"Stubborn?" Margo laughed shrilly. Then, before she could quite believe she'd said it, Margo heard herself say, "Well, if I'm stubborn, I come by it honestly! With you for a grandfather, what else could you..."
Kit Carson halted mid-stride. His face collapsed into a tangle of weathered lines, aging him ten years in an instant. Despite the tan, he had blanched the color of dirty snow.
A knot of panic condensed in Margo's belly, the germ of a glacier. Shit ...oh, shit, me and my big mouth ...
For at least ten thudding heartbeats, he just stood there, looking like a stray word might knock him to the ground. Piercing blue eyes had lost their focus. Margo groped uncertainly for the chair and shoved it aside, anxious to put room between herself and the forceful man who would be coming out of shock any second.
Empty blue eyes focused slowly on her face. His brows came together. He studied her for another thudding stretch of heartbeats. Margo didn't know what to say or do to fix this. When he drew a halting sip of air, she braced for the worst, but he didn't say anything. He seemed incapable of speech. After a moment, he shut his eyes. Then, without a single word spoken, he turned and opened the door. He left her standing behind the chair, feeling like she wanted to die and get the hurting over with, rather than face what she'd just done.
Kit didn't hear or see much of anything. He navigated the library on autopilot and found Brian Hendrickson behind the main reference desk. He located the desk by bumping into it.
"Good afternoon, Kit. What can I- Dear God, what's wrong?"
The librarian's face swam into focus. Kit gripped the edge of the reference desk until his knuckles hurt. "Am I awake?"
"Are you what?"
"Am I awake?"
Brian blinked. "Uh -- yes?"
Kit swore. His belly did another drop into oblivion. He wished for the tiniest of moments he could follow it. "I was afraid of that." He left Hendrickson gaping after him and literally ran into Margo halfway back to the cubicle. She staggered, blinking tears, then made to cut around him.
"Oh, no you don't!" He sidestepped quickly, blocking her path. "Back where you came from!" He pointed imperiously.
Her face was blotched and red. "Leave me alone!"
She tried to bolt. He cut her off neatly and resisted the urge to seize her wrists. The last thing he wanted her to do was scream. But when she shoved him hard enough to stagger him off balance, he reacted before his brain could catch up-which wasn't very difficult in his current state of mind. Kit snatched her off balance, swearing under his breath, and forcibly pulled her toward the back of the library.
Predictably, she resisted.
Kit swung her around hard enough to jounce her teeth together. "Do you really want me to turn you over Grandpa's knee, little girl?"
Margo worked her mouth like a drowning fish. "You, you wouldn't-" She halted mid-protest. "You would."
For a moment, they stalemated in the center of La-La Land's library. Then she wrenched free of his grip, with an against-the-thumb movement that spoke of some martial arts training, but she didn't try to leave. She stood glaring at him, chest heaving against the plunging neckline of her dress in a fashion that made him want to throw a flour sack over her torso. Then she broke and fled toward the language lab. Kit drew a deep, shaky breath.
Dear God . .
He needed time to absorb this, time to figure out when and how ...
Sarah, why didn't you ever tell me?
The hurt in his chest made his whole soul ache.
Kit lifted a shaking hand to his eyes. Gotta think. Sarah and I broke up in ...If she was pregnant then, and had a child before ...Sarah's child would've had to be about seventeen when Margo was..."Dear God. She could be."
Teenage pregnancies had very nearly become the rule, rather than the exception, during the years Margo's mother would have been a teenager. Margo had reminded Kit all along of someone. Now he knew. She didn't look much like Sarah, but that temper, not to mention the pride ...even the determination to get what she wanted and everything be damned that stood in her way. Margo was Sarah van Wyyck all over again.
He didn't know whether to laugh or cry or swear aloud.
Meanwhile, his granddaughter had to be faced.
"Christ, and she's still set on being a time scout."
His viscera did another swan dive into a bottomless chasm. l can't let her do this .... Hard on the heels of that thought came another. And just how do you propose to stop her?
The whole library wavered in his vision for a moment as he superimposed Margo's face over some of the sights that still gave him nightmares. She doesn't understand... thinks it's high adventure and she'll live forever ...and I can't even insist on partnering her, can't even go along and watch her back ....
If Kit stepped through another unknown gate, odds were extremely high the attempt would kill him.
"What am I going to do? She wants this..." And was it any wonder? What must the kid have grown up thinking and dreaming every time she heard about her famous granddaddy?
"Dammit, Kit, pull it together: ..."
Walking back into the language lab was possibly the hardest thing Kit had ever done.
Margo had pulled the chair into the far corner; but she wasn't sitting in it. She'd taken up a stance behind it, gripping the back as though he were a savage lion in need of taming. He recalled some of the ugly things he'd said to her and swallowed. Damn ...Kit closed the door softly and faced her. Tear streaks ran down her face in jagged paths. But her chin was still up, still defiant, despite visible fear in her eyes.
"I'm not an ogre," Kit muttered. "'You can put down the chair."
Very slowly, Margo let go her death grip. The front legs settled with a quiet thump. She swallowed a couple of times. "I didn't mean-I mean, I didn't plan to-"
"It's said," Kit interrupted brusquely. "And yes, you do come by it honestly."
For some reason, that brought a fresh flood of tears. Kit felt as though he'd just hit her and couldn't for the life of him figure out how to repair the damage. The sense of helplessness which paralyzed him reminded Kit unpleasantly of the times Sarah had dissolved into tears.
"I-Skeeter, he-and you-" Margo's voice control was gone.
Kit finally thought to hunt for a handkerchief and found a rumpled one in a back pocket. "Here."
She all but snatched it out of his hand, then turned her back and struggled visibly to regain the shreds of her dignity. Kit waited quietly, aware that a woman's pride was a far more serious matter than a man's and men had been known to do murder when theirs was injured. She hiccoughed a few times and blotted her face, then blew her nose.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I ruined Skeeter's hanky, too."
Kit winced. He decided he did not want to know how Skeeter Jackson had comforted his granddaughter. If he'd hurt her ...I'll toss him through the next unstable gate that opens. She finally faced him, a watery-eyed waif in a bedraggled strumpet's gown. No wonder she paid somebody to change the name on her ID card to "Smith." Didn't want anyone to know who she really was, desperate to do this on her own merits ...
Kit knew only too well how that felt. He cleared his throat, more to gain time than anything. "You're dead set on this time-scouting business."
She swallowed. Her eyes, red and angry as bee stings, still brimmed with unshed tears. "I've wanted it all my life."
Once again he cleared his throat. "Things as they are, I can't say I blame you ...." Then he eyed her critically, studying her for the first time as a potential scout. He shook his head over the visible cleavage. "Best thing to do would be disguise you as a boy, but you're not really built for it."
Her eyes widened. "You mean-" Then, hastily, "It's not real. I mean, they're real, but I'm wearing stays. A corset. Skeeter bought them for me at an outfitter's. They really make me look ...well, more voluptuous." Kit, thoroughly familiar with the bio-mechanical effect of a woman's corset stays, flushed. I'm talking to my granddaughter about the size of her breasts ....