Lizzie stood between them, small and disheveled, her reddened eyes fixed on Jamie. And smiled.

74



SO ROMANTIC

BRIANNA DROVE THE LITTLE CAR slowly up the slope of the quilt over Roger’s leg, across his stomach, and into the center of his chest, where he captured both the car and her hand, giving her a wry grin.

“That’s a really good car,” she said, pulling her hand loose and rolling comfortably onto her side beside him. “All four wheels turn. What kind is it? A Morris Minor, like that little orange thing you had in Scotland? That was the cutest thing I ever saw, but I never understood how you managed to squeeze into it.”

“With talcum powder,” he assured her. He lifted the toy and set a front wheel spinning with a flick of his thumb. “Aye, it is a good one, isn’t it? It isn’t really meant to be a particular model, but I suppose I was remembering that Ford Mustang of yours. Remember driving down out of the mountains that time?” His eyes softened with memory, the green of them nearly black in the dim light of the banked fire.

“I do. I nearly drove off the road when you kissed me at eighty-five miles per hour.”

She moved closer to him by reflex, nudging him with a knee. He rolled obligingly to face her, and kissed her again, meanwhile running the car swiftly backward down the length of her spine and over the curve of her buttocks. She yelped and squirmed against him, trying to escape the tickling wheels, then punched him in the ribs.

“Cut that out!”

“I thought ye found speed erotic. Vroom,” he murmured, steering the toy up her arm—and suddenly down the neck of her shift. She grabbed for the car, but he snatched it away, then plunged his hand under the covers, running the wheels down her thigh—then madly up again.

A furious wrestling match for possession of the car ensued, which ended with both of them on the floor in a tangle of bedding and nightclothes, gasping for breath and helpless with giggling.

“Ssh! You’ll wake up Jemmy!” She heaved and wriggled, trying to get out from under Roger’s weight. Secure in his fifty pounds’ advantage, he merely relaxed on top of her, pinning her to the floor.

“You couldn’t wake him with cannon fire,” Roger said, with a certainty born of experience. It was true; once past the stage of waking to be fed every few hours, Jem had always slept like a particularly comatose log.

She subsided, puffing hair out of her eyes and biding her time.

“Do you think you’ll ever go anywhere at eighty-five miles per hour again?”

“Only if I fall off the edge of a very deep gorge. Ye’re naked, did ye know that?”

“Well, so are you!”

“Aye, but I started out that way. Where’s the car?”

“I have no idea,” she lied. It was, in fact, under the small of her back, and very uncomfortable, but she wasn’t about to give him any further advantages. “What do you want it for?”

“Oh, I was going to explore the terrain a bit,” he said, raising himself on one elbow and walking his fingers slowly across the upper slope of one breast. “I suppose I could do it on foot, though. Takes more time, but ye do enjoy the scenery more. They say.”

“Mmm.” He could hold her down with his weight, but couldn’t restrain her arms. She extended one index finger, and placed the nail of it precisely on his nipple, making him breathe in deeply. “Did you have a long journey in mind?” She glanced at the small shelf near the bed, where she kept her contraceptive materials.

“Long enough.” He followed her glance, then looked back to meet her eyes, a question in his own.

She wriggled to make herself more comfortable, unobtrusively dislodging the miniature car.

“They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” she said, and raising her head, put her mouth on his nipple, and closed her teeth gently. A moment later, she let go.

“Be quiet,” she said reproachfully. “You’ll wake up Jemmy.”



“WHERE ARE YOUR SCISSORS? I’m cutting it off.”

“I’m not telling you. I like it long.” She pushed the soft dark hair back from his face and kissed the end of his nose, which appeared to disconcert him slightly. He smiled, though, and kissed her briefly back before sitting up, swiping the hair out of his face with one hand.

“That can’t be comfortable,” he said, eyeing the cradle. “Surely I should move him to his own bed?”

Brianna glanced up at the cradle from her position on the floor. Jemmy, aged four, had long since graduated to a trundle bed, but now and then insisted upon sleeping in his cradle for old times’ sake, wedging himself stubbornly into it, despite the fact that he couldn’t get all four limbs and his head inside at once. He was invisible at the moment, save for two chubby bare legs sticking straight up in the air at one end.

He was getting so big, she thought. He couldn’t quite read yet, but knew all his letters, and could count to a hundred and write his name. And he knew how to load a gun; his grandfather had taught him.

“Do we tell him?” she asked suddenly. “And if so, when?”

Roger must have been thinking something along the same lines, for he appeared to understand exactly what she meant.

“Christ, how do you tell a kid something like that?” he said. He rose and picked up a handful of bedding, shaking it in apparent hopes of finding the leather string with which he bound his hair.

“Wouldn’t you tell a kid if he were adopted?” she objected, sitting up and running both hands through her own bountiful hair. “Or if there’s some family scandal, like his father’s not dead, he’s in prison? If you tell them early, it doesn’t mean all that much to them, I don’t think; they’re comfortable with it as they get older. If they find out later, it’s a shock.”

He gave her a wry, sidelong look. “You’d know.”

“So would you.” She spoke dryly, but she felt the echo of it, even now. Disbelief, anger, denial—and then the sudden collapse of her world as she began, against her will, to believe. The sense of hollowness and abandonment—and the sense of black rage and betrayal at discovering how much of what she had taken for granted was a lie.

“At least for you, it wasn’t a choice,” she said, squirming into a more comfortable position against the edge of the bed. “Nobody knew about you; nobody could have told you what you were—but didn’t.”

“Oh, and ye think they should have told you about the time travel early on? Your parents?” He lifted one black brow, cynically amused. “I can see the notes coming home from your school—Brianna has a most creative imagination, but should be encouraged to recognize situations where it is not appropriate to employ it.”

“Ha.” She kicked away the remaining tangle of clothes and bedding. “I went to a Catholic school. The nuns would have called it lying, and put a stop to it, period. Where’s my shift?” She had wriggled completely out of it in the struggle, and while she was still warm from their struggle, she felt uncomfortably exposed, even in the dim shadows of the room.

“Here it is.” He plucked a wad of linen from the mess and shook it out. “Do you?” he repeated, looking up at her with one brow raised.

“Think they should have told me? Yes. And no,” she admitted reluctantly. She reached for the shift and pulled it over her head. “I mean—I see why they didn’t. Daddy didn’t believe it, to start with. And what he did believe … well, whatever it was, he did ask Mama to let me think he was my real father. She gave him her word; I guess I don’t think she should have broken it, no.” To the best of her knowledge, her mother had broken her word only once—unwillingly, but to staggering effect.

She smoothed the worn linen over her body and fished for the ends of the drawstring that gathered the neck. She was covered now, but felt just as much exposed as if she were still naked. Roger was sitting on the mattress, methodically shaking out the blankets, but his eyes were still fixed on her, green and questioning.