Quinn's Way Read online

  “WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?”

  Houston took a startled step back. “I beg your pardon, but it’s not every day a man wearing a silver lamé catsuit falls out of my apple tree. What are you doing here?”

  “Experiencing a crisis, if you don’t mind.”

  Houston looked around. No car, no horse, no motorcycle, not even a bungee cord from which he might have conceivably catapulted out of a hovering helicopter. She took a cautious, protective step back. “How did you get here?”

  He didn’t glance up. “That’s a rather complicated story.”

  “Sky diver?” she asked, thinking out loud.

  No parachute.

  “You’re making a movie!” Houston exclaimed suddenly. “That’s it!”

  He looked at her, and she knew that wasn’t it. He looked at her, and she knew a lot of things about him…. That he had eyes that couldn’t lie, a temper he didn’t often show and the kind of face a woman wouldn’t easily forget.

  Dear Reader,

  Traveling three hundred years to find your true love? It’s a journey only a hero in a silver jumpsuit could pull off—make that a great-fitting silver jumpsuit.

  When I first started the story of Quinn, the quantum-leaping field historian, I knew that any hero who could get lost in time, fall from an apple tree and still cause hearts to flutter would be a blast to write about. I was right. I had a great time pairing him with the most unlikely of loves—Iowa schoolteacher Houston Malloy.

  Time-travel romances are a special kind of fairy tale, and I’m pleased that Quinn’s Way is available once again. Happy reading!

  Sincerely,

  REBECCA FLANDERS

  Quinn’s Way

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Until the spaceman fell out of her apple tree, Houston Malloy was having a perfect morning.

  For the first time in over a month, she didn’t have bus duty, cafeteria duty or a parent-teacher conference. Mark had gotten up with her first call, hadn’t complained too much about his breakfast and had even brushed his teeth without being told. Houston had fifteen minutes before she had to leave for school, which allowed her plenty of time for a second cup of coffee and her favorite pastime—taking in the view from her kitchen window.

  It was the middle of May, and Iowa farm country had never been more beautiful. Houston liked to get up early, even on school days, just to watch the light spread over the meadow, which on this particular morning was bedecked in spring green, butter cream yellow and morning glory blue. Her neighbor’s sheepdog, Arthur, was chasing a honey bee beneath the low-hanging branches of the apple tree—he was not very bright, Arthur—and her calico cat was dozing in a gentle patch of sun on the windowsill. It was precisely the kind of peaceful bucolic scene Houston had moved to the country to enjoy.

  She turned away to refill her coffee cup, and when she looked back a humanoid creature in a silver jumpsuit and helmet was tumbling out of the apple tree.

  The coffee cup slipped out of her fingers and crashed to the floor, splattering her shoes and the hem of her skirt with coffee before she jumped out of the way. Arthur the sheepdog went into a fit of crazed barking and Heloise the cat shrieked and took off across the lawn in a black-and-orange-and-white blur. Mark clattered down the stairs, shouting, “Hey, Mom, you won’t believe what’s going on in the meadow!”

  But Houston was already running across the front porch, the screen door banging behind her.

  By the time she reached him, the alien—or whatever he was—had managed to get to his feet, apparently unharmed, and was now trying to fend off the attentions of an overexcited Arthur, who couldn’t decide whether to lick the stranger’s face, defend the apple tree from attack or chase the cat. The stranger, for his part, was muttering angrily what must have been curses, while alternately trying to chase the dog away and gather up something that had spilled on the ground.

  Houston, when she was within ten feet of him, slowed her approach, regarding him warily. He was without a doubt the strangest thing she had seen in her meadow in quite some time. The formfitting silver jumpsuit displayed every muscle and plane, ripple and bulge, and though a few of those were quite interesting, curiosity was not enough to override caution. His head and face were completely covered by an oval helmet made of some kind of black plastic or glass, completely unlike anything she had ever seen before. In fact, everything about him was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

  Mark ran up and she grabbed him by the shoulder, watching the scene before her with growing concern. The dog was barking and circling the stranger, and Houston could now see that what he was trying to pick up from the ground were small instruments, like computer tools, and little pieces of black plastic. Apparently something had been broken in the fall.

  Abruptly, the man pulled off his helmet, running his hand through a headful of squashed sandy curls, and glared at her. “What are you staring at?” he demanded.

  Houston took a startled step backward. “I beg your pardon, but it’s not every day a man wearing a silver lamé catsuit falls out of my apple tree. What are you doing here?”

  “Experiencing a crisis, if you don’t mind. Is this your beast?”

  He bent down again to search the ground, and Arthur, apparently encouraged by his audience, lunged for him. Mark broke away from Houston and ran to Arthur, grabbing him by the collar while keeping a curious eye on the stranger.

  On further study, Houston decided he probably wasn’t a spaceman, after all. Curly brown hair and clear hazel eyes seemed to her distinctly all-American traits, and she doubted whether the kind of curses he was muttering were taught on the average alien planet. It was just that bizarre outfit he was wearing…that and the fact that he appeared out of thin air between one blink of her eye and the next.

  Houston looked around. No car, no horse, no motorcycle, not even a bungie cord from which he might have conceivably catapulted out of a hovering helicopter. She took a cautious, protective step toward Mark. “Where in the world did you come from?”

  He barely spared her a glance. “Clarion, Minnesota. Excuse me, young man. If you could hold that animal back a little farther I’d be grateful.”

  Mark voiced one of the questions that was uppermost in Houston’s mind. “How did you get here?”

  He didn’t glance up. “That’s a rather complicated story.”

  Houston looked at her son, thinking out loud. “Sky diver?”

  Mark shook his head. He was a studious child, his eyes alert and thoughtful behind Clark Kent-type glasses, and far too serious for a ten-year-old. He could always be counted on to point out the obvious. “No parachute,” he replied.

  Houston took another look at the man’s shiny suit.

  “Well, eliminating the spaceman theory—”

  “Great son of a cat!” the man exclaimed, and Houston threw him a startled look, stepping quickly closer to her son.

  The man straightened up with both hands full of tiny machine parts and scraps of grass, his expression disgusted and dismayed. “Look at that! Everything broken, scattered, filled with dirt—” Suddenly his expression changed. Houston thought she could actually see color drain from his face. “Where’s my…?” His hand went to his belt line—though he was wearing no belt—as though he expected to find something there. When he didn’t, he turned to search the ground again, a new
desperation in his movements.

  Houston took Mark’s shoulders in a unifying gesture—mother, son and sheepdog against the Intruder. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  He replied impatiently, “I hardly think any of that matters now—”

  “Excuse me!” Exasperation sharpened the challenge in Houston’s tone. “Since you’re the trespasser here, it seems to me that it should matter a great deal! This is my apple tree and my meadow, and unless you can give me a good reason for not calling the police—”

  Arthur apparently decided at that moment that he had been still long enough. With one good lunge, he broke Mark’s grip and bounded out of reach. The stranger ducked back against the tree to avoid Arthur’s enthusiastic movements, and after one or two wild circles around the group, the sheepdog took off across the meadow in search of more interesting games.

  The stranger stood up, dusting off his knees and muttering, “Well, that’s just perfect. If anything else can go wrong—”

  “You’re making a movie!” Houston exclaimed suddenly. “That’s it!”

  Mark glanced around and reminded his mother, “No crew. A movie crew has lots of equipment, and it would take a couple of eighteen-wheelers to get it all out here. I read somewhere—”

  “So he’s the advance man,” Houston interrupted, a little too anxious to find an explanation. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re making a movie.”

  He looked at her, and she knew that wasn’t it. He looked at her, and she knew a lot of things about him…. That he had eyes that couldn’t lie, a temper he didn’t often show and the kind of face a woman wouldn’t easily forget. If he had been a teacher, every girl in class would have a crush on him. If he had been a policeman or a fireman, someone would have persuaded him to pose for their annual charity calendar, and he would have been too nice to refuse. If he had been an athlete he would have been the darling of the media, and if he had been a movie star she would have known it.

  He could have been any of those things, but he was none of them. Still, there was something about him that made her heart beat a little faster, just looking at him; something above the ordinary, larger than life…something oddly familiar. The set of the mouth, the little scar bisecting the corner of one eyebrow… Where had she seen him before?

  He released a soft breath, and she became aware that he was examining her with a scrutiny similar to her own. She felt her cheeks warm, but she wasn’t sure whether it was from embarrassment or excitement. What was it about this man?

  And why in the world couldn’t he have found clothing that fitted him more loosely?

  “The name is Quinn,” he said, with deliberate politeness, “and I am not a spaceman or a sky diver or a movie maker. I’m a field historian on a research project who is, at the moment, just a little lost. My equipment is in a shambles and one very important piece of it is missing—a piece, I might add, that if I don’t find I’ll be in more trouble than even I want to think about—so please forgive me if I’ve inconvenienced you but I have far, far bigger problems.”

  “What’s a field historian?” Mark asked.

  Houston couldn’t stop staring at him. “Have we met?”

  For the first time since falling out of the tree, he looked surprised. Those clear hazel eyes moved over her again, toe to head, and lingered on her face. Then he looked away and answered abruptly, “No. I would have remembered.”

  In that moment Houston almost thought she could put her finger on what it was about him that fascinated her so. But just as she was about to grasp it, a familiar sound distracted her attention and Mark said, “School bus.”

  She turned toward the road just in time to see the big yellow bus round the curve in front of their house. Mark sometimes rode the bus on Houston’s early days, but today they were riding to school together. What the appearance of the bus meant was that she had less than twenty minutes to get to her classroom.

  “Perfect,” she muttered. So much for her leisurely morning. She turned Mark toward the house and gave him a gentle push. “Okay, run and get your books together. I’m right behind you.”

  He gave the stranger a last skeptical look, then did as he was instructed.

  Houston looked back to Quinn. “Look,” she said, “I’ve got to go to work. Just get out of here, okay? Whatever you’re doing, just don’t do it here. And…” She had started to leave him but turned back. “If you’re planning on burgling the place, please don’t break any windows. They’re all odd sized and hard to replace.”

  He had resumed his search of the ground, and he looked up with another spark of surprise. Then he smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  He had an absolutely incredible smile.

  Houston hurried back to the house, knowing she really should call the police and give them a description of the stranger, just in case. But there was something about that face, that smile… Besides, she really didn’t have time.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Mark assured her as he buckled himself into the front seat of the car beside her. “He’s pretty strange, but I don’t think he’s dangerous. I sure would like to check out his story, though.”

  Houston looked into the eyes of her wise little man and felt the urge to hug him hard. Mark was at an age where he did not always appreciate such spontaneous gestures of affection, however, so she settled for tousling his hair lightly. “I’m sure you’re right, honey. He’s probably just some kook who likes to climb trees.”

  “Probably,” agreed Mark. “But I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Houston’s pride was mitigated with concern. She was proud of him because he was so grown up, and she was concerned because he was so grown up. She and Mark’s father had divorced when Mark was six, and since then it seemed Mark had grown more and more serious, more and more responsible. She wished sometimes he could just relax and be a kid. When a ten-year-old child felt he needed to protect his mother from strangers, something was seriously out of balance.

  But as it turned out, the entire discussion was moot. As Houston slowed the car at the end of the driveway before turning out onto the road, she deliberately looked back and searched the area around the apple tree. The stranger was gone.

  QUINN KNEW that he was in trouble. He was completely lost, the most important things he owned were in pieces that he was not entirely sure he would be able to put together again, and he had no idea how to get back where he belonged.

  This would not have ordinarily been a problem of life or death importance, but where Quinn belonged was approximately three hundred years in the future.

  The malfunction that had brought him here must have been with the frequency resonator—the same resonator that was now nowhere to be found and without which he had no chance of ever getting home. He tried to recall if there was anything he had done or not done that could have possibly caused this to happen but quickly abandoned the effort. He would leave problems analysis to the button-punchers back home. The only thing he had to worry about now was how to get there.

  Quinn was one of the foremost researchers of his time, in many ways a pioneer in his field. That was not a distinction one earned by being unprepared for emergencies. He quickly began to prioritize his needs.

  In the storage compartment of his helmet he had money, some undamaged tools and a few essential micronics that would enable him to interface with the computers of this time. Beneath his protective suit he wore a costume appropriate—more or less—to this decade. Matters could have been worse.

  The first priority on this, as any other mission, was to establish a cover and a base of operations. Food, shelter, the elements of survival were necessities that could not be pushed aside by any other concern. So the first order of business was to find out where and when he was, so that he could establish an identity in this time and set up a base.

  The search for the frequency resonator was paramount, but he had to be prepared for the fact that it might have been lost during transfer and might never be found. He wou
ld have to begin work immediately on repairing the tracking device, using the equipment he had with him and the materials of this century that would enable him to find the resonator if it was in this time period.

  But in the meantime, there was his mission and no excuse for abandoning it. Even if he could not return home, there was always the chance that the information he gathered could.

  One thing was certain. He was attracting far too much attention here, in the middle of nowhere recognizable, dressed as he was. The way the woman had looked at him… The way the woman had looked at him made his pulse beat faster even now, remembering her.

  Some of the surprises on this trip were not entirely unpleasant. Maybe she was a sign of better things to come.

  He watched her walk back toward the house, then looked around for a place in which to change into his “civilian” clothes. There was a closed garage and a couple of outbuildings close to the house, but given what she had said about burglars, it was probably wiser not to give her any more cause for suspicion—particularly since he was going to need her permission if he was to continue to search her property for the resonator.

  Memorizing his landmarks, he checked the contents of the storage area in his helmet one more time. He took out a small metal holder and opened it, looking at the contents soberly for a moment. Twenty-three small tablets were contained inside the case, one for each day he was expected to be here. When the pills ran out, so would his time.

  It was not a comforting thought.

  But Quinn was an explorer by trade, an adventurer by nature, and he was not easily daunted. He had been in tight spots before and had always found his way out; he would no doubt do so again. Here he was in the twentieth century, that mad and reckless time where anything was possible and every breath was an adventure; if he had to be stranded, he could think of no place better to be.

  He would find his way home. He always did.