Page 2 of Laird Of Her Heart

“Is it?” Oh. She shouldn’t have said anything. It only encouraged Jenny.

“The chapter I’m reading is about the effects of gravity on time. Isn’t that an intriguing concept?”

Maggie leaned closer and peered at the book through squinty eyes, just to make a point. “Are you reading fiction?”

Jenny snorted.

“How could gravity have any effect on something with no mass?” She was hardly a science genius like her cousin, but that much seemed like simple logic.

“It does in a singularity.” Jenny flipped a few pages. “Here. They’ve postulated time shifts close to a black hole. Stretches. Folds. Kind of makes me wonder if it could make time act like a wormhole, you know, bending it over on itself so you could make a temporal hop.”

“You’re making my brain hurt.” But it was, at least, her temporal lobe.

Jenny shot her a trademark smirk. “You did ask what I was reading. And you have to admit, it is an interesting possibility.”

“It’s not a possibility at all. Not if you have to go through a black hole to travel through time. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t a black hole rip you apart, atom by atom, if you got too close?” Maggie huffed a sigh. “Honestly. What are they teaching you in science school?”

Jenny ignored her. She often did. Physicists were notoriously pretentious. “There’s a chapter… Where is it?” More riffling pages. “Ah. He talks about sites here, on Earth, where gravity behaves differently than it does elsewhere.”

“Oh joy. My boobs will be delighted.”

A glare. “Point being—”

“Was there an actual point?”

“Point being…” Jenny frowned. “You made me forget my point.”

“Must have been an enthralling point.”

“I hate when you do that.”

“It’s hardly my fault I’m so scintillating I make people forget what they were saying.” She made it a point to bat her lashes.

Jenny grumbled something beneath her breath and went back to her riffling. “Oh. Right. These gravitational aberrations.”

“Of course.” Maggie stifled a sigh. Or not.

“Many of the sites, like Stonehenge and Machu Picchu—”

“And the Oregon Vortex?” She tapped her lip. “Ah, but then, isn’t all of Oregon a vortex?”

“Hush. They have excellent donuts and some of my best friends live in Oregon.”

“I have friends in Oregon too—”

“Anyway…” Jenny shot her a quelling glare. “Many of these sites were considered sacred or magical in the days of yore.” She patted Maggie’s hand. “You should like that part. Days of yore were dusty.”

Maggie made a face and opened her tome again to that page. Not to stare at him again, or anything like that.

He didn’t look dusty. He looked strong and bold and handsome. Wild. Savage.

They didn’t make men like that anymore.

Metrosexual, metroschmexual.

“Oh good googelymoogley,” Jenny warbled. “Are you drooling over him again?”

“I do not drool.”