Echoes of Tomorrow by Jenny Lykins

and baby food."
    As they strolled to the back door of the house, he draped his arm over her shoulders and tucked her up against him.
    "Too bad they happened by when they did," he murmured into her hair, his breath causing it to stir slightly.
    She stopped on the step and turned her face up to his with a grin.
    "I rather liked the conversation we were having when they so rudely interrupted us," he whispered against her neck.  "Volant.  Why did you say volant right before you kissed me?  What does it mean?"  His warm breath on her neck caused shivers along her spine.  Elise nuzzled her face against his and brushed his lips with hers.
    "You were...trying....to...describe......flying."  One long, mind-numbing kiss followed. Her bones melted and that welcome ache that had begun earlier in the day grew with every passing second.
    "Oh, hell.  Look it up!"  She grabbed a handful of shirtfront and dragged  Reed through the back door.
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Reed paced the floor like a caged lion.  The dark evening sky created a mirror on the den window, and after several passes he caught a glimpse of himself.   He paced in the opposite direction.  Elise was on another flight and had only been gone since two o'clock that morning, but he was totally lost without her.  How could anyone take over his mind and his life in less than a month's time?
    He looked at the clock again.  A quarter past ten.  It had only been three minutes since the last time he'd looked at it.
    He picked up the remote and flipped on the TV.  The control still felt foreign in his hand, but according to Elise he'd begun to use it like every other man in this day and age.  Watch ten seconds, flip to another channel; another ten seconds, another channel; finally get interested and a commercial prompts more flipping.   Once she'd finally grabbed it out of his hand  and aimed it toward him.  He'd half expected the darned thing to actually do something to him!
    He sank to the couch, rested his forearms on his thighs, and after one last flip, dropped the remote between his feet.  He settled back and decided to leave it on one channel in his own kind of silly tribute to Elise.
    At two a.m. he woke up and staggered to bed, wondering what Elise was doing, where she was, if she was thinking about him.
    The jangling finally penetrated Reed's sleeping brain.  He jumped out of bed and banged the alarm clock with a fist.  He would never get used to that obnoxious, relentless sound.
    The jangling stopped for a second, then started up again.  He banged the clock again then shoved it under the closest pillow.  As he came fully awake he realized the sound was coming from the phone.  Hesitantly he reached for the receiver and slowly put it up to his ear.  He'd only answered the phone once before.  He always just let it ring until that machine answered it for him.
    "Reed?  Reed?  It's me, darlin'.  Are you there?"
    "Elise?"
    "Oh, I hope I didn't wake you.  Did I?"
    Reed stared at the receiver, then placed it back against his ear. 
    "Why would you imagine I was asleep?  Why it's..." he dug under the pillow to find the clock, "four-thirty in the morning.  My day's half over.  I was just about to go order up some lunch."
    "Oh, I'm sorry.  It's just two-thirty here."  Just two-thirty.  Reed smiled and shook his head.  "I've tried for hours to go to sleep and I thought maybe if I could talk to you I'd be able to sleep better."
    He grinned to himself and reassured her that he didn't mind.  "There's only a couple of better ways I can think of to be woken up," he mumbled, then smiled when Elise groaned.
    They talked quietly for a few more minutes, mostly trying to find new ways to say "I miss you," then Elise said she'd better try again to get some sleep.  Her last words before hanging up were a sleepy, "I'll see you tomorrow night, my volant lover."
    Reed hung up the phone, grinning at Elise's reference to their day at the restaurant after their