Daring Time (27 page)

In their place stood blocks of modern brick condominiums, each and every one of which was precisely the same. A few ugly low-rises built in the 1960s added a grim, institutional presence to the street.

Things were much better when one looked to the right, where at least an attempt had been made in the new buildings to preserve the historical appearance of the once-grand avenue. In fact, the new limestone and brick town houses were each unique and built within the strict guidelines of the Historical Preservation Society. A few of the houses were meticulously renovated structures that would have stood during Hope's time.

Several of the grand mansions still remained as well, 1807 Prairie Avenue being one of many. Instead of pointing that out to Hope, however, he hurried her into the house.

He understood that it was what Hope was
not
seeing as much as what was there that distressed her so deeply.

When they entered the front door Ryan noticed that the foyer chandelier was turned on again. He was going to have to get an electrician to come out and repair that short. He aimed Hope for the grand staircase. When they reached the bedroom Ryan turned the electric heater on to high and brought it over to where Hope sat shivering at the end of the bed.

"Sorry it's so chilly," he mumbled. "Someone is coming out early next week to check out the heating system. It's been modernized but it still doesn't seem to work very well."

"It never did. Ryan?" she asked suddenly, seeming to stir out of a trance.

"Yes?"

"Why is the house so empty? It's like it's been stripped bare. I tried finding something to eat but there were only bottles of water, milk and a little fruit in that enormous icebox in the kitchen. Has there been some sort of catastrophe? War or ... or famine?"

"No, not recently, anyway," he answered with a short laugh. His laughter hardly implied amusement, however, only anxious concern for Hope's disorientation at her familiar world being wiped away in a split second. "Remember I explained that I'd just been given 1807 Prairie Street by a friend—Alistair Franklin? It's a long story, but the bottom line is, I just moved in here at the beginning of the week. It's my understanding that the house has stood empty for fifteen or twenty years. That's the only reason it seems so barren."

He walked over to the bedside table and picked up his cell phone.

"How about some Chinese food?" he asked, paging down the list of nearby restaurants that he'd programmed into his phone.

"What about it?" she asked, rising from her sitting position, her gaze glued on his cell phone.

"Do you want to have it for dinner? You said you were hungry. There's a place that has food that might be more what you're used to—chicken, steak, potatoes. Your only other choices at present are Mexican and pizza."

"What does Chinese food taste like?"

"You like beef? Chicken?"

Hope nodded. "Vegetables—peas, carrots, stuff like that?"

Again she nodded as she came closer to him. "I'll get a few things. If you're as hungry as I am, at least one of em is going to taste good to you."

As soon as he'd ordered and flipped his cell phone closed Hope ached for it.

"May I?"

"Sure," he replied, handing her the phone. "It's a cell phone."

"So you use this to contact your servants?" she asked finally after inspecting the phone with obvious fascination.

He grinned. "No. Very few people in this day and age have serwants."

"I don't understand. Who were you just giving instructions for bur dinner then?"

"Oh, the restaurant. They make meals."

"I know what a restaurant is—they have them in all the finest hotels. But you make it sound as if anyone can go to them. And it sounded as if they're going to deliver food to the house."

"Right." Ryan shrugged.

"Have we acquired a socialist form of government, then?"

"No . .. why would you say that?"

"Because you said there were hardly any servants anymore, and that anyone can have food prepared for them. I thought perhaps the government sponsored the restaurants."

Ryan shook his head. "No, good old-fashioned capitalism keeps the restaurant industry alive. That along with a good dose of American laziness and overwork."

"You mean we're going to pay money for our meals?" she asked, clearly disappointed.

" 'Fraid so, honey."

"Oh." She sighed and sat back down on the bed. "Then things really aren't that different from the past. They've just moved the servants out of the house."

"People who work in restaurants aren't servants. They get paid for their work," Ryan explained as he sat next to her on the bed. He was glad to see that some of the animation and color had returned to her face.

"Servants get paid! My father pays the best wages on Prairie Avenue and we offer the staff paid vacations and medical care from Dr. Walkerton as well. Do these people who work in restaurants make enough for their wages to raise their families? Can they go to the doctor for free and do they have paid vacations?"

"Er . .. no," Ryan admitted.

"Well, they should," Hope informed him with a pointed glance. "You should treat the people who prepare your meals well, Ryan, and they'll repay you a thousandfold with their loyalty and kindness."

Ryan opened his mouth to educate Hope on the reality of the modern-day world and shut it just as quickly. Hope may see things from the cockeyed angle of the early twentieth century and the influence of her idiosyncratic social reformist father, but that didn't mean her point of view held no validity whatsoever. Maybe she had a few things to teach him about his time period as well. So instead of lecturing her he tucked one of her errant curls behind her ear, smiling to himself when he felt her go utterly still beneath his touch.

"You know, you're right. I'll make sure I give an extra good tip."

She gave him a radiant smile.

There was no doubt about it. He was going to go bankrupt heating this monstrous old house and giving fat tips to every delivery boy in the city. But if it meant Hope Stillwater blessed him with that smile, he'd be the richest poor man in the city.

***

Hope sat cross-legged on the bed, her back against pillows that had been stacked next to the headboard. She gave a muffled cry of triumph when she successfully maneuvered the last piece of Mongolian beef into her mouth using chopsticks.

"This is delicious," she told Ryan, who sat opposite her on the bed, his back leaning against pillows and the foot railing and his legs stretched out in front of him. He'd put on a dark blue shirt earlier that only made his eyes look lighter and more striking in contrast to it. He wore a faded pair of the type of the thick cotton pants, similar to the ones he'd had on when she first saw him in the mirror. It was difficult for her to keep her stare off how well they fit his trim hips and long legs. She'd been impressed at how adroitly he handled his chopsticks, as though he had been born in China. "May we use the cell phone to order more of it for tomorrow's dinner?"

"Yes," Ryan said.

"Could you please pass the orange chicken?"

"You already ate it all."

"Oh." She frowned in disappointment and patted her belly thoughtfully. "Perhaps I'm fuller than I thought. I've never tasted food half so good. So many flavors. So exotic. And the delivery boy said he'd been to Hong Kong twice to visit his grandparents! Do you think he'll remember to bring the photographs of his last trip the next time he visits?"

Ryan's low laughter brought her out of her reverie.

"He'll remember all right. It's not likely he'll forget talking to you for a long, long time."

Hope put her chopsticks in the empty carton and carefully placed it on a paper napkin on the bedside table. She'd been unimpressed when Ryan had explained that the rough white paper was meant to be a substitute for cloth napkins and immediately asked why they didn't make napkins as soft as the paper she'd found in the bathroom. He'd laughed at her then just as he did presently.

"I suppose I must seem very foolish to you," she murmured.

Ryan shook his head and swallowed a bite of sweet-and-sour pork. "You don't seem foolish, honey. You make me see my world in a whole different way. I only meant that boy would never forget having such a beautiful woman listen to every word he uttered like she thought he was the most fascinating male on the planet."

Warmth flooded her at Ryan's compliment. He hadn't kissed her and only briefly touched her since they'd awoken from their nap; The heat in his eyes when he looked at her combined with his special small smile made her feel as if he'd been caressing her intimately the entire time, however.

"I
did
think he was fascinating. How many people do you know who have been to Hong Kong twice by the time they were sixteen? And these
airplanes
that he spoke of . .." She trailed off, gazing off into the distance and fantasizing what it would be like to get on a vehicle and be on the other side of the globe within a day and a night. "Airplanes sound like something right out of one of Mr. Jules Verne's novels. I can't wait to discover the other miracles of your time. I can't wait to tell my father about it all .. . the airplanes, the cell phones, the Chinese food delivery, the toilet paper . .."

It struck her suddenly that there was a very good chance she'd never have the opportunity to tell her father anything ever again.

A moment later she glanced up and saw Ryan standing beside her through an annoying veil of tears. He came down on the bed next to her. She found herself enfolded in his arms. She buried her face in his shirt, infinitely thankful for his steadying presence as her world rocked precariously. He said nothing as she cried but he ran his hand soothingly along the back of her head and shoulders, once pausing to pull the combs out of her hair.

"I'm sorry," she said wetly against his chest a while later. At some point her attention had turned from her grief to the sensation of Ryan's fingers running through her unbound hair.

"You don't have to apologize. You've been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours."

Hope sniffled and raised her head to look at him. They were so close she could perfectly see the vivid pinpoints of color in his cerulean eyes. For a moment she found herself drowning in the depths of his gaze as though she'd dove down into a warm, sunlit sea. "I want you to know something, honey." "What?"

"When I first came into this house—when I first starting seeing you—I was convinced you weren't dead." He saw her crinkled brow and continued. "Ramiro—he's my partner—tried to tell me you were a ghost. The documents and newspaper articles I read stated that without a doubt you'd died in the year 1906. But I didn't believe it, Hope. And now you're here in my arms proving me right." His hold tightened around her. Her body slid along his several inches, until their faces were only inches apart. "I don't understand what you mean," she whispered.

"I'm trying to say that I don't think time works the way you and I had always thought.

Somehow—some way—I knew you weren't dead. I sensed that we were only separated by something human beings usually don't have the power to penetrate. But you and I—we're solid proof that it's not an impossibility."

Hope merely watched him soberly, emotion clogging her throat. He opened his big hand along the side of her head, his thumb caressing her damp cheek gently.

"I'm trying to tell you I don't think your father is dead . .. not in the way we used to think of it. We're separated from him at present, that's true. But if a gateway could be formed, you would see him, alive and well."

"But—"

He shook his head. "I
know
there's a paradox involved. I used to feel the discomfort of living with that paradox in regard to you. You were both alive to me and not. I had to force myself to choose which reality I wanted . .. which reality felt more tangible to me . .

. more
right.
Which one I wanted the most."

She swallowed with difficulty. "Are you saying that it's necessary to believe that my father is still alive, that this house still exists just as I recall it over a hundred years ago?"

He wiped the tears from her other cheek carefully. Hope could sense him deliberating on how to choose his words. "What I think I'm saying, honey, is that it's a
possibility.

Someday, just like I did, you'll have to decide which possibility is your reality."

She stifled a sob of anguish.

"But that day isn't today, Hope. For now, we're here together."

She stared into his eyes, feeling like she soaked up some of the courage he offered her.

"We don't know enough about the mirror that remains. I'm just telling you this because

..."

"You don't want to see me give up hope. I understand, Ryan. Thank you."

He just watched her silently. Hope became preternaturally aware of every point on her body where they touched; how his chest brushed against the tips of her breasts when he inhaled.

"I'm looking forward to learning more about your world," she whispered.

"Do you want to go out right now? See the city?"

"It's dark out now. Perhaps ... we could wait until morning?"

"If that's what you'd like."

She studied him from beneath her lowered lashes. "I slept all day. I'm not at all tired yet.

What will we do?"

"We could watch television."

"What's
television?"
She looked over to where he nodded. She saw a rectangular electrical device with a pane of opaque glass. It was the first time she'd noticed it because Ryan had draped the coat given to him by one of Addie Sampson's men on top of it.

"It's like a radio with pictures."

"I don't understand."

His eyelids narrowed as he studied her. "It's sort of hard to explain. You might just have to see it. That little box over there could tell you a lot about the early twenty-first century, but it might be misleading as well. Maybe it'd be best if you started out by reading newspapers."

Hope bit her lower lip indecisively. She knew what she wanted to do and it wasn't along the lines of reading newspapers.