“I remember. Your senior year at Oxford.” The first time she’d seen Lance as a real person, not just the boy she’d tagged after as a child. The geeky boy had grown into a very sexy man. The look in his eyes that day told her he wasn’t seeing her as a child anymore. “I wouldn’t call it a date exactly. I asked you to take me rowing.”
“Yes. You wore a dress like that and a big hat I resented because it shadowed your face. I couldn’t tell what you were thinking. Afterward, I took you to the pub for dinner.”
“The Lamb and Flag. How could I forget a pub with such a gloriously odd name?” But the pub wasn’t all she remembered. After far too many pints, the laughter in the smoke-filled pub had given way to moonlight, and hands swinging, and a long walk to her hotel.
She’d invited him in, but he didn’t accept.
“Next time, Guinevere,” he’d said, his words slurring the slightest bit. He’d bent his head and kissed her. Long, lingering, gentle. “I want us to be sober when it happens.”
That was the first time he’d ever called her Guinevere.
“The first time I asked you in, you refused me. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. I remember every minute I spent with you.”
She fluttered her lashes at him. “Would you like a re-do?”
The buzzer rang again. Jen stood on tiptoe to look through the peephole. Her sister. “What horrible timing!” She pushed Lance toward the bedroom. “Go. Hide. Don’t come out. I’ll tell you when the coast is clear.”
Lance’s eyes darkened. “If I’m interrupting anything?”
Jen’s nerves prickled. Did he think she had a lover? “Do it.” She was not sharing Lance and their current relationship with Courtney. There would be far too much explaining to do.
Jen opened the door. “Was I expecting you?”
Courtney swept into the room looking like a much younger version of the Queen. All she needed was a Corgi. “You would be if you ever checked your phone messages.”
Phone messages. Right. “Actually, Courtney, you caught me at a bad time.”
Courtney rolled her eyes toward heaven. “I called you last week to remind you I was coming in to take Evan for his braces fitting,” she said slowly and clearly as if she were dealing with a half-witted child. “I left you another message yesterday. There’s a sale at Agent Provocateur and I knew you wouldn’t want to miss it.”
She never a missed a sale at Agent Provocateur, but . . . “Sorry, Courtney. I’ve got a —Special rehearsal this afternoon? Meeting with my agent? Lunch with He Who Must Not Be Named who now has a name again? “Doctor’s appointment. Can’t reschedule.” She slipped her arm through Courtney’s. “Come on. I’ll walk you down.”
Courtney balked. “But I want to use the loo.”
She’d forgotten how hard it was to steer her sister on any course Cee hadn’t chosen for herself. “It’s stopped up. Sorry. The plumber’s coming this afternoon. Try the coffee shop on the corner. It’s quite clean.”
Courtney allowed herself to be pulled to the elevator. “I thought you might want to come stay with us. I’m so sorry about the fire. I suppose they have to close the play.”
“Well . . .” Jen’s mind blanked. Fire? She’d only been gone a day. It was easy to forget the world might have rolled on without her. She fumbled for words. “The fire was—”
“Terrible.” Courtney clicked her tongue against her teeth. “The Royal Court should have been updated years ago. Electrical. The paper said it had nothing to do with the IRA protest. Lucky it was your dark day. You might have all been killed.”
“Yes.” She had to call John. The theatre manager. Her agent. Perhaps she should have checked her messages. She hugged Courtney. “Thanks for the offer. But I’ve already made plans. I’m going to . . .” It was getting harder to think of plausible excuses. Maybe her mind was going. “To Corfu. Goodbye, darling. I’ll ring you later. Hug Evan for me. Tell him in three years he’ll be glad he got braces. That boy is going to break hearts.”
The elevator closed on Courtney’s gratified smile.
She hurried back to her apartment to check the message machine.
The bedroom door cracked. “Is she gone?” Lance asked in a stage whisper. At her nod, he came out. “I wish you had a peephole in the bedroom door. I would love to see what Cee looks like now. She sounds more like the Queen than the Courtney I remember.”
“She went county in a big way after Christopher made baronet. Any day now I expect to see her ride to hounds. Courtney said there was a fire at The Royal Court Theatre yesterday. I am doing Private Lives there. Or I was.” Jen hit rewind on the furiously blinking answering machine.
The first voice was her agent. “Good morning, Jennifer. I’ve some rather disturbing news for you. Please call as soon as you get this.”
Click. “Jen. Pick up the phone, damn it. We’re out of a job.”
Click. “Ms. Knight. It’s Harold Lawson from the ‘Lives’ office. There was a fire last night at the Royal Court. The police are investigating. The costumes and sets were a total loss. We are consulting with our backers on the best way to handle the refunds. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.”
Click. “Hello, Jen.” Peter’s voice sounded smooth and caressing. “I heard about the fire. I know it means you’re out of a job. If you need a loan to tide you over . . .”
Jen pushed erase.
“I’m sorry.” Lance put his arms around her.
She did not allow herself to relax into their comfort. “Well. I guess I’m free to time travel if Jeremy and Kat can straighten out the program. Pity about the play. I’ll miss my green Vionnet. I wish we could travel back to the 1930s. Maybe meet Noel Coward? That would be smashing.”
Lance said nothing.
She was not going to cry. “Let’s go have lunch. You must be starving.”
Chapter 12
Jen looked less shocky after a cup of chocolate, although she seemed to have lost her appetite. Lance transferred the second half of her tuna sandwich onto his own plate. “Private Lives, eh? I would love to have seen you play Amanda.”
He didn’t see any point in telling her Jeremy said his 2001 self had seen it. After all, he had no memory of it. “I think the world’s run wrong. If we lived backward, then we’d know what we did wrong and we could stop ourselves. We deserve a second chance.”
Jen smiled faintly. “There are some things you don’t want a second chance at.”
He hoped she wasn’t thinking of him. “Who was the last voice on the message machine?
He sounded like a —”
“Self-satisfied prick?” Jen’s knuckles whitened on the chocolate cup. “That would be correct. That was Peter. My second attempt at happy-ever-after.”
“Ah. You mentioned him last night. What happened? Did he walk away from fights too?”
“Lord, no. You couldn’t fight with Peter.” Jen put her two fingers to her lips and inhaled as if she were taking a drag on a cigarette. Then expelled the breath.
Lance gestured to her fingers. “And that was because?”
She sighed. “Sometimes I really feel like I need a cigarette, and the imaginary one helps. “Peter was incredibly charming. When he was with me, I thought I was the most important person in his world. He was funny and tender. The perfect husband. He seemed proud of my acting career.”
“I was proud of your acting career.” He had been in awe of her talent. He just wished she’d had more time for them.
Jen arched her eyebrows. “I never would have guessed.”
Why hadn’t he told her how proud he was? “Go on.”
“He never minded when I went on tour. I found out later he’d had lots of company to keep him occupied. Male and female.” She took another drag on her invisible ci
garette. “I walked in on him with Kathryn on his lap. She was twelve. When he hastily set her aside and stood, there was no missing the bulge in his pants. I wanted to kill him, but I settled for a divorce.”
“Good for you.” It was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate.
“The divorce was rather noisy. Peter is a Member of Parliament for Upper Chichester. The papers love a good scandal. I didn’t take any money from him. I am perfectly capable of supporting myself. He has a bloody nerve calling and offering it to me now.”
He couldn’t agree with her more. “Spend the afternoon with me?”
Jen perked up. “In bed?”
“No.” He couldn’t sleep with her again. Not knowing he was engaged to a stranger. He couldn’t be sorry he came forward, but it was a right mess. He had to tell her. “Let’s go walking. Get to know each other again.”
“In the mental sense as opposed to the biblical?”
Jen had very expressive eyebrows. “Yes.” He threw some bills on the table. Came around and pulled out her chair. His hands lingered, helping her on with her coat. She didn’t seem to mind.
By mutual consent, they turned toward Hyde Park, their old favorite walk. When they got to the lily pond they turned to each other and said simultaneously, “Do you remember ?”
They both laughed.
“Perfectly,” Lance said. “It’s the first time anyone ever pushed me into a pond.”
“Surely not,” Jen said with a straight face. “You are so eminently pushable.”
“When I haven’t taken on too many beers, I have excellent coordination. You're the first pushee I didn’t manage to dodge.”
“Well, you deserved it. You called Star Wars a bad movie.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad movie. I said he plagiarized it.”
“He did not. When you steal from a lot of different writers, it’s called creativity.”
“You said you’d rather date Luke Skywalker.”
“He was cuter than you. Nicer too.”
“That’s why I had to push you back.” He tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder. “I was sorry afterward, though.”
Jen sighed. “We were a right pair of ninnies, staggering home sopping wet at two a.m. We were lucky not to have been arrested. You’d think we would have had better sense at our age.”
“Possibly if we hadn’t drunk so much, we would have.” Lance grimaced. “I stopped a few months after the divorce. Realized at the rate I was going, I’d be out of a job and out of friends.”
Jen held out her hand. “Show me your chip.”
“I don’t have one. Quit on my own.”
“You had more willpower than I did. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”
“Not more willpower. More cowardice.”
Jen looked up at him, questioningly.
“I’m terrified of walking into a room full of people and saying anything, much less confessing to a room full of strangers I drank too much.”
“It isn’t like that,” Jen protested. “Everyone in there has been through the same problem. They are all nice people who have a story to share.”
“Baring my soul to strangers isn’t my style.”
Jen slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. “Baring your soul to anyone wasn’t your style. I sometimes thought you believed words were like silver bullets. Only to be used in cases of extreme vampirism.”
He covered her cold fingers with his warmer ones. “That’s another thing about you I remember. Your extremities were always cold.”
“I have thin blood. Probably it’s too blue.”
“Not a problem in my case. Tell me five things I don’t know about who you are today.”
Jen withdrew her fingers from his pocket. “You first.”
“I’m the coward, remember? You have to give me courage.”
“Fine.” Her steps slowed with her thoughts. “One. I read Anne Rice.”
She was having him on. “But you hate horror films. Why would you?”
“I got offered a part in a film about one of her vampire books, so of course I had to see what they were about. She’s a good writer. But I still don’t like the subject matter. Your turn. We’ll trade, turn and turn about.”
He couldn’t start off with the big one. “I cook. I’m pretty decent at it.”
Jen looked as if she didn’t believe him.
“I do a mean dish of chips and my salmon au poivre has to be eaten to be believed. Can you cook yet?”
Jen sniffed. “No. Why cook when there are restaurants? And takeaway? Something for every mood. Why did you take up cooking?”
“I got tired of the waiters asking me ‘How many, sir?’ when it was obvious I was by myself. Besides, I needed a hobby.” He curved Jen’s fingers into his and put them back in his pocket. “Your turn.”
“I watch Coronation Street with Kat. And I crochet while I watch it.”
Lance tried to suppress his snort.
“Don’t judge me. I was out of work for six months and I had to do something or go stark raving bonkers.” She looked at his chest, pursing her lips. “I could probably do you a lovely sweater.”
Hard to imagine his Guinevere doing anything as mundane as crocheting. “I thought crochet was all blankets and baby clothes.”
“Not true. However, not many men wear crocheted sweaters, although I’ve made myself some lovely ones. I’ll do you a blanket instead. Your turn.”
Something innocuous. “I loved Moonstruck.”
Jen’s mouth dropped open. “The king of horror and crime films watched a Romance?”
“I thought it was a very good story.” He’d watched a lot of romances. Trying to find out what other people did right.
Jen shook her head. “I don’t have anything nearly as exciting to confess.”
“I’m baring my soul to you here. You might try to reciprocate.”
“Fine.”
They walked away in silence. Her voice was so low he almost missed what she said.
“I tutor kids.”
“You what?”
Jen shrugged. “No big deal. Courtney asked me if I could spare a few hours for this school her church was sponsoring. I said yes because my word ‘no’ was taking a nap. They’re nice kids.”
“What do you tutor them in?”
“I started out helping with the second graders. Reading. Spelling. I left the maths to the better qualified. I never thought I could like teaching. Your turn.”
“I’ve taken up martial arts. I have a purple belt in Tae Kwan Do.”
Jen raised her eyebrows. “Very cool. You’re a teacher who cooks and could defend the heroine against the bad guys. What else do you do in your spare time?”
They’d reached the end of the Serpentine. He guided Jen toward an empty bench.
“That’s about it.” He had to tell her what Jeremy said. “Your turn.”
“Well, I signed up online for a matchmaking service. So far it’s a bust.”
“Delighted to hear it. In my day people used chat rooms. I’ve been in a few.”
“Any luck?”
He shook his head. “When I saw you I was still heart-whole, but . . .”
“But?” Her eyes smiled up at him, waiting for the words he wanted to say.
He’d rather walk barefoot on nails than tell her. “Jen. Your brother says I am . . . that is, the me who lives in this time period, is engaged. To be married.”
Jen spun around and walked away.
Chapter 13
Engaged? How dare he sleep with her when he was involved with another woman? Hadn’t she had enough of that in her life? Her steps kept pace with the adrenaline racing through her veins. Walking away wasn’
t enough. She wanted a fight. He owed her an explanation. She marched back to the bench. Looked at him slumped on the bench, all depressed as if he were the injured party. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” he said dully. “Abigail or Aileen. Somebody with an A. Jeremy says she’s a research wallah. Or statistics. I don’t remember.”
Jen’s sense of humor reasserted itself. He didn’t sound like a man in love. “How lovely for you,” she cooed. “Have you set a date yet?”
“How would I know?” he muttered. “I’ve never met her. This is my future self we’re talking about. He had ten years to screw up everything.”
He reached for her hand, held it to his cheek without looking at her. “I thought when you came back, it changed things . . . time. I knew I’d have to wait ten years to catch up with who you are today. But I had this theory I would catch up and you’d be waiting for me.” He swallowed. “It wouldn’t be any time at all for you. But I . . . we . . . must have done something to mess it up. Or else I wouldn’t be engaged.”
Jen’s head felt light. “But you. The you I am looking at. You want to get to know me better because you love me?”
She caught her breath at the look in his eyes.
“I should think it was obvious. I’m so sorry, Guinevere. I wanted to try again.”
And if she had anything to say about it, they were damn well going to. “Buck up, laddie. It’s not over till the fat lady sings. I’m here and you’re here, and this Ariel or Abigail is not. Let’s go see Jeremy.”
Lance silenced her words with his mouth. Her hands didn’t feel cold anymore. She pressed them to his cheeks, fitting his face to hers. Time stopped.
“Get a room,” someone yelled.
Lance broke the kiss. “Back to Jeremy’s, then?”
‘No. I think we should go back to my place. If we’re going to be traveling, I want to pack a bag.”
Lance’s face fell. He’d obviously been hoping for another answer. Baiting him was too easy. “And,” she whispered against his lips, “I’ve always heard the third time’s lucky. I think we should find out.”
Maybe This Time (A Second Chance Romance) Page 6