“Yes. I just need some time.” Maggie buried her head in her hands. “I can still feel the train tipping over, hear the screeching of metal, and, of all things, the sound of the music playing in the background. I don’t think I’ll ever want to hear, ‘If You Knew Susie’ played again. It will always remind me of the accident.”
“I know.” Scott grabbed a blanket off of the back of the sofa and wrapped it around Maggie. He sat next to her and pulled her into a snug embrace. “When I saw you fall out of the window my heart almost stopped.” He placed his fingers on her chin and turned her face to his. Scott kissed her, long and slow, letting his warmth seep into Maggie. His passion intensified and he shifted to accommodate his erection. Maggie leaned into Scott and kissed him back with fervor.
In a flash her arms tightened around Scott’s neck and her tongue darted into his mouth. She dueled with his tongue for a few minutes sighing and moaning with each thrust and parry.
Scott lifted Maggie onto his lap knowing she would feel his desire for her. She moaned again and rocked her rear end on his hard erection.
Scott moaned. “Maggie…sweetheart…stop.” He couldn’t stand it much longer.
“I want you, Scott. Right now. I…need you.”
“I know, honey. I want you, too. But we can’t.” He stroked her face, her hair, trying to soothe away the fear, the desire.
Maggie pulled away. Anger replaced passion and she stood. “I almost died today, Scott Forrester. I almost died.” She paced the small trailer and waved her arms. “I don’t want to die without feeling all that a woman feels when in the arms of a man.” She came back to Scott. “I have strong feelings for you. I don’t understand them, but they’re there just the same. I know you feel the same.”
Sexual frustration and the remains of adrenaline coursed through Scott. “For God’s sake, Maggie. Don’t tempt me. I can barely hold back as it is.” He paced away from her knowing that if he touched her they’d be on the sofa undressing in two seconds. “I know you almost died today. So did I. You have to think beyond the accident. What about your reputation? In this century you’d be ruined if I took you to bed.”
Maggie stopped her pacing and stared open-mouthed at Scott. “What do you mean ‘in this century’? What other century is there?”
At that precise moment Scott’s Blackberry rang.
Chapter Five
“What’s that noise?” Maggie asked.
Scott fumbled under the cushion of the sofa and brought out the BlackBerry. “I’ll be damned. She found me,” he muttered.
“Who found you?” Maggie asked.
“My sister-in-law.” Scott wanted to turn his back to Maggie but she’d already seen the BlackBerry. The device continued to ring the futuristic ring tone that his sister-in-law, Shauna, had set. “I’ll explain it in a moment.” Scott pressed a button and said, “Hello?”
“You’re married?” Maggie screeched.
“Scott! Oh my God! Mike, I’ve got Scott on the phone,” Shauna shouted.
“No, I’m not,” Scott said to Maggie.
“You’re not what?” Shauna asked. “On the phone?”
“Just a minute, Shauna,” Mike said. He turned to Maggie with a pleading look on his face, “Let me take this call, then I’ll explain.”
Maggie screeched. “Who…who’s that?” She glanced around the room and twisted her hands together. “Where’s that voice coming from?”
Scott cursed under his breath. The phone was on speaker. He held the device in front of him and walked over to Maggie so she could have a good look at the BlackBerry. “Hang on a sec, Shauna.” After putting his arm around Maggie he said, “This is a telephone. Please don’t be frightened. I can explain everything. Will you give me a minute?”
Maggie stepped away from Scott. Her eyes were big and round and her mouth gaped open. “A voice came out of that little box and you talked to it. I’ve never seen a telephone like that before.”
“Scott Forrester, you talk to me right now! What century are you in?” Shauna’s voice came clearly over the speaker. “How can I know how to get you back if I don’t know where you are and when?”
“Hang on, Shauna. Please. This…uh…call came at a particularly bad time.”
“Oh, so now I’m a bad time?” Maggie asked.
“No, sweetheart. It’s not you.” Scott heaved a sigh. What a mess. “Maggie, give me a minute to talk to Shauna, then I’ll explain. Really.”
“You have your minute, Scott. I’m going to my trailer.” Maggie stormed out of the room with the door slamming behind her.
“Well, that went well,” Scott said to Shauna.
“Sweetheart? You already have a sweetheart? You’ve only been wherever you are for a week and you have a sweetheart?” Shauna’s voice had escalated in tone and pitch as she spoke. “Where are you? When are you?”
Scott ran his hand through his wavy hair. “I’m in Los Angeles. In 1925.”
“What? Oh, how exciting! What’s it like?”
Scott could hear the excitement oozing out of Shauna. “It’s different. The air’s cleaner, the sun’s brighter. Transportation is slower and the women all dress like boys. Your reconfigured BlackBerry surprised the hell out of me. I appeared on a movie set that had caught fire.”
“Oh, that’s incredible! A firefighter goes back in time and fights a fire. Did you have to rescue anyone?”
Scott paced the small trailer. “Shauna, I’ll answer your questions when I get home. If you’re calling me then I guess I can come home now, right?”
“Well…not exactly.”
Frustration erupted from Scott. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? If you can call me, why can’t you get me home?”
“Is there some reason you want to rush home, Scott?”
“You’re avoiding my question.” Scott didn’t know why but a feeling of fear spread through him. “Does this mean you can’t get me home? Am I stuck here forever?”
“Calm down, Scott,” Shauna placated. “I’m surprised at you. You sound as if you’re panicking. And firefighters don’t panic.”
Scott realized he did sound frantic. “Look. I’m in the middle of something. There’s a woman I’ve met who’s very important to me and I’ve just scared the bejesus out of her. The phone system here is in its infancy and everyone still has to go through an operator. No one has small hand-held devices. Oh…you already know that, anyway.” With an airy wave of his hand Scott flopped onto the sofa where just moments before Maggie had been. He could still smell her intoxicating perfume.
“Yes, the woman. You called her sweetheart. What’s that all about?”
“I met her here at the studio. There’s a…connection, sort of.” Scott felt lame trying to explain his feelings to Shauna when he hadn’t fully accepted them himself.
“Uh-oh. That’s not good,” Scott heard Shauna shift in her chair. She must have turned to his brother Mike. “Sounds like Scott’s fallen for some girl in 1925.”
Before Scott could reply to that comment his brother’s voice boomed out through the speaker. “Scott Forrester, you get back here right now. I don’t want you falling in love with a woman from another century.”
Scott didn’t answer for a long minute. He heaved a sigh and said, “Isn’t that what you did?”
Mike’s furious voice exploded over time and distance. “Yes, that’s what I did and look where it got me!”
“What’s that mean?” Shauna asked her husband.
The joy of speaker phones. Sometimes Scott didn’t know who was talking to whom.
“Now you’ve done it, bro. You’ve pissed off your wife. Why don’t you let her explain why I can’t come home right now, then smooth over your blunder later?”
“I can’t believe I’m having an argument with both my baby brother who’s in 1925 and my wife who’s in 2005. What’s happened to this world?”
“Put Shauna back on, Mike. Let’s get this worked out.” Scott waited. His foot bounced up and down and he tapped
his knee with his free hand.
“Okay, I’m back. So, you’re in L.A. in 1925. Where exactly are you?”
Scott could hear the sound of scratching, like a pen on paper. It sounded like Shauna was talking and writing notes at the same time. “I’m at the Artists Unlimited studio. They’re filming a movie called The Gunslinger’s Wife.”
“Isn’t that a classic?”
“You tell me. It’s not finished yet,” Scott said.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Shauna said ignoring Scott’s cryptic remark. “You can’t come back because I don’t have the right instruments to reconfigure my BlackBerry to the same specifications as the one you have with you. I need to calibrate it to yours.”
“What’s that techno-speak mean, Shauna? Tell me in layman’s terms.”
“It means I have to go to my century to get the right instruments.”
“So, go ahead. Don’t you go back on a regular basis? After all, you still work for that energy company that rules the world, right?”
“It’s a travel company, and we’re working on limited time travel for people to go on vacations.”
“Right. Well, I’m on the vacation of a lifetime,” Scott muttered. He began to pace the trailer again. “How did you figure out to call me?”
“I got lucky.”
“It’s not luck, bro,” Mike said. “She’s brilliant.”
“Okay, great.” Scott heard the pride in his brother’s voice. “Does this mean we can communicate whenever we want?” Scott asked.
“Well, yes and no,” Shauna said.
Frustration raced through Scott. He couldn’t believe the predicament he was in. “Explain.”
“It means that while I’m working on the device and while I’m in the twenty-second century we won’t be able to speak. But when I’m back home, here in good old 2005, we can talk and bullsh— er, talk, all we want.” Shauna paused then said in a quiet voice, “Tell me about your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” But at that moment Scott knew he wanted her to be. Yet now he wondered how he’d explain this little situation, knew that Maggie wouldn’t believe him anyway and worried that there wouldn’t be a future for them.
“Cut the crap, bro. Tell us the details before Shauna has to get back to work,” Mike said.
“I met her right here on the set after saving the life of Sid Goodman, the studio’s president. Her name’s Maggie Ingram.”
“Ingram. That sounds familiar,” Mike said. “Wait! Is she an Ingram from the steel magnates?”
Scott stopped pacing and stared out the window at the perfect Los Angeles sunshine. For some reason the sun dimmed and he felt a hollow in the pit of his stomach. “Yes. She’s not on good terms with her father.”
“Wow. I’m going to research her and see what it says happened to her,” Mike said.
“Don’t do it, Mike,” Shauna warned.
“Why not?”
“Hey! Are either of you speaking to me? You know, the lost brother in 1925?”
Shauna laughed. “You’re not lost, Scott. At least not anymore. And Mike, you can’t look up what happened to Maggie Ingram. It might change her future. And who knows, it may change Scott’s too.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Mike grumbled. “Okay. I’ll leave well enough alone. I ought to know, what with my situation. Why’d I ever marry a woman from another century, anyway?”
Scott heard the tenderness in his brother’s voice and a streak of envy raced through him.
“Because you love me,” Shauna stated with a certainty that Scott heard across time.
“Okay, you two,” Scott interrupted. “What’s the situation for me here?”
“You sit tight, Scott. I’m working on getting you back. It’s probably better if you don’t call me, just wait for my calls to you. I’ll get you back as soon as I can.”
“Fine. I have some explaining to do to Maggie anyway.” Scott flopped onto the sofa, worried how he’d explain his time traveling to her. “Say, Shauna. How’d you explain it to Mike?”
“I didn’t have to, he traveled with me by accident. Poor boy didn’t know what hit him,” Shauna laughed.
“To say the earth moved beneath my feet when I first saw Shauna was an understatement, little brother. My advice to you is to be truthful. If Maggie Ingram is half the person my Shauna is, she’ll come around after she realizes you’re telling the truth.”
“Yeah, but the question is, how do I prove to her I’m not lying?”
“That, my sibling, is the million dollar question,” Mike replied.
* * * * *
Mike walked to Maggie’s trailer and felt like a man going to his execution. He had the BlackBerry hidden in his pants pocket and wore his shirt out to cover the bulge. He knocked on Maggie’s door.
“Come in.”
As Scott entered he saw Maggie sitting at her dressing table. She was creaming off her stage makeup. Half of her face was artistically made up and the other half was full of white goop. Both halves looked stunning. “Hi.” He didn’t know what to say and decided to let her lead the way. But Maggie’s silent glare told him volumes. He shifted back and forth for a minute then sat at the small, round table near her makeup area. Maggie slapped more goop on the other side of her face and rubbed with angry strokes. Scott could feel her fury and knew it covered her confusion. “Okay, this is the truth. I don’t know how else to say it and I hope you believe me. But I don’t even know if I’d believe me, so—”
“Are you going to say something worthwhile or just blabber on?” Maggie wiped the goop off her face with sure strokes and threw the tissues in a nearby trash bin.
“I live in the year 2005.”
“What?” Maggie swiveled in her chair to stare at Scott. Her mouth formed a perfect O, her eyes were dilated with shock. “That’s nonsense. Do you take me for a fool?”
Scott jumped up from the chair. He took two steps and bent down to be eye to eye with Maggie. “Far from it, sweetheart. I know how smart, beautiful and rational you are.” He watched Maggie’s eyebrows lower and her eyes narrow at his remark. He could see the storm brewing and wondered when the hurricane would hit.
“If you live in 2005—which is preposterous—how can you be here with me in 1925?”
Scott sighed and rubbed both his hands down his face. He felt the stubble on his chin and realized he must look a mess. “Will you listen to my whole explanation before you make up your mind?”
Maggie stared at him. She braced her hands on her knees and leaned forward. “You really are going to tell me a story that’s outrageous and expect me to believe it, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Long moments passed then Maggie leaned back in her chair, waved her hand at him and said, “I’m listening.”
“No interruptions.”
Maggie’s eyebrows lowered ominously.
“Okay, I get it.” He took her creamy smooth hand in his and led her to the small sofa in the trailer. First Scott seated Maggie, then he sat next to her, turned and faced her squarely. “I have an older brother, Mike—”
“I heard him on that voice-box thing,” Maggie said.
“We agreed on no interruptions.” Scott sat back but didn’t let go of Maggie’s hand.
“I’m sorry. Please continue.”
“Mike is a police officer. We live in Bend, Oregon, a small town in the center of the state of Oregon.” Maggie opened her mouth to speak, Scott put up his hand and she snapped her mouth closed. He heard her teeth click from the force of her anger. “Mike met his wife on a street while she was in a glowing tangerine bubble.”
Maggie jumped up. “Okay, now you’re treating me like an idiot.”
“I told you it was a wild story. Please…hear me out.”
Maggie paced the length of the trailer. She glanced at Scott a few times and he thought she might be on the verge of kicking him out. After expelling a long-suffering sigh she said, “Continue,” and sat back on the sofa.
“
Shauna, Mike’s wife, comes from the year 2110.”
“What?” Maggie jumped up again and stared at Scott.
“She is a brilliant scientist working for a travel company designing limited time travel for customers so they can take vacations to different time periods.” Maggie’s silence sounded ominous but he continued. “She had been testing her latest device when Mike saw her.” Scott rushed on to complete the story before the winds of hurricane Maggie ripped him apart. “Mike ended up in 2110 and that’s a story in itself. But he fell in love with Shauna. They married and live between the two centuries.”
Maggie opened her mouth. Scott lowered his eyebrows and frowned at her. “Okay, go on.”
“In 2005 we have little hand-held telephones. Most people have them. They talk on phones wherever they are, no one needs operators.” He strolled over to her and stroked a lock of her golden hair off the side of her face and tucked it behind her ear. Scott felt Maggie shiver and the reaction sent bolts of lightning through his system. He pushed his desire to the back burner and said, “So, the upshot of this little discussion is that Shauna Wentworth, my sister-in-law, made a time travel device to look like the little telephone I have in my pocket.” He pulled out the BlackBerry and handed it to Maggie who stared at the black box in her hand with fascination and fear. “There are so many of this model phone in my time that I thought it was my brother’s. When I picked it up to dial my father I pushed some button and ended up here in 1925.” He expelled a huge breath because the last part was said as if it were one long sentence.
Silence filled the small room. Scott was nervous. What would she think? Would she believe him? Had he frightened her away with his crazy story?
Maggie looked at Scott then at the phone in her hand. He couldn’t read her thoughts, but when she dropped the BlackBerry like a hot potato he thought he had a good idea of how she felt about his story.
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