Nora Roberts - Times Change

“A what?”

He caught himself and put another card in place. “Nothing. My mind was wandering.”

She snickered. “What’s left of it.”

“You were saying?”

“I was saying let’s get out of Dodge.”

“I thought Medford was the closest town.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. “Sometimes,” she said at last, “I’m not sure if you belong on the same planet with the rest of us.”

“It’s the right planet.” A portion of his pasteboard roof fluttered. “Breathe the other way, will you?”

“Jacob. If you could spare a moment of your valuable time.”

He glanced up then, and he had to smile. “You have the sexiest pout I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t pout.” When she caught herself doing just that, she hissed between her teeth and blew down a building.

“You’ve just murdered thousands of innocent people.”

“There’s only one person I’m going to murder.” Desperate, she grabbed a handful of his sweater. “J.T., if I don’t get out of here I’m going to start bouncing off the walls.”

“Can you do that?”

“Just watch me.” She leaned closer. “Portland. People, traffic, restaurants.”

“When do you want to leave?”

With a huff, she sat back again. “You were listening.”

“Of course I was listening. I always listen. When do you want to leave?”

“A week ago. Now. I can be ready in ten minutes.”

She sprang up. Though Jacob winced when his city collapsed, he rose with her. “What about the snow?”

“It hasn’t snowed for three days. Besides, we have four-wheel drive. If we can get to Route 5, we’re home free.”

The thought of getting out nearly made him forget his priorities. “And if Cal comes back?”

She was all but dancing with impatience. “They’re not due back for a couple of weeks. Anyway, they live here.” Carelessly she stepped on his demolished city. “J.T., think carefully. Do you really want to see a grown woman turn into a raving lunatic?”

“Maybe.” Taking her by the hips, he pulled her intimately close. “I like it when you rave.”

“Then prepare to enjoy yourself.”

“I am.” He dragged her to the floor.

She argued—briefly. “I’m going,” she said, undoing the buttons of her flannel shirt.

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Right.” He tugged the plain white undershirt over her head.

She struggled but couldn’t prevent her lips from curving. Giving up, she helped him off with his sweater. “And so are you.”

“As soon as you’re finished raving,” he promised, then closed his mouth over hers.

***

Sunny threw a small bag into the back of the Land Rover. She’d taken time to grab a toothbrush, a hairbrush, her favorite camisole and a lipstick. “In case we have to stop on the way,” she explained.

“Why would we?”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get out of the mountains.” She settled in the driver’s seat. “It’s about five hours after that.”

Five hours. It took them five hours to get from one part of a single state to another. For the past few days he’d nearly forgotten how different things were.

She shot him a look, eyes bright, lips curved. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

It was difficult not to stare as she turned a small key and sent the combustion engine roaring. He could feel the vibration through the floorboards. A few small adjustments, he mused, and even an archaic vehicle could be made to run smoothly and quietly.

Jacob was on the brink of pointing this out to her when she shoved the Land Rover in gear and sent snow spitting out from under the tires.

“All right!”

“Is it?”

“This baby rides like a tank,” she said happily as they lumbered away from the cabin.

“Apparently.” He braced himself, finding it incongruous that he should worry about life and limb here, when he had taken countless trips at warp speed. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

“Of course I know what I’m doing. I learned how to drive in a Jeep.” They labored up an incline where snow had melted and refrozen into a slick surface. Jacob judged the height and breadth of the trees. He could only trust that she knew how to avoid them.

“You look a little green.” She had to chuckle as they plowed, then fishtailed, then plowed again, making erratic but definite progress. “Haven’t you ever ridden in one of these?”

He had an image of driving his own LSA vehicle—Land, Sea or Air. It was smooth and quiet and as fast as a comet. “No, actually, I haven’t.”

“Then you’re in for a treat.”

The Land Rover bumped over rocks hidden under the snow. “I bet.”

They forged through the drifts. He nearly relaxed. By all indications, she knew how to handle the vehicle. Such as it was. After the first twenty minutes, the heater began to hum.

“How about some tunes?”

His brow creased. “Fine,” he said cautiously.

“You’re in charge.”

“Of what?”

“Of the tunes.” She navigated carefully down an incline. “The radio.”

He eyed a particularly large tree. At their current rate and angle, he estimated thirty seconds to impact. “We didn’t bring it.”

“The car radio, J.T.” She missed the tree by six or eight inches. “Pick a station.”

She’d taken her hand from the wheel for an instant to gesture at the dashboard. Eyes narrowed, Jacob studied it. Trusting luck, he turned a dial.

“It works better if you turn it on before you try to tune in a station.”

Biting back an oath, he tried another dial and was greeted by a blast of ear-popping static. After adjusting the volume, he applied himself to the tuner. His first stop was an instrumental melody, loaded with strings, that made him cringe. Still, he glanced over at Sunny.

“If that’s your choice, we’ll have to reassess our relationship immediately.”

Sound faded in and out as he played with the tuner. He hit on some gritty rock, not too dissimiliar from what might have sounded over the airwaves in his own time.

“Good choice.” She turned her head briefly to smile at him. “Who’s your favorite musician?”

“Mozart,” he answered, because it was partially true and undeniably safe.

“You’re going to like my mother. When I was a kid, she used to weave to his Clarinet Concerto in A Minor. ” With the radio still rocking, she hummed a few bars. “For the purity of sound, she’d always say. Mom’s always been big on pure—no additives, no preservatives.”

“How did you keep food fresh without preservatives?”

“That’s what I say. What’s life without a little MSG? Anyway, then Dad would switch on Bob Dylan.” She laughed, more relieved than she wanted to admit when they turned onto the first plowed road. “One of my earliest memories of him is watching him weed his garden, with his hair down to his shoulders and this scratchy Dylan record playing on a little portable turntable. ‘Come gather ’round, people, wherever you roam.’ All he was wearing—Dad, not Dylan—was bell-bottoms and love beads.”

Jacob got an uncomfortable flash of his own father, dressed in his tidy gardening clothes, blue shirt, blue slacks, his hair carefully trimmed under a stiff peaked cap, his face quiet as he hand-pruned his roses and listened to Brahms on his personal entertainment unit.

And of his mother, sitting in the shade of a tree on a lazy Sunday afternoon, reading a novel while he and Cal had tossed a baseball and argued over strike zones.

“I think you’ll like him.”

Dragged back, Jacob blinked at her. “What?”

“My father,” she repeated. “I think you’ll like him.”