It wouldn’t do to lose her temper with him, Sunny thought. If she wanted to find out exactly who and what he was, she would have to employ more tact. It wasn’t her strong point, but she could learn. She was as completely alone with him as it was possible to be. And, since she had no intention of packing up and leaving, she would just have to exercise some caution and some diplomacy. Particularly if he was as loony as she believed.
It was too bad that he was crazy, she thought, smiling at him. Anyone that attractive, that blatantly sexy, deserved a solid, working brain. Maybe it was only a temporary mental breakdown.
“So.” She tapped her spoon against the side of her bowl. “What do you think of Oregon so far?”
“It’s very big—and underpopulated.”
“That’s how we like it.” She let the lull drag out. “Did you fly into Portland?”
He wavered between a lie and the truth. “No, my transportation brought me a bit closer. Do you live here with Cal and your sister?”
“No. I have a place in Portland, but I’m thinking of giving it up.”
“To what?”
“Just giving it up.” She shot him a puzzled look, then shrugged. “Actually, I’m toying with the idea of going east for a while. New York.”
“To do what?”
“I haven’t decided.”
He set his spoon aside. “You have no work?”
Automatically her shoulders squared. “I’m in between jobs. I recently resigned from a managerial position in retail.” She’d been fired from her job as assistant manager of the lingerie department of a mid-level department store. “I’m considering going back to school for a law degree.”
“Law?” His eyes softened. There was something so appealing about the look that she nearly smiled at him and meant it. “My mother is in law.”
“Really? I don’t think Cal mentioned it. What kind of law does she practice?”
Because he thought it would be a bit difficult to explain his mother’s position, he asked, “What kind did you have in mind?”
“I’m leaning toward criminal law.” She started to elaborate, then stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk about herself but about him. “It’s funny, isn’t it, that my sister should be a scientist and Cal’s brother should be one? Just what does an astrophysicist do?”
“Theorizes. Experiments.”
“About stuff like interplanetary travel?” She tried not to smirk but didn’t quite succeed. “You don’t really believe all that stuff—like people flying off to Venus the way they fly to Cleveland?”
It was fortunate he was a cool hand at poker. His face remained bland as he continued to eat. “Yes.”
She laughed indulgently. “I guess you have to, but isn’t it frustrating to go into all that knowing that even if it becomes possible it won’t happen in your lifetime?”
“Time’s relative. In the early part of this century a flight to the moon was considered implausible. But it has been done.” Clumsily, he thought, but it had been done. “In the next century man goes to Mars and beyond.”
“Maybe.” She got up to take two bottles of soda from the refrigerator. “But it would be hard for me to devote my life to something I’d never see happen.” As Jacob watched in fascination, she took a small metal object out of a drawer, applied it like a lever to the top of each bottle and dislodged the caps. “I guess I like to see results, and see them now,” she admitted as she set the first bottle in front of him. “Instant gratification. Which is why I’m twenty- three and between jobs.”
The bottle was glass, Jacob mused. The same kind she had tried to strike him with the afternoon before. Lifting it, he sipped. He was pleasantly surprised by the familiar taste. He enjoyed the same soft drink at home, though it wasn’t his habit to drink it for breakfast.
“Why did you decide to study space?”
He glanced back at her. He recognized a grilling when he heard one, and he thought it would be entertaining to both humor and annoy her. “I like possibilities.”
“You must have studied a long time.”
“Long enough.” He sipped again.
“Where?”
“Where what?”
She managed to keep the pleasant smile intact. “Where did you study?”
He thought of the Kroliac Institute on Mars, the Birmington University in Houston and his brief and intense year in the L’Espace Space Laboratory in the Fordon Quadrant. “Here and there. At the moment I’m attached to a small private facility outside of Philadelphia.”
She wondered if the staff of that private facility wore white coats. “I guess you find it fascinating.”
“Only more so recently. Are you nervous?”
“Why?”
“You keep tapping your foot.”
She placed a hand on her knee to stop the movement. “Restless. I get restless if I stay in one place too long.” It was obvious, painfully so, that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him this way. “Listen, I really do have some things to . . .” Her words trailed off as she glanced out the window. She didn’t know when the snow had begun, but it was coming down in sheets. “Terrific.”
Following her gaze, Jacob studied the thick white flakes. “Looks like it means business.”
“Yeah.” She let out her breath in a sigh. Maybe he did make her nervous, but she wasn’t a monster. “And it’s not the kind of weather suitable for camping in the woods.” Fighting with her conscience, she walked to the door, back to the table, then to the window. “Look, I know you don’t have a place to stay. I saw you walk into the forest yesterday.”
“I have . . . all I need.”
“Sure, but I can’t have you go trudging into the hills in a blizzard to sleep in a tent or something. Libby would never forgive me if you died of exposure.” Thrusting her hands in her pockets, she scowled at him. “You can stay here.”
He considered the possibilities and smiled. “I’d love to.”
Chapter 3
He stayed out of her way. It seemed the best method of handling the situation for the moment. She’d stationed herself on the sofa by the fire, books heaped beside her, and was busily taking notes. A portable radio sat on the table, crackling with static and music and the occasional weather report. Absorbed in her research, Sunny ignored him.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jacob explored his new quarters. She’d given him the room next to hers—larger by a couple of meters, with a pair of paned windows facing southeast. The bed was a big, boxy affair framed in wood, with a spring-type of mattress that creaked when he sat on the edge.
There was a shelf crowded with books, novels and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were paperbacks, for the most part, with bright, eye-catching covers. He recognized one or two of the names. He flipped through them with an interest that was more scientific than literary. It was Cal, he thought, who read for pleasure, who had a talent for retaining little bits of prose and poetry. It was rare for Jacob to while away an hour of his time with fiction.
They were still using trees to make the pages of books, he remembered with a kind of dazed fascination. One side had cut them down to make room for housing and to make furniture and paper and fuel, while the other side had scurried to replant them. Never quite catching up.
It had been an odd sort of game, one of many that had led to incredible and complicated environmental problems.
Then, of course, they’d saturated the air with carbon dioxide, gleefully punching holes in the ozone, then fluttering their hands when faced with the consequences. He wondered what kind of people poisoned their own air. And water, he recalled with a shake of his head. Another game had been to throw whatever was no longer useful
