What about us? (43 page)

He didn’t have to think about
it.

“Grace... my lovely, lovely
Grace.  Why in the world wouldn’t I want that? It appears that I have searched
for you across quite a few timelines and realities.  Why would I do that if I
didn’t love you?”

It wasn’t just what he said
that told me what I needed to know; it was his eyes, his voice and most
importantly, I knew the words had come from deep inside.

“Hah! Romeo and Juliet might be
the original star crossed lovers, but you and me Jack, we go way beyond that!”

He laughed.

I leaned further across the
table.  If they were watching us, which I suppose they must have been, I didn’t
want them to be able to lip read.

“It’s just that... they didn’t
take my watch away from me.  Even if they had, I’ve got another one pinned to
me knickers and I’ve got all the money from the apartment in me bag.  You know,
just in case...”

His eyes glowed and a huge grin
started to spread across his face.

“You are amazing Grace, but
life without time travel won’t have any adventures in it.  You’ll be stuck with
me in a normal humdrum life.  Would that ever be enough for you?”

I raised my eyebrows at him.  Stupid
man, I could see he still wasn’t convinced.

“Jack, I’ve seen and done
things that most people would describe as magical, but do you want to know what
the real magic has been?”

He tilted his head to one side
and studied me carefully before nodding.  I was sure he already knew, but I
wanted to make sure.

“The real magic has always been
what we create together, regardless of when and where we are.  And anyway,
you’ll be stuck with me; have you considered that?” I asked.

“Life with you will always be
an adventure.” he said, smiling broadly.

“Good.  Now get cracking on
working out if we can have this humdrum life or not.” I told him, hoping that
we weren’t about to run out of time.

“Right you are.  Now let me
think.  The system will be shut down in around four minutes and from the
base...”

His eyebrows were going fifteen
to the dozen.

“They may not come and search
for us, because the search itself could do more damage than leaving us whenever
we are.  That’s one of the main findings of the investigation; apparently we’ve
not been properly assessing the ‘meddle risk factor’.  That and the fact that
you and I have to stop searching for each other across time, oh and...”

I interrupted him.  “We could
run Jack, we could run right now.” I whispered.

After all, if we were
successful, we’d have time later to talk about The Board and all that.  It just
wasn’t important at that precise moment, not to me anyway.

“Just you and me Jack, for as
long as we’ve got.  Even if they do find us again, it might take a while and we’d
get more time together...”

“You saved the world.” he said,
looking at me.

“Yes... and one day you are
going to have to tell me just how I did that.” I said, squeezing his hand even
tighter.  “And we can learn from our mistakes, we can learn not to break the
rules anymore.  So as I understand it, you’ll still be making amends, it’s just
that I’ll be there making them with you.”

“But where shall we go?” he
asked.

“Well, I have a rather nice
place in Lyme Regis that we could retire to and there’s a serious amount of
history about to happen that somebody should be recording for the future.” I
whispered, surreptitiously undoing the pin on the watch.  As it fell from my
breast, I passed it to him.

“June 15
^th
1902 suit
you?” he asked, setting the coordinates as I tried to shield what he was doing
from anyone that might have been watching us.

“Perfect!” I exclaimed, winding
my other hand around his arm.  “That’s only two days after I left; the place
should still be clean!”

He smiled happily at me.  “Home
Grace, home at last.”

“’Ere, we haven’t paid for the
coffee!” I exclaimed, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, maybe we’ll come back
for a holiday; we can pay then.”
he said, winking at me
.

The shimmer enveloped us and I
turned my head, to see Hector and Suri sitting at a table just inside the cafe. 
Suri looked up and while I can’t be sure, I think she was smiling.  But she
definitely waved at me.  Of course they had the benefit of history, so maybe
they knew something I didn’t.  And of course Jack wouldn’t have to come and
look for me anymore; he’d know exactly where I’d be, right at his side...