Times Change

by Nora Roberts

  As clear as a bell, it came from the circle of metal in her hand. He was reciting equations, as far as she could tell. Neither the numbers nor the terms meant anything to her. But the fact that they were emitted by the little disk opened up new realms of possibility.

  He was a spy. Probably for the other side. Whatever the other side was. And from his behavior it was natural to assume that he was an unbalanced spy. Imagination had never been Sunny’s weak point. She could see it all perfectly.

  He had been captured. Whatever techniques had been used to pull information from him had unhinged his mind. Cal had covered for him, making up a story about his brother being an astrophysicist, too deep in research to travel to the West Coast, when in reality he had been in some sort of federal institution. And now he’d escaped.

  Sunny pushed buttons at random until Jacob’s voice clicked off. She would have to treat him carefully. Whatever her personal feelings, he was family. She’d have to make absolutely certain he was a dangerous lunatic before she did anything about it.

  ***

  A stupid, often annoying person. Jacob scowled at the puff of smoke he saw through the last line of trees. He didn’t care for the definition of jerk. Being called annoying didn’t bother him in the least. But stupid did. He would not tolerate some skinny woman who considered the combustion engine the height of technology calling him stupid.

  He’d gotten quite a bit done overnight. His ship was well camouflaged, and his records had been brought up to date. Including his infuriating encounter with Sunbeam Stone. It hadn’t been until sunrise that he’d remembered his flight bag.

  If she hadn’t made him lose his temper, he would never have left it behind. Not that it contained anything valuable. It was the principle of the thing. He was not absentminded by nature, and he only forgot minor details when his mind was absorbed with larger ones.

  And he resented thinking of her. She had popped into his mind on and off as he’d worked through the night. A constant annoyance—like an itch on the shoulder blade that was just out of reach. How she’d crouched, ready to fight, chin up, body braced. How that body had felt under his, tensed, challenging. How her hair glowed, like her name.

  Furious, he shook his head, as if to dislodge her from his thoughts. He didn’t have time for women. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate them, but there was a time for pleasure. This wasn’t it. And if it was pleasure he wanted, Sunbeam Stone was not where he should look for it.

  The more he thought about where he was, when he was, the more he was certain that Cal needed to be brought to his senses and taken home.

  Some sort of space fever, Jacob decided. His brother had suffered a shock, and the woman—as some women had throughout time—had taken advantage of him. When he approached Cal logically, they would get into the ship and go home.

  In the meantime, he would take the opportunity to study and record at least this small section of the world.

  At the edge of the forest, he paused. It was colder today, and he sincerely regretted the lack of warmer clothing. Gray clouds, plump with snow, had drifted in to cover the sun. In the gloomy light he watched Sunny lifting logs from the woodpile at the rear of the cabin. She was singing in a powerfully erotic voice about a man who had gotten away. She didn’t hear his approach, and she continued to sing and stack wood in her arms.

  “Excuse me.”

  With a yelp, she jumped back, sending the split logs flying. One landed hard on her booted foot, and she swore roundly and hopped up and down. “Damn it! Damn, damn, damn! What’s wrong with you?” Clasping her wounded foot with one hand, she braced the other on the cabin wall.

  “Nothing.” He couldn’t help the grin. “I think there’s something wrong with you. Does it hurt?”

  “No, it feels great. I live for pain.” She gritted her teeth as she set her foot gingerly back on the ground. “Where did you come from?”

  “Philadelphia.” She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, you mean now?” With a jerk of his thumb, he said, “That way.” He paused to glance at the logs scattered in the snow. “Want some help?”

  “No.” Favoring her foot, she crouched down to retrieve the logs. All the while, she watched him carefully, braced for any move he might make. “Do you know why I’m here, Hornblower? For peace and solitude.” She blew the hair out of her eyes as she looked up at him. “Do you understand the concepts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Turning, she limped back into the cabin, letting the door slam shut behind her. After dumping the logs in the woodbox, she came back to the kitchen. And swore. “What now?”

  “I left my bag.” He sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

  With a sound of disgust, she darted to the toaster, banging on it until the smoking, blackened bread popped up. “This stupid thing sticks.”

  To get a better look at the fascinating little device, he leaned over her shoulder. “Doesn’t look appetizing.”

  “It’s fine.” To prove it, she bit into the toast.

  Her scent drifted to him over the smoke. His instant reaction annoyed him, but pride had him resisting the instinctive move away. “Are you always so stubborn?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so unfriendly?”

  “No.”

  She turned and was immediately made aware of the miscalculation. He didn’t move aside, as she had expected. Instead, he leaned forward, resting his palms against the counter and casually caging her between his arms. There was nothing she detested more than being outmaneuvered.

  “Back off, Hornblower.”

  “No.” He did shift, but closer. As on their first meeting, their thighs rubbed, but there was nothing loverlike in the connection. “You interest me, Sunbeam.”

  “Sunny,” she said automatically. “Don’t call me Sunbeam.”

  “You interest me,” he repeated. “Do you consider yourself an average woman of your time?”

  Baffled, she shook her head. “What kind of a question is that?”

  She had dozens of shades in her hair, from pale white to dark honey. He was sorry he had noticed. “One that requires a simple answer. Do you?”

  “No. No one likes to be considered average. Now would you—”

  “You’re beautiful.” His gaze skimmed over her face, deliberately, a test of himself and his endurance. “But that’s merely physical. What do you think separates you from the average?”

  “What are you doing, a thesis?” She lifted a hand to shove him away and met the solid wall of his chest. She could feel his heartbeat there, slow and steady.

  “More or less.” He smiled. He was disturbing her at a very basic level, and he found it intensely satisfying.

  It was his eyes, Sunny thought. Even if the man was unhinged, he had the most incredibly hypnotic eyes. “I thought you dealt with planets and stars, not with people.”

  “People live on planets.”

  “At least this one.”

  He smiled again. “At least. You could consider this a personal interest.”

  She wanted to shift but realized that would only make the contact more intimate. Cursing him, she kept her voice and her gaze level. “I don’t want your personal interest, Jacob.”

  “J.T.” He felt the quick tremor from her body into his. “The family usually calls me J.T.”

  “All right.” She spoke slowly, all too aware that her brain had turned to mush. What she needed was some distance. “How about you get out of my way, J.T., and I put together some breakfast?”

  If she didn’t stop nibbling on her lip, he was going to have to stop her in the most effective way he knew. He hadn’t realized that such a small, nervous habit could be seductive. “Is that an invitation?”

  Her tongue slipped out to nurse her lip. “Sure.”

  He leaned closer, enjoying the way her eyes widened, darkened, steadied. It wasn’t easy to resist. He was known for his brilliance, his tenacity, his temper. But not for his control. And he wanted to kiss her, not scientifically, not ex
perimentally. Ruthlessly.

  “Toast!” he murmured.

  She let out a quick puff of air. “Froot Loops. They’re great. My favorite.”

  He eased back, much more for his sake than for hers. If he was going to spend the next few weeks around her, he was going to have to work on that control. Because he had a plan.

  “I could use some breakfast.”

  “Fine.” Telling herself it was a change of strategy, not a retreat, she darted across the kitchen to pluck two bowls from the cupboard. With those and a colorful box in hand, she walked to the table. “We could never have these as kids. My mother was—is—a health fiend. Her idea of cold cereal is hunks of roots and tree bark.”

  “Why would she choose to eat tree bark?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Sunny grabbed the milk from the fridge, then dumped it over the piles of colorful circles. “Anyway, ever since I moved out I’ve been on a binge of junk food. I figure since I ate healthy for the first twenty years I can poison myself for the next twenty.”

  “Poison,” he repeated, giving the cereal a dubious look.

  “To the health fiend, sugar’s poison. Dig in,” she added, offering him a spoon. “Burnt toast and cold cereal are my specialties.” She smiled, charmingly. She, too, had a plan.

  Because he wouldn’t have put it past her to poison him, he waited until she had begun to eat before he sampled the cereal. Soggy candy, he decided. And fairly appealing. He considered the informal meal a good start if he wanted to ingratiate himself with her enough to pump her for. information.

  It was obvious that Cal had told no one except Libby about where—and when—he had come from. Jacob gave him full marks for that. It was better all around if the matter was kept quiet. The repercussions would be . . . well, he had yet to calculate them. But Sunny might not have been far off when she had said that Cal’s marrying her sister could change the course of history.

  So he would play the game close, and cautious, and use the situation to his advantage. Use her to his advantage, he thought with only a twinge of guilt.

  He intended to pick her brain, about her family, her sister in particular, her impressions of Cal. And he wanted her firsthand account of life in the twentieth century. With a little luck, he might be able to convince her to guide him into the nearest city, where he could add to his data.

  It wouldn’t do to lose her temper with him, Sunny thought. If she wanted to find out exactly who and what he was, she would have to employ more tact. It wasn’t her strong point, but she could learn. She was as completely alone with him as it was possible to be. And, since she had no intention of packing up and leaving, she would just have to exercise some caution and some diplomacy. Particularly if he was as loony as she believed.

  It was too bad that he was crazy, she thought, smiling at him. Anyone that attractive, that blatantly sexy, deserved a solid, working brain. Maybe it was only a temporary mental breakdown.

  “So.” She tapped her spoon against the side of her bowl. “What do you think of Oregon so far?”

  “It’s very big—and underpopulated.”

  “That’s how we like it.” She let the lull drag out. “Did you fly into Portland?”

  He wavered between a lie and the truth. “No, my transportation brought me a bit closer. Do you live here with Cal and your sister?”

  “No. I have a place in Portland, but I’m thinking of giving it up.”

  “To what?”

  “Just giving it up.” She shot him a puzzled look, then shrugged. “Actually, I’m toying with the idea of going east for a while. New York.”

  “To do what?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He set his spoon aside. “You have no work?”

  Automatically her shoulders squared. “I’m in between jobs. I recently resigned from a managerial position in retail.” She’d been fired from her job as assistant manager of the lingerie department of a mid-level department store. “I’m considering going back to school for a law degree.”

  “Law?” His eyes softened. There was something so appealing about the look that she nearly smiled at him and meant it. “My mother is in law.”

  “Really? I don’t think Cal mentioned it. What kind of law does she practice?”

  Because he thought it would be a bit difficult to explain his mother’s position, he asked, “What kind did you have in mind?”

  “I’m leaning toward criminal law.” She started to elaborate, then stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk about herself but about him. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that my sister should be a scientist and Cal’s brother should be one? Just what does an astrophysicist do?”

  “Theorizes. Experiments.”

  “About stuff like interplanetary travel?” She tried not to smirk but didn’t quite succeed. “You don’t really believe all that stuff—like people flying off to Venus the way they fly to Cleveland?”

  It was fortunate he was a cool hand at poker. His face remained bland as he continued to eat. “Yes.”

  She laughed indulgently. “I guess you have to, but isn’t it frustrating to go into all that knowing that even if it becomes possible it won’t happen in your lifetime?”

  “Time’s relative. In the early part of this century a flight to the moon was considered implausible. But it has been done.” Clumsily, he thought, but it had been done. “In the next century man goes to Mars and beyond.”

  “Maybe.” She got up to take two bottles of soda from the refrigerator. “But it would be hard for me to devote my life to something I’d never see happen.” As Jacob watched in fascination, she took a small metal object out of a drawer, applied it like a lever to the top of each bottle and dislodged the caps. “I guess I like to see results, and see them now,” she admitted as she set the first bottle in front of him. “Instant gratification. Which is why I’m twenty-three and between jobs.”

  The bottle was glass, Jacob mused. The same kind she had tried to strike him with the afternoon before. Lifting it, he sipped. He was pleasantly surprised by the familiar taste. He enjoyed the same soft drink at home, though it wasn’t his habit to drink it for breakfast.

  “Why did you decide to study space?”

  He glanced back at her. He recognized a grilling when he heard one, and he thought it would be entertaining to both humor and annoy her. “I like possibilities.”

  “You must have studied a long time.”

  “Long enough.” He sipped again.

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  She managed to keep the pleasant smile intact. “Where did you study?”

  He thought of the Kroliac Institute on Mars, the Birmington University in Houston and his brief and intense year in the L’Espace Space Laboratory in the Fordon Quadrant. “Here and there. At the moment I’m attached to a small private facility outside of Philadelphia.”

  She wondered if the staff of that private facility wore white coats. “I guess you find it fascinating.”

  “Only more so recently. Are you nervous?”

  “Why?”

  “You keep tapping your foot.”

  She placed a hand on her knee to stop the movement. “Restless. I get restless if I stay in one place too long.” It was obvious, painfully so, that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him this way. “Listen, I really do have some things to . . .” Her words trailed off as she glanced out the window. She didn’t know when the snow had begun, but it was coming down in sheets. “Terrific.”

  Following her gaze, Jacob studied the thick white flakes. “Looks like it means business.”

  “Yeah.” She let out her breath in a sigh. Maybe he did make her nervous, but she wasn’t a monster. “And it’s not the kind of weather suitable for camping in the woods.” Fighting with her conscience, she walked to the door, back to the table, then to the window. “Look, I know you don’t have a place to stay. I saw you walk into the forest yesterday.”

  “I have . . . all I need.”

  “Sure, but I
can’t have you go trudging into the hills in a blizzard to sleep in a tent or something. Libby would never forgive me if you died of exposure.” Thrusting her hands in her pockets, she scowled at him. “You can stay here.”

  He considered the possibilities and smiled. “I’d love to.”

  Chapter 3

  He stayed out of her way. It seemed the best method of handling the situation for the moment. She’d stationed herself on the sofa by the fire, books heaped beside her, and was busily taking notes. A portable radio sat on the table, crackling with static and music and the occasional weather report. Absorbed in her research, Sunny ignored him.

  Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jacob explored his new quarters. She’d given him the room next to hers—larger by a couple of meters, with a pair of paned windows facing southeast. The bed was a big, boxy affair framed in wood, with a spring-type of mattress that creaked when he sat on the edge.

  There was a shelf crowded with books, novels and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were paperbacks, for the most part, with bright, eye-catching covers. He recognized one or two of the names. He flipped through them with an interest that was more scientific than literary. It was Cal, he thought, who read for pleasure, who had a talent for retaining little bits of prose and poetry. It was rare for Jacob to while away an hour of his time with fiction.

  They were still using trees to make the pages of books, he remembered with a kind of dazed fascination. One side had cut them down to make room for housing and to make furniture and paper and fuel, while the other side had scurried to replant them. Never quite catching up.

  It had been an odd sort of game, one of many that had led to incredible and complicated environmental problems.

  Then, of course, they’d saturated the air with carbon dioxide, gleefully punching holes in the ozone, then fluttering their hands when faced with the consequences. He wondered what kind of people poisoned their own air. And water, he recalled with a shake of his head. Another game had been to throw whatever was no longer useful into the ocean, as if the seas were a bottomless dumping ground. It was fortunate that they had begun to get the picture before the damage had become irreparable.