“
Y
ou belong in this world,” Mandi said. “You know, I think that maybe that’s why you go back and forth. You can’t decide between the two. Have you ever thought about that?”
Abraham shrugged. “Maybe. So, what are you saying—that if I concentrate long enough, I can go back to Titanuus?”
“Perhaps. But I don’t want you to do that. I want to keep you here as long as I can.” She crawled into his lap, straddling him. Cupping his face in her hands, she said, “I want to stare into those soft brown eyes. It’s hard seeing you with Ruger in there. His stare is hard as iron—not mean, but penetrating. It freaks me out. Like Martha said, I need a sweet man. A teddy bear. One that I can trust.” She started kissing him.
He kissed back. Her soft lips ignited his blood. While he was kissing her, he thought of Sticks. He broke off the kiss.
“Uh…”
Panting with her eyes closed, she said, “What? Don’t worry about them. They won’t bother us.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s the other women, in Titanuus. I’m close with them.”
Mandi slid off his lap. She tied her hair into a ponytail and said, “Look, let’s keep a rule, what happens in Titanuus stays in Titanuus. I don’t want to know. Ruger’s rambled on a good deal about Queen Clarann. I can’t bear to hear any more.”
“Well, it’s not Clarann. It’s—”
She put her hand over his lips and said, “I don’t want to know. Believe me, I have a very jealous bone. But we aren’t married—or exclusive, exactly. Look, the reason I married Barry was because some other woman made me jealous. I didn’t want her to have him. I didn’t want her to win. So I took him and regretted it ever since. So for you to do what you need to do, you’ll have to decide without my intervention.”
“You’re a little too cool about that. I mean, it’s not like I’m out to fool around. It happens, but it hasn’t happened in a while.”
Mandi plugged her ears with her fingers. “Nah nah nah. I am not listening. Please quit talking about it. Nah nah nah.”
He lifted up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Okay, not a word.” He took a long drink of Coke then glanced over his shoulder at the bedroom door. “Do you really think they can help? There is an army out to get us.”
“They have a plan. They went over it with Ruger too. He was on board with it.”
He tilted his head and asked, “So everyone knows but me?”
“We’ve been waiting for you to arrive.” She bit her bottom lip. “Man, I was hoping to have a little one-on-one time before we got into this. There’s another bedroom, you know. The plan would make very good pillow talk.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really need to know what is going on.” He ran his stare over her body. “And I think it’s best that I don’t… you know, until all of this is over.”
“Okay, suit yourself.” She lifted her arms up, chest out, and stretched. She twisted side to side. “But if you change your mind…”
With a dry throat, he said, “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“What do you think?”
“And you said that you didn’t want to be a distraction.”
“Okay, fine.” She eased back into the sofa cushions and curled her legs underneath her body. “I might not be able to explain it as well, but I’ll let them explain the details. So if you have questions, they’ll have to wait. Got it?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Mandi propped her head on a pillow. “We’ve been hoping that you would return. At least, that is what we’ve been waiting for and why we are hiding. Everyone agrees that we need to all meet at the Time Tunnel at the same time.”
Abraham lifted a finger.
“No.” She pushed the finger down. “Hear me out. From our side, we need to be there when you come from the other side. No, wait—that doesn’t sound good.” She stroked her ponytail. “When you are in Titanuus, well, you or Ruger, you need to work your way to the place where the tunnel is. Ruger believes the Time Tunnel will have to be destroyed from both sides. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it makes sense, but there is one big problem.”
“What is that?”
“I still don’t know where the Time Tunnel is.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been there.”
“I’m not talking about the one in this world. I’m talking about the location in Titanuus. I don’t know where it is.’
“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s a problem. We thought you would have known that already.”
“Well, I don’t.” He crushed his Coke can and tossed it toward the waste bin. He missed. “And now, it looks like it’s up to Ruger to find out.”
