Time Enough for Love (15 page)

He looked around the tiny closet. “We have to find a way out of here.”

“I was locked in here last night,” Maggie told him. “The air-conditioner vent is too small—believe me, I already tried. The only way out is through the door. No, we’re in here until they let us out—until you read that report, or until Chuck comes and they kill him. And
that’s
why we have to warn him to stay away!”

“Warn him through double memories.” Charles bent down and worked to untie the rope that lashed her feet together. His fingers were warm against her chilled skin. He glanced at her. “Can they
really be that clear? Clear enough to remember a conversation—a warning?”

“Double memories can be pretty faint. At first it feels like a weird kind of déjà vu. But Chuck said that once you get used to—” Maggie broke off, remembering something else Chuck had said. Something about …? “Charles, kiss me.”

He glanced up at her in surprise.

“There was something Chuck told me about double memories and glandular activity. If you kiss me, he’ll remember.”

Charles hesitated. “Maggie, I don’t—”

She pulled her still-bound feet away from him and struggled to her knees. It wasn’t easy with the sodden weight of her dress dragging against her legs and with her hands still tied behind her back.

“This
will
work,” she insisted. “Kiss me.”

He leaned forward, obviously doing this only to humor her. Softly, gently, almost chastely, he brushed his lips against hers.

“Oh please,” Maggie scoffed. “I’m not your grandmother.
Kiss
me, Charles. Come
on
! Make it memorable!”

His eyes flared with heat and he pulled her against him so forcefully that nearly all the air was squeezed from her body. And then he kissed her,
sweeping his tongue possessively into her mouth, stealing all that was left of her breath.

It was a kiss of pure fire, pure passion. And Maggie kissed him back just as fiercely, just as hungrily, opening herself to him.

He kissed her harder, deeper, inhaling her, consuming her, and her heart pounded wildly as heat surged through her veins.

It was a kiss that
she
would never forget.

“Don’t come here, Chuck,” she murmured breathlessly, kissing him again and again, praying that her words would stand out in his memory. She had to believe he’d remember. Chuck had remembered their conversation when she’d met Charles at that lunch place in Scottsdale. He’d remembered telling her about carrot cake. He’d remembered
that
kiss. “It’s a trap—Goodwin and his men are ready for you. They’re hoping you’ll make a mistake, that you’ll lose your temper and patience. But there’s still time. I’m all right. I’m with Charles now and we’re safe for the moment. Whatever you do, be careful. Think it through.”

She kissed Charles again, telling herself it was only to drive home her words. It wasn’t because she wanted to lose herself in the strength of his passion, in the heat of his hunger for her.

Charles was breathing hard as he pulled back to
gaze down into her eyes. He cupped her face with the palm of one hand and traced her lips with his thumb. “What is it about you?” he breathed. “What is this power you have over me?”

Maggie lost herself in the midnight depths of his eyes. Eyes so like Chuck’s. “Maybe it’s destiny,” she whispered. “Or maybe it’s knowing that in the future we’ll be lovers.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her again, so softly this time, so sweetly. Maggie felt herself melt.

“For you, we’re lovers right now,” he told her. “But I’ve got to wait seven years. Seven
years
.” He gave her a crooked half smile that was so like Chuck’s. “Something tells me, as much as I’d like to, it’s a little too soon to start the foreplay.”

Maggie laughed. When she’d been at the bottom of that swimming pool, she had been so sure she’d never have the chance to laugh ever again.

“Let me get these ropes off of you.” He gently pushed her back so that he could untie the rope that bound her feet.

“Charles, thank you.”

He glanced up at her as he finally worked the ropes loose. “For letting you communicate with Chuck through me?” He gave her another crooked smile. “It was my pleasure. Literally.”

Maggie couldn’t keep from wincing as he pulled the rope from her ankles.

Charles looked down and saw that the rough cord had rubbed her skin raw as she’d fought to free herself in the swimming pool. “Oh, God, I’m sorry!” He pulled her feet up and onto his lap. “I wasn’t being careful—that must’ve hurt!”

“I’m okay,” she said softly. And she was. She was alive. “You know, I really thought I was going to drown. I thought …” She shook her head.

“You thought Ken Goodwin was going to kill you,” he continued her thought, “because he figured that Chuck—that
I
—had traveled through time to try to save you once already. If you’re dead, that gives Chuck a powerful reason
not
to terminate the Wells Project before it even starts. In fact, Goodwin’s probably banking on the fact that if you’re dead, Chuck’s going to work to keep the Wells project alive so that he can have another chance to go back in time and save you.”

Maggie shivered. The closet, like the rest of the house, was cold. It was November in the desert, and although the days were warm, the nights could be quite chilly. And the sun wasn’t hot enough during the day to heat this big house. “If Goodwin wants me dead, why didn’t he just let me drown?”

“Because I wouldn’t allow that. We’ve got to get
you out of that wet dress.” Charles gently took her feet from his lap and moved around to begin untying her hands.

Maggie turned to look back at him. “That room they brought me to. The furniture in the room you were held in was wrecked. What did you do?”

He glanced into her eyes. “I played what turns out to be our trump card.”

She could feel her wrists burn as he tugged gently at the rope and she couldn’t keep from drawing in a sharp breath.

“Maggie, I’m sorry. Your wrists are pretty scraped up too. I don’t think I can get this rope off without hurting you.”

“Just do it. I’ll be okay.”

He did. It took several long, agonizing seconds, but then the rope finally was off of her. Her fingers were numb and her shoulders ached as she pulled her hands in front of her. “What trump card?” she asked Charles, trying to ignore the tears of pain that were stinging her eyes. She pushed her wet hair out of her face and hiked up her soggy dress as she turned to face him.

“Goodwin needs me alive,” Charles told her. “That’s how we’re going to get out of here. I’m going to hold my own self hostage.”

Maggie shook her hands, trying to bring life back
into her numb fingers. “How? We don’t have enough time for a hunger strike. And I doubt threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue is going to work.”

Charles gave her a quick smile. “I haven’t quite figured out the how part yet, but I’m working on it.” He shrugged out of his fight-tattered jacket and began taking off his tuxedo shirt.

Maggie couldn’t help but notice when he glanced down at the Wells Project report still lying on the floor. It was only a matter of time before he reached for it. But right now his priorities were with her. “Come on,” he said gently. “Get out of that dress before you catch pneumonia. You can put on my shirt and jacket.”

Maggie didn’t move, and he turned around so that his back was to her. “I won’t look,” he added.

Maybe he
should
look. Maybe that would keep him from looking at the Wells Project report instead.

Maggie closed her eyes, still feeling the fire of his kisses. “I can’t get the zipper. My fingers …” It wasn’t quite true, but he wouldn’t know that.

She heard him turn around, felt him touch her gently as he searched for the tiny zipper pull on the back of her dress. The sound of the zipper going down seemed to echo in the silence.

There was no way he could miss the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. In fact, he probably already knew that from the way the wet fabric of the dress was glued to her like a second skin. Her breasts were clearly outlined, her nipples taut from the cold. Still, the unavoidable intimacy of her completely bare back—bare from the nape of her neck all the way down to the lace of her panties—exposed by the simple pull of a zipper made it obviously clear.

She could hear him swallow, hear his quiet breathing. She could hear her own heart beating in that fraction of a second between her decision and her ability to act.

And then Maggie acted. She pulled the dress off, stepping out of it as it sank in a heavy wet pile on the floor. She didn’t know if Charles had turned around to give her privacy, but she had to guess from the way he wrapped his shirt around her that he hadn’t.

She turned to face him, pulling the shirt off her shoulders.

He was wearing only his tuxedo pants, and he looked like some kind of exotic male stripper. And she—she was wearing only slightly more than he had been wearing that day, seven years in his future, when she’d first set eyes on him.

Chuck had wanted her to seduce Charles. He
seemed to think that Maggie would have no trouble at all, that Charles would be unable to resist her. And from the sudden volcanic flare of heat in Charles’s eyes at the sight of her wearing only the white lace of her panties, it seemed as if he was right.

But Charles was not just a man. He was a brilliant man. And the crooked smile he gave her was rueful. “Boy, you
really
don’t want me to look at that report, do you?”

Maggie felt herself blush as he reached for the shirt in her hands and held it open for her. Closing her eyes in embarrassment, she slipped her arms into the sleeves. He turned her to face him, and began buttoning the front, as if she were a child.

“Now would probably be a good time for you to tell me exactly why you don’t want me to read that report,” he continued.

“I’m not sure I can speak and die of embarrassment at the same time,” she told him.

He caught her chin with his hand, tipping her head up, and she opened her eyes to find herself looking directly into his eyes.

“I think I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn’t seize the moment and take advantage of you.” He smiled crookedly. “God, I don’t just think it—I
know
it.”

For one brief moment Maggie was certain that he was going to lean forward and kiss her again. But instead of covering her mouth with his, he released her, stepped back, and put some distance between them.

“But you belong to someone else,” he continued quietly. “Someone that I’m not—not yet, anyway. And as much as I’d like to let you … distract me, it wouldn’t be right.”

Maggie turned away, picking up the sodden mass of her dress, trying to hide the emotion that surged through her at his soft words. She hung her dress over one of the bars that stretched lengthwise across the small space. “Funny, I was just thinking how like him you are.” She turned to face him. “You have to promise me that if … something
does
happen to me—”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you—”

She took a step toward him. “Charles, they have guns and we don’t. Think about it. If Chuck doesn’t storm the gates, trying to get us out, and if you don’t read the Wells Project report, I’m willing to bet that by the time the sun sets, Ken Goodwin will stop trying to persuade you to see things his way—he’ll start using force. And the first thing he’ll do is take
me
out of the picture—permanently. And Chuck will
want to find a way to go back in time again, to save me. Again.”

Charles reached for the report, still lying on the floor. “So maybe I should do what Ken Goodwin wants.”

Maggie moved faster, putting her foot on it before he could pick it up. “I’m afraid if you read this, there’ll be no turning back. I’m afraid once you understand the theories and the equations you used to make the Runabout work, you won’t be able to change your entire destiny with just one simple decision. I’m afraid that what you learn will take you past the point of no return.”

Charles sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall and tiredly taking off his black dress shoes. “Maggie, you have no idea how badly I want to look at that report.”

She sat down next to him. “Really? Even knowing that in seven years you’ll be willing to trade your entire life for a chance to walk away from the information that’s in there?”

He was silent.

“If Chuck were here right now,” she told him, “he’d be urging you to take all of your theories on time travel and just let them go. He’d tell you that you have the power to end this once and for all. Right here. Right now. All you need to do is make
that decision. No, you won’t work on time travel anymore. Yes, you’ll go back to school, finish up your medical degree, and start working full-time on finding a cure for AIDS. Or cancer. Or
some
thing. Something good. Something that can’t be used as a weapon by unscrupulous people.”

“If I do that,” Charles said quietly, “if I decide right now to do that, you won’t ever see Chuck again.”

Maggie felt her eyes fill with tears. “I know.”

“What if there’s some way we can make this work?” Charles turned to face her, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together. “What if there’s something Chuck’s overlooked, something he hasn’t come up with, some way we can stop Wizard-9 and
still
develop my time-travel theories?” he asked. “Maggie, I want to talk to him. I want to figure out a way to get us safely out of here so we can meet him somewhere and try to figure this out.”

Maggie looked into the dark brown intensity of his eyes. Chuck’s eyes. “Why is this so important to you?” she whispered. “Why do you want to develop time travel so badly? What happened that you want so desperately to go back and do over?”

As she watched, she saw him take an emotional step back, away from her. His face was instantly more reserved, his eyes almost shuttered. He wasn’t
going to tell her. Maggie knew he wasn’t, and she got good and mad.

“You’re
exactly
like him,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Too damned bottled up to share even the tiniest piece of yourself.” She wanted to hit him, so she moved away to avoid the temptation, scooping up the Data Tech report and hugging it close to her chest as she sat in the farthest possible corner of the tiny closet. She glared at him. “Well, guess what, Charlie boy? I’m probably going to die for you tomorrow, for the
second
time around. You can at least show me the courtesy of answering my questions!”