Time Enough for Love (12 page)

“Hello, Charles.”

Charles nearly spilled the entire cup of coffee down the front of his tuxedo.

It was Maggie Winthrop. But instead of looking the way he remembered her, like a sparklingly pretty girl-next-door, the woman who stood before him was pure sensual elegance.

“Remember me? I’m Maggie—”

“Winthrop,” he finished for her, setting his cup back on the counter and quickly taking the hand she extended. “Of course I remember you.”

Her hair was up off her shoulders—delicately smooth shoulders exposed by the strapless neckline of her dress. And what a dress! It was the richest shade of brown and made of silky material that clung to her breasts. It swept down all the way to
the floor, emphasizing her slender waist and the soft curve of her hips.

“I left a message on your home answering machine,” he told her with a smile, fighting to keep his gaze properly above her neck. God, she was a knockout! She was wearing makeup—more, at least, than she had on the other time they’d met. It accentuated her soft lips and her gorgeous eyes and the delicate bone structure of her face.

“You did?” Her eyes lit up with genuine happiness.

Charles realized he was still holding her hand. She hadn’t tugged it free from his grasp. He held on even tighter, lacing their fingers together, feeling a surge of pleasure. God knows their attraction was mutual. The connection that flowed between them was hot enough to make his coffee seem tepid. But in addition to that attraction, she honestly seemed to like him. As much as he liked her. And he did, he realized. He liked the sparkle in her smile and the amusement that danced in her eyes.

But tonight there was something else in her eyes as well. He could see a quiet sadness that seemed to linger.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you didn’t get my message.”

“No, I haven’t … been home for a while.” As he
watched she surreptitiously checked her watch. It was a sign that he was either boring her, or she needed to be somewhere. He couldn’t believe the first.

“I called to see if you were going to the Data Tech party.” He released her hand. “But obviously, you’re heading someplace else tonight.”

“No, I was planning to go to Data Tech, but not till a little later.” She leaned back against the coffee counter, as if she intended to stay for a while. So much for his second theory. “So, what are you doing here? Do you live nearby?”

“Just down the street,” he told her. “Are you meeting someone at the party?”

“Actually, I’m supposed to meet
you
there.”

Now, what the hell did she mean by that?

“I mean, I was hoping to see you there,” she added. She held his gaze, smiling slightly, and he felt his pulse accelerate. Had she come to this particular Circle K hoping to bump into him? He knew her address, and while it wasn’t far, this convenience store was anything
but
convenient to her. In fact, it was well out of her way.

“Do you have plans for dinner?” He picked up his coffee and started toward the front of the store, hoping he sounded casual.

“Charles, would you mind pouring me a cup of coffee too?”

He looked at her, startled. For just a moment her voice had sounded slightly strained. But her smile was wide and relaxed. “The decaf’s up a little too high,” she explained. She leaned forward, closer to him, and lowered her voice. “And I have limited movement in this dress.”

The movement she had just made gave him a breathtaking view of the tantalizing fullness of the tops of her breasts. Charles forced his gaze toward the coffeepots. Decaf. She wanted decaf. “Of course,” he said, quickly pouring a cup. He put a lid on it as he cleared his throat. “About dinner …”

She looked at her watch again. “I’ve already ordered room service for tonight. I’d love for you to join me.”

He picked up both coffees. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to see Maggie Winthrop in the warm pink light of the lingering sunset. He wanted to offer her his arm and escort her to some four-star restaurant and … “Did you say
room
service?”

Charles turned back to her. She took both cups of coffee from him, setting them back on the counter. God, he didn’t even think to ask if she wanted cream and sugar.

But cream and sugar wasn’t exactly what she
wanted. It wasn’t even close. She stepped nearer to him, close enough for an embrace, close enough for a kiss, and rested one hand on the front of his jacket, just over his heart. Her other hand went up to the nape of his neck. She gently pulled his head down while rising on tiptoes to meet him and …

Her kiss was sheer perfection. Her lips were so soft, her mouth so sweet. He hesitated in surprise for only the briefest of moments before he opened his mouth to her, deepening the kiss. He put his arms around her, pulling her even closer. His hands encountered the cool smoothness of her dress and the perfect softness of her body underneath.

His arousal was instant. He kissed her again, harder this time, pressing her back against the counter. There was no way she could have missed his physical response to her, yet she didn’t push him away. On the contrary, she held him even closer, kissing him just as passionately, just as hungrily.

Dear God, he’d died and gone to heaven.

Except when he pulled back to look at her, he couldn’t help but see that her eyes were filled with unshed tears. She turned her head, trying her best to blink them away without him noticing.

So he pretended not to notice. “Don’t tell me,” he said, trying to keep his voice sounding light. It
wasn’t hard to do because he was breathless. “Someone’s following you again.”

Maggie gazed up at him. “Actually, someone’s following
you
. Agents from a covert government organization called Wizard-9.”

Charles laughed. “Wizard-9, huh? Sounds pretty scary.”

“Oh, they’re very scary.” She glanced at her watch again, then picked up the coffee and started toward the front of the store.

Charles followed, taking out his billfold as she set the paper hot cups on the counter near the cash register.

“Anything else?” the clerk asked. He was about seventeen years old and had straggly facial hair that was supposed to pass for a beard. Charles couldn’t remember ever being that young.

“No, that’s it, thanks.”

“Two eighty-nine.” The kid glanced up at Charles, and did a double take. “You again? What happened to your last cup? Drop it or something?”

“Excuse me?” Charles asked. Him again? He hadn’t been in here in days. And even then, this wasn’t the same clerk who had waited on him.

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “We had a little accident.” She handed the boy three dollars.

“A what?” Charles said. “Wait a minute, I’m paying for this.”

“You can pay me back,” Maggie told him, taking the change, grabbing the coffee, and heading for the door. “Come on.”

When she walked, a long slit up the side of the dress revealed flashes of gracefully shaped legs.

Charles was almost completely distracted. Almost. “But why did you say—”

Maggie turned to face him. “Charles, I’ve got a suite at the Century Hotel. Will you come and have dinner there with me?”

Charles was confused about quite a number of things, but this was not one of them. “Absolutely.”

Charles was silent as they took the elevator up to the seventh floor of the Century Hotel, where her suite was located.

Maggie gazed at the numbers above the door, watching the three light up and then the four. She was well aware that Charles’s eyes were on her. She was also well aware that he entertained high hopes of having more than dinner here in her room.

Maggie knew what Chuck wanted her to do. He wanted her to have dinner with Charles. He wanted
her to be bright and funny. He wanted her to charm him, to be some kind of super, extra-strength, high-dosage Maggie. He wanted her to try to condense seven years of friendship into one short evening.

And he wanted her to cement the whole thing by spending the night with Charles.

But what was she supposed to do after this whole awful mess was over? What was she supposed to do after she succeeded in convincing Charles to change his entire life, his entire career—assuming one glorious night of sex could actually do that. Was she supposed to spend the rest of her life with him?

She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the man standing next to her. He was a stranger—except he wasn’t. Not really. He looked like Chuck. He kissed like Chuck. He even smelled like Chuck—a faint but tangy whiff of some kind of aftershave mixed with fresh-smelling soap, commingling with his own very male, slightly musky, extremely delicious scent.

But what else was Charles missing besides the scar on his left cheekbone?

Chuck had desired her—maybe even loved her, although he hadn’t admitted as much—for seven years. Charles had met her two days ago.

She’d fallen in love with Chuck. But every experience Charles had lived, Chuck had too. Was it possible, then, to love Chuck without loving Charles as well?

Maggie shook her head. This was much too complicated.

And then there was Chuck. Did he love her? She’d thought perhaps he did. Last night he’d made love to her so passionately, so emotionally. But maybe he had been simply sating his desire by having sex with someone who looked like the woman he truly cared about—a woman who had died in his arms seven years in the future.

If so, what an incredibly complicated love triangle
that
would be. And if Maggie did what Chuck wanted, she would be involved with Charles, too, making their relationships even more tangled. That couldn’t possibly be the solution to
any
thing.

Maggie didn’t know
what
the solution was, but the first step seemed kind of obvious.

She had to tell Charles the truth.

And as the elevator doors opened onto the seventh floor and they headed down the long, elegantly carpeted corridor to the fancy suite that Chuck had used money from Charles’s own bank account to
pay for, Charles gave Maggie the perfect opportunity to start telling him the truth.

“So,” he said. “What’s with the suite at the Century Hotel? Are freelance writers making higher salaries these days than I thought?”

Chuck had prepped Maggie. He’d wanted her to tell Charles that she was staying here because she was having the interior of her house painted and the fumes were too strong.

Instead, as she fitted the key into the lock, she turned to look up at Charles. He was smiling—not that tight, grim little half smile that Chuck so grudgingly gave away. Instead, his face was relaxed, his smile wide. It made him breathtakingly handsome. It lit his eyes, defusing some of the hot attraction that still burned there.

But only some of it.

“Actually, I’m staying here because those men—remember, the ones from Wizard-9 who were following you—they’re waiting for me at my home, because they want to kill me.” Maggie laughed, and it sounded forced and fake. But now she was babbling and she couldn’t stop. “It sounds like one of those brainteasers, the one that goes: There’s a man and he wants to go home, but he can’t because there are two masked men waiting there for him. You know, it sounds really scary, but it turns out the man
is a baseball player on third base, home is home plate, and the two masked men are the catcher and the ump.”

Maggie pushed the door open and stepped into the room, praying that after that little outburst Charles wouldn’t simply turn tail and run. “Except my own personal brainteaser isn’t about baseball. Mine
is
very scary.”

She turned and looked back at Charles, who was still standing silently in the hallway. “Are you coming in?”

He hesitated. “Are you …”

“Crazy?” she finished for him. “No. I’m sorry, I’m a little on edge. Please. Come in, Charles.”

“I wasn’t asking if you were crazy.” Charles stepped into the room. “I was asking … Maggie, are you in some kind of trouble?”

He followed her into the spacious living area of the suite, barely even glancing at the luxurious furnishings, at the gorgeous rose-patterned drapes and matching upholstery. His concern tinged his voice. “Because I have a friend who specializes in getting people out of trouble. I could give him a call and—”

“Boyd Rogers is on leave,” Maggie told him, turning to face him.

Chuck had told her about Boyd today as they’d stopped to get his hair cut. Back at that roadhouse,
when they’d bought that little illegal gun he wore under his jacket, he’d called Boyd and warned him to make himself invisible. Chuck was afraid Wizard-9 would try to even up their odds by taking Boyd out now, before he became a major player. His old friend had trusted him enough to agree to take a weeklong leave at an unreported destination without a lengthy explanation.

Now Charles
was
staring at her as if she were crazy. Or a mind reader. “How do you know …”

Maggie sat down on the rose-patterned sofa. “Charles, I need to talk to you about your work with time travel.”

The change that came over him was extreme. One moment he’d been looking at her with concern in his liquid brown eyes. Then it had changed to wariness with her mention of Boyd. Now … If a look could cause frostbite, Maggie would definitely require hospitalization.

Still, along with the chill, she could also see curiosity in his eyes. She was counting on that scientist’s need to know to keep him from simply walking away.

“What are you talking about? Currently at Data Tech I’m working on—”

“It’s not something you’re doing at Data Tech. Not yet. Right now you’re working on your own.”

He took several steps toward the door, but then spun around and took several steps back. “I haven’t told anyone about my theories. How could you possibly know?”

Maggie smiled. “You’re probably not going to believe this—but, then again, if
any
one’s going to believe it, it’s going to have to be you—”

The chill in the room dropped another thirty degrees as his eyes narrowed. “Are you the one who broke into my house a few days ago?”

She shook her head. “No.” She crossed her legs, and the slit in the slim skirt of her dress flipped open. His gaze flashed in that direction. Chuck had certainly been right about the physical-attraction thing. It was strong enough to distract Charles even now, when he should have been at his least distractible. “No, I’m not.”