run email via the domain address. She hadn’t put up even a rudimentary site. After all, who would bother to look for one?

  Her heart thudding even more, Jesse broke with her normally iron-clad personal rule of not checking her sales except at the end of the month, to square the bookkeeping for the month. At the end of January, she had sold only a dozen copies, as she had expected to do for a first novel by a complete unknown.

  She pulled up the sales charts and sat back, breathing hard.

  Since January 31st, when she had last checked sales, Kiss Across Chaos had sold three hundred and eighteen copies.

  In eleven days.

  Jesse went back to the reviews, perplexed. It was a silly little novel. How could people like it so much?

  Even
more puzzling were the many references to the book as a romance.

  I didn’t write a romance, Jesse mentally protested.

  But some old, dead writer had once said that a manuscript was for the author. The book that came from the manuscript was for everyone else. The author lost all opinion about what the book meant, after that.

  If readers wanted to call it a romance, they were right.

  If they wanted to buy it, they could. And they were buying it.

  Her hand shaking, Jesse scrolled down the product page to where the sales ranks were displayed.

  Kiss Across Chaos was #49 in Women’s Fiction.

  She was charting on the first page of a category best seller list. She’d never done that before.

  Jesse shut the laptop down and poured more coffee and drank it while sitting on the deck chair on the gravel in front of the house, wrapped in Aran’s pea coat.

  When he got home a few hours later, she said nothing about the spiking sales of the book. She was too embarrassed. She also didn’t write that day.

  When she got up the next day, Jesse didn’t check her feeds or groups. She opened the manuscript and started writing, instead.

  Sinking into the story soon blew away the fragments of unease which the momentary spike had imparted.

  That night, Jesse asked Aran if he could take her to Europe in the morning.

  “Of course I can. Where and when?”

  Jesse smiled. “Paris, the spring of 1957. And Geneva in 1923.”

  “That’s very specific. Have you been researching? Why there?” He sat up enough to put his head on his hand and study her.

  “I want to try something…it’s a spin on your retirement fund idea and it’s probably not nearly as risky.”

  “Anything involving time is risky,” Aran said. “Usually it’s the innocent-looking jumps that turn out the worst. So if we go, we go with our mental shields up.”

  Jesse sat up. “I was researching for my book—just a quick look up for a couple of details. And I tripped over something that made me sit up.”

  “Like you’re doing now?” He reached and pulled her down so that she was resting with her head on the pillow, which put him above her and made her heart run a little harder at the possibilities ahead.

  She rolled onto her back so she wasn’t looking into his eyes. “In 1957, you could buy a Grace Kelly bag from Hermès for about fifty American dollars. An original Kelly bag made in that year was just sold at Christies. Wanna guess what it sold for?”

  “A fashion accessory?” Aran just barely avoided laughing. “Okay, tell me.”

  “Twelve thousand dollars.” She paused. “American,” she added.

  “For a handbag?” Aran laid on his back, too. After a moment, he blew out his breath. “You have my attention. Paris, 1953, is for the bag. What’s in Geneva in the 1920s…” He rolled his head to look at her. “Damn. Rolex, right?” He held up his wrist, displaying the watch there, that he hadn’t paused to take off when he had been removing his and her clothing an hour ago.

  Jesse nodded. “You paid how much for yours?”

  “This is a Daytona. They’re about seven thousand, depending on where and who you buy it from.”

  “That’s today’s prices for a new watch. A 1934 Submariner in what Christie’s called ‘Relatively good condition’ sold for fifty thousand Euros last week.”

  Aran blew out his breath once more. “Wonder what they would make of a mint condition 1920s Submariner?”

  “I thought I might try to find out. The only catch with the Rolex is that we have to park it somewhere safe back in that time, then collect it here and now.”

  Aran turned on his side once more. “Why?”

  “The luminous dial and hands were made with radium, pre-1964. They actually test vintage Rolexes with Geiger counters to check the degree of radiation, when they authenticate them. A 1920s watch should be just about stone dead on the Geiger counter, but if we bought it directly back here, it would light the thing up like a Christmas tree.”

  “So we stow it and retrieve it a hundred years later.” Aran smiled. “I think you’re getting the hang of this.”

  Jesse shook her head. “It’s your idea. I’m just tweaking it.”

  “And you told me there are no new ideas in story telling, that anything you write has been done before. People still call that creating a book.” He drew her to him.

  It took five days to prep for the jump to Paris in 1957 and Geneva in 1923, but the prep paid off. Both jumps went without incident.

  Aran brought old money suitable for both times. Setting up the Swiss bank account and depositing the watch in the lock box was the most complicated part of the arrangement. At least in 1920 they were still not using fingerprints or complicated identity papers.

  And Jesse learned that she loved the swish of multiple crinolines. “It’s ridiculous,” she told Aran in Paris, as she spread the skirt of her dress—a ‘frock’, she had heard it called. “I’ve led men into battle, driven Hummers under fire from drone rockets, blown up buildings, and—”

  “And saved everyone in greater London single-handedly,” Aran added, a twinkle in his eye as he took in her dull silk ensemble.

  “I’m the least feminine woman I know,” Jesse finished. “But I feel all silly and delicate and lady-like in this.”

  “You look it,” Aran replied. “Not the silly part. But the lady-like part is a lock.” He got up from the little wrought iron table where they had paused for coffee and a croissant and refastened the buttons on his double-breasted jacket. The jacket had enormous padded shoulders and very wide lapels.

  Jesse got to her feet and paused as Aran held his elbow out for her. “They do that here and now?”

  “I don’t give a damn if they do or not,” Aran said. “I want you on my arm.”

  Jesse took his arm, trying to contain her smile to something elegant, instead of the goofy grin that wanted to form.

  It was an extended day of jumping that ended up being the last pleasant day they would have for a while, because the shit had already hit the fan. They just didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  The first sound Jesse grew aware of as the living room of Aran’s cottage formed around them was the sound of her cellphone vibrating against the closed top of the piano, jiggling in a little dance across the ebony lacquer.

  “Sorry,” Jesse said quickly, for Aran was fastidious about caring for the piano. “No one ever phones me,” she added and picked up the phone.

  The caller hung up before she could connect.

  “Not even my mother?” Aran asked, sounding merely curious, not peeved. He emptied his pockets upon the high mantelshelf above the hearth.

  Jesse had to think to recall how she could check who had just phoned. While she was flipping through the screens, the phone vibrated and rang again.

  The alert popped up over the top of her screen.

  Incoming Call.

  That was it. No number.

  “Well, who is it?” Aran asked.

  Jesse shook her head. “There’s no name. Not even a number.”

  Aran moved closer. “Don’t answer it.”

  Even before Jesse could begin to analyze the odd note in Aran’s voice, the phone stopped ringing again.

  She looked up at him. “I don’t know who it is.”

  “That’s the point of jigging your outgoing ID. No one knows who is calling until they answer the phone. They want you to pick up.”

  “Phishing? Some sort of scam?”

  “You won’t ever find out,” Aran said grimly. “Because you won’t answer the call. If they were legitimate, they’d have an ID you could read.”

  Jesse relaxed when the phone didn’t ring again and grimaced. “It’s stupid how much it bothers me that I can’t see who it is. Modern tech, huh?” She went over to the shopping bag that held the brand-new vintage handbag. “I should put this in plastic and seal it.”

  “Once you’ve got rid of the tags an
d the new car smell,” Aran added. “Tomorrow we can head over to Geneva and pick up the watch, too. Sell them both in one jump to New Y—”

  The phone buzzed again, making Jesse start. She lifted it to check the screen, even though there wouldn’t be anything there to see.

  Only, there was.

  This time, there was a phone number and an ID.

  “The Huffington Post?” she read aloud and looked at Aran, her gut clamping. “Why would HuffPo want to talk to me?”

  Aran crossed his arms. “Let me see. Why would one of the biggest online news outlets want to speak to an author?” His face was sober, but humor glittered in his eyes.

  “But I’m just a midlist indie…” she began.

  The book. The book.

  She wasn’t certain why the alternative history book leapt into her mind. No one knew who Jerry Hale was. She still turned on her heel and dashed into the kitchen and to her laptop and fired it up. She clicked over to check the book itself, just to see that it was there, that it wasn’t being shat all over by reviewers. Maybe something really horrible had happened to it and HuffPo wanted a juicy quote from her to make their update sensational and click-baity. She’d heard of trolls ganging up on an author they took exception to and painting the author’s book with dozens or hundreds of one star reviews with horrible, blood-drawing comments about the author and the quality of the book.

  Maybe she had been targeted.

  Her heart racing, Jesse waited for the page to load, while Aran strolled into the kitchen behind her and leaned against the island, watching with his brows together. He didn’t interrupt her with endless questions.

  Not that she could answer any of them right then.

  The page finally formed, and Jesse discovered she had been flagged, but not by trolls.

  Her pulse froze. Her throat tightened. Her gut squeezed down into a fist-sized rock sitting in her middle and burning. “I’m number one,” she breathed.

  “Really?” Aran straightened, sounding very pleased. “In which category?” It had taken hours to teach him the intricacies of genres and categories. He was a voracious reader, but he read non-fiction almost exclusively.