Time After Time

“M
ISS
C
ORTNEY
-B
ENNET
?”

From some distant corner of the very dark room a tiny, gentle voice reproved him. “It’s just Bennet. Most Americans don’t use hyphenated names.”

A bit rattled for several reasons, he stepped inside the loft and half-closed the door behind him. It was so dark that he had the eerie feeling of having been swallowed up by something huge and dimly threatening. It didn’t help that rain lashed the high windows or that thunder rumbled distantly.

“Sorry. Uh—I got a message about a problem.”

There was a long silence broken only by a muffled crash as he took an unwary step forward, tripped over something unyielding, and found himself sprawled across what seemed to be a large box. The tiny voice reached him through his muttered curses.

“A slight problem. You may have noticed that it’s dark.”

“The whole building’s dark,” he retorted, peeling himself off the box.

“Well, you own the building. Can’t you do something about it?” Suspicion abruptly entered the ridiculously small voice. “You do own the building, don’t you?”

“Not at all,” he responded politely, barking his shin on what felt like a boulder. “I just stopped by to rape and pillage.”

“Perfect weather for it,” she murmured.

“Look, where
are
you?” he demanded, trying to home in on that small voice.

“I’m not sure. I was in the shower when the
lights went out, and I haven’t been able to find my flashlight. I just barely found the phone.”

Before he could stop himself, he asked, “Did you find any clothes?”

“I found a robe.” Her voice turned reflective. “Or maybe it’s just the towel Caliban chewed a couple of holes in. It
feels
like a robe, though.”

Fascinated, he took a step toward her voice, tripped again, and found himself hugging something tall, unyielding, and furry. Recoiling violently, he tripped going backward and sat down hard on yet another box.

“What the
hell?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I just ran into something with fur,” he managed to say.

“Is it alive?”

“I sincerely hope not!”

“Oh, well, that was Fluffy. He’s a bear. A
stuffed
bear,” she added rather hastily.

He took a deep breath. “Oh.”

“Yes. Don’t you have a flashlight?”

He decided to remain where he was on the box
because there was something definitely unnerving in encountering a bear—be it ever so stuffed—in total darkness. “I couldn’t find my flashlight,” he explained, adding, “I just moved in yesterday myself.”

“You’re a lot of help,” she told him severely. “What
is
your name anyway? I’ve forgotten.”

“Noah Thorne. And you’re Stephanie Alexandra Cortney Bennet,” he said, remembering not to hyphenate the surnames. “It stuck in my mind.”

“Impressive, isn’t it?” she agreed cheerfully. “I was born with it, but use it only professionally. To my friends, I’m just Alex Bennet.”

For some time Noah had been conscious of a wry feeling about his mental image of the lady with the impressive name. Now he was certain that image was slightly off. They had never met face to face, or even talked on the phone; he had seen some of her interior decorating and had hired her through correspondence to handle the decorating of his building.

And Alex Bennet, upon learning all the details of the conversion, had instantly requested a loft
for herself. She had decided to relocate to San Francisco from the East, and both the job and the loft had sounded perfect to her. But he had been gone all day while she moved in, and they still hadn’t met.

Neither of them knew the building at all well—she because it was her first day here, and Noah because he’d been out of town working on a commission while the conversion took place.

It was an old building, a warehouse recently and very roughly converted to lofts. There would be five lofts eventually, although only two were presently habitable: the one he had moved into on the top floor yesterday, and the one Alex Bennet had taken on the first floor today. Neither loft was much more than bare floors and brick walls at this point.

Noah had tired of his apartment in a vast complex downtown, and had instantly decided to move here when the warehouse-conversion idea became feasible. He planned to manage the building himself, taking the top floor as both living and
work areas. It would allow him plenty of space and time for his photographic work, he’d decided.

He wondered now if he was being optimistic about having plenty of time. Everything that could go wrong
had
already, and he’d been here only since yesterday. He’d had the plumber out only hours after moving in to fix various clogged drains, requested the building contractor to return in order to close up a doorway somebody had officiously added to the plans, and now it most certainly looked as though the electrician would have to be called.

He sat on a box in a very dark room, wary of moving because of a stuffed bear, and growing more and more curious about his decorator/tenant. He had checked his answering service after leaving his studio late in the afternoon, stopping by a phone booth because his home phone hadn’t been connected yet, and his studio phone had just been disconnected since it was his last day in the place.

There was little he could do about the situation, but when his service reported a problem with his
tenant, he’d felt honor-bound at least to find out what the problem was. Encountering darkness upon entering the building, he’d felt his way cautiously up the three flights of stairs to his own loft, searched fruitlessly for a flashlight, then felt his way back down the stairs to Alex’s loft.

For all the good it had done either of them.

Suddenly aware of the silence, he suggested, “Matches? Candles?”

“Are you kidding? I couldn’t even find my clothes.”

Noah calculated the position of the bear, carefully got off his box-chair, and made another attempt to work his way toward her voice. When his outstretched fingers encountered fur, he jerked his hand back, silently damned his sense of direction, made a ten-degree correction, and went on.