Maybe This Time (A Second Chance Romance)

by Susan B. James

  “Home was never this festive.” Jen prowled toward the lighted shop windows.

  Lance took her arm, guiding her toward the broad-stepped winding staircase. “Sir Winston’s is upstairs.”

  The banister’s light-twined branches scented the main hall with pine. The red-patterned carpet gave an air of elegance to the room.

  In Sir Winston’s, amber-draped curtains filled the spaces between a curved wall of windows. The waiter seated Jen so she had a perfect view of the harbor lights. “This is wonderful.”

  Lance took the seat opposite her.

  “No. Come sit next to me. Your head spoils the view.”

  Lance moved. Somehow his foot got twined with hers. Lovely.

  The waiter offered Lance a wine menu. “No, thank you.”

  Jen nudged his foot. “Go ahead. It won’t bother me.”

  “I’m good. We’ll start with water and a large pot of tea.”

  Jen scanned the menu. It reminded her of meals with her parents at Rules restaurant in London.

  Glass-shaded candles flickered on white tablecloths. Music murmured in the background. Definitely old school. The thirties, perhaps? Jen arranged the huge, black napkin in her lap. “I feel like I’ve gone back in time.”

  Lance raised his eyebrows.

  “In a good way. To a time of glamour, and wealth, and Fred Astaire. I want him and Ginger to come gliding past us in a marvelous dance.”

  “Thank you.” Lance smiled at her. “That’s what I hoped you’d feel.”

  The waiter placed a salver with a white china teapot, a small pitcher of milk, and a silver bowl containing sugar cubes and tongs in front of them.

  “No talk about time and problems. Tonight’s for us.” Lance poured tea into the two gold-banded cups.

  The tea’s smoky scent soothed her. “I’ll play mother.” She slid both cups and saucers toward her and picked up a sugar cube with the tongs. “One lump or two?”

  “None. I like it just the way it is.” But he wasn’t looking at the tea. “Anything on the menu you fancy?”

  Her core responded to his intention. “Quit it,” she whispered.

  Lance looked the picture of innocence. “I was talking about the menu.”

  Jen sipped the tea, letting her hair form a curtain between them. Two could play at that game. “Hard to choose. So many wonderful things.” She peeped up at him from under her eyelashes, giving him her best, sultry look. “The Lobster Bisque with truffle scented tamale roe butter sounds wonderful.” She moistened her lips with her tongue. “Don’t you think so?”

  His eyes glazed over. “Yes. Wonderful.”

  “Perhaps followed by the Chateaubriand for two, with . . . Béarnaise?” she breathed huskily.

  “Stop it, Jen.”

  “You started it.”

  “I know I did. Pax?”

  Jen kissed her little finger and curved it into his. “Pax.”

  His finger tightened around hers. “Do you want to go home now?”

  “No. I’ll be good if you will.” Jen leaned back and took in the lighted boats sailing by. “This is the most romantic place you’ve ever taken me.”

  “That’s sad. I wish I’d taken you places when we were married.”

  “We didn’t have the money. Your salary barely covered our flat and the car payment. I certainly wasn’t earning much as an actor.”

  “Did you mind it? The lack of money?”

  “No. Being poor was part of the glamour. We were following our dreams. At least, I was. Were you happy?”

  “Of course I was happy. I had you.”

  But he hadn’t been. She remembered times when he turned silent. And walked away. “Did the lack of money bother you?”

  Lance shrugged. “Yes. I think it did. I wanted to give you so much more. Sometimes I felt like I failed. Here was Jeremy, able to give Laura anything she wanted. And I could barely afford to take you to a film. There was a time when I thought that might be why you left.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  The waiter came before she could get wound up properly. Lance ordered Chateaubriand for two. Jen shook her head to the Lobster Bisque. “Too rich. I’ll never sleep tonight.”

  Lance’s eyes gleamed in the candlelight.

  “All right, Lance. What’s the best Christmas present you ever got?”

  “You. Yesterday. When you married me.”

  “Very nice. Go further back. To your childhood. What was your best Christmas present then?”

  “You.”

  She frowned at him. “You’re not playing the game properly.”

  “All right, not just you. The first Christmas Jeremy invited me to stay with your family. It was like being invited into a magic circle. All of you were so happy. Yeah, you squabbled, but like kids in one of E. Nesbit’s magic books.”

  “I loved her books. Especially Five Children and It. It was my dream to be Anthea. I know I would have made so much better use of my wishes.”

  “Me too. Did you read The House of Arden?”

  Jen nodded.

  “That poor boy on the outside. That was me. And you were the family in the castle. I wanted so much to be a part of you. Happy, squabbling, and safe.”

  “And your wish came true. You were with us every Christmas.” Jen rubbed her foot against his calf. “Your parents were idiots. And I’m so happy for us they were. I would have lost a lot more dolls to the stake if it hadn’t been for your intervention.”

  “Ah, well. We’d started reading The Knights of the Round Table. Took us right out of cowboys and Indians.”

  “That’s when you stuck me with Guinevere. I hated it. I didn’t want to be a stupid queen who couldn’t make up her mind. I wanted to be one of the knights.”

  “There were no girl knights,” he reminded her.

  “That’s why I made one up. Her name was Garamond and she was the strongest of the knights. No one could best her. And after she won the tournament, she would kneel in front of King Arthur and take off her silver helmet, and her long golden hair would swirl around her like a cloud.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “You wouldn’t have let me play her. You boys wanted all the swords for yourselves. When you went out skating, Courtney and I stole your swords and had our own game.”

  Lance toyed with her fingers. “What was your best Christmas present as a child?”

  “The toy theatre set Santa brought me. I loved making up plays. The cut-outs did what I told them. When I played pretend with you and Jeremy and Robert, you lot always wanted to make up your own lines.”

  “Of course we did.”

  The waiter wheeled up a cart with two, silver-domed serving dishes. He removed the covers and placed the gold-banded plates in front of them. The mouthwatering smell had them both reaching for their forks.

  The chateaubriand was perfection. Melt-in-the-mouth slices of beef garnished with golden, Béarnaise sauce. The roasted tomatoes, slim stalks of asparagus, and truffle mashed potatoes were the perfect accompaniment.

  “But that wasn’t the best present I remember. The year I was sixteen, you gave me a diamond heart on a silver chain.”

  Lance opened his mouth to correct her. She hushed him. “I know it wasn’t real diamonds or silver, but it was the first grown-up present you ever gave me. And I allowed myself to dream someday we would have a happy-ever-after, just like in the stories.”

  Lance’s smile twisted. “And we had it. For a while.”

  “And now we’ve begun another one. This time we’ll make it stick.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Lance unlocked the door to the apartment and flipped the light switch.

  “Home Sweet Home,” Jen quipped. The Spanish shawl she’d fl
ung over the back of the sofa brightened the room. She sat and eased off her shoes. “Retail work’s harder on the feet than theatre.”

  Lance switched on the radio. “I take it you don’t want to finish the night with a dance. Shall I make us a nightcap instead? Hot chocolate?”

  Jen stood up. “Find us another station. I’m not dancing to Goodbye Ruby Tuesday.”

  Lance fiddled with the dial. He went past classical and another rock station to Christmas carols.

  “Never mind. Turn it off.” She held out her arms to him. “I’ll hum for us.”

  He put his arms around her waist. Jen hummed a Cole Porter tune as they slow danced in the open space between the kitchen and the living room. She rested her head against his shoulder, breathing in the wool scent of his sweater mixed with the spice musk scent that was Lance. This was home.

  She stopped humming and stood on tiptoe to join her lips to his. Their tongues danced to the rhythm of their quickened heartbeats. Her core was on fire. This was a different dance. One she had to have now.

  Lance broke the kiss. “I have a better idea for a nightcap,” he said hoarsely.

  Jen could feel his idea swelling. “Right. Race you to the bedroom.”

  Lance picked her up, maneuvered them through the bedroom door, and rolled her onto the bed. “You win.”

  They were getting very quick at undressing each other. Wonderful how it all came back. “Just like a bicycle,” Jen murmured, before their tangle of limbs became a hot, fast, ride up the mountain. Together they reached the top.

  Jen looked down into the face of her lover, still holding him inside her. She didn’t want to let go. She wound his errant lock of hair around her finger. “Sylvie asked me why we couldn’t just stay here. Change our names and have new lives like in the witness protection program.”

  Lance smoothed away the tension between her eyes with a gentle finger. “Jeremy says we’ve a very small window of time to correct the anomaly. If we don’t go back and rescue our other selves soon, the you and I in this time may cease to exist.”

  “But he flew on a plane to New York. Isn’t it going to take him a few weeks to do whatever he has to do there?”

  “Yes. But he’s figured out how to calculate a time jump. That’s what he told me. He’ll be in New York for whatever length of time it takes him to build a portal. Then he’ll set a time jump, which will bring him back to Los Angeles tomorrow morning. He can’t take a chance on coming back to today. It’s vital he doesn’t meet himself coming or going.”

  Lance’s calm expression didn’t fool her. He was as scared as she was. Time to lighten things up. “So he’s going to find an apartment and construct a time portal in it. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if he bought one in the Dakota?”

  “What’s the Dakota?”

  “It’s a marvelous gothic apartment building off Central Park West. Lots of famous people have lived there.”

  Lance’s brow furrowed. “Now I remember. The Dakota is where John Lennon was shot.”

  “Blast. I forgot about that. I thought it would be brilliant because the hero in Jack Finney’s novel Time and Again used an apartment in the Dakota to time travel back to 1882.”

  She felt Lance’s body relax infinitesimally. “How’d he do it?”

  “I don’t remember.” She shifted her body to spoon into his, pulling his arm across her like a security blanket. “Something to do with furniture and acting as if he lived in the 1880’s.” Jen yawned. “The Dakota has been around a long time.”

  Lance’s yawn answered hers. “Odd theory. I’ll have to read the book. Go to sleep, love. Tomorrow’s coming early.”

  Chapter 33

  “It’s done.” Jeremy looked gray with exhaustion. “I’ve created a portal in New York.”

  Jen handed him the cup of coffee they’d brought from home for him. “At the Dakota?”

  “Don’t be daft, Jen. Do you have any idea how much one of those apartments cost? About eighteen million pounds.”

  “That’s insane.” Jen couldn’t resist needling Jeremy. “You checked then?”

  “Yes, I checked.” Jeremy’s smile was so fleeting she thought she’d imagined it. “You’re not the only one who read Finney.” He turned back to the computer, his hands flashing over the keyboard. “I rented an apartment in a brownstone off Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Considerably cheaper. It’s about halfway between Wall Street and the theatre district.”

  The box attached to the computer spat out a white card.

  “Why only one?” Jen asked, attempting to stall the inevitable.

  “Because the computer doesn’t think you exist. Shall we go?”

  Jen felt the stomach-dropping sensation that preceded her worst stage fright attacks. “You haven’t explained anything. I want to know what we are going to do.”

  Lance took her hand. “We’re going to get ourselves out alive. And then?” His eyes shifted to Jeremy. “And then we see.”

  Jen put her hands on her hips and glared at both of them. “You’ve made a plan without me. You haven’t told me a damn thing.”

  Jeremy rose, putting his hands on the desk to steady himself. “I set the gate. I’ve done everything I can to ensure your safety, and you want to have a conference? I’m the time expert. Come on.”

  Lance eased Jeremy back into the chair. “You don’t look fit to go anywhere. When did you last sleep?”

  Jeremy rubbed his eyes. “How do I know? All this jumping back and forth is—”

  “You didn’t eat either, did you?” Jen interrupted. “Let’s get you some food before you pass out.”

  “No. There’s something odd about this gate. There’s something shaky in the parameters.” Jeremy used the armrests to lever himself up. “Jen, we have to go.”

  Jen put one arm under Jeremy’s shoulder. “Let’s do it, then.”

  Lance supported him on the other side. They walked him down the plywood-lined hall to the room with the key card slot in the door. Lance took the card from Jeremy and inserted it.

  They huddled together in the claustrophobic, nightmare of the closet that had brought them to Los Angeles. When the blue light traveled over them, there was a crackle like loose lightning. Then an unexpected lurch. Jen muffled her scream against Lance’s chest.

  The exit door opened into a small living room. On one wall were two un-curtained windows facing into an air shaft. The wall in front of them was lined with a row of computers, wired together and stacked two deep. A single cord connected them to a computer monitor with a fish screensaver which sat on a card table in the corner. The third wall was white plaster with an open arch leading into a kitchen. The only other furniture was a black swivel office chair.

  Jeremy fell forward. Lance caught him and hoisted him over his shoulder. “Jen, see if there’s a bed in this benighted place.”

  There were two more doors next to the one they’d come through. Jen opened the first. A small room with a single bed and no other furnishing. “In here.”

  Lance maneuvered him through the doorway and dumped him on the bed. “Sleep. “Nothing’s going to happen until you get some sleep. We need you sentient.”

  “No time,” Jeremy mumbled. His indrawn breath expelled as a snore.

  Jen threw a cover over him. “Idiot.” She’d seen Jeremy work through like this before. He had no sense when he started following an idea. She strode back to the living room. “He’ll sleep for hours and wake up starving.”

  “I know.” He slung his arm around her.

  She threw it off. “How could you make a plan and not tell me? You’re both treating me like a child. I am a fully-functional capable human. I want to know the plan.”

  Lance sighed. “If we’re going to argue, I want to do it sitting down.”

  “Fine.” Je
n glanced at the one chair, then crossed one leg over the other and sank gracefully to the floor in lotus position.

  Lance lowered himself to the floor, wincing slightly. “Aging hasn’t been kind to my knees. How do you manage to sit on the floor and look comfortable?”

  Jen ignored his complaint. “What have you two decided?”

  “Last night was ours and I was damn well not going to waste it talking about our somewhat uncertain future.”

  “Come again?”

  “Jen, what do you think is going to happen when we find ourselves?”

  “I don’t know.” She’d avoided the thought of meeting their past. “You tell me.”

  “Aaron thinks the act of meeting our . . . our past selves may cause them to merge.”

  Jen absorbed what he said. “One of us becomes a ghost and slips into the body of the other?”

  Lance nodded.

  Jen shivered. “That’s a kind of death. If there are two of me in the same body, what happens to my memories?”

  “I don’t know. Neither does Jeremy. It’s only a theory.” Lance shifted his glance upward, to the fish swimming mindlessly across the computer monitor. “Jeremy and I think we have to go in and rescue you first.”

  “And when and where do you plan to do that?”

  “Jeremy thinks we should intercept you at the theatre, after you finish your performance.”

  Jen wrapped her arms around her knees, bracing herself for the answer. “And where do we rescue you?”

  “At the Marriott next to the World Trade Center.”

  Jen fought to keep the wave of terror she felt out of her face. “Can’t we get to you before you check in? Take a train to Washington and find you there?”

  “Aaron said our best chance of making this work is to intervene as close to when the planes hit as possible. Good Lord. I didn’t ask. We don’t know what day it is.” Lance stood and pulled Jen to her feet. “Come on, Guinevere. Reconnaissance time. Let’s go find a newspaper and some food.”