Andie only smiled. “I’ve heard a lot worse. I’m in the military, too, remember?”

  “Do your commanding officers discuss mold and pee with you?”

  “Only the cool ones.”

  “Welcome, Colonel Theron.” Sue extended a hand toward the cozy cellar-like dining room, with vines growing up the stone walls and decorative plates and bottles hanging from thick wooden beams that stretched across the ceiling. “It’s good to see you with a lady friend.”

  “Yes, we’ll sit outside, please.” Theron recognized a number of faces from the fort at the handful of tables in the main room, and he was hoping for more privacy.

  “This way.”

  Unfortunately, heading out to the patio involved walking through the dining room, and the officers of his rank or above gave him unwanted encouragement. One reached out and slapped him on the back as he walked by, nodding approvingly at Andie. One of the officer’s wives, who he might have believed would be more circumspect, smiled and said, “She’s pretty. Good for you, Theron.”

  By the time they reached the door to the patio, his cheeks were hot enough to use for lighting candles. Andie was going to think him some kind of pathetic recluse who never had companionship. True, it had been a while since he’d been in a relationship that lasted longer than whatever leave he had back home, but he wasn’t some celibate monk. He was just busy.

  The handful of tables on the patio were empty, for which Theron let out a relieved breath. Sue turned up a couple of lamps. Andie glanced up, perhaps wondering if they risked being rained on, but they were in a tidy section of a greenhouse that attached to the building, so a glass ceiling protected them. An open door on the side let in a nice breeze that smelled of damp earth and the sea.

  “The garden grotto,” Sue said, placing them at a table with a curved booth cut into a boulder that would seat them side by side. A fountain gurgled behind it, also built into the boulder.

  Theron glanced at Andie. Would she object to the intimacy? The booth was large enough that four could have sat there, so it wasn’t as if they would have to touch.

  She slipped onto the cushions of the seat and inhaled the scent from the nearby potted citrus trees. Rows of raised vegetable beds for the restaurant stretched into the darkness farther back. Theron always found this place restful, at least when men weren’t cackling at the fact that he had a lady friend. Even as he had the thought, laughter floated out from the dining room. He told himself he was far too old to worry about whether or not people were talking about him and eased into the booth beside Andie.

  Sue lit candles on the table and left the menus. Theron noticed that only a couple of things he had mentioned were being served that day, and he hoped Andie wouldn’t mind the lack. Theron had seen enough of the outside world to appreciate this niche the Cascadians had carved out for themselves, but it all had to seem rustic and primitive to her. What could he offer her that might intrigue her enough to want to stay? Not that he even knew if that was an option yet. It would depend on what Gideon found. Still...

  “Tell me, Andie,” he said. “Were you at all intrigued by our discussion in the office? The mention of a secret project?”

  “Of course, but I know that secret military projects don’t get shared with civilians, or soldiers from other forces, or even most people within your own forces.”

  “Well, in this case...”

  “You’re allowed to share it with me? Because I’ll ultimately go back to my century and wouldn’t have anyone to tell, anyway?” Andie wriggled her eyebrows and laid her hand on his forearm.

  “I...” He lost track of his thoughts for a moment, distracted by her touch. “I already mentioned that we have another time machine, one in Mount Olympus.”

  She nodded.

  “There’s a lot of other stuff down there. Six months ago, I wasn’t aware of any of it, but Morimoto has known me for almost twenty years, and I guess he figured I was trustworthy. Especially when some other people he chose proved they weren’t. He decided it was better to have someone loyal rather than someone with more qualifications.” He offered a self-deprecating smirk. “That’s how I came to be searching for you, by the way.”

  “I’m glad for your integrity then.” She squeezed his arm.

  Theron hoped he could convince her to squeeze other things too. But perhaps it was premature for that. And premature for all of this. But if Morimoto and Gideon were planning to send him to fetch those other women tomorrow, he didn’t have much time. Andie and her friends could be on their way back home the day after that. He closed his eyes.

  “You probably wouldn’t guess it, looking around our simple town,” Theron said, “but we haven’t really lost that much technology from your time period and the generation after. It’s just that all of the easy-to-acquire resources were depleted back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and there’s very little left that we can get to. You can’t burn five gallons of oil to retrieve one. So we live simply because we must. Because even the most basic things that people doubtlessly took for granted in your time require sophisticated extraction, manufacturing, and transportation processes that could not be maintained indefinitely. But information has survived and some resources have been squirreled away. I’m sure every government still running on any significant level out there has secret projects. We have...” He spread his hand, palm up. “A nearly complete space shuttle, with plans to launch a colony ship to another solar system in the next twenty years.”

  Andie blinked a few times and looked around. From candlelight to a rocket ship? He would ask for proof, if he were in her shoes. With time, if she stayed here, he might be able to offer it. With her background and her education, it would be a simple matter to get her into the army with equal, if not higher rank than she had at home. But would she be even remotely tempted by that offer? He could hardly expect her to stay because of him, not after the short time they had known each other, but once again, he was all too aware of how little time he had to pique her interest.

  “They were very close to launching colony ships in your time, you see,” Theron said. “A little past your time, actually, but before things fell apart. There were some wealthy individuals in your area who funded private space programs after your government stopped sending shuttles into space, and we—not myself, but others in the army—found a ship hidden away in the mountains out here. Our scientists have been learning everything they can, figuring out what needs to be done to finish the craft and launch it, to send humans to another planet where at least some of us could start over.”

  When he stopped talking, it took Andie a moment to speak.

  “That’s encouraging. So far what I’ve seen has been... less so. Not here,” she added, looking into his eyes, perhaps wondering if she had offended him, “but out there.” She waved vaguely toward the Cascade Mountains. “But why are you telling me this when it must be top secret? Your general wouldn’t approve.”

  “No, but he doesn’t approve of anything. I’m telling you because I’d like you to think about...” Staying, he thought, but couldn’t manage to say it out loud. What if she said no? Better to ease her into the idea. “You said your odds of being invited to the space program in your own time are not good. Here, I could almost guarantee that you could go. We don’t have any pilots with the experience you have, on the kind of highly computerized equipment that’s onboard that shuttle.”

  “I... Oh. Wow.” She traced the mortar between the tiles of the tabletop. “Would your people really go for that? How many would even believe my story? They might think I’m a spy from... ah, I really haven’t gotten the lay of the land yet. Is China still a thing? Russia?”

  “I’ve never sailed across the Pacific Ocean, but there are traders who do regularly. China got decimated by a virus later in your century, as did most of the world, honestly. The Earth’s population fell from ten billion to one billion and then continued to decline for a while, thanks to wars over increasingly scarce resources. That had been going on for a long time, but people got even more scared after the virus. Russia is back to being an empire, but we don’t hear from them much. They have the same problems this continent does with toxic waste and fallout from—er, this isn’t a very good dinner topic, either, is it?” He wanted her to talk about her adventures—and the possibility of her staying here. He didn’t want to bore her with history lectures—or scare her away from his world.

  “Slightly more interesting than latrine mold,” Andie said.

  “I don’t need an answer now. And you’re right in that we’d have to do some research and see if it’s feasible for you to stay, if you wanted to, but I wanted to bring it up because I don’t know how much time we’ll have left together, er, that you’ll be here, I mean.”

  The door opened, and Sue walked out, carrying glasses of water and a bottle of mead. “Have you decided?”

  “The salmon, please,” Andie said.

  “Surprise me,” Theron said because he hadn’t so much as glanced at the menu.

  Sue looked appraisingly, not at him but at Andie, then she nodded to herself. “Nothing too garlicky, eh? I think the oysters would be appropriate, yes.” She took the menus, smiling slightly, and left them alone again.

  Oysters? Had those been considered an aphrodisiac in Andie’s time too? Maybe she wouldn’t think anything of the comments or the selection. He poured mead for both of them, feeling the need for something alcoholic and bracing.

  Andie scooted closer, touching his arm again. “Is it my imagination or does everyone here want you to get laid?”

  He almost spewed his mouthful of mead out across the table. Fortunately, he choked it down instead, though some of it went down the wrong pipe, and he ended up coughing. “I’m, ah, not entirely familiar with that expression.”

  “I think you got the gist.”

  “Possibly.”

  Andie beamed up at him, her face so much more lively than it had been when she was a prisoner. She had been so busy being tough and putting up a stoic front then. He remembered her question in the carriage, her uncertainty about whether she should have pretended to be his lover. He had thought that had been an attempt to separate herself from the notion, but here she was, gazing up at him, her hand on his arm, her eyes twinkling in the light of the candles. Even if she was an enigma to him in many ways, he wasn’t so out of practice with women that he couldn’t tell when one was enjoying being with him, despite the fact that he was talking of things far too profound for a light dinner date.

  “Do you mind?” Theron asked gently, lifting his hand to brush her soft cheek.

  “No,” she whispered. “I’m not a prisoner now,” she added, her eyes locked onto his, her expression earnest.

  Yes, that had been his reason for breaking their last kiss, a reason he had dearly regretted. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her. But now, she was his guest in the fort. She had shown up on his doorstep—or at least the square in front of headquarters—of her own volition.

  The memory of that kiss in the dark shadows of the cabin flashed into his mind. He had been surprised by her eagerness then, when she shouldn’t have wanted anything to do with any of them. He had been embarrassed by how aroused he had been, worried that he was taking advantage, but at the same time, he had found it so difficult to break away, to keep himself from pressing her against the wall, from cupping her ass with his hands and pulling her up to him, onto him.

  He found that his gaze had wandered downward, to the curve of her breasts, so close he could easily touch them. Embarrassed, he jerked his eyes back toward her face. She must have guessed at his lustful thoughts, but they didn’t seem to alarm her. Andie merely raised her eyebrows and smiled, her lips parted slightly. In invitation.

  Theron lowered his mouth to hers, brushing her lips with his. Despite the heated thoughts flooding his mind, he told himself to keep his touch light and sweet, at least for now. Her lips curved against his, and she scooted closer to him. It would have been easy to let his hands roam, as he so much wanted to do, but a restaurant wasn’t the place for anything overly passionate, at least not a restaurant that he would like to return to one day. They should talk, use this time to get to know each other better, in a non-physical way.

  Despite the thought, not much talking happened until Sue returned with the first course. Andie had her fingers curled into the hair at the back of Theron’s head, and she let them drop when the door opened, but she didn’t pull far away from him. She rested her shoulder against his, which he found quite pleasant.

  Smiling, Sue delivered the plates of food, giving Theron a wink as she set down the oysters. Knowing her intentions were good—if obvious—he kept himself from glowering at her.

  “It looks delicious,” Andie said, lifting her fork when they were alone again. But she hesitated before digging in, looking more closely at the plate. “Is the fish, uhm. In our time, they talk a lot about mercury in fish. From what you said, I gather things are worse now?”

  Theron took a sip of the mead, wishing he hadn’t said anything about toxins and radiation, not when he was now trying to give her a reason to stay. “There’s mercury in everything, not just fish. A lot of other metals that aren’t great for humans, too. You’ve seen that a lot of people have birth defects, especially midline ones.” He waved to indicate his nose, mouth, and eyes. “I’m not a scientist—” Not even close, Theron, “—but they say it’s related to people’s systems being overburdened and unable to clear out the toxins from the body. More babies are born with defects, and there are... mental illnesses, I guess you would call them. Like with the raiders. But there’s less of that here, in the civilized areas. You can go into the clinic monthly and get a shot that amplifies the body’s ability to excrete toxins. And some people don’t even need the shots,” he added, seeing the concerned expression on her face. “It depends on your genes. Some people are naturally good at clearing out the toxins and are never bothered by them. And our doctors actually recommend eating fish.” He pointed at her plate, hoping this discussion wouldn’t ruin her appetite. “There’s mercury in it, yes, but most kinds are high in selenium, too, and that binds with the mercury so it can’t bind to other things in your body. And it’s a healthy food, overall.” That was what his father had told him, anyway, to convince him to eat salmon as a child. “We eat a lot of it. Seaweed too. For the iodine. So you don’t soak up the radioactive stuff lingering in the atmosphere.” He sucked down an oyster to demonstrate his own enthusiasm for the food, hoping to pass it on to her. Fortunately, they were delicious, with butter, chives, parsley, and a hint of cayenne mingling in his mouth. He did smirk because he was fairly certain Sue usually made them with garlic too. That was oddly absent. He wouldn’t be surprised if she sent mints—or mouthwash—out with dessert.

  “Seaweed?” Andie asked. “Hm, my mom used to make me eat seaweed soup as a kid. It’s a traditional Korean dish. When she wasn’t looking, I would dump it in the pot of the big rubber tree plant next to the dining table.”

  Theron snorted, amused and unsurprised that parents hadn’t changed much over the centuries. “Was it a healthy plant?”

  “Actually, yes. Very green and vibrant. I never knew I was doing it a favor.” Andie lowered her fork, cut a piece of the salmon, and put it in her mouth.

  Theron considered that a victory. “Do you miss her?” he asked, wanting to change the topic. Toxins were even less appealing of a dinner subject than latrines.

  “Yeah. I was too busy rebelling and being a general ass as a teenager to appreciate my parents, especially her. She always wanted what was best for me, and even if her advice made me grind my teeth, it was well-intentioned. I wish I’d had a chance to let her know...” She swallowed, her eyes on her plate, and shrugged. “Lots of things.”

  Distressed by her distress, Theron closed his eyes, wishing he had chosen another topic. Any topic. Rubber tree plants.

  “What about your parents?” Andie asked. “Are they still alive?”

  Theron ate a few more bites of his food before answering. He almost lamented that he did not have a tragic familial past he could share, one that would let them commiserate about their mutual losses, but... “They’re alive, yes, and together. Happy. They have an orchard about twenty miles south of here and a little inland. They keep bees and goats, too, and my mother makes goat cheese, candles, and honey. My father makes all manner of weird alcoholic beverages with the fruit from the trees and also from herbs and random weeds he gathers from the field behind the house. His last experiment was red clover and dandelion wine. He sent some to me here. I thought it was horrible. Some of the privates liked it, but they don’t have high standards. They’ll drink anything that’s free.”

  To his surprise, Andie was smirking. Theron had worried she might find his parents irritatingly perfect, especially after the story she had shared about hers trying to force her to be something she wasn’t.

  “Do they wear tie-dye shirts and drive a V-Dub bus?” she asked, still grinning.

  “Pardon?”

  “They sound like hippies. Do they rail against the government and smoke weed, by chance?”

  Theron wasn’t familiar with the term. “Dad does rail. I think when they were younger, they might have collected the mushrooms on the property for more than eating purposes.”

  “I thought so. Did you grow up there? You must have been bored.”

  “I was,” he said, surprised that she had guessed. “Oh, there was plenty to do when I was a boy, but as a teenager, I was a little—” what had her words been? “—of a rebellious ass. I was an only child because my mother had lost the first two in pregnancy, and they wanted me stay there, to be safe and take over the orchard some day. I joined the army as soon as I was able. After the first ten years, they gave up on trying to get me to leave it and turned their efforts toward trying to get me to have children, so they might have some grandchild to take over the orchard. I’m afraid I’ve been a disappointment for them in that respect.” A shot of inspiration charged through him. “I’d love to take you to meet my mom. If we can find the time. She would like you, and...” Wait, was it too soon to talk of meeting the parents? He couldn’t help but wonder if Andie might think of his mother as a surrogate for the one she had lost.