Time After Time (9 page)

She looked up just as they turned back to the building, and saw Noah silhouetted by the lamps behind him as he stood at his balcony doors. It was dawn, and she was sure he could see them. She lifted a hand and watched him acknowledge
the gesture with a wave, then she headed for her loft.

Back inside, she fed Cal and then took a long, hot shower, trying to shake off the last of the night’s peculiar feelings. But they wouldn’t go away. She stood before the vanity in her bathroom and stared at the fogged image of herself, restless.

Restlessness had always meant it was time to change. To move on, to try a different job or cut her hair or move the furniture. Now, for the first time, Alex wondered if she had gotten her own motivation wrong all these years. Was it change her restlessness had urged, or had she been searching for something she hadn’t been able to name?

For ten years she’d been either literally or figuratively on the move. Ever since a visit to a circus had tugged at the mind and heart of a sixteen-year-old, she had moved from place to place, from one job to another. Contentment for a while, then restlessness and change.

Today she was restless, but she didn’t want to move on. This, she thought, was a different kind of uneasiness. Not discontent, but rather the tense
hesitation of someone about to make an important decision. A part of her insisted the decision was made, but Alex was afraid to put it into words. She was afraid because she had never in her life reached out to anyone else. She’d been a temperamental orphan who had refused to allow herself to be comforted after a scraped knee or bruised heart; she’d grown into a woman who was wary of reaching for someone who might not be there.

She wasn’t accustomed to casual touches, to hugs or kisses or arms holding her in the night.

Alex watched the mirror fog up even more, and realized her own tears were blurring her vision. Swearing softly, she dashed the moisture away and went to start breakfast.

When she answered Noah’s knock a few minutes later, Alex was under control and calm. “Hi,” she said. “Ready for breakfast?”

“Are you offering?” he asked with a ridiculously hopeful expression.

“It’s the least I can do for my boss.” She closed the door behind him, her control faltering for a
moment as she wondered a bit wildly why the man had to be so damned
handsome!

“You abandoned your boss at the crack of dawn,” he chided her.

“Sorry. Had to walk the cat.”

Noah paused near the couch to look at the picture of a small white kitten atop Cal’s broad head and chewing busily on his ear. “Damn. Wish I had my camera.”

“Coffee?”

“Thanks.” He accepted the cup she held out, sipping the hot liquid and watching her move gracefully on the other side of the low partition. “I didn’t take advantage, sprite,” he said suddenly, his tone light.

“You were a perfect gentleman,” she agreed, matching his tone in spite of the tightness in her throat.

Very softly he said, “Then why the whip and chair?”

Alex busied herself turning strips of sizzling bacon. It gave her a moment to think, but she still couldn’t answer that question. Instead, she sent
him a wry glance and said, “Seven in the morning and the man’s asking cryptic questions.”

“Was that cryptic? Sorry. Maybe I should have asked why you’re a few hundred miles away from me this morning.”

“Not that far, surely.” Alex was suddenly aware of his presence directly behind her, but she was nonetheless startled when he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him.

“Hey, she’s real,” Noah said quietly. “She’s not a figment of your imagination, old sport. Or a ghost. Just a very elusive lady with an invisible whip and chair.”

“Noah, you’re making me burn the bacon,” she managed to say.

“Wouldn’t want to do that, would we?” He released her and stepped back.

Alex turned suddenly and caught his hand before he could move away. “Noah …” She looked at him, at his still face and curiously guarded eyes, and she dredged up a self-mocking smile from somewhere. On a half-laughing sigh, she murmured, “Stop
roaring!”

His fingers tightened around hers and his still face relaxed in a faint smile. “King of the beasts. Unlike Cal, I have all my teeth. And nobody put a kitten in me. Show me a lioness, and I’m afraid I’d want to do more than just wash her face. But I’d never hurt her, Alex. I’d never hurt her.” His blue-gray eyes were very direct and very steady.

She remembered the soldier in blue and someone else, someone holding a Gypsy girl on a bed of green moss. She didn’t know what it meant, or if it meant anything at all. But she knew what she felt. And caution was only a dull ache pushed aside.

“Why don’t you set the table?” she suggested, the restlessness gone. Decision made and confronted. Instinct, she knew, might well conjure up her whip and chair, but she would never again knowingly hold Noah at a distance.

He lifted her hand briefly to his lips, still wearing that half smile. But his eyes were brighter, as if he knew or sensed a difference between them. He went to set the table.

Alex watched him for a moment, then turned back to her burned bacon. And her burned bridges.

By the time breakfast was finished, the workmen had arrived with the usual clatter. Alex barely had time to nip up the stairs and hide Cal and the kitten she’d begun calling Buddy, for want of a better name, in one of the empty lofts and lock the door securely.

Within an hour the building was ringing with the sounds of shouts and hammers and the clashing of ladders and paint cans. Traffic jams began occurring on the stairs as masons arrived to finish repairing the remaining fireplaces, and men came to measure for carpet, and landscapers kept popping inside to ask Noah where he wanted a particular bush or tree.

Alex had to sneak Cal and the kitten out of one loft and into another at one point because the masons were about to move into the one they had been inhabiting. She managed the feat, but couldn’t control a startled jump when she ran into Theodora Suzanne Jessica Tyler at the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh, hi,” Alex managed lightly. “Noah’s around somewhere.”

“I don’t want to bother him.” The redhead smiled brightly. “I just wondered if he’d mind me wandering around inside the fence out back.”

Alex shrugged casually. “You’ll have to ask him, Miss Tyler. I’m just the hired help.”

Shrewd brown eyes studied her, but the friendly smile remained, “Call me Teddy; the rest is too much of a mouthful.”

“Sure. I’m Alex.” The last thing she wanted to do was spend too much time with someone who could take Cal away from her, but Alex was reasonably certain this lady was no quitter; she wouldn’t give up easily. And if you couldn’t get rid of an enemy, you turned her into a friend.

It might even work.

Cheerfully Alex confided her own impossible name, and the two were laughing over the trials and tribulations they had endured, when another voice echoed down the stairs.

“Sprite! Where
is
that woman?”

Watching Noah come down the stairs toward
them, Teddy murmured, “Just the hired help?” to Alex. Before she could respond, Noah had reached them.

“Hello, Miss—Tyler, isn’t it?”

“That’s it. Call me Teddy. I just wanted to ask if you’d mind me wandering around out back, Mr. Thorne.”

He looked blank. “It’s Noah. And, no, but why? Nothing out there except trees and weeds. The landscapers haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“I’m still looking for my lion,” Teddy said brightly. “An animal that big usually leaves some signs. I have to check out everything, you understand—rules.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks for the cooperation. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“Do that.”

“See you, Alex.”

Alex nodded, her smile firmly in place, and watched the redhead leave the building briskly and head around back.

“Will she find anything?” Noah asked.

“If she knows what to look for.” Alex drew a deep breath. “Cal’s been sharpening his claws on the trees.”

“I couldn’t say no without arousing suspicion, Alex.”

“I know.” She smiled up at him. “You’re the brains of the gang, pal; think of some way we can explain those scarred trees.”

“I’ll try, Bonnie, but these G-ladies are tough customers.”

Alex couldn’t help but laugh. She shook her head and changed the subject. “Did you want me for something?”

Noah caught her in his arms so that she had to clutch at his shirt to keep her balance. In a throbbing voice he said, “I dare not offer what I desire to give, much less take what I shall die to want!”

She blinked at him. “Good heavens. What’s that from?”

“A paraphrase from
The Tempest
. I’ve become fond of that play.”

Staring up at his reflective expression, Alex
fought a desire to giggle. “Oh. Well, I meant, did you want me for anything special.”

He looked at her, his eyes suddenly darkening to stormy gray. “Always. Always something special.”

Alex reacted without thought, her arms sliding up around his neck as his lips met hers. She tuned out the sounds of the workmen, listening only to her own heart pounding and to the hot blood rushing through her veins.

A sudden fierceness rose in her when his mouth slanted across hers hungrily; she wanted to hold him with every muscle she possessed, tie him to her, cage them together. And there was elation, an odd, giddy relief, as if she had found a treasure long lost to her.

She could feel the need building in him, and an answering need rippled through her body like the shock waves of an earthquake. His lips were branding themselves on more than her own, searing through to the deepest levels of herself until they touched and marked her soul. Alex wanted to
cry out wildly, emotions spiraling inside her until they filled her, consumed her….

“Excuse me, but—Oh. Sorry.”

Alex stared up into clouded eyes that cleared slowly, and felt a wrenching sense of loss when Noah released her and turned to face an apologetic Teddy.

Noah cleared his throat. “Yes, Miss—Teddy?”

“The gate’s locked. I looked, but there isn’t another. I’m really sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem.” Noah glanced at Alex, his eyes still stormy. “I’ll unlock it for you.”

Alex remained there at the base of the stairs for a long moment, one hand gripping the railing. The sheer raw power of her response frightened her, but there was an odd satisfaction as well because she’d not known she could feel so deeply. And there was more. The rush of emotion was still with her even though he was not.

Her hand released the railing and rose, and she gazed down at her palm with a growing sense of wonder. Was it like that, then? A pairing older
than either of them could know? A destiny that held no certainty except the certainty of love?

Love …

She caught her breath, releasing it in a ragged sigh. What could she say to Noah?
I’ve always loved you, even when you were a Union soldier, and when I was a Gypsy girl and … and other places and times and people that were us
.

Lord, she couldn’t tell him that! He’d think she had flipped, gone stark raving bananas! And maybe she had.

“Alex! Oh, there you are. Didn’t Noah tell you? We need you up here.” The painter was bending over the railing a floor above and staring down at her.

“Coming.” She turned and automatically climbed the stairs, her heart thudding heavily from something other than the exercise.

Noah escorted Teddy through the gate and into the fenced area, determined to do his part to keep Cal safe. He wondered briefly at Alex’s clear decision
to be friendly to this woman, finally coming to the same conclusion that Alex had come to: A friendly enemy might possibly jump your way when the chips were down.

“I’ll come along if you don’t mind,” he told her casually.

“I don’t mind. It’s your property, after all.”

Noah followed her toward the trees and swore silently; even from here he could see the deep scars on a large oak tree. His mind clicked into gear and began working frantically. Any reason. Any reason at all. He didn’t have to prove anything. She was the one who had to prove something.

Teddy halted before the tree, her eyes measuring the distance from the ground to the top of the gouges—several feet above her head.

He didn’t make the mistake of jumping in with an explanation of the scars, but merely stood and looked around casually. “What do you look for when you’re tracking a lion?” he asked her casually.

She pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, relaxed and at ease, gazing at him
steadily. “Oh, what you’d expect. Tracks. Maybe deep gouges in a tree.”

Noah frowned at her for a moment, then looked at the tree. He chuckled quietly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but those weren’t made by a lion.”

“Oh? What, then?”

“I caught some kids out here with a hatchet one day,” he answered, perjuring his soul without hesitation and ruthlessly sacrificing the reputations of the mythical kids. “They’d already gotten several of the trees, I’m afraid. God knows why.”

“It does seem a senseless thing to do.”