Chapter 2 #3
She sighed a little as she opened the can.
Recently she’d begun to think about being alone.
As a scientist she knew the reason. She lived in a culture of couples.
Single—unmatched, she remembered with a quick smile—single men and women often found themselves dissatisfied and depressed in their own company.
The entertainment media subtly—and not so subtly—drilled into them the pleasures of relationships.
Families added pressure for the single to marry and continue the family line.
Good-natured friends offered help and advice, generally unwanted, on finding a mate.
The human being was programmed, almost from birth, to search for and find a companion of the opposite sex.
Maybe that was why she’d resisted. An interesting analysis, Libby mused as she stirred the soup.
The desire for individuality and self-sufficiency had been ingrained in her from birth.
It would take a very special person to tempt her to share.
She had dated only rarely in high school.
The same pattern had held true in college. She’d had no interest.
That wasn’t precisely true, she thought.
She had had interest—the trouble was, it had usually been scientific.
She’d never met a man who dazzled her enough to stop her from making lists and forming hypotheses.
Professor Stone, they’d called her in high school.
And it still rankled. In college she’d been considered a professional virgin.
She’d detested that, had struggled to ignore it, pouring her energy into her studies.
The appeal of her personality had made her friends, both male and female.
But intimate relationships were another matter.
When all the data had been analyzed, there had never been one who had made her . . . well, yearn, Libby decided. That was the appropriate term.
She supposed there wasn’t a man on the planet who could make her yearn.
Wooden spoon in hand, she turned to take out a bowl. For the second time she saw Cal framed in the doorway. She gave a muffled shriek, and the spoon went flying. A flash of lightning lit up the room. Then it was plunged into darkness.
“Libby?”
“Damn it, Hornblower, I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Her voice was breathless as she rummaged through drawers for a candle. “You scared the life out of me.”
“Did you think I was one of the mutants from Andromeda?” There was a dry tone to the words that had her wrinkling her nose.
“I told you I don’t read that stuff.” She closed a drawer on her thumb, swore, then wrenched open another.
“Where are the stupid matches?” She turned and bumped solidly into his chest in the dark.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating his face.
It took only that instant for her mouth to go dry.
He’d looked stunning, strong and dangerous.
“You’re shaking.” His voice had gentled almost imperceptibly, but the hands on her shoulders stayed firm. “Are you really frightened?”
“No, I . . .” She wasn’t a woman to be scared of the dark. Certainly she wasn’t a woman to be afraid of a man—intellectually speaking. But she was shaking. The hands that had reached up to his bare chest trembled—and intellect had nothing to do with it. “I need to find the matches.”
“Why did you turn the lights off?” She smelled wonderful. In the cool, unrelieved darkness he could concentrate on her scent. It was light and almost sinfully feminine.
“I didn’t. The storm knocked out the power.” His fingers tightened on her arms, hard enough to make her gasp. “Caleb?”
“Cal.” Lightning flashed again, and she saw that his eyes had darkened. He was staring out the window into the storm now. “People call me Cal.”
His grip had eased. Though she ordered herself to relax, the crash of the thunder made her jolt. “I like Caleb,” she said, hoping her voice was pleasant and casual. “We’ll have to save it for special occasions. You have to let me go.”
He slid his hands down to her wrists, then back. “Why?”
Her mind went blank. Beneath her palms she could feel the strong, steady beating of his heart.
Slowly his fingers skimmed down to her elbows, where his thumbs traced lazy, erotic circles on the sensitive inner skin.
She could no longer see him, but she could taste the warm flutter of his breath on her parted lips.
“I . . .” She felt each separate muscle in her body go lax. “Don’t.” The word nearly strangled her as she jerked back. “I need to find the matches.”
“So you said.”
Leaning weakly against the counter, she began to search the drawer again.
Even after she found a pack, it took her a full minute to light the match.
Thoughtful, his hands plunged deep in the pockets of the sweats, Cal watched the little flame dance and flicker.
She lit two tapers, keeping her back to him.
“I was heating soup. Would you like some?”
“All right.”
It helped to keep her hands busy. “You must be feeling better.”
His mouth twisted into a humorless smile when he thought of the hours he’d lain in the dark willing his memory to return completely. “I must be.”
“Headache?”
“Not much of one.”
She poured the water she’d already boiled for tea, then arranged everything meticulously on a tray. “I was going to sit by the fire.”
“Okay.” He picked up the two candles and led the way.
The storm helped, Cal thought. It made everything he was seeing, everything he was doing, seem that much more unreal. Perhaps by the time the rain stopped he’d know what he had to do.
“Did the storm wake you?”
“Yeah.” It wouldn’t be the last lie he told her.
Though he was sorry for the necessity of it, Cal smiled and settled in a chair by the fire.
There was something charming about being in a place where a simple rainstorm could leave you in the dark, dependent on candles and firelight.
No computer could have set a better scene.
“How long do you think it’ll be before you regain power? ”
“An hour.” She tasted the soup. It nearly calmed her.
“A day.” She laughed and shook her head.
“Dad always talked about hooking up a generator, but it was one of those things he never got around to. When we were kids, we’d sometimes have to cook over the fire for days in the winter.
And we’d sleep all curled up here on the floor while my parents took turns making sure the fire didn’t die out. ”
“You liked it.” Cal knew people who went into preserved areas and camped. He’d always thought they were strange. But the way Libby spoke of it, it seemed homey.
“I loved it. I guess those first five years helped me handle the more primitive parts of digs and fieldwork.”
She was relaxed again. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Though a nervous Libby held a definite appeal for him, he wanted her relaxed now. The more at ease she was, the more information he might glean.
“What era do you study?”
“No specific era. I’m hung up on tribal life, mainly isolated cultures and the effects of modern tools and machines.
Things like how electricity changes the sociopolitical mores of the traditional man.
I’ve toyed around with extinct cultures, Aztecs, Incas.
” This was easy, she decided. The more she talked about her work, the less she would think about that jolting moment in the kitchen and her own inexplicable reaction to it.
“I’m planning on going to Peru in the fall. ”
“How’d you get started?”
“I think it was a trip to the Yucatan when I was a kid, and all those wonderful Mayan ruins. Have you ever been to Mexico?”
Looking back, he remembered a particularly wild night in Acapulco. “Yes. About ten years ago.” Or a couple of centuries from now, he thought, and frowned into his bowl.
“Bad time?”
“What? No. This tea . . .” He took another sip. “It’s familiar.”
Grinning, she tucked her legs up under her. “My father will be glad to hear that. Herbal Delight—that’s his company. He started it right here in this cabin.”
Cal looked down into his cup, then laid his head back and laughed. “I thought that was a myth.”
“No.” With a half smile forming, she studied him. “I don’t get the joke.”
“It’s hard to explain.” Should he tell her that over two centuries from now Herbal Delight would be one of the ten biggest and most powerful companies on Earth and its colonies?
Should he tell her that it made not only tea but organic fuel and God knew what else?
Here was Cal Hornblower, he thought, sitting cozily in a chair in the cabin where it all began.
He noted that she was staring at him as if she were going to check his pulse again.
“My mother used to give me this,” he told her. “When I had—” He wasn’t sure what childhood illness he could name, but he was certain it wasn’t red dust fever. “Whenever I wasn’t feeling well.”
“A cure for all ills. You’re remembering more.”
“Patches, pieces,” he said, still cautious. “It’s easier to remember childhood than last night.”
“I don’t think that’s unusual. Are you married?” Where had that come from? she wondered, and immediately turned her attention to the fire.
He was glad she wasn’t looking at him when the grin split his face. “No. It wouldn’t be wise for me to want you if I were.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she twisted around to look at him. Quickly she rose and began stacking the dishes on the tray. “I should take these back in.”
“Would you rather I didn’t tell you?”
She had to swallow once, hard, before she could speak at all. “Tell me what?”
“That I want you.” He closed his hand over her wrist to keep her still. It amazed and aroused him to feel her pulse hammering. His word-by-word perusal of the newspaper hadn’t given him an inkling of how men and women interacted in the here and now, but he didn’t believe it could be so different.
“Yes— No.”
Smiling, he took the tray out of her hands. “Which?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” When he stood up, she stepped back and felt the heat from the fire on her legs. “Caleb . . .”
“Is this a special occasion?” He traced a fingertip across her jaw and watched her eyes go as hot as the flames behind her.
“Don’t.” It was ridiculous. He couldn’t make her tremble with just a touch. But all he had done was touch her. And she was trembling.
“When I woke up and saw you sleeping in the chair in the firelight I thought you were an illusion.” He rubbed his thumb gently over her bottom lip. “You look like one now.”
She didn’t feel like one. She felt real, shatteringly real, and terrified. “I have to bank the fire for the night, and you should go back to bed.”
“We can bank the fire for the night. Then we can go to bed.”
She squared her shoulders, furious at the realization that her palms were sweating.
She would not stammer, she promised herself.
She would not act the inexperienced fool.
She would handle him the way a strong, independent woman would, a woman who knew her own mind.
“I’m not going to sleep with you. I don’t know you. ”
So that was a condition, Cal mused. After thinking it over, he found it rather sweet and not completely unreasonable. “All right. How long do you need?”
She stared at him. At length she dragged both hands through her hair. “I can’t figure out if you’re joking or not, but I do know you’re the oddest man I’ve ever met.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He watched her bank the fire carefully. Competent hands, he thought, an athletic body, and the most vulnerable eyes he’d ever seen. “We’ll get to know each other tomorrow. Then we’ll sleep together.”
She straightened so quickly that she rapped her head on the mantel. Swearing and rubbing her head, she turned to him. “Not necessarily. In fact it’s very unlikely.”
He took the screen and placed it in front of the fire, exactly as he had seen her do earlier. “Why?”
“Because . . .” Flustered, she fumbled for words for a moment. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”
She recognized genuine astonishment when she saw it. It was staring at her now out of Cal’s dark blue eyes. “At all?”
“Really, Hornblower, that’s none of your business.” Dignity helped, but not a great deal. As she swept up the tray, the bowls slid dangerously, and they would have crashed to the floor if he hadn’t caught the end of the tray and balanced it.
“Why are you angry? I only want to make love with you.”
“Listen.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve had enough of all this.
I did you a favor, and I don’t appreciate you insinuating that I should hop into bed with you just because you’ve—you’ve got an itch.
I don’t find it flattering—in fact, I find it very insulting—that you think I’d make love with a perfect stranger just because it’s convenient. ”
He tilted his head, trying to take it all in. “Is inconvenient better?”
She could only grit her teeth. “Listen, Hornblower, I’ll drop you off at the nearest singles bar the minute we can get out of here. Until then, keep your distance.”
With that, she stormed out of the room. He could hear the dishes crash in the kitchen.
He dug his hands in his pockets again as he started upstairs. Twentieth-century women were very difficult to understand. Fascinating, he admitted, but difficult.
And what in the hell was a singles bar?