Time Enough for Love (7 page)

But he couldn’t tell her that.

“Just trust me on this, all right?” he said.

She was silent, walking alongside him, carefully not meeting his eyes. Trust him, Chuck had told her. But he wouldn’t blame her one bit if she didn’t trust him. After all, in her mind he’d given her nothing of himself, nothing to make her think that he trusted her in return.

In her mind.

In truth, he had. In truth, he’d told her something he’d never told anyone before.

“Carrot cake,” he said.

She stopped in front of a shoe store’s window display to stare at him. “Excuse me?”

“The fact that I don’t like carrot cake really was
something I’d never told anyone.” He could see surprise and confusion in her eyes, so he tried to explain as he pulled her closer to the window, out of the stream of pedestrian traffic. “When I was little, I went to live with my uncle, my mother’s brother, and his housekeeper made me a carrot cake the first day I arrived. I really hated it, I mean,
hated
it—but I ate it because it seemed rude not to.”

Maggie was still staring at him, her eyes wide.

Chuck cleared his throat. “I, um, I guess, you know, because I didn’t want to be there, I had this sense that everything was destined to be awful, but I was stuck there until I was old enough to live on my own. I don’t know, it seemed kind of appropriate that I choke down that terrible cake. So I did, and Jen, the housekeeper, got it into her head that I really loved her carrot cake, so she made it for me all the time. Every holiday, every birthday. She’d probably still be making it for me now, but my uncle finally died a few years ago, and she retired.”

Maggie didn’t say a word.

“I know I didn’t manage to get that all out this morning, but that’s what I was talking about when I told you that I hated carrot cake,” Chuck told her.

“This morning …” The surprise in Maggie’s eyes turned to suspicion. “Did you follow me today? Oh,
my God. Did you somehow listen in on my conversation with Charles?”

Chuck had to laugh. It started as a chuckle but grew into a full laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this way. “Mags. You don’t get it, do you? Think about it. Think about what you just said.”

But her expression had changed again. She was looking at him now much the way she’d looked at him this morning. This morning, in her time. Seven years of mornings earlier in his.

He could see his own attraction for her mirrored in her eyes. And he could see something else, something warm and soft, something that made him nearly dizzy with longing.

“You don’t do that often enough,” Maggie told him quietly. “You don’t laugh anymore. Or even smile.”

She reached out then, gently touching the side of his face, and he remembered the heaven it had been to kiss her. Seven years ago she’d walked into that restaurant in downtown Scottsdale. He was supposed to meet Boyd Rogers for lunch, but Boyd had called and canceled. And then Maggie had appeared, telling him some ridiculous story about someone following her. He’d been so enchanted by her sparkling smile, by the way she seemed to look
at him with something akin to wonder in her eyes, he hadn’t been able to resist. He’d kissed her. Twice. God, he could remember the softness of her lips, the sweetness of her mouth as if it were yesterday.

Or more precisely, as if it were about eleven forty-five this morning.

“I didn’t follow you,” he told her. “I didn’t have to. I was there.” He saw the realization dawn in her eyes, and he said aloud the words she already knew. “I was there, because I’m Charles. Or rather, I
was
Charles.”

He’d spent most of the day going to movies. It had taken him almost no time to find the perfect dress for Maggie to wear to the Data Tech holiday party, and then he’d had the entire rest of the day free.

He’d walked around the mall for a bit, delighting in his ability to take his time, to stroll without his crowd of bodyguards hurrying him along. It had been years since his experiments with time travel had been made public knowledge. And after that, as a target for terrorists and lunatics, he’d needed professional protection. He’d taken the time to learn to protect himself as well, and there was still a part of him that constantly checked in the glass windows and mirrors of the mall stores to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

But of course he wasn’t being followed. In this year, in this time, no one gave a damn about Dr. Charles Della Croce. He liked it that way.

That morning, he’d bought a ticket to the eleven-thirty showing of a movie whose name he couldn’t even remember now, and halfway through he’d been flooded with memories—new memories, double memories—of meeting Maggie Winthrop for the first time not at the Data Tech party, but rather at a little restaurant in Scottsdale.

The memory was fuzzy at first, and he really had to work to recall the incident. Even then, it didn’t seem to gel until he remembered that kiss. Somehow that sweet sensation brought the entire encounter into sharp focus. Then he remembered the conversation he and Maggie had had almost word for word.

He hadn’t bothered to watch the rest of the movie. He’d spent the time instead sitting there in the darkened theater with his eyes closed, replaying that second incredible kiss over and over in his mind, trying to make that memory stronger, willing himself to recall something that had happened seven years ago.

Something that had happened mere moments before.

But now Maggie was here, inches away from him, and he didn’t have to rely on memories. Her
gaze flicked down to his mouth before she looked searchingly into his eyes. She smiled then, very slightly, and he knew she was thinking about that incredible kiss too.

“That
was
you, wasn’t it?” she whispered.

Chuck nodded. “Yeah. That was me.”

Maggie held her breath, entranced by the way, once again, just like this morning, he took his time leaning closer and closer until his mouth covered hers. He kissed her, slowly, sweetly, almost reverently.

Then he reached for her, pulling her tightly against him, burying his face in her hair as he held her close. “I’ve been dying to do that again for the past seven years.”

“Chuck—” Maggie lifted her head to look up at him, but instantly forgot whatever it was she’d intended to say. The heat in his eyes seemed to magnify all of the secrets revealed by the intimacy of their embrace. He wanted her. Badly. She couldn’t help but know that.

And when he lowered his head to kiss her again, she kissed him back hungrily, desperately, reaching up to meet him on the tips of her toes. She pulled him even more tightly against her, running her fingers through the nearly unbearable softness of his hair. All of her senses seemed to explode as she
kissed him harder, deeper, as if all of the emotions of the past few days stood up in unison and cried out to be heard.

Heard and harkened to.

Maggie had had complete sexual encounters that were far less powerful, and far less meaningful, than this single kiss.

He pulled back, pushing her away to arm’s length, breathing hard, both alarm and elation written clearly on his face, as if he had been able to follow her very thoughts.

“Dear God,” he breathed.

As Maggie gazed into his eyes she knew that with that kiss, she had given far too much away—she had revealed way too much of her feelings. She took no comfort from knowing that Chuck had done the same.

“That was a mistake,” he told her.

She pulled free from his grasp so that he wouldn’t see the disappointment she knew was on her face. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re probably right. A big mistake.”

He
was
right. What was she thinking? What was she doing?

The last thing in the world she needed was to get involved with a man who took seven years to open
up and tell her why he hated carrot cake. “Let’s find that dress and get out of here.”

“How’s this?” Maggie’s voice interrupted Chuck’s reverie, and he turned to see her standing in The Dress.

It was the one. He’d known from the moment he saw it on the mannequin in the store. He would have bought it right there and then, at quarter past ten that morning, but when it came to women’s clothing sizes, he was clueless. A fourteen seemed much too big, and a four was surely too tiny. Maggie was somewhere in between the two, but where, Chuck couldn’t begin to guess.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” she said tightly. “It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m not sure I can be in the same room with you and
not
look at you like this,” he admitted. “You look … amazing.”

She’d pulled her hair up off her neck, holding it in place with one of those bear-trap-like clip things that she’d no doubt had in her purse. Several tendrils had escaped, hanging down around her shoulders, accentuating the sheer elegance of the strapless gown.

The dress itself was a rich shade of brown, made
of some kind of fabric that managed to be both velvety and silky. It clung intimately to the soft curves of her breasts, yet fell smoothly, gracefully across her stomach and hips, cascading all the way down to her ankles.

It had a neckline that was shaped with the swell of her body, dipping down to meet between her breasts. And it had a slit up the side, all the way to her thigh. He couldn’t tell it was there now, while she was standing still, but when she moved, he knew it would reveal tantalizing glimpses of her legs.

She turned away, going back into the changing room.

Chuck could see himself reflected in the store mirror. From a distance, he looked the same as he ever did, nearly the same as he did seven years ago. But he wasn’t the same. The road he’d taken over the past years had been a rough one, fueled by his obsession to find a way back to the past.

He’d sold his soul for the chance to develop and test his theories. He’d danced with the devil that was Wizard-9, and soon he was going to have to pay the ultimate price.

Maggie came out into the store, dressed once again in her sleeveless blouse and denim skirt, the dress on a hanger, the long skirt looped over her arm. She didn’t do more than glance at him, as if she
were afraid to meet his eyes, and Chuck knew that his talk of mistakes had hurt her.

But it was true. Getting involved with him—physically or otherwise—was surely the last thing she needed.

Chuck followed her over to the cash register and took the dress from her. She wandered around the front of the store as he used cash to pay, as the store clerk wrapped the dress in tissue paper and put it into a shopping bag with handles.

Maggie looked up as he headed toward her, and together they left the store.

“My car’s over by Sears,” she told him. “On the lower level.”

They walked for a moment in silence, and then, as if she couldn’t stand it another moment, Maggie spoke. “You know, it
wasn’t
a mistake.”

She was talking about that kiss. “Yes, it was,” he said gently.

“Why?”

Chuck had to close his eyes briefly at the impossible irony. He’d wanted this woman for years.
Years.
He’d kept his distance when she dated and then married Albert Ford, but he’d never stopped wanting her. If anything, the years and their continued friendship had made him want her more. Yet now
here he was, about to talk her out of the kind of relationship he’d only ever dreamed of having.

“Because I need you to help me change
Charles
’s future.”

She forcefully pushed open the door and he followed her out into the warm night air. “But you’re Charles, and Charles is
you
,” she argued.

Yes, he was Charles, but Charles wasn’t him. Charles hadn’t made the mistakes that he’d made. Charles hadn’t put an entire nation in jeopardy. Charles hadn’t been tainted by his connection to Wizard-9.

“Here’s what I think we should do,” Chuck said to Maggie as they crossed the car-filled parking lot. “You take this dress and go home, and tomorrow night wear it over to Data Tech and …”

Chuck had seen the car approaching the moment they exited the mall. He’d been watching it out of the corner of one eye, his wariness a habit that was impossible to break. The car was moving too fast, bouncing jarringly over the speed bumps. But it was the fact that the windows were tinted and the front passenger’s window—the side nearest them—was rolled slightly down that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

He was reacting even before he saw the slight
movement at the window, even before his mind registered the fact that that was, indeed, the barrel of a gun being aimed at them.

He caught Maggie around the waist, pulling her down between two cars, dragging her to cover as an assault rifle was fired from the open window of the car. Bullets slammed into the cars around them, breaking windows and tearing into the metal with a terrible screeching sound.

And as quickly as it had started, it was over. The car was speeding away with a squeal of tires.

The explosive racket of a weapon being fired at close range still rang in Chuck’s ears as he took one shaky breath and then another. He realized he had thrown himself on top of Maggie in a ludicrous attempt to shield her from the bullets with his body. He was probably crushing her, grinding her into the rough asphalt. But she didn’t move beneath him, didn’t protest, didn’t make a sound.

A drowning wave of panic washed over him as he pushed himself off of her, terrified that the future was repeating itself.
Please God, don’t let her have been hit.…

But Maggie moved then, throwing her arms around his neck and clinging tightly to him. She was alive. His relief nearly knocked him over, and as he sat up he pulled her with him, cradling her in his
arms. He ran his hands over her, reassuring himself that with the exception of a slightly skinned knee, she was all right.

She seemed only to want to hold him tightly. He could feel her trembling, or maybe that was him, he wasn’t sure anymore. But then, God, she lifted her face, and just like that, he was kissing her. Kissing her as if the world were coming to an end.

In some ways, it was.

This
was what he should have wanted more than anything else in the world. Maggie, with all of her passion and joy and those smart-aleck comments that always made him smile. Maggie, with her million-watt grin, her husky laugh, and her sparkling eyes. Maggie, not just his best friend, but the keeper of his heart and soul—his lover, his only, his wife.