Time After Time (18 page)

“No, I didn’t think so. You have a lion, don’t you, Alex?”

Alex nodded slowly, her eyes still locked with those shrewd brown ones. Which way would Teddy jump? She didn’t know. “Yes. Yes, I have a lion.”

Cal wandered around the partition just then. He blinked large golden eyes at Teddy, then sat down and began rubbing an itching ear against Noah’s hip.

“I have a very old lion,” Alex said quietly. “A
very gentle and loving lion.” She felt Noah’s hand warmly rest on her shoulder and was more than grateful for his silent support. “A lion who’s never in his life hurt a living thing.”

“Where’d you get him?”

Alex didn’t hesitate. “I stole him from a circus six years ago. He’d lost all his teeth, and they were going to destroy him.”

“You’ve kept him hidden for six years?”

“Yes.” Alex looked up at Noah again, smiling because she loved him so much, her heart turning over at his instant tender smile. Then she looked back at Teddy. “When anyone got too close before, I ran. I couldn’t run this time.”

Bright eyes glanced from one to the other of them, then briefly studied the lion. “I see. Were you planning to go on hiding him?”

“No.” Alex shook her head. “A circus friend of mine faked a bill of sale for us. We’re hoping to start a children’s zoo. Old, gentle animals that kids can pet. If we can get the permits.”

Teddy watched as the lion came to sprawl nearly at her feet, and she smiled a little when the
white kitten leaped off the couch to land on a broad, patient head and began to chew on a round ear.

“He seems gentle enough. How old is he?”

“Thirty-one.”

The other woman’s face went still as she looked at Alex, sympathy stirring in her brown eyes. “Then he is … very old.”

“Yes.”

After an eternally long moment Teddy nodded as if to herself. “I have a few friends downtown,” she said briskly. “I think maybe we can get those permits for you.” Her eyes gleamed at Noah. “You may have trouble renting these lofts, but I’ll take one.”

“You’ve got it,” Noah said. “Rent free.”

“Oh, no.” Teddy chuckled softly. “That’d be considered bribing an officer—or something like that. No, I’ll pay rent, Noah. It’ll be well worth the price of admission to watch you cope with a zoo!” She laughed again. “I’ll start the wheels turning
downtown tomorrow. For now I’ll leave you two to your unpacking.” She turned for the door.

“Teddy?” Alex knew her cheeks were wet, and didn’t give a damn.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, Alex.” She smiled widely. “I’m a sucker for old lions, white kittens … and love. See you.” And she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her.

Alex found herself held tightly in Noah’s arms, laughing and crying at once. Relief and happiness were filling her until she thought she’d burst.

“You startled the hell out of me by telling her the truth,” Noah said, leading her around so that they could sit on the couch. “But I decided you knew what you were doing.”

“Did you?” Alex wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and grinned at him. “I didn’t. I just hoped Teddy would be with us rather than against us, crossed my fingers, and jumped.”

“You took quite a chance.”

Alex leaned against him with a sigh. “I know,
but somehow I just had a feeling she wouldn’t take Cal away.” With a frown she added, “And
why
do I think she should be taller every time I see her?”

“That’s odd, I keep thinking the same thing.”

For a crazy moment Alex wondered if Teddy had played a part in their past lives. A helpful part, maybe? Then she winced. It was tangled enough
now
.

“Since we have Cal’s future settled,” Noah said, smiling at her, “shall we make firm plans for our own?”

Alex decided the time had come. She wouldn’t feel comfortable in keeping her dreams from Noah, not when they had influenced her so much. “Um, Noah, there’s something I want to tell you about.”

“If it’s a bar to matrimony, I don’t want to hear about it,” he said definitely.

“No, nothing like that. At least—it certainly hasn’t changed my mind, although it might change yours.”

“Nothing could change my mind.”

Alex rose to her feet and began to wander
around the room aimlessly, trying to find words for the impossible. “Ever since we met, I’ve been having … dreams.”

“Dreams?”

He sounded startled, she thought, and her pacing became even more aimless. “Yes. Odd dreams. At first I didn’t really think much about them. Or at least I didn’t
want
to think about them. They seemed to be—were—pieces of two stories, two lives. And each story progressed very neatly and logically, with beginnings and middles … and endings.

“One story was about a Gypsy girl and a lord’s son. And the other was about a Union soldier and a Southern lady. But somehow I
knew
that
I
was the Gypsy girl and the Southern lady, and that
you
were the lord’s son and the Union soldier.”

“Alex—”

She interrupted him, hurrying on. “When I began believing that what I dreamed were actually memories of past lives, I started to worry that you and I were caught up in some strange pattern of—oh, hell—fate, for want of a better word. Because
those endings I dreamed weren’t happy ones. I lost you. The Gypsy girl was sent away, and the Union soldier rode back into the war—”

“I came back to you, Alex.”

Alex felt a shock that was oddly both hot and cold, his husky words and the meaning behind them stopping the breath in her throat and halting her restless steps. “You—?”

“I came back to you.”

She turned slowly to stare at him.

He was on his feet only a few steps away. “That soldier,” he said softly, “came back to the beautiful Southern lady, and the child that was theirs.”

She hadn’t told him about the child, Alex realized wildly. How could he have known? Unless …

“I’ve been dreaming too.”

Alex swallowed hard. “And the Gypsy girl? You sent her away.”

“No. My father sent her away. Paid her brothers gold to take her away. But I found you, Alex.”

The certainty in his voice was too strong to be questioned. And Alex didn’t want to question.
It felt too right; they were both too certain to be wrong.

She stepped toward him and held out her right hand. “Look at the lifeline,” she said softly.

He took her hand, studying for a moment, then looked at his own palm. She traced her lifeline and his with her left index finger.

“From this point—the point where we met—our lifelines match. It’s impossible, but they match.”

“Fated to share all our lives together,” he concluded, lifting shimmering silver eyes to hers.

Alex drew a shaken breath. “I’m not sure that I believe in any of this.”

“It’s probably something much simpler,” he agreed. “Like telepathy.”

She looked down at their palms. “Just lines on skin,” she observed.

“Just lines. Not, after all, much else. Lines.”

“Reincarnation … there’s no way to prove it.”

He nodded. “No way to
know
. Just faith. Belief.”

They stared at each other.

“I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. I loved you when you danced in front of a campfire,
and when you hid me from soldiers. You taught me what love meant in a clearing near a stream, and in a bedroom with an old rock fireplace. Leaving you to go back to a war was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and finding you after my father’s cruelty was finding a heaven I thought I’d lost.”

It held the sound of vows spoken from the heart, and Alex’s heart responded instantly.

“I love you. I loved you when you were a Union soldier and when I was a Gypsy girl. I loved you when you went away to war, and even when I thought you’d paid to be rid of me. I’ve been searching for you, searching for someone I couldn’t name. And when I found you this time I was so desperately afraid of losing you.”

Noah enfolded her in his arms, holding her tightly. “Marry me,” he whispered.

“Yes.” Alex slipped her arms around his neck as he lifted her and strode toward the bedroom. “Yes, my love.”

It wasn’t the same little glade, but the Gypsy girl was drawn to it because it reminded her of that other one. She sat on a fallen log and stared at the stream, memories tormenting her. Months. Months, and they were far from the place where she’d learned of love … and betrayal. The gold was long since spent, her brothers’ jeering triumph lessened by time.

Her own pain was an ache even time could not heal.

She felt more than heard someone coming, but stared at the stream blindly. No. It wasn’t he. It was never he. But she heard a soft sound and looked up despite herself, everything in her going still. This time it was he.

“They lied,” he said hoarsely, looking at her with desperate need. “They lied to you. My sweet, don’t say their lies have killed your love. Don’t say it’s too late for us!”

With a wild cry she flew to his embrace, the coldness gone forever. She listened to his broken endearments, to the sound of his heart pounding in time with hers, and her own murmurs of love were
the outpourings of a heart filled with a fierce, joyous release….

She no longer stared down the dusty, empty road, but a part of her could not help glancing from time to time. And today was a hot and sunny day, much as that day had been. On this day, though, her son played happily on a blanket spread beneath the big oak tree, his infant gurgles mingling with the sounds of birds in the branches high above him.

She sat nearby, her fingers occupied with the mending in her lap and her mind ranging free. Memories. She hoarded them within her heart. Her fingers moved automatically as she lifted her head and sent a yearning glance down the dusty road. Then her fingers stilled.

The mending fell at her feet as she rose, heart pounding. A horse was coming down the road. A single horse and rider. She walked toward the gate steadily, hope and dread clashing within her, biting her lip to hold back the cry of desperate longing. It
would be just a stranger, asking for a dipper of water or a meal or directions. Just another stranger to pass through her life briefly. So briefly.

But … dear God, he looked familiar! Straight and broad-shouldered in the saddle. No uniform, of course, but the hot sun shone down on golden hair.

Her heart stopped, then began thudding against her ribs.

It was he!

She waited, still and silent, by the gate. Stared into blue-gray eyes as he swung from the horse and stepped toward her. And when he held out his arms, she went into them with no more than a sigh.

“I love you,” he said huskily, fiercely. “I’ve nothing to offer you, but—”

“That’s enough,” she whispered, gazing up at him tenderly. “It’s more than enough.”

He framed her face in warm hands, eyes alight, and kissed her with aching gentleness. Then his eyes were drawn by the sounds of a child, and he looked back at her with incredulous hope.

Smiling, she took his hand and led him toward the blanket beneath the big oak tree. “Come and meet your son, my love.”

And he held a babe with blue-gray eyes….

Alex smiled and listened to the heart beating steadily beneath her cheek.

All stories had endings.

And some endings … were no more than beginnings.