The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance Read Online Free Page A

her will a tear striped her cheek.
    “It doesn’t come back, Kate. She’s cancer free at five years and, at ten, the cancer is something you hardly think about any more – either of you. She’s there for you, Kate. She’s always there. And I know this because I lived through it with you. Not the college stuff – I didn’t meet you until later – but all the rest.”
    Her heart ached, so badly did she yearn to believe what he said. “I haven’t told this stuff to my best friend.”
    “But you told it to me. I’m not your best friend, but I’m close.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Her words were hot. She hated feeling exposed.
    “I … I …” He stole a glance at her, evidently considering the limits to which he might go. “I come from the future and –”
    “Bullshit.” She nearly yanked her hand away, but the temptation to hear more was too strong.
    “I understand why you’d not believe, Kate. I do. What I’m doing is something almost no one ever gets to do.”
    “So you’re special.”
    “Lucky,” he corrected. “I guess.” He gazed at his shoes.
    “Lucky” was not the emotion he was radiating.
    “So what is this mistake?”
    “Are you sure? I mean, do you believe me?” He worked the key ring in his palm like Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.
    “‘Believe’ is a strong word. Let’s say I’m willing to prolong the, well, whatever this is. Go on. You have my attention.”
    He chewed his lip. At last he leaned forwards. “The man you were just speaking to—”
    “Mark?”
    He flushed deeply. “After him.”
    Kate frowned, thinking. “Mark’s friend? One of the ones you said you came with?”
    “What I said was I came for them.”
    Then it hit her, and her heart kicked like a rabbit in her chest. “You look like him.” Medium height, medium build, same grey eyes.
    “There’s a reason for that,” Patrick said softly. “And what I said was a lie. I came for you.” The keys stopped moving, and he gazed at the place her thumb met his palm.
    “What’s your name? Your whole name?”
    “Patrick McCann. Patrick John McCann.”
    P.J.! He had to be P.J.’s father. There couldn’t be any other explanation, or rather, there could be, but her mind simply wouldn’t process it.
    “I don’t have kids,” he said, answering the look in her eye. “I also don’t have brothers or a nephew – well, except one, but he’s half Filipino and lives in Singapore. I come from the future, our future, where I’m the best friend of your husband.”
    Kate’s eyes bulged. “I marry Mark?!”
    The key ring began to rattle. “Yes.”
    She sat up to put her hand on his arm, and he caught it. “You can’t let go, Kate. The things I can tell you, I can only tell you with your hand in mine.”
    “Why?” Her head was reeling from what he’d already told her.
    “Because,” he said carefully, “telling you about the future is very dangerous, or so I’ve been told. I can tell you what I tell you for one simple reason: so long as our hands are clasped, you’ll remember what I’m saying, but as soon as you let go, it will all be gone.”
    “Gone?” She thought of her mother.
    “Gone.”
    She was dizzy with questions, though the sceptic in her, whose voice was fading fast, kept a low “uh uh,” rumbling in her ear.
    “Mark, then? Where do we live? Is he a politician? Am I a strategist? Am I successful? Are we happy?”
    He gave her a weak smile. “That’s a lot of questions. Let’s see …” He lowered his gaze to her hand, as if reading her fortune in the topography of knuckles and minute lines. “You live here, in Pittsburgh, in an immense condo overlooking the river, where you host a lot of parties. Mark is a partner at a law firm, though he’s a power broker in politics here and in the state.”
    Kate frowned. A power broker was hardly the idealist she’d visualized in that flash of imagining. Nonetheless, they were still in the thick of it. “And me?”
    “You