“What do ye mean, he cannae control the destination?”
Sorcha bit her lip hesitantly. “The other end just bounces all over the place … and time, apparently, each time they power it up. As far as I can see, the targeting software is showing that it opens up at different destinations with no discernible pattern.”
“So I just walked into this wormhole when it ‘bounced’ into the Drummosse Muir two hundred and fifty years ago?” Hugh asked unnecessarily. He already knew the answer. By God but he had always thought he had lived a fairly charmed life. How unlucky could a man be to happen upon such an occurrence with such incredible bad timing?
“And you and that Native American probably startled Fielding to death when he realized that his wormhole didn’t travel through space alone,” she told him. “I didn’t see anything in there about anticipating time travel.”
Hugh grimaced at that. “And the reason he dinnae simply send us back through the hole is because he cannae duplicate the destination,” Hugh said dully. He had been expecting that, of course, but it didn’t make the truth any easier to hear.
“And the reason he kept you was because there was no way he was going to go public with such a huge mistake.”
Lovely, Hugh thought. How terribly comforting to know that it was all nothing but an innocent mistake.
Chapter 26
Hugh fell into a brooding silence, standing at the window with one hand braced against the pane. Unlike at his last such lapse, this time Claire was all sympathy. Lord only knew she had hated telling him the truth. It couldn’t have been any more pleasant to hear it.
His attention had drifted to a cargo ship chugging by in the distance, but Claire wasn’t certain if he was truly seeing it or if his thoughts were turned entirely inward at that point.
It was there again, that urge to comfort, but this time Claire did not try to turn it away. She went quietly to his side and slipped her cold hand into his warm one, giving it a comforting squeeze. Finally, he looked down at her with the desolation that had been temporarily banished lurking once again in his eyes, but even when all must have seemed lost to him, Hugh was still chivalrous enough to recognize the chill that had come over her. He caught her hand between his and chafed it between his. “If we have the schematics for the machine, could we build it ourselves and find a way tae send me home?”
“I’m not a quantum physicist, Hugh,” she said regretfully, absently slipping her other hand between his for warmth as well. “And I don’t know anyone who is. Time machines are as new a concept to me as they are to you. It’s always been just science fiction.”
“So we cannae just build our own then?”
“Not unless we can harness the 1.21 jigawatts of electricity it would take to work one,” she quipped, then bit her lip. “Bad joke. But, no, there is no way we could find a power source even if we could build the machine itself.”
Hugh grunted but remained silent. Silent enough to renew her worry as he looked into the distance once more. She wondered what he was thinking but couldn’t bring herself to ask. Instead, she slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him close, resting her cheek against his chest. The warmth of his embrace, the press of his body against hers was everything she had imagined it would be. Claire could only hope that human contact provided him the comfort it gave her now when he needed it the most. “I’m sorry, Hugh. So sorry that I can’t give you the answers I know you want to hear.”
His arms came around her, tenderly at first, but then he was clutching her so tightly it almost stole her breath. Hugh buried his face in her hair, and she could feel his deep breaths caressing her neck. One hand crept up her back until his fingers tangled in the hair at her nape.
Her heart full of worry for him, Claire whispered into his shoulder, “Are you okay?”
Lifting his head, Hugh pressed a kiss against her temple and eased away, raising his other hand until he was cradling her head between them, the heels of his hands against her jaw and his fingers curling at the base of her skull.
Looking down at her, he seemed as fierce and hard as he had been that first day, but this time it was not trepidation that made Claire tremble.
“You can kiss me now if you like,” she whispered helplessly, fully expecting that he would take advantage of the offer. But as he tended to, Hugh surprised her again.
“Nae, lass, I do plan on kissing ye long and hard, but when I do, it willnae be in a moment of gratitude,” he said, searching her eyes intently. His eyes were dark with growing desire but there was a question there as well. “I dinae ken what it is about ye, Sorcha, but for some reason I cannae remain in a mood for long since I hae been in yer company. For as long as I was held in that prison, I was angry. Every day more so than the one before. I should be angrier than I am now for all that was done tae me, for what was taken away. I should be angrier wi’ ye for being so provoking, but I am nae. Why is that?”
“My charm is irresistible?” Claire jested, summoning the hint of a smile to the corner of his mouth.
“Is that what it is?” he asked with just a whisper of humor but it was enough for her to know that the worst had passed. “Either way, ye’ve been a balm tae my soul, Sorcha.”
“Gee, I’ve never been anyone’s balm before,” she whispered in an awed tone, hoping to banish the shadows lingering in his eyes. It seemed to work.
His blue eyes brightened at that, and the tension in his expression eased. Claire felt the pad of his thumb caressing her cheek tenderly. “And what am I?”
Temptation? Salvation? Claire shook her head. “You are a vacuum.”
“A vacuum?”
“It’s a …”
“I ken what a vacuum is, lass. I only wonder how it might apply tae a person.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy,” she said with a winsome smile. “You have sucked all the anger right out of me. I hadn’t realized how angry I was with the world at large and everyone in it, but you’ve helped me to see that and send it all away. Admittedly, it lingered on the surface there for a while, but now I’m all cleaned out.”
“Is that so?” he asked, raising an arrogant brow. “I may provoke ye tae anger again.”
“Nope, I won’t let you. This is now an anger-free zone.”
Hugh released a dry chuckle. “I doubt that. Ye are easily roused.”
Yes, I am, Claire thought, and Hugh must have intuited her more lascivious thought in some way because his brow raised slightly. Suddenly Claire realized that she was still standing in the warmth of his embrace as naturally as if she belonged there. She was locked in his arms with his hard thighs pressed against hers, his broad chest against her breasts. With her head tilted back to look at him, she was arched against every inch of him. The desire that she had fought against and denied assailed her once more, but this time Claire let it flow over her, savoring the feel of her heart fluttering in her chest, the shaky intake of breath, and even nerves that made her hands tremble as they slid up his muscular back.
Hugh’s fingers tightened in her hair, forcing her head back even more until his lips were just inches from hers, but his body was taut, as if relaxing would allow his mouth to fall on hers against his bidding.
“I’m not feeling an ounce of gratitude, I swear it,” she whispered. “Are you?”
“Nae,” he murmured huskily. “Nary a bit.”
But still he did not kiss her, and then Claire remembered their bargain. Bringing an arm between them, she skimmed her palm along his rough jaw and around the back of his neck before urging him down as she rose high on her toes. The soft brush of her lips against his set them tingling immediately, and a quiver followed, coursing down her body and answered by his. How could she have thought to deny this? Something so powerful was unusual, too rare to brush aside. It was meant to be seized, an opportunity meant to be taken.
“I’m instigating,” she whispered against his lips. “Please kiss me, Hugh.”
And there in the glow of the roaring fire, Hugh bent Claire back o
ver his arm with a low growl and lit a fire in them both. His lips moved across hers tenderly at first, as if testing her response, but Claire parted her lips and urged him to deepen the kiss, drawing in his lips as her tongue flicked against them. With a groan, Hugh swept his tongue against hers, dueling skillfully, only to withdraw before his mouth covered hers once more.
Hugh drew away slowly, his kiss softening until he brushed one last tender kiss across her lips and lifted his head. Brushing her hair back from her temples, he looked down at Claire with a warm smile that went all the way to his blue eyes, and she couldn’t help but return the gesture, lifting her face for another kiss, but Hugh eased back.
“Now that that is all settled, I believe it is time for luncheon,” he said smoothly as he drew away, much to Claire’s disappointment. Who was changing the subject now?
Parted from his warm body, Claire felt a chill wash over her and waited for regrets to do the same. For guilt to take her in its own icy grip.
The only regret she had was that their kiss had ended too soon.
Phil Jameson strode into the stark control room of mounted monitors with ill-concealed impatience. “Where are we? Talk to me people.”
“All the animals have been retrieved and contained with minimal injury.”
The agent waved an impatient hand. “And the others? What have you got?”
“We got a retrieval team setting up near the Canadian border north of Spokane.”
“Which one?”
“Eyewitness reports identify it as Anomaly X20.”
Jameson grunted. “ETA?”
“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Tops.”
“And the other?”
There was palpable hesitation among all the junior agents at the question. “Nothing on Anomaly J42, sir. No eyewitness reports as yet. Blood tests were inconclusive.”
“I found her, sir!” Marshall, parked in front of one bank of monitors, announced happily, tapping a series of buttons to bring up surveillance footage on one of the larger monitors and pausing it to freeze the image of a car in the frame. A sigh of relief exhaled simultaneously from the other underlings. “It’s Claire Manning. We got her car off a traffic camera in Seattle north of the airport.”
“Is J42 with her?” Jameson barked.
Nichols followed Jameson into the surveillance room and studied the monitors. “Are you still pursuing this, Jameson? I thought we decided that Claire Manning wasn’t a suspect.”
“You decided,” Jameson told his INSCOM counterpart. “I have my own thoughts on the matter.”
“Your gut,” Nichols said dryly, sipping from his coffee as Jameson pinned him with a scowl. “I’m telling you, we should be out scouting the area instead of pursuing this bullshit. Your J42 is either hiding or dead.”
Jameson ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He’d had an entire detail working night and day to track Claire Manning but still had no solid proof that she was even harboring the anomaly—Jameson could hardly think of him any other way. He had seen the video from Fielding’s lab, had seen the thing that had escaped. It was a beast, a terror. There was no reason at all to assume that Mrs. Manning had voluntarily aided its escape. No significant proof that she was being coerced.
But there was no proof she hadn’t aided it, either, and his gut said she had, for whatever reason. There had been no sign of the escapee at all, despite Nichols’s “scout the area” crap. No sightings. No reports, though his agents were at the point of exhaustion from hours spent in front of the monitors. They needed to find this Manning woman before more people were hurt, including Claire Manning herself.
“Show me what you got, Marshall.” Jameson commanded, turning away from Nichols.
“Impossible to tell, sir.” The enthusiasm in the agent’s voice dimmed and faded after he had watched the interaction of the two senior agents. He backed up the video footage and played it forward slowly. “Camera shot every two seconds. We got one of the front, but the angle is too deep to see inside. We’re lucky we could get enough of the license plate for someone to catch it.”
Jameson grimaced as Nichols lifted a mocking brow.
Nichols pulled out a chair and sat next to Marshall. “How goes it on the other escapee?”
“Much more promising, sir. He …” he cast a look up at Jameson and corrected himself. “I mean, X20 has been fairly resourceful but was easily noticed making its way out of Spokane. Simms and his men are currently tracking it through the mountains on infrared. They should have it soon.”
“Any chance the other one is with him?” Nichols asked.
“It doesn’t appear so, sir.”
Jameson was disappointed with their progress. Finding one being’s heat signature in the wilderness was easy, but how would they track another body through a crowd of millions if the anomaly had made it into Seattle? “Get men at the Seattle airport. I want every flight checked and Claire Manning found. Nothing on the family yet?”
Marshall shook his head, “No, sir, as far as we can see she hasn’t attempted to contact her parents or call them. No emails, either. We’ve got their phones tapped and the older brother’s. Tails on friends, just in case, as ordered.”
Nichols shook his head for another reason. “You’re wasting time on her, Jameson.” The INSCOM agent raised a brow to the nervous Marshall. “Anything to connect her yet?”
Marshall swallowed tightly. “No, sir. Not yet.”
“Anything solid on J42 at all?”
“Still attempting to track him down, sir.”
With a grunt of aggravation, Jameson slapped his palm down on the desk. “Get me something!”
Nichols rocked back in his chair and considered Jameson levelly over his Styrofoam cup as he sipped his coffee once more. “Jameson, I mean no disrespect here,” Nichols said softly, “but this is bullshit. You have no grounds to push to this extent. Watching her house, her family … tapping her phones and email based on a hunch? Did you even bother with a warrant?”
“And what have you got, Nichols?”
“I’ve got confirmation that nothing leaked and nothing is missing from the lab. Anything so problematic that it might have been questioned has been rounded up or disposed of, besides those two men.”
“They are not men.”
Nichols snorted rudely. “Look who’s talking. They are nothing in the big picture. We get them, fine. We don’t, who cares? They will never last out there either way, and they know nothing that can threaten the project if they are exposed. We have done our job. You should relax.”
“You should shut the fuck up,” Jameson snarled.
“Going off half-cocked like this will only land you knee-deep in shit if Colonel Williams finds out you’ve been jacking with agency resources without cause,” Nichols warned.
“I have cause!” Jameson said. “She is helping him. I know it.”
Nichols only laughed at that. “You don’t know shit.”
Chapter 27
Three days later…
Claire mentally shook herself and forced her attention back to the book in front of her, only to realize that she had no idea what had been said on the page before her. Turning back a page, she scanned that one and then the one before it, only to realize that she hadn’t absorbed a word of the book in almost a dozen pages. Closing her eyes with a groan, she opened them again in time to see Hugh crossing the deck outside the window with yet another load of firewood. His T-shirt was damp with sweat, clinging to his muscular body. She could see the bulge of his pecs, the movement of his lats as he walked. His biceps stretched the short sleeves tightly.
Had the definition of flirtation somehow changed in the past 250-plus years? Because this was beginning to feel more like payback.
Admittedly Claire hadn’t finished that first kiss with the intention of slipping right into bed with Hugh, and it was true that she was lacking recent experience in the whole arena of romance, but she had expected something … more. That extra edge that transformed playful inter
action into flirtation.
But ever since leaving the Crab Pot, nothing more significant than that single kiss had taken place. When they had returned to the house, the evening had followed the same theme as others before. They talked, ate and cleaned up together before retiring to the library, where Hugh had built up a fire to ward off the chill. Hugh had then taken up the monstrous A History of the World to read, but instead of ensconcing himself alone in the cocoon of the library’s big armchair, had taken a space on the couch a few feet from where Claire had curled up with the thick file Danny had printed for her.
The evening had been pleasant but not at all what she had expected after Hugh’s confident assertion of his flirtatious skills and after his demonstration at the restaurant. He was close enough to tease her with his presence, for her to feel his body heat and to hear him breathe, but far enough away to deter any of the touching he had been allowed by their new agreement. When the clock had struck midnight, he had banked the fire and led her upstairs to her bedroom door. There he had bid her goodnight and turned away to his own room, leaving her to wonder when it would all begin. To her, their casual camaraderie had turned to intimacy. It was that shift when friends were not merely friends any longer, when awareness overrode friendly interaction. The attraction had been there before their departure that morning, but by that evening it had increased tenfold.
Surely, given license to proceed, Hugh meant to act on it?
Still, the next day had delivered only more of the same. After that single embrace and intoxicating kiss, Hugh had been nothing but courteous, charming, and humorous company as they were confined inside throughout the rainy May day. They had played games and read with Robert’s collection of classical music CD’s streaming in the background, and through it all, Claire had laughed freely, worrying less about the world outside the haven they had created and liking him more with each minute that passed.
A Time & Place for Every Laird Page 21