Who from this time was trying to kill her, and why? Who could have known about her?
A: The killer had been warned about her arrival—and probably about Houseman and McElroy, too.
B: The killer had recruited local aid. But why not just tell the sheriff that she wasn’t a real FBI agent? Her credentials couldn’t be verified in this time. She would be in jail, and out of the way.
Was it possible he hadn’t wanted her in jail? Just being out of the way wasn’t enough. He wanted her dead.
She yawned, too tired to think straight. Turning on her side, she blinked her heavy eyes. Now that her vision had adjusted to the dark she could see the outline of the two windows, and she wished that she could open them. The room was a little stuffy, and some fresh air would be nice. But an open window was also a security breach; in her time, windows were never open. Training and custom kept her in the bed, wishing instead of doing.
The air here in these mountains was so fresh, and the rustling of the breeze in the huge old trees was an almost constant, soothing whisper in the background. The grass was green and fragrant, and flowers provided bursts of color and scent. Trees and grass and flowers still existed in her time; trees, in fact, had flourished now that they were no longer used to make paper. New varieties of flowers, in every color and scent, grew in great masses.
But it wasn’t the same. This was . . . newer. And it wasn’t home. It would never be home.
17
Knox got up at his usual time and heated two cups of the leftover coffee in the microwave. Reheated coffee never tasted quite right, but he couldn’t see the point in letting coffee go to waste just because it had been cold for a few hours. Thank God Nikita drank her coffee black, so he didn’t have to worry about how much of what to put in it. Right off the bat he couldn’t find the single tray he knew he had, so he improvised and put the coffee cups on a baking sheet, then carried them both to her bedroom. As a peace offering, warmed-over coffee wasn’t much, but it was the best he had.
He deliberately wasn’t wearing a shirt, not to show off his manly physique, but because in his own experience the best way to get a woman to touch him was to take off his shirt. Pheromones, he guessed. For whatever reason, it worked, and he needed her to touch him. Physical contact would help bridge the gap between them, pull her closer to him.
He knew he was invading her privacy in a big way, but that didn’t stop him from knocking once, then twisting the doorknob and walking in.
Startled awake, Nikita sat up in bed. “What’s wrong?” she asked urgently, pushing her tousled hair out of her face.
Knox’s heart nearly stopped, and the baking sheet wobbled in his hand. The flesh-colored gown she was wearing was like some sort of fluid, pouring gently over her torso. It wasn’t tight, and he couldn’t see through it, but he almost didn’t need to, so faithfully did it follow every curve, every outline.
He swallowed, and managed a halfway normal tone. “I brought you a cup of coffee. I figured you might need it to jump-start you this morning.”
“Jump-start?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her brow.
He suppressed a grin. She probably wouldn’t like it if she knew how much he enjoyed her verbal miscues caused by her too-literal application of the language. “
Jump-start
means use an external source of energy to get you started. It’s a car term.” He took the tray over and set it down on the bedside table, then took a seat himself, settling beside her hip. He picked up both cups and extended one to her.
“Oh.” She accepted the cup. “Thank you.” She took a cautious sip of the steaming liquid, then made a face. “This doesn’t taste like it did last night. What did you do to it?” She glanced at his chest, then looked away.
“Nuked it.” He sipped his own coffee, glad for the hot liquid even if it wasn’t the best in the world.
Appalled, she stared at her cup, and he had to laugh. “It’s the same coffee from last night; I just reheated it in the microwave. It isn’t really radioactive,” he reassured her.
She took another sip, then said, “I would advise you to pour out the old coffee and make a fresh supply.”
He chuckled. “It’s hot, and it’s caffeine. That’s all I need. A fresh pot is brewing, but this tides me over until it’s ready.” He was chatting casually as he tried to keep his gaze from locking on her breasts, but, God, he was only human, and she had a fine looking pair: not too big, not too small, just round enough, and with soft-looking nipples. He wanted to pull off his clothes and climb into bed with her, but she hadn’t given any indication that she would forgive him any time within the next decade, so he didn’t push his luck. If she hit him again, she might break his jaw.
She was checking him out, too, with quick little glances at his chest and shoulders, but then she would devote her entire attention to the coffee. Maybe she wouldn’t touch him, but she was thinking about it.
He fingered a loose fold of her gown, which happened to be on her stomach, where the fabric was a little bunched. “What kind of fabric is this? It looks like water.”
She looked down at herself, frowning. “It looks wet?”
“No, I mean the way it sort of flows, as if it’s liquid.”
“That’s the point. It’s a synthetic fabric, of course, and the comfort of it is the whole idea. It keeps you warm if you’re cold, and cool if you’re too warm. All the really good sanssaums are made from it—”
“ ‘Sanssaums’?”
“What I’m wearing. That’s what it’s called. It means, literally, ‘without seams.’ The market name of the fabric is ‘Elegon,’ but who knows how it’s made? Some chemists came up with it.”
“I like how it feels.” He rubbed the fold between two fingers, letting his knuckles rub against her stomach. He could feel the sudden breath she took.
Deciding that he’d pushed matters far enough, he got up. “I’m going to hit the shower,” he said as he turned away. “I’ll be finished in ten minutes; then it’s all yours.”
Leaving the room was almost more than he could do. She looked so damned sexy in that gown that showed every detail of her body without exposing her, her newly blond hair all mussed, her eyes heavy-lidded with sleep. She was getting to him, in a big way. Last night, when he’d seen the stricken look in her eyes, he could have kicked himself for even bringing up the possibility that she might not be human. His damn curiosity had made him open his big mouth and hurt her feelings. Robots couldn’t have hurt feelings;
simulated
feelings, maybe, but not real ones.
So how did he know hers weren’t simulated?
He shut that thought off as he stripped out of his jeans and got into the shower. She’d said she was human. He would take her at her word. She felt human, and that was good enough for him. If she was anything else, he didn’t want to know.
He was going to have to work for her. He’d never
worked
for a woman before, not because he was such a hotshot lover, but because any attraction he’d felt had usually been mutual. The few times it hadn’t, well, there were reasons why it just wasn’t there, and he hadn’t pursued the matter.
With Rebecca, the almost giddy sense of falling in love had been strong, immediate, and definitely mutual. It was as if they looked at each other and simply knew; the sex had been good because they were so in tune.
The way he felt about Nikita was unfolding differently, growing a little slower, but he was definitely feeling testosterone-driven urges that made him want to grab her up. He was a reasonable man, so he was taken by surprise at how
un
reasonable he felt about her. He couldn’t just keep his distance the way she’d said; he
couldn’t.
Nikita sat in bed, sipping that awful coffee, and settled her jangling nerves. First he had startled her awake, though, oddly enough, she had seemed to instantly recognize him, because she hadn’t reached for a weapon. Then her senses had been thrown into mild shock because he hadn’t had on a shirt, and all that warm, bare skin made her want to cuddle close and feel the warmth wrap around her, to bury her face against him and inhale the scent of his skin.
Pheromones, she knew. It was basic biology: a woman’s pheromones were airborne, capable of attracting men from a distance. A man’s pheromones were mostly exchanged by touch. As close as he’d been, she had definitely felt the pull, urging her to reach out and stroke his chest.
Aesthetically speaking, it was a good chest, muscled and hairy—more muscled than she’d expected, given his relatively lean build. Either he worked to keep himself in shape, or he’d been blessed with excellent genes. Morning stubble had darkened his jaw—which was slightly darker on the left side, where she had hit him—and his hair needed brushing. She had wanted to pull him down on the bed with her, but her emotions still felt shredded. After a while she would get over her hurt, but right now all she could do was cling to her rather tenuous composure. When she was home—she had to believe she would somehow be able to go home—she would deal with the emotional issues he had exposed. In the meantime, she still had to work with him, regardless of how much she would prefer to just go away and hide.
The sound of the shower stopped. She waited five more minutes; then she heard the bathroom door open and Knox called, “It’s all yours.”
She didn’t get out of bed until he’d gone into the kitchen. She gathered her clothing for the day and took it into the bathroom with her; it was still damp and steamy from his shower. The smell of him lingered in the air, mingled with that of soap and some minty odor.
The novelty of a wet bath charmed her once again, and soothed her nerves, though they were somewhat jangled again when she first looked in the mirror and saw her blond self; she’d forgotten about changing her hair color. Overall, though, when she was dressed in her new clothes, she felt almost ready to tackle whatever the day brought, and she followed the smell of cooking food into the kitchen.
He was standing in front of the stove, his back to her, and he still didn’t have on a shirt. Helplessly her gaze traced the deep groove of his spine, followed the way the muscles in his back played whenever he reached for something. She felt as if she had been plunged into a heated pool. “I forgot my coffee cup,” she said in a muffled tone, and fled to her bedroom.
The brief interruption to retrieve the cup gave her the time she needed to brace herself. He evidently didn’t intend to put on a shirt until it was time for them to leave, so she would just have to ignore the provocation. When she went back into the kitchen, she asked, “What are you cooking? It smells wonderful.”
“I didn’t have much on hand; bacon, eggs, and toast is my limit, and I’m lucky I have that. I usually eat breakfast out.” He glanced at her. “You still eat meat and eggs in your time, don’t you?”
“Some people do, and some people don’t. Real animal protein can be very expensive. I usually eat a nutrition bar for breakfast.”
He made a face, then pointed toward a section of cabinet. “Get a couple of plates down for me, please. If you don’t mind.”
She turned and opened the cabinet door, then took down two plates that were a sunny yellow color she wouldn’t have expected in a bachelor’s house. “These are pretty,” she said.
“Lynnette gave them to me for Christmas last year. She said it was pitiful for a grown man to have nothing but paper plates in his house.”
Nikita tilted her head and thought the matter over. “She was right,” she finally said, passing the plates to him.
“Gee, thanks,” he said wryly. He put the plates in the microwave and punched the one-minute button.
“What are you doing?”
“Warming the plates. I don’t like for my food to get cold, and this keeps it warm longer.”
The explanation made sense to her. She looked around. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Set the table. The silverware is in that drawer there.” He pointed with a spatula.
Place settings were another thing that hadn’t changed much in two centuries: plates, napkins, and eating utensils. She looked around and didn’t see any napkins, so she asked him where they were.
Again he pointed with the spatula. “Use the paper towels.”
Marveling again at how plentiful and cheap paper was, she pulled two sections off the roll of towels, folded them, and put one each at the places they had used before. The microwave dinged as she was putting out the silverware, and Knox retrieved the plates, then began dishing up the food directly onto them.
He had an excellent sense of timing, because two slices of bread now popped up out of the toaster. He grabbed them, put one on each plate, quickly slathered butter on them, then handed the plates to her while he put two more slices of bread in the machine.
Nikita looked at the plates of food; they seemed identical to her, so she supposed it didn’t matter which plate went where. “I’ve always wondered what cooked eggs looked like,” she said as she put the plates on the table.
He looked around, his expression incredulous. “I know you said they were expensive, but . . . Surely you’ve eaten eggs before?”
She shook her head. “When I was young, my parents didn’t have much money because”—
because they’d beggared themselves buying her
—“they had some unforeseen expenses. Their financials are much better now, of course, now that all their children are grown and gone, to use your phrase.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“One of each, both younger.” She never told anyone about the older one, the one who wasn’t really a sibling. She had never known her, and tried not to think about her.
“Are you close?” He refilled their coffee cups with the fresh coffee, set them at their plates, then indicated her chair and waited until she had sat down before he did.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “My brother, Connor, has a baby boy whom we all adore. Fair, my sister, will be getting married next spring.”
“So they’re both younger, but they’ve both settled down. Why are you still unmarried?”
Because things like her didn’t reproduce.
“I’m married to my career,” she replied as lightly as possible. “The training is unbelievably intense; then I did my specialized studies, too.”
“Specialized in . . . what?”
“History. The last half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first, to be specific.”
“Hard to think of
now
being history.”
“It’s probably even more difficult to think that in my time, you’ve been dead for about a hundred and fifty years.”
“Ouch!” He gave her an appalled look. “Do you know exactly when I died?”
“No, of course not.” Despite everything, she found herself smiling at his expression. “For one thing, I didn’t know your name to search in the archives for it. For another, there are huge gaps in our records. For all the great gains your time made in technology, you were really dumb about archiving.”
“Yeah, you’ve said so before. So my music CDs aren’t going to last?”
“No, they’ll be beyond use in about twenty years. I will say that, when the problem was noticed, it was swiftly rectified, but unless there was a hard copy of the music, book, newspaper—whatever—then there wasn’t any way to regain those lost records. For instance, we know all of the music by the Beatles, but very little from about 1995 to 2020.”
“What about books?”
“Printed material held up fairly well. Not all, of course. Some of it was printed on poor-quality paper that disintegrated. Others things held up well, though. Look how many of your banknotes still exist.”
“Yeah, that’s really good paper.”