Times Change by Nora Roberts

Cal. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.
    The video report on Cal’s wounded ship had shown exactly what Cal had been through. The black hole, the panic, the helplessness as he’d been sucked toward the void and battered by its gravitational field. That he had survived at all was a miracle, and a tribute to his skill as a pilot. But if he’d had a scientist on board he might have avoided the rest. And he would be home now. They would both be home. Where they belonged.
    Calming himself, he turned from the window. In a few weeks, they would be. All he had to do was wait.
    To pass the time, he began to toy with the clunky computer sitting on the desk in the corner. For an hour he amused himself with it, dismantling the keyboard and putting it together again, examining switches and circuits and chips. For his own entertainment he slipped one of Libby’s disks into the drive.
    It was a long, involved report on some remote tribe in the South Pacific. Despite himself, Jacob found himself caught up in the descriptions and theories. She had a way of turning dry facts about a culture into a testament to the people who made it. It was ironic that she had focused on the effects of modern tools and technology on what was to her a primitive society. He had spent a great deal of time over the last year wondering what effect the technology he had at his fingertips would have on her time and place.
    She was intelligent, he admitted grudgingly. She was obviously thorough and precise when it came to her work. Those were qualities he could admire. But that didn’t mean she could keep his brother.
    Shutting the machine down, he went back downstairs.
    Sunny didn’t bother to look up when she heard him come down the stairs. She wanted to think she’d forgotten he was there at all as she’d pored over her law books. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t complain that he was noisy or made a nuisance of himself. Except that he did make a nuisance of himself just by being there.
    Because she wanted to be alone, she told herself as she glanced up and watched him stroll into the kitchen. That wasn’t true. She hated to be alone for long periods of time. She liked people and conversation, arguments and parties. But he bothered her. Tapping her pen against her pad, she studied the fire. Why? That was the big question.
    Possibly loony
, she wrote on her pad. Then she grinned to herself. Actually, it was more than possible that he’d had a clearance sale on the top floor. Popping out of nowhere, living in the forest, playing with faucets.
    Possibly dangerous.
That turned her grin into a scowl. There weren’t many men who could get past her guard the way he had. But he hadn’t hurt her, and she had to admit he’d had the opportunity. Still, there was a difference between dangerous and violent.
    Forceful personality.
There was an intensity about him that couldn’t be ignored. Even when he was quiet, watchful in that strange way of his, he seemed to be charged. A live wire ready to shock. Then he would smile, unexpectedly, disarmingly, and you were willing to risk the jolt.
    Wildly attractive.
Sunny didn’t like the phrase, but it suited him too well for her not to use it. There was something ruthless and untamed in his looks—the lean, almost predatory face and the mane of dark hair. And his eyes, that deep, dark green that seemed to look straight into you. The heavy lids didn’t give them a sleepy look, but a brooding one.
    Heathcliff, she thought, and laughed at herself. It was Libby who was the romantic one. Libby would always look into a person’s heart. Sunny would always be compelled to dissect the brain.
    Absently she sketched his face on a corner of the paper. There was something different about him, she mused as she penciled in the dark brows and the heavy lashes. It bothered her that she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was evasive, secretive,