“I’m upset because it was a hell of a lot more than sex.” And he was a coward, he realized, because he couldn’t tell her that what they had now would end before either of them was ready. “I don’t know how to handle it.”
She was silent for a moment. He looked so angry—with himself. And as confused as she was by what had grown—no, by what had exploded into life—between them. “How about one day at a time?”
He shifted his gaze to hers. He wanted to believe it could be that simple. Needed to. “And what happens when I leave?”
The ice had definitely melted, because she felt the first slash in her heart. “Then we’ll deal with it.” She chose her words carefully. “Jacob, I don’t think either of us wanted to get involved. But it happened. I wouldn’t want to take it back.”
“Be sure.”
She lifted a hand to his cheek. “I am.” Afraid she would say too much too soon, she bundled back under the covers. “Now that that’s settled, it’s your turn to make breakfast. You can yell up the stairs when it’s ready.”
He said nothing. The thought of what might tumble from his heart to his lips unnerved him. If it was a choice between saying too much and saying too little, he had to choose the latter. He rose, tugged on what clothes came to hand, and left her.
Alone, she turned her face into the pillow. It smelled of him. Letting out a long, weary sigh, she willed her body to relax. She had lied. Rejections wounded her deeply, left her miserable and aching and full of self-loathing. A rejection from him would hurt so much more than the loss of a job.
Rubbing her cheek on the pillowcase, she watched the slant of sunlight. What would she do if he ended it? She would recover. She needed to believe that. But she knew that if he turned away from her, recovery would take a lifetime.
So she couldn’t let him turn away.
It was important not to push. Sunny was very aware that she demanded too much from the people close to her. Too much love, too much attention, too much patience, too much faith. This time it would be different. She would be patient. She would have faith.
It would be easier, she knew, because he was as unsteady as she. Who wouldn’t be, with the velocity and force with which they had come together? If they could progress so far in such a short time, how much further could they go in the weeks ahead?
All they needed was a little time, to get to know each other better, to work on those rough edges. Forget the rough edges, she thought, gazing at the ceiling. Those would take a couple of lifetimes, at least. In any case, she rather liked them.
But time . . . she was certain she had that right. Time was what they needed to get used to what had happened, to accept that it was going to keep right on happening.
She smiled at that, her confidence building again. And if that didn’t work she’d browbeat him into it. She knew exactly what she wanted. And that was a first. She wanted Jacob T. Hornblower. If, after he had seen and spoken with Cal, he packed his pitiful little bag and headed back east, she would just go after him.
What was a few thousand miles between friends? Or lovers.
Oh, no, he wasn’t going to shake her off without a fight. And fighting was what she did best. If she wanted him—and she was certain she did—then he didn’t have a chance. She had as much right to call things off as he did, and she was far from ready. Maybe, if he was lucky, she’d let him off the hook in fifty or sixty years. In the meantime, he was just going to have to deal with it, and with her.
“Sunny! This stuff is in the bowls, and I can’t find the damn coffee.”
She grinned. Ah, the sweet sound of her lover’s voice carrying on the morning air. Like music, like the trilling of birds—
“I said, I can’t find the damn coffee.”
Like the roar of a wounded mule.
Madly in love, she tossed the heap of blankets aside.
“It’s in the cupboard over the stove, dummy. I’ll be right down.”
Chapter 8
Another week of quiet, serenity and nature in the rough would drive Sunny mad. She’d already accepted that. Even love wasn’t enough of a buffer against hour after hour of solitude, punctuated only by the occasional call of a hardy bird and the monotonous drip, drip, drip of snow melting from the roof.
For variety she could always listen to the wind blow through the trees. When she had stooped that low she realized that she would gladly trade all of her worldly possessions for the good grinding noise of rush-hour traffic in any major city.
A girl might be born in the woods, she thought, but that didn’t mean you could keep her there.
Jacob was certainly a distraction, an exciting one. But as the days passed it became clear that being snowbound in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere was no more his definition of a good time than it was hers. The fact that she found that a relief didn’t ease the boredom.
They managed to occupy their time. Arguing, in bed and out. Two restless personalities stuck in the same space were bound to strike sparks. But their minds were as restless as their bodies and needed stimulation.
Sunny compensated by hibernating. Her reasoning was, she couldn’t be bored if she was asleep. So she developed the habit of taking long naps at odd hours. When he was certain she was asleep, Jacob would slip out, taking advantage of the bonus he’d found in the shed. Cal’s aircycle. With that he would make a quick trip to his ship and input new data into the main computer.
He told himself that he wasn’t deceiving her, he was simply performing part of the task he had come to her time to accomplish. And if it was deceit, it couldn’t be helped. He’d nearly convinced himself that what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least for the time being.
Though he was as restless as she, he found himself storing up memories, images, moments. The way she looked when she woke—sleepy-eyed and irritable as a child. The way she’d laughed, the sun shining on her hair, when they’d built a house of snow under the pine trees. The way she felt, passion humming under her skin, when they made love in front of the fire.
He would need them. Those memories, those remembrances of each conversation or spat. Each time he returned to the ship he was reminded of just how much he would need them. He told himself he was only preparing to go on with his life. And so was she.
She had written inquiries to the handful of universities she’d selected. But the weather had so far prevented her from venturing out as far as Medford to mail them. She had read, lost to Jacob at poker, even dragged out her sketchbook in desperation. When she tired of drawing the view of snow and pine trees from the windows, she sketched the interior of the cabin. Bored, she resorted to drawing caricatures.
Jacob read incessantly, and he’d taken to scribbling in a spiral notebook he’d dug out of some drawer. When Sunny asked him if he was preparing for an experiment, he made noncommittal noises. When she pressed him, he simply pulled her into his lap and made her forget to ask questions.
They lost power twice, and they made love as frequently as they argued. Which was often.
Sunny was certain, when she caught herself making the bed for lack of anything better to occupy her time, that if they didn’t
Leaving the bed half-made, she sprinted to the top of the stairs. “J.T.”
He was currently trying to keep himself sane by building a city of cards. “What?”
“Let’s drive to Portland.”
Jacob’s attention was fixed on a particularly intricate arrangement. He thought the structure was beginning to resemble the skyline on Omega II.
“J.T.”
“Yeah.” With fingers that were rock-steady, he added another card.
“I guess it’s too late,” Sunny murmured, and sat down to the west of the city. “He’s already gone around the
