Quinn's Way

by Rebecca Flanders

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t able to find some of the titles. I placed an inter-library loan request, but it may take a few days.”

  Quinn nodded. “We have a few days.”

  He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that was open over his bare chest. His hair was rumpled and his feet were bare. Even in the uncertain light she could see the fatigue that lined his face, and she wanted to lay her hand against that face, to comfort him.

  “I’ve never seen you shave.”

  If he was surprised by the non sequitur, he didn’t show it. “In my time, facial hair is considered unsanitary and unattractive. Most men have their beards permanently removed through a simple cosmetic procedure.” He paused, and she saw the corner of a smile lurked around his lips. “The same procedure is used to remove hair from their heads.”

  Houston lifted her eyebrows. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “Because it’s the fashion.”

  “Baldness?”

  He nodded, eyes twinkling. “Sleek and sexy, I believe is the phrase.”

  She stared at him for a moment, straining to discern more of his expression in the low light, then struck him playfully on the leg.

  “You’re teasing me! Why am I so gullible?”

  “It’s the truth,” he insisted, catching her hand. “I keep my hair because I don’t want to be conspicuous in this time period, but in my time period I’m very conspicuous. And unpopular, I’m afraid. None of the ladies wants to be seen with someone as hopelessly out of step as I am.”

  Though he made his voice mournful she could see the glint of mischief in his eyes. “Well, if you’re looking for sympathy, don’t look here,” she retorted. She tried to tug her fingers away—though she didn’t try very hard. “I find it difficult to believe that with lines like that, you’d be unpopular with the ladies in any century—hair or no hair.”

  He grinned. “Thank you—I think.”

  And then the grin faded; he linked his fingers with hers and raised their entwined hands a few inches off the bed, gazing at them absently. “You know, it’s funny. Most of my life, all I’ve wanted is to be a part of the twentieth century. My entire career has been devoted to studying it, and I’m never more comfortable than when I’m actually here, in this time. I could be perfectly content living out a full life here—that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, really. But now the most important work of my life, the hardest work of my life, is spent trying to figure out a way to leave it behind.”

  She felt a catch in her throat, and her fingers tightened involuntarily on his. But she couldn’t dwell on that. She couldn’t.

  Instead, she asked, “Have you ever been here before—in the nineties?”

  He shook his head. “I like to do my work chronologically. I had just finished an overview of the seventies, and was beginning the eighties. Of course, the nineties are in many ways the most exciting decade—certainly the most tumultuous—of the century. I’m glad I got to see it.”

  He brought their linked hands to his face then, where he caressed the backs of her fingers briefly with his cheek, and then to his chest, resting them just above the beat of his heart. Houston did not object. She let the quietness of the night and the warmth of the moment draw them together and seal them in.

  “What’s it like—three hundred years from now? Is life better? Is society stronger? Is the future worth waiting for?” And are all the men like you? Because if so, there is hope for us all….

  He chose his answer carefully, as of course he would. “In many ways it’s better. Certainly everyday life is simpler, with all the modern conveniences we have.”

  Houston stifled a surprised giggle. She considered herself fairly well equipped in the modern-convenience department, but she supposed her household must seem as backward to him as a pioneer woman’s sod house would to her.

  “We don’t work as many hours to provide for our families as you do now,” he went on. “I suppose that’s good. Women and children are society’s most valuable assets, and they are treated as such. Crimes against the innocent are almost nonexistent.” His tone was a little nostalgic—and something more.

  “Wow,” Houston said softly. “I could live there.”

  “There is a price to be paid for these advances in civilization, however—there always is. I think sometimes we have less freedom than you do. I know we have fewer choices. And—” he smiled at her “—our lives are not nearly as exciting as yours.”

  “Exciting? Surely you don’t mean my life.”

  “Every time you get behind the wheel of an automobile, every time you stand in front of a classroom, every time you go into a supermarket, you experience an adventure most people of my time can’t even imagine. There’s an amusement park called Freeways of the Twenty-First Century—traffic gets much worse before it gets better, I should warn you—and people flock to it by the thousands to have a taste of the excitement of these times.”

  Houston laughed. “I’m not sure whether I believe you, but you have given me a new appreciation of rush hour.”

  His skin was smooth and warm against her hand, the muscles of his chest firm. She could feel the rhythmic rise and fall with his breath, and she wanted to open her fingers, to spread her hand over that strong, masculine expanse, caressing and exploring. Perhaps he saw it in her eyes. Something about the tenderness of his smile, a slight softening of his gaze, made her drop her own eyes as she searched for a more neutral topic.

  “What other centuries have you studied?” she asked in a moment.

  “None,” he admitted. “It takes years of study to learn the customs and details of a particular time period, and then of course there’s the language problem. Once you choose an area of specialization, you stick with it.”

  “Language?”

  He nodded, smiling. “Anything past the twenty-first century is an entirely alien language to us. Except for variations in dialect, we speak a single planetary language now—and most of it, interestingly enough, is based on what Mark would call ‘compu-speak.’”

  Houston’s brow creased with a puzzled frown. “What’s that?”

  “The shorthand computer bulletin board and E-mail users are inventing even now—and for the record, that’s something no one knew until I discovered it, working with Mark. The origins of an entire language rediscovered…that’s quite a find, and it’ll be sure to set the academic world on its ear when I…”

  The glow of excitement that had begun to kindle in his eyes faded as they both realized what he had been about to say. Houston’s fingers tightened on his, and she said a little more intensely than she had intended, “I don’t understand. I know history is important. I know we all need to know where we came from to know who we are. But it can’t be this important. Not enough to risk your life for.”

  “The men and women of your time are risking their lives to explore space, and they do so with much less promise of reward than we have. You see, it’s not just abstracts we’ve lost, but technology, botanicals—things that could make a real difference in our lives if they could be applied to the problems of the twenty-fourth century. It is important,” he assured her, and his eyes showed no fear, no regret. “It is worth dying for.”

  Houston closed her eyes against the pain that was slowly twisting in her chest. It was a moment before she could speak.

  “Mark…” She had to clear her throat. “Mark doesn’t think it’s going very well.”

  “No,” he admitted, holding her gaze. “Not through any fault of his or his bulletin-board friends who are helping. The problem is we’re about six years too early for even the simplest piece of technology I need.”

  “But…” Her throat constricted with anxiety. “You can improvise, right? You can invent what you need, or alter something we already have…”

  “It’s not very likely.”

  The look in his eyes was patient and apologetic, watchful and sad. From it she knew what he was going to say before he spoke.


  “Houston, I may have to ask you to do some things for me. There are arrangements that should be made and—”

  “No!” She jerked her hand away. “No, I don’t want to hear that. You’re talking like you’ve given up and you can’t give up! There is a way—there has to be!”

  “I haven’t given up. But we have to face reality, and be prepared for the worst.”

  But Houston couldn’t. She couldn’t face the possibility of failure, not if it meant his life. Even though success would take him away from her, at least she would know that somewhere, in some time, he lived.

  She half turned from him, pressing her lips tightly to close off the words she had no right to say—or perhaps to just silence the sobs.

  Quinn sat up, taking her shoulders gently from behind. “I’m sorry. I know I have no right to ask anything of you. I’ve brought so much turmoil into your life and Mark’s already. Believe me, if I could take it back, I would.”

  “It’s just that—it’s so unfair, you know?” Houston’s voice sounded tight and high, and she focused her eyes on the corner where the ceiling met the wall. “I mean…I’m almost thirty-three years old, and in all that time you’re the only good thing, besides my son, that’s ever happened to me. The only one.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders, but he said nothing.

  “I know you don’t belong here, I know there’s no, well, future for us, so to speak…” She even tried to smile. “And that’s bad enough, but given the history of my relationship with men—if it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all—it’s not surprising. I hate it. But…if you go back…at least I can think of you, now and then, and daydream about…possibilities…”

  She was beginning to choke up; she fought back the tears deliberately. “But if you don’t go back, then it’s over, tragically, finally. And all I’ll ever be able to think about is that because you came here, and loved me—because you were a part of our lives for this tiny little space of time—you died. You never got to be what you were supposed to be in your own time, you never got to live out your life the way you were meant to, you never got to think back, and remember me….”

  Her voice was harshened now, by tears and anger, and her hands closed into tight fists. “That makes me angry, Quinn. So don’t ask me to talk about what has to be done. Don’t ask me to be prepared for the worst. I know you’re right. I know we have to deal with these things. But not now. Now, just let me be angry.”

  His hands caressed her shoulders, tenderly gathering her to him, even as he bent his head to bury his face in her hair. “Ah, Houston.” His breath was warm on her neck. “If I could live a thousand years, I could never make up for the pain I’ve caused you.”

  He raised his face and let his hands slip down her arms, cupping her elbows. “I want to tell you something. I wasn’t going to raise false hopes. But now I want you to know.”

  Houston turned around and looked at him.”

  “All the effort I’ve put into trying to get back, instead of trying to find a way to stay here safely—it wasn’t because I wanted to leave you.”

  “I know that,” she protested quickly, but he laid a finger lightly across her lips to silence her.

  “It was because I knew that only by going back could I find a way to stay with you. You see,” he explained, “even though we can only stay in a foreign century a few weeks at a time because of the limitations of the serum, we can return to our own time, detoxify our systems and then travel back in time again—arriving only a few minutes after we left. That’s how I was able to spend almost a whole summer with Sam, and he never knew I had ever left.”

  Houston’s heart began to beat faster as she understood the implications.

  Then he said, “Unfortunately, we can only do this a few times before the magnetic pattern begins to wear thin, preventing us from returning to the same time period at all. But research is being done on the problems every day. If I could get back to my own time, I could find a way to make it possible for a traveler to stay indefinitely in a foreign time. Then I would come back to you…if you wanted me.”

  Her heartbeat caught, tumbled, raced—and only partially from hope, desperate though it might be. The joy that filled her chest and made her light-headed was simply from knowing that he had formulated a plan and wanted it to work.

  “It could take a long time,” she said.

  “You would never know I was gone.”

  “You would be older.”

  He hesitated, then nodded, dropping his eyes. “Probably.”

  Houston smiled. Lifting her hand to his face, she lightly touched one corner of his mouth. “You might be bald.”

  She felt the curve of his smile beneath her fingertip before he lifted his eyes. “I might,” he agreed. “Do you think you could learn to like that?”

  “I might.”

  He captured her hand, kissing her fingers.

  “You might forget about me,” Houston said softly. “You might go back to your own time and find someone else.”

  Quinn’s eyes were dark and serious. “There is no one else,” he said simply. “In my time, a man has only one mate. You are mine.”

  Tears trembled on Houston’s lashes, blurring his face in a mist of tenderness and need. She said, only a little thickly, “Now I want to tell you something. Whatever happens, you’ll always be my hero.”

  Placing her hands on either side of his face, she leaned forward and kissed him gently.

  She pulled away, and they looked at each other for a moment. His hand caressed her hair, cupping the back of her neck. His eyes absorbed her. She felt him inside her, mingling with her soul. She felt him in her breath, in her heartbeat. She felt as though, if she simply relaxed her muscles, she would flow into him, become a part of him, inseparable forever. And that was what she did.

  Leaning forward, she let her weight press him back onto the bed, settling her legs on either side of him, her skirt falling over them like a curtain. She took his lower lip between her teeth, lightly nibbling, tasting him. His hands gathered up her hair, entwining his fingers through it, then combing it free, tugging out the curls. She pressed her palms to his chest, kissing his nipples, tracing the shape of his muscles. He slipped his hands beneath the fall of her skirt, caressing her calves and the curve of her knee and her thighs. His palms cupped her buttocks, fingers hooking inside the elastic band of her panties. He kissed her face.

  “I love your freckles,” he murmured. “They taste like sunshine.”

  She pushed her fingers into his hair, a smile of sheer pleasure spreading across her face as she kissed his throat. “I love your hair. Don’t be a slave to fashion.”

  He tugged her panties down, straightening her legs to remove them. Houston reached between their bodies and unsnapped his jeans, slid down the zipper, then sat back to help him tug the material free of his hips.

  Their breathing, now deep and heavy, was as one. They kissed, opening their mouths, tasting deeply of each other. Their hands joined, fingers locked, arm muscles stretching. As naturally as night becoming day, they merged and became one.

  Their lovemaking was sweet, like a sonnet, and tumultuous, like a storm. They wrapped themselves around each other and drew themselves into each other, straining together, swelling together, poised together for one endless suspended moment on the edge of rapture, then bursting together into a thousand fragments of glittering pleasure; she and he, mixed and inextricable, not one part distinguishable from the other.

  They lay in a damp tangle of arms and legs and twisted clothing, heartbeats and breathing gradually slowing, the fever fading. But the glow that surrounded them did not fade; the intensity that joined them did not diminish. Outside, the moon rose and stars came out, the crickets began their familiar song. Inside, they lay together in silence, holding each other and treasuring the moment.

  “Take me with you,” Houston whispered. She lifted her head, looking at him. “I can’t take the chance on letting you go—that som
ething might go wrong again. You’ve got to find a way to rebuild the resonator and take Mark and me with you.”

  He combed his fingers through her hair, his expression gentle and sad. “I can’t. Even if I had the technology, you couldn’t survive in my time, any more than I can now survive in yours.”

  Houston lowered her head to his chest, biting her lip against further protests.

  Quinn wrapped both arms around her, kissing her hair, holding her tightly. “I’ll find a way,” he promised her, his voice low and hoarse. “I’ll survive this, I’ll go home and I’ll come back to you. I have to.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Mom! Quinn!”

  It was ten o’clock the next morning. She and Quinn were finishing breakfast; Mark had bolted his and run off somewhere almost half an hour earlier. It was promising to be a perfect June day, soft and lazy and bathed in sunshine. But neither the bright morning light that flowed through the bay window nor the glow of warmth that lingered between them last night could disguise the mauve circles beneath Quinn’s eyes or the tired, grayish color of his skin. Houston was worried about him. She didn’t want to tell him so, but she was.

  They both looked around when Mark burst through the kitchen door, sweaty and flushed and looking as though he had run an obstacle course to reach them. His hair was tangled with twigs and briars, his cheeks were smudged and his hands were filthy, and the knees of his jeans were coated with mud. Such a hapless disregard for cleanliness might have been typical for any other ten-year-old boy, but for her son it was definitely a cause for remark.

  “Mark!” exclaimed Houston in dismay. “Look at you! Where have you been? How did you get so filthy?”

  He stood just inside the doorway, breathing hard, his face alight with triumph and excitement. “It was so simple,” he said, looking at Quinn. “I don’t know why we didn’t see it before!”

  Houston got up from the table and went to the sink, snatching up a handful of paper towels and dampening them under the faucet before offering them to her son. Mark ignored them. Quinn, apparently sensing something Houston did not, regarded Mark intently.