Time and Again

covered his hand with hers. "Oregon, southwest Oregon, just over the California border in the Klamath mountains."
    "Oregon." The tension in his fingers relaxed slightly. "U.S.A.?"
    "The last time I looked." Concerned, she checked for fever again.
    He took her wrist, concentrating on keeping his grip light. "What planet?"
    Her eyes flew to his. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn the man was serious. "Earth.
    You know, the third from the sun," she said, humoring him. "Get some rest, Hornblower. You're just rattled."
    "Yeah." He let out a long breath. "I guess you're right."
    "Just yell if you need something."
    He sat where he was when she left him. He had a feeling, a bad one. But she was probably right-he was rattled. If he was in Oregon, in the northern hemisphere of his own planet, he wasn't that far off course.
    Off course, he repeated as his head began to pound. What course had he been on?
    He looked down at the watch on his wrist and frowned at the dials. In a gesture that came from instinct rather than thought, he pressed the small stem on the side. The dials faded, and a series of red numbers blinked on the black face.
    Los Angeles. A wave of relief washed over him as he recognized the coordinates. He'd been returning to base in L.A. after- after what, damn it?
    He lay down slowly and discovered that Libby had been right. The bed was surprisingly comfortable.
    Maybe if he just went to sleep, clocked out for a few hours, he would remember the rest. Because it seemed important to her, Cal tugged on the sweats.
    What had she gotten herself into? Libby wondered. She sat in front of her computer and stared at the blank screen. She had a sick man on her hands-an incredibly good-looking sick man. One with a concussion, partial amnesia- and eyes to die for. She sighed and propped her chin on her hands. The concussion she could handle. She'd considered learning extensive first aid as important as studying the tribal habits of Western man. Fieldwork often took scientists to remote places where doctors and hospitals didn't exist.
    But her training didn't help her with the amnesia. And it certainly didn't help her with his eyes. Her knowledge of man came straight out of books and usually dealt with his cultural and sociopolitical habits.
    Any one-on-one had been purely scientific research.
    She could put up a good front when it was necessary. Her battle with a crushing shyness had been long and hard. Ambition had pushed her through, driving her to ask questions when she would have preferred to have melded with the background and been ignored. It had given her the strength to travel, to work with strangers, to make a select few trusted friends.
    But when it came to a personal man-woman relationship-
    For the most part, the men she saw socially were easily dissuaded. The majority of them were intimidated by her mind, which she admitted was usually one-track. Then there was her family. Thinking of them made her smile. Her mother was still the dreamy artist who had once woven blankets on a handmade loom. And her father- Libby shook her head as she thought of him. William Stone might have made a fortune with Herbal Delights, but he would never be a three-piece-suit executive.
    Bob Dylan music and board meetings. Lost causes and profit margins.
    The one man she'd brought home to a family dinner had left confused and unnerved-and undoubtedly hungry, Libby remembered with a laugh. He hadn't been able to do more than stare at her mother's zucchini-and-soybean souffl‚.
    Libby was a combination of her parents' idealism, scientific practicality and dreamy romanticism. She believed in causes, in mathematical equations and in fairy tales. A quick mind and a thirst for knowledge had locked her far too tightly to her work to leave room for real romance. And the truth was that real romance, when applied to her, scared the devil out of her.
    So she sought it in the past, in the study of human relationships.
    She was twenty-three and, as Caleb Hornblower had put it, unmatched.
    She liked the phrase, found it accurate and concise on the one hand and highly romantic on the other. To be matched, she mused, was the perfect way to describe a relationship. She corrected herself. A true relationship, like her parents'. Perhaps the reason she was more at ease with her studies than with men was that she had yet to meet her match.
    Satisfied with her analysis, she slipped on her glasses and went to work.

CHAPTER 2
    The rain had slowed