Inara’s smile is a commiserating sort of grimace as she sits crouched on her heels. Yes, her heels—and remember when I wondered how she walked on her toes all night? Yeah, she can do that so effortlessly because she’s an alien.
My new hire isn’t pretending to be an otherworldly creature. She is an otherworldly creature. And she’s assured me that I should leave her here in this park alone tonight, because she’ll be just fine.
Dazedly, I get to my feet and stand back as she wishes me a safe night—me—and she mounts an invisible ramp and disappears like an unseen-door is closing her into an invisi-ship.
This is whacked.
Don’t leave her. Do NOT leave her.
“Okay, time for a reality check,” I mutter under my breath. Yeah, I’m talking to myself. But you already knew I do that. Now I’m just doing it out loud. “No one can see her ship. Even if they walk into it, how are they going to get inside? They can’t. Turn around, walk away.”
I stand there. I don’t know how long I stand there.
The niggling feeling—not worried, not nervous, I don’t know what it is—isn’t going away. But loud and clear, every time I tell myself to move, it’s like I get thumped in the skull with a firm as hell order: DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THIS WOMAN.
With a ragged groan, I drop my hands from where I was gripping my head, stalk up to the ship and pound… on the vicinity of the door. (I can’t tell exactly where the door even is now that it’s sealed shut—and shouldn’t that be enough to put my mind at ease? Somehow it’s not.)
There’s a moment, only a moment but it feels like forever, where it’s just me standing in front of a ship I can only feel the dimensions of on account of its seriously cool as shit camouflaging. It’s tech straight out of a video game. Or highly classified military tech-level stuff. But after only an agonizing moment, the door’s sliding strip appears and Inara is revealed. “Yes, Matt?” she asks, looking endearingly perplexed.
“I’m sorry,” I wave my hand to indicate her ship, “I still can’t… I can’t walk away knowing I’m leaving you here. Spaceship or not, this feels too wrong to me, I can’t do it.” My eyes cut back to her quickly. “And this isn’t about you being a chick alien. If you were a dude and something happened to you, I’d feel fucking awful that I left you out here when I knew better.” I grimace, wincing as I admit, “But I guess there is something about you being a woman that doesn’t sit right with me. Because if I leave you here, and anything bad happens, I won’t just feel awful. That shit will haunt me. I can feel it.”
Inara plunks her hip against the doorframe I still can’t see, but is obviously there and supporting her in an upright position. Her face, her honest-to-God alien face, is so amused. Her scaly lips curl up in a slight smile. The delicate brow plates that are not makeup-covered eyebrows quirk up in the cutest, most humorous way. And you know? She has every right to look at me this way. I treated her like she had screws loose every time she insisted on pretending she was an alien. “What do you propose?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But since it’s not a lie that you’re my employee, and you’re female,” my eyes unwillingly make a trip from her feet, up her muscular yet feminine-plump calves, thighs, hips, to the sexy dip of her waist, to the swell of her chest area, “there’s a chance I can call one of my female employees and ask them to take in a coworker for a few days until we get something safer for you.”
“This is safe. It’s a fortified ship,” she informs me.
“Then again, Tansy’s mom probably doesn’t give two hoots about any of my employees’ welfare what with her daughter running off to Vegas with one of my other employees.” I rake my knuckles up the back of my skull, trying to scrub my brain matter into working order. “Purely by association and my unwilling hand in those two pairing up, her mom probably hates me right now. So she’s not going to house an alien even if I tell her you’re totally a human woman.”
Inara is giving me what looks like the alien version of a very patient look. “Matt. My ship is safe. You don’t have to worry for me.”
“There’s Stacy’s mom,” I continue, running through the options I can think of.
“Matt—”
“But she’s got a couple other kids so I don’t know what kind of room her house has. You could stay at my house, but—”
“I will!” Inara chirps.
My eyes jump up to hers, because for some reason, they’d dropped to her chest again. For a human woman in a costume, she has a phenomenal rack. For a real live alien, she has a phenomenal rack and why can’t I stop staring at her twins? I think I should be ashamed that one of my first internal questions upon learning she’s a real alien was to ponder if her nipples are as blue as the rest of her. But I’m not being a perv. I’m even being respectful. If she were a dude, I’d have wondered too. I just would have come out and asked.
“You will… to which thing?” I ask, trying to keep up.
“Stay with you,” she declares.
I eye her, thrown by her sudden capitulation and trying not to see (i.e., be distracted by) her very female features. Normally, I’d never offer a female employee the option of coming to my house, let alone invite her to share my space for any length of time. But this isn’t a human, and these are abnormal circumstances in the extreme. “Okay. Yeah. Get whatever stuff you need. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 7
It’s a mostly silent walk back to get my car so I can take Inara to my place. Having her in my car with me proves to be interesting because she watches me start, shift gears, and steer my vehicle so avidly—and then she snorts and declares, “I can operate Earthen vehicles.”
I’m majorly caught up wondering how she can sit with her tail… well, poking out of her tailbone. How does that work? Does it ever feel uncomfortable? Is she sitting on it, or does it like, tuck to the side or something? Can I ask or is that a rude-ass question?
I clear my throat and try to refocus. “Since you can drive a spaceship, I don’t doubt you can handle a car.” I calmly keep both hands on the wheel and do not laugh at the absurdity of letting an alien drive this family heirloom of a car. “But this is a 1969 Boss 429 Mustang, which was handed down to me from my grandfather after I worked my ass off to prove I could take care of it, and I wasn’t going to wrap it around a tree. Nobody drives it but me. Plus, there are rules of the road; those you don’t know. So keep that in mind.”
“May I drive your vehicle once I learn the rules of your road?” she asks.
“Not a chance,” I reply.
“Because you don’t know me well enough to share?”
“Because even if we were friggin’ married and we shared a VW Bug I wouldn’t be putting my ass in the passenger seat and letting my woman drive.” I shrug unapologetically. “My women don’t pump gas either—which was the way my grandpa was with my grandma. He said princesses don’t pump gas. He’d say that, and she’d smile. It was this thing between them, some joke I guess. I liked how it made her blush and her eyes sparkle, to hear him say that—to be treated like that.” I glance over at Inara, and she meets my eyes, her gaze not wavering from my face. I look back to the street. “She knew he thought of her as special because he treated her special. He was big into showing, not just telling. He always helped her out of the car too, and opened doors. Although he did that last one for all the ladies.” I shrug. “The door thing though—some women do not like that. It drives them nuts. I know that. But maybe they should all be shown a little more consideration by the men in their lives. It teaches them to expect respect.”