Ric gave an unconvincing laugh. “What’s your beef with me anyway?” His gaze did an insolent survey of Mel’s assets. “Did I forget we spent some time together?”
The nurse pressed against him tittered, the sound both silly and painfully high pitched.
Mel tried to look bored, but she had a feeling her eye twitched. “Well, I know you’re completely forgettable, but I doubt we spent any time together. You’re just a boy. I prefer my men to, well, be men.”
It took him a minute to sort through this. He scowled. Mel wasn’t sure who looked more put out, him or his nurse. She leaned close to the girl. “And just so you know, honey, if he didn’t care what I thought, he wouldn’t be standing here trying to taunt me. Think about it.”
She did. So did Ric. Her tiny back straightened. She pushed Ric away. “Well!” She stalked off, her incredibly high heels hitting the floor like infuriated mallets.
“How does she do that?” Mel muttered.
“What?” Norm’s voice was thick with unexpressed laughter.
“The heels. It’s like they aren’t even there.”
“You have a real thing about shoes, don’t you?” Ram said.
“Until you’ve walked a mile in these shoes, you’re not entitled to comment,” Mel said, softening the words with a grin.
Ric glared at Mel, then turned and followed his date. “Cissy! Baby!”
“Got ‘em both,” Ram said, admiringly. “Good shooting, ma’am.”
“I try to be an equal opportunity offender, whenever possible,” Mel said and got blank looks from both of them. It made for a tough room, when all her jokes were time sensitive. She looked around. “So…”
And then she saw Jack. He was wearing his dress uniform and…dang. She actually felt a bit light-headed and her heart was pounding like it was going to jump out of her chest and flop at his feet. She was sort of aware that both Norm and Ram were deriving considerable amusement from her predicament, but this didn’t help her get over it.
“He’s pretty, ain’t he?” Norm said, provocatively.
Enough to eat, she thought, but was wise enough not to share. Jack had that look in his eyes again, the one that said he was still trying to figure her out. He didn’t know how much she wished she could help him. She shivered as the chill of her isolation from the here, from the friendly camaraderie surrounding, swept over her. She was out of her time. It was a fact. And there was nothing she could do that would close the distance between her and Jack. Not here and not in the future. It just wasn’t meant to be. If she kept repeating this, maybe she could quit hankering for something she couldn’t have.
More than anything she wanted to go back to her room and hide as much of her head as would fit under her lame excuse for a pillow. She looked at her dead man’s watch. Ten o’clock. In an hour the alert would come. The party would be over. Boy, would it be over.
Jack joined them as the band made warming up sounds indicating their break was concluding. Mel flexed her toes, which had curled in her shoes, and not just from pain.
“My dance, I think,” Jack said, holding out his hand. They were playing Norm and Gran’s “song” Faithful Forever.
Mel eyed his attractive digits for a moment before taking his hand. His fingers closed over hers, pulling her back into the moment. It was an illusion, but she didn’t care. Even her feet seemed resigned to their fate as his other hand settled on her waist. She hoped he didn’t feel the slight shiver that spread out from the spot, before dancing down her spine.
Jack was a good, though conservative dancer, something Mel was grateful for. The words of the song slipped into her brain, mingling with her longing for Jack to have faith in her, as they moved around a small portion of the floor in silence. Jack didn’t talk and Mel didn’t know what to say. Around them, like leaves in a whirlwind, chatter rose in waves. It was bright and brittle and brave.
Someone tapped Jack’s shoulder, separating them. Mel saw him dancing with some of the local women, some nurses, working his way toward her as the clock ticked closer and closer to eleven, when they’d all turn into pumpkins.
In a brief pause between songs, Mel found herself thinking about one of her favorite songs, I Will Remember You. Just like the song, the past wasn’t letting her choose. And though he’d given her light, he couldn’t give her love. She hoped he would remember. She hoped she’d remember him. Someone should.
As I’ll Never Love Again started, Jack waited for her. She was grateful for his steadying hand, even though he was the one making her knees wobbly. Luckily her ankles wobbled opposite her knees, giving the impression she was steady on her pins.
She glanced at her watch as Jack once again took her in his arms. The last dance. The music felt like it kept time with the clock and their steps got slower and slower and slower until Jack paused as an aide approached the Colonel. He signaled for the music to stop, but Jack already knew. He looked down at Mel.
“We’re being alerted.”
Mel nodded.
“Party’s over.”
“Yes.”
“You could still change your mind.”
Mel looked at him without answering.
“I’ve been wondering what mission you could have worth risking your life for and I just can’t come up with anything that makes any sense.”
“No?” Mel looked at him. There was a look on his face she hadn’t seen before.
“When you rule out the possible…” He hesitated for a moment. “When were you born, Mel? What year?”
Mel’s eyes widened. Did he actually suspect she was a time traveler? “Excuse me?” Panic could be mistaken for outrage, thank goodness, providing stall time while she tried to do the math. And she’d always had trouble with one’s and seven’s. Forty-two minus twenty-seven? That was almost thirty years, which would put it in the teen’s, wouldn’t it? Nineteen-fourteen?
“You told Ric you were twenty-seven. So that would make you born in…”
“Nineteen…fourteen.” She tried to look confident. Why did her super memory have trouble with simple adding and subtracting? “I was born in nineteen-fourteen.” Jeeze-Louise that seemed old. She might be older than her own grandmother. She knew she was older than Norm, even though technically she was actually about forty years younger. She hadn’t done the math on that either, mostly because she didn’t want to know. “What year were you born?”
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have to. “Nineteen-sixteen.”
“So I’m older than you.” Even she could do that math. “Is that a problem for you?”
“No. That’s not my problem.”
Mel stared at him, debating the wisdom of asking the obvious, when she already knew, but Colonel Wray rescued her.
“Sorry to break things up, Captain, but you are both flying in the morning.”
Jack stepped back. “Yes, sir.”
The colonel looked at Mel. “My aide is standing by to drive you back to your quarters, young lady.”
Mel looked in the direction he’d indicated and saw the young man standing nervously at the door, cap in hand.
“Oh.”
“Try not to break him,” the Colonel said, giving a grimace that might have been a smile.
“Sir, if I might have one minute—“ Jack began.
“I’ll just say goodnight and let you have your minute, sir and sir.” Mel smiled blandly at Jack. She started away from them and realized her feet had had it. She bent and slipped off her shoes, picked them up and started forward again. Her feet flattened out against the floor. They cramped a bit, resisting straightening as vigorously as they’d resisted the heels, but it was still an improvement. Each step got easier. Maybe her walk wasn’t as sexy or hippy, but at least it was almost her walk again.
Mel collected her coat and headed outside. The cold tarmac felt wonderful against the soles of her aching feet. She stopped, letting the cold do its healing thing.
“The jeep is this way, ma’am,” her escort said, bashfully.
“Yes, ma’am.” He tried to salute, but couldn’t with a shoe in each hand. Finally he pointed toward the jeep with one of the shoes.
The cold was starting to get intense, so Mel legged it to the jeep, hopping in and pulling her legs up under the coat for warmth—though careful to make sure she didn’t semi-moon anyone in the process. Her escort looked at the shoes uncertainly. Mel took pity on him, retrieved them and tossed them over her shoulder. There was a sort of exclamation and she looked back. Jack was holding one. And a proper Prince Charming, he looked, too. As they pulled away, Mel didn’t face forward until he was lost in the blackout darkness of the night. She sighed. She’d never wanted to be Cinderella until now.
* * * * *
If you take away the possible…
He’d never met any woman like Mel, but that was not the scientific proof he’d need to believe she was from…somewhere else. There was one other possibility he hadn’t considered. What if he hadn’t been as cagey as he thought he was? What if Mel were part of an elaborate joke dreamed up by his ever loving crew?
It wasn’t that he couldn’t believe Mel was a time traveler. Jack’s brain wrapped reluctantly around this thought. If he really believed in time travel, then it was reasonable to expect his future self to send someone back in time. What wasn’t reasonable was to believe that he’d send a woman to do it. The world couldn’t have changed that much.
But even if he assumed the world had changed, and he had chosen Mel, then why didn’t she tell him? And what if he had a good reason for her not to tell him about himself? He gave himself a slight shake. It was making his head ache to think about it. He had to face a hard truth. Maybe the only reason he wanted to believe Mel was out of her time was it would mean he survived—which made his conclusions suspect by reason of bias. He rubbed his face and sighed. And it didn’t mean that tomorrow was going to go well.
Earlier he’d wished they could get on with the job, but now he wished for more time.
“Do you think we’ll go this time?” Norm asked.
Jack lifted his head. The sky above had cleared enough to give glimpses of the distant stars. “Yeah, we’re going.”
As he and Norm walked toward their quarters, Jack was quiet, his mind worrying at the puzzle that was Mel.
One moment it seemed logical to wonder how far back in time she’d come from and the next to wonder if he should ground himself and ask to be committed. What really was his evidence? She walked and talked a bit different. A few almost slips of the tongue and eyes that seemed to know things about him and others. What he knew wouldn’t stand up in court—or mean anything in a lab. It was the illogical that made it seem…logical to believe the impossible. Her so-called mission was the biggest incongruity. If the plan was something his future self had cooked up…would cook up…then he was crazy—or he would be. And if it was a joke? They’d be sorry.
“You all right, Jack?” Norm’s voice broke into his confused thoughts.
It was a relief to be pulled out of the mental morass.
“I’m fine, Norm. Get some rest.”
Norm nodded and left him, his footsteps fading into the deep darkness.
“You going to tell me what’s eating you?” Ric asked, pushing away from a wall in the shadows and tossing away his cigarette.
Jack sighed. It would be easier to smooth things over. He was tired. They had to fly in the morning. “Do we have to do this tonight? We’ve been alerted.”
“We’re friends, Jack. Why you letting that…” He hesitated “…reporter mess up our friendship? Women come and go, Jack, but friends….” He hesitated again and then looped an arm around Jack’s shoulder. “Best friends, Jack. Right?”
Jack eased Ric’s arm off his shoulder. “Down here, we’re friends, Ric.” It was a compromise. If they made it back tomorrow, he’d talk the colonel about changing Ric out of their crew. “Up there, we’re officers with a job to do.” He grabbed Ric’s shoulders, frustrated at the wasted potential that was Ric. “This is serious. Figure it out before you get us all killed.”
Jack stepped back, facing Ric, hoping for something, though he wasn’t sure what, when it was clear Ric had had a few tonight.
“You’ve changed, Jack.” It wasn’t a compliment.
“And you haven’t changed enough. Go to bed.”
Jack turned away from him, striding quickly off into the dark. He couldn’t face their shared quarters until he was sure Ric was out. The night was cold, the sky clearer than it had been for a long time. There were people around. He could hear murmured conversations and footsteps crunching as the camp shut down. Soft laughter, doors shutting, the firing of a motor car in the distance as the locals headed home, but with the black out, he was essentially alone. He couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see him.
He wanted a smoke bad. He wanted to talk to Mel. But what would he say? Are you from the future? Did I send you here? Why? Why would I do that? Why would I send you? Or are you a joke and couldn’t you call it off now that we’re, well, almost friends? Only a joke didn’t explain how she had Washington-level approval to fly with them. Unless the joke was an add-on and separate from that?
He really hated to think she would be party to a cheap joke. She couldn’t know how much it mattered to him, but he still felt she should. Not fair, but no one said he had to be fair in his thoughts.
The night gave him back no answers or solutions, or if it did, he wasn’t hearing anything but the wind moving across the base, stirring things unseen to creak or groan. Slowly he made his way to The Time Machine. He leaned against the fuselage. It was crazy to be out. It was cold, he was tired and he had to fly in a few hours. But he didn’t move, just huddled deeper in his coat, his hands dug into the pockets looking for warmth they wouldn’t find.
After a bit he realized the footsteps crunching against the tarmac were coming closer, not moving away. After a while, he saw a shadowy figure. Whoever it was, they were huddled in a coat in much the same way as Jack. He didn’t move, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t see him there. They stopped up by the nose and he knew, he didn’t know how, that it was Mel.
“What are you doing out here?”
She didn’t seem surprised either. “I couldn’t sleep.” She walked along the side of the plane until she was close enough that they could sort of see each other.
“Nervous about tomorrow?”
“About flying into enemy territory and getting shot at? Well, yeah.”
Her tone made him smile. “No one would think less of you if you changed your mind.”
A pause. “I would.” He heard her sigh. “I double dared myself. I hate it when I do that.”
Jack sensed a story—or several. “Sounds like you should stop.”
“That’s the plan—after this one.”
This sounded more and more like a set-up. Jack felt disappointed when he should be relieved. A joke meant he wasn’t crazy.
She stamped her feet. “You’re freaking crazy to be out here in the cold, Jack. Jeeze.”
“If I’m crazy to be out here, what does that make you?”
“I thought we’d already established that I’m freaking crazy.”
“If I had any doubts, you’ve managed to erase them.” Jack could hear the smile in her voice. He couldn’t help asking, “Freaking?”
“Fricking? Frigging? They’re all less…objectionable than the original.”
“I guess they are.” He should ask her where she picked them up, but he wished he could do it where he could see her face, see her eyes. The silence stretched out, oddly companionable as he tried to decide if he really wanted to know. Maybe it was better not to know.
“Now what’s your problem?”
She did have an uncanny knack for mind-reading. But since she asked….
“Did the guys put you up to this? What I can’t figure out is how you persuaded the Colonel to let you fly? Unless that wasn’t part of th
e joke? You’re just pulling my chain as an extra thrill?” The questions came out more hostile than he’d planned.
She was quiet for a moment. He felt her surprise.
“Joke? I think I missed a beat somewhere?”
Jack hesitated. If she wouldn’t come clean, was he prepared to admit that he’d considered her a time traveler—even if not that seriously?
“I think you know what I mean. Or are you going to try to convince me that you’ve never met any of my crew before?”
“I have the odd feeling that no matter what I say, you won’t believe me.” He thought she sighed, but it might have been the wind. “I wish…”
Mel straightened now, turning to face him. He could feel her gaze on him, but the darkness and her bulky clothes, defeated his efforts to see her eyes. The silence seemed to stretch long, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He’d vented and felt better, no matter what she said now.
“What do you wish?” His voice was low and he wondered if she could hear him.
“I wish that you could trust me. I wish you could know that I’m not your enemy. They’re out there somewhere, but tonight, you’re with a friend.”
It wasn’t about trust, he wanted to tell her, well, maybe it was. He didn’t know anymore. Like her, he just wished for something more.
“I expect it will be a rough one tomorrow.”
He didn’t want to, but he accepted the change of subject. He didn’t blame her for the distance in her voice either, since he hadn’t responded.
“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. “We should turn in.”
Mel nodded. “Jack, would you do something for me?”
“If I can.” He felt his gut tighten.
“Tomorrow…just don’t…worry about me. I know it’s probably against your programming, but your crew, your mission has to come first. I’ll be fine. My Gran used to say I’m luckier than I deserve to be.”
It seemed straightforward, but there was just enough ambiguity to make him wonder if she knew something. She sounded so sure.
“I don’t have much choice about that, Mel,” he finally said. He hoped her Gran was right. They could all use a bit of that luck. “You should turn in.”
Out of Time Page 12
