Times Change

by Nora Roberts

  Turning from the window, he wandered the room, running a fingertip along the walls, over the bedspread, the bedposts. Certainly the textures were interesting, and yet . . .

  He paused when he spotted a picture framed in what appeared to be silver. The frame itself would have caught his attention, but it was the picture that drew him. His brother, smiling. He was wearing a tuxedo and looking very pleased with himself. His arm was around the woman called Libby. She had flowers in her hair and wore a white full-sleeved dress that laced to the throat.

  A wedding dress, Jacob mused. In his own time the ceremony was coming back into style after having fallen into disfavor in the latter part of the previous century. Couples were finding a new pleasure in the old traditions. It had no basis in logic, of course. There was a contract to seal a marriage, and a contract to end one. Each was as easily forged as the other. But elaborate weddings were in fashion once more.

  Churches were once again the favored atmosphere for the exchange of rings and vows. Designers were frantically copying gowns from museums and old videos. The gown Libby wore would have drawn moans of envy from those who admired the fuss and bother of marriage rites.

  He couldn’t imagine it. The entire business puzzled him, and it would have amused him if not for the fact that it involved his brother. Not Cal, who had always been enamored of women in general but never of one in particular. The idea of Cal being matched was illogical. And yet he was holding the proof in his hand.

  It infuriated him.

  To have left his family, his home, his world. And for a woman. Jacob slammed the picture down on the dresser and turned away. It had been madness. There was no other explanation. One woman couldn’t change a life so drastically. And what else was there here to tempt a man? Oh, it was an interesting place, certainly. Fascinating enough to warrant a few weeks of study and research. He would undoubtedly write a series of papers on the experience when he returned to his own time. But . . . what was the ancient saying? A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

  He would put Caleb in his right mind again. Whatever the woman had done to him he would undo. No one knew Caleb Hornblower better than his own brother.

  They had been together not so long ago. Time was relative, he thought again, but without humor. The last evening they had spent together had been in Jacob’s quarters at the university. They’d played poker and drank Venusian rum—a particularly potent liquor manufactured on the neighboring planet. Cal had commandeered an entire case from his last run.

  As Jacob remembered, Cal had lost at cards, cheerfully and elaborately, as was his habit.

  They had both gotten sloppy drunk.

  “When I get back from this run,” Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, “I’m going to spend three weeks on the beach—south of France, I think—watching women and staying drunk.”

  “Three days,” Jacob had told him. He’d swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. “Then you’d go up again. In the last ten years you’ve been in the air more than on the ground.”

  “You don’t fly enough.” With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob’s glass and downed the contents. “Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it’s a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them.”

  “Point of view. If I didn’t study them, you couldn’t bounce around them.” He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. “Besides, you’re a better pilot than I am. It’s the only thing you do better than I do.”

  Cal had grinned again. “Point of view,” he had tossed back. “Ask Linsy McCellan.”

  Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men—on separate occasions. “She’s too easily entertained.” His smile had turned wicked, “In any case, I’m here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are.”

  “Even Linsy—” he lifted his glass “—bless her, can’t compete with flying.”

  “With running cargo, Cal? If you’d stayed with the ISF you’d be a major by now.”

  Cal had only shrugged. “I’ll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower.” Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. “J.T., why don’t you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There’s this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed. There’s this mutant sax player— Anyhow, you’ve got to be there.”

  “I’ve got work.”

  “You’ve always got work,” Cal had pointed out. “A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach.”

  It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always. But so had the responsibilities. “Can’t.” Heaving a sigh, he’d lunged for the bottle again. “I have to finish these equations before the first of the month.”

  He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with Cal. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.

  The video report on Cal’s wounded ship had shown exactly what Cal had been through. The black hole, the panic, the helplessness as he’d been sucked toward the void and battered by its gravitational field. That he had survived at all was a miracle, and a tribute to his skill as a pilot. But if he’d had a scientist on board he might have avoided the rest. And he would be home now. They would both be home. Where they belonged.

  Calming himself, he turned from the window. In a few weeks, they would be. All he had to do was wait.

  To pass the time, he began to toy with the clunky computer sitting on the desk in the corner. For an hour he amused himself with it, dismantling the keyboard and putting it together again, examining switches and circuits and chips. For his own entertainment he slipped one of Libby’s disks into the drive.

  It was a long, involved report on some remote tribe in the South Pacific. Despite himself, Jacob found himself caught up in the descriptions and theories. She had a way of turning dry facts about a culture into a testament to the people who made it. It was ironic that she had focused on the effects of modern tools and technology on what was to her a primitive society. He had spent a great deal of time over the last year wondering what effect the technology he had at his fingertips would have on her time and place.

  She was intelligent, he admitted grudgingly. She was obviously thorough and precise when it came to her work. Those were qualities he could admire. But that didn’t mean she could keep his brother.

  Shutting the machine down, he went back downstairs.

  Sunny didn’t bother to look up when she heard him come down the stairs. She wanted to think she’d forgotten he was there at all as she’d pored over her law books. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t complain that he was noisy or made a nuisance of himself. Except that he did make a nuisance of himself just by being there.

  Because she wanted to be alone, she told herself as she glanced up and watched him stroll into the kitchen. That wasn’t true. She hated to be alone for long periods of time. She liked people and conversation, arguments and parties. But he bothered her. Tapping her pen against her pad, she studied the fire. Why? That was the big question.

  Possibly loony, she wrote on her pad. Then she grinned to herself. Actually, it was more than possible that he’d had a clearance sale on the top floor. Popping out of nowhere, living in the forest, playing with faucets.

  Possibly dangerous. That turned her grin into a scowl. There weren’t many men who could get past her guard the way he had. But he hadn’t hurt her, and she had to admit he’d had the opportunity. Still, there was a difference between dangerous and violent.

  Forceful personality. There was an intensity about him that couldn’t be ignored. Even when
he was quiet, watchful in that strange way of his, he seemed to be charged. A live wire ready to shock. Then he would smile, unexpectedly, disarmingly, and you were willing to risk the jolt.

  Wildly attractive. Sunny didn’t like the phrase, but it suited him too well for her not to use it. There was something ruthless and untamed in his looks—the lean, almost predatory face and the mane of dark hair. And his eyes, that deep, dark green that seemed to look straight into you. The heavy lids didn’t give them a sleepy look, but a brooding one.

  Heathcliff, she thought, and laughed at herself. It was Libby who was the romantic one. Libby would always look into a person’s heart. Sunny would always be compelled to dissect the brain.

  Absently she sketched his face on a corner of the paper. There was something different about him, she mused as she penciled in the dark brows and the heavy lashes. It bothered her that she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was evasive, secretive, eccentric. She could accept all that—once she discovered what he was evading. Was he in trouble? Had he done something that required him to pack up quickly and find a place, a quiet, remote place, to hide?

  Or was it really as simple as he said? He had come to see his brother and to get a firsthand look at his brother’s wife.

  No. Scowling down at the impromptu portrait, Sunny shook her head. That might be the truth, but it was no more than half of it. J.T. Hornblower was up to something. And, sooner or later, she was going to find out what it was.

  With a shrug, she set her pad aside. That was reason enough for her interest in Jacob Hornblower. She only wanted to know what made the man tick. With that in mind, she rose and went into the kitchen.

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  Jacob glanced up. Spread all over the table in front of him were the various parts of the toaster and a carpet of crumbs. He’d found a screwdriver in a drawer and was having the time of his life.

  “It needs to be fixed.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Do you like your bread burned?”

  She narrowed her eyes. His fingers, long, lean and clever, skimmed over screws. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Maybe.” He smiled, wondering what she would say if he told her he could dismantle an X-25 primary unit in under an hour. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.” She turned to put on the kettle. “But I don’t suppose you can make it any worse than it already is.” Friendly, she reminded herself. She would be friendly and casual, then move in for the kill. “Want some tea?”

  “Sure.” With the screwdriver in his hand, he watched her walk from stove to cupboard and back to stove. Grace, he thought, when combined with strength, was an appealing combination. She had a way of shifting her weight so that her whole body flowed into the movement. Yet there was a control about her, the kind of discipline seen in athletes and dancers. And it wasn’t genderless, but innately and completely female.

  When the nerves at the back of her neck began to prickle, she glanced over her shoulder. “Problem?”

  “No. I like to watch you.”

  Because she didn’t have a ready response for that, she poured the tea. “Want a cupcake?”

  “Okay.”

  She tossed him a little chocolate cake wrapped in clear paper. “If you want something more elaborate for lunch, you’re on your own.” She brought the cups to the table, then sat across from him. “How are you with plumbing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The faucet in the tub leaks.” Sunny tore the paper from her cupcake. “My solution’s been to put a wash-rag on the drain to muffle the noise at night, but if you’re handy there’s probably a wrench around somewhere.” She took the first bite, closing her eyes to better enjoy the taste. “We could consider it a tradeoff for your meals.”

  “I can take a look.” He was still holding the screwdriver, but he was more interested in the way she gently licked icing from the cake. It had never occurred to him that eating could be quite so sexy. “Do you live alone?”

  She lifted a brow, then nipped at the cake again. “Obviously.”

  “When you’re not here.”

  “Most of the time.” She sucked chocolate from her finger and had his stomach clenching. “I like living alone, not having to check with anyone if I want to eat at ten or go dancing at midnight. Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Live alone?”

  “Yes. My work takes up most of my time.”

  “Physics, right? Too bad.” She settled back with her tea. The idea of him being a spy was beginning to sound absurd. And, to give him his due, she decided, he wasn’t as crazy as she’d initially believed. Eccentric, she thought. If there was one thing Sunny understood, it was eccentricity. She’d lived with it all of her life. “So you really like splitting atoms, or whatever it is you guys do?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What’s your stand on nuclear reactors?”

  He nearly laughed, but then he remembered where he was. “Nuclear fission is like trying to dispose of a mouse with a rocket launcher. Dangerous and unnecessary.”

  “My mother would love you, but that doesn’t sound very physicist-like.”

  “Not all scientists agree.” Knowing he was on unsteady ground, he went back to the toaster. “Tell me about your sister.”

  “Libby? Why?”

  “I have an interest in her, since she has my brother.”

  “She isn’t exactly holding him for ransom,” Sunny said dryly. “In fact, he rushed her down the aisle so fast, she barely had time to say ‘I do.’”

  “What aisle?”

  “It’s a figure of speech, J.T.” She spoke slowly now, and with a sigh. “When people get married, they, you know, go down the aisle.”

  “Oh, right.” He thought that over as he fiddled with the toaster. “You’re saying that the marriage was Cal’s idea.”

  “I don’t know whose idea it was, if that matters, but he was certainly enthusiastic.” Her fingers began to drum as her annoyance grew. “I get the impression you think Libby pushed Cal into something here, or that she, I don’t know, used feminine wiles to trap him.”

  “Does she have them?”

  After she finished choking on her tea, Sunny took a long breath. “This may be tough for you to understand, Hornblower, but Cal and Libby love each other. You’ve heard of love, haven’t you? Or doesn’t it compute?”

  “I’ve heard of the concept,” he said, mildly enough. It was intriguing to watch her temper rise—as it did with very little provocation. Her eyes darkened, her skin flushed, her chin lifted. Attractive when composed, she was simply devastating when aroused. He wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t considered how interesting it would be to arouse her in other, more rewarding ways. “I haven’t experienced it myself, but I have an open mind.”

  “That’s big of you,” she muttered. Rising, she stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and stalked to the window. Lord, he was a prize. If she managed to keep from murdering him before Cal and Libby got back, it would be a miracle.

  “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Been in love,” he said, running the staff of the screwdriver through his fingers.

  She sent him a particularly vicious look. “Keep out of my personal life.”

  “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t, not a bit. He was as determined to make her look like a fool as she was to make him sound like one. “It’s just that you sounded so knowledgeable on the subject I assumed you’d had quite a bit of experience. Yet you’re not matched—married—are you?”

  Whether he’d aimed or just shot from the hip, he’d hit the target dead-on. She hadn’t been in love, though she’d tried to be several times. Self-doubt only fanned the flames of anger.

  “Just because a person hasn’t been in love doesn’t mean he or she can’t appreciate its value.” She whirled back, hating the fact that she’d been put on the defensive and determined to turn the conversation around. “The fa
ct that I’m not married is purely a personal choice.”

  “I see.”

  The way he said it had her teeth snapping together. “And this has nothing to do with me. We’re talking about Libby and Cal.”

  “I thought we were talking about love as a concept.”

  “Talking about love with a heartless clod is a waste of time, and I never waste mine.” She balled a hand on her hip. “But we both have an interest in Libby and Cal, so we’ll clear it up.”

  “All right.” He tapped the screwdriver on the edge of the table. He didn’t need a computer to tell him what a clod was. It was just one more thing she would have to pay for before this was over. “Clear it up.”

  “You automatically assume that my sister, being a woman, lured your brother, being only a man, into marriage. What an incredibly outdated theory.”

  His fingers paused in the act of reattaching the toaster’s coil. “Is it?”

  “Incredibly outdated, chauvinistic and stupid. The idea that all women want is marriage and a house with a picket fence went out with the poodle skirt.”

  Though he wondered who in his right mind would put skirts on poodles, there was something more important to touch on. “Stupid?” he repeated.

  “Idiotic.” Legs spread, jaw firm, she baited him. “Only a true idiot would be alive today with that kind of neanderthal attitude. Maybe the last few decades have passed you by, pal, but things have changed.” She was on a roll now, a slender steamroller with right on her side. “Women have choices today, options, alternatives. An enlightened few even figure that, because they do, men benefit from the same expanding horizons. Except, of course, men like you, who are mired in their own self-importance.”

  He stood at that, in a slow, deliberate manner that would have tipped her off if she hadn’t been so angry. “I’m not mired in anything.”

  “You’re up to your neck in it, Hornblower. From the minute you got here you’ve been trying to find some way to turn your brother’s marriage into a setup created by my sister.” She took one long-legged stride toward him. “I’ve got a flash for you. Only a fool gets tricked into marriage, and Cal doesn’t strike me as a fool. That’s where the family resemblance fades.”