Dixie had wondered about the place when the limo dropped them off there, but after the fantastic cod fish filet done perfectly with a light salsa, she needed to once again learn to trust Bonnie and Duster.
Dixie sat at the paper-covered table and listened to Duster’s end of the conversation with Brice, smiling so hard that it hurt.
Bonnie was smiling as well.
“Pack a bag and meet us in an hour at the airport,” Duster said. “Private terminal area seven.”
Duster listened for a moment, then said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call the president and tell him you have joined us. He’ll get your classes covered. And I’ll send someone to pack your apartment and get it up to Boise tomorrow.”
Again Duster listened, then said, “Glad to have you with us. See you in an hour at the airport.”
With that Duster hung up and smiled at Dixie. “To say Brice is excited would be a giant understatement.”
Dixie actually bounced in her chair, clapping her hands. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Step one down,” Duster said, smiling at her. “Now it’s going to be up to you to ease him into the math and tell us when it’s time to head to the Monumental Lodge.”
Dixie nodded. “I’ll go slow, I promise.”
“That may be one of the hardest things you ever have to do,” Bonnie said, patting Dixie’s hand.
“You’re telling me,” Dixie said, laughing. “I wanted to jump Brice in front of the class when we walked in the door.”
“Way, way too much information,” Duster said, waving his hands as if trying to swat an annoying fly away.
Both Bonnie and Dixie laughed.
Dixie was far, far too excited to even try to finish the last of her wonderful fish lunch. Twenty minutes later they headed back out into the heat for the limo and the airport.
They were all three sitting in the plane when Brice walked out of the private terminal building and toward the plane. Dixie could feel her heart just about to beat out of her chest.
Brice looked as handsome as ever with his jeans and tee shirt and running shoes. He had a duffle bag slung over one shoulder and a laptop bag over the other.
Duster went out to meet him while Dixie and Bonnie stayed seated, sipping iced tea.
Duster brought Brice’s bag up into the plane and handed it to a steward named Louis whom Dixie had found very nice. He was a cowboy-looking guy who often wore cowboy boots and a hat. Louis had two kids and a wife in Boise and all he did was stand by to help Bonnie and Duster with anything they needed.
But clearly he loved his job and Bonnie and Duster. Dixie had met him a few times when he had run errands at her office.
Duster introduced Brice to Louis and then said, “Grab a seat.”
“Welcome aboard,” Bonnie said.
“Yes, welcome,” Dixie managed to say.
Brice took a seat facing Dixie and Bonnie and fumbled with his seat belt. He was directly facing Dixie. The four huge seats, one on each side of the aisle faced each other. So she was going to get to spend the entire flight facing the man she loved in another timeline.
Bonnie had been right, this was going to be the really hard part, not rushing anything.
“I know I’m going to wake up from this dream at any moment,” Brice said, “and be really bummed this isn’t real.”
“It’s real,” Louis said, smiling. “But Bonnie and Duster tend to get that feeling from people they hire. So can I get you something to drink?”
“Iced tea would be wonderful,” Brice said, laughing.
“We’ll be headed for Idaho in about five minutes,” Duster said, coming from the cockpit and sitting across the aisle, also facing Bonnie and Dixie.
“Never expected to be going back home this way,” Brice said, indicating the wonderful large private jet around them. “This is fantastic.”
“One of the perks with having more money than anyone can ever spend,” Duster said.
“We try to spend it, don’t we?” Bonnie asked.
Duster laughed and nodded as he took a sip from his iced tea.
Dixie managed to not say much as the plane taxied and then got into the air. Mostly she just listened to Bonnie and Duster talking with Brice about how much he liked teaching and what he had been working on.
At one point Brice said, “I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of theoretical work this last year, with getting used to the teaching and all.”
“What we are going to want you to do with us is all theoretical work,” Duster said. “We’ll give you a bunch of our work and we want you to spend day and night absorbing it. Dixie will help you get up to speed on anything you might need. She’s completely familiar with our work and has advanced it some in the last year.”
“Once Dixie thinks you are up to speed,” Bonnie said, “we’ll jump you into the deep end.”
“And then all four of us go from there,” Duster said.
Brice nodded and smiled at Dixie. “This is going to be fun.”
“That it will,” Dixie said, smiling back.
Both Bonnie and Duster laughed, so Dixie quickly asked a question she already knew of Brice and got him telling them about his work at Harvard.
Then he asked about her, and before she knew it, the plane was landing in Boise and Louis was taking Brice to a top hotel for the night.
And making arrangements with him to get his apartment packed and up here and his car driven up.
Dixie watched Brice go off with Louis and then turned to Bonnie and Duster. “Thank you both.”
Bonnie smiled. “You are more than welcome. But just don’t jump him before he gets settled.”
“Again, too much information,” Duster said, waving his hat at the two women and walking off toward the Cadillac in the parking area.
Dixie and Bonnie just laughed as they followed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
September 4th, 2016
Brice’s Timeline
BRICE WAS STUNNED how fast Dixie picked up on the work that Bonnie and Duster had done. She was the smartest person he had ever met and hungry to learn. She seemed to focus on the math day and night, asking Brice questions the next day in the office when there was something she seemed stuck on.
They had set her up an office in the same building as Brice, just down the hall from his, and hired a secretary to guard the reception area between them and make copies and run errands and a ton of other little stuff, including getting them lunch at times.
The two-story building actually was empty except for the two of them. Bonnie and Duster owned it. It looked out over the Boise River from a small ledge just above the River Walk. The office was surrounded by cottonwood trees and even in the heat of the summer, the grass area around the office seemed to stay cool. In the evenings they often sat on the patio looking at the river and talking math.
Dixie had made her office as comfortable as his, with a couch, a huge desk, two large computers, and more whiteboards than anything else on the walls.
Somehow, even with the attraction, they had managed to not even kiss in almost two months. Brice wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but he was willing to be very patient. And as the summer wore on and Dixie got more and more familiar with the mathematics of what Bonnie and Duster had done, they became closer and closer as friends.
They shared the math, which was what they had shared when they met the first time in the other timeline. Now they were building that same connection in this timeline.
Over lunches and a few dinners, he had learned that she hadn’t dated anyone at CalTech. And he had not managed to slip and say anything about her he couldn’t have known from a simple hiring search.
Even though they were not a couple, he had enjoyed the two months more than he wanted to admit. And he had kept Bonnie and Duster completely up to speed, finally suggesting it was time for them to head to the lodge in the mountains.
That next morning they had picked up Dixie at six in the morning while it was still dark and headed ou
t of town, going north into the Central Idaho Mountains.
He and Dixie were in the back seat and Duster and Bonnie were in the front with Duster driving as normal.
Both Brice and Dixie napped for the first hour of the drive and Brice managed to wake up some with coffee at a wonderful little café in Cascade, Idaho.
Then four hours later they were in the huge Monumental Summit Lodge. It was as stunning as Brice remembered it from a few months earlier.
They all checked into their rooms and met for dinner in the huge, high-ceilinged dining room.
“So this is the deep end?” Dixie had asked over dinner. “This place is something to behold. And in stunning condition considering how bad the weather must be up here in the winter.”
“We help with the upkeep some,” Bonnie said, smiling. “We know the owners.”
“Do you own this place as well?” Dixie asked.
Brice had never thought to ask them that.
“Nope,” Duster said. “But we have a special connection to it.”
“We’ll tell you tomorrow,” Duster said.
Brice looked at them. “How about we tell her at breakfast tomorrow right here,” he said.
“Don’t want to head down that road again into the valley?” Duster asked, laughing.
“Since Dixie is from Phoenix and not really familiar with this area, I think right here is fine.”
Bonnie nodded and Duster shrugged.
“This is all sounding so suspicious,” Dixie said.
“Trust me,” Brice said, “I just saved you a terrifying drive down a cliff face.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, looking puzzled.
“Just remember the math you’ve been going over,” Brice said, “and it will all make sense tomorrow.”
Both Bonnie and Duster nodded and then Bonnie changed the subject, talking about the lodge and some other projects for the rest of dinner.
After dinner Brice suggested that he and Dixie go out on to the deck to sit and have a dinner drink.
“Remember, breakfast at six,” Duster said as Brice and Dixie walked toward the deck to watch the colors of the sunset color the mountains below the lodge.
They sat in two chairs, both facing the Monumental Valley and sipping on their dinner wine. The summer air had an evening bite to it and smelled of warm pine needles. Brice flat loved being in the mountains like this, and if he had his way over the next few years, he would spend more and more time in them, maybe in the past for a lot of it.
“Down there is the lake covering the old ghost town that you talked about?” Dixie asked.
“It is,” Brice said. “Worth seeing, but other things are more important tomorrow.”
“What does this have to do with this lodge and the math I’ve been going over?” Dixie asked, turning to face him, a worried look in her eyes.
“A lot,” Brice said. “And it’s not bad stuff, I promise. But I want Bonnie and Duster to explain it to you as they explained it to me about two months ago.”
“So you’ve sat here before?” Dixie asked.
“I have,” Brice said. “But alone, not with such wonderful company.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for all the help the last two months.”
“It honestly has been my pleasure,” he said. “And we’re just getting started.”
“It feels that way to me as well,” Dixie said. “In more ways than just the job and the math.”
He looked into her wonderful brown eyes and he knew, he could see, she was starting to care for him. And more than anything else he wanted to just reach over and kiss her.
But he didn’t.
After a moment she looked at him and sighed and then stood. “Is there a reason you won’t kiss me? I know you want to and I want you to, you have to know that. Is there some dumb job reason or something?”
He laughed. “No job reason,” he said.
He stood and moved over and bent down and kissed her.
And that felt better than he had remembered. It was wonderful as the cool night mountain air swirled over them.
She put her arms around him and held him against her.
Finally they came up for air.
“Now that was better than I had imagined,” she said.
He almost said And better than I remembered but stopped himself just in time.
“That was wonderful,” he said.
And he kissed her again.
Then when they came up for air the second time, she took him by the hand and pulled him toward the staircase up to their rooms.
“Where are we headed?” he asked, laughing.
“To do something I wanted to do the first time I saw you walk into my classroom.”
“Lead on, professor,” he said, laughing.
CHAPTER FORTY
September 5th, 2016
Dixie’s Timeline
DIXIE AWOKE IN the wonderful feather bed and rolled over and kissed Brice softly on the lips. The man was more handsome than any man she had ever met and she had wanted to kiss him for the last two months, but had managed to just keep her hands to herself and let him work.
But now, up here at the big lodge, while sitting on the big deck, he had finally asked her why she hadn’t kissed him, if it was a job rule that he didn’t know about with Bonnie and Duster.
She had laughed and kissed him and they had ended up making wonderful love in the big featherbed in her room.
But now they needed to head to breakfast, to shock Brice with the reality of the math, and then take him to the crystal cavern.
“That’s nice,” he said as she kissed him softly to wake him up just as she used to do months earlier in Boise. He had liked it then as well.
After one long kiss, she pushed back a little and said, “Time for breakfast, professor. But even with what Bonnie and Duster tell you this morning, this right here is real.”
She kissed him again before he could ask a question, then she headed for her shower, very aware that he was watching her walk naked away in front of him.
“See you downstairs,” she said, turning and giving him a big smile, then moving on into the bathroom.
She half expected him to join her in the shower, but he didn’t. And she beat him to the breakfast table in the big dining room by only a minute.
Bonnie and Duster were already there, sipping orange juice.
Dixie smiled at Bonnie and winked and Bonnie damn near fell out of her chair laughing.
“Is this something I need to know about?” Duster asked.
Bonnie kissed her husband on the cheek and said simply, “No, dear.”
Bonnie took a deep breath and tried to focus on eating her wonderful breakfast of ham and eggs and homemade bread. They were almost done when finally Brice pushed his mostly empty plate away. “All right, the suspense is killing me. What’s up?”
Dixie couldn’t eat another bite. Somehow, in Brice’s timeline Bonnie and Duster had talked him into this. But the idea of losing him now scared her more than she wanted to think about.
“You like this lodge?” Duster asked, taking one last bite of his ham before also pushing his plate forward.
“I love it,” Brice said, nodding. “I wouldn’t mind going down to see the old town under the water, but I know work comes first, if staying in this wonderful old lodge can be called work.”
“We built it,” Duster said.
Brice frowned.
“It can’t be possible,” Bonnie said. “We know, but we actually built this, paid to have it designed and furnished in 1903 in another timeline.”
“Okay,” Brice said. “So what’s the joke?”
“Math is never a joke,” Duster said. “You’ve been going over all the math since we hired you. You know mathematically that other timelines are probable.”
“Knowing mathematically and going to the alternate timelines are two very different things,” Brice said, clearly getting angry.
Dixie forced herself to remain silent, but h
er stomach was twisting up with worry.
“Very, very true,” Bonnie said. “But didn’t your work on math clearly show you the possibility of time having a physical nexus in each universe that in a form connects time and energy and matter together.”
“It did,” Brice said. Then he looked at Duster and Bonnie and then at Dixie, who just sat staring into his wonderful, and clearly panicked, eyes.
After a moment he asked softly, “Are you telling me you found the nexus between timelines?”
“We’d like to show it to you,” Duster said, “if you are up for an adventure today.”
Brice turned and looked at Dixie. “And you believe all this?”
“I’ve stood in the nexus,” Dixie said. “It is a crystal cave that is more stunning than anything that can be described in beauty. And more infinite than any of our calculations can imagine.”
“And you went to another timeline?” Brice asked.
“Twice so far,” she said, nodding. “One short, one for a few months.”
She did not tell him that she had met him on that trip. Duster and Bonnie had figured that telling him about their history would be up to her, and better done on a trip into the past. She had agreed.
“You know this is impossible to believe,” Brice said, pushing back slightly from the table.
“For the moment,” Duster said, “trust the math, trust the three of us, and let us show you the cave. It will make a lot more sense when you see it, both mentally and mathematically.”
Brice took a deep breath, then looked at Dixie.
“Trust us,” Dixie said, using her most convincing look. She didn’t want to beg Brice, but if she had to, she would. She was that much in love with him.
“All right,” Brice said, after a moment. “Show me this physical proof of the math. Where is it?”
“A drive from here,” Duster said, smiling and standing. “Get your stuff and I’ll check us out.”
Bonnie stood and smiled at Brice. “Remember who we are and remember the math. And if nothing else, trust Dixie.”
With that she moved to follow Duster.
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