Kate Hoffmann - The Pirate

She slipped her arm through his and paced alongside him. "Well, there is a theory that would have us believe that if history is altered, the books written about the event will also change. So, I suppose we could just look at the books that have been written about Blackbeard and see if they've changed."

"Whose theory is this?"

"I'm not sure. I saw it in a movie called Back to the Future ," she said.

"A movie?"

"A video," Meredith said. "It's like a play you watch on… well, just think of it as a play."

"Ah," he said, nodding. "And this video was written by a respected scholar, an expert in this science… this physics, like your colleague, Kelsey?"

"No, not exactly. Movies and videos are entertainment. They're fuel for the imagination. Even though there are plenty of books and movies about the subject, no one has ever really traveled in time."

He stopped short and spun her around to face him. "No one?"

A tremor raced through her at the look in his eyes and she bit her bottom lip. "I-I thought you understood that. As far as I know, no one has ever traveled in time."

A myriad of emotions crossed his face before he spoke again. "Then I am the first," he stated softly. "And I must be the first to return, as well."

Meredith drew a deep breath and screwed up her courage to say the words she'd wanted to say since he'd come to her. Words she knew would anger him. "What if you can't get back?" she asked.

"I will not consider that possibility," he said. "I must return."

She swallowed hard. "Is-is there someone waiting for you?" She felt her cheeks flame. "I mean, do you have a girlfriend… or maybe a fiancée… or a wife?"

Meredith risked a glance up. He was staring up at the sky, his gaze fixed on some invisible star. His eyes were frosted with pain and his thoughts had drifted to a different time. She'd never seen such a look on a person's face, such intense anguish, so tightly controlled yet so visible.

She wanted to reach out and pull him into her arms to comfort him. But she couldn't. There was a woman in his life, a woman he missed very much.

Her heart sank. What did she expect? She was twenty-eight, yet no one questioned her single status. He was only a few years older, yet the times he had lived in dictated early marriage. "Do you?" she asked gently. "Do you have a wife waiting for you?"

His jaw tightened and she saw a nerve twitch in his cheek. "No," he replied, his voice ragged. "I have no wife, no…family."

Meredith breathed a silent sigh of relief, but she quickly admonished herself. She would do well to remember that Griffin Rourke was not some fantasy pirate, but a flesh-and-blood man, a man with his own demons to plague his dreams. And he didn't belong here. If she continued to harbor these illusions about him, she'd only get hurt when he left.

If he left. The prospect of Griffin remaining in her time hung over them like a storm cloud. Whether she was attracted to him or not, it was her responsibility to see that he got home. She couldn't help believing that she had somehow brought him here, that he'd been an unwilling participant in some great cosmic happening.

"Why don't we go get some lunch," she suggested, hoping to shift the mood of their conversation. "I can work at the library later this afternoon."

"I am not hungry," he murmured. "I would like to take a walk. Alone."

Meredith nodded and pulled her hand from around his arm, knowing it would be best to leave him to his own thoughts. "I'll meet you back at the cottage then."

He nodded curtly, and without looking at her, set off down the street.

"Let him go," Meredith whispered to herself. "You'll have to let him go sooner or later, so do it now." As she watched him disappear around a bend in the road, she pressed her hand to her chest, wondering if her heart had heard the words she'd spoken.

The next two days were passed in uneasy frustration, Griffin trying mightily to control his impatience and Meredith spending most of her time at the library, working at the computer. Griffin usually joined her, examining every scrap of information she uncovered, then demanding careful explanations.

But this morning, he had been in a foul temper, ready to give up on searching the computer networks. They'd argued over breakfast and she'd left him at the cottage to brood while she paced the pathways of cyberspace.

There was precious little to find that might help Griffin. What she did discover was purely theoretical, and often too difficult for her to understand. She was beginning to think that Griffin had been right, that this course of action would get them nowhere. She finally decided to head home and discuss her bleak findings with Griffin, to prepare him for the prospect that she might not be able to find him a way back.

She was secretly happy that she hadn't found anything. She wanted Griffin with her a little longer. At first, she'd rationalized that it was merely to benefit her work, but then she had to face the fact that she wanted more.

At night, she'd lie in bed and listen to him move about the cottage, hoping, praying, that he might come back to her bed as he had that first night. She would close her eyes and imagine his body next to hers, his breath soft on her neck, his lips nibbling a path-

Meredith stopped beside the road and cursed herself soundly. This would not do, these unbidden fantasies about Griffin Rourke! For all she knew, he might disappear just as quickly as he'd appeared, in a flash of lighting or a clap of thunder. She quickly put him out of her mind, replacing him with a mental grocery list before she took off in the direction of the store.

The sun was almost down by the time Meredith reached the cottage. In the waning light, she could make out a figure sitting on the steps. She breathed a silent sigh of relief, glad to see that Griffin was waiting for her. She shifted a bag of groceries in her arms and searched her jacket pocket for her keys.

"Hey there, Meredith!"

The figure on the steps stood up and waved. A flash of disappointment shot through her. This was not Griffin, but someone much shorter, with curly auburn hair. Slowly, Meredith smiled, recognizing her best friend, Dr. Kelsey Porterfield. "Kels!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

"Do you have to ask? My graduate assistant told me you've called four times in the past three days. What is the big emergency?"

Meredith stepped up beside her and pushed the key into the lock. She opened the door and glanced around the interior, relieved to find that Griffin was not inside. She had plenty to explain to Kelsey without having to explain the presence of an eighteenth-century pirate living in her cottage. He was probably down at the harbor, watching the ferries come and go and the shrimpers return with their catch.

"You didn't have to drive all the way down here," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "There's no emergency. I'm fine. I just had a few questions I needed to ask you."

Kelsey followed her into the cottage. "Come on, Meredith. You're the national poster child for patience. You didn't even bother to call me when you found out you were on the shortlist for the Sullivan Fellowship. I had to find out from that witch, Katherine Conrad, and her little band of campus cronies. You called four times!"

Meredith put the groceries down on the kitchen counter. "Did I? I'm sorry, but I didn't mean for you to rush down here."

"I was on my way back from my symposium at Wake Forest and decided to take a detour. I figured someone should check up on you, stuck here on this island with nothing but your books."

"I'm fine," Meredith repeated.

Kelsey studied her for a long moment, a shrewd look in her bright eyes. "You look all right, but whether you are all right is still to be determined. Why the frantic phone calls?"