CHAPTER 29 – EPILOGUE (sort of.)
"I love you but you're stealing the covers."
Jack grasped a handful of bedcovers and pulled them over his chest ignoring the groan from Elizabeth as her back was left bare.
"Give them back," she muttered.
"Nope. You've had them all night. You have to learn to share."
"I'm delicate. I need more warmth."
Jack chuckled. "You are not delicate."
Elizabeth scooched her naked body across the mattress and snuggled onto Jack's chest.
"You do realize that I can't sleep when you shove your feet under me," he said when she smooshed her feet under his legs. "And I think one of your nails just scratched me."
"I need to be coddled."
"It's cuddled. Not coddled. I think we've already established that you don't need to be coddled."
"Fine," she said sleepily as she pulled her feet out from under his legs and moved away a few inches.
"Hey, get back here," Jack ordered in dismay as the woman he loved had too easily decided to leave him.
"You said you can't sleep with my feet under you."
"You can put them back," he offered. "Just no scratching me."
"Can I have the covers back?" Elizabeth asked eagerly as the room's cool sixty-four degree air chilled her exposed skin.
The temperature of the living quarters was pre-set to the level found by the directors to be the optimal temperature based on energy costs and health needs; and it couldn't be altered by the room's occupants, who were expected to wear clothing to bed.
Unfortunately, sixty-four degrees was not the optimal temperature for Jack and Elizabeth; it seemed that no matter how good their intentions to wear clothing, within a few minutes of climbing into bed, they usually found themselves naked.
"You can have some," he conceded as he pulled the blanket over her shoulders and then kept his arm around her for extra warmth and affection.
"In Hamilton, I have a four-inch thick down comforter for winter nights. It's deliciously warm," Elizabeth noted as she closed her eyes and thought about her bedroom on Earth.
For more than twenty years, she had gone to sleep at night and woken up in the morning in a room that was vastly different from the utilitarian metal and plastic room with plain white walls in which she was presently sleeping. Her bedroom in Hamilton had yellow walls the color of a lemon. Not the color of the peel of a lemon, but the color of the tart-tasting flesh inside. Pale and perfect. Soothing and not overwhelming. Two large windows had given her a view of maple trees, whose leaves changed to red and yellow just before they dropped in the Autumn. It was a beautiful room.
Unlike the scratchy wool blanket and rough sheets that now covered her, the sheets on her queen-sized wooden sleigh bed on Earth had been changed by the mansion staff with the season. 800 thread-count cotton sheets in the summer with a light coverlet; flannel sheets with the thick down comforter in the winter.
"Tonight, you can have you own single bed with all the covers you want," Jack reminded her.
Elizabeth's voice was muffled as she placed a kiss on his torso. "You know perfectly well that you'll be crawling into my berth."
"Yeah, you're probably right about that," Jack admitted as he kissed the top of her head. "So, this big fancy bed of yours back in Hamilton, am I ever going to get to sleep in it? Or are your parents going to throw me out? Because I'm some middle-class guy that seduced their daughter."
"I'm not sure yet," Elizabeth said with a yawn. "They can be kind of protective."
Jack's face frowned. "I was actually joking about that. I fully intend to share a bed with you in Hamilton."
"That's what I like about you. You know what you want and go after it."
"Elizabeth, I'm serious," a suddenly worried Jack spoke again. "Your family's okay with us. Right?"
"That depends."
"On what?!"
"On whether you give me some more covers right now," Elizabeth declared as she pulled the thin blanket up closer to her chin and burrowed herself under Jack's warmer body.
Five hours later, they had eaten breakfast, finished packing their few bags, and realized it was time to go.
Time had gone by so quickly.
They had been away from Earth for twenty months. It had been four months of space travel to the remote planet, and then more than a year in Coal Valley living in rudimentary living quarters.
They had lived for sixteen months on a small colony that grew larger every other month when transporters arrived with new scientists, workers, and their families.
When Elizabeth had first received her orders to Planet Assaymark, the colony had four hundred and sixty citizens - two hundred and thirty-seven men, one hundred eighty-two women, and forty-one children. By the time she prepared to leave, there were over nine hundred citizens.
The growing population had kept Jack and Elizabeth busy. Elizabeth with the constant flow of new students and departing of others. Jack with maintaining the peace.
While most of the men and women were hard-working with decent morals, the boredom and isolationism of Coal Valley sometimes caused tempers to ignite or someone to drink too much or someone to act out of character.
More than one man had arrived on the desolate outpost, and finding Elizabeth to be like a holiday in an otherwise boring month, had tried to woo her. Sometimes too aggressively. Which had usually resulted in a jealous Jack arresting the victim after Elizabeth had punched the would-be-suitor.
And more than one female had found Jack to be a breath of fresh air due to his occupation and lack of a rigid ordered scientific mind. Which had usually resulted in a jealous Elizabeth stamping her foot and demanding that Jack, who found the whole thing comical, tell the woman to stop following him around or asking his advice unnecessarily.
Through it all, Jack and Elizabeth had remained true to each other. Never wavering from the love they had first found on the transporter. Even when William Thatcher had encouraged one of his favorite employees, who had traveled to Planet Assaymark a few months after Elizabeth, to take a special interest in her.
Jack, more than slightly put out by the visiting six-foot three-inch engineer who had known Elizabeth for years, had informed Elizabeth that if she didn't send the man home on the next flight back to Earth, Jack would be on it himself.
"You are not getting on the flight," Elizabeth had said dismissively when Jack had made his threat four months after they had arrived in Coal Valley.
"Oh, yes I am!" he had retorted. He had spent enough time feeling inferior to William Thatcher's hand-picked prospective son-in-law in just a week. "The only reason I came to Coal Valley was because of you. And if your father thinks he can just send a replacement here – a replacement that you seem to find very charming – I can easily go home on that transporter."
"Jack Thornton, be sensible. You know that I am not the least bit interested in him. And you have absolutely no intention of leaving me on this planet without you. Admit it."
"You aren't the least bit interested in him?" Jack had questioned with a hint of worry and a lot of hope that her answer remained no.
"Not in the least. Yes, he's handsome and yes, he's got a good pedigree, and yes, he has an exceptional education -"
"So you admit he's handsome?!" Jack had exclaimed irritably.
"Well, of course. I'm not blind. I haven't been away from Earth so long that I've forgotten what a good-looking man looks like. But – " she paused as she counted and gathered some test-tubes.
"But?" he had asked coldly.
"But you are more handsome, and more incredible, and more perfect. And he's too polished and suave. It kind of makes my skin crawl. Besides, I love you so what does it matter about him? You quickly destroyed any chance of me ever loving another man because I already know that no-one can come close to how you make me feel. So, stop pretending to threaten to get on that flight, and help me carry these supplies to my classroom," she had ordered him.
And that had been the last time Jack had ever doubted – even for a moment- Elizabeth's love for him.
As for Elizabeth, who looked at the stars every night and thought of her endless love for Jack, life in Coal Valley had not always been easy. There had been good times. Plenty of wonderfully good times. Decorating a tiny Christmas tree, which was growing against all odds in a strange environment, with Jack. Celebrating birthdays with new friends. Getting warm hugs from her students. Feeling fulfilled when a young child proudly learned something after countless hours of struggling. Laughing with Abigail as the woman tried to teach her how to cook.
But she had also found herself feeling inadequate on more than one occasion. Having grown up in a prominent and wealthy family, she had no idea about the realities of life on a mostly barren planet. For months, she had been afraid to explore, preferring to stay safely in the large bio-dome.
During her time in Coal Valley, she had learned how to live with few material possessions, formed close relationships with people only to have some of them move back to Earth, teared up due to injuries incurred during Krav Maga classes that Jack had taught more for exercise than anything else, and she had stayed up late studying several nights just to keep ahead of some of her students, who had inherited the genius-level IQs of their scientist parents.
Jack had always been there. To wrap her injuries in bandages, to bring her cups of tea as she studied, to boost her confidence, to make her feel that she was strong enough or brave enough to do anything.
It had been an interesting and exciting sixteen months on Coal Valley. And now it was coming to an end.
As they stood in line to depart Coal Valley, Tessa, Seth's daughter, ran up to the couple.
"My dad said you shared living quarters on your trip here," she said excitedly. At six years old, she barely remembered her trip to Coal Valley over a year earlier when she and her mother had arrived on the transporter after her father's flight. She was eagerly looking forward to the return trip to Earth with her mother and her father.
"We did. And he was a very good roommate. He talked about you all the time. Except when he was talking about his rocks."
Tessa, who was well aware of her father's obsession with rocks giggled. "Daddy says we'll be together this time 'cuz we're a family. And families always stay together on a transporter."
"That's right. And I'll be in the next room with Officer Thornton because the rooms are arranged alphabetically. So, we'll all be sharing a bathroom."
Elizabeth sat strapped into her seat in the lift-off room. She clutched the arm-rests as she dreaded the next one hour and eight to nine minutes. This was the part of space-travel she hated the most.
"One hour and eight to nine minutes?" she asked when she looked at Jack sitting next to her. He was looking calm. Collected. At ease. Handsome.
Why don't these things bother him, she thought in slight jealously.
"Remember the final check takes about an hour. We'll hear loud sounds as the engine prepares."
"Loud sounds. Got it. No problem. I remember that."
I'll just think happy thoughts. Like raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings.
"There'll be some thumping and rumbling underneath us."
"Thumping and rumbling," Elizabeth repeatedly nervously.
Oh, who am I kidding? Kitten and mittens aren't going to take my mind off of accelerating to more than the speed of sound for lift-off, traveling close to the speed of light, my stomach feeling like it's in my throat, or worrying that if there's even the slightest crack in the transporter, we're going to explode into smithereens.
"Then there will have eight to nine minutes of gravity pulling at us."
"That's when we'll be shaking and pressed against our seats with a force twice our weight," she said.
Elizabeth's voice sounded unnaturally shrill but she couldn't help it.
"Just for a few minutes," Jack reassured her.
"But then we'll get higher and the ship will pick up even more speed, and we'll be pressed against our seats with three times our weight. That's three hundred and ninety pounds for me."
Darn, why'd I eat breakfast?!
"It won't be so bad."
"It will be like a small hippo sitting on my chest making it difficult to breathe for two minutes. As we go from zero miles per hour to seventeen thousand miles per hour in eight and a half minutes."
"How do you remember all this so well?" Jack asked in bafflement
"Because it was horrible."
"Okay. Stop clutching the arm rests so hard. You're tearing them open." Jack affectionately picked up her hand and clasped it in his own.
"Okay, now you need to stop clutching my hand so hard." he said in a slightly pained voice as the blood was squeezed from his fingers.
And then it was just like her first flight. When Jack had talked to her to get her attention away from lift-off. But this time, instead of talking about singing in a bar in college and piano lessons and duets, he whispered some very interesting ideas into her ear which made her cheeks blush and other body parts tingle.
"You wouldn't really do that. Would you?", she hissed in surprise when he made one very scandalous proposition.
"I will if you want me to," he seductively whispered back as he nibbled her earlobe.
"I can't believe they let you carry this bag on-board", Jack said as he struggled slightly with their bags in front of the door with their EC numbers listed.
The lift off had been the same as when they left Earth, and the couple had been grateful when the initial thrusting of the engines had ended and the transporter with its artificial gravity was now moving smoothly through space. "It's definitely way over twenty-five pounds."
"Yeah. Oh well," Elizabeth said evasively.
"Elizabeth, what aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing", she said a little too innocently as she ran her bracelet over the door sensor causing the metal door to their assigned living quarters to slide open.
"We are allowed twenty-five pounds each. Your bag should weight exactly the same as mine. And it doesn't. What did you pack in here?"
"My clothes. And a rock."
"A rock?!"
"The one from Seth. It's beautiful. With its crystals," Elizabeth replied as she thought about the rock in her bag which had been a present a year earlier.
The fifteen-pound geode was as exquisite as it was heavy. The rough gray dull outside was in sharp contrast to the inside which sparkled when the rock was cut open. The first time Elizabeth saw the split rock in Seth's work-zone, she had run her fingers along the gems and remarked that the dark blue ones reminded her of Jack's eye color. By coincidence, Jack had seen the same rock the next day; he had remarked about Elizabeth's blue eye color but then also commented to Seth that he liked the yellow streak of gems along the edge because it reminded him of dandelions.
That had sealed the deal for Seth. When the occasion arose to give them a present, the geode had been an obvious choice.
"But how did you get past the weight allowance?"
"I um. . . .don't you worry about that."
"Elizabeth," he said with raised eyebrows. "I am glad we can take the geode back with us. You know that, but I thought we were going to send it back with a cargo flight."
"I couldn't do that. I was afraid it was going to get lost or it would take it too long to get to us."
"What did you do?" he said accusatorily.
"I traded some of my water-minutes for some of Seth's weight limit."
"Traded some of your water minutes already? We haven't even been here one day!"
"It's no big deal. You'll share your water minutes with me."
"How do you know I'll share my minutes with you?" he challenged. "Maybe I want them all. Or I promised them to someone else."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Someone else? Yeah, right," she said sarcastically.
"I may have," he insisted as he tried to keep from laughing.
"You didn't. You'll share with me."
"How do you know?"
"Because you can't resist me," she replied simply as she opened her locker and frowned at the small space. "I forgot how tiny these transporters are."
Jack shook his head silently in defeat. She was right; he couldn't resist her.
"Where do you want your bag?" he asked after putting his own on one of the top berths.
"Top berth," Elizabeth responded as she looked around the room and wondered if they could put the mattresses on the floor to make a double bed. Darn, not enough room.
"Why am I not surprised?" he chuckled. "I believe we got in a fight over the top berth last time we flew together."
"That's because you refused to acknowledge that I had got to it first."
"I think we've already decided we'll be sleeping in the same berth this time. Because you can't keep your hands off of me. You can't resist me any more that I can resist you. In fact, I think you're the weaker of the two of us," he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
"It's a good thing we share a room", she teased back. "Otherwise I would have to sneak down the corridor to get to you."
"So that's why you married me? So we could share a room again on the transporter?" Jack asked as he grinned at her.
Elizabeth giggled. "I married you a year ago. And we'd be sharing a room anyway. That's what happens when Thatcher and Thornton are alphabetically next to each other."
Jack pulled her into his arms. "You mean Thornton and Thornton. And I married you just to make sure."
Jack lowered his mouth to meet hers. At the same time, he moved his hands to her head, keeping her mouth close to him. He moved his mouth on hers with an incredible mixture of love and passion.
She was aware of everything about him. The way his mouth tasted of spearmint, the faint smell of his soap, the feel of his hands as they touched her hair.
"I get two berths! And two lockers for myself!', a young girl's excited voice exclaimed as she burst in through the bathroom door.
Jack pulled back from Elizabeth with a jolt.
"Tessa, you need to knock before you come in. In case you're interrupting something important," Elizabeth admonished Seth's daughter who was now standing two feet from her.
"But you're not doing anything important. You're always kissing Officer Thornton!"
Jack chuckled and turned away, occupying himself with starting up his computer while Elizabeth dealt with the young interloper.
"I am not always kissing Officer Thornton!" a somewhat shocked Elizabeth responded.
I thought I hid it pretty well from the students!
"Dexter saw you kissing behind the classroom. And Clementine saw you kissing in the dining room. Mylo said he saw you kissing at the fitness center. Margaret saw you -"
"That's enough, Tessa."
Elizabeth stopped the girl before she could say any more, put her hand on her shoulder, and ushered her back through the bathroom. "Back to your room for you young lady, and knock next time."
"I think we're going to have to keep that door locked," Jack remarked as Elizabeth closed it tightly.
Elizabeth sighed and leaned against a berth. 'Do you think this voyage will be anything like the one we took here?", she asked with a smile. "It was most unusual. And exciting. And actually quite lovely at times."
'Lovely?" Jack smirked at her word choice.
"I've been reading twentieth century novels," she said by way of an explanation of her adjective.
Jack moved the few feet across the tiny living quarters and stood in front of Elizabeth. He put a finger to her neck, trailing it slowly along her flesh.
"You and me married. Having this room to ourselves. Nowhere to go. No real duties to take up our time. I think our return voyage is going to be out of this world," he whispered huskily in her ear.
Dear Readers:
Thanks for spending time reading this story so far and joining Jack and Elizabeth on their journey. Weeks after finishing this chapter, I decided to continue the story! Check out the next chapter!
If you recognize Elizabeth's happy thoughts of kittens, mittens, and kettles, you may have picked up to a hint of that from her first lift-off in chapter 4 when Elizabeth said she was in a musical in college in which she played a nun who became a governess to a bunch of kids.