Nothing But Time (42 page)

“I appreciate it!” she grumbled
as she turned away,
taking the envelope.  Opening it, she found a British passport in Brand’s name, a birth certificate and
the
National Insurance number that he would need to have his medical treatment covered under the NHS
. 
Whomever
David knew, he was good. 

Returning to the kitchen, Kate continued to prepare the dinner she had started working on before the men’s return
.  A
s she picked up the knife to continue
quartering her limes
, Kate’s hand shook.  Dropping the knife, she buried her face in her hands and drew a deep breath trying to rid herself of the worry, the near terror that had been building inside of her
.  

That d
istress
had
evolved from
that
terrible moment when Kate
returned from the market to
a
vacant
flat
. 
In the wake of the afternoon’s uncertainty, s
he’d been
convinced
that Brand had taken advantage of her absence to leave her, to leave an unwelcome situation.  She’d imagined
him
out on the streets, cold and in pain, and had even driven around looking for him.
   The loss she felt had sent
heartache worse than any she’d ever imagined surging through her.

All her worries of the day
had seemed to come
to fruition.

The last thing she’d ever imagined was that Brand had been in David’s company all that time.
 
How could they have not thought to call? 
Men!
 
Kate thought as she grabbed up the
knife
again
and began c
rushing
garlic c
loves with the side of it
, slapping her palm fiercely down onto the blade
. 

Kate couldn’t help but wonder what the two men had talked about, if they had spoken at all.  Had Brand asked David if he might stay at his flat to avoid an uncomfortable situation with Kate? 

She hoped not.

Of course,
she was grateful that David had thought to fix what might have become a major issue in the days to come
.  Kate hadn’t even thought of what a problem the lack of a passport or birth certificate might cause. 

Aside from that, Kate knew she couldn’t live with the uncertainty any longer.  She needed to look into Brand’s eyes and know that things were going to be okay…that they were going to be okay.

“Brand?  Can we talk?” she asked into the small room but received no answer.  “I know you are having troubles coming to grips with all this but what’s done is done.  I need to know whether
you forgive me or not.”

Still silence reigned and Kate circled the peninsula of her kitchen to go to Brand.  As she
suspected
, he was fast asleep.  The events of the day and evening had clearly worn him out.  What fatigue hadn’t taken care of, his meds had.

Reaching up, Kate pushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead thinking how
much longer it was now tha
n when they first met.  He hadn’t had it cut in the months since and Kate tho
ught the wavy tousle suited the
more unstructured man he had become.  Her fingers strayed across
his broad forehead,
down
the sharp plane of his cheek
– she loved the rough scruff of his unshaven face! – to
his full lips where she stroked his bottom lip, a soft smile playing on her lips.  “What would I do without you?” she whispered.  “I thought I wanted to live my life alone, I really thought it was the best way to go.  I never realized that the presence of a single person in my life would make everything so much better.  I love you, Brandon Ryder.  I love you so incredibly much.”

Brushing a kiss across his lips, Kate rose with a sigh and went into the guest bedroom to retrieve a blanket.  Returning to Brand’s side, she slipped off his shoes and loosened the top several buttons on his shirt before covering him up.

Returning to the kitchen, she put her chopped veggies and fish into small
plastic
containers and returned them to the fridge before taking a small frozen meal out for herself.  As the timer wound down on the microwave, Kate thought about what the days to come might bring.

Dave’s calculations for their return had been pretty good ones.  They had returned on a Wednesday afternoon,
the
Wednesday afternoon two days prior to their original departure. 
Dave had impressed upon Kate the importance of allowing their other selves to carry on with their date and the events that would follow, sending them both into the past. 
Any change from their previous actions might alter that interlude into history and Kate knew she couldn’t risk losing the chance to know Brand, not matter what.

Thinking of the movie
Time Cop
with its ominous warnings that the same matter could not occupy the same space, Kate had studiously avoided Oxford all together. 
As a result,
she
had been forced to get a hotel room in London and buy some new clothes since she couldn’t return to her flat until after her other self had left for her date on Friday night.

Now it was S
aturday and she had only one full day left with Brand
.
On Monday, she would have to go back to work
and act as if nothing happened
.  While she was excited at the idea, she wasn’t sure how she could go in acting as if only a weekend stood between her and her last day there rather than nearly three months.  All that she had been working on was as lost to her as the fact that she had run out of milk three months before.

Between now and Monday, she had but o
ne day to refresh herself on the details of her project when, in truth, she would rather spend the day showing Brand the wonders of her world. 

What would he think of 2012?  Rather, what did he think?  He’d seen the hospital and a quick trip through London and Oxfor
d plus where
ver David had taken him.  Kate watched Brand sleep
,
wonder
ing about his first impressions, w
ishing they were in a place where she even thought she could ask. 

When Brand awoke, the flat was dark and the pain in his side was throbbing once again.  The urge to take another of the amazing painkillers was strong
, so strong in fact
,
that Brand knew he should not indulge himself.  He’d seen people become addicted to the effects before.  His own father had become addicted to laudanum before his death.  After watching his father’
s decline, Brand had resolved
never
to
use the drug yet
,
here he was
,
craving the relief those innocuous looking pills provided him without even knowing what they were.

Pushing himself to his feet, Brand hunched over the pain and circled the room stretching his tight muscles until he was able to stand erect.  A clock on the wall told him it was just after two in the morning but as he paced the small flat
,
he saw a light coming from under Kate’s bedchamber door.

Curious he cracked the door to find Kate propped up on the bed surrounded by reams of bound paper and fast asleep.  Walking to her side, he lifted one pile off her lap.  On the front was an amazing color photograph
showing abnormal shapes
colored in dark purple surrounded
by
lighter purples and whites.  It was a very abstract confi
guration of swirls and squiggles
that looked rather artistic
to Brand
until he read the title below the illustration,
Cryptococcal Meningitis
.  It was the disease that Kate had told him her project was working to cure.

Eyes wide with surprise, Brand flipped through the
subsequent
pages finding more pictures with a higher magnification of the bacteria.  Other
s
showed
monochromatic
photo
graph
s of what Brand read
were
crosscut details on the effects of the disease on the human brain. 
Despite reading those same words in the
Timeline
book, h
e didn’t
yet
know what an MRI was but wondered how many human skulls had been dissected with it to achieve the photos. 

With a curl of his lip, Brand set the papers aside and gathered up the others as well
moving them to the table beside the bed.  Gently he eased Kate
down
until she was lying
on her side
before finding the switch near the door to turn off the lights.  Though he felt it would be better to leave her, Brand didn’t want to return to the sofa or to the guest room Kate had assigned him.  He had been sleeping with her most nights for a month and wasn’t about to change that now.

Circling to the opposite side of the bed, Brand lifted the covers and eased himself in beside her
.  She was warm against his cool skin and squirmed a little when he pressed behind her
but with a soft sigh, she wiggled her bottom against his groin, spooning tightly back against him.  Wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her close, Brand inhaled the clean fragrance of her hair before burying his face in the crook of her neck
and
relaxing with a sigh similar to hers.

He didn’t know what had gone wrong that day and Brand found himself wishing that he had shunned the medication that forced sleep upon him so that he might have spent the evening talking to Kate, determining what had her walking on eggshells around him.  He didn’t want that polite distance between them.  Now more than ever, he needed the intimacy of her embrace, her support to see him through the transition into this strange time.

He wanted to explain to her his fascination with electrical lighting, the concept of the television and automobile.  Did she realize how easy life was in this time?  Did anyone? 
Did they appreciate the advances or were they taken for granted?  There was much to awe a man in this time but there was much that terrified as well.  So much that made him wish that he might hide away to spare himself the next revelation.

Brand
needed to explain to her his fears, needed to be honest with himself about them and he couldn’t do that when they distanced themselves like strangers.  Today there were moments when he felt afloat in an alien world.  Felt as if he didn’t belong here.  It wasn’t until this moment when he finally had Kate in his arms once more that he felt at peace. 

This was where he belonged. 
As long as there were these moments, Brand knew he could conquer whatever awaited him outside those doors.

***

Kate woke
to find
sunli
gh
t
streaming across her bed, a bed she wasn’t alone in.  Brand had come to her in the night and now she lay
curled against the man she loved.  His arm was heavy across her midsection but his hand was up under her
T
-shirt cupping and gently massaging her breast.  He nuzzled the side of her neck, pressing hot kisses down the length.  With a sleepy moan, Kate arched back against his warm body, her bottom grinding against him.

“Mmmm,” she sighed, raising an arm to caress his hair before turning her head to smile up at him. 
There were no recriminations there, no scorn.  None of the detachment she
feared
th
e day before.  Just warmth and
affection. Her heart leap
ed
.   If this w
as a dream, she didn’t want to
wake
up
.  
“Good morning.”

“Good morning
.
”
H
e returned her smile before bending his head to kiss her tenderly.  As was his habit, Brand smoothed her hair back from her temples and brushed his lips across hers once more in a whisper of a kiss.  “I’d like to make love
to
you, Kate.”

“I’d like that to
o
,” she agreed turning on to her other side to face him.  With several days
’
growth, his beard was a dark shadow against Brand’s sharp cheeks softening his normally austere appearance
.  Skimming her hand over his jaw, Kate savored the prickly sensation.  He looked so sexy like this, unshaven and rumpled.  Masculine.  Sensual.   Inviting.

She traced her hand over his broad shoulder and across his chest. 
Tilting her head
, she
offered her lips to his kiss.  He lips captured hers but while the kiss was heartfelt and filled with longing, it was not a kiss of passion and Kate
felt that she
knew why.  He was still unhappy with her
,
though perhaps not unhappy enough to avoid her bed
. 
They had i
ssues
that
needed to be resolved before they could resume intimacies.  “We can’t yet,” she whispered. 

He let her feel the strength of his arousal, the power of his body as he held her
pressed against him with one steely arm
.  The doctor had told him to wait a week or two before resuming relations such as this but Brand felt fully capable now.
“I am willing to take a few risks for you,” he said huskily.

“Are you still?” Kate
asked.

“There is little I wouldn’t risk to be with you,” he told her as he nuzzled her neck once more.

Kate frowned.  “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

Brand drew back with a frown.  “What?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“About how long the doctor said I must refrain from maki
ng love to you,” Brand told her.  H
er widening eyes
expressed
her surprise.  “Why?  What were you talking about?”

“I was thinking… I thought
.”  Kate closed her eyes and shook her head.  “I thought you were still angry with me.”

“
I told you yesterday I was not,” he reminded
her,
smooth
ing her hair back once again
.

Kate ran through their conversation in her mind.  True, he had said that but gi
ven their lack of communication
following that, she hadn’t been sure.  “When you said you wanted to go slowly then, you did mean the car?”

“What else might I have meant?”

Kate just shook her head.  She felt like such an idiot. 

Sensing her distress, Brand hugged her against him.  “I apologize for falling asleep last night before we could speak.  Those blasted medications
knock me out
.  I
was
angry with you
, you are right in that
.  I am a man used to making my own choices and I felt that you were precipitous in bringing me here.  You should have explained it all.
  You should have asked my wishes.
”  Brand pressed her head against his chest, sensing that she was about to defend herself once more.  “No, allow me to finish.  I understand your reasons even if I do not approve. 
However,
as you said, you did what you felt was right and it is done.  Given that my preference to return home as been denied out of hand, I know I must find my way in your world.  Darling Kate, you know me so well you can divine my mood the moment you walk through the door, can you not
intuit
how difficult this is for me now?”

Kate looked up into Brand’s blue eyes, seeing there everything he didn’t want to say.  His fear, his worries.  Since their return and argument, she’d been so worried about how he felt toward her that she hadn’t given much thought to how he felt about the change
.  All she knew was that he was a
ngry.  All she had considered were
his impressions.  She hadn’t considered how a man from another time might view the advanced technology of her time.

Brand was out of his element.  For a man who had dominated in his world, who had commanded and ruled, this time must make him feel as if he had no control whatsoever.  “I’m sorry, Brand.  I’ve told you many times that I was raised to think that the world revolved around me.  I didn’t see
how
all of this would affect you.”

“You are not that bad,” he said gently as he rolled on to his back, pulling her along until her head rested on his shoulder.  “You are a very caring woman.  In your defense, I did not grant you the truth of the matter.  I vented my anger upon you until it was all you might see.”

“I can help, Brand,” she assured him.  “Once you learn how to use a few simple tools, it’ll be fine.  I promise.”

Brand wasn’t so sure though he appreciated her sentiment. 
The views of this new time he’d been exposed to th
us far had been through windows;
the hospital’s and vehicles such as hers and David Fergusson’s.  Other than the hospital staff and Fergusson’s interesting associate, he had met no one. 
The news program
s on the television that he
watched and the
publications
he
read in the hospital spoke of organizations, people and buildings he’d never heard of.  Others mentioned unfamiliar countries, sporting events and innovations
about which
he would have to educate himself.  He might well have been a child for all the tutoring he would require and he hated that feeling of helplessness and inadequacy such ignorance left him with.

No, it went beyond a few simple tools.  He truly might as well
have
descended into the pages of one of his books in coming here but, unlike his novels, this story was unwritten and he
was
but a
character with an unwritten future
.

Shaking off the trepidation that was descending over him once more, Brand determined to change the subject
.  In
doing
so,
he
recalled something Fergusson had said to him the night before
.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were engaged to marry Dr. Fergusson?” Brand asked.

Content as she had been in the circle of Brand’s arms, Kate was so flabbergasted, not only by the question
but also
by the diversity of Brand’s thoughts in comparison to her own, that for a moment she couldn’t think of a response.  “Is that what he told you?  We were never engaged
. 
David just thought we should be.  In truth, we were only on our first date when we ended up
be
ing sent back to your time.  He’s so full of bullshit, Brand.  You shouldn’t listen to anything that he says.”

“Should I not listen to him when he tells me that you love me then?” he asked softly and Kate jerked her head up to meet his vivid gaze.