“Goodnight.” She hugged them both and trudged back upstairs.
Lance shook his head. “She’s still carrying it? At nineteen?”
“Leave her alone,” Jen said sharply. “She’ll give it up when she’s ready.” She picked up the piece of paper which had fallen out of Kathryn’s jeans and unfolded it. “Look. Directions.”
Lance took it. “Coordinates. She’s a smart girl.”
“Will they help?” Her hands itched to smooth the errant lock of hair off his forehead. Down, girl. You don’t know him anymore.
“Maybe.” Lance studied the paper, tight-lipped. “I wish Jeremy were here.”
“So do I.” Jen folded the jeans into a smaller bundle. She felt the edge of a hard object. “Wait.” The inner pocket revealed a stiff white card. She held it out to Lance. “This is it! The second card.”
Lance stared at it in wonder. “This thing took you through time?”
“When she put it in the door, the machine started up.” Jen felt a weight of terror she didn’t realize she’d been carrying, roll off her. “We can get back. All we have to do is put the card in the slot. You’ve got a key to the lab, right?” She grabbed Lance’s hand. “Come on.”
Lance unlocked the door and switched on the lights. Jen’s heart took a nosedive. Jeremy’s lab didn’t look the same as it did in 2001. There were fewer computers for one thing, which left more wall space for Kathryn’s drawings. Jeremy’s desk was framed in Kathryn’s pictures and starred tests. The card-issuing thingy, which stood next to the keyboard in 2001, was missing. And . . . “There’s no key slot in the closet door.”
“No. Because Jeremy hasn’t got that far yet.” Lance sounded calm. “But there is a key slot in the point of entry. All we have to do is get to the door where you came in.”
Jen froze. What was the name of the street?
“You do know where you came in, don’t you?”
“Um . . .”
Chapter 6
“Come on, Jen. You have to remember.”
Jen folded her arms, giving him the look which preceded most of their arguments. “Why do you always look at me like I am some kind of lower species too stupid to know its own name?”
Lance felt the slow burn of temper and shut it off. Temper never got him anywhere he wanted to be. “Do you remember anything about the street? A building? A shop?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Exhaled. “Yes. A thrift shop. The street looked familiar. I think the shop used to be one of my favorite clothing stores. Kate’s . . . something. I know it was a few blocks off Carnaby Street. I remember there being a pub a few doors down on the corner. I think it was called Shakespeare’s. Now the corner has a hole in the ground with a huge red crane in the center. But if felt like the same street.” Jen yawned. “Too tired. I’m sure I’ll remember in the morning. Goodnight.”
The old Jen would have screamed at him. The whole scene would have escalated into some dramatic statement ending in shouting and tears.
“Jen, why did everything have to be a fight?”
Halfway up the stairs, she turned around. The upstairs light haloed her in gold. His throat constricted. He’d loved her more than life and she’d run away.
“They weren’t fights, Lancelot. I’d start to fuss and you’d turn away. There were no fights because you never fought back.”
He tried to relax his jaw. “I don’t like to fight.”
“I know. You’d rather shut off. I’ve learned to shut off, too. It certainly is more peaceful, isn’t it?”
Lance watched her go. He’d never fought for her. Some noble character he was.
He slumped into Kathryn’s armchair and picked up the papers Jeremy had left for him. Back to facts. He was good at those. The words blurred in front of his eyes.
He’d let her go without giving her a chance to explain. Why had he been so sure she didn’t love him? Because Jen loving you was always too good to be true. You never deserved her.
The Smythe family had been his refuge as a schoolboy. The first time Jeremy had brought him home for the long holidays he’d been dazzled by them. Not the castle, although the castle was marvelous. The Smythes were the British version of America’s Donna Reed show. A warm, loving mother and a rumbly presence of a father.
His parents were too absorbed with each other to have much time for the child they’d created by mistake. They were happy to turn him over to the Smythes whenever possible.
For him, the Smythe home was heaven. Not the kind his dad preached about, but a more Narnia-like heaven. Two boys who didn’t think he was a figure to be tortured and teased. Jeremy was brainy and popular. A feat he’d never been able to manage. Robert usually joined in their games. Rob was already a senior prefect at their school, headed for Oxford and the diplomatic service.
Jen was a red-headed bundle of temper to be teased and petted. Courtney was a baby and didn’t count in his scheme of things. Babies and dogs were part of the family ambiance. He’d spent Christmas and summer holidays with them until he and Jeremy started Oxford.
At Oxford, the two of them happily succumbed to any lark going. Jokes. Parties. Girls. They spent their summers working at a holiday camp. “Lots of lovely birds,” Jeremy pointed out, and a chance to earn money for things their parents wouldn’t approve of.
Jeremy was popular with the birds and Lance often got a date because he was Jeremy’s mate. Nothing serious. He wasn’t interested in serious.
Then Jennifer came down to Oxford to visit and . . . He cleared his too-dry throat. She was the Guinevere of the legends he loved so much. She’d grown into a creature of magic. All allure and flame and joy. And he didn’t know how to tell her. Then one day she’d asked him to take her rowing. He couldn’t believe his luck. He knew he’d filled out from the stick-skinny kid with glasses who used to tie her dolls to the stake, but he wasn’t anything special. He was just an awkward math major whose only true love was the new field of computers. He never could get the hang of fashion. And his hair was a joke.
He ran his fingers through the peat brown mass, pushing the unruly lock off his forehead. Need another haircut. He took out the notebook he always carried and wrote a memo. Haircut. Find a way to say sorry to Jen.
He picked up the papers once more. More theories. Dry facts. He closed his eyes and allowed a new worldview to sink in. Jeremy had done it. Time travel was a reality.
His hand relaxed. The papers slipped to the floor. Jeremy had meant to use the machine to go forward. But Kathryn and Jen had traveled backward. Was it possible for him and Jen to go back and start over?
Chapter 7
“Wake up Kitty-Kat. We’re going home.”
Kathryn turned over and blinked sleepily up at Jen. “I am home.”
Jen picked up the square of silk from the floor. “No, baby, we are going forward. I found the other card. Wakey. Wakey.”
Kathryn’s eyes opened wide. “Truly?”
“I hope so. We’re going to try.”
Kathryn bounced out of bed. “Let’s go.”
“Put on your grown-up jeans and blouse. You don’t want to pop back to being a grownup wearing your child clothes.”
When they got downstairs there was no sign of Lance. Jen lifted her chin. So much for him wanting a second chance. Not that she planned to give it to him.
“Where’s Uncle Lance?”
“I’ve no, idea, poppet. We don’t need him. We can find our own way home.” She yanked open the front door.
Lance stood on the front stoop, hands in pockets, staring morosely at the few spears of green in the window box. “No flowers. I thought flowers and a note might be a start.”
Jen suppressed a ridiculous pang of joy. “It might have been.”
“The start of what?” Kitty-Kat asked.
<
br /> Lance looked down at her. “A new adventure, Kitty-Kat. A better one where your Aunt Jen and I—”
“Find a way to get us back home,” Jen interposed. “Let’s get started.”
Lance hailed a taxi to take them to Carnaby Street. Kathryn looked decidedly odd in the too big rolled up jeans tied with a scarf and the oversized blouse, but in Soho, no one noticed. Jen’s bold print Stella McCartney was getting a lot more attention.
Lance took off his jacket and bundled it around her. “We’re trying to be inconspicuous, not that you ever could be.” He dropped a feather-light kiss on the back of her neck.
Jen shivered. She wished he wouldn’t do things like that. Kisses poked holes in the armor of her anger. She stalked in front of Lance and Kathryn, following the direction she used to take from Biba, her favorite shop on Carnaby, to her other favorite shopping haunt, Kate’s, on some street she couldn’t remember the name of.
Soho was alive with new construction. All the old placemarks in her mental map were confused. She stopped at a corner. Surely the gaping hole in the ground used to be Shakespeare’s pub?
The jackhammers spat out a rattling accompaniment to the whine of swinging cranes. Jen searched for the thrift shop they’d shopped at yesterday. Not there.
“We need to try another street.”
“But you’re sure it was Soho?”
Jen wasn’t sure of anything at this point. Still . . . “The cab fare was about right. Let’s go a block up.”
“Nothing like a brisk walk on a spring morning,” Lance said cheerfully.
Kathryn sighed. “We’re lost.”
Lance took her hand. “Don’t worry, Kitty-Kat. We’ll find it.” He held out his free hand to Jen.
Jen curled her cold fingers into his warmth. Walking beside him was bittersweet. Long-buried memories of strolling beside Lance, arm in arm, silly-in-love, surfaced. She tried to will them away. “Concentrate,” she muttered to herself.
Four blocks later with no sign of new construction, Jen stopped. “We’ve come too far. We’re almost to Piccadilly Circus.”
Kathryn leaned against Lance. “I’m tired.”
Lance picked Kathryn up and put her on his shoulders. “Let’s turn around and go west.”
Kathryn grabbed his hair. “Now I can see things.”
Lance winced. “Sweetheart, don’t use my hair as reins.”
“I see a red crane,” Kathryn crowed. “Over there.”
Jen and Lance turned in the direction Kathryn pointed. In three blocks, they were at another gaping hole in the ground. Jen spotted the thrift shop. “This is the street. The door was across from that shop.”
Lance followed her across the street to the row of green and brown wooden doorways, all featuring cracked, peeling paint. None of the doors had knockers. He lifted Kathryn off his shoulders.
“They all look alike.” Kathryn rubbed her eyes. “How are we going to find it?”
“We look for a slot to fit the card,” Jen said as cheerily as she could manage.
The first two doors yielded nothing. Tiny typed names and apartment numbers. On the third doorframe, all the little address slots were blank.
“This has to be the door. Look.” Lance pointed at the card-sized slot near the doorknob.
“Yes!” Jen slid the card in. The slot lit up. The door swung outward. It was over. She turned to Lance. “I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for your help.” She held out her hand for him to shake.
He wrapped his arms around her. “Not so fast, Guinevere. If you think I’m going to let you and Kathryn go through a door, which might lead anywhere, you’re all wet.”
All he had to do was hold her and all her convictions of right and proper went out of her head. “No,” she whispered. “You can’t come with us. It will change history.”
“History’s already changed. Get used to it.” He closed the door, leaving them in darkness. The slot on the second door glowed dimly. Lance took the card from her unresisting hand and put it in the second slot. The sweep of blue light played over them.
Kathryn whimpered. “My bones feel funny.”
“Bloody Hell.” Lance’s arms tightened around her. “You didn’t mention it hurt.”
Jen felt the same unnerving elevator sensation as before, but no pain. “What’s wrong? I’m not hurting.”
The door swung wide revealing Jeremy’s lab looking exactly as it had when they’d left for 1988.
Jen looked at Kathryn. Aside from wide, shell-shocked eyes, she was back to normal. Except her jeans were rolled up past her knees. But Lance . . . “You’ve gone gray.”
“My knees are a bit wonky, but it’s not too bad.”
“I’m not talking about your face. I’m talking about your hair. Your sideburns are silver and your hair’s more pepper than salt.”
“Really,” Lance said without interest. He stared intently at Jen. Running a finger over the faint lines around her eyes. “I must say you age well. Had some work done, have you?”
“Shut up, Lance.” She’d had some work done around her eyes, but her clear skin was her own.
Lance looked quite fabulous for . . . How old was he now? Right. The same age as Jeremy. Fifty-two.
Kat whirled to face them. “I am never going to do that again! I’m so sorry, Jen. I had no idea my memories would disappear. I knew I was nineteen, but I couldn’t find myself. Child Kathryn took over.”
Jen hugged her. “Kat, Child Kathryn had some tough experiences to deal with. When your mum left, you slept on a chair in the living room for two years. We think you thought she would come back.”
Kat’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t remember any of that. I thought I was very well adjusted.”
Jen pressed her lips together to keep from offering her opinion. Never mentioning her mother again was not well adjusted. Shakespeare said, “Give sorrow words.” Kathryn never had. She had inherited the trait from her father. When Rob was killed, Jeremy never cried. She and Courtney couldn’t stop crying. Which was the better way to heal?
Lance broke the silence. “You both look like you could use a meal. Why don’t I take you to Trilby’s?”
“Trilby’s doesn’t exist anymore,” Jen said. “That’s where the Millennium Eye is.”
“And what’s a Millennium Eye, exactly.”
“It’s a huge Ferris Wheel,” Kat said. “It’s smashing. You get a bird's eyes view of the whole city. It opened last year.”
Lance grinned at Jen. “I imagine you were the first to line up.”
“You know me so well,” she quipped. They both hated heights. Another thing they had in common. Along with a tolerance of cats, a love of dogs, and an affinity for boats of any kind.
Lance strode over to the desk. “I can see I’d better do some research before I venture out into the streets. Not knowing thirteen years of history leaves a big gap. I don’t want to come off as a complete nutter.”
“I can’t imagine it,” Jen said fake-sweetly. “Since you rarely speak in public, I am sure no one will notice anything unusual.”
Lance ignored her. “This new operating system is brilliant. Someone’s done some very nice work. I hope it was me.”
Kat sat down at a second computer and scrolled through her email. “Uncle Lance, I’ve got an email from you. You’re at a computer conference in Brussels.”
Lance nodded abstractly. “That’s good. I’m not sure what would happen if I ran into myself.”
Jen tapped her fingers in a nervous riff. “Last night, you said time protected itself. Could that happen?”
Lance’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. “You do listen.”
Could they ever be together for more than an hour without taking digs at each other? Probably not. Old habits die hard.
&nb
sp; Lance smiled. A genuine, straight from the heart smile. “I’m sorry. I sounded patronizing and I didn’t mean to. I know you’re smart. A lot smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
She leaned over his shoulder and looked at the history timeline he’d brought up. Lance rated a paragraph all to himself. Her family had complied with her dictum no one speak his name to her. She’d known he and Jeremy were still colleagues, but nothing of what Lance had done. She put her hand over his on the mouse so he wouldn’t scroll past his list of accomplishments. “You’re a doctor of computer science? And you consult with banks on computer fraud? That’s quite a jump.”
“Bollocks.” Kat jumped up. “It’s Thursday. I have to be at a lecture in an hour. If I miss another one Professor Greyson said I’d have to retake the class.” She looked down at her rolled up jeans. “I’ve got to change.” She turned back to Lance and Jen. “Don’t tell Dad what I did. Please? I want to tell him myself.”
Chapter 8
“And how are we going to tell your dad?” Jen remarked to the air. “We don’t even know where he is.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’d just as soon not be here when Jeremy comes home.” Lance pushed the chair away from the computer, swiveling round to face her. “Let me take you to lunch, Guinevere. Buy you some flowers. Chocolates. I need to show you how sorry I am for not believing in you.”
“Why don’t you try words? The note was a good idea.”
Lance reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I tried writing one.”
Jen unfolded the much-creased piece of paper. Between a string of blacked out sentences she read, I should have believed in you. In us. My only excuse is I ran mad. In my head, I kept waiting for you to realize the truth. I didn’t deserve you.
“It’s not very good,” he said sheepishly, raking his fingers through his hair. “It’s not enough. I was going to buy a card and try again. You have every right to kick me to the curb and tell me to stuff it, but please don’t.”
Maybe This Time (A Second Chance Romance) Page 4