The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance (44 page)

In contrast, the stranger’s summer-blond hair was short and neat, and he wore a plain dark-brown T-shirt with a pocket – no clever sayings – and faded blue jeans a little on the tight side (bless you, handsome newcomer). He did have well-defined muscles; what he did not have was a Look. “Sorry I’m late,” he said to Jason, and my heart hit the floor at the rumble of his voice. Oh, that voice. “I had a little trouble finding the place. Thank you for inviting me.”

He glanced at everyone in the room, studied me for a longer moment, and gave me the sort of smile a five-year-old gives an icecream cone. He strode through the circle of folding chairs and took the empty seat to the right of mine.

Which simply doesn’t happen.

Because . . . me, I’m the woman men notice when there aren’t any busty twenty-something ex-lap dancers or sylphlike Heinlein heroines around. We were full-up on both, and they had empty seats next to them, too.

The new guy swung his enormous backpack to the floor beside him, where it made a substantial thud, pulled a legal pad and pen out of it, then leaned over to me and whispered, “What have I missed?”

All the oxygen leaving the room, I thought. When did that happen?

I managed to find my voice though, and I said, “Pizza. When Jason hosts, he always has pizza for us before the meeting.”

“No writing yet?”

“No. Official start time is in ten minutes. You’re not actually late,” I told him. “We ’re waiting for two other writers to arrive – Narnie, who has a long drive to get here, and Tyler.” I’d been halfheartedly and sporadically dating Tyler for about four months, a fact I suddenly wished wasn’t true.

Tyler arrived like the king for his coronation, spotted the stranger sitting beside me, and glared at him. He came over and took the empty seat on my other side, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Who’s he?”

“New guy,” I whispered back. “Jason invited him. We haven’t done introductions yet. We’re still waiting on Narnie.”

Narnie Hampstead was our resident pro. She had fifteen published novels, plus a bunch of shorts in various magazines. Jason had an MFA and taught creative writing, but Narnie actually wrote for a living. She was the one whose crits we all saved and double-checked as we were writing and revising.

The rest of us were wannabes. I was the Wannabe-Least-Likely-to-Ever-Publish-
Anything.

It wasn’t that I didn’t write. Seven completed novels gathered dust and mouse droppings in the trunk at the foot of my bed, and I could not muster the courage to send out any of them.

After a year in the group, I’d finally brought myself to read
Wall of Rivers
, the best of my trunk novels, to everyone. Narnie told me I should send it out, that it was really good.

But I hadn’t. I couldn’t.

Next to me, the stranger was introducing himself. I realized Narnie had come in and taken her seat while my head was in the clouds.

“Thanks, Jason,” the stranger said. “I’m Per Tordönsson. I’m just getting started writing. I didn’t bring anything to read tonight. I want to see how this works first.”

Both Carol and Shora oozed “Hi, Per,” in melting tones. Beside me, Tyler snorted.

“I’m Nila,” I told Per. “I write, but I haven’t sold anything yet.”

Per looked into my eyes and smiled again. All he said was, “Wonderful to meet you,” but he said it like he meant it.
Really
meant it. Like meeting me was the most important thing he’d done all year.

There may be a moment in every woman’s life when she sees someone she doesn’t know and, for just that moment, wants what she cannot have because every cell in her body is screaming at her that this . . .
this
is the person she’s supposed to be with. Or maybe that’s just me. But right then, right there, feeling the bass vibrations of Per’s voice resonating in my chest, staring back into his eyes, with his left knee bumping my right one . . . that was
my
moment.

I wanted.

I could feel Tyler stiffen in the seat on my other side. He put his arm around me and said, “I’m Tyler Boothe Mayall, the defence attorney. I intend to be the John Grisham of fantasy.” He was a Thorsday Night charter member, and he’d been using that as his introduction since
I
joined.

Per called him on it. “Terry Brooks beat you to that thirty years ago, big guy.” This caused Tophe and Carol, who couldn’t stand Tyler, to burst out laughing. Giggles echoed around the rest of the room. I stifled my own laugh, but not fast enough.

Tyler’s arm around me tightened.

The tension between the two men grew palpable.

After Tophe finished reading his latest reworking of his third chapter, which should have been called “Why My Hero Should Drink Arsenic Right Now and Make the World a Better Place”, Per gave Tyler a sidelong glance that would have killed small animals at a hundred yards.

Tyler glared at Per and groped me, and I shook him off. The two of us were not
there
– never had been.

They were two big dogs, circling. I had no idea what was going on.

But whatever it was, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Halfway through the meeting, Tyler leaned over and murmured in my ear, “Why don’t we get out of here and go to your place? I have court tomorrow morning, and I don’t think I can stand any more of Shora reading.”

While I agreed with him on Shora – her heroine that night had already slept with a werewolf, a were-tiger, two dark elves (one male, one female, both at the same time), and was at that moment being chased by a vampire through the reptile display at the zoo, where I winced to think what was going to desire her next – I was sitting beside the handsome enigma, and the burning question on my mind was, if I hung around, would he smile at me again? Besides, Thorsday Nights only happened every other week, and I loved them. “I still haven’t read yet,” I told him. “I brought chapter one of my new story, and I want to get some feedback.”

Tyler said, “Read it another night. I don’t want you going home alone. I don’t trust your neighbourhood,” but he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He was looking at Per Tordönsson.

Per Tordönsson. Who rested a hand lightly on my shoulder and said, “Nila, please stay and read your chapter. I’d love to hear it.” He looked past me to Tyler. “I’ll see her home, or one of the other men here will.”

“She doesn’t know you, and neither do I,” Tyler said.

Tyler had a point. Per’s interest in me, in my writing . . . it was completely out of place. It unnerved me. But I didn’t want to leave the meeting. I was having fun.

And Tyler was being possessive way past anything our half-dozen dates entitled him to. We weren’t a couple. We hadn’t slept together. He’d driven me home one night and had stayed over because it was so late, but he’d spent the night on the couch. And brought me breakfast in bed the next morning, which he’d gone out to get, and which had creeped me out, though I couldn’t figure out why.

“I haven’t invited you over,” I told Tyler. “And I’m having fun. My neighbourhood’s good, and I’ll be fine.”

He looked completely unbothered that I’d blown him off. “I’ll drop by first thing in the morning, sweetheart,” he said, loud enough that Shora stopped reading, which was a blessing, and that everyone else looked at the two of us with surprise, which was awkward.

Tyler was one of those men who didn’t
get it.
We weren’t working out, but he seemed to think we were. I decided in that instant that our last date had been just that. The last.

“I’ll bring you breakfast in bed again, baby,” he added.

He might as well have peed on my leg. He was telling Per, “Don’t be there,” without actually coming out and saying it. As if Per and I . . . well, as if there were any possibility for there being a “Per and I”.

“Don’t,” I said.

I was glad to see Tyler leave.

The rest of the evening was fun. Long, but fun. I read, and people made useful comments. Per sat silent after I finished reading, blinking like he was trying not to cry, which was crazy, because my first chapter wasn’t sad at all. He reached over and touched my hand once, just brushed it, and said, “Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to make of that.

Narnie read. Jason read. The Thorsday Nighters talked. We laughed.

At 3 a.m., we were all packing up and telling tired, silly jokes just prior to heading out the door, when Per stepped in front of me and took a deep breath and said, “Before you go, can I show you something?”

I looked at the earnest expression on his face, and said, “Sure.”

He turned so his back was to everyone in the room but me, and pulled a book out of his backpack. He put a finger to his lips, then handed it over.

I took it, turned it over, and saw the title.
Wall of Rivers.

My title.

My heart started to race, and when I glanced at the author’s name, I had to sit down.

Nila Sturgess.

It was a new copy, printed beautifully by a publisher I’d never heard of. I opened it to the middle and out of habit sniffed the pages. There is no smell like book.

I turned to the copyright page.

And closed my eyes.

Wall of Rivers
was in its thirty-seventh printing, with a copyright renewal in the name of the Estate of Tyler Boothe Mayall. And a print date more than fifty years in the future.

I turned to the back of the book, to the author photo on the inside flap of the dust jacket. The picture was mine – one Tyler had talked me into having taken only a few weeks earlier. “Because you’re so pretty,” he said, “and when you’re famous, you’re going to want a nice picture of you when you were young to go inside your books.”

It was the stupidest reason I’d ever heard for someone wanting a photo. I figured he’d just wanted it for himself.

But . . . there it was. I turned to the first page. The words were my words.

I handed the book back to Per, and saw how badly my hand was shaking.

Per took it, and touched my fingers lightly in the process. What he said next was the biggest understatement I’d ever heard.

“We need to talk.”

We went to an all-night diner – one of those chains where you can have breakfast or dinner twenty-four hours a day. It had the advantage of being public while still being anonymous.
Wall of Rivers
was the manuscript Tyler had asked to read the night he stayed over because he said he was having trouble getting to sleep. I would have been insulted, but Tyler did not exactly have a way with tact. I’d put it down to him being him, and hadn’t thought about it again.

But now I needed an explanation. How and where had my novel come to be published, what did the date and number of printings on the copyright page mean, why did Tyler’s estate own the copyright? How had Per gotten his hands on it?

I ordered a diet drink. I didn’t think I was going to like what he would say, and diet cola was all I could trust my stomach to keep down.

Per, on the other hand, ordered half of everything on the menu.

He started by saying, “I’m not supposed to be here, and I’m screwing things up by doing this. But I love your books. You’ve been my favourite author for years.”

I shivered. He was heading into the territory I’d feared.

“You want a sweater?” he asked. “I have one in my bag.”

“I’m . . . fine,” I lied, which was clearly the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. I was a long damn way from fine. He shook his head, his half-smile telling me I wasn’t fooling either of us.

“No, you’re not. How could you be?”

“I started out being fine,” I amended. And that was true enough. He’d sat beside me at Thorsday Night, he’d smiled at me, and he’d made my heart beat faster. But now everything had gotten scary, and I had to ask. “You’re not from . . . here . . . are you?”

“Swedish Institute of Historical Research, Time Validation Division,” he said. “In Helsingborg.”

“That’s where. How about
when
?” I’d written time travel. I was proud of myself for making the leap so sensibly, for not falling apart over the situation that was presenting itself to me. I was, I thought, at least as cool as my characters right then. I was a bit freaked out. But I’d seen one of my future books. So at least I knew I was going to eventually get up the nerve to send out my work. And that when I did, at least one of them would sell.

The idea that I might also end up marrying Tyler, though, wasn’t doing too much for the residual pizza churning in my stomach.

Per nodded. “I’m from about sixty years ahead. But you and I don’t have much time. We mustn’t talk about me. You have to know the truth about you before you go home
tonight.
”

Something about the way he said “tonight” made my skin crawl.

“Why tonight . . . specifically?”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a ring binder. It was gunmetal grey, and made of a material as cool and hard as metal, but as pliant as plastic, impressively space-age-y.

He handed it to me, and said, “Skim. You’ll get the gist of this quickly.”

The binder held copies of newspaper articles far more exotic than the originals had ever been: the paper was creamy with a semi-gloss finish, and the words on the first page scrolled down as I read them. I didn’t have to touch anything. The paper seemed to be tracking my eye movement and helpfully putting the next words I needed to read where I needed them to be.