Kara
After everyone had left, I wandered back into the living room and sat down on the couch, my hands hanging limply over my knees. I found myself wishing Persephone had left me with a pile of dirty dishes, but my friend, trying to help, had made sure the kitchen was spotless before she and Paul led Grayson out of the house and into Persephone’s Volvo. So now here I was, in an empty house with nothing to do.
Gort nudged me with his nose, and I reached down to ruffle him behind the ears. He whined a little, as if sensing my disquiet. “It’s all right,” I said. “My heart’s already been broken once. I know it can heal. But the process may require many pints of Ben & Jerry’s.”
The dog cocked his head to one side. He was a fiend for ice cream, since I let him lick the bowl of anything that didn’t have chocolate in it.
I had a feeling this might require more than a bowl of Cherry Garcia, though. This was…I didn’t even know how to articulate the feeling inside me. Hurt, yes, of course. But beneath that, something else. Betrayal? Maybe. Stupid, really. It wasn’t as if Grayson had purposely set out to deceive me.
Or had he?
No. I refused to believe that. Whatever else happened, however things ended up between us, I knew he’d truly not known who…or what…he was. Besides, Persephone had flat-out stated that she didn’t feel anything bad coming from him. And she would know. She’d tried once or twice to describe to me how it had felt to touch the consciousness of the aliens and the hybrids, and even that bit had been enough to tell me I was glad not to have that sort of perception, not if it meant being exposed to that kind of evil.
Grayson wasn’t evil. I’d know it.
Wouldn’t I?
The doorbell rang and I started, even as Gort gave a short, sharp bark and dashed toward the entry. His tail was wagging, though, which indicated he knew who was waiting on the other side of the door. Persephone, coming back to babysit despite my protests to the contrary?
I let out a breath and stood, automatically pushing my hair back off my shoulders. This was an argument I really didn’t feel like rehashing, but if Persephone needed to be told for the fifth time….
I opened the door. On the other side waited Lance, for once without his mirrored sunglasses.
“Oh,” I said lamely. Lance was about the last person I really wanted to see right then, for a variety of reasons. “Aren’t you supposed to be standing watch over the alien captive or something?”
The keen gray eyes didn’t blink. “I wanted to talk to you. Can I come in?”
Since I couldn’t refuse without sounding completely rude, I lifted my shoulders and stepped aside. Gort looked up at the intruder with wary eyes, but because he recognized Lance’s smell, he moved out of the way and went back into the living room to occupy his favorite spot on the rug, the one that in the winter was touched by the heat of the fireplace.
Following his lead, I took my own place on the couch, pushing myself back into one corner as I stared up at Lance, arms crossed. “I hope you’re not here to read me the riot act. I know I screwed up, okay?”
His brows drew together. “That’s why you think I came over here?”
“It’s not?”
“No.” With a restlessness quite unlike him, he paced over to one side of the coffee table, hands jammed in the pockets of his cargo pants. “How could you have known?”
What he said was true enough, but I couldn’t quite figure out what to make of his words. Lance wasn’t exactly known for his gentle, forgiving nature. And seeing him here like this, after everything that had happened — well, I hoped I would be able to hold it together long enough for him to speak his piece and be done with it. I had a hard enough time concealing my feelings from him on a normal day; right now, with all my nerve endings flayed and raw, the thought of looking at him as if he didn’t mean anything more to me than anyone else of my acquaintance made me feel almost physically ill.
Or maybe the sickness gripping my belly was just echoes of my reaction to Grayson’s true identity.
“Okay,” I said, uncrossing my arms and cupping my palms over my jeans-clad knees, “so why are you here? It’s been kind of a rough night, and I’m wiped.”
“I didn’t like the thought of you being here alone.”
That comment made me lift my head and look up at him sharply. The expression on his face was so unexpected that at first I didn’t even recognize it. Worry, yes, but something else. It couldn’t be need. Not from Lance. All the day’s shocks must really be getting to me.
“I’m fine,” I said, those two words of denial that had gotten me through so many things — my mother’s abandonment, Alan’s betrayal, my grandparents’ deaths. By that point, the phrase hardly meant anything anymore.
“No, you’re not.”
I didn’t like how he stood there, looming over me. Without replying, I rose and moved past him to pause a few feet away from the mantel. Absently, I thought I had the air conditioning turned up too high. That must be what was making me feel suddenly chilled.
“Okay, and what if I’m not fine?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself, feeling the goosebumps on my bare flesh. “How is admitting it going to make any difference?”
“I don’t know if it will. But denial sure doesn’t help.”
The retort shot out of my mouth before I even realized what I was saying. “Oh, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
He didn’t blink, even though something in the taut lines of his mouth told me I’d scored a point with that one. Not that I’d really been intending to. I didn’t want to hurt Lance. I just really didn’t want him there right then, not when I felt so close to losing it.
Plowing forward, since I didn’t know what else to do, I said, “Look, I know I was an idiot — ”
“You’re not the idiot around here.” He hesitated, but that piercing ice-gray gaze never left my face. “I am.”
That confession came from so out of nowhere that for a few seconds, I could only stare up at him. Finally, I said, “I don’t follow.”
One sun-browned hand reached up to push its way through his close-cropped fair hair. “If I’d had the balls to say something to you before this, then this whole Grayson thing would never have happened.”
He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was saying.
Or…could he?
Now, after everything, he’d come over here to announce his feelings for me? Never mind that for years I’d hoped for such a declaration. But how could I possibly accept it now? He couldn’t think that I’d just forget what had passed between Grayson and me, that I’d put those feelings aside as if they’d never been.
Or maybe he could. Men’s thought processes never seemed to work the same way as mine.
I gave a shaky laugh. “Wow, Lance, your timing is really spectacular.”
He didn’t appear to take any offense. He just stood there, back as straight as if he were in a military review. “Would you rather I didn’t say anything, that we just keep lying to one another?”
“I don’t know, Lance — it’s worked out pretty well so far!”
His mouth twisted then, and before I could really understand what was happening, he reached out for me and pulled me against him, held me close. No attempt to kiss me — just his arms around me, his heart thudding beneath my cheek. He felt very different from Grayson, leaner, more wiry, but just as strong in his own way. And the warmth of his body seemed to surround me, to finally take some of the chill from my flesh, as if he was lending that strength to me when my own had begun to fail.
Maybe I should have tried to push him away. My thoughts didn’t seem able to stay in one place — they skipped this way and that, first telling me that this was nuts, that I couldn’t go running to Lance just because things with Grayson had fallen apart, then whispering insidiously that this felt too good, and hadn’t I wanted this all along, settling for Grayson because I had thought there was no hope of ever being with Lance?
I didn’t know anymore. The one thing I did know was that I didn’t want to leave the circle of Lance’s arms. I’d dreamed of this for years. Was I really going to push him away now?
Somehow, I did. I moved back a step, then another. “Is it just jealousy?”
He blinked, but, surprisingly, he didn’t bother to dodge the question. “At first.”
“‘At first’?” I repeated. I didn’t bother to hide the skepticism in my tone.
“Well, I think that’s what made me finally wake up. I kept thinking everything could go on the way it was because there wasn’t anyone else in your life. But when I found out about Grayson — ” A shrug, followed by a narrowing of his eyes. “I found I really didn’t like the idea of you tooling around on the back of a motorcycle with some random guy…and I liked even less the thought of you shacked up with him.”
“How the hell did you find out about that?” I demanded, although I thought I could guess.
“Your neighbor is the chatty type.”
Thanks, Felicia. But at the moment, I was too tired to feel anything except mild annoyance at Mrs. Martinez’s loose lips. At least she’d done her blabbing to Lance and not someone much more dangerous, like the two government agents who’d stopped by earlier that afternoon.
Or worse, whoever or whatever the aliens had out looking for their one lost soldier….
Still, I couldn’t think about that now. I didn’t really know what I should be thinking about, because the tumult of the past few days seemed to hit me all at once…the UFO…the MIBs…Grayson…now Lance…and I couldn’t seem to focus on any of it.
Lance was staring at me intently. When he spoke, his voice was far gentler than I’d ever heard it, lacking its usual irony. “You’ve had a hell of a time, haven’t you?”
“You could say that,” I managed.
“And I haven’t made it any easier. I get it. But you don’t have to go through all this alone.”
Meaning what, exactly? That he wanted to be with me now? Surely I should be happy about that, but somehow, all I could feel was an enormous leaden weight of weariness.
“Thank you for that, Lance. But right now, I think I just need to go to bed. I just…I just can’t process this right now.”
He didn’t move, but only stood there, staring down into my face. If he reached out to hold me again, I wouldn’t stop him…mostly because I didn’t have the energy at the moment.
“I don’t think I should leave you alone.”
“So, what, you’re expecting to stay the night?” I asked caustically. “That’s asking a bit much, don’t you think?”
The ironic glint returned to his eyes. “I don’t know…that couch looks pretty comfortable.”
Oh, right. Of course he wouldn’t be stupid enough to ask to crawl into bed with me. Not now, anyway. If I’d been functioning a bit better, I probably should have been able to figure that out on my own.
“You don’t need to sleep on the couch, Lance. I’m fine. The bug-eyed monsters aren’t coming to get me.”
“Maybe not…but I’d still feel better if I did.”
Something about his stance, about the set of his jaw, told me he was willing to stand there and argue the point until I capitulated. And since I felt about ready to fall over from exhaustion, it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Okay,” I replied. “It’s your back. Hope you’ve got a chiropractor on speed dial. Let me get you some blankets at least.”
He seemed to relax slightly. “Okay.”
And I made myself go to the linen closet, retrieve a lightweight cotton blanket and a spare sheet, then return to the living room and hand off the bundle to Lance. “Here you go. You know where the bathroom and the kitchen are, so — make yourself at home.”
He took the blanket and sheet from me and set them down on the couch. For a second or two, he watched me carefully, as if trying to gauge exactly what might be going through my head. “You sleep well.”
So much for worrying about whether he was going to try to kiss me. I didn’t know what I would have done if he’d made the attempt, but it looked as if I wouldn’t have to deal with that particular scenario. At least, not tonight.
“Goodnight, Lance,” I said.
That shuttered expression was back on his face. “Goodnight, Kara.”
And that seemed to be it. I left him standing there in front of the couch, and went to my own empty bed.
Lance
Kara might have been able to sleep, but he knew it was still a long ways off for him — if it ever came it all. If so, this certainly wouldn’t be his first sleepless night.
He untied the desert boots he wore and lined them up at one end of the couch. Gort, still lying Sphinx-like on the rug, watched him with a mixture of curiosity and wariness, as if not sure what to make of this intruder who’d taken up residence in the living room.
I’m not sure what to make of it, either, Lance thought, and lay down on the couch. Even if he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long while — if at all — he figured he might as well make himself comfortable.
Should he have kissed her? Maybe that would have been smarter, to just push ahead after he’d held her in his arms. But she’d looked so tired, shadows under the deep gentian blue of her eyes, that he hadn’t the heart to force the issue. She’d had enough shocks already. He hadn’t mistaken her regard for him — no, that had been clear enough in her face. There’d been confusion, too, and guilt, as if she inwardly berated herself for caring for him and Grayson at the same time.
Grayson. Lance wondered then how the half-alien man fared, tucked away into the Olivers’ spare bedroom. Probably not too great; that bed had to be a lot colder than the one he’d been sleeping in up until today.
That might not have been the best thing to think about. Lance really didn’t want to imagine Kara tangled up in the hybrid’s muscular arms, and he certainly shouldn’t be thinking about her now, sleeping just a few yards away down the corridor. He wouldn’t go to her, of course not, but his loins tightened a little at the thought of her lying in her bed, golden hair spread over her pillow.
Go ahead, drive yourself crazy, he mocked himself, and the wave of heat subsided somewhat. He wanted her, yes, but he could give her all the time she needed. He’d made her wait long enough.
He didn’t want to think about how much time any of them had left.
Kara
I awoke with a start, eyes straining at the darkness in my room. One hand reached out to touch the space where Grayson should have lain. Then I paused, fingers tangling in the cold sheet. Of course, he wasn’t there. He was clear on the other side of town, in the Olivers’ guest room.
A noise then, just the slightest whisper of movement, coming from somewhere down the corridor. I reached under my bed for the Louisville Slugger I kept there — another relic of my grandfather’s — and eased myself from underneath the covers, the bat clutched grimly in my right hand.
Blinking the cobwebs of nightmares away, I crept down the corridor, padding along in my bare feet. I didn’t know how someone could have gotten in without tripping the alarm, but —
Lance’s voice came to me in the dark. “Forgotten about me already?”
Of course. My sleep had been so disordered, my waking so sudden, that I’d actually forgotten that Lance had insisted on staying over. The bat dropped down to hang limply at my side. “Maybe.” I squinted into the dining room, realized he was sitting at the table and staring out into the backyard.
“Hmm.”
I advanced a few paces, then stopped. In hot weather, I slept in my underwear and a tank top, which was fine if I was alone. Not so great for parading around in front of the man with whom you had a good deal of unresolved sexual tension. On the other hand, to turn now and flee back to my bedroom would only show him exactly how uncomfortable I was. So I moved on into the dining room, silently grateful that at least Lance hadn’t turned on any of the lights.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.
“No.” His gaze flicked toward me, lingered for a second, then moved back to the sliding glass door.
Great. Apparently, the darkness wasn’t quite as concealing as I’d hoped it would be. Movement out of the corner of my eye made me startle for a second, until I realized it was only Gort, padding from the living room to a few paces from where I stood. He whined.
“No three a.m. treats,” I said.
He whined again, then lay down on the rug, resignation clear enough even in the gloom.
I returned my attention to Lance. “Did you see something?”
“No. That is, I thought I heard something, but nothing’s out there.”
Sitting down seemed safer than standing up so he could see everything. At least that way, he wouldn’t be staring at my striped bikini underwear. I pulled out the chair nearest me and settled into it, my eyes becoming more and more accustomed to the lack of light. The solar lamps in the backyard made little pools of blue-white light, but there wasn’t much for them to illuminate.
“Probably a cat,” I offered. “Felicia Martinez lets hers roam all over the neighborhood, even though everyone tells her the coyotes are going to get them eventually.”
“Maybe.”
He didn’t look as if he’d attempted to sleep, since he was still fully dressed, although his shirt was untucked. Something pale moved near the floor, and I realized it must be his bare feet. So at least he’d allowed himself to relax that much.
“You don’t really think they’re watching my house, do you?” I asked. “I mean, if they knew Grayson was here, you’d think they would have already tried to retrieve him.”
At my question, Lance shifted in his chair so he could meet my gaze. “You’re probably right. But it doesn’t have to be the aliens, come in search of their prodigal son. Could be the MIBs. Just because you got rid of them temporarily doesn’t mean they’re gone for good.”
“Well, that’s a cheery thought.” I watched him carefully, but his eyes seemed to be more or less intent on my face, and not the amount of cleavage exposed by the skimpy tank top I wore.
His shoulders lifted. “Or I could just be jumpy. But I keep wondering…why? What’s so important here that the aliens have come back, even when we wiped out their forces, basically compelled them to go back to square one?”
I could have made a snide answer about the aliens wanting to get a spa treatment or a psychic reading, but something in his voice stopped me. He actually sounded tired and a little worried, which was not the Lance I knew. While I appreciated him showing something more of himself to me, part of me wished for the snarky, confident man who never seemed to get rattled, no matter what the world might throw at him.
“I wish I knew,” I said when the silence between us grew too unsettling. “I suppose Paul and Persephone will try to get more information out of Grayson….” I trailed off, realizing I should be there for that interview, and not sure whether I was really up for it.
“True, but he may not know that much, even if his memory has returned.” Lance sounded a little more brisk now, as if glad he could talk about Grayson on a more abstract level, as part of the alien puzzle to be solved and not the man who’d made himself a part of my life. “After all, even though it’s clear something strange has happened to him, he was only a soldier. Soldiers do what they’re told. They don’t have to have the big picture to get the job done.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“Yes,” he said shortly, then turned to look back out the window. “The brass always thinks the grunts are too dumb to master the intricacies. Besides, we can’t divulge information we don’t know, can we?”
I supposed that was true enough, but I still didn’t like the sound of it all that much. Maybe I was too much of an individualist to appreciate the nuances of military service.
“Grayson,” Lance repeated, and gave a short, humorless laugh. “Did you name him that?”
“No. He heard it on TV and told me he liked the way it sounded.” I wasn’t about to tell Lance that Grayson had picked it up from a frivolous rom-com show I’d had languishing on my DVR.
“Ironic.”
“How do you mean?”
Once again, Lance turned to look at me. “Grayson. Gray’s son. Considering he’s an alien/human hybrid, I’d say the name is pretty apt. Maybe his subconscious was trying to tell him something.”
Now that he’d pointed it out, I wanted to smack myself for not making the connection before. “Wow — that is kind of crazy.”
“You could say that.” He showed no signs of resuming his inspection of the backyard, but remained swiveled in his seat, eyes fixed on me.
I didn’t know what he expected me to say. Was he thinking now was the time when I’d reveal why exactly I’d allowed Grayson into my house and my bed, would explain what the hell I’d been thinking? Well, if that was what Lance wanted, he’d be waiting a long time to get it. I didn’t even know if I could explain it to myself, let alone a not entirely unbiased audience like Lance.
“So what do we do next?” I asked, hoping the question would shift his thoughts away from my relationship with Grayson and on to bigger concerns.
“We’ll meet up tomorrow. Paul sent me a text a while ago saying he wanted everyone over at his house tomorrow around eleven. You should have gotten one, too.”
Probably I had, but my phone was buried in my purse, and of course with everything going on, I hadn’t bothered to dig it out and look at it. “Council of war?”
Lance nodded, his mouth very grim. “I’d like to say I hope not, but considering our past history with these adversaries, I’m guessing that’s exactly what it’s going to be.”
Great. Well, I’d always bemoaned my role in this group, thinking I was going to be continually shuffled off to the sidelines, always kept out of the important goings-on. Now I was stuck right in the middle of things, and it wasn’t quite as exciting and thrill-packed as I’d thought it would be.
“Kiki and Jeff are going to be showing up sometime tomorrow,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be better if we waited until they were back in town?”
“I’ve already briefed Jeff on the important elements,” Lance replied.
Irritation flared in me. “Oh, you have? Did you ever stop to think that maybe I’d like to reveal certain things about my private life to my sister in person?”
Lance looked singularly unperturbed. “I said I told Jeff…and what I told him was in confidence. All Kiki knows is that there’s a situation going down here, and that they’re to be in Sedona ASAP. They’re actually leaving before first light tomorrow, to beat the traffic. They may make it here by noon if all goes well. They’re not going to miss that much — I told Jeff to drive straight to the Olivers’ place.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help feeling a little amused at the thought of Jeff having to rouse Kiki at o’dark thirty to get on the road. My sister had never been an early morning person. “Okay, then…guess you’ve got it all worked out.”
“Not really.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You could have fooled me.”
Lance didn’t reply, but only gazed at me steadily. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what he was thinking. He wasn’t thinking about Jeff or the Olivers or the “council of war” anymore. He was thinking about the situation between the two of us.
Damn. And we’d been getting on so well there for a while, discussing things as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t held me in his arms just a few short hours ago. How long had it been, actually? From where I was sitting, I could squint and just make out the digital clock on the microwave in the kitchen. Two forty-four. Somehow, it felt much later than that.
“Maybe we should just worry about that later,” I said.
“How much later?”
The question sent a small spark of fury along my veins. What a thing to be asking, considering everything that was going on. I had no idea how I even felt about Grayson, and there were aliens outside town plotting God knows what, and the man I’d been hopelessly in love with for years had finally gotten the balls to admit that he cared for me as well, and what the hell was I supposed to do with that particular piece of information?
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts, I didn’t even realize at first that Lance had gotten out of his chair and now stood next to me.
“Kara.”
A look upward, and those keen eyes caught me and seemed to hold me, seemed to prevent me from moving or speaking. He reached down and took my hands, drew me upward. Then his mouth was on mine, his hands in my hair, his body crushed against me. I could feel so much more of him now that I wore only the tank top, feel his taut muscles against my breasts, the strength of his fingers and the warmth of his flesh. There was my own heat as well, working its way from the pit of my stomach down between my legs, the need, the ache, the desire for something I’d dreamed of for so many years….
Somehow, I managed to back away, to put a few inches of distance between us. Lance did nothing to stop me, as if he knew I needed to claim that space for myself.
Oh, I was in trouble. Big trouble. Even though I’d wanted this for so long, some part of me had hoped that when Lance kissed me, I wouldn’t react all that much, and I could dismiss the infatuation as simply that, and no more. But….
Kissing Grayson had been amazing. No doubt about that. God only knew how a human/alien hybrid with no experience of women could manage to be even half that talented, but wherever he’d learned his technique, it was damn good.
Kissing Lance, though….
Kissing Lance was like coming home. It felt right, more right than anything ever had. He was too old for me, scarred and ironic and distant, and yet I knew now that what I’d felt for him all these years had been my soul crying out for its mate, for the person who understood me and knew everything about me and still loved me anyway.
I stood there for a long moment, staring up at him. Still, he didn’t move, but only watched me with those steel-gray eyes of his, eyes that had seen far too much and yet lingered on me with a sort of wondering joy, as if he couldn’t quite believe that we had finally come to this moment.
Somehow, I found my voice. “Is this crazy?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Probably.”
“Well, as long as we’re in agreement on that.” My body ached with need for him, but, as right as things felt with Lance, I knew I couldn’t take the next step, not until I had time to let Grayson know how things stood between us. And Lance would just have to understand. Stumbling over the words, I went on, “I want to, Lance. But not yet. Not before — I should talk to him, let him know — ”
“It’s all right.”
Startled, I stared up at him. The lighting made it difficult to read his expression clearly, but he just looked resigned and possibly a little amused.
“I’ve waited this long to say anything, Kara. Do you think a night or two is really going to make that much of a difference?”
I wanted to smile back at him. Instead, I planted my hands on my hips and tilted my chin. “How do you know it’s going to be only ‘a night or two’?”
“Wild guess.”
And then we were kissing again, bodies locked in an intimacy that might have been a tease but which I knew was really a promise. It would have been so easy to take him by the hand, lead him down the hall to my bedroom. Time enough for that later, though. I knew I could never forgive myself if I didn’t set things straight with Grayson first.
Whether he’d be open to hearing my explanations was an entirely different matter….