The Trouble With Time by Lexi Revellian Page A

that she’d wait five years for him?
    He felt he could forgive her anyone but Quinn. He told himself he was not being reasonable. On the heavy side five years ago, his hair cut short to camouflage male-pattern baldness, Quinn hadn’t been handsome, but women hadn’t seemed to mind. They liked the intelligence and humour in his eyes, the directness of his gaze, the way he focused his attention on them; and he was unquestionably an alpha male. Kayla hadn’t known what the man was really like any more than he had; also doubtless hadn’t known that his diary was scattered with other girls’ names, Jinghua being the latest of a long line. Kayla was the only woman who’d lasted more than a couple of months – but then she was exceptional. Jace had started proposing when they’d only been going out for nine weeks. Kayla, not yet ready to settle down, used to tease him about it.
    He got out Quinn’s dataphone and scrolled through the messages till he got to: Q, where are you? Call me. K.
    With an effort, he went back to non-Kayla emails, trying to work out what Quinn had been up to. After a while he got absorbed in this task. Then he did some different research, on luxury items for the man who has everything. He had completely forgotten Floss’s presence. When he finally thought of her and looked around she was sound asleep, curled up on the sofa clutching her book. Clearly the day had got to her. The computer told him it was 12.13 am. He decided to leave Ryker till the morning, make an early start. His boots should have arrived by then. He fetched a blanket from one of the bedrooms and dropped it over the girl. She didn’t stir.
    He got into Quinn’s ridiculously opulent king-size bed and lay for a while thinking, trying not to imagine Kayla lying where he lay now. He stared into the dark at the intermittent lights of passing aeroplanes; welcome confirmation he was back from the future, however much trouble awaited him here.
    He regretted killing Quinn. It had let him off too easily. He should have been left there alone, without even a box of matches. Getting progressively weaker on a diet of nettles and blackberries, while he taught himself by trial and error how to catch rabbits and hunt deer and make fire and do without, scavenging for the few useful things time had not destroyed.
    For year after year.
    Gradually despairing of rescue.
    Defeat and anger eating into his soul.
    There was a clunk as the drone delivered his boots to the package bay. He listened to the whirr of its rotor blades fading into the night.
    Jace turned on his left side, closed his eyes and slept like the dead.

CHAPTER 14
Kayla
    Floss woke to an early spring morning, and took a few seconds to work out where – and when – she was. She’d never slept in her clothes before. No sign of Jace; for a moment she panicked, since he represented her only hope of returning to her own time. She walked softly round the vast apartment, decided he was probably asleep in the room behind the closed door, but didn’t like to look in and check. So she locked herself in one of the bathrooms and had a shower, which apart from a settings selection – she went for Manual – was reassuringly like 2015 showers. The towels were thick and soft, and she found a hair dryer in the bedroom.
    She dressed, asked the computer for breakfast (its idea of breakfast, or possibly Quinn’s, turned out to be hot croissants and coffee), sat at the computer and checked its browsing history. She had to adjust to using a sensitive area on the desk to control it, and at first her fingers kept reaching for the non-existent mouse. Also the computer seemed to be responding to her eye movements, which both helped and confused. The interface was super-fast, different of course from what she was used to, but intuitive and she quickly adapted.
    She was curious to find what Jace had been so engrossed in the evening before. Floss liked to have all the facts, and felt at a disadvantage in her