Free Cold Fusion by Harper Fox Page A

reappear until the three hours were up, and so I went in search of him, defiantly leaving my last two batches of wiring undone.
    He was on his hands and knees in the sunlight, head down, peering beneath the floorboards with a torch. I should have been past noticing such things, but he had a very nice backside. The seam of his overalls followed his arse crack like a welcoming smile. Compact and muscular. I couldn’t help thinking it would look better still with a couple of pounds on it, so I cleared my throat. “Hoi. I’m calling a tea break.”
    He gave a short cry, jumped hard and dropped his torch. I wanted to laugh until he sat up and faced me, and I saw how pale he was. “Mallory,” he said hoarsely. “It’s four thirty-seven. Unless you’ve worked too fast, you can’t have accomplished the task I set you.”
    “That’s right.” I pushed my hands into my pockets. Who did he think he was? I’d paid off my night’s shelter and my bits of burnt toast about an hour ago, I reckoned, though I didn’t like to think about intangibles like coats and Savlon and his total absence of judgement. “The last two parts of my task remain unaccomplished. You know how you said you don’t eat while you’re thinking?”
    “Yes.”
    “How long have you been thinking for this time?”
    He pulled off his watch cap and ruffled his hair. This was the most endearingly human gesture I’d seen him make, and I fought down the impulse to go and smooth the dark curls back into order. “What day is it?”
    “Thursday. In September. On Earth. Wow, you do lose track, don’t you?”
    “Thursday?” The particle physicist did a quick count on his fingers and got to four before hiding the gesture from me. “Rather a long time. I was so close, you see. Or I thought I was.”
    “Four days?” I went to help him to his feet, trying not to notice how the long, supple body rose with passive power at my touch. “No wonder your belly’s kissing your backbone. Come back to the caff. I’ll make you my traditional family tin of Heinz soup.”
    “I’m afraid there isn’t any.”
    “No Heinz? What kind of a mad scientist do you call yourself? Okay, then, beans on toast it is.”
    “There’s nothing. And nothing to heat it if there was, not until I can get this wiring to work.”
    Oh, Viv, give it up. Put a new fuse in the toaster and switch on the bloody genny. I squeezed my lips shut. That was how you spoke to someone you’d known for ages, not less than twelve hours. I’d even shortened his name. “Why don’t you have any food out here?”
    “I just forgot.”
    “Well, one of us is gonna have to leg it back down into Kerra before the Co-op shuts.” I looked him over. His colour hadn’t returned, and no wonder, after a four-day fast. “I guess it had better be me.”
    “I didn’t think you’d want to go back there.”
    “I’d rather walk barefoot through a sea of upturned plugs. But this isn’t much of a garret to starve in, and…”
    “You’re not that kind of poet?”
    I did a small double take. I didn’t know why I was still holding on to his arms, except that they were vibrant and warm beneath his layers. “Er, no. I mean…I’m not. Any kind of poet, that is.” I shut up before my language skills could fail me entirely.
    “My father always took the Northern Poetry Gazette . He enjoyed your work there very much.” He detached himself from me gently. “Neither of us has to go down to the village. I’ll finish my work here—and the unaccomplished parts of yours—if you would take this to the place where the lane meets the single-track road. There’s a white rock, a big piece of quartz. Just put it under there.”
    He’d produced from somewhere a sheet of paper in a transparent file pouch. There was writing on the sheet, but before I could read it, he folded it up and tucked it into the pocket of my coat. Then he frowned. “Wait a minute,” he said, extracting it again. He turned me round like a piece