“I’ll tell them you’re off meditating. My father will love it.”

“Okay. Then tonight . . .” He lowered his head for a gentle kiss. “I’ll concentrate on you.”

“Concentrating’s all you’ll do.” She linked her arms around his neck. “You’re sleeping on the couch.”

“I am.”

“Definitely.”

“In that case . . .” He slid down to her.

***

Later, during the night, when the fire was burning low and the house was quiet, Cal sat alone, fully dressed. He knew how to get back. At least he knew how he had gotten where and when he was and how to reverse the process.

With a few more repairs, basically unnecessary ones, he would be ready to go. Technically he would be ready. But emotionally . . . Nothing had ever torn him quite so neatly in two.

If she asked him to stay . . . God, he was afraid if she did, it would swing the balance of the tug-of-war he was waging. But she wouldn’t ask him to stay. He couldn’t ask her to go.

Perhaps when he made it back and offered the data to the world of science a new, less dangerous way would be created to conquer time. Perhaps he could come back.

Turning his head, he looked into the fire. More fantasies. Libby was facing the facts, and so would he.

He thought he heard her on the stairs. But when he looked it was William.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asked Cal.

“Some. You?”

“I always loved this place at night.” Because he loved his daughter, as well, he was determined to make an effort to be civil, if not exactly friendly. “The quiet, the dark.” He stooped to add another log to the fire. Sparks flew, then winked out. “I never pictured myself living anywhere else.”

“I never imagined living in a place like this or realized how hard it would be to leave.”

“A long way from Philadelphia.”

“A very long way.”

He recognized gloom when he heard it. William had courted it early in his youth, mistaking it for romance. Unbending a little, he dug out the brandy and two snifters. “Want a drink?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

William settled in the winged chair and stretched out his long legs. “I used to sit here at night and ponder the meaning of life.”

“Did you ever figure it out?”

“Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t.”

It had been simpler, somehow, when his main concerns had been world peace and social reform. Now, God help him, he was nearing middle age—that area that had always seemed so gray and distant. It reminded him that he had once been a young man, much younger than the one facing him now, with his head in the clouds and his mind on a woman. The times they are a-changing, he thought wryly, and swirled his brandy.

“Are you in love with Libby?”

“I was just asking myself that same question.”