Time After Time by Kay Hooper Page B

all. He didn’t have to prove anything. She was the one who had to prove something.
    Teddy halted before the tree, her eyes measuring the distance from the ground to the top of the gouges—several feet above her head.
    He didn’t make the mistake of jumping in with an explanation of the scars, but merely stood and looked around casually. “What do you look for when you’re tracking a lion?” he asked her casually.
    She pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, relaxed and at ease, gazing at himsteadily. “Oh, what you’d expect. Tracks. Maybe deep gouges in a tree.”
    Noah frowned at her for a moment, then looked at the tree. He chuckled quietly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but those weren’t made by a lion.”
    “Oh? What, then?”
    “I caught some kids out here with a hatchet one day,” he answered, perjuring his soul without hesitation and ruthlessly sacrificing the reputations of the mythical kids. “They’d already gotten several of the trees, I’m afraid. God knows why.”
    “It does seem a senseless thing to do.”
    “Doesn’t it? But things like that make the papers every day.”
    Teddy merely nodded, the shrewd brown eyes unreadable, then began walking again. Noah followed, giving silent thanks that the lot was so overgrown with weeds, there were no bare patches where a track could present unexplainable and wholly damning evidence against Cal.
    Other than three more scarred trees, the lot was innocent.
    Noah walked her back to and through the gate,locking it behind them and saying cheerfully, “The damage was done, but there’ll be no more kids with hatchets in there.”
    She shook hands with him briskly. “Well, thanks for taking the trouble, Noah. I’ll be seeing you.” And she walked toward a small truck parked in front of the building.
    Noah went inside, more troubled than relieved. He met Alex coming down the stairs and answered her quizzical look. “I told her it was kids with hatchets. She didn’t believe me, but didn’t question.”
    Alex went through the open door into her loft, and he followed. The painters having finished in there, the furniture was back in place and the canvas covers gone. She sat down on the couch, absently picking up one of the decorative pillows and hugging it. The interlude on the stairs was hardly forgotten, but she was worried about losing Cal and still unsettled by her growing belief in destiny.
    “Did she say she’d be back?”
    “She said she’d be seeing me. And I’m willing tobet we’ll be seeing her.” He sat down beside her on the couch.
    “It isn’t fair,” she murmured. “Cal’s happy with me, and he would never hurt anyone.”
    “Have you tried getting a special permit to keep him?”
    “I never dared,” she confessed. “If they turned me down, the animal control people would know about him. Besides, I’ve never had a place they’d consider large enough to hold a lion.”
    “Plenty of room here,” Noah pointed out carefully. “And you certainly have the owner’s permission to house a lion.” He could read the worry in her taut features, and he was still afraid she’d decide to leave in order to save her lion. She smiled at him with an obvious effort, and his heart ached because she was so lovely and so vitally important to him.
    “Thanks, Noah. If this whole thing goes public, it’s nice to know I can count on your support.”
    “That you have,” he confirmed lightly. “Always.”
    Something about his voice caused Alex toquickly change the subject. “You know, you’ve never told me anything about your background.”
    “Nothing much to tell.”
    “Fair trade,” Alex chided him. “If I remember correctly, I told you practically everything about me when we were still strangers in the dark.”
    He chuckled. “Okay. What d’you want to know?”
    “Everything, of course.”
    “Should I start with my birth, or would you settle for a more recent history?”
    “Noah!”
    “Sorry. Well, I was born and