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

run a not-for-profit – disadvantaged kids, that sort of thing. You’ve made a huge impact in the city,” he said with an obvious pride, “and it keeps you very busy.”
    This was like going to your high-school guidance counsellor to find out what job the vocation test says you’re suited for and discovering it’s some vaguely improbable position at the top of a corporate food chain. Admirable, maybe, but for someone else.
    “Really?”
    “You do a great job, Kate.”
    “But why not politics?”
    The odd distracted reflection washed over him again. “I could speculate, but … but I think I should stick to what I know.”
    “You’re supposedly one of my closest friends.” The voice in her head was growing louder. “Didn’t I tell you?”
    “What you told me was that politics was a place for the coldblooded.”
    “ I said that?” She’d never been a cynic. Not about politics.
    “Yes. And I can see you’re disappointed,” he added quickly, “but I can tell you, you never look back. Your work brings you immense joy. Immense.”
    “It sounds like you’re trying to convince me.”
    “No,” he said, agitated. “What I’m trying to do is be fair.”
    “Fair?”
    “Kate, I’m about to ask you to give it all up, and I don’t ever want it to be said that I didn’t present the case fairly.”
    It was almost too much, she thought, to have pictures of her life laid out before her and then immediately snatched away. “Give it up? What are you asking me to give up? And why?”
    Before he could answer, Mark appeared in her peripheral vision, and instinctually she withdrew her hand.
    Patrick felt the cool air on his palm. All for naught, he thought with a philosophical chuckle, looking at that gorgeous, strong profile as she turned her gaze towards Mark. He stood at the centre of the remaining wedding guests, riveting them with a story. But it wasn’t Mark to whom Patrick’s eyes went when he’d finished feasting his gaze on the full, knowing lips he’d never know and the long, pale neck, fringed with dark blonde hairs that fell from her effortless French knot; his eyes went to himself, albeit a much younger version, standing to the side of the circle, eyes fixed on Kate.
    Ah, my friend, if only you’d find the courage to approach her now, before that fated foosball game, he thought, and ached with the memory of how that longing felt.
    But though the decades had given him the confidence he lacked then, even now, at fifty-six, after years of being there for her whenever she called, of sharing every step of her personal and business life, of being the recipient of all but her most precious secrets, he knew he’d never have the confidence – ever – to believe he could possess her. And yet, here he was, certain that what he was about to do, an act that would not only ensure he didn’t possess her, but almost certainly tear her from him for ever, was the only choice he had.
    He’d been given one hour. How it worked, he didn’t know, but the woman in the souk with the coal eyes and the hookah pipe did, and in exchange for a thousand Egyptian pounds and his silence on the matter of the stolen cartouche , she told him the rules: Yo u may tell the girl what you wish about her future so long as her hand is in yours, though nothing you say will be remembered. After an hour you will awake as if from the worst sort of drunken indulgence. Under no circumstances are you to make contact with your younger self.
    When he asked if it was possible to change what would happen – his past, her future – the woman pulled a long drag from the pipe, grinned a horrible, black-toothed grin and said, “Changing the world is an effort of the heart, Yankee Doodle, not the mouth.”
    Then she’d mixed him his own hookah cocktail and handed him the pipe. That was the last thing he remembered.
    He returned Kate’s keys and other items to her purse surreptitiously. An instant after he closed it, Kate turned back to him. He