Time After Time (2 page)

The next few minutes were strange, to say the least. Locating a wall by nearly running headlong into it, he felt along it until he found a door. Opening the door was an instinctive reaction—and so was hastily shutting it when a deep and eerily menacing growl issued from within.

“What in heaven’s name—?”

“That’s just Caliban. You said I could have a pet,” she reminded him anxiously. “He’s very well-trained.”

Noah decided not to ask exactly what kind of pet Caliban was; judging by the sound of his growl, he was a big one. Making another guess as to the location of his tenant, he turned and tentatively started back across the room. “It would be much simpler,” he said, “if we just went out and got flashlights and oil lamps.”

“Well, I hate to be a bother,” she told him, “but
you’ll
have to do that. I’m not dressed to go anywhere. At least I don’t think I am. Won’t the power come back on?”

“If lightning hit a transformer or something,” he replied, “and work crews are out. But if it’s just this building, who knows when we’ll have power?”

“I called the power company; they said it was the storm.”

“Did they estimate when service might be restored?”

“Apparently they didn’t dare. I called your service
again to let you know what they said, but you’d already checked in for the last time. I really didn’t think there was anything you could do, but …” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then resumed rather stolidly. “But I’ve never been totally alone in a strange city before—with no lights—and I got a little nervous.”

Instantly he said, “I don’t blame you. A strange apartment is bad enough, but in the dark? My heart’s still pounding from running into your bear.”

She giggled, and since the voice sounded very near, Noah reached out an experimental hand. “Is that—”

“Yes, that’s me,” she said, startled and slightly breathless.

He swiftly drew back his hand. “Um … sorry.” She had a little-girl voice, he reflected, but there was nothing childish about what his hand had encountered.

Alex cleared her throat. “Blind man’s bluff has its pitfalls. Look, I’m near the couch. I’ll back up and move sideways, and if you take a step forward, I think we can both sit down.”

Gingerly they managed the feat.

“I really should go out and find some kind of light,” he said, “but, quite frankly, I’m not looking forward to making my way back to the door.”

“That’s why I stayed in one place,” she confided. “Since the loft is basically one huge room, with only a bedroom and bath separate from it, the movers pretty much just dumped everything and left. I think Caliban was making them nervous.”

Something about that name bothered Noah, but he couldn’t pin it down; he only knew that every mention of the name twanged a chord of uneasy memory. “He isn’t vicious, is he?”

“Oh, no. He’s just big. And he looks a bit … um … unusual.” Before Noah could comment, she was going on cheerfully, “I must say, I’ve never before met a client under circumstances like these. Or a landlord, for that matter. Are you going to be a good landlord?”

Both taken aback and amused by the question, he answered gravely. “I certainly hope so. But I’m
new at it, so you’ll have to bear with me—no pun intended.”

She giggled, a curiously enchanting, gleeful sound, and Noah felt his interest in her growing. She
couldn’t
be as young as she sounded, although if his encounter with womanly curves was anything to go by, she was certainly much shorter than the average woman. He decided that there was something vastly intriguing about this meeting. It was, he knew, because of the total darkness; with sight no help to him, he found himself using other senses more intensely than he could ever remember doing before.

His ears found the sound of her voice pleasant and musical, the very small and low-pitched timbre of it oddly fascinating. She smelled of herbal soap, reminding him of a dark-green forest after a spring shower. And though they were not touching, he could feel the warmth of her beside him on the couch. Questions filled his mind, and in the enigmatic darkness those questions were a tantalizing mystery.

Upon hearing the name Stephanie Alexandra
Cortney Bennet, Noah had fleetingly visualized a tall and queenly woman, chic, sophisticated, and with a strong sense of style. Alex was a freelance decorator, which meant either that she was very successful, hadn’t been at it very long, or else was taking a tremendous gamble on her own abilities. He knew of two apartment buildings she’d done in the East—the work he’d seen and been impressed by—and both clients had spoken well of her.

Now that he thought about it, both those clients had also seemed a bit bemused, and the remarks, identical from both men, now rose in his memory.
“She’s a
very
good decorator.”
Not an unexpected remark from a satisfied customer, to be sure, Noah thought. But … somehow peculiar.

Unconsciously he began listening even more intently with every sense, both curiosity and a pleasurable feeling of mystery prodding him. And something else, some odd, compelling sense of … certainty? “Did you just get into town today?” he asked, wanting to hear more of her oddly fascinating little voice.

“Yes, this morning. It was a long drive.”

“You drove?” he exclaimed. “Across the country?”

“The pioneers blazed a trail,” she reminded him, amused. “I just followed it.”

“But you didn’t drive alone?”

“Except for Caliban. It was fun, really. I got to see a lot of the country, and whenever I needed to rest, I just pulled over somewhere and slept in the van.”

In spite of darkness, reality was taking an even sharper turn away from his imaginings: She was obviously not the chic first-class traveler he’d expected.

“So you just literally pulled up roots and came out here? What about your family?”

“Don’t have one. My parents were killed when I was six, and there weren’t any close relatives. I was raised in a foster home.”

“That’s tough,” he said, his ready sympathy stirred.

“Oh, no, not at all.” Alex was cheerful. “They were good people. I left about ten years ago, just
after I turned sixteen. I didn’t run
away
from there as much as I ran to something else.”

“What did you run to?” he asked, curious.

“The circus.”

“What?”

She chuckled. “I went to see the circus about a year before I left, and it kind of, well, obsessed me. So I decided to run away and join the circus.”

“And that’s what you did?”

“Certainly. It was a plan.”

“A plan?”

“I like to plan things. So I waited until another circus passed through town, and when they left, I left with them.”

“No one tried to send you back?”

“I lied about my age. Besides, I was good with animals and they needed a trainer. It wasn’t a very big circus,” she added ruefully.

“So you became their animal trainer.”

“That’s right. I trained whatever they asked me to train. Primates, elephants, dogs, horses, cats.”

“Cats?”

“The big cats.”

“Don’t tell me you put your head in a lion’s mouth?”

“You’d be surprised,” she murmured.

Noah was more than a little incredulous. “How on earth did an animal trainer wind up being an interior decorator?”

“Growth.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Growth. I believe that people have to change constantly in order to grow as human beings. I left the circus after about four years because it was time for me to change, to do something else.”

“And what did you do?” he asked, fascinated.

“Well, several things. I left the circus in Richmond and ran into a childhood friend; she had a business and asked me to join her, so I did. I got my high school diploma and took some college courses while I was there. When she decided to move her business—it was an arts and crafts place—I just stayed on in Richmond. After that I did different things. I worked in a bank, and a realty company, and a museum. Then I took courses in decorating, and decided to try that for a while.”

The thumbnail sketch told him more, probably, than she’d intended. It told him she was versatile, strong-minded, and very self-reliant. She had spent ten years settled in foster care, then four years traveling the Gypsy circuit of circus performers before settling again in the East.

Though he couldn’t help but believe that her life as a child had been a bland one, she had more than made up for that during the past few years. And he had an odd but strong feeling that if she had gone into detail, he would have found even more fascinating enigmas.

At that moment Noah’s strongest desire was for a single match. Though lightning had flashed intermittently, the high glazed windows of the loft permitted little light to penetrate—and none at all long enough for them even to glimpse each other.

And he very badly wanted to see her.

“My kingdom for a match,” he muttered, unaware of speaking aloud.

Alex clearly sensed nothing personal in the remark. “It is dark, isn’t it? I’ve never seen dark like
this before. Why on earth did you leave the windows so high?”

“I didn’t want to change the basic structure of the building,” he answered automatically. “Will it present problems for decorating?”

“I doubt it: lofts look better without drapes anyway. But if you don’t have the power company put a couple of streetlights nearby, your other tenants might complain.”

Amused at the critical advice, he murmured, “The power company’s coming out next week: there’ll be two utility lights out front and one in back. I’ll have floodlights around the pool too.”

“There’s a pool?” she asked eagerly.

“Just finished. It isn’t huge, but since this building is miles away from a health club, I thought a pool would be pleasant and convenient.”

“And there’s quite a bit of cleared land around this building, isn’t there?” Alex sounded thoughtful.

“A couple of acres, and fenced. It seemed like a good investment: I can always have more buildings constructed later if I decide to go that way.
Apartments and lofts are at a real premium around here.”

“So this is an investment for you?”

“More or less.”

“You mentioned in your letter that you’re a photographer, and that part of your loft will be a studio. Have you decided whether or not I’m to decorate your loft as well as the others?”

“After seeing how bare everything is—definitely. If it suits you, we’ll take care of our lofts first, then you can work on the other three.”

“Fine.”

While the conversation had progressed casually, a part of Noah’s mind had been idly considering why he had fumbled his way across a dark room just to be near her. He remembered reading of various city-wide blackouts during which people had tended to stick together and form quick friendships—most of which had instantly dissolved when the lights came back on. Was that it? A very human tendency to find companionship in order to ward off the inherent danger of darkness? Rather the way cavemen must have huddled together
around a fire with deadly wilderness at their backs …

There was something about total darkness that stripped away the caution most people felt upon encountering strangers. Unable to see, there was no need to guard expressions or to wonder worriedly if dinner had left a stain on an otherwise clean shirt. There was only darkness that seemed to intensify each sound, each shift in movement.

Noah wondered if his own fascination would dissolve when the lights came back on, wondered if Alex Bennet would be nearly as interesting when he could see her.

And then his questions were answered.

W
HEN HIS EYES
had stopped squinting from the sudden light, Noah found that Alex had recovered her own vision with the quickness of a cat. She was looking at him, wide-eyed, and her obvious surprise gave him a few moments to try to cope with his own.

For an instant he felt a hazy yet jarring sense of déjà vu. Another face flashed across his mind. But the memory fled before he could know anything except that it was not this face. The eyes were the
same, though, the enchanting green eyes. Or perhaps the soul behind them …

A violent mental shove sent the unnerving idea spinning away, and Noah forced himself to think only of this face and this woman. It was not, in the end, very hard to do.

Stephanie Alexandra Cortney Bennet was a woman tiny enough to match her voice; she might have been five feet tall on her very best day and wearing three-inch heels. She had on a white robe that looked more like a scanty beach coverup, the lapels barely covering curves that were startlingly generous for so petite a woman, the hem only just reaching the middle of her thighs. She was tanned a golden brown over every inch of exposed flesh.

And she possessed the kind of delicate, fragile beauty that would always turn heads and stop conversations in mid-sentence. Blond curls, thick and with the texture of spun silk, tumbled to her shoulders, framing a face that was right out of a dream. It was an oval face, golden and flawless. Delicate brows winged above large, expressive eyes of such a clear green that Noah half-expected
to see a siren beckon to him from their depths; dark lashes tangled in a long, curling thicket that was a sooty frame for the green. Her nose was finely etched and straight, her mouth gently curved with humor and vulnerability.

Noah caught himself leaning instinctively toward her, and felt a jarring shock. There
were
sirens in her eyes, he thought dimly, innocent sirens beckoning with guileless smiles and the timeless grace of ancient seas. Then she spoke, and although the sirens continued to exist in green depths, now they laughed like forest sprites….

“I thought you’d be short, fat, and balding!”

“Thanks,” he shot back, conscious of the huskiness in his own voice.

“Sorry, Noah, but I was going by past experience; all the photographers I’ve known have looked like that.”

Trying to distract himself from the sirens, Noah tore his gaze away to look around the room, and he succeeded very well when he saw Fluffy. “Good Lord!”

Incredibly, the stuffed bear was of the polar variety,
standing very tall and wearing a fierce grimace of bearlike rage. Noah marveled fleetingly that the stark white had been so invisible in the darkness, realizing that the room had been even darker than he’d thought. His gaze flitted over the confusion of boxes, crates, and furniture, absently noting that the “boulder” he’d barked his shin on was in actuality a large crate that lay open and empty except for a pile of clean straw.