Time After Time Read Online Free Page A

jolt to her system. No, she thought, it wasn’t because he was a handsome man. It was because of the humor in his deep voice and the charm and danger of his smile.
    Danger. Alex knew then why she was so attracted to him. For nearly four years, while most girls her age had been playfully experimenting with boys, Alex had learned to handle creatures of the wild. She had learned to read the signs of rage in the posture of a big cat, in the abrupt movement of a bear, and in the flashing eyes of a stallion. And she had survived those years and experiences unscathed because she was very good at reading such signs.
    Smiling a little to herself, Alex allowed that instinct to search her impressions of tonight’s meeting with Noah, and her instinct summed up the situation neatly.
A caged lion, a tethered hawk, a chained bear … call him what you will, Noah Thorne is a dangerous man
.
    Not dangerous to life and limb, of course, but dangerous to something far more vital. Alex had the strong feeling that any involvement with Noah would literally change her life forever.
    So what? You approve of change
, a voice in her head pointed out reasonably.
    So there was a problem. Caliban.
    Alex looked up as he padded silently around the low partition dividing the kitchen from the rest of the loft, and rose to her feet. “Ready to go out, boy?” Caliban rumbled something that might have been a yes, his big yellow eyes gazing at her with a gentleness she could read and no one else would ever believe.
    “Now, look,” she told him, scrabbling through a box for his collar and leash, “we can’t let anyone know you’re here. So you behave yourself, all right?” After nearly six years of successfully hiding her pet, Alex normally would have had little fear of exposure. Except that now she’d met Noah.
    Whether he would keep her secret or not she didn’t know, but both her job and her interest in him promised a closer involvement than she’d ever had to deal with during the past six years. Noah had her definite interest, but Caliban had her heart—and sooner than lose him, she knew she would quietly fold her tent and steal away into the night.
    Sighing, wondering how long she could keep Caliban’s presence a secret from her landlord—tosay nothing of future tenants—Alex fastened the heavy collar around his thick neck and snapped the leash in place. Then, while he waited patiently, she went through the routine of finding out whether or not there was anyone in the vicinity outside the building.
    Feeling fortunate to have a ground-floor loft with a back entrance, Alex checked the rear of the building and felt even luckier. The pool was to the right of her back door, new wooden decking surrounding it and a decorative fence surrounding that; the gate stood open, giving her a good look inside since the moon now shone in a cloudless sky.
    Directly outside the sliding glass door was an equally new deck matched by another several yards away for the other ground-floor loft. Looking up, she could see that each loft boasted a deck with a view of the pool. Alex sighed, hoping that neither Noah nor any of the future tenants would spend late nights out on their decks. Then she gazed at the fenced land surrounding this building.
    For what was basically a city dwelling, shethought, there was an abundance of empty land, which was just great for her purposes. She stepped out far enough to look up toward Noah’s loft, assuring herself that it was dark and that he wasn’t on his deck. He might well have been inside in darkness, gazing through his own glass door, but she doubted it.
    Ten minutes later she and Caliban were exploring, and she was patiently teaching her pet where his boundaries were. They roamed among the dripping trees and wet, overgrown grass for more than an hour before she finally led him back inside the loft and got ready for bed.
    Later, lying sleepily in the darkness of her bedroom, she automatically moved over as Caliban climbed into