Time Enough for Love Read Free

time machine and managed to plant some kind of bomb in the White House that killed the president and his entire staff, including the Speaker of the House, in order to triggera political coup.” When she said it that way, it sounded like the bad plot of a comic book.
    “The coup is just my theory. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if I was right.”
    “So you’ve come back in time to stop yourself from developing time travel, in order to prevent this assassination. Have I left anything out?”
    “That’s about it in a nutshell,” he told her.
    “Why not just go back in time and warn the people at the White House about the bomb? Why stop the entire project before it even starts?”
    He answered her gravely, as if her question were serious. “I figured if I did only that, the door through time would still be left open. This way, the problem of unauthorized time tampering is solved once and for all.”
    Chuck had actually considered going back to his childhood, back before the time when the idea of time travel first flashed into his head. But he couldn’t be sure that a change made that far in his past would be enough to alter his entire future. He knew he had only one shot, and he had to be damn well certain it would work.
    Maggie sat back in her chair. “Meanwhile, while all this was happening in Metropolis, Superman couldn’t do anything to stop the evil Wizard-9agents, because he had been struck down by a bullet made of kryptonite.”
    Chuck had to laugh. “I’d almost forgotten how sarcastically funny you used to be.”
    “What, I’m not as funny seven years from now?”
    He couldn’t quite meet her gaze, unwilling to tell her the truth. He realized he was nervously drumming his fingers on the table and he forced himself to stop, to sit calmly, without moving.
    She leaned forward. “Come on, Futureman. What am I like seven years from now? Does my freelance-writing business finally earn enough to pay my mortgage? Do I move into one of those big houses on Camelback Mountain? Do I have any kids? A rich, handsome husband? No, wait a sec. Don’t tell me.
You
’re my husband, right?”
    “Wrong.” He looked across the table at her. She was incredibly pretty, but she didn’t know it. She’d probably never know it.
    Her hair was brown and from a distance it seemed to be nothing special. It was only up close that one could see that it hung in shining waves around her face, long and thick and glistening. Her eyes, too, were an average shade of brown, but they sparkled and danced when she smiled and laughed. Her face was long, with a delicate cleft in her chin,her jaw strong and almost square. Her nose turned up very slightly at the end.
    She was gorgeous in a girl-next-door kind of way, with a brilliant smile that could light up the darkest night.
    She was funny and smart and sweet. And incredibly sexy.
    He’d been wildly attracted to her from the very moment he’d first set eyes on her—seven years ago, his time. And she’d been attracted to him. It had happened this time around, too, despite the fact that she doubted his sanity. He could feel the familiar sexual pull, even now, each time she looked into his eyes.
    If history was going to repeat itself, she would learn to hide that attraction from him, letting him see only friendly warmth in her eyes. But he was here to make sure that history
didn’t
repeat itself.
    “Two years from now you’ll marry a man named Albert Ford,” he finally told her. “An accountant. It won’t work out. One of the last times we spoke, you told me you were waiting for the divorce papers to arrive. I think the whole thing was pretty nasty. So, yeah, it’s been a while since you’ve made very many jokes.”
    Maggie stood up. “Well, this was more fun than I’ve had since the last time I played with my Magic Eight Ball.”
    He stood up, too, and Maggie felt a flare of panic. Shoot, she’d forgotten how big this guy was. When she’d come into the bar, he