Plymouth Rock 2075

by Alayne Warren

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Plymouth Rock 2075

  Copyright ã 2004 Alayne Warren

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2004

  Look for us online at:

  www.zumayapublications.com

  www.Extasybooks.com

  Dedication:

  To my family and friends, who give me so much to be thankful for every day of the year.

  Part One:

  Landing

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Hope Giovanni looked around the landing site with mounting dread. “This is the famous spot where the Mayflower came ashore? This is summer on the East Coast of Earth? This is where we’re going to spend the day?” She knew she sounded incredulous, even to her own ears, but if this was the right spot, it definitely wasn’t what she’d envisioned when the Professor had tagged her for this research project.

  Hope turned to stare at her mentor, teacher, friend, and—she had been hoping—soon to be lover, but Professor Cal Riebochet was staring intently out the porthole on his side of the ship. She should have known. Nothing got Cal worked up more than a good old-fashioned historical site. Not even her skin-tight, electric blue bodysuit could get the Professor’s blood boiling hotter than the places he taught about in his classroom.

  “Amazing. Simply amazing.” Cal’s tone was one of awe, but somehow Hope doubted that he was talking about the new hairstyle she’d spent hours on this morning. She sighed with frustration and prepared to act interested about a site that on a 'could care less' scale of one to ten rated a negative five.

  “Did you know,” Cal said, starting right off in his lecturing mode, “that up until the meteor crash of 2014 thousands of visitors flocked to this site every year, just to see where the Mayflower had actually landed?”

  “Hmm, yes, I think I remember hearing about that.” Like about two million times.

  Cal unbuckled his safety harness and moved to the back of the ship, gathering up his pack and Hope’s own in one big hand. Her gaze automatically watched the play of muscles in his arm—the wrist twice as big around as her own, the forearm dusted with a light sprinkling of dark hair, the bare shoulder with muscles that bunched in tune with the ones in her own stomach. Hope had it bad for the Professor, and historical site or no historical site, she’d planned on making her stand today.

  As she glanced one last time out the window on her side of the ship, she forcefully held back another sigh of disappointment. She’d been picturing bright sunlight, sandy shores, and a huge rock with a nice round surface on top just begging to have a blanket laid upon it. Hope was woman enough to admit that she’d come along on this trip not for the research value, not to see where her ancestors had been, and certainly not to discover the true meaning of that still-in-service holiday, Thanksgiving. Oh, no. Hope Giovanni had come along on this trip with Professor Calvin H. Riebochet III for the simple task of getting him flat on his back.

  If her surroundings had anything to do with it, it was going to be a lot more difficult than she’d planned.

  Cal opened the hatch, and a gust of chilly wind blew through the interior of the pod, reminding Hope that she had nothing on underneath her nifty bodysuit. She’d dressed for seduction, not exploration.

  Hope followed him out onto the damp, dirty ground of their landing spot. Grass was just beginning to grow again in this part of Earth, but the majority of the ground seemed to be made up of mud. Cal clomped merrily along, recorder in hand, no doubt triangulating his coordinates to those he’d memorized as the location of the former Plymouth Rock.

  The rock, or rather where the rock had once been, was their destination. For decades, an actual piece of granite graced the land of Plymouth, Massachusetts, proclaiming for all to see that here was the place where the English had come upon America’s shores. The rock, that piece of history sacred to many, was just one thing amid thousands that had been destroyed when a meteor landing five miles off the coast of North Carolina caused the Atlantic Ocean to flood the eastern seaboard.

  Hope had never been all that interested in history. Although she’d never tell him, she’d only enrolled in Cal’s class—Historical Sites and Landmarks of Earth 1600-2015—to gain his attention. Seeing Professor Riebochet twice a week, for three hours at a time, had benefits that totally outweighed the fact that she had absolutely no desire in anything historical.

  “See that tree over there?” The Professor’s voice snapped Hope out of her reverie, and she hurried across the muddy ground on her Air Treads. As she stood beside him, she realized he still had her gear.

  “Here, let me take my pack.”

  “No need. It’s not that heavy. Plus, a gentleman always carries a lady’s bag.”

  Hope glanced at him, mouth agape, sure he was joking. A gentleman? A lady? Sure, Cal Riebochet would most definitely fit into the category of gentleman, but there was no way in hell her square peg would ever fit into the round hole of ladydom.

  Snorting was probably out of the question, as was laughing until she fell to the ground in a heap. So she shut her mouth with an audible click and stood silently beside him, determined not to open her mouth until he asked her a question she had to respond to. Then she realized he’d already done that.

  Glancing around, she saw something she thought might once have been a tree about thirty yards to their right. It stood only about two feet off the ground, with gnarled limbs and no leaves. Tree? Today, anything was possible.

  “If you’re talking about that stump with arms over there, then yes, I see the tree.”

  Cal didn’t even break a smile. The quiet, reserved type he was. Unless he was lecturing, which he loved to do, and then he became loud, rambunctious, and animated. She’d been hoping that if she got him out of Professor mode and turned that hidden energy into more productive lines of reasoning—like, say, getting down and dirty with his research assistant—that she’d unleash the man she knew was hiding underneath that stuffy image.

  So far, stuffy was staying stuffy, and getting dirty wasn’t going to be a problem. Getting down, however, looked to be a bust.

  The only way to get through this tedious day was to keep talking. For a girl like her, that shouldn’t be a problem. What would be a problem was sounding like she knew what she was talking about, and sounding interesting. When you’re talking to a Professor, sounding intelligent was a must. When you were talking to Professor Riebochet, sounding intelligent was imperative to your health.

  “It’s so dark. I mean, it’s almost eleven in the morning, Earth time, and it’s darker than dusk. Any ideas?” There, that sounded smart.

  Hope was following behind Cal, close enough to see his glutes moving in time with his legs. All in all, a great view, even in the near-darkness.

  His voice floated back to her, a mixture of professor-ism and teasing in his tone. “You didn’t read over the notes I sent home with you yes
terday, did you?”

  How to answer that one? They said honesty was the best policy, but in this case, they could be wrong. “Of course I did.” Hope stumbled over a rock hidden in the wet ground, grabbing onto Cal’s belt pack to keep from falling on her face. Seems lying for the good of the cause might not be the way to go after all.

  “You all right?”

  “Just peachy.” She let go of his belt, reluctantly, and backed up a few inches. Pushing her hands through her long blonde hair, she smiled what she hoped was a lascivious pursing of lips in his direction. Hope had no idea what a lascivious smile was, but she was trying her best. “Anyway, I did indeed read the notes you sent home with me. I thought, however, that hearing you tell your personal opinions on the darkness would be beneficial.” Holy cow, she could sound smart!

  Cal Riebochet had blue eyes, the kind that looked into your own and made things thump around in the rest of your body. She could see them now, even in the murky darkness, weighing her words—probably for believability. Then he smiled, and whether he believed her or not, all was once again right with the world; cold, wet, muddy Earth be damned.

  “When you put it that way, how can I refuse?” Cal turned his back on her again, aiming towards their tree. He’d put his recorder away and swung their packs over his left shoulder, a soldier of history happily marching toward their goal. “When the meteor landed in the Atlantic, the resulting tidal waves flooded the entire eastern seaboard, from Maine all the way down to Florida. Thousands of people drowned, which was quite unnecessary, in my opinion, due to the fact that they’d had weeks of warning to move farther into the country.

  But as you know, it didn’t stop there. The meteor’s path had bisected that of the sun’s trajectory and temporarily threw it off course. Just long enough to freeze the floodwaters—in essence, to bring about a mini Ice Age. The chemical and biological make-up of the eastern states of Earth is now a lot like that of Alaska. Long months of darkness, followed by months of almost constant daylight. Vegetation has started to grow again in this part of the world, and if you want my conclusions on the matter, it’s only a matter of time before human habitation can be supported once again.”

  Yep, Cal loved to lecture. Good thing Hope liked listening to him. Although she had to admit, this part of the class was interesting. Real field research with a good-looking, desirable man in a part of the solar system that most people her age would never see.

  Habitation on Mars had come about in 2032, almost as a direct result to the flooding of Earth’s eastern states. Inland, clear to Washington, DC, had been completely unfit for human living, so its inhabitants had moved west. But there was only so much space for so many people, and the Midwest and West Coast had quickly become overcrowded. The President of the United States had urged scientists to speed up their pace on the research of humans living on Mars, and the scientists had been quick and eager to respond. So, voila! Problem solved by shipping around two and a half million humans to another planet.

  Cal had been born on Mars. Hope knew that much from his profile listed on the University’s recruitment website. Hope Giovanni, however, had been born on Earth. Seattle, Washington, had a very large Italian population—all those hot-blooded Italians that had left New York and Jersey before the flood had emigrated as far away from the East Coast as they could get. Hope had left Seattle, and Earth, behind at the age of eighteen. Partly rebellion, partly curiosity, she’d headed for Mars to make her own mark. She had an Earth-born College diploma in Business Administration, and was only three credits shy of earning a Master’s Degree in Business. And what, you might ask, were the courses she was lacking? You’ve got it—history.

  She was a study in contradictions, she knew. A blonde Italian. Imagine that. Her mother, however, was strictly blue-blood English. Caroline Fuller Giovanni could trace her ancestry all the way back to her great-great-great-great and so on grandfather, Charles Fuller, who was actually a passenger on the Mayflower when it landed on American soil on November 11, 1620. And she never failed to remind everyone who would listen of that very fact.

  Blonde hair, brown eyes, and the temperament of her pure blood Italian father. Definitely a contradiction, and maybe an unconscious reason she enrolled in Professor Riebochet’s class to begin with. Oh, it wasn’t the main reason, not by a long shot, but it sounded good.

  They were at the tree. Thank God, because between the rubbing of her Air Treads and the droning of Cal’s lecture, she needed a rest.

  “I need to set up some lights for the vids. Here, take these,” Cal said, handing her both their packs. “There’s a portable spotlight in there that should work fine. If you can set it up, I’ll finish the recordings and get the camera ready.”

  All work and no play. Ah well, Hope thought, there’s always the eighteen-hour return trip. Maybe by then Cal’s defenses would be lowered enough for her to pounce.

  Setting up the light was a snap. Hope spent fifteen minutes making minute adjustments that the Professor assured her were absolutely necessary for the perfect shot. She watched with admiration as he took picture after picture, first with the digital camera that could be hooked up directly to the University’s computer, then with the still recorder that he would use to convert to slides for the class lecture she knew was coming. He brought out the video camera, assuring her that live recordings were absolutely necessary.

  During all of this, Hope sat to the side and surreptitiously watched him work while taking notes on her hand-held recorder. Watching him bend, stoop, and flex had butterflies doing a dance in her stomach. She was twenty-four years old, and had been waiting for almost two years to get her hands on the one man who gave her the shivers.

  It took less than an hour. A thirty-six hour round-trip from Mars to Earth, and their entire reason for coming took less than an hour. Hope shook her head in resignation.

  “Time for a break and some food, don’t you think?” Cal had come to sit beside her, having packed away all the equipment and carefully wrapping everything with soft cloths before returning them to the packs. The video camera was still out, as he wanted to film the return trek back to the ship. For posterity, he’d said.

  The only posterity she wanted to see was his posterior, rising and falling in the air as he straddled her. Oh, Christ.

  Cal handed her a pre-packaged meal and settled in to eat his own. “So what do you think? Worth the trip out here?”

  “Hmm.” Hope was trying to sound noncommittal. She’d enjoyed his company, as always, but the long trip here and the prospect of the long trip back home did nothing for her.

  The Professor took a sip of his bottled water and laughed. “'Hmm' as in, 'yes, sir, this was a totally educational trip and I’m so glad you asked me to come along', or 'hmm' as in, 'how the hell did this man talk me into this'?”

  Hope had to laugh. Cal Riebochet was almost twenty years her senior. His black hair was cut in what was once called a military style, shorn close to his head. His eyes sparkled in the dusky light, and the dimple in his chin just begged to be kissed. She’d always been attracted to him, ever since seeing him come into the University Affairs office where she worked. At the time, she hadn’t been enrolled in any classes. She simply worked there to earn money, to pay the bills, to make a life of her own. When she found out he was a Professor, she’d been intrigued enough to find out what he taught. When she learned it was history, it had taken her over six months to work up the desire to sign up for his class. She really, really hated history.

  But the thought of spending six hours a week with the hunky stud Professor had finally convinced her to take his class. If only he’d let her teach him a thing or two, they could have a beautiful teacher/student relationship. However, and it was a big however, there had never been even a hint that Professor Riebochet fraternized with his students.

  Great for his reputation, very bad for her plans to seduce him.

  Cal was still smiling at her, and Hope felt that now was the time to come clean—at least about hi
story. “I guess it’s more like 'Hmm, it was interesting, but not so interesting that I’m wondering why I gave up two days of my life for it.'”

  “That’s an honest enough answer, Hope. I know you hate history.”

  She was shocked. He knew? But if he knew she had absolutely no desire in his class, why did he choose her as his assistant for the trip?

  “Because I wanted to spend more time with you, away from the classroom.”

  And he was a mind reader to boot.

  “Yes, well, umm.” Brilliant, Hope. You’re the epitome of sophisticated conversation.

  He turned those eyes in her direction. They were sitting close, on a blanket she’d stuffed into her pack in case they did, indeed, decide to do the deed—deed being, in this case, a lunch break. Hope could see each individual eyelash, could trace the curve of his eyebrows if she just lifted her hand. Her hand, though, seemed glued to the bottle of protein shake she was now crushing in her grip.

  What should she say? Gee, I’ve wanted to spend more time with you alone since I first saw your delectable body walk into my office? Well golly, it’s about damn time you noticed that I’m not just another blonde history addict? Or, in all honesty, hot damn, now let’s get busy?

  In the end, she decided a combination of the three would be the best way to go. After all, she’d come along on this trip for exactly this purpose, right? And Giovannis weren’t known for missing opportunities, especially the kind that came in six-foot-four-inch packages, wrapped in body-hugging material that left nothing—nothing—to the imagination.

  Hope’s hands left their death grip on the beverage bottle and somehow, of their own accord, wrapped themselves around his upper arms. They were nose to nose now, and the Professor’s startled squeak, although not manly, had her wanting to squirm against him.

  “I hate history. We both know it. Just like we both know that the only damn reason I enrolled in your class was to get close to you. If you didn’t know it before, well, you know it now.” Hope lowered her voice, and her face, until her words were nothing but a breath upon his lips. “I’m really glad I came along on this trip. It’s been, how should I put it, fairly enlightening. But I’ll admit, I had ulterior motives for coming along."”