Nora Roberts - Times Change

“Cal, why don’t you relax? As tempting as it was, I didn’t murder him.”

“I wasn’t worried about that.” He poured hot water into two cups. “Not too much, anyway. It’s more a matter of wanting to explain.”

“That your brother’s a jerk? I know that.”

“He’s also sensitive.”

She could still be amused. That was a relief. “Are we talking about the same man? Hornblower, Jacob? Astrophysicist? The one with the bull head and the nasty temper?”

An apt description, he thought. “Yeah. I don’t mean like he cries at vid—movies,” he remembered. “Or that he takes it to heart when you call him names. He’s sensitive where other people are concerned. Family.” Not certain he was handling the situation correctly, he brought the tea to the table. “Half the time when he’d get into fights it was because someone had said something about me. It used to annoy me, because I wanted to take care of it myself, but he’d always plow right in before I had the chance. And my parents . . . I can’t think of a single time he’d forget a birthday or Mother’s Day.”

“They still have Mother’s Day?”

“Sure.”

“Cal.” Absently she stirred sugar into her tea. “How did you decide to stay?”

“I didn’t decide,” he told her. “What I mean is, I don’t think decide is the word. It implies choice. I couldn’t leave Libby. I tried. But I’ve never stopped thinking about my family.”

“Whether you consider you had a choice or not, it had to be difficult.”

“For me it was pretty cut-and-dried. I couldn’t even be sure if I’d make it back. I sent the ship and the reports because if there was a chance I could let them know I was alive, safe, I had to.” He laid a hand over hers. “With J.T., it’s different. He knows he can make it back, and if he didn’t go he’d be leaving them without hope. He couldn’t do that.”

“No, he couldn’t do that.” She lifted her head. “It’s been hard for you.”

“This has been the best year of my life.”

“But the adjustments, the separation . . .”

“If I’d been tossed back another five hundred years it wouldn’t have mattered. As long as I’d found Libby.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

“I like to think so.” He grinned, then sobered. “He loves you, Sunny.”

Something flickered in her eyes before she lowered them. “Did he tell you that?”

“Yes, but he didn’t have to. I saw it the first time he said your name. I guess what I wanted to tell you was that he’s never felt about anyone the way he feels about you.”

“Will you help me, Cal? I left before he woke up.” She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. “I can’t say goodbye.”

***

Libby stood by the stream watching the water fight its way around the ice. In her mind she saw it as it had been in the spring, when the water had gurgled lazily over the rocks and the song of birds had been everywhere. The grass had been soft and green.

It was there that she and Cal had buried the time capsule. And there they had made love, while her heart had broken at the picture of him unearthing it again in some springtime hundreds of years ahead.

Instead, he had stayed, and it was his brother who had taken out the box they had placed there. Now it was her sister’s heart that was breaking.

Whatever comfort she offered Sunny wouldn’t be enough.

It seemed wrong that she should have everything while Sunny lost. She had Cal, and the home they loved, the life they were building. She had the child. With a soft smile, she pressed a hand to her stomach. The child who would come at summer’s end and bind them even closer together.

Sunny would have only memories, and there was nothing Libby could do about it.

She turned her head slightly and saw Jacob.

He was only a few feet away. She hadn’t heard his approach in the muffling snow. In the shadows cast by the trees she saw how much he resembled Cal. The same build, the same coloring, the same sharp facial bones. There was a measuring look in his eyes that made her wonder how long he had been standing and watching her in silence.

She didn’t approach him. Though he posed no threat to her—and she admitted that she had been foolish and overemotional ever to believe he could—he had taken her sister’s heart. And broken it.

“Cal’s inside.” Her voice was cool and clipped. She made no attempt to be friendly.

She showed her anger differently from Sunny, he mused. Sunny exploded with hers, went straight on the attack. Apparently Libby let hers bubble and brew inside. He wondered if she realized it was just as volatile.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

She had never enjoyed confrontations, but she braced for this one. “There’s nothing you can say to me that would make me influence Cal to leave with you. The choice is his, whether you believe it or not. Just as it was before.”

“I know.” He moved slowly across the snow until he stood beside her. “It isn’t something I thought I would understand or accept, but I do. Our parents will . . . It will mean a great deal to them when I tell them about you. About the child.”

“He misses them.” Her voice was thick as she battled the tide of emotion. “They should know that.”

“They will.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?” she demanded. “How could you have let her fall in love with you when you knew you were going to leave?”

His hands fisted as he plunged them into the pockets of his pea coat. “I spent two years working, inching my way here. For one reason. Only one. To find my brother and take him home.”

Her eyes smoldered at that. “You can’t have him.”

“No.” He nearly smiled. Perhaps she was more like Sunny than he had originally thought. “And I can’t have Sunny, either. I have to live with that. She isn’t the only one who fell in love. She isn’t the only one to lose.”

“But you knew what you were doing.”

Vibrating with frustration, he faced her. For the first time she saw that his eyes were haunted and miserable. “You thought Cal would leave. Did it stop you from loving him, or him from loving you?”

“No.” With a little sigh, she put a hand on his arm. “No, it didn’t.”

“She’s strong,” he said. His control had slipped a few notches when he’d heard the understanding in her voice. “She won’t allow herself to hurt for long. If I can’t come back . . .” The pain ripped through him, forcing him to take a slow, deep breath. “If I can’t come back, she’ll go on.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I have to.” He dragged an unsteady hand through his hair. With the ache rippling through him, he told her what he hadn’t been able to tell Sunny. What he hadn’t wanted to face himself. “I haven’t perfected the procedure. This time I was months off. The next time, if there is one, I may be years off. She may have started a new life. I have to accept that.”

She smiled at him. “I study people. When you make it a profession, you learn more than tradition and social mores. You learn that real love, lasting love, is very rare. It should never be simply accepted, J.T. It should be cherished.”

He gazed across the white world he was just beginning to understand. “I’ll think of her every day for the rest of my life.”

“Have you never heard the word compromise ?”

“I’m not very good at it. If I could find one, I’d learn to be good at it. I can only tell you that everything I do from the moment I get back will be geared toward finding a way to return here, within a day, within an hour, of the time I left.”

Moved, she leaned up and kissed his cheek. It surprised her when his arms came around her, held her. Without hesitating, she returned the embrace.