Second Chances

Late the following afternoon, after countless hours of making love, sleeping, then waking up to do it all over again, Brian awoke to find Jenn staring at the ceiling. He wished he had the power to read minds, to know what she was thinking. His stomach rumbled hungrily and she turned her head. “You’re awake.”

He nodded, wondering when she looked into his eyes if she saw a still-smoldering echo of the love they’d shared earlier. Brian had never experienced anything like that before in his entire life. It had been wild and raw---by far the best sex he’d ever had. Ever. But it had been so much more than that too. He had never felt so connected, so in tune with another human being. He had never felt so complete.

He leaned toward her to kiss her. Jenn met his lips only briefly before she pulled away. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, sitting for a moment with her back to him. “It’s nearly four-thirty. We need to start getting ready.”

He sat up, touching her back. “Ready for what? I’m in no hurry to go anywhere.” He kissed her shoulder, encircling her with his arms, his hands encountering her breasts, then sliding even lower. “Are you sure I can’t talk you into….”

Jenn caught his hand. “Brian, we need to go.” She stood up, grabbing her clothes from the floor and putting them on. “If you want to take a shower, you should do it now.

“I want to take a shower---but I want to take it with you.” He said boldly. He stood up, too, making no move to cover himself.

When she turned to look at him, the heat and desire that flared in her eyes was tempered with sadness. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do more,” she told him quietly. “But we’re running out of time. I need you to intercept Jennifer before she leaves for the party at the Hard Rock.”

She needed him to……

“Please, Bri.”

She didn’t seriously expect him to……

But she did. Brian saw that fact in her face, in her eyes. She still expected him to try to seduce Jennifer.

No, he couldn’t believe that. Not after the way they’d made love. He wouldn’t believe it. She must have something else in mind.

“You said I wouldn’t be able to go to the party—that the Merlin agents would be waiting for me!” His words came out in barely a whisper.

“You aren’t going to the party,” she told him. “I am.”

“But they’ll kill you.”

“No, they won’t. They need Jennifer alive, remember? To develop the Wells Project. When I go to the party, they’ll think I’m Jennifer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dixon’s men are probably watching Jennifer’s house, because they know that sooner or later I’m going to try to contact her,” Jenn explained. “They’ve probably been following her wherever she goes, only this time they’re not going to follow her, they’re going to follow me. I’m going to get my hair cut and buy a dress and…..”

“You’re going to sneak in the back door and come out the front, pretending to be Jennifer,” Brian realized.

“That’s the general idea,” Jenn agreed. “But Merlin is surely watching both the front door and the back. There’s no way I could get into the house without being seen. I was trying to figure out how to make this work when I remembered I left for the party about 90 minutes early. I went into NASA to finish some work in the lab before I had to make an appearance at the party. But I’d been up late the night before so I stopped at the convenience store on the corner to get a cup of coffee to go.”

“So Jennifer will come into the store…”

“And I’ll come out. The Merlin agents will follow me.”

“But if you’re both in the store, Jennifer will see you.”

“No, she won’t. She’ll only see you.”

Brian drew in a deep breath. “So there I am, with Jennifer in the convenience store. What is it exactly that you expect me to do?” He knew. He just wanted to hear her say it.

Her gaze was steady. “You can’t go with her back to her place---Merlin probably has the house bugged. We’ll get a suite at the Sheraton. It’s right around the corner. You can take her there.”

“You want me to take her to a hotel room.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe you intend for me to go through with this!” Yes, he’d told her that all he’d wanted was one night, but he couldn’t believe after the intensity of what they’d shared….

“We have no choice,” she said quietly.

“I’m not going to do it.” He replied determinedly.

She took a step toward him. “Brian, she’s me. It’s not as if I’m asking you to be with some other woman.”

“She’s not you. She’s only a part of you. She doesn’t even know me!”

She drew her hand through her hair in a gesture of pure frustration. “She is me. The same way you’re still the same Brian I’ve cared so much about for the past five years.”

That stopped him. Jenn had mentioned that the Brian she had known had changed---that time and a lousy relationship had made him quieter, less sarcastic. When Jenn looked at him, did she see a mere shadow of the man he was to become? Did she miss the maturity and growth that five extra years of life had surely brought? Was he nothing more than a poor substitute for the Brian she truly cared about?

“Jenn, please. I don’t want to be with Jennifer. I want to be with you. Why can’t we just let events play themselves out?”

Jenn slowly sat on the bed. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

She gazed at him. “Because in just a few hours, Merlin will be able to make another jump with the Enterprise. They’ll come back---to just a few days into the past this time. And this time they’ll get here before me. They’ll be waiting to kill me. And then you won’t find a naked woman in your backyard. You’ll find a naked DEAD woman.”

“Oh, my God!” Brian fought a wave of panic. “But……maybe we’re going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to keep Jennifer from developing the Wells Project, we should be trying to find where Merlin has the Enterprise. If we could destroy it…”

“That wouldn’t be enough. If I’m allowed to continue with my work…” Jenn broke off, shaking her head.

He waited for her to explain, but she didn’t say anything more.

He moved toward her then, taking her hands and kneeling on the floor at her feet, prepared to beg if he had to. “Please. Why wouldn’t it work? Talk to me, Jenn! Tell me what you’re feeling! I want to know.”

“I can’t. There are things you shouldn’t know about the future.”

“I don’t give a damn about the future. It’s all going to be different now anyway,” he said, gesturing toward the bed where they’d shared such incredible love just a few short hours before. “I don’t know about you, but I’m never going to be the same!”

The sadness in her eyes only deepened, and her words seemed to catch in her throat. If Brian hadn’t known better, he would have thought she was going to cry. “It’s not going to be different enough.”

He moved up onto the bed and pulled her into his lap. He held on to her, needing to be closer to her. “I don’t care!”

“Maybe you should.” Her voice was ragged as she clung to him, holding him as tightly as he held her. “Brian, you should. God knows I care!” She kissed him fiercely, taking his mouth, stealing his breath, touching his very soul. There were tears on her face. Jenn Townsend was actually crying.

“The day I left my time,” she said, her voice just a whisper, “only ten hours before I appeared in your yard….Brian, I held you while you died.”

Brian couldn’t say a word. He had died. He would die. Five years in the future, he was going to die.

“I went to NASA,” she continued. “You were there. James Dixon didn’t know it, but one of the lab cameras was on and you saw him kill my assistant on the monitor in another lab. You knew I was next, and you tried to warn me. We tried to get away, but they started shooting. You stepped in front of me, Brian, and you took a bullet meant for me.” Her voice shook. “I locked us both in one of the other offices, and I held you while you died. Your heart stopped beating, and your eyes glazed over and you were gone. You were GONE!” She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice rang with a hard certainty. “I will not let that happen again. I’ve got to stop this before it starts.” She kissed him gently. “I’ve opened a terrible Pandora’s box,” she told him. “Please, Bri, you’ve got to help me nail it shut.”

next chapter