Maybe This Time (A Second Chance Romance)

by Susan B. James

  Jen didn’t want the moment to end. She wanted to hold him inside her forever, their breath and heartbeats mingling.

  Lance broke the silence, his tone rich with satisfaction. “Apparently, we still remember how to do it.”

  “The force is still strong in us, my Skywalker.” She curled against him. His arms went round her, his breath ruffling her hair. Being here with him felt old and new; strange and right. “Lance, I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”

  “Neither have I.” She could feel his pulse pick up. “I had a girlfriend or two. No one serious. None of them were you.”

  “I would think you’d be glad of that. I know I was a mess.”

  “You were my goddess. A bit temperamental. Everything for you was so high or so low. I was never quite sure how to handle you.”

  “I know.” She turned to face him. “You know it drove me crazy every time you walked away.”

  Lance’s eyes shadowed. “I didn’t know what else to do. I never learned how to fight with you.”

  She stroked her fingers over his eyebrows. Such a perfect arch. “It’s hell being young. We’d do better now. Lance, what’s going to happen to us?”

  “I don’t know.” She could hear the drag in his voice. “I’ve researched time with Jeremy. Many scientists thought it was possible to go forward. What they were never sure of was the possibility of going backward. Jeremy was sure, of course. Because he’d done it.”

  Jen rolled over to face him. “How could he have done it when the machine wasn’t invented yet?”

  “And there you have me. It’s one of those mysteries of circular time.”

  “Why do you think the computer couldn’t find us?” Jen asked, hoping he’d say it was some mysterious computer glitch.

  “I don’t know.” He silenced her next question with his lips. “Go to sleep. I’m going to do some more research.

  She watched him remove a box from the electronics store bag. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the latest laptop computer.” He plugged the slender machine into the wall and opened it up. “I’m going to do a month by month scan, and try to find out when we were last heard of.”

  When they were last heard of? The unreality of their situation washed over her. Two days ago she’d been celebrating her birthday with the Private Lives cast. Then Kat whisked the two of them into the past. Since this morning she’d come forward to her own time, made love with her first and only true love, discovered he was engaged to someone else, been sent forward in time and told she didn’t exist. Jen closed her eyes. “If you find you’re not engaged to this Aileen person anymore, wake me.”

  Chapter 16

  The incessant knocking at the door pulled Jen out of deep sleep. She lifted her head. Lance lay next to her, unmoved by the noise. She stumbled out of bed, eyes half-closed to shut out the sunlight. They’d forgotten to draw the curtains. She cracked open the door. “Go away,” she snarled.

  “Wake up my chickens,” Jeremy’s voice caroled. “I think I found the anomaly.”

  “Wait.” Jen wrapped herself in the soft, white robe the hotel provided. No use trying to shut out Jeremy. He’d keep up the racket till they let him in. She undid the safety chain. “Couldn’t you have waited for a decent hour to tell us?”

  “It’s ten o’clock.” Her brother’s eyes were bloodshot; his cheeks unshaven. But his smile was exultant. He strode to the bed and punched Lance on the shoulder. “Wake up, slugabed. I discovered what Kat did. Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “Not till we’ve showered and changed.” Jen tossed the other robe to Lance. “Jeremy, if you have any mercy, get us some coffee. Now.”

  “All right, but no larking about, you two. I’m starving.” The door closed behind him.

  Jen sat next to Lance. “You look like you spent the night wrestling with nightmares. Are you okay?”

  Lance rubbed his face. “I will be.” His arms came around her, circling her waist. He rested his head on her shoulder. “Oh, Jen.” His almost inaudible tone held a world of pain.

  She pushed away to look up at him, then wished she hadn’t. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  His attempt at a smile was pitiful. “I love you. I will always love you. We’d better hurry or Jeremy may try to join us in the shower.”

  Nothing in Lance’s expression even hinted at larking about. This was starting out as a very bad day.

  ~ ~ ~

  The coffee shop smelled of vinyl and old grease. The customers didn’t seem to mind. Every orange, plastic booth was filled, and there was a waiting line at the counter.

  “I know how to go back.” Jeremy made inroads into the stack of pancakes in front of him. “I went through the program module line by line, and it stood out like a sore thumb.”

  “Of course it did,” Jen grumped. “I bet it waved and did a little dance.”

  “Have some more coffee, Jen.” Jeremy motioned to their server for refills. “You sound liverish.”

  “I’ll liver you,” she muttered under her breath, but she took his advice. Right after she downed a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. It helped.

  Jeremy poured more syrup on his already drowned pancakes. “The thing I can’t see is how she got it to 1988. That’s a very fine calibration. From what I’ve learned now, I can jump us backward, but if I’m wrong, I don’t want to pull a Kathryn and land us back in our childhood.”

  Jen shuddered. “Heaven forbid. One childhood was enough for me, thank you very much.”

  “First, I want to consult this chap I met when I was here before. His space-time continuum theory may be my missing link.”

  “I did some research last night, Jeremy.” Lance covered Jen’s hand with his. “I read through a history timeline. Then I tried our personal timelines. In August 2001, Jen opened in Private Lives in New York. She was still there on September tenth. There’s no mention of her after that.”

  Jen perked up. “Lovely. I didn’t want to let go of the role yet. I loved playing Amanda. Was John Luterman playing Elyot?”

  “Didn’t notice,” Lance said shortly, his eyes fixed on Jeremy’s.

  Jeremy whitened. He set down his coffee so hard it sloshed onto the table. “Did you find yourself?”

  “No. But the International Physics Association held a conference in Washington D.C. which ended September tenth. It’s probable I would have been there.

  “Sweet mother of God,” Jeremy said softly.

  “You know then?”

  Jeremy nodded, his face grim. “I saw it when I came forward from 1969 to Sherry’s time. I used her computer to see if what she’d told me about the future was true. It was. But Sherry never mentioned that particular event to me.”

  “If I were going to tell someone about the future, it’s the last thing I would mention,” Lance said. “I read about it last night. Unbelievable.”

  Jen’s head swung from Jeremy to Lance. “Care to clue me in on what you two are going on about?”

  Jeremy’s voice dragged. “They call it 9/11 in the history books. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, a group of terrorists found a new use for planes. They hijacked four jumbo jets. They crashed two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City.”

  Jen sat stone still. It was a story out of those horror movies Lance loved. “They used the planes as weapons? The passengers all died?”

  “Yes. But the horror of their deaths got swallowed by the bigger numbers when the World Trade Center collapsed.”

  Jen tried to picture two planes crashing into the tallest buildings in New York. She couldn’t. However big the plane, it couldn’t possibly compare with the size of those buildings. “What do you mean collapsed?”

  “They fell. Like a shower of black rain. Both buildings turned to dust.”r />
  Jen swallowed the tears clogging her throat. “I don’t . . . I can’t picture it . . .” But she could. She had a very active imagination. She didn’t want to see it, but . . . “Is it on the computer?”

  Jeremy nodded. They waited while he saw to the check. None of them were hungry any longer.

  The drive to the building housing Jeremy’s lab was silent. Jeremy unlocked the front door and led them down the hall to the lab. Today, it’s chill humming felt ominous. Jeremy typed something into the computer and a logo, The History Channel, appeared on the center monitor. “This will give you a brief overview.”

  Jennifer gripped Lance’s hand. The video’s factual narration contrasted strongly with the footage rolling by. Not black rain. Gray smoke. The buildings collapsing in on themselves and turning to sand. A cloud of smoke rolling out across the city covering everything in its wake. The video continued, showing stunned onlookers. It was too real. Too terrible. She felt as if she were there among the fleeing gray-frosted men and women racing through ash-covered streets.

  “I wouldn’t have been there.” Jen used Lance’s joined hand to wipe away her tears. “I hated that building from the moment I saw it. It was too big! I can’t think of a single thing that would make me go into a building with over a hundred floors. You know what I’m like.”

  Jeremy’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, I know what you’re like. I can’t imagine why you would be anywhere near Wall Street. Especially at any time before noon.”

  Jen drew a ragged breath. All those people. What kind of imagination thought up using passenger jets as weapons? She’d been terrified of planes before she saw the video. Never could fly without a Xanax. “You’re right. I always sleep in on a performance day. Unless I have an audition. And auditions are normally after ten.” She closed her eyes, but the images were burned into her brain. “You said four planes?”

  “Yes.” Lance cleared his throat. “One crashed into the Pentagon. The other never reached its target. It crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.”

  This was far worse than time travel. “You think you were on one of them, don’t you? Why?”

  Lance shrugged. “I’m listed as a speaker at the conference. My name never comes up again. I’m very good with computers. I couldn’t find any mention of either of us after that date.”

  Jeremy swung back to the screen. Drummed his fingers on the desk; tapping out an offbeat rhythm. “That’s it, then. Somehow both of you are connected to the events. Or at any rate, disconnected to this world afterward.” He could have been intoning their funeral mass.

  “But we aren’t dead.” Both of them looked at her as though she’d lost her marbles.

  “If we don’t show up on the computer, no mention of us anywhere at all on the World Wide Web, I think we died,” Lance said gently.

  “Well, computers don’t know everything because here we are. Something happened. Something changed.” Jen forced back the fear and panic. She folded her arms and tried to stare them down. “So all you have to do is find out what happened to me and Lance on that horrible day and fix it!”

  Lance shook his head. “Sweetheart, time doesn’t work that way.”

  “You don’t know for sure how time works. All you have are theories. Listen up, big brains. It’s time to find a new theory.”

  Jeremy massaged his forehead with his fingers. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jen. But I have no bloody idea in the world of how to do it.”

  “Oh come on. You invented this whole time thing, didn’t you? What was the point unless it was to fix things?”

  “Kat almost proved it was possible to fix herself out of existence.” Jeremy’s words didn’t match his expression. Jen could see his wheels turning. Good.

  She glared at them both. “So hadn’t you better get started? We don’t have forever, you know.”

  Lance’s shout of laughter broke the tension. “That’s my Guinevere. We don’t have forever, Jeremy. Let’s get cracking.”

  Chapter 17

  Jen prowled the empty hall. She’d done her bit, cheering them on. Time to leave them to it. Now all she had to do was keep from going bonkers while they figured it out. The thought she might have been a part of the video Jeremy showed them was a buzzing tension in her mind. It couldn’t be true. How could she be dead and feel this alive?

  She heard hammers on the other side of the wall tapping to the jazzy beat of Stayin’ Alive. Good songs don’t die. Jen closed her mind to the memory of the video. “You’re here. Alive,” she scolded herself. “Stay in the now.” She halted in front of the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on the door in the sheetrock wall. Who owned the other half of the building? No time like the present to find out. She opened the door.

  A couple of hot guys in hard hats were working on what looked like a frame for a stage flat. Now that would a good name for a play. Hot Guys in Hard Hats. “Hello.”

  Neither of them answered.

  She raised her voice. “What are you building?” The tall blond hit his thumb with a hammer.

  The shorter, and equally hot Hispanic man stopped crooning along with the music. “This is a closed working space. Sorry, ma’am. You can’t be in a construction zone without a hard hat. Union rules.”

  Jen was so accustomed to male admiration she almost always failed to notice it. Until it wasn’t there. She pouted prettily. No reaction. It’s happened. I’m officially over the hill. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

  She gazed past the stacks of sheetrock and plywood. The area was divided by wood frames into two large rooms separated by a center space, possibly meant to be a hall. The huge door in the back wall resembled a crenulated-stone castle gate. Wonder what set it was from? “Are you building a film set?”

  “No,” the blond hottie said. “You really have to leave, ma’am.”

  Ma’am? Dear God. I’m my mother!

  An older man with a hard-bitten look came through the castle door. “Vinnie, Joe. We’re on break.” His eyes swept over Jen appreciatively. “Can I help you, miss?”

  Now that was more like it. She upped her smile to a touch of sultry. “My brother’s working in the back, he’s rather busy at the moment with some new . . . development. And I’d hoped to get a tour. What exactly are you building here? When I saw the castle door, I thought it might be a new film set. I’m Jen, by the way. Jennifer—

  “Knight,” the foreman finished. “I saw you in The Way Out three times. He cracked a slow smile.

  “That’s very flattering.”

  The other two exchanged “Huh?” looks. They’d probably been in primary school when her film came out. “So, could I have a tour?”

  “Vinnie. Give me your hat. You both go to lunch. Back in thirty.”

  The Hispanic man shrugged. “Your call, Nate. No skin off my nose.” He handed Jen the yellow hard-shell hat. “The strap adjusts. Come on, Joe.”

  Jen adjusted the strap. Nate’s look was appreciative, but not a come on. More respectful than anything else. “So, no sound stage?”

  “Not anymore. This guy from England . . .”

  “My brother. Jeremy.”

  “Mr. Smith is your brother?”

  “Smythe, actually. With a long I sound. One of our great grandparents thought it made us sound more posh. Jennifer Knight is my stage name. I felt an actress needed a catchier name than Smythe.”

  “The studio started selling off soundstages after the recession and your brother bought it. He hired an architect. And Ed hired us. McCann Construction does a lot of his buildings. That’s me. Nate McCann.”

  She shook the calloused hand he held out. “Please to meet you, Nate McCann. What exactly are you building here?”

  Nate swept his arm around. “It’s a theme park for grownups. This front part here is going to be two restaurants. The back?” He shrugged. “The bac
k is going to be some kind of virtual reality game. It’s out of my field.”

  What on earth was virtual reality? She could see she was going to become very friendly with Lance’s laptop.

  “So, restaurants?” She turned in a circle trying to imagine the empty rooms filled. Jeremy bought a sound stage? All those business trips. This is where he’d been coming. All part of some scheme to reunite with his true love. But . . . “A theme park?”

  “Why not? Look at Disneyland and Universal. Look at LEGOLAND. Some of the new movie complexes have theaters which only cater to adults and they are making money hand over fist. There’s a lot of money to be made in entertainment.”

  “I’m sure there is.”

  Nate smiled knowingly.

  “Don’t look at me. I am, or rather, I was, the talent. Not a lot of money in it unless your name’s above the title. I was never that kind of a draw.”

  Nate frowned. “You were great in The Way Out. I kept my eye out for your name after that. But I didn’t see it. What happened?”

  “I . . .” Jen rubbed cold fingers together. Behind her eyelids, she watched buildings, human beings, sink and turn into dust. “I decided I liked the theatre better. Went back to doing plays. I don’t imagine you get much news of British theatre.”

  “I don’t go to the theatre. My wife and I like movies.”

  “You said theme restaurants? What theme?”

  “Want to see the drawings?” Nate pointed to a series of sketches taped to a large worktable. Whoever did them was very good. One room looked Victorian. The other resembled a jazz club from the roaring twenties.

  “Lovely.” Jen’s mind pictured the finished restaurants. “I suppose the food will be themed too? I’d love to see a 1920s takeaway menu.”

  Nate grinned. “I’m more of a steak and potatoes man, but my wife would love it. I’m looking forward to bringing her here when it opens. Can’t wait to see what your brother has up his sleeve.”