Time and Again

managed as he started to slide down the jamb. "Caleb Hornblower."
    Dimly he heard her swearing at him. Shaking off his giddiness, he surfaced to find her face close to his.
    Her arms were around him, and she was struggling to drag him up. In an attempt to help her, he reached out and sent them both sprawling.
    Winded, Libby lay flat on her back, pinned under his body. "You'd better still be disoriented."
    "Sorry." He had time to register that she was tall and very firm. "Did I knock you down?"
    "Yes." Her arms were still around him, her hands splayed over a ridge of muscle along his back. She snatched them away, blaming her breathlessness on her fall. "Now, if you don't mind, you're a little heavy."
    He managed to brace one hand on the floor and push himself up a couple of inches. He was dazed, he admitted to himself, but he wasn't dead. And she felt like heaven beneath him. "Maybe I'm too weak to move."
    Was that amusement? Yes, Libby decided, that was definitely amusement in his eyes. That ageless and particularly infuriating male amusement. "Hornblower, if you don't move, you're going to be a whole lot weaker." She caught the quick flash of his grin before she squirmed out from under him. She made a halfhearted attempt to keep her eyes on his face-and only his face-as she helped him up. "If you're going to walk around, you're going to have to wait until you can manage it on your own." She slipped a supporting hand around his waist and instantly felt a strong, uncomfortable reaction. "And until I dig through my father's things and find you some pants."
    "Right." He sank gratefully onto the couch.
    "This time stay put until I come back."
    He didn't argue. He couldn't. The walk to the kitchen doorway and back had sapped what strength he'd had left. It was an odd and unwelcome feeling, this weakness. He couldn't remember having been sick a day in his adult life. True, he'd bashed himself up pretty good in that aircycle wreck, but he'd been, what-eighteen?
    Damn it, if he could remember that, why couldn't he remember how he'd gotten here? Closing his eyes, he sat back and tried to think above the throbbing in his head.
    He'd wrecked his plane. That was what she-Libby-had said. He certainly felt as though he'd wrecked something. It would come back, just as his name had come back to him after that initial terrifying blankness.
    She walked back in carrying a plate. "Lucky for you I just laid in supplies." When he opened his eyes, she hesitated and nearly bobbled the eggs a second time. The way he looked, she told herself, half-naked, with only a blanket tossed over his lap and the glow of the fire dancing over his skin, was enough to make any woman's hands unsteady. Then he smiled.
    "It smells good."
    "My specialty." She let out a long, quiet breath, then sat beside him. "Can you manage it?"
    "Yeah. I only get dizzy when I stand up." He took the plate and let his hunger hold sway. After the first bite, he sent her a surprised glance. "Are these real?"
    "Real? Of course they're real."
    With a little laugh, he took another forkful. "I haven't had real eggs in-I don't remember."
    She thought she'd read somewhere that the military used egg substitutes. "These are real eggs from real chickens." The way he plowed his way through them made her smile. "You can have more."
    "This should hold me." He looked back to see her smiling as she sipped her ever-present cup of tea. "I guess I haven't thanked you for helping me out."
    "I just happened to be in the right place at the right time."
    "Why are you here?" He took another look around the cabin. "In this place?"
    "I suppose you could say I'm on sabbatical. I'm a cultural anthropologist, and I've just finished several months of field research. I'm working on my dissertation."
    "Here?"
    It pleased her that he hadn't made the usual comment about her being too young to be a scientist. "Why not?" She took his empty plate and set it aside. "It's quiet-except for the occasional plane crash. How are your ribs? Hurt?"
    He looked down, noticing the bruises for the first time. "No, not really. Just sore."
    "You know, you're very lucky. Except for the head wound, you got out of that with cuts and bruises.
    The way you were coming down, I didn't expect to find anyone alive."
    "The crash control-" He got a misty image of himself pushing switches. Lights, flashing lights. The echo of warning bells. He tried to focus, to concentrate, but it broke apart.
    "Are you a test pilot?"
    "What? No- No, I