by JoAnn Ross
“Nate’s already vouched for him.”
“Like our brother would even notice if a guy looked like Charles Manson or the Unabomber so long as he was an asset to his precious lab.”
“He doesn’t look anything like either one of them. And Nate’s not as single-focused as you’d think. He warned Sebastian against having sex with me.”
Her sister’s hazel eyes widened. “He did that in front of you?”
“No. While they were outside supposedly talking about lab stuff. Sebastian told me later.”
Kirby opted for not telling Emily that her stranger—and yes, she was now admittedly thinking of him as hers—was warned against “mating” with her. It would only give her sister another reason to worry. Even without the mystery of his background and sudden appearance on the island, there was definitely something off-kilter about Sebastian Blackthorne. Then again, that could be said for their own brother. Who was absolutely harmless.
“Well, I’m glad he’s watching out for you,” Emily said. “But I still want to meet him. The rehearsal dinner’s tonight with the wedding tomorrow. Once everyone’s out of the house, I want the two of you to come to dinner.”
“He might be working.”
“If Nate, who can be even more clueless about real life than most men, recognized the need to give the man a warning, obviously he spotted some vibes.”
Kirby decided to give up the ruse. This was her sister she was talking with. The one who’d assured her she was better off without teen boy slut Branson Smith, who’d dumped her the day of the annual Winterfest and gone with Margot Keene, who everyone in school knew put out. Emily had always had her back. As had Shelby. But her other sister was currently digging up an ancient city with a trowel and unavailable for romantic consultation.
“Or felt the earthquake,” Kirby admitted.
Emily lifted that brow again. “That strong?”
“I have never, ever felt that way in my life.”
“Well.” Her sister stood and began gathering up the dishes. “Now I definitely need to meet him. To make sure he’s good enough for you. I’ll expect you both the day after tomorrow for pot roast. Six o’clock.”
“If he’s not working,” Kirby hedged. As much as she wanted her sister’s take on Sebastian, she also, conversely, wanted to keep him to herself. Bad enough she had to share him with Nate.
“Six o’clock,” Emily repeated, giving Kirby a very good idea how she must’ve sounded when ordering staff around at the five-star hotel whose trademark, known around the world, was When Deluxe Will No Longer Do. “No excuses. Now, I have to run to finish arranging the flowers for tonight’s dinner.”
With that, she was out the door, leaving Kirby behind with a mac and cheese casserole and those same unanswered questions.
* * *
Five hours later, still as clueless as she’d been about Sebastian earlier, Kirby was getting ready to leave the office when her cell chimed.
“Hey, sis,” Nate said. “Where are you?”
“At work. For the next thirty seconds.”
“Would you mind picking Sebastian up?”
“Of course not.” Hello, huge understatement. “But I assumed you guys would be working late.”
“Yeah. That was the plan. But he seems to still be suffering some lingering effects from last night. He nearly passed out on me a few minutes ago. He wants to stay, but I really think he needs a good night’s sleep.”
Damn. She’d known he should’ve stayed home. Not that her house was his home, but how many humans could nearly die, then a few hours later be headed off to work in a place as high-intensity as she suspected the brain factory was? She would have gloated but was too concerned.
“I’ll be right there. Do you think he needs to go to a hospital?” Now that the snow had let up, Mac should be able to fly.
“Not necessary. His vitals check out okay. Like I said, he just needs some bedrest.” He paused. Then said carefully, “And food.”
“As it happens, Emily brought extra lobster mac and cheese.”
“A comfort meal,” her brother said approvingly. “Perfect.”
“I’m ever so glad you approve. See you in a bit.”
Unfortunately, there was nothing comforting about the way Kirby’s unruly girly parts began getting all tingly in anticipation on the way to the lab. “Stop that!” she scolded them. “That’s not the type of bedrest Nate is prescribing.”
Not that she didn’t want Sebastian in her bed. But neither did she want Nate to kill the first guy in a very long time she’d even contemplated having sex with.
Her brother wouldn’t really commit murder, she assured herself. Still, although those who didn’t know him well might consider him absent-minded and easygoing, she’d grown up with him.
She’d seen Nate’s temper. Not at anything done toward him. Insults and other bullying had simply rolled off him like water off a pelican’s back. But injustice or cruelty of any kind, toward people or animals, was enough to make him retaliate with surprising force.
She’d first witnessed the power of his fury when George Perkins, a high school sophomore, had caught her on the way home from middle school, knocked her down, and washed her face in the snow. When she’d come home with tears streaming down her gravel-scraped cheeks, thirteen-year-old Nate had pulled on his jacket, then walked out the door, marching the two blocks to the Perkins’s house.
When George had opened the front door, Nate had demanded to know if he’d been the one to attack Kirby. When the bully had dared to laugh and say he’d just been having himself some fun, Kirby—who’d followed him to watch events unfold—had heard him say, “Well, then, let’s have a little fun of our own.”
It was as if some superhero inside him had made him larger, more dangerous, like the Incredible Hulk losing his temper. But without turning green. He’d dragged Kirby’s nemesis down the front steps, out into the front yard, where he’d thrown him facedown onto the snowy driveway, knelt, and, straddling his back, shoved his face down so deep into a drift at the edge and held it so long Kirby had been afraid he might accidentally kill him. No way would she allow her twin to go to prison!
She’d run over and begun pulling the back of Nate’s jacket, but he shook her off. “It’s okay, Kirby,” he’d assured her as he jerked a lobster-red-faced George out of the snow, then stood him up just long enough to throw him back down again, this time so he landed on his butt. Hard.
As George had struggled to stand up again, Nate had bent down and jabbed a finger into the front of the older boy’s hoodie.
“If you ever so much as even look at any one of my sisters again, I will get a rusty hacksaw, saw off your dick, and stuff it down your damn throat.”
“Like you’d really do that,” George had retorted, spitting out snow and gravel. Stunned by her brother’s metamorphosis, Kirby had been amazed anyone would have had the nerve to attempt to stand up to such cool, controlled rage. Which just went to show that George was not only a bully. He was stupid, too.
Nate’s eyes had blazed. “Just. Try. Me.”
And then, as quickly as it had started, the confrontation was over. Nate was no longer looming over the driveway like a superhuman avenger, but back to her sweet, brilliant, absent-minded brother.
“Come on, kiddo,” he’d said, holding out a hand to her. “Let’s go home.”
He’d always been her closest sibling. But that day he’d become her hero. And her protector. Which could have proven a problem during her first marriage if she’d let it. And although she was a grown woman and knew that Nate wouldn’t really saw off Sebastian’s dick, she didn’t really want to put it to the test.
15
Once again, Sebastian found himself conflicted. He hadn’t wanted to leave the laboratory. He’d wanted, needed to stay and work with Nate on the accelerator. But, on the other hand, after several hours running through programs, bringing Kirby’s brother up on nearly two centuries of scientific discovery he’d not yet experienc
ed, his head felt as if it were being attacked by Janurian storm troopers, and he was feeling as weak as a newborn. The idea of collapsing into Kirby’s cloud of a bed was all too appealing.
Unfortunately, that brought up images of her lying beside him. Beneath him. On top of him. By the time her machine pulled up in front of the building, his head wasn’t the only body part aching.
He watched her jump out of the vehicle and come striding toward him, looking as if she had everything and everyone on the island under control. But before she’d opened the Jeep door, he’d caught her checking her hair in the rearview mirror and smoothing some color over lips that he could have told her needed no artificial enhancement.
“You do not have to say it,” he greeted her as he left the building to meet her halfway.
“Say what?”
“That you were correct. That I should have allowed my body time to rest.”
“Why should I point out what you’re smart enough to have already figured out for yourself? I will say that I’m glad you agreed to come home.”
Home.
Kirby Pendleton’s house was not Sebastian’s home. Nor was this island. Or even the planet. But that single word, reverberating in his throbbing head, caused his heart to begin to tumble in a way that had him wondering if he could possibly be having what, in this time, was known as a heart attack. That particular medical problem had been cured eighty years ago, but perhaps something about entering the Earth’s atmosphere had negated any genetic advances.
“It was not exactly a unilateral decision,” he admitted. “Your brother can be very persuasive.”
Whenever she laughed, he heard music. Every school child had listened to the sounds terran scientists had sent out—like a bottle in a cosmic ocean on the Voyager spacecraft in the year 1977.
There were spoken greetings in fifty-five ancient and modern terran languages, sounds of nature, such as waves, rain, and storms, and musical selections from different cultures and eras. Sebastian’s favorite, to his sister’s annoyance, had been a musician named Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” But if only they’d included Kirby Pendleton’s laughter, every man in all the galaxies would be racing to purchase transport tickets to Earth.
“I have to warn you about something,” she said as they crossed a covered wooden bridge.
“What’s that?”
“I have this tradition.”
“Traditions are a good thing.” One of Logosia’s most enduring traditions was the annual celebration of Truthfest. Which caused Sebastian’s head to throb even more painfully when he thought of how Rosalyn planned to disrupt this year’s events.
Disrupt? How about blow them sky-high?
He shouldn’t have come. The only reason he’d done so now was that this solar period was the only time that all the planets in both their solar systems would be in proper alignment. And his sister had promised not to do anything drastic until he’d returned. Which he now realized could have well been a lie. He’d never known her to tell a falsehood. But then again, how did anyone really know a person? Even one you’d shared a life with?
Although he knew Nate loved his sister, he was holding back truth from Kirby. For her own protection, he’d claimed. Sebastian knew Rosalyn loved him. So wouldn’t it be logical for her to do the same thing for the same reason? She wouldn’t want to be responsible for him abandoning years of work. Especially since it would be another century before the alignment would occur again.
“I’ve always thought so,” Kirby agreed, bringing his mind back to its original track. “Which is why I watch a holiday movie every night of December.”
“A Christmas tradition. Like your tree.”
“Precisely.” Her smile, in the slanted silvery moonlight, could have lit up the entire island. “And you’re in luck, Sebastian. Because tonight, not only are you getting my sister’s lobster mac and cheese, if you can stay awake, you’re watching It’s a Wonderful Life. Even though, like everyone else on the planet, you’ve probably already watched it a gazillion times.”
After the translator informed him of the meaning of gazillion, although he didn’t understand why anyone would use an indeterminate number when a specific one would be preferable, he decided against questioning her.
“I don’t believe I have,” he said instead.
She glanced over at him, her expressive face revealing surprise. “Never?”
“Not that I remember.”
“It’s got to be the amnesia,” she said to herself as much as to him. “Well then, you’re in for a treat.”
* * *
Two hours later, after a warm bath, which, in its own way, had felt as good as the shower, and two servings of lobster mac and cheese, which Sebastian could have happily eaten for every meal for the rest of his life, he was sitting in bed, a bowl of white corn she’d exploded in the microwave on his lap, watching a movie Rosalyn had apparently missed in her search for films depicting Earthlings.
“Why is it not in color?” he asked as the words rolled onto the television screen.
“Because it’s old.” She tossed some corn into her mouth. “But some stories never become outdated.”
He took in the black-and-white starry sky. “Is that outer space?”
“No. It’s heaven. Everyone’s praying for George Bailey, who’s gotten himself in a mess and lost his faith.”
“Who is George Bailey?”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “This is like a prologue,” she said. “If you just watch without trying to analyze every moment, you’ll enjoy it a lot more.”
Sebastian didn’t need any principles of analytic reasoning to deduce that she wanted him to shut up. So he did, content to watch the story unfold as he drank in the scent of her hair and ate the salty, buttered treat.
“Why does he tell her he’ll lasso the moon?” he asked after a time.
“Because he’s feeling romantic.”
“I can think of better ways to show a woman you want her than that.” He regretted the words as soon as he’d heard them leave his mouth. That was the problem with being anywhere near this woman’s force field. His brain deserted him.
She slanted him a gaze that was both scolding and amused at the same time. “And isn’t that just like a typical male.”
Not having entirely lost his mind, Sebastian didn’t tell her precisely how atypical he was.
“If she believes it’s possible to pull down the moon with a mere rope, she’ll be disappointed,” he did feel the need to point out. “How is that romantic?”
“She doesn’t believe he can actually lasso the moon,” she said on another exhaled breath. “George has just told her that he’ll give her anything she wants. That shows her that he loves her.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler and lead to less possible misunderstandings if he told her outright?”
She hit a button on the control, pausing the movie. “Have you ever been in love, Sebastian?”
He thought about that for a moment. “No,” he decided. “I don’t believe so.”
What he had with Zorana was more companionship. Yet it was nothing like this simple act of eating exploded corn kernels and watching a movie about angels in a small town that reminded him a great deal of Rum Runner Island and sharing a bed with this woman. What he’d had with his former fiancée was more duty. Which, he thought, as Kirby’s foot casually brushed against his and caused his pulse to spike, was surely more logical than ephemeral, and often painful, human love.
“Neither have I,” she said.
Which was a surprise, considering what Nate had told him about her having been married. Granted, he wasn’t an expert on terran behavior, as Rosalyn was, yet he’d have thought this human would not have entered into a marriage if her heart hadn’t been fully engaged.
“I thought I was,” she continued, answering his unspoken question. “But I later realized I’d just had stardust in my eyes.”
Earthlings, he was coming to realize, were very fond of metaphors, w
hich had disappeared from his language because, when words were precise, there was no need to elaborate or explain.
“Anyway,” she said, shaking off memories he wasn’t about to intrude upon, no matter how curious he might be, “I’m guessing that if you’d fallen in love, you would’ve known it. Which, thinking about it, makes us a pitiful pair, Sebastian. You thirty-one, me twenty-nine, and neither of us have fallen in love.”
“Or perhaps we’re not as much pitiful as choosy,” he suggested. A bright strand of hair had escaped the elastic band she’d wrapped around that ponytail. He curled it around his finger and drew her face closer to his.
She tasted exactly the way a woman should taste. And her lips felt exactly the way a woman’s lips should feel—soft and warm and generous. Sebastian decided that he could drink from them forever.
When her right hand gripped the front of the flannel pajamas she’d given him to wear, he decided that once again they were sharing the same thought.
He ran kisses over her upturned face as emotion stronger than anything he’d ever felt before swelled in him.
Sebastian’s first thought was that he was falling in love.
Which should be impossible. Every Logosian knew that the term was an outdated euphemism for something a great deal more basically biological. But even knowing that fact couldn’t quite diminish the feeling that he’d come all the way through time and space specifically to meet this one very special woman.
Outside the house, the snow, illuminated by the moon, had begun to fall again, soft white flakes that drifted to earth like floating petals.
Inside, the air began to thicken and heat.
Her breast, even covered by another of those bear-faced tunics, fit so perfectly in his hand that his head, feeling as if it were filled with helium, began floating, as it had in the lab right before he’d nearly passed out and Nate had insisted he go home.
She smelled of flowers and tasted of the heaven the people of Bedford Falls had been praying to. This was every bit as good as this morning’s dream. No, Sebastian thought, as she lifted her arms to fork her fingers through his hair, which pressed her warm, soft body against him, it was better.