Time After Time (11 page)

Noah didn’t dare come in.

Pillows were flying across the room and pelting the wall near a stuffed and impervious polar bear, their quiet thumps going unheard amid the other sounds filling the loft. And it was those other sounds rather than the flying pillows that held Noah’s attention.

Alex had not exaggerated her temper tantrums. Her tiny voice could never be roused to a shriek, he thought, but it was truly amazing how it had achieved the tone and general level of sound more commonly found among enraged dock workers. And she had borrowed the dock workers’ vocabulary, along with a judicious sprinkling of furious truckers’ swearing, and a wonderfully colorful mixture of curses most probably originating among sailors long at sea.

Then, quite abruptly, everything ceased. Alex shook her hair away from her face, took a deep breath, and gave Noah a very calm look. And her voice was utterly normal, unthreateningly tiny and sweet, when she said, “Want to help me pick up the pillows?”

“Is it safe?”

She chuckled softly, looking more relaxed than she’d been in days. “Of course. I wasn’t mad at you.” Crossing to begin to gather the pillows, she added thoughtfully, “I needed that.”

Noah took a deep breath of his own, shut the door behind him, and came into the loft. “I apologize,” he said. “I thought you were exaggerating.”

“The tantrums?” Alex thrust a couple of pillows into his arms. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that.”

“I see you didn’t.”

Alex grinned faintly. “You look very wary.”

“I’m just wondering,” he said, “what set you off.”

“No one thing. Just a general mad.”

“Nothing to do with me?”

“I wouldn’t say that. You might say I got mad partly because of you, but not
because
of you.”

Noah carried the pillows to the couch, then turned to her with a frown. “Want to run that by me again?”

She dumped an armful of pillows beside his pile. “Well, you were part of why I was mad, but it wasn’t anything you’d done.”

“Was it something I didn’t do?”

“No.”

He stared at her. “Alex, at the risk of enraging you again—
why were you mad?”

Alex wasn’t about to confess her jumbled emotions. She settled for a relatively simple definition. “Fate. I was mad at fate.”

“Why?”

She sat down among the pillows and gazed up at him. Well, she thought, why not? He probably knew exactly how she felt about him anyway. Mournfully, she said, “Fate has not been kind. Started out kind, mind you. Here I am in a new city, with a new life and a fairly new career. Then I met you, and that certainly looked like it was going to be a good thing.”

“It didn’t turn out that way?” he asked uneasily, sitting down on the coffee table to face her.

“That,” she told him, “is where fate started to twist on me. It threw an animal control officer into the pot, along with assorted workmen just to keep things nicely crowded and confusing, and then other peculiar—things.” She wasn’t about to confess to insane dreams and speculations.

“What other things?”

“Just things. The point is,” she added hastily, “that it all just got to be too much. And I got mad.”

Noah was thoughtful, obviously trying to work his way through her explanation. Then, very carefully, he said, “Do I understand you to mean that you got mad because fate sort of dumped a group of quite unnecessary people between you and me?”

“How clearly you translate,” she murmured. “Yes, that was the crux of the tantrum.”

Gravely he said, “All you had to say was ‘Noah, take me away from all this.’”

Alex didn’t want to speculate on the similarity between his advice and the wistful thoughts she’d been harboring all week. Leaning forward to prop
her elbows on her knees, she said, “Noah, take me away from all this.”

“I’d love to,” he said promptly.

She leaned back and gestured with a thumb toward their furry friends. “Them too?”

Noah sighed, “They are a problem, aren’t they?”

“They certainly are. It’s not easy—I speak from experience—to travel anywhere at all with a full-grown lion in tow. There is also the matter of the workmen; you and I are both needed until the work is completed. And just to add a bit of icing to the cake, if we did manage to sneak away somewhere, there would undoubtedly be suspicion in certain quarters.”

“Teddy.”

“The very same.” Alex felt depression creeping over her again.

Noah was frowning slightly. “We could slip out at night,” he said slowly. “Park your van at the door and get Cal into it unseen.”

“And where would we go? Besides, the workmen—”

“Never mind the workmen.” Noah’s blue-gray eyes were bright. “Tell me, sprite, if neither of us was needed here, would you really want to go away with me for a while?”

Alex wavered for only an instant, thinking of two other loves she’d lost. Then she nodded steadily. “If we weren’t needed. And if Cal was protected.”

“He’ll go with us,” Noah said calmly.

“Go? Go where?”

“Away.” Noah leaned forward. “Trust me?”

“Yes.” It was an instinctive response.

His eyes were even brighter. “I’m glad.”

“Yes, but, Noah—the workmen. Teddy.”

“I’ve got a feeling we’ll have to face Teddy sooner or later; why not postpone the inevitable and give ourselves time to think? As for the workmen, there’s nothing easier—I’ll just have them suspend the work until we return.”

Alex blinked. “Return from where? How many places can you go for a visit
and
hide a lion?”

“I know of one place at least.”

“Where? Noah—”

“I want it to be a surprise,” he interrupted, but
in a soothing tone of voice. “Just keep trusting me, okay? I’ll talk to the men when they get here. You pack enough things for a week or two, and then we’ll draw up a list of groceries for ourselves and the pets.”

“Groceries?”

“Can’t take a lion into a restaurant.”

“True.”

“Besides, there aren’t any restaurants.”

“There aren’t any—”

“Get busy, sprite,” he said cheerfully, rising to his feet as a clatter out in the hall announced the expected arrival of the workmen.

Alex sat there for a long moment, gazing after him. She was relieved at the thought of getting away for a while, with Cal out of harm’s way at least temporarily. And she was torn between excitement and wariness at the thought of days of uninterrupted time with Noah.

She pushed the memory of dreams—or dreams of memory—aside, and let excitement win the tug-of-war.

“Hello.”

Alex looked up from pulling a large suitcase through the door of her loft, and gave silent thanks that Cat was shut up in the bedroom. “Hi, Teddy.”

“Kick me if I’m being nosy,” the redhead said dryly, “but did Noah throw you out?”

Working on the principle that it was better to get over difficult fences as quickly and easily as possible, Alex aimed directly for this one. “Oh, no,” she said happily. “As a matter of fact, he’s so pleased with my work that he’s giving me a little vacation. Isn’t that nice?”

“Very. Going anyplace special?”

Alex said a silent good-bye to what was left of her virtuous reputation. “He hasn’t told me yet. A surprise, he says.”

“Oh, you’re both going?”

“Uh-huh. For a week or so.”

“Is the work on the building finished, then?” Teddy asked casually.

“Not quite. The workmen will finish it up when we get back.”

There was a faint gleam of laughter in Teddy’s brown eyes. “I see. And you’re just the hired help?”

Alex managed to get all the dignity she could into a level stare at the other woman. “I started out that way,” she said.

Teddy began to laugh. “Please don’t be offended, Alex—I think it’s great. You two seem to belong together.”

Sighing, Alex said, “We’re in the process of working that out at the moment.”

“Hence the vacation?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, good luck to you both.”

“Thanks.”

Teddy started to turn back toward the door, then paused. “Oh—Alex, d’you think Noah would mind if I hung around and kept an eye on the place? I still haven’t found my lion.”

Alex made a mental note to remove every last
trace
of Cal’s presence in the building. “I doubt it, but you’ll have to ask him.”

“Ask who what?” Noah asked as he came down the last few steps to Alex’s side.

Teddy smiled at him. “Ask you if you’d mind me hanging around and keeping an eye on the place while you two are gone.”

“Not at all,” Noah said promptly.

“Thanks. Well, have fun, you two. I’ll probably see you when you get back.”

“’Bye, Teddy.” Alex listened to Noah echo her good-bye, then she sank down on her suitcase. “D’you know what really irritates me, what makes me absolutely furious?” she asked him.

Noah studied her for a moment before deciding that there wouldn’t be an explosion. “What?”

“I like her. I mean, I really like her.”

He grinned a little. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like feeling friendly toward an IRS agent.”

“Scary,” she agreed, deadpan.

Noah looked down his nose at her. “Are you going to sit on that suitcase all day, sprite, or shall I take it out to the van?”

Alex got up. “Take it, by all means. By the way, when are we getting the groceries?”

“On the way.”

“On the way
where?”

He picked up the valise and started for the door. “Don’t spoil my surprise,” he told her over his shoulder.

Alex decided to give it up. She went back into the loft and began boxing up the baby food and cat food she’d stockpiled, knowing it would be easier to take what she had and just buy some extra when they got groceries. Besides, she thought, who knew where “on the way” might turn out to be? From the mysterious way Noah talked, it was the back of beyond at the very least—and possibly Mars.

Were there toothless lions or hungry kittens on Mars? Probably not, she decided, choking back a laugh. Or babies either, most likely. Which meant no baby food. She reminded herself to take along her blender in case Cal was forced to eat meals prepared from scratch. She heard Noah come into the loft, and turned to frown at him.

“Is there electricity on Mars?”

Noah took the question in stride. “Last I heard,
there weren’t even little green men. Science disproved them. Why?”

Alex sat down on a box and started laughing. “Doesn’t anything shake you?” she asked him finally.

“If you mean did I consider your question strange,” he said affably, “the answer is yes. I trust you mean to explain it.”

“I was equating this mysterious place you’re taking me to with Mars,” she explained.

“Ah. Now the question makes sense. Yes, there is electricity there, but it’s not the most dependable since it originates with an antique generator that only works when it wants to. Do we need electricity?”

“For my blender. In case we run out of baby food for Cal.”

Noah leaned against the low partition and stared at her. “If we run out,” he told her, “we can always get more. We can trade a few baubles to the savages.”

“Very funny. You won’t tell me where we’re going, after all.”

“You told me yourself that the pioneers blazed a trail across this country, and I’d guess there are a few side trails as well; I don’t think we’ll get so far from civilization that we’ll fall off the edge of the world.”

“And get eaten by dragons—I know, I know.”

Noah was half-hiding a grin. “Well, you have to admit the thought’s a bit on the absurd side.”

“For all I know,” she said with dignity, “I’m being kidnapped into white slavery. And along those lines, I’d like to remind you that my lion would protect me with every instinct his toothless self can lay claim to. I would also like to inform you that lion-taming is not the
only
thing I learned how to do in the circus.”

“Knife-throwing?” he queried with a look of mock uneasiness.

“Yes.” She held up a finger in warning. “And my best friend was a Gypsy, so I can curse as well.”

“You certainly can,” he agreed, remembering the scene earlier that morning and choking back a laugh.

“That’s not what I meant,” she told him, reading his expression accurately.

“I meant to ask you where you learned some of those words,” he said, persistent.

“Will you help me pack these?” she asked with a gesture toward the cans and jars lined up on the counter.

“If you’ll answer my question.”

Alex sighed. “I told you that the circus wasn’t exactly Ringling Brothers; most of the people were a bit—rough. They’d been everywhere, and rarely did they go first class. After four years I picked up quite a few very impolite words. Satisfied?”

Noah began helping her pack the cans and jars. He was smiling, but he sent her a thoughtful look. “If these people were so rough—and I’ll certainly take your word for that—then how did you survive four years with them? They … didn’t hurt you or anything, did they?”

“No, they didn’t hurt me.” Alex smiled at him. “Even the worst of circus people have certain codes. I was one of them, so I was respected. Besides, my tough act didn’t fool anybody; they knew
I was a kid. Instead of taking advantage of that, several of them taught me how to take care of myself.”