by Nora Roberts
Two peas in a pod, Jacob thought, pleased that he’d been able to dig up the expression. The same coloring, the same bone structure, the same frank, measuring looks. Taking the initiative, Jacob stepped forward and offered a hand.
“Mr. Stone.”
Since one arm was still holding his daughter—a bit possessively—William stuck the phone in the back pocket of his jeans before he shook Jacob’s hand.
“Hornblower,” Sunny continued, enjoying herself. “Jacob Hornblower. Cal’s brother.”
“No kidding.” The handshake became more enthusiastic, the smile more friendly. “Well, it’s nice to see you. We were beginning to think Cal had made up his family. Come on in. Caro’s around somewhere.”
He released Jacob but kept a firm hold on Sunny as he led the way through the foyer into the living room. Jacob got the impression of bold colors mixed with pastels. And, again, elegant. A simple, timeless elegance.
A few pieces of glittery crystal, gleaming antiques and, of course, what he now realized was Caroline Stone’s stunning art. If Jacob was surprised to find her woven masterpieces so casually displayed on the walls, he was speechless to see another spread on the floor as a rug.
“Have a seat,” William was saying as he walked thoughtlessly over what Jacob considered a priceless work of art. “How about a drink?”
“No, nothing. Thank you.” He was staring at an ornamental lemon tree in the window. His own father nurtured the same type of plant.
“You’ll have to have tea,” Sunny said, patting Jacob’s hand as she sat on the sofa beside him. “If you don’t, you’ll hurt Daddy’s feelings.”
“Of course.” He glanced up at William again and caught his narrowed-eyed, speculative look.
The phone in William’s back pocket rang. He ignored it. Recognizing the gleam in her father’s eye and wanting to delay the questions for the time being, Sunny dropped the banana peel in his hand. “I’d just love some, Daddy. How about Oriental Ecstasy?”
“Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
He disappeared through a doorway, the phone still shrilling in his pocket.
Sunny chuckled and put her hand on Jacob’s again. “I suppose I should warn you . . .” She tilted her head, curious. Jacob was gawking—she couldn’t think of another word for his expression—at one of her mother’s wall hangings. “J.T.? Would you like to tune in?”
“Yes. What?”
“I was going to warn you, my father’s nosy. He’ll ask you all kinds of questions, most of them personal. He can’t help it.”
“All right.” He couldn’t resist. Rising, he walked over to the rectangle of cloth and ran his fingers over the soft material and bleeding colors.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very beautiful.”
She got up to stand beside him. “She’s become a very well respected artist.”
Respected was a mild word for Caroline Stone. Her work was found behind glass in museums. It was studied and revered by art students throughout the settled universe. And he was here, running his fingers over an exquisite piece of it.
“She used to sell blankets and things for grocery money.”
“That’s a myth.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.” He dropped his hand, shoved it into his pocket. For the first time since he had stepped off the ship he felt totally disoriented. These were people he had learned about from study disks. Historical figures. Yet he was here, in their home. He was in love with their daughter. How could he be in love with a woman who had lived, and died, centuries before he had been born?
Panic. He tasted it. Turning, he gripped her arms. Reality, solid and warm. He was holding it in his hands. “Sunny.”
“What’s wrong?” He was so pale, and his eyes were so dark. “What is it?”
He just shook his head. There was nothing he could say. No words he knew to explain it. Instead, he brought his mouth down on hers and let her flavor chase away the fear.
“I love you.”
“I know.” Moved by the desperation in his voice, she lifted a hand to his cheek. The urge to soothe and ease was still new to her. “We’ll both get used to it eventually.”
“Hello.”
They drew apart to see Caroline standing in the doorway. Her dark, straight hair skimmed her shoulders. Beaded columns swung at her ears. There was a small smile on her face, a quietly lovely face that was animated by large, amused eyes. She was wearing a baggy man’s shirt, trim denim pants and beaded moccasins. In her arms she held a gurgling baby.
“Mom.” Sunny dashed across the room to hug both woman and child. She was taller than Caroline and had to bend slightly to give her the same enthusiastic kiss she had given her father. Laughing, she took the baby. Then, holding him above her head, she began to turn in a circle. “Hi, Sam! How’s it going? Oh, you’re getting so big!”
“He has his sister’s appetite,” Caroline pointed out.
Grinning, Sunny planted the giggling baby on her hip. “J.T., this is my mother, Caroline, and my brother, King Samuel.”
“J.T.” Caroline’s artist’s eyes had already seen the resemblance and made the connection. “You must be Cal’s brother.”
“Yes.” The sense of unreality came back as she crossed the room. Rather than offering a hand, she kissed him.
“We were hoping we’d finally meet some of Cal’s family. He’s very proud of you.”
“Is he?” A trace of resentment came through in his tone.
Caroline noticed it, let it pass. “Yes. Did your parents make the trip with you?”
“No. They weren’t able to come.”
“Oh.” The disappointment in her eyes was brief but sincere. “Well, I hope we can get together one day. Where’s Will?” she asked Sunny.
“Making tea.”
“Of course. Please, sit down. You’re an astrophysicist?”
“That’s right.” He settled back on the sofa, with Caroline Stone opposite him and Sunny on the floor with the baby.
“J.T.’s into time travel at the moment.”
“Time travel?” Caroline smiled and crossed her slender legs. “Will’ll go crazy. Though I think parallel universes are his current interest.”
“What happened to reincarnation?”
“He’s still a staunch disciple. He’s convinced he was a member of the first Continental Congress.”
“Always the revolutionary.” Sunny tickled her brother’s belly as she smiled up at Jacob. “My father likes to pick controversial subjects so he can argue about them. Oh, look! Sam’s crawling!”
“A newly acquired skill.” With two parts pride and one part wonder, Caroline watched her chubby, towheaded son pull himself across the rug. “Will’s already taken a caseful of videos.”
“I’m entitled,” William said as he wheeled in a tea cart. “As I remember, Sunny went from crawl to walk to run so fast we hardly had time to blink.”
“And you recorded it all on that secondhand movie camera.” Caroline rose, stepped over her son, and kissed Will before she helped him with the tea.
“So . . .” William had already gone over his list of questions in the kitchen. “. . . did you just get into Portland?”
“This afternoon,” Jacob told him, and accepted his cup of tea.
“You were looking for Cal when you tracked down Sunny.”
“That’s right.” He sipped, trying to resolve himself to the fact that he was drinking Herbal Delight with the man who had invented it. “He’d given me the—” coordinates nearly slipped out “—directions to the cabin.”
“The cabin?” The teacup paused on the way to William’s lips. “You’ve been to the cabin—with Sunny?”
“We had a hell of a snowstorm last week.” Sunny laid a hand lightly on her father’s knee. “Lost power for a couple of days.”
“Together?”
She managed to keep her expression bland. “It’s hard to lose it separately in a space as small as
the cabin.”
Amused, Caroline watched her son crawl over Jacob’s feet. “It’s a shame you missed Cal and Libby. I hope you plan to wait until they get back.”
The baby was chewing on his pant leg. After setting his teacup aside, Jacob reached down to set Sam in his lap. “I’ll wait.”
“Where?” William wanted to know. Sunny dug her fingers into her father’s knee.
“Did you know that J.T.’s experimenting with time travel?”
“Time travel?” Fascination warred with paternity. Paternity won. “Just how long were you two together in the mountains?”
Jacob let Sam gnaw on his index finger. “A couple of weeks.”
“Really?” His eyes narrowed, and he laid a proprietary hand on Sunny’s shoulder. “I suppose the snow kept you from making more suitable arrangements?”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Caroline sighed. Jacob ran a hand over Sam’s fine, pale hair.
“The arrangement suited me well enough.”
“I’ll bet it did.” William leaned forward, then hissed as Sunny dug again, shooting for the worn denim at his knees.
“Did you know, J.T., that my father absconded . . .” She liked the word, enjoyed rolling it off of her tongue. “. . . with my mother when she was sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” William corrected.
“Not quite.” This from Caroline as she sipped her tea.
He shot her a look. “You were only a couple months shy. And that was entirely different.”
“Naturally,” Sunny agreed.
“It was the times,” William muttered. “It was the sixties.”
Sunny kissed his sore knee. “That explains everything.”
“You had to be there. Besides, we wouldn’t have had to elope if Caro’s father hadn’t been so interfering and unreasonable.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Sunny fluttered her lashes at him. “There’s nothing worse than a father who pokes his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
He caught her nose between his two fingers and twisted. “Watch it.”
She just grinned. “Tell me, is Granddad speaking to you yet?”
“Barely.”
“Except when they make fools of themselves over Sam,” Caroline put in. “He’s almost forgiven us for the fact that you and Libby weren’t around for him to spoil when you were babies. Would you like me to take Sam, J.T.?”
“No, he’s fine.” The baby was playing with Jacob’s fingers, gurgling to them and sampling one occasionally. “He looks like you,” he murmured, turning to Sunny.
Her lips curved. She couldn’t have explained how it made her feel to watch him cuddle a baby on his lap. “I like to think so.”
William drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. The Hornblower boys seemed to have some kind of charm that worked on his daughters. Though he’d decided Cal was nearly good enough for Libby, he was reserving judgment on this one.
“So, you’re a scientist.” William had a great deal of respect for scientists, but that didn’t mean he was ready to accept the picture of his daughter snuggled up with one. In his cabin. Without any electricity.
“Yes.”
Talkative son of a gun, William thought, and prodded deeper. “Astrophysics?”
“That’s right.”
“Where did you study?”
“Maybe you’d like his grade point average,” Sunny muttered.
“Shut up.” William patted her head. “I’ve always been fascinated with space, you see.” This time his smile was cautiously friendly. “So I’m interested.”
If this was the game, Jacob decided, he could play it. “I got my law degree from Princeton.”
“Law?” Sunny said. “You never told me—”
“You didn’t ask.” His eyes dipped to her, then zeroed in on her father again. “Physics started out as a hobby.”
“An unusual one,” William mused.
“Yes.” Jacob smiled. “Like growing herbs.”
William had to laugh. “About time travel—”
“Take a break, Will,” Caroline advised him. “You can grill the man more later. Your son needs to be changed.”
“And it’s my turn.” William unfolded his long legs. He crossed to Jacob, his heart turning to mush as Sam lifted up his chubby arms. “There’s my boy. Have some more tea,” he told Jacob. “We’ll talk about those experiments of yours later.”
“I’ll come with you.” Sunny pushed herself up off the floor. “You can show me all the toys you bought him since last month.”
“Wait till you see this train . . .” he said as they walked out.
“Will likes to pretend the toys are for Sam.” Caroline smiled as she rose to fill Jacob’s cup again. “I hope you’re not too annoyed.”
“By what?”
“The Spanish Inquisition.” She moved back to sit on the arm of her chair. She reminded him of Sunny. “Actually, it was pretty mild, compared to what he put Cal through.”
“Apparently Cal passed.”
“We love him very much. Nothing would have made Will happier than to bring him into the business. But Cal has to fly, as I’m sure you know.”
“He never wanted anything else.”
“It shows. It was the same with Libby. She always knew what she wanted. It’s more difficult for Sunny. I wonder sometimes if all that energy and intelligence hasn’t given her too many choices. You’d understand that.” At his questioning look, she continued. “From a law degree from Princeton to astrophysics. That’s quite a leap.”
With a brief turn at professional boxing in between. He shrugged. “It takes some of us longer to make up our minds.”
“And those kind of people usually jump in with both feet. Sunny does.”
She was subtler than her husband, Jacob thought, and more difficult to put off. “She’s the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.”
And he is in love with her, Caroline reflected. Not happy about it, but in love. “Sunny’s like a tapestry, woven in bold colors. Some of the threads are incredibly strong and durable. Others are impossibly delicate. The result is admirable. But a work of art needs love, as well as admiration.” She lifted her hands. “She’d hate to know I described her that way.”
His gaze shifted to the vivid, blending colors of the wall hanging. “She wouldn’t care for the delicate.”
“No.” Caroline felt a tug of regret, and of relief. So he knew her younger daughter, and he understood her. “It’s old-fashioned, I suppose, but all Will and I really want is to know that she’s happy.”
“It’s not old-fashioned.” His mother had said almost the same words to him about Cal before he’d left home.
With a sigh, Caroline turned to glance at the wall hanging he was studying. “That’s one of my older pieces. I made that while I was pregnant with Sunny. I sold most of my work back then, but for some reason I held on to this one.”
“It’s beautiful.”
On impulse she rose to take it down from the wall. Her fingers slid over it. She remembered sitting at her handmade loom, watching the sunlight play on the colors as she chose them, blended them. With Will in the garden, Libby sleeping on a blanket spread on the grass and a child moving in her womb. The image was all the sweeter for the time that had passed between.
“I’d like you to have it.”
If she had offered him a Rembrandt or an O’Keeffe, he would have been no more stunned. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s priceless.”
She laughed at that. “Oh, my agent puts prices on my work. Ridiculous prices, for the most part. I’d hate to think that my pieces will only end up in art galleries or museums.” She folded it. “It would mean a lot more if I knew some of them were being enjoyed by my family.” When he said nothing, she held it out. “My daughter took your brother’s name. That makes us family.”
He didn’t want to feel like family. He needed to hold on to his resentment, to go on thinking of Caroline and William Ston
e as names in history. But he found himself reaching out and taking the soft cloth.
“Thank you.”
***
The nursery was painted a soft green. An antique iron crib in white was draped with a blanket Caroline had woven in pastels. The room was full of toys, many of which Sam would have no interest in for years. But there were dozens of stuffed animals, ranging from elephants to the traditional teddy bear.
Picking one up, Sunny waited until her father laid Sam on the changing table. “You’re pathetic.”
“Maybe you don’t remember the punishment for sass,” Will said mildly as he unsnapped Sam’s overalls.
“I’m a little too big for you to make me sit in a chair until I apologize.”
He shot her a look. “Don’t bet on it.”
“Dad.” Sighing, she set the bear aside. “From the time I turned thirteen you’ve interrogated every male I’ve brought into the house.”
“I like to know who my daughter’s seeing socially. There’s no crime in that.”
“There is the way you do it.”
Sam gurgled and kicked his feet as Will freed him of his diaper. Will dusted powder on him, enjoying the scent. “I liked you better when you were this size.”
“Tough.” She walked over to rest her elbow on his shoulder. Even at her most rebellious, she’d never been able to do anything but love him. “I suppose you’re going to grill the girls Sam brings home when he starts dating.”
“Of course. I’m not sexist.” Neither was he stupid. “Do you want to tell me that you and J.T. have been spending a few platonic days in the cabin?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He fastened a fresh diaper on his son. Life had been so simple, he thought, when all he’d had to worry about was diaper rash and teething. “Sunny, you haven’t known the man more than a few weeks.”
She stuck her tongue in her cheek. “Does this mean you’ve changed your views on free love?”
“The sexual revolution is over.” He snapped Sam’s overalls again. “For several very good reasons.”
She held up a hand. “Before you start listing them, why don’t I tell you I agree with you?”
That took some of the wind out of his sails. Sunny had come by her argumentative nature honestly. “Good. Then we understand each other.”