Time and Again

revolutionary." Sunny tickled her brother's belly as she smiled up at Jacob. "My father likes to pick controversial subjects so he can argue about them. Oh, look! Sam's crawling!"
    "A newly acquired skill." With two parts pride and one part wonder, Caroline watched her chubby, towheaded son pull himself across the rug. "Will's already taken a easeful of videos."
    "I'm entitled," William said as he wheeled in a tea cart. "As I remember, Sunny went from crawl to walk to run so fast we hardly had time to blink."
    "And you recorded it all on that secondhand movie camera." Caroline rose, stepped over her son, and kissed Will before she helped him with the tea.
    "So-" William had already gone over his list of questions in the kitchen, "-did you just get into Portland?"
    "This afternoon," Jacob told him, and accepted his cup of tea.
    "You were looking for Cal when you tracked down Sunny."
    "That's right." He sipped, trying to resolve himself to the fact that he was drinking Herbal Delight with the man who had invented it. "He'd given me the-" coordinates nearly slipped out "-directions to the cabin."
    "The cabin?" The teacup paused on the way to William's lips. "You've been to the cabin-with Sunny?"
    "We had a hell of a snowstorm last week." Sunny laid a hand lightly on her father's knee. "Lost power for a couple of days."
    "Together?"
    She managed to keep her expression bland. "It's hard to lose it separately in a space as small as the cabin."
    Amused, Caroline watched her son crawl over Jacob's feet. "It's a shame you missed Cal and Libby. I hope you plan to wait until they get back."
    The baby was chewing on his pant leg. After setting his teacup aside, Jacob reached down to set Sam in his lap. "I'll wait."
    "Where?" William wanted to know. Sunny dug her fingers into her father's knee.
    "Did you know that J.T.'s experimenting with time travel?"
    "Time travel?" Fascination warred with paternity. Paternity won. "Just how long were you two together in the mountains?"
    Jacob let Sam gnaw on his index finger. "A couple of weeks."
    "Really?" His eyes narrowed, and he laid a proprietary hand on Sunny's shoulder. "I suppose the snow kept you from making more suitable arrangements?"
    Sunny rolled her eyes. Caroline sighed. Jacob ran a hand over Sam's fine, pale hair.
    "The arrangement suited me well enough."
    "I'll bet it did." William leaned forward, then hissed as Sunny dug again, shooting for the worn denim at his knees.
    "Did you know, J.T., that my father absconded-" She liked the word, enjoyed rolling it off of her tongue,
    "-with my mother when she was sixteen?"
    "Seventeen," William corrected.
    "Not quite." This from Caroline as she sipped her tea.
    He shot her a look. "You were only a couple months shy. And that was entirely different."
    "Naturally," Sunny agreed.
    "It was the times," William muttered. "It was the sixties."
    Sunny kissed his sore knee. "That explains everything."
    "You had to be there. Besides, we wouldn't have had to elope if Caro's father hadn't been so interfering and unreasonable."
    "I'm sure you're right." Sunny fluttered her lashes at him. "There's nothing worse than a father who pokes his nose in where it doesn't belong."
    He caught her nose between his two fingers and twisted. "Watch it."
    She just grinned. "Tell me, is Granddad speaking to you yet?"
    "Barely."
    "Except when they make fools of themselves over Sam," Caroline put in. "He's almost forgiven us for the fact that you and Libby weren't around for him to spoil when you were babies. Would you like me to take Sam, J.T.?"
    "No, he's fine." The baby was playing with Jacob's fingers, gurgling to them and sampling one occasionally. "He looks like you," he murmured, turning to Sunny.
    Her lips curved. She couldn't have explained how it made her feel to watch him cuddle a baby on his lap. "I like to think so."
    William drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. The Hornblower boys seemed to have some kind of charm that worked on his daughters. Though he'd decided Cal was nearly good enough for Libby, he was reserving judgment on this one.
    "So, you're a scientist." William had a great deal of respect for scientists, but that didn't mean he was ready to accept the picture of his daughter snuggled up with one. In his cabin. Without any electricity.
    "Yes."
    Talkative son of a gun, William thought, and prodded deeper. "Astrophysics?"
    "That's right."
    "Where did you study?"
    "Maybe you'd like his grade point average," Sunny muttered.
    "Shut up."