“I’m sorry, Finn. Please don’t worry. I have a little money from my dad. We’ll manage.”
He wasn’t listening. Finn was on his feet and then he went down on one knee beside her, with a determined expression on his face. Oh no, he wouldn’t dare.
“Look, I know the big guy smashed your heart for good. I can’t offer you anything like that. But I’ll never love anyone the way I love you, even though you’re a woman.” That last bit probably could have done with a second rehearsal.
Ingrid raised her hand to stop him, but Finn brushed her protests aside. “Let me finish, Sorrenson, I’ve been rehearsing this speech for days. Think about it, Ingrid. You’ve still got to publish your doctoral thesis. I work nights, you work days. So one of us will be here all the time, and if anything happened to you, the kid will need a father.”
That one hit home. Finn was right. Apart from some elderly cousins of her father’s in Norway, she had no relatives. “Finn, I don’t know what to say.”
Her response seemed to give him hope and he pressed on. “Face it, Sorrenson, you’re almost thirty and you’re knocked up. You mightn’t get another offer.”
Ingrid giggled. “Finn O’Leary, that is positively the worst marriage proposal I have ever heard.”
Finn’s blue eyes looked hopefully at her. “So it’s a yes, then?”
Could she do it? Could she marry her best friend? Everything Finn said made sense, in a crazy illogical kind of way. She was worried about what would happen to the baby if she died, and Finn was the nearest thing to family that she had. But he had his own life and it wouldn’t be fair to tie him down like that. She had to give him a way out.
“I’ll marry you on one condition. You have to promise that you’ll leave me when you meet the one.”
“You too,” he quipped. Then he was sorry as hell when she started to cry. The love of his life might still be out there, but Ingrid had already met and lost hers.
Winter 2011
Two fiancés in one year, Ingrid mused as she fixed her lipstick in the bathroom mirror. Not bad for a pregnant, soon-to-be unemployed assistant curator. Neither of them were particularly religious, so Finn had organized a quiet civil wedding ceremony at lunchtime with two of his friends as witnesses. He was throwing a wedding-baby shower-leaving work party at the theater later that evening. Theater management seemed to suit him, though he would still belt out a medley of songs with very little encouragement.
Ingrid took the jeweler’s box with the shiny, new wedding rings out of her handbag. Finn had surprised her by turning out to be almost conventional when it came to the ceremony.
“Please, Ingrid, neither of us is likely to do it again. Besides, my mom will be thrilled.”
“Okay, we can have a party, but no bouquet and no wedding dress.”
He was so disappointed that she relented about the flowers, but she was wearing her own dress, a dark-blue velvet empire line that reached almost to her ankles. When Finn commented that she looked like a giant blue tsunami, she had offered to exchange it for a pink one. She knew that he hated pink.
Ingrid applied concealer to the dark circles under her eyes. Last night she had dreamed about the viking and wondered if it was an omen. Maybe she shouldn’t go through with this, maybe she should wait a little while longer, just in case he returned. She thought of him constantly, wondering if he was happy or if he missed her as much as she missed him.
She felt a sudden flutter inside her. He was kicking again. The doctor said that the baby was definitely a boy. She had never expected that being pregnant could change her life so much. Everything centered on the baby and his future. Her own mother had died suddenly when she was young and her father was dead before she finished college. What if something happened to her? Strom’s son would end up in Norway with a couple of aging farmers, probably looking after goats. Finn was right, marriage to him was the best way to safeguard her son’s future, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t have the occasional crisis about it.
She was usually in bed when Finn came home, but she had to talk to him and she wasn’t going to sleep anyway. He had arrived home after one a.m., having consumed rather a lot of bachelor-party drinks.
“What’s up, Mrs. O’Leary to be? Are you worried the guests will realize you’re a tiny bit pregnant?” He planted a light kiss on her forehead. “Just wear some Spanx, and stay away from the desserts.”
“Finn, I’m as big as the Great Wall of China. I’m sure that Strom can see me from space.”
Then the tears began. She had finally mentioned his name. What would Strom think if he found out she was getting married? Did he already know? Did he have some computer program that popped up with a message—Ingrid did this or that? Strom had told her that she was virtually unknown in the twenty-sixth century. But he hadn’t been looking for her then. Was he looking now or had he forgotten all about her?
“Hey, hey, now stop that.” Finn gathered her up in a hug. “You’ll ruin the wedding photos if you have a big puffy face.”
“I thought we agreed there would be no photos.”
“No,” he argued, “we agreed no wedding album. Besides, do you really think my mom would pass up an opportunity to show off the photographs of her only son and his pregnant bride to the neighbors back home? Now tell me what has you so upset?”
“I’m all mixed up, Finn. I feel like I’m going to give birth to a giant. And I’m worried that you’ll get fed up with me. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you too.”
Finn cupped her face in his hands. “Ingrid, listen to me. I will never, ever, get fed up with you. Now what else is bothering you?”
Ingrid rested her head on his shoulder. “I feel guilty about the baby. Strom deserves to know about it, but how can I tell him? How can I send a message five-hundred years into the future and be sure that he’ll get it?”
Finn was silent. His chest rose and fell and Ingrid realized that he had fallen asleep. She would have to figure that one out for herself.
Ingrid took one final look in the mirror. The reflection that stared back at her was as good as a heavily pregnant bride-to-be was likely to get. She reached for the chain around her neck and kissed the wolf head ring twice for luck. She had worn it every day since Strom left and she hoped that he was still wearing hers. The taxi was waiting outside. “Chin up, Sorrenson.” She smiled at her reflection. “Everything will be fine.”
Chapter Seven
Winter 2525
Strom stepped out of the sonic shower stall and reached for his razor. Twenty-sixth-century technology still hadn’t found a way to defeat stubble. As he shaved, Strom’s hand brushed against the chain holding the gold wedding band. Nine months had passed since he left her. For the first few weeks, Strom had counted the days, hours, even the minutes. Each night in bed he wore her ring, wondering as he lay awake if she still wore his.
Following his return from the twenty-first century, he had spent weeks searching for the wolf-head ring, going through old catalogues to see if it had turned up at an antique sale. Then he stopped, feeling as if he was spying on her. For all he knew, Ingrid had forgotten him.
The old Strom hadn’t returned from the last mission. Some part of him remained behind in the twenty-first century. He found himself looking for Ingrid everywhere. A smile, a head of dark curls, any small resemblance to her was enough to send him spiraling into a black hole of misery. Jake and Pete knew. They had tried to drag him back into their old lifestyle, but drink and random women no longer held any fascination for him.
In the end, he had done the only thing he could do. He had signed up for a three-year diplomatic mission to the Cyraelian territories. Not all Cyraelians were as psychotic as Raoul Jasson, and there was quite a substantial bounty on his head, which they would be happy to collect if the opportunity arose.
“You ready, Boss?” Jake’s voice came from the adjoining state room.
“Almost, grab my dress uniform, will you?”
Jake spotted the ring aroun
d his neck. “Ever think of going back there?”
Almost every single day, but he would never admit it. He shrugged casually. “Sometimes.”
Jake grinned slyly at him. “Strom, you are such a bad liar. I hope your diplomatic skills are better than that. Lying is almost compulsory in diplomatic circles.”
Strom pulled on his uniform and reached for the colored sash, which denoted his rank. “We’ll soon find out.”
Outside the reception hall, Pete was waiting for them, tugging at the neck of his white uniform. Jake grinned at him. “You look like a well-dressed monkey.”
“Fuck off, Jake. You know I hate these formal dinners.”
“Gentlemen,” Strom announced, “it’s time to meet the Cyraelians.”
As was befitting the first official contact between their two species, dinner was long and the speeches and formalities were endless. After almost four hours of polite introductions, encouraging trade enquiries and accepting as many invitations as they could get through over the next month, Strom was ready to leave. He refused yet another offer of refreshments from the ambassador and stifled a yawn. It was almost time to go. That was before they saw her. Tall and slender, her sleek blue-black hair was elaborately arranged. Ivory skin contrasted with her dark, slanted eyes, heavily made up with kohl to make them appear even more dramatic. Her lips were pure carmine.
Jake whistled. “What’s the protocol on relations of the non-diplomatic kind?”
Strom took a sip of his wine. “Don’t even think about it. Cyraelians are very protective of their women. Stay away from her.”
“That might prove difficult, Boss. She’s coming this way.”
Strom watched her cross the room. She didn’t so much walk as glide and she headed directly for their table. “Who is she?” Strom murmured to the Cyraelian diplomat sitting beside him.
“That is Tanith Jasson.”
“Is she any relation of Raoul’s?”
“I’m afraid so, she’s his sister.”
Jake, he commed, she’s Raoul’s sister. You have free rein.
“Wolf and she-wolf,” the diplomat observed as he watched Jake intercept Tanith and lead her to the dance floor. “You play a dangerous game, my friend. Raoul Jasson may be in hiding, but he is well briefed on his sister’s activities.”
Strom’s mouth twisted in a grim smile. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
It was morning before Jake returned to the ship. Strom noted that the neckline of his once-pristine dress uniform was somewhat tarnished by carmine lipstick. “Good night?”
Jake winked. “A gentleman never tells.”
“I know that you’re not a gentleman, Jake. So tell me what happened.”
“We kissed.”
“And?”
“She asked a lot of questions. Tanith was extremely interested in you. Are you sure you don’t want to take this one?”
Strom thought of Ingrid and shook his head. He couldn’t imagine touching another woman. “Is she working for Raoul?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say no, but that doesn’t mean she’s not in contact with him. How do you want me to handle this?”
“Hot, heavy and public. If that doesn’t smoke Raoul out, nothing will.”
Strom knew his plan was working when he received a third complaint from the ambassador relating to the conduct of one of his officers and an unnamed Cyraelian woman. The ambassador was distressed that the officer’s behavior might well bring the unwelcome attention of a certain individual to the city.
Perfect.
Even by Jake’s standards, his conduct at the Cyraelian National Day celebratory dinner was completely outrageous. Strom and Pete did their best to remain stone-faced as Jake practically made love to Tanith on the dance floor in front of over two hundred dignitaries.
“It’s called dirty dancing,” Pete observed. “Ingrid showed him how to do it.”
Strom’s hand closed into a fist at the mention of her name. “Ingrid did that with him.”
“Yeah, at the burlesque club.”
Strom’s fingers tightened on his wineglass, snapping the delicate stem in two. He looked down in surprise at a single drop of blood that ran down his finger. He had an overwhelming urge to beat Jake to death on the dance floor. How could she do this to him? They were a million light-years away from each other and Ingrid could still drive him crazy. God, he would give anything to be with her this minute.
Winter 2011
“Can’t you give her an epidural?”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Mr. O’Leary. Your wife’s labor is too far advanced. It won’t be long now.”
Ingrid was cursing like a sailor and demanding drugs. Way to go, girl. He could do with some himself. She thought she had indigestion, until her water broke. He was never, ever buying her silk sheets for Christmas again.
“Finn, Finn, get in here. I’m not doing this on my own.”
He swigged deeply from the hip flask he had prepared specially for the occasion and opened the cubicle curtain. It was more woman than he ever wanted to see. “Ingrid, hon, I don’t know if I can do this.”
She was lying red-faced in the bed, wearing a distinctly unattractive hospital gown. “You better get your butt in here, O’Leary, or you can find yourself a new roommate.”
Finn got through it by looking at her face the whole time. The nurses thought he was tender and romantic and Ingrid was satisfied, so long as she could squeeze his hand viciously. At the end of it they were presented with a son. A boy with sherry- colored eyes. Finn’s heart melted. He was a dad.
He looked down at the red-faced bundle lying in his arms. This was it, the reason why he was sitting in a maternity hospital, with a sleeping wife lying exhausted in a bed next to him. Some of his friends thought he was crazy, but others were envious. He watched Ingrid’s chest rising and falling. Her hair was a sweaty, matted mess and her face was red, but she looked kind of beautiful.
Finn remembered his own strict religious upbringing in a tiny village in the West and the sense of liberation when he moved to the city. “You are so lucky to have her for a mommy,” he whispered to the sleeping bundle.
He and Ingrid had been best friends since their first year in college and had drifted into being roommates when he lost an acting job one Christmas and couldn’t pay his rent. That had been a bad winter for both of them. Ingrid had fallen apart when her dad died a couple of months later and she failed her college exams. But they had gotten through it. When she moved into her father’s old apartment, he had moved in to take care of her. Along the way they had helped each other through the bad boyfriend breakups and now he couldn’t imagine his life without her in it.
A nurse arrived to take the baby from him. Finn dropped a kiss on Ingrid’s forehead. “Night, Mrs. O’Leary, see you tomorrow.”
* * * * *
Ingrid had just sat down with her laptop when she heard him crying. Adam needed changing again. She must have been delusional when she imagined that she could write a book while the baby was sleeping.
The last six months had been an exercise in crisis management. They were the worst parents in the world. Neither of them had siblings to call for advice when the baby wouldn’t stop screaming. Eventually they caved in and did the inconceivable. Finn rang his mother. Within days, the apartment was running like clockwork and the baby fed at the precise times arranged by her. Mari O’Leary, or Madame Defarge as Ingrid liked to call her behind her back, could have run a small country while simultaneously knitting what she described as a layette. If she ever saw another knitted bootie she was going to choke Finn with it. How did she ever have a feckless son like him?
It was two months before Finn’s mother left. By that time, Ingrid had threatened him with divorce, baby Adam was permanently attached to one of her breasts and Finn was more than delighted to escape to the theater in the evenings. By early summer, they had settled in to a pattern of permanent parental exhaustion.
“Why don’t you save one
of these for Finn?” she muttered as Adam chuckled up at her. Was this how the raped and pillaged coped after a viking invasion? Ingrid had never actually contemplated the aftermath before, but when she unwrapped what Finn described as another car-crash diaper, she was inclined to swear viciously. Strom was off floating in his spaceship somewhere in the heavens, while she was stuck on Earth with dirty diapers.
“I wish I could send him one,” she cooed to the baby, “a great, big, dirty hello from his son. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Adam chuckled again. She still hadn’t figured out a way of getting a message to Strom, but she would, somehow.
Adam’s small pudgy fingers reached for her research notes, crumpling the edge of one page. “Naughty baba, give that to mommy.”
Ingrid smoothed out the precious page and then it hit her. Her book, the one she hadn’t written yet, was sitting on Strom’s bookshelf somewhere in the future. All she had to do was write it. She lifted Adam up until they were face to face. “Work with me on this, Adam. Give mommy one hour a day, so that we can let your daddy know that you’re here.”
Adam reached for a handful of her hair and gave it a tug. Who was she kidding? This was going to take forever.
Summer 2527
Strom poured two mugs of syntho-coffee and handed one to Jake. What he wouldn’t give for a double espresso. But there wasn’t a planet within several hundred light-years that had the real thing and it would probably cost him a month’s salary.
“We’ve received intelligence reports that Raoul is out of hiding. He’s been lying low on Tarsus Four, but he’s on his way back to Cyraelia.”
“That’s great, Strom, but—”
“But what, Jake? Soon you won’t have to pretend to romance Tanith anymore and we can deal with Raoul, permanently this time.”
Time Slip Page 8
