Your Planet or Mine? (7 page)

“I grew old.”

“Not to me. I look at you and I see Peter. I see someone I never forgot.”

“Never?” His mouth seemed to want to form a grin that he wouldn’t allow. The result was a boyishly charming half smirk. “That didn’t seem to be the case in the market, Jana. You ran from me.”

“You expected me to remember you on the spot after twenty-three years?”

“Yes.”

“And if I’d walked onto your spaceship, no notice, and said I needed to talk to you, you would have remembered me?”

“Yes,” he said with conviction.

Jana gave a little huff of disbelief.

“It is true. You grew up to be more beautiful than I could have imagined, but when I look at you, I still see the same girl that took my heart. You were beautiful then, and even more so now as a woman.”

A flush of heat burned her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered. Other men had called her beautiful, but their words hadn’t affected her this way.

“Believe me, Jana, when I say I didn’t fully understand my father’s line of work back then. The mission to your world was the turning point.”

“Yet it didn’t turn you into a pacifist. You grew up to be a soldier.”

“I came to see the reasons behind the Coalition’s methods, even if I didn’t agree with them all. The Drakken would change your mind, too.”

“They’re the bad guys, I take it.”

“Far worse than anything you have here on Earth.”

“I don’t know about that. We have some pretty evil characters on this rock.”

“Take them and what they do to the
nth
degree, and you have the Drakken.”

Jana was glad fog covered the stars tonight, so she couldn’t see them. She couldn’t help thinking of all the evenings she forgot to look at the stars because she was too busy, rushing here, rushing there. Tonight had changed that forever. Not only was there other life out there, other
human
life, there were battles and governments and decisions being made on a vast scale where Earth was nothing but an insignificant speck. Less than a lowly pawn in a chess game. She’d never look up in the sky and see the stars the same way again. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to look at the stars again. “Cavin, how is Earth going to keep the Drakken away? We can’t even keep the REEF away.”

“It’s the Coalition I have come to warn you about. The Drakken aren’t a threat here.”

“The Coalition? But the Coalition are
your
people.”

“Yes.”

She glanced sideways at him, but he’d blanked his face of emotion. “But doesn’t—doesn’t that…?”

“Doesn’t that make me a traitor? Believing Earth deserves the chance to defend itself? That the loss of use of one planet won’t make or break the Coalition? Yes, I suppose it does make me a traitor to have such unconventional views. I don’t intend for the Coalition to find out, however. Treason is a capital crime. I’d be executed, and not mercifully, either.”

“Cavin…”

“If the REEF doesn’t get to me first.”

“
Cavin!
” She took a few deep breaths to calm down. He risked his life to save hers, and everyone else on Earth. And now he expected her to be the one to sound the alarm. The sensation of being swept out to sea in advance of an approaching tsunami consumed her. “All we have to do is talk. Mediate a compromise. Explain to the Coalition that we live here, and—”

“They won’t care.”

“The United Nations will get involved. It’s not a lost cause. Sides farther apart have reached agreement through diplomacy. We don’t have to go to war.”

“Earth can’t go to war. You don’t know how to fight the Coalition. You’ll lose.” His voice took on an edge. “Jana, I’d talk to my government personally if I thought negotiation would do any good.”

“No!” Engaging in direct communication with his people would end any question of him being seen as a traitor at home. It would confirm it. They’d know he was here and what he’d done. “You’re here to help us help ourselves, not to earn a death sentence. I won’t risk you being executed. I won’t.” She couldn’t bear the thought of Cavin being put to death. She’d never be able to live with it. “If we can’t fight them off, or talk our way out of this, what does that leave?”

“Bring me to Groom Lake in Nevada. An inert Coalition spacecraft is hidden there. I have a plan. It requires activating the ship to deter the invasion force. Powering up a spacecraft generates a single signal that Coalition sensors can detect. But if I take that signal and multiply it by a hundred, I can make it appear as if Earth possesses its own space fleet.”

“You want to find the Roswell saucer and hack into it.”

“That’s one way to describe it. Unlike modern craft, it has no safeguards. I will hack in to the shipboard computer. I have the codes.” He tapped his head. “Memorized.”

Her laugh sounded more than a little bit manic. “That’s urban legend. A rumor. There’s no flying saucer hidden there, or anywhere.”

“Correct. It is a scout vessel.”

“Oh, a scout vessel, that explains it.” She wiped sweat off her forehead. He wanted her to get him inside the most guarded and secret military base there was so he could hot-wire a spacecraft that wasn’t supposed to be there. Could it possibly get any worse? “That’s Area 51. Dreamland. It’s where they test top secret aircraft. You’d need a special clearance to get on base. Top secret, minimum.”

“That’s why you must take me to your leader. He will bring us there.”

“With no proof on your part other than a sincere smile and a few cool gadgets? I don’t think so. You look too human.”

“I am human. We’re all humans. Same DNA, different planets.”

“That’s not going to help your story. You have to be able to prove you’re an extraterrestrial, or people will think you’re lying.” Or crazy. Jana rubbed her forehead. Cavin would talk, but no one would listen. And she’d be laughed out of the capitol right behind him. Jana played out the scenario in her mind:
“Oh, Governor Schwarzkopf, do you have a minute?”

“For you, always, Jana,” he’d say in his thick accent, holding his cigar high so as not to singe her hair when he pulled her into his usual bear hug.

That’s when she’d step back and introduce Cavin. The governor would wonder about the armor. “His name is Cavin, and I know he looks as human as you and me, but he’s an alien.”

“Illegal?”

“No, extraterrestrial.”

The governor would take a puff of his cigar then, and make eye contact with his security officers, just in case.

“He wanted me to bring you here, so he could tell you…well, I think Cavin can explain it all better than I can.” That’s when she’d wave Cavin forward. “Go on, honey, tell him about that spaceship you want to use at Area 51, you know, to phone home…”

Jana groaned. She felt a little like Paul Revere, famed for sounding the early warning that gave the American colonists the chance to fight off an invasion. But what if Revere had cried out, “The British are coming, the British are coming,” and they didn’t come? Without a doubt, it would have generated some credibility issues for ol’Paul. The last thing Jana needed was credibility issues. She couldn’t let fear blind her. She had to think this through. In light of the ethics scandal with her father, she owed it to her family not to act rashly.

“This was a long time in the making, Jana, my coming here. As soon as I learned of the planetary acquisition plans, I left my post without leave and came here. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you, Squee, if I lost track of you.”

Emotion thickened his voice, but he quickly cleared his throat to erase the evidence and became Mr. Tough Guy again. “If wanting to save you makes me a traitor, I wear the title without shame.”

She bit her lip and forced her eyes to focus on the foggy road.
Her Peter…her exotic, magical boy
…He’d jettisoned his future for her. He was willing to die for her. She’d always dreamed of a hero, and here he was.

“Say something, Jana. Look at me.”

“I want to. Trust me, I do.” She sucked in another breath. “But I can’t, because the truth is, I’m having a vulnerable moment here, and until it passes, if I look at you, if I steal one tiny peek at those eyes of yours, I’m afraid I’ll agree to anything you want, because I love you, I never stopped, that’s why I can’t look at you. And now I have to drive—”

“No you don’t.”

Cavin grabbed the steering wheel at the same time he slid his fingers into her hair at the back of her head to pull her close. Before she could finish uttering, “What the hell are you doing?” he’d sealed his mouth over hers.

A shudder ran through her body, and she forgot all about the highway, and driving, and everything else normally hardwired to the basic instinct for survival.

Magic.

Yes, that’s what it was, magic, pure and consuming, what she’d searched for all her life and never found with anyone else. Jana took his face in both hands and kept him pressed to her lips. It was a full-on, openmouthed kiss, hungry and wet. Her heart pounded a deafening drumbeat in her ears. Not just any kind of drumbeat. The kind they played at primitive exotic ceremonies where you danced and got naked and had sex with people you didn’t know.

A horn blared. She and Cavin jumped apart.

“Gods,” he said hoarsely and jerked the wheel expertly to the right to avoid hitting the truck they’d veered toward and almost hit.

“I thought you said you’d drive!”

“I was driving! I, ah, got a little distracted at the end. But here, you drive.” He let go of the wheel. “And turn left.”

She was still so dazed by the kiss, the heart-stopping, head-spinning kiss of utter, unadulterated magic that she didn’t react. “You improved a bit since you were a kid.”

“So have you. Now,
turn left
, Jana!”

She swerved to the left in the fog. “You don’t have to yell.”

“If it keeps you alive, I do.”

She smelled him—the unique male scent of him; she could feel his body heat burning from across the car. It was terribly distracting. It was all she could do not to pull over and drag Cavin into a ditch and…

“Me, too,” he said huskily.

She blushed. “You can mind read?”

“No, but I was hoping my thoughts were the same as yours, based on the look on your face.” He reached across the seat to play with a lock of her hair. She felt him rubbing it between his gloved fingers. “You have a very expressive face. And an expressive mouth, or maybe expressive isn’t the best word to describe your mouth. I’ll need to consult my internal English thesaurus and find something better, like luscious, for instance, or succulent. Better yet, carnal.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over her knuckles, a feather touch that made her tremble.
Magic
.

She tugged her hand away and clamped it around the steering wheel. “No more of that, by the way.”

He threw her an are-you-crazy look of male shock. Then abruptly he sat back with a deep sigh. “Ah, Squee, I didn’t stop to think you might have a lover, someone important to you. I am sorry.” And he sounded it, too. “When I read your background data, I didn’t see anything about a mate—a spouse—or a serious male interest.”

Great. Not only did people she’d never met know the sordid, depressing details of her social life, aliens she’d never met did, too. “I’m not seeing anyone. No boyfriends. No husbands, past or present.”

He made a sound of relief. “But if you were, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have been disappointed, yes, but I still would have come. I would have saved you, your family.”

“My family is under investigation, and I’ve made them and my career my focus. I can’t afford to get involved with anyone right now—even you, Cavin. And if you think that’s going to be easy with you hanging around, knowing how I feel about you, you’re crazy.”

“So, it will be hard to resist me.” He sounded more than a little pleased.

“Not as hard as you think. I’m highly motivated.”

She could talk the talk, but could she walk the walk?

The fog began to lift some as they sped east. Soon she was able to see without Cavin’s directions. Had she survived this unscathed? She was almost afraid to do it, but she let a little of the tension out of her aching shoulders. Just as she did so, the flash of police car lights illuminated the interior of the car. Her luck, it seemed, had finally run out.

F
LASHING LIGHTS
illuminated the dark interior of the car. Earth law wardens, Cavin thought darkly. What more could go wrong? Could he and Jana not, in Earthling terms, catch a break?
“Yenflarg,”
he muttered, forming a fist on the dashboard.

Jana gave him a panicked look. “Please tell me your brain implant’s not malfunctioning.”

“Lorglor tessmassa,” he replied.

At the flash of fear in Jana’s eyes, Cavin said quickly, “Kidding, Squee. A bad joke. My translator’s fine.” She shoved at him. “A badly timed bad joke. I have no idea what a lorglor…whatever I said is, but
yenflarg
is a swearword in my language. Untranslatable, apparently.”

“Try.” Tight-lipped, she exited the highway, the patrol car in pursuit. “I’m running out of English cusswords.”

He drummed his fingers on his knee. “
Yenflarg
is, as best I can describe it, the foul interior walls of a large, muck-eating creature’s ass.”

Jana made a strangled sound that sounded suspiciously like laughter, but almost immediately, worry turned her pink little mouth into a pout. He immediately thought of kissing that mouth, suckling on those plump lips, and…His body tightened. He made fists and willed the distracting heat to pass. It wasn’t the time or place for such carnal thoughts.

Jana stopped the car at the bottom of the entry ramp. “Shut off the motor.”

He did. The police car pulled up behind the Chevy and stopped, lights flashing.
“Yenflarg,”
she said with feeling, then: “It’s not working, Cavin. This is such a nightmare. Two more exits and we’d have been back to the Safeway. So close and yet so far.”

“This will not be a problem.”

“How can it not be a problem? Okay, I’m working on excuses and coming up empty here. ‘Sorry officer, it was only one gun battle and three carjackings.’” She frowned at Cavin. “Do you think that’ll make him more or less likely to overlook the reckless driving?”

Cavin frowned. Charm and persuasion had long been talents of his, and it had always been so with the female sex. But how was he going to get Jana to trust him when at every turn he led her into trouble? Or worse, danger.

She sat rigid in the driver’s seat, squeezing the steering wheel. He brushed a finger over her bloodless knuckles. “It will be okay, Jana. Wait and see.”

“He’s going to know this is a stolen vehicle.”

“No, he won’t.”

You will see
. Cavin simply smiled. She’d learn to trust him, yes, she would, one small technology-enhanced act at a time.

The uniformed warden sauntered over to the car. Jana rolled down the window. “Yes, Officer?”

“Good evening, ma’am. License and registration.”

He dipped his head and peered inside the car. “Costume party,” Jana said, poking a thumb at Cavin, who nodded politely at the officer.

Before she could hand over her identification, Cavin subtly brushed his wrist over the cards. The warden took them and returned to his car.

“What did you do?” she whispered.

“I altered the data. Your identity will now come up as the legal owner of this vehicle.”

She smiled. “I like you more and more by the minute.”

“Love me, you mean.” He’d meant it to come out smug, but instead it sounded tender. Quietly, he added, “For your information, I never stopped loving you, either.”

She smoothed her bangs away from her forehead and pondered him with an expression of intensity and surprise that took him all the way back to the night he’d kissed her for the first—and what he’d assumed would be the only—time. It had been a very different kind of kiss from the one they’d just shared. It had been his first kiss, innocent and sweet. The expression on her face that night was one he’d selfishly held close through so many years: Her small heart-shaped face pale in the moonlight, her hair parted down the middle, bearing waves on each side from pigtails even after being brushed out.

Our daughter will look like that.

He couldn’t imagine anything he desired more than having a child with Jana, except bedding her, yes, definitely that, but that was a more immediate wish as opposed to long-term, but Cavin cleared his mind of all of it. Before he could consider any such blessings from the gods, he had a world to save and a woman’s trust to win. Neither would be easy, no matter what their feelings for each other.

He’d never dreamed Jana wouldn’t be immediately and thoroughly convinced by him, or that she’d have obligations she’d need to think of first—career and family obligations. In his mind, she’d always recognized him right away. They’d fall into each other’s arms and soon after, of course, he’d make love to her. That very night, they’d approach Earth’s leadership. The leaders would listen to his plan and act immediately. And when it was over, when the fleet was turned away, Cavin would get his girl.

He’d have to leave for a while, he’d tell her, to honorably resign his posting with the Coalition military. The Coalition would wonder at his decision. He’d never tell them, of course. “I’ve grown weary of war,” was all he’d have to say and it would be enough to seal his fate. Of course, there was the complication of the woman he’d been promised to marry, a woman he’d never even met, but once he gave up his position, he’d no longer fit into her plans. Then he’d find his father, bid him farewell, and return to Jana. She’d agree to be his mate. They’d make a life, make a family. And when the nights were warm in midsummer and the moon was full, he’d let Jana think he was magic all over again. He had it all planned out.

Had,
he reminded himself. One day cycle on Jana’s infuriating little world had taught him that plans meant little.

He sighed and briefly touched her hair, letting his hand fall. Her unruly blond hair looked soft to the touch. It took all he had not to wrap it in his fingers and pull her to his mouth and kiss her senseless, as he had fifteen minutes ago.

“Cavin, stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he asked innocently.

“Like you want to kiss me.”

“And what if I did kiss you? Just one more kiss. Would it be so—”

Jana pressed a warm finger against his lips. “Stop.”

“Wrong?” he finished in a mumble. Holding himself very still, he watched her react to the feel of his mouth, the prick of his barely surfaced whiskers, the intensity of his stare.

The heat between them crackled.

She let her finger slide to his chin and leaned closer, her eyes closing. “I’m beginning to wonder if resistance is futile,” she whispered against his lips.

The warden returned and rapped on the glass. They jumped apart before completing the kiss.

Jana sighed.
“Yenflarg,”
she muttered.

Cavin chuckled. “Such language would make a space-dockworker blush.”

“Thank you. I wish my grandfather could hear that.”

With a perplexed expression, the warden returned Jana’s cards. “Is there a problem, Officer?” she asked him innocently.

“I’d pulled you over for speeding. But my radar says you were driving well under the speed limit.”

“We wanted to be careful in the fog,” Jana said brightly.

“I wish more folks were doing that tonight.”

She nodded with sympathy.

“Say, you’re not
the
Jana Jasper are you?”

Jana’s laugh sounded high-pitched and false. “People keep saying that. Actually, I think I look more like Drew Barrymore.”

“The actress?” He squinted. “Hmm, yeah. But you look more like John Jasper’s daughter. My partner didn’t think so. ‘Senator Jasper’s a real fashionable lady, smart and classy,’ she said.”

As he walked away, Jana said, “Was I just insulted?” She pushed her tangled hair away from her face. Her clothing was soiled, and her bare feet dirty. Only her brightly colored toenails appeared unscathed. Noticing her condition for the first time, Cavin felt the heat of shame. He was supposed to be protecting this woman. “In the heat of battle, I didn’t think of what you’d suffered. It was either this, or risk losing you. I hope you can understand.”

But Jana had no ear for his apologies. She clapped her hands together. “He didn’t think I was me!”

“Unfortunately, our assassin friend will not be so easily fooled. We’ve outmaneuvered him, for now, but we’ll need to take cover.”

Reality rushed back into her expression. “You’re right. We’ll go to my apartment—no, that’s not a good idea. My doorman will wonder who you are. And my neighbors are very social, very curious. Look at the way we’re dressed; they’ll ask questions.” Jana tapped her chin. “Must avoid questions.”

Then she snapped her fingers. “Evie’s house. My sister. No questions there. She’s gone for a week, but she wouldn’t mind us staying the night. Start the car, Cavin. I’m getting you inside before you make me break any more laws.

“Private as well as public,” she added under her breath and, with a screech of tires, roared up the entry ramp to the highway.