Avalanche Creek

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “I don’t know what to say,” Brice managed to squeak out, then stopped and cleared his throat.

  “I can tell you this,” Dixie said. “It’s a job that will challenge every mathematical skill you have and never once get boring.”

  Brice looked at her and she kept her gaze locked on his, doing her very best to will him to come join them.

  Finally Brice looked back at Bonnie and Duster. “Can I have a little bit to think about it?”

  “Of course,” Duster said, standing and shaking Brice’s hand.

  Bonnie shook his hand and then Dixie did the same, again holding slightly too long onto the man she had spent almost two months with in another timeline.

  But he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Here’s my cell phone number,” Duster said. “We’ll be having lunch and will be glad to talk and answer any question you might have. But this evening our jet at the Burbank airport will be heading back to Boise. If you want to be on it, we’ll have your apartment here packed and moved for you.”

  “In a hurry, huh?” Brice said.

  Duster shrugged. “Time is an interesting thing. We are on the verge of making some fantastic breakthroughs mathematically, but could use your help to push the breakthroughs over the top.”

  Brice nodded. “You said thirty times my salary here?”

  “I did,” Duster said. “And a paid condo in Boise.”

  “And all four of us will be working together? Anyone else?”

  “On the math, just the four of us,” Duster said. “I don’t trust anyone else, to be honest. But you can have staff if you want to help on mundane things.”

  “I’ll call you shortly,” Brice said after letting that sink in.

  “Good,” Duster said, turning and heading for the door.

  Bonnie turned and followed her husband.

  Dixie smiled once more at the man she loved. “It’s more fun than you can ever imagine.”

  “I can imagine a great deal,” Brice said.

  Dixie smiled at him. “This job will beat even that. After all, look who you will be working for.”

  Brice glanced up at where Bonnie and Duster were just leaving and nodded.

  “I think I need to wait for my alarm to wake me up,” Brice said.

  Dixie laughed. “I felt the same way a year ago when they offered me my job.”

  “Ever regret taking it?” Brice asked.

  “Not for a second,” Dixie said.

  With that she turned and walked after Bonnie and Duster.

  She knew Brice was staring at her as she left, but she didn’t dare turn around.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  July 9th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  FOR BRICE, THE meeting with Dixie and Duster’s job offer to her went about as good as could be hoped. He had been as scared and nervous as he ever got.

  She had sure been shocked when two of the great math minds walked into her undergraduate class. He had no doubt that if they did the same thing to him in Dixie’s timeline, he would be just as shocked.

  Dixie seemed very interested in Duster’s offer.

  And Brice was very glad that clearly the attraction hadn’t stopped at the other timeline. It was everything he could do to not just kiss her. But that would have been such a wrong move for the Dixie he knew. But even he could tell from her looks that she was just as attracted to him.

  Brice knew that Dixie was forward in her emotional life, but she was forward in her own way and on her own time, and that was one of the things he loved about her.

  As she had told him back in 1901, “Make me think it’s my decision to want to be with you.”

  He had no doubt that right now she was on the phone with the president of the board of the university making sure that what Duster had told her was real.

  “What’s the president of the board going to say when she calls him?” Brice asked as they climbed back into the limo on California Boulevard. He felt very glad to be out of the July Southern California heat.

  Duster laughed. “He’s going to say what I told her, and he’s going to encourage her to take the job, since working for us would be valuable if she decided to go back to the university at any point.”

  “How much did that cost us, dear?” Bonnie asked.

  “Nothing extra, actually,” Duster said. “We already endow two mathematics chairs here and fund a couple dozen mathematics scholarships. But I might have mentioned we were thinking of another donation to help with the updating of the Alfred Sloan building.”

  Bonnie laughed.

  Brice just smiled and then said simply, “Thank you. To you both.”

  “We’re doing this for us,” Duster said, “not your sex life. What you two came up with in 1901 on pen and paper is simply stunning. We need you two working together as soon as possible.”

  “And what happens if she says no?” Brice said.

  Both Bonnie and Duster laughed at that. “Did you say no? And clearly in another timeline, she didn’t say no either.”

  “But a year has gone by and she might love teaching,” Brice said, still beyond worried.

  “You’ve never taught an undergraduate math class, have you?” Bonnie asked.

  “You saved me from that,” Brice said.

  “Trust me,” Duster said, “we’re saving her as well.”

  “Which is why you burst in while she was teaching one of those undergrad classes, isn’t it?”

  Duster just smiled at Brice and Bonnie laughed.

  “He’s starting to catch onto us,” Duster said.

  “How fast they grow up,” Bonnie said.

  And with that all Brice could do was laugh as well.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  July 9th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  DIXIE WAS BOTH stunned and overjoyed when Brice called Duster and accepted the job two hours later. They had almost finished a wonderful fish lunch not far from the CalTech campus in a restaurant that looked like a cross between a bad Mexican restaurant and a shack on the beach.

  Dixie had wondered about the place when the limo dropped them off there, but after the fantastic cod fish filet done perfectly with a light salsa, she needed to once again learn to trust Bonnie and Duster.

  Dixie sat at the paper-covered table and listened to Duster’s end of the conversation with Brice, smiling so hard that it hurt.

  Bonnie was smiling as well.

  “Pack a bag and meet us in an hour at the airport,” Duster said. “Private terminal area seven.”

  Duster listened for a moment, then said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call the president and tell him you have joined us. He’ll get your classes covered. And I’ll send someone to pack your apartment and get it up to Boise tomorrow.”

  Again Duster listened, then said, “Glad to have you with us. See you in an hour at the airport.”

  With that Duster hung up and smiled at Dixie. “To say Brice is excited would be a giant understatement.”

  Dixie actually bounced in her chair, clapping her hands. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Step one down,” Duster said, smiling at her. “Now it’s going to be up to you to ease him into the math and tell us when it’s time to head to the Monumental Lodge.”

  Dixie nodded. “I’ll go slow, I promise.”

  “That may be one of the hardest things you ever have to do,” Bonnie said, patting Dixie’s hand.

  “You’re telling me,” Dixie said, laughing. “I wanted to jump Brice in front of the class when we walked in the door.”

  “Way, way too much information,” Duster said, waving his hands as if trying to swat an annoying fly away.

  Both Bonnie and Dixie laughed.

  Dixie was far, far too excited to even try to finish the last of her wonderful fish lunch. Twenty minutes later they headed back out into the heat for the limo and the airport.

  They were all three sitting in the plane when Brice walked
out of the private terminal building and toward the plane. Dixie could feel her heart just about to beat out of her chest.

  Brice looked as handsome as ever with his jeans and tee shirt and running shoes. He had a duffle bag slung over one shoulder and a laptop bag over the other.

  Duster went out to meet him while Dixie and Bonnie stayed seated, sipping iced tea.

  Duster brought Brice’s bag up into the plane and handed it to a steward named Louis whom Dixie had found very nice. He was a cowboy-looking guy who often wore cowboy boots and a hat. Louis had two kids and a wife in Boise and all he did was stand by to help Bonnie and Duster with anything they needed.

  But clearly he loved his job and Bonnie and Duster. Dixie had met him a few times when he had run errands at her office.

  Duster introduced Brice to Louis and then said, “Grab a seat.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Bonnie said.

  “Yes, welcome,” Dixie managed to say.

  Brice took a seat facing Dixie and Bonnie and fumbled with his seat belt. He was directly facing Dixie. The four huge seats, one on each side of the aisle faced each other. So she was going to get to spend the entire flight facing the man she loved in another timeline.

  Bonnie had been right, this was going to be the really hard part, not rushing anything.

  “I know I’m going to wake up from this dream at any moment,” Brice said, “and be really bummed this isn’t real.”

  “It’s real,” Louis said, smiling. “But Bonnie and Duster tend to get that feeling from people they hire. So can I get you something to drink?”

  “Iced tea would be wonderful,” Brice said, laughing.

  “We’ll be headed for Idaho in about five minutes,” Duster said, coming from the cockpit and sitting across the aisle, also facing Bonnie and Dixie.

  “Never expected to be going back home this way,” Brice said, indicating the wonderful large private jet around them. “This is fantastic.”

  “One of the perks with having more money than anyone can ever spend,” Duster said.

  “We try to spend it, don’t we?” Bonnie asked.

  Duster laughed and nodded as he took a sip from his iced tea.

  Dixie managed to not say much as the plane taxied and then got into the air. Mostly she just listened to Bonnie and Duster talking with Brice about how much he liked teaching and what he had been working on.

  At one point Brice said, “I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of theoretical work this last year, with getting used to the teaching and all.”

  “What we are going to want you to do with us is all theoretical work,” Duster said. “We’ll give you a bunch of our work and we want you to spend day and night absorbing it. Dixie will help you get up to speed on anything you might need. She’s completely familiar with our work and has advanced it some in the last year.”

  “Once Dixie thinks you are up to speed,” Bonnie said, “we’ll jump you into the deep end.”

  “And then all four of us go from there,” Duster said.

  Brice nodded and smiled at Dixie. “This is going to be fun.”

  “That it will,” Dixie said, smiling back.

  Both Bonnie and Duster laughed, so Dixie quickly asked a question she already knew of Brice and got him telling them about his work at Harvard.

  Then he asked about her, and before she knew it, the plane was landing in Boise and Louis was taking Brice to a top hotel for the night.

  And making arrangements with him to get his apartment packed and up here and his car driven up.

  Dixie watched Brice go off with Louis and then turned to Bonnie and Duster. “Thank you both.”

  Bonnie smiled. “You are more than welcome. But just don’t jump him before he gets settled.”

  “Again, too much information,” Duster said, waving his hat at the two women and walking off toward the Cadillac in the parking area.

  Dixie and Bonnie just laughed as they followed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  September 4th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE WAS STUNNED how fast Dixie picked up on the work that Bonnie and Duster had done. She was the smartest person he had ever met and hungry to learn. She seemed to focus on the math day and night, asking Brice questions the next day in the office when there was something she seemed stuck on.

  They had set her up an office in the same building as Brice, just down the hall from his, and hired a secretary to guard the reception area between them and make copies and run errands and a ton of other little stuff, including getting them lunch at times.

  The two-story building actually was empty except for the two of them. Bonnie and Duster owned it. It looked out over the Boise River from a small ledge just above the River Walk. The office was surrounded by cottonwood trees and even in the heat of the summer, the grass area around the office seemed to stay cool. In the evenings they often sat on the patio looking at the river and talking math.

  Dixie had made her office as comfortable as his, with a couch, a huge desk, two large computers, and more whiteboards than anything else on the walls.

  Somehow, even with the attraction, they had managed to not even kiss in almost two months. Brice wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but he was willing to be very patient. And as the summer wore on and Dixie got more and more familiar with the mathematics of what Bonnie and Duster had done, they became closer and closer as friends.

  They shared the math, which was what they had shared when they met the first time in the other timeline. Now they were building that same connection in this timeline.

  Over lunches and a few dinners, he had learned that she hadn’t dated anyone at CalTech. And he had not managed to slip and say anything about her he couldn’t have known from a simple hiring search.

  Even though they were not a couple, he had enjoyed the two months more than he wanted to admit. And he had kept Bonnie and Duster completely up to speed, finally suggesting it was time for them to head to the lodge in the mountains.

  That next morning they had picked up Dixie at six in the morning while it was still dark and headed out of town, going north into the Central Idaho Mountains.

  He and Dixie were in the back seat and Duster and Bonnie were in the front with Duster driving as normal.

  Both Brice and Dixie napped for the first hour of the drive and Brice managed to wake up some with coffee at a wonderful little café in Cascade, Idaho.

  Then four hours later they were in the huge Monumental Summit Lodge. It was as stunning as Brice remembered it from a few months earlier.

  They all checked into their rooms and met for dinner in the huge, high-ceilinged dining room.

  “So this is the deep end?” Dixie had asked over dinner. “This place is something to behold. And in stunning condition considering how bad the weather must be up here in the winter.”

  “We help with the upkeep some,” Bonnie said, smiling. “We know the owners.”

  “Do you own this place as well?” Dixie asked.

  Brice had never thought to ask them that.

  “Nope,” Duster said. “But we have a special connection to it.”

  “We’ll tell you tomorrow,” Duster said.

  Brice looked at them. “How about we tell her at breakfast tomorrow right here,” he said.

  “Don’t want to head down that road again into the valley?” Duster asked, laughing.

  “Since Dixie is from Phoenix and not really familiar with this area, I think right here is fine.”

  Bonnie nodded and Duster shrugged.

  “This is all sounding so suspicious,” Dixie said.

  “Trust me,” Brice said, “I just saved you a terrifying drive down a cliff face.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, looking puzzled.

  “Just remember the math you’ve been going over,” Brice said, “and it will all make sense tomorrow.”

  Both Bonnie and Duster nodded and then Bonnie changed the subject, talking about the lodge and some other projects for the
rest of dinner.

  After dinner Brice suggested that he and Dixie go out on to the deck to sit and have a dinner drink.

  “Remember, breakfast at six,” Duster said as Brice and Dixie walked toward the deck to watch the colors of the sunset color the mountains below the lodge.

  They sat in two chairs, both facing the Monumental Valley and sipping on their dinner wine. The summer air had an evening bite to it and smelled of warm pine needles. Brice flat loved being in the mountains like this, and if he had his way over the next few years, he would spend more and more time in them, maybe in the past for a lot of it.

  “Down there is the lake covering the old ghost town that you talked about?” Dixie asked.

  “It is,” Brice said. “Worth seeing, but other things are more important tomorrow.”

  “What does this have to do with this lodge and the math I’ve been going over?” Dixie asked, turning to face him, a worried look in her eyes.

  “A lot,” Brice said. “And it’s not bad stuff, I promise. But I want Bonnie and Duster to explain it to you as they explained it to me about two months ago.”

  “So you’ve sat here before?” Dixie asked.

  “I have,” Brice said. “But alone, not with such wonderful company.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for all the help the last two months.”

  “It honestly has been my pleasure,” he said. “And we’re just getting started.”

  “It feels that way to me as well,” Dixie said. “In more ways than just the job and the math.”

  He looked into her wonderful brown eyes and he knew, he could see, she was starting to care for him. And more than anything else he wanted to just reach over and kiss her.

  But he didn’t.

  After a moment she looked at him and sighed and then stood. “Is there a reason you won’t kiss me? I know you want to and I want you to, you have to know that. Is there some dumb job reason or something?”

  He laughed. “No job reason,” he said.

  He stood and moved over and bent down and kissed her.