The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  Neither of the men saw or heard her as she slowly moved toward her work table, intending to use it as a shield. Of course, they could probably just vaporize it, but she didn’t see weapons in either of their hands at the moment. She crouched down, gripping the vase more tightly. She edged behind the table, scanning the area now – in between wincing as they sent another display, then another, crashing to the floor – for any sign of Jack’s weapon.

  Then she saw what looked like a cell phone, just out of Jack’s reach, on the floor, and realized it was what both of them were trying to grab at, while keeping the other from getting it first. She was trying to decide how good her chances were to grab the weapon herself, when Stoecker managed to get free from Jack and palm the small weapon. He writhed to his back, and lifted it – aiming it right at Jack, who was lunging at him, making Jack vulnerable for a shot right to the chest.

  Dani didn’t even think, she just stood up and drilled the vase directly at Stoecker’s head. Like a perfect spiral pass, the heavy crystal caught him on the temple, just as he pushed the button, sending the violet stream to the left of Jack, where it vaporized half the wall between the front and back of her shop, and a good part of the ceiling.

  Stoecker grunted and collapsed, as Jack – after a quick look of shock in her direction – kicked at the slave trader’s hand, sending the weapon out of his reach. Then Jack grabbed it and aimed it at Stoecker. But the man hadn’t moved. In fact, he was out cold.

  Jack looked at Dani. “I thought I told you to stay outside.”

  “You were trashing my business. And my home. I live – lived – upstairs.” She glanced up, and felt her shoulders slump, even as the rest of her began to shake as the after-effects of the adrenaline rush kicked in.

  “What was that?” Jack asked, as he pulled himself to his feet. He staggered to her work table, looking a bit more worse for wear after the fight.

  “Fluted vase. Austrian crystal.” She sighed. “Imported.”

  “Lucky throw.”

  She looked at him. “Nothing lucky about it. Archery and darts champ, Lake Machapunga, three summers running.” She looked over at the prone form of Stoecker and smiled. “Bite me, Tommy Decker.”

  “Who?”

  She looked back at Jack. He was holding one arm around his ribcage, and there was blood trickling down the side of his temple. Even battered and banged-up, he was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. “Are you going to be okay? You should let me look at that puncture wound—”

  “I’ve had worse.” He shook his head when she started to come around the counter to check on him. “Stay back. I need to get him secured.”

  “I didn’t . . . kill him?”

  “Doubtful, sweetheart.” But before Jack could secure him, the air around Stoecker began to shimmer. It only took a moment or two for Dani to realize it wasn’t the air around the prone giant, it was the giant himself who was shimmering. “He’s – Jack! Look!”

  “I can see it.” Moving with surprising swiftness, Jack came around the table, blocking her behind him with one arm. He was sweaty, almost hot to the touch, and despite the blood and the obvious wounds, felt sturdy, stable, and strong. “It’s the fissure. It’s looped back already. Must be a tight bend this far back.”

  “So, he’s what? Going back? I mean . . . forward?” She shook her head. “Back to your time, I mean?”

  Jack nodded, then turned to face her, keeping her tight in the circle of his arm. “I have to go with him, Dani. It’s the best chance I’ve had, the closest I’ve gotten to stopping him for good.”

  “Can’t you just, you know, catch the next – what did you call it? Fissure?”

  He shook his head. “This is just the far end looping. No telling if it would ever come back this far again. I still don’t know how it was manipulated to do what it did. I may never know.” He looked at her, searched her eyes. “You should be safe now. At least from Stoecker. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “So you’re going? For good?”

  He nodded.

  “But—”

  He framed her face with his palms. “No time.”

  She smiled faintly. “You said that once before.”

  “Stop talking,” he said, only this time a smile hovered over his beautifully chiseled, if slightly battered, lips.

  “That, too,” she said, trying to smile, but hearing the quaver in her voice.

  “Come here.” He tilted her head and kissed her firmly, passionately, but there was something else there now. Not simply urgency due to the situation. It was far more elemental than that. When he lifted his mouth from hers, her eyes were glassy and unreadable. “I’ve never missed anyone before. But I’ll miss you, Dani.”

  “Jack—”

  But it was too late. He broke his hold, and stepped back, into the aura that surrounded an almost completely transparent Stoecker on her shop floor. Then Jack started to fragment, too.

  Dani raised her fist to her mouth, determined not to say anything, not to beg him to stay. He had no choice but to do his job, to save those whose lives Stoecker would destroy. Besides, what the hell would a time-traveling bounty hunter from the future do in a tiny, South Carolina tourist town?

  She couldn’t, however, stop the single tear that tracked down her cheek as he held her gaze, solidly, intently, until the very last particle of him was gone.

  Dani slowly gave in to the trembling in her legs and sank to the floor of her battered and trashed shop. Funny how the destruction didn’t even seem to matter to her. All it was to her now was proof that the entire night hadn’t, in fact, been a product of an overactive imagination.

  It had really happened. Jack was real. His commanding presence and take-charge attitude. His instinctive need to protect and defend. His kisses, so dark and dangerous.

  She lifted her fingers to her lips, and didn’t even try to stop the tears. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  Four

  Nine months (plus one week, three days, and two hours – but who was counting, really) later, Dani was working late, putting the finishing touches to a table centerpiece for the upcoming town-council banquet. They didn’t go in for the exotic or whimsical, so her thoughts were wandering as she plugged in a spray of lily grass here and a random piece of fiddlehead fern there.

  She was proud of herself. She’d gone a whole month now without making up reasons to stay late after the shop closed, till long after the sun had gone down, you know . . . just in case. This evening, she actually hadn’t had to make up an excuse. The council order had been last-minute, to be picked up the following morning, and she needed the business.

  She’d had to stay late. Possibly, if she were being honest, not quite as late as she’d ended up staying, but she couldn’t seem to stay focused on the project at hand. It was a nagging problem. Ever since Jack.

  She might have stopped waiting for him to materialize again, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop thinking about him. Even running into Adam and his very young bride as they pushed the stroller with their adorable baby past the floral shop hadn’t distracted her from her, well, moping, really. There was no way to pretty that up. She missed Jack. Simple as that. And she couldn’t even talk about him to anyone.

  The local cops had shown up moments after Jack had vanished. Apparently vaporizing the back door had set off her new silent security system, which automatically alerted the police and fire department, who had also shown up, sirens blaring. She had still been a wreck, which the responding police officers had assumed was a result of her finding her shop broken into and vandalized. That’s how the report had been written up, though no one could adequately explain how the wall and part of the ceiling had been destroyed.

  Thankfully, she supposed, her insurance company had settled the claim on most of the repairs and replacements. And the accompanying excitement had driven business her way. For a time. But the cost of repairing what her insurance hadn’t covered, combined with a very slow winter season, had put her busines
s on the brink of closing. If things didn’t pick up fast now that summer was here – well, she tried to keep positive.

  She sighed, and plunged another sprig into the arrangement. She still enjoyed her work, it was the one true escape she had from her tormenting thoughts. What would have happened if she’d run to Jack in those last few seconds? Would she have gone with him? What did it feel like, being all particulated like that? Was it risky? Would she have done it anyway, if he’d asked her to go with him?

  She shook her head as she picked up the glue gun and started attaching small beads around the exterior lip of the base container. The council wasn’t paying for the extra dazzle, but she had a reputation to maintain, and since her business was going to be listed in the program, it was important to create a centerpiece worthy of a second look.

  “Ouch, dammit!” She wiped the hot glue off her fingertip and dipped it into the water pitcher sitting off to one side. Seriously, Dani, get a grip. You’re not doing your best work. And if you don’t snap out of this . . . funk, you won’t be doing any work. Then you’ll lose the only thing you have left. The only thing that matters.

  What if there was something else that mattered? Or someone?

  She lifted her head and closed her eyes. For the past nine months (plus one week, three days, and three hours now) she had been hearing her own voice in her head, but she hadn’t gone so far around the bend that she’d been hearing Jack’s.

  “Dani.”

  She swung her hands up, glue gun loaded and aimed. She couldn’t survive him leaving her twice. “Jack,” she breathed. “Is it . . . are you really here?”

  “I’m really here.”

  She couldn’t gather her thoughts, it was all so sudden, and real. What came out next was not what she’d envisioned saying to him. “Do they still have flowers in your time?”

  He frowned, even as his lips quirked. And damn if he didn’t look way more intoxicatingly sexy than she even remembered. Which was saying a hell of a lot. “We do, yes.”

  “Then, I’m good.”

  “Dani—”

  “Did you . . . come back to see me?”

  “I – I came back because of you.”

  She tensed and her heart skipped a beat. “Is this about Stoecker?”

  He shook his head. “He’s dead.”

  She flinched at that.

  “Not killed by you,” he said quickly.

  “By you?”

  His nod was almost imperceptible. “I told you I’d make sure you were safe.”

  “So that’s it. You just came to tell me that?” She steadied her stance, glue gun still held out in front of her in a two-fisted grip. “Because, to be honest with you, I haven’t spent any time thinking about Stoecker.”

  His expression flickered, but was still unreadable. “I see.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead, though. If he did all those things you said he did, then I’m glad.”

  “There will be others like him.”

  “Are you chasing one of them now?”

  He shook his head. “I’m retired. From active duty, anyway.”

  The glue gun shook a little, and her composure slipped. “Are you okay? Did anything happen? Was it Stoecker? Did you get hurt, or . . . ?”

  “I’m fine, I’m just done chasing bad guys.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “At the moment, I’m still working on figuring that out. Maybe train a team to do what I used to do. Did. I can’t . . . I can’t seem to focus, though. It’s not enough, anymore.”

  She swallowed. Hard. “And?”

  “You didn’t think about Stoecker? No worry?”

  “That he’d come back?” She shook her head. “I trusted you.”

  “Then why are you holding me at glue gunpoint?”

  “I – I don’t know. Self-preservation instinct, I guess. I’ve—” She broke off. He hadn’t given her much to work with, and she wasn’t about to make a complete fool of herself by spilling her guts.

  “Dani, put the gun down.”

  She looked up, found his gaze, and got lost in it, all over again.

  He took a step forward, then another. “Do you still trust me?”

  She nodded.

  And then he was in front of her, his hand over her shaky one. Or was it his hand that was shaky? He gently pushed the gun down, until she dropped it on the work table.

  “Let me ask you one thing.”

  Anything. “Okay.”

  “Did you think about me?”

  She nodded. Every second of every day.

  “Come here,” he said, his voice gravelly, but softer, gentler, than she’d ever imagined possible.

  “Wait,” she said. “I – I don’t want—” She broke off, not sure what to say. That she didn’t want him to leave her again? Did she think he was back because he was staying? Was he going to ask her to go with him? “Why – why are you here?”

  “For you.”

  Her heart leapt so fast and hard it hurt. “With what in mind, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s possible. What you want. Or don’t want. I just know that I don’t want to not have you. Not for another day, another minute.”

  “When did you know that?”

  For the first time, his expression wavered, and she could see that this stoic act was costing him. “The moment I couldn’t see your eyes anymore.”

  She smiled, even as her eyes grew a bit glassy. “I might have you beat on that, then.”

  The relief she saw, the quick, sudden sag to his oh-so-broad shoulders, almost leveled what was left of her willpower. “It’s been almost a year,” she managed.

  “That’s how long it took to figure out how Stoecker manipulated the fissure. And to make damn sure it would hold up.”

  “Hold up to what?”

  “Getting me here. Getting the both of us back.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Right now, what I want is to not be standing apart from you like this. So close, and still a lifetime away. The rest can figure itself out.” And the rest of his protective shield came crashing down. He let her see, for the first time, all the anxiety, the anguish, the frustration, and yes, even the fear. “Dani, sweetheart, I just want you.”

  And that was all she needed. She literally leapt into his arms, and he caught her, hard and fast against him. “Then phone home, E.T.,” she murmured, smiling against his lips. “And tell them you’re bringing company with you.”

  Tales from the Second Chance Saloon:

  Macawley’s List

  Linnea Sinclair

  Telling her he loved her was on his list of things to do.

  Dying before he had a chance to do so, wasn’t.

  The metal decking of Starbase Delta Five skewed suddenly under his boots. The shock wave of the first explosion blasted by him. He stumbled, slammed against the bulkhead. Debris cascaded down through the ruptured conduit panels. He swung his good arm up to shield his face and slid awkwardly to the floor.

  “Macawley!” Her anguished voice called to him through the communications badge pinned to his shirt.

  He almost said it, right then and there. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’m just too much of a coward to tell you.

  He ripped the badge from his shirt, threw it across the wide corridor. It skittered against a chunk of ceiling tile. If he answered, she’d try to rescue him. Even though he’d given her a direct order to pull out.

  But she had a propensity to ignore his direct orders. That was one of the things he loved about her.

  The station rumbled again. A large section of the corridor collapsed into the level below, taking the chunk of tile and his badge with it.

  He hooked his good arm around a curved support pylon and hung on, though he didn’t know why. He was already dead. A Duvri ion lance had severed his left arm at the elbow, cauterizing it neatly. And he was bleeding profusely from a shrapnel wound in his thigh.

  But none of that mattered. What did w
as the destruction of Delta Five. His tactical team set the charges for that purpose an hour ago. That would bring the Duvri’s invasion of the Galleon Quadrant to a dead stop, like slamming into a black hole.

  “A waste of a few damn fine pubs,” Briony Winn had quipped just before she followed the rest of the team into the escape shuttle.

  That was another thing he loved about her. She always had a quip, some little sotto voce remark.

  “I’m sure you and my crew will take it as a personal challenge to find replacements,” he’d shouted to her as he’d jogged backwards towards the airlock. He was headed down to the next deck to appropriate an X-7 fighter, and blow a few more holes into the station for good measure as he left.

  She had the audacity to stick her tongue out at him just as the hatch was closing. “They’re my crew, too, Mac!”

  They were all hers now. In the event of the death of the captain, the executive officer automatically took command.

  A Duvri suicide squad had greeted him at the fighter bays. They had an ion lance and shrapnel guns. He was trapped, and wasn’t about to recall the shuttle and risk the lives of eight team members – and one irreplaceable Commander Briony Winn – to save his ass.

  The station shuddered violently again. He heard the agonizing groan of metal stressed to its limits; the harsh snap of plasticrete as it twisted and shattered. The jagged ledge under his legs vibrated.

  He had minutes. No, probably only seconds. The lights blinked out. A rush of wind drove gritty particles of insulation into his skin. He knew what it was. The station’s hull had ruptured. The air was being sucked out into the vacuum of deep space.

  “I love you, Winnie.” It was the first time he had ever said those words out loud.

  It was the last thing he remembered.

  Until he coughed.

  He was face down in a pile of insulation dust. It coated his lips, stuck in his throat. He coughed again, planted his hands on the ground and pushed his shoulders up.