That was part of the problem, he admitted as he prowled the ship. Men wouldn’t. Maybe she hadn’t paid attention before. Maybe she’d been too wrapped up in her books and her work and her theories on the societal tendencies of man as a species. One day she was going to slip those glasses off her nose and look around—and realize that there were men, flesh-and-blood men, looking back at her. Men who could make promises, he thought in disgust. Even if they didn’t mean to keep them.

Perhaps she hadn’t realized how much passion, how much heat, how much power, she held. But he’d opened those doors for her. Opened, hell—he’d smashed them. Once he was gone, other men would tend the fire he’d lit.

The thought made him insane. Cal admitted it as he dragged his hands through his hair. Stark, raving crazy. He belonged in one of those padded cells Libby had spoken of. He couldn’t stand it—the thought of someone else touching her, kissing her. Undressing her.

With an oath, he wheeled into his cabin and began to put it in order. That is, he tossed things around.

He was being selfish and unfair. And he didn’t care. It was true that he would have to accept the fact that Libby would go on with her life, and that her life would include a lover—or lovers, he thought, grinding his teeth. A husband, perhaps, and children. He had to accept that. But he was damned if he had to like it.

After kicking a shoe into a corner, he dug his hands into his pockets and stared at the picture of his family. His parents, he mused, going over each feature of their faces as he had never bothered to before. It had been three . . . no, four months since he’d seen them. If you didn’t count the centuries.

They were attractive, strong-looking people, despite his father’s slightly hangdog expression. They had always seemed so content to him, so sure of their lives and what they wanted. He liked to picture them at home, with his mother laboring over some thick technical book and his father whistling between his teeth as he played with his flowers.

He had his mother’s nose. Intrigued, Cal leaned down to peer closer. Strange, he’d never noticed that before. Apparently she’d been satisfied with the one she’d been born with and had passed it on to him.

And to Jacob, he realized as he studied his brother’s image. But to Jacob she’d passed along brilliance, as well. Brilliance wasn’t always a gift, Caleb thought with a grin. It seemed to make Jacob hotheaded, questioning and impatient. He remembered his mother saying that J.T., as his family called him, was more fond of arguing than breathing.