Out of Time

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Out of Time Page 9

by Pauline Baird Jones


  Ric lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to the chilly back of it. “So you’re Jack’s Amazon, his mystery girl.”

  He smiled confidently at her, his fingers stroking the palm of the hand he’d just kissed. It was creepy. She’d like to have tossed him on his tush, but she didn’t. Instead she gave him one of her wide-eyed, dumb blonde looks.

  “I’m from, like, Wyoming, like, not the Amazon,” she pointed out, blinking a couple of times for effect. “That’s, like, a river or country, isn’t it? And where’s, like, the mystery in a pub pick up? I hear it happens to you, like, all the time.”

  “I think it’s the physics lesson he’s referring to,” Norm said, with a broad grin.

  “Would you, like, like me to show, like, you how I did it?” Mel opened her eyes even wider and slow-blinked some more. “It only, like, hurts when you, like, land, but they tell me the trip is, like, well, a trip.”

  The crew got a kick out of this, even if they didn’t get the Valley Girl connection, but Ric looked like he was in a play with the wrong script. His smile was still there, but was a bit uncertain. It was almost too easy. She’d have stopped, if it weren’t for the memory of the family he’d killed. If this was the only way to erase that event—

  “Give it a try, Captain, you’d be pretty—” Gaby drew the word out, as he rocked on his heels with barely suppressed amusement, “—flying through the air.”

  Ric seemed to realize it was a joke and his smile widened. “If it weren’t for the landing, doll—” He leaned close to Mel, automatic seduction back on. “—you could flip me to the moon. Or we could just hit a pub?”

  Mel widened her eyes. “The pub? That’s, like, so, like, last night.” She looked at Jack. No surprise he was having trouble keeping up, too. “Besides, Colonel Wray, like, invited me to the concert tonight. A colonel so, like, trumps a captain, don’t you, like, think?”

  Ric’s smile faltered and he blinked a couple of times. “So you don’t have a date with Jack tonight?”

  “No.” Jeeze…. “So you can, like, quit trying to beat his time and we can, like, get a picture.”

  Ric laughed. Not even a glancing blow as the shot went past him. How on earth had he managed to get his mind off himself long enough to save Jack’s life? And how did an intelligent guy like Jack delude himself into thinking this waste of space was his friend? Clearly, men were, like, so from Mars.

  Mel looked past Ric to Jack, letting her eyes clearly ask him, “Who is this guy?”

  He looked a bit defensive, but she could tell her shot hadn’t gone past him. He turned from her. “Form two rows,” Jack said, “front row kneeling.”

  As she moved to her predetermined place, she felt his gaze probing her, too. Thank goodness she was from Venus. She pasted on a deflective smile, but perverse Mother Nature sent a last bit of sun through the gray cloud canopy and right across Jack, lighting him from behind. It was like putting the cherry on top of the sundae. Thank you for making this even harder. She’d had, she realized a bit ruefully, a crush on his memory, so it wasn’t that surprising she’d bring it into this skewed reality. But crushes could be gotten over—when the parties involved were separated by sixty freaking years. She repeated the sixty freaking years part to double their impact, but Jack still looked good enough to eat. And her heart was still doing a willful pit-a-pat.

  Stupid heart. Didn’t it know that in a couple of days, she’d be stranded in Occupied France with the survivors of this bunch? The poor Time Machine would be a broken wreck in a foreign field. And Gran would get a telegram informing her Norm was missing in action. If Mel failed, it would be followed by the official notification of his death. Both telegrams were pasted at the end of the biography Gran had written for her husband. Mel knew them word for word, as well as the letter of condolence that Colonel Wray had written. Her only chance of succeeding was to keep her mind on the job so that Norm could emerge from a prisoner of war camp to the life he was supposed to have.

  Or she and Jack would have to do this all over again. And again, until they got it right. The only way out of this Jack-induced causality loop was to do it right this time.

  Mel turned away from the temptation of Jack, taking her place with the guys and raising her arm to expose her Uncle Sam tattoo—just in case history needed to repeat itself—and forced her lips into a brave smile.

  “Now we should get some with each of us alone with Mel,” Ric said, cutting Mel neatly from the herd. It seemed Mister Charm-in-the-box had wound himself up for another try. His arm snaked around her waist and his hand started to slide down her tush. She grabbed the hand, turning herself—and him—using their combined momentum to flip him on his tush instead. She twisted his arm and lifted her foot to rest lightly on his chest, just shy of his throat.

  “You must have missed the part of the story where I don’t like to be touched, Captain Bramwell.” She applied just a bit of pressure to his throat, enough to make him gasp, then eased it up. “Do you really want another picture with me?”

  His eyes wide, Ric shook his head.

  “Good answer.” Mel stepped back from him. Ram and Gaby stepped forward to help him. The rest were hiding grins. Ric, to his credit, realized it and looked at Mel with a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. She’d penetrated his ego this time.

  “So that’s physics? Well, I was never that good at math, but I can tell time. Don’t want to miss the liberty bus.” With a half salute, he sauntered off toward the barracks, his dignity a bit tattered, but the patch work on his ego already under way—like the Borg. In his mind, resistance was futile.

  “I don’t think he likes you anymore,” Norm said.

  “That’s fair. I don’t like him either.” At least Ric was deep enough to get ticked off at her.

  Norm’s brows arched. “That was quick. It usually takes longer to hate him—some longer than others.” His gaze found Jack and bounced back to Mel.

  Mel almost said something, but the look on Jack’s face stopped her.

  “Was that necessary?” Jack’s voice was low but angry.

  “A guy puts his uninvited hand on my bu—tush, he’s lucky he’s still got it swinging from the end of his arm.” Mel tipped her head to the side. “I figured he might need it to help you fly the Fort—if he does help you? I mean, he’s not a total waste of space, is he?”

  Jack’s face whitened, but she couldn’t stop for Jack’s—or her—own good.

  “What’s your problem with Ric? He’s okay.”

  “Okay? Only if your definition of okay is slime of the universe.” She looked at the men clustered around them, clearly enjoying the deconstruction of Ric. “Am I right?”

  “She does have a point, Jack,” Norm said. “And he was trying to cut you out.”

  Jack opened his mouth, but Mel cut him off. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m your girl or not. He thought I was and he hit on me right in front of you.”

  “It’s just his way…”

  “Exactly my point. His way was to put his hand on my butt.” This time Mel didn’t censor herself. “And I’d like to know why you didn’t knock him on his? Or isn’t that your way?” It wasn’t a fair question. She hadn’t given him time to react, but he’d made her mad, and a temper was another one of those faults she should be working on instead of trying to fix his freaking mess in time.

  Jack stared at her for a long moment, then turned and stalked away. Temper faded as quickly as it rose. Mel looked at Norm. “I guess I was a bit harsh?”

  Norm shrugged. “The truth is harsh.” He looked at Jack’s retreating back for a moment and added, “Maybe he’ll even hear it this time.”

  Mel grinned in relief. Her grandpa was pretty cool. She looked at what was left of the crew. “Anyone else want to take a picture with me?”

  They all took a step back. Mel grinned at them. “Now you’re all being harsh.”

  * * * * *

  Jack stood between sets of blackout curtains, watching Mel ask questions of the men cluster
ed a respectful distance around her. They were the right questions, but something was wrong with the picture, something was missing. Then he got it. Another guy in the room got it, too.

  “How come you don’t take notes?” he asked her.

  Mel stared at him for what seemed a long time.

  “I have a photographic memory,” she said, then added, “That’s one reason the magazine let me come. They knew I wouldn’t exacerbate the paper shortage.”

  “Photographic memory?” Another guy looked puzzled.

  “I can’t forget,” Mel added.

  “Anything?” Someone else asked, looking a bit horrified at the idea.

  “A woman who can’t forget?” The original questioner shook his head. “Now that’s just wrong.”

  Jack grinned, but it didn’t last. Mel was a puzzle and he’d never been able to resist puzzles. Had she really been tweaking Ric with her comments about the nose cone art? When she’d first seen his vortex, she’d looked like she recognized it. And she’d called it a time machine. She’d made light of it, but he still felt uneasy. She was the first person who’d ever made a connection between the name of his plane and the vortex as an instrument of time travel.

  And then there was her altercation with Ric. Ric was still steaming about it, but the worst part was, she was right. Ric was a jerk. So why did he keep making excuses for him? When had they stopped being friends and why hadn’t Jack noticed that Ric was just a habit, and a bad one at that? Jack could handle being wrong, it was being stupid that was hard to swallow. Why had he let it go on so long? It was bad enough Jack had done it to himself, but it didn’t just affect him. Ric was a lousy pilot, and if Jack were injured, the crew would be at risk because Jack had put his loyalty to a jerk before their lives. He’d failed as a leader of his crew. And he should have knocked Ric down when he grabbed Mel. And all the other times he’d made a play for any girl Jack showed the slightest interest.

  He made sure the inside curtains were in place and slipped back outside. The blackout was more intense with all the cloud cover, and the air was thick and damp. He hunched his shoulders irritably, wanting a cigarette, but Mel had spoiled that, too. He pulled the pack out of his pocket, looked at it for a few seconds, and then crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash barrel.

  “Giving it up?” Mel asked.

  She was standing just outside the doorway. Could she see in the dark, too?

  “What?” he stalled. Already he wished the pack back.

  “They’re pretty addictive, besides turning your lungs, like, totally black. Like this night.” She looked up. “Blackout’s a pain, isn’t it?”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. “Yes, it is.” He wanted to tell her she was right, but the words stuck in his throat. His mom always said, climbing down was hard.

  “I’m sorry about…Captain Bramwell, Ja—Captain Hamilton—”

  “Jack. My friends call me Jack,” he cut in. Tension left, his throat came unstuck. “Gaby was right, he did look pretty—” He drew it out like Gaby “—flying through the air.”

  Mel’s chuckle sounded relieved. “I always like the landing the best. The look of surprise, when they realize a girl just took them down.”

  “Is it so hard being a girl?” Jack was rather glad she was one, but he didn’t have to live with it.

  “Despite the shoes, the bras, and clueless guys, it has its moments.”

  Jack almost choked. “Bras?” In his world, bras were mystical items to be removed, not instruments of torture—and generally not a topic of conversation between the sexes.

  “I can’t seem to help being indelicate. Sorry, but if you had to wear one—“

  Jack chuckled, pushing his hands into his pockets as the urge for a smoke swept him again. He hadn’t realized how much he used them to distract himself, or give himself something to do when—he stopped, then reluctantly let his brain finish the thought: while he decided if—or how—to make a move. There wasn’t really an “if” in there. Want was already there. He’d had her in his arms once when they danced. He’d held her hands and looked into her purple eyes. Now he wanted to kiss her more than he wanted a cig.

  “Would you like to—” He couldn’t ask her that, so he compromised “—to take a walk?”

  She hesitated long enough for his gut to clench, before saying, “Sure.”

  They turned together, walking, inevitably, toward the flight line. It was the only place to be alone. To distract himself from his preoccupation with kissing, he cast about for something else to talk about, but all he came up with was her flux capacitor. She was a reporter. What would she think of a pilot who not only believed in time travel, but knew how to make it happen? He couldn’t even explain how he knew. He just did. Oh, he had years of research ahead of him to make it happen, assuming he survived the war and he could find the energy source required to create his vortex, but he knew how to do it. It was all there, inside his head. Putting it on the nose cone of his plane had probably been a mistake, or perhaps it was an exercise in arrogance, an impulse he couldn’t resist, a sort of hint, if he did die, to some future kid with an inquiring mind. Some kid like he’d been, one who read H.G. Wells and saw beyond the story to the possibilities. Now he realized it would look odder not to ask.

  “So exactly what is a flux capacitor?”

  Mel chuckled, the sound rich and warm in the chill of the night. “It’s just a funny word I heard somewhere.”

  “I thought you can’t forget?”

  Mel was quiet for a moment, her boots hitting the ground twice as often as his did. He wished he could see her expression, but that wasn’t possible.

  “Not everything I remember comes with a definition, you know. Unless I get curious and do the research, it’s just a word I can’t forget. Which is not always a blessing. Boy, when I get a song stuck in my head—” Her teeth put a slice of white in her face, indicating a grin.

  He stopped in the shadow of a Fort’s wing, grabbed her arm and turned her to face him.

  “Ric was right about one thing,” he said, as much to himself as to her, “you are a mystery.”

  “While I hate to disillusion you any more about Ric,” Mel said, “that’s not exactly a news flash. Most women are a mystery to men—and the reverse.”

  He chuckled, the sound oddly husky in the quiet of night. He inhaled, trying to suck enough chilly air into his lungs to clear his head. While the air was frosty, it was also filled with her scent. It wasn’t perfume, in fact she smelled of standard issue soap, but beneath it was something that had to be Mel. Kind of crisp, like her, with a touch of humor and whatever it was that drew men to women and had since the beginning. Working with the chill, this only sharpened his longing to explore the mystery posed by her mouth.

  Mel lifted her chin, examining the horizon with the air of a connoisseur. “Cloudy again. I don’t expect there’ll be an alert tonight. I’ll bet it doesn’t clear before Sunday. That means drills, drills and more drills.”

  Jack didn’t care about drills. He slid his hands up the sides of her arms, stopping at her shoulders for any sign his touch was unwelcome. He hoped she didn’t toss him but was willing to take that chance. He didn’t mind taking flight if the reason were good enough.

  For a moment she stiffened. He might have missed it if he hadn’t been waiting for it, then she sighed and he felt her body relax, not against him, but not away from him either.

  In the deep dark, he could only sense where his target was. There was no radar to help him here. And, not unlike their missions, he missed the first time, his mouth landing on the curve of her cheek. Her skin was soft and cold and slightly sweet. He lingered there for a moment, just savoring the sensations of this first contact. Almost reluctantly, he cupped her face with his hands. His hands liked the feel of her skin as much as his mouth did. They spread across the soft silken surface and felt warmth bloom there. He tilted her head and moved in again. This time he was right on target.

  Her lips were supple and sw
eet. They welcomed him, though with a slight reserve. Despite that, he was inclined to linger, to find the passion he felt waiting to join them, to erase the reserve, but it didn’t seem wise, so he slowly, very slowly, backed off. He felt her sigh again and echoed it. He pulled her gently against him and just held her. It felt right. He felt at peace for the first time since he left home. Part of him knew it wouldn’t, it couldn’t last, but he was content to linger there for now. Even the promise of passion in the kiss they’d exchanged couldn’t lure him out. One thing he’d learned in the military, get your priorities right the first time. Passion was easy to find in war time, but peace, even if fleeting, was a gift.

  She didn’t speak and he was glad for it. He had no idea what she’d say. In the distance, he heard faint strains of music. The concert. The colonel.

  “You’re late for…the concert,” he murmured.

  “I said I’d been invited, not that I accepted.” Her voice was soft and lit with laughter. Something broke inside him. He hoped it wasn’t his heart.

  Now passion tried to struggle up from his gut. He fought it back. He needed to think and that wasn’t possible with his arms around her. His brain sent an order to step back. His body was slow to respond, but eventually the night chill flowed between them again.

  “What now, Jack?”

  He couldn’t see her face and her voice gave him no cues to follow. What did he expect from her? He was a pilot with the life expectancy of a bug. She had everything to lose and he cared too much to put her through that. He took another step back.

  “The concert?”

  Mel laughed softly. “As enticing as that sounds, I don’t think so. It’s been a really long day. I think I’ll just turn in.”

  Jack nodded but realized she probably couldn’t see it. “I’ll walk you to your quarters then. Don’t want any of the guys to get hurt.”

 

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