Times Change by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

brother. Not Cal, who had always been enamored of women in general but never of one in particular. The idea of Cal being matched was illogical. And yet he was holding the proof in his hand.
    It infuriated him.
    To have left his family, his home, his world. And for a woman. Jacob slammed the picture down on the dresser and turned away. It had been madness. There was no other explanation. One woman couldn’t change a life so drastically. And what else was there here to tempt a man? Oh, it was an interesting place, certainly. Fascinating enough to warrant a few weeks of study and research. He would undoubtedly write a series of papers on the experience when he returned to his own time. But . . . what was the ancient saying? A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
    He would put Caleb in his right mind again. Whatever the woman had done to him he would undo. No one knew Caleb Hornblower better than his own brother.
    They had been together not so long ago. Time was relative, he thought again, but without humor. The last evening they had spent together had been in Jacob’s quarters at the university. They’d played poker and drank Venusian rum—a particularly potent liquor manufactured on the neighboring planet. Cal had commandeered an entire case from his last run.
    As Jacob remembered, Cal had lost at cards, cheerfully and elaborately, as was his habit.
    They had both gotten sloppy drunk.
    “When I get back from this run,” Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, “I’m going to spend three weeks on the beach—south of France, I think—watching women and staying drunk.”
    “Three days,” Jacob had told him. He’d swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. “Then you’d go up again. In the last ten years you’ve been in the air more than on the ground.”
    “You don’t fly enough.” With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob’s glass and downed the contents. “Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it’s a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them.”
    “Point of view. If I didn’t study them, you couldn’t bounce around them.” He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. “Besides, you’re a better pilot than I am. It’s the only thing you do better than I do.”
    Cal had grinned again. “Point of view,” he had tossed back. “Ask Linsy McCellan.”
    Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men—on separate occasions. “She’s too easily entertained.” His smile had turned wicked, “In any case, I’m here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are.”
    “Even Linsy—” he lifted his glass “—bless her, can’t compete with flying.”
    “With running cargo, Cal? If you’d stayed with the ISF you’d be a major by now.”
    Cal had only shrugged. “I’ll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower.” Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. “J.T., why don’t you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There’s this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed. There’s this mutant sax player— Anyhow, you’ve got to be there.”
    “I’ve got work.”
    “You’ve always got work,” Cal had pointed out. “A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach.”
    It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always. But so had the responsibilities. “Can’t.” Heaving a sigh, he’d lunged for the bottle again. “I have to finish these equations before the first of the month.”
    He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with