Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 7

  Then he’d get a fever she had no way of fighting.

  And then he’d die.

  And Chase and Noah and Micah would return and find out she’d killed their brother, and Chase would wring her neck instead of Snuggles’.

  Assuming she didn’t die of embarrassment first.

  Isobel pulled the blanket over her head with another groan. The moment she’d come back in the cabin last night and curled up in the corner, Daniel had picked her up and carried her to the bed, covered her with the blanket, then gone outside.

  All without saying a word.

  And apparently without coming back in, either.

  She suddenly bolted upright. “Ohmigod! What if he thought he was well enough to join his brothers and swam to shore like he did before?” She threw off the blanket, jumped out of bed, and went hunting for her shoes. “He better not have drowned himself. How in hell am I going to explain to Chase that I lost his brother?” she cried, hopping to the door as she pulled on one sneaker and then the other. “Honest to God, I’ve treated snarling wild animals that didn’t give me this much trouble,” she muttered as she tore outside.

  Only to slam head-on into a large, solid chest.

  “Hey, there,” the owner of the large, solid chest said with a grunt, grabbing her shoulders when she bounced off him and nearly fell back.

  Isobel looked up and gasped. “Chase!”

  “What are you saying about wild animals?”

  She took a calming breath, stepped out of his clutches, then took another step back for insurance. “I . . . um . . . I lost your brother,” she whispered, inching toward the side of the cabin as she kept an eye on his neck-wringing hands.

  “Which brother?”

  She finally worked up the nerve to look up. “Daniel.”

  “Oh, him,” he said with a shrug. “That’s okay. I’ve always wanted to be the oldest. So what were you saying about wild animals?”

  Isobel took a step toward him this time. “That’s a terrible thing to say! Brothers are precious.”

  “Do you have a brother?”

  “No. But if I did, I certainly wouldn’t want to find out someone had lost him.”

  “What about a sister? And parents? Do your parents live near you?”

  Isobel scowled at him. “My parents are dead. But what are we talking about me for, when Daniel’s out there somewhere?” she said, angrily waving toward the ocean. “Probably drowning, because he thinks he’s such a warrior that he can swim to shore two days after having major surgery.”

  She stepped around him and strode toward the bluff. “Okay, if you won’t go find him, then I will. Honest to God, if everyone’s counting on you guys to keep the human race from becoming extinct, mankind is in really big trouble,” she continued when he fell into step beside her. “Maybe along with the animal, you should take back some nonfiction books.” She stopped when they reached the bluff and she saw the beach was empty. “Dammit, where’s your boat?” she asked, turning around and heading to the beach on the other side of the island. “I need it to go find your no-good, rotten brother.”

  “I can see by your concern that you’ve obviously grown quite fond of Daniel,” Chase said, falling in step beside her again.

  Isobel stopped and shot him a brilliant smile. “Oh yes, how can anyone not grow fond of a man who leads a girl to believe he wants her, then totally humiliates her by flat-out rejecting her when she works up the nerve to accept what he’d been offering all day?”

  “It certainly wasn’t Daniel’s intention to humiliate you, Isobel. He was trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “From yourself.” He grabbed her shoulders when she gasped and took a step back. “Isobel, Daniel knows that when a woman gives herself to a man, her heart usually follows. He was protecting you from getting your heart broken.”

  Of all the arrogant, outrageous, condescending things he could have said, the idea that Daniel was protecting her from herself was . . . it was . . .

  Oh God, there were those prickles of heat climbing into her cheeks again, and damn if her chin wasn’t starting to quiver. Without even thinking about what she was doing, much less who she was doing it to, she punched Chase in the belly hard enough to make him grunt and let go of her.

  And then she ran as if the hounds of hell were after her.

  But she didn’t make it ten feet before she was stopped by another large, solid chest—only this time she knew instantly who it belonged to.

  “Daniel! You didn’t drown!”

  Not answering because he was too busy glaring past her shoulder, he pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest. Isobel didn’t even protest, because . . . well, because she just as soon not let him see her blushing to high heaven.

  “Why was she running?” he asked over her head. “What did you do to her?”

  “Hey, she punched me,” Chase said, walking to them. “She was so distraught that you might be drowning and we weren’t going to look for you that her emotions obviously got in the way of her judgment.”

  Wonderful. She could hear the amusement in Chase’s voice, as well as feel the tension humming through Daniel. So how in hell was she supposed to get out of this mess without utterly humiliating herself again?

  “Eww! What a monstrous snake!” she cried, pointing at the ground as she stamped her feet in alarm and struggled to get free.

  Daniel’s arms merely tightened. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” he whispered into her hair.

  She snorted. “Did you get that one out of one of your great-great-grandmother’s books?”

  His arms relaxed but didn’t let her go.

  That was okay with her; she still wasn’t quite up to facing him yet.

  “Where’s the snake?” Noah asked, running toward them. “I want to see it.”

  “There is no snake,” Daniel said. “Isobel pretends to see things to distract unsuspecting dogs before she pokes them with a needle. Only apparently it doesn’t work on cats.” He gave her a warning squeeze. “Or on men.”

  “It sure as hell worked on you the first time,” she muttered into his shirt.

  “So, have you asked her yet?” Micah asked, having run up with Noah.

  “No,” Daniel said.

  Isobel tilted her head back to look up at him. But when she found herself staring into his beautiful, ocean blue eyes, she immediately buried her face in his shirt again. “Ask me what?”

  “We want you to help us catch a raccoon,” Micah said.

  Isobel leaned back in surprise, but having learned her lesson, she looked at Micah instead of Daniel. “You think the animal you need is a raccoon?” She suddenly pulled free and walked over to Micah. “What happened to you?” She looked at Noah. “And you!” She stepped closer and squinted up at his face. “Are those claw marks? From a raccoon?”

  Noah nodded.

  “Well, come on then,” she said, taking his arm and leading him toward the cabin, figuring that as distractions went, this one worked. “You, too, Micah. I have to clean those scratches before they get infected. There’s a whole world of nasty bacteria growing under animal claws.”

  Noah freed himself from her clutches but continued walking with her, Micah and Daniel and Chase following behind.

  “If they have bacteria under their claws, how come they don’t infect themselves?” Noah asked. “We saw them putting their little hands in their mouths.”

  “You did? Where?”

  “Just fifty meters behind your house, down by the stream.” He grinned over at her. “We found some bread in one of your cupboards and filled a large can you had in your shed with it, then set it beside a tree down by the stream.”

  She arched a brow. “So you know what bread is, but you didn’t think to pack any for us?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Okay, you filled a trash can with bread and then lugged it into the woods. But why?”

  “Because one of your books said raccoons like to sneak
in when it’s dark and lift off the covers to get to the food inside. So we lured them with the bread, then waited in the bushes for them.”

  She stopped walking and eyed the scratches on his face. “And what did you do when they showed up?” she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea already.

  “We jumped out and grabbed them,” Micah interjected, holding up his battered hands as proof. He shook his head. “They’re not as friendly as your rabbit.”

  Isobel looked at Chase, noticing he didn’t have a scratch on him. “And just what were you doing while Micah and Noah were wrestling raccoons?” she drawled.

  “I was in your den, reading,” he drawled back. “Because I do not believe a raccoon is the animal we need.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not from the family of Lepor-something. I don’t know the rest of the word, but I did find that raccoons are of the Procyonidae genus, which isn’t even close.”

  The hairs on the back of Isobel’s neck rose in alarm. “You’re looking for a member of a genus that begins with the letters l-e-p-o-r?” she whispered. “Um . . . what makes you think that?”

  When Chase’s eyes sharpened on her, Isobel realized she probably looked as if she’d just seen a ghost. She started for the cabin again.

  “The only thing our medical scientists on the moon were able to come up with is four or five Latin genera for which animal it might be,” Chase told her, falling in beside her again. “But they aren’t sure of the spelling; the data uploads they got from Earth were garbled, because radiation was already leaking out of some of the nuclear reactors and causing interference. But even though I’ve been scouring your books, I still haven’t been able to narrow it down, much less translate it to a common name. We can’t afford to mess this up, Isobel,” he said gravely, “because if we don’t find an animal with the proper attributes that can fight this particular germ, then we have nothing.”

  “Did your scientists send you here with actual data, or is it all in your head?”

  Pulling her to a stop, Chase reached in his pocket and took out what looked like an iPod, touched a button that caused the screen to light up, then handed it to her. “It’s been difficult for them to solve a problem from over four hundred thousand kilometers away, especially with no animals to study. The scientists on Earth sent us what they had on developing a vaccine, but our worry is that just like the animals mutated, so did the germ.”

  Isobel frowned at the notations on the tiny screen, then turned to face all four of them. “How about I make a deal with you? You take me home right now and let me go over this information,” she said, holding up the iPod-like device, “and let’s see if I can’t help you decide exactly which animal you need.” She shot them what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “And once I do, then I will help you catch that animal.”

  “We only have nine hours,” Chase said, “and then we must leave, with or without the animal.”

  “But I thought you had four more days?”

  “Our time links have been signaling us that they’re running low on power,” Daniel interjected. “If we don’t return to 2243 in nine hours, we won’t be able to return at all.”

  “Then go plug them into a charger or something, and come back.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple, Isobel. The cargo transport we used to come here from the moon is supplying the energy for our links.” He smiled sadly. “And I’m sure Neil and our parents are right now working to get every last drop of that energy out of its antiquated fuel source. If we don’t activate our links ourselves, Neil will do it for us in exactly nine hours.”

  “Then come on,” she said, heading back to the beach. “We’re burning daylight!”

  Daniel grabbed her arm to stop her. “We must find Snuggles first. She hopped away from me earlier and is exploring the woods,” he said, pointing to her left.

  “We don’t have time,” Isobel told him, pulling away and heading for the beach again. “She’s a rabbit; she’ll be fine. I’ll come back and get her . . . later.”

  But Snuggles chose that exact moment to come tearing out of the bushes at Micah—causing him to trip over himself to avoid stepping on her. Then the little imp ran right over to Daniel, sat up on her haunches, and begged him to pick her up.

  Which he did, immediately tucking her inside his jacket with a laugh. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, clasping Isobel’s hand and leading her to the beach.

  And sure enough, her face started prickling again at the feel of his large, warm, and rather proprietary hand holding hers.

  Eight hours and two pots of coffee later, Isobel had most of the books in her den strewn over every available surface, including the floor. Micah and Noah were quietly following her around, picking up the books she would snap shut and shove away, and silently piling them into neat stacks that she would then dismantle as she went digging for something she’d read in one of them.

  Chase was also following her around, reading over her shoulder.

  And Daniel? Well, he was roaming through her house and surgery and barn, to study what type of structures they should build in 2243, he’d told her just before he and Snuggles—who seemed way too content in his arms—had disappeared.

  Meanwhile, she was getting more than a little frantic as she searched in vain for something—anything—that would help her find another species of animal that would satisfy the barely decipherable formulas on Chase’s device.

  But try as she might, for some stupid, insane, no-good, rotten reason, the only genus of mammal that appeared even close to what they needed was Leporidae.

  Or in layman terms, a rabbit.

  Or in more personal terms, Snuggles.

  And if Chase had known how to work backward from the Latin genus, she didn’t doubt that she’d be standing in an empty den right now, in absolute, stark silence, minus her pet.

  “We have less than an hour, Isobel,” he said, straightening with a sigh and closing the book they were reading. “Do you or do you not agree with me that of the five names they gave us, it’s the Lepor-something family we are looking for? Because if it is, you need to tell us what animal that is exactly, so we can go catch one now.”

  She also sighed, rubbing her eyes with her fists, then finally looked directly at him. “Yes, I agree with you,” she said softly, just as Daniel walked into the room. She looked at each of the four men in turn, who were all looking at her expectantly, then settled her gaze on Chase. “Um . . . they don’t intend to kill this animal, do they, to develop the vaccine?”

  “No. They need to keep it alive, to draw its blood.”

  Isobel took a shuddering breath. “Then the genus is Leporidae, and the animal you’re looking for, is a rabbit.”

  The room suddenly went silent enough that they could have heard a mouse sneeze, and almost as one, all four men stopped breathing.

  When she felt silent tears streaming down her cheeks, Isobel hugged herself and nodded toward Daniel. “I guess mankind’s salvation has been r-right here under our noses all . . . all along.”

  “Are there no other rabbits we could take?” Daniel whispered, placing his hand over Snuggles’ ears, as if protecting her from their conversation. “A wild one, or . . . some other one we could find?”

  “There’s a chance one of the pet shelters might have a rabbit,” she said, even as she swiped at her cheek and shook her head. “But the closest shelter is in Ellsworth, and even if they did have one, it would take several hours to get there, fill out the paperwork they require, and then get back to your island.”

  “We don’t have several hours,” Chase interjected softly.

  “I-I know.”

  Chase pulled a tiny metal collar out of his pocket as he walked over to Daniel and held out his hands. “At any cost, brother; to us, or anyone, or any thing,” he said quietly.

  Daniel glanced at Isobel, his dark-as-the-ocean eyes locking on hers briefly before he looked back at Chase. “We can come back,” he growled tigh
tly. “Isobel will find us several rabbits, and we will come back and get them.”

  “We can’t,” Chase said, shaking his head. “The transport might not have the energy for another trip. As it is, we can’t even get back to the moon. We’ll have to develop the vaccine ourselves and have it waiting for the others when they arrive.”

  “Dammit, Daniel! Just give him Snuggles and go!” Isobel cried, turning away. “All of you, just get the hell out of my house. Now!”

  She ran out of the den, down the hall, and into her surgery, slamming the door behind her so hard the windows rattled. She blindly groped her way along the reception counter and fell into one of the waiting-room chairs, then bent at the waist, buried her face in her hands on her knees, and broke into loud, gut-wrenching sobs.

  Honest to God, she wanted to die.

  No, she wanted to go with them!

  She could help them. She knew stuff they couldn’t possibly know about Earth, and animals, and vaccines, and medicine! And weather. And fishing. And what plants were edible. Dammit, she could help.

  No, she just wanted to die!

  She was so distraught that she didn’t even scream when she was suddenly plucked out of the chair, slammed against a solid chest, and hugged so tightly that her last sob came out as a strangled squeak.

  “Stop crying, Isobel,” Daniel growled, sitting down in one of the chairs to cradle her against his chest. “I don’t like it.”

  Realizing that he was shaking nearly as badly as she was, she bunched his shirt in her fists and cried harder.

  “I’m sorry, Isobel,” he whispered. “For everything. You have been nothing but kind and generous to us, and so brave through all we forced upon you; I’m sorry we hurt you. But mostly I’m sorry that I have hurt you,” he continued gutturally, stroking her hair. “And by all that I hold dear, I will find a way to make this up to you, I swear.”

  “You can’t! You’re going to disappear into the ether!” she wailed, struggling against him because she was afraid she’d start begging him to take her with them.