Two

An hour later, Clem comes by to pick me up, but this time, she’s minus her husband. I’m not sure if she did that for me or not, but I appreciate it enough to smile my thanks.

I spent the last sixty minutes huddled on the couch, unable to log into my computer to do even a speck of work, though I have a crap-ton to do since I took yesterday off to visit the lawyer’s office. Malcolm completely derailed me. It’s what he does, what he’s best at. The messages are only the beginning of a cycle of fear and intimidation.

The thought of someone having my back—even a small someone, let alone a large someone—makes me feel better. I know I should be strong and brave on my own but I’m tired of being strong and brave on my own. It took a lot out of me just to leave Malcolm and I’d been planning it for months.

I can’t let Malcolm get his claws into me again. My confidence is shaky at best and doing something—anything—to take control back feels like a win. Even if it’s marrying a guy so he’ll be my bodyguard. Sure, I could look into hiring one, but I like the idea of having one that owes me. It gives me at least the illusion of control. And I’m sure they’re expensive. Who knows how long I could need one?

Clem’s sunny smile greets me as I slide into her Honda and she chatters at me the entire way as we drive north out of Olympia proper. I smile and listen, but honestly, it’s a little hard to get a word in edgewise when Clem gets going. She talks about how great Ares’s people are and how honorable. How much she appreciates that I’m willing to meet her husband’s friend. She’s always talked about her husband with a slightly besotted look on her face and seeing them together earlier put the icing on the cake.

They’re really in love. You can tell. That part alone should clue in the entire world that her husband isn’t from around here. I don’t know anyone who is happy in a relationship with someone local.

I certainly never have been. Come to think of it, maybe a green card marriage isn’t such a crazy idea after all. Or it’s the craziest idea in the history of time. I sit up a little in Clem’s passenger seat. “What if the marriage doesn’t work out?”

Clem waves that off as if it’s a minor detail. “It can’t fail. You’re not marrying him for better or worse. It’s basically a contract so he can stay in America legally. It’s a tit-for-tat kind of deal. You’re doing him a favor, and in return, he’ll be your bodyguard. Charmaine handles all the paperwork to ensure your assets are protected. What’s not to work out?”

Fair point. She’s trying to sell it like I might hate the idea of due compensation for services rendered. Honestly, this is not sounding as terrible as I had originally thought. If I were to go through with this, a marriage license sends a whole different kind of message to Malcolm, one I’m slowly starting to like. He doesn’t have to know that it’s a marriage of convenience or that the guy I’m shacking up with is only sticking around so he doesn’t get made by the Russian Mafia or whatever.

Before I’m ready, Clem pulls onto a dirt road and parks in front of a house buried in the forest. I wouldn’t have known it was here if she hadn’t been driving. Shadows from the towering trunks darken the porch.

An older woman with long white hair sporting artful blond streaks answers the door. She hugs Clementine and asks after Ares, clucking like a pleased aunt when she hears how happy the lovebirds are. She ushers us into a living room that should feel stuffy given the overly zealous brocade patterns covering the furniture, walls and side tables. But it’s nice to be in the company of friendly people who all want the same thing: to hook up couples in need of each other.

It’s been a long time since anyone needed me for me. I let myself contemplate how that might work as Clem bounces to the couch and drags me along. The older woman settles into a chair with a bright red brocade pattern.

“You must be Brooklyn Carter,” she says. “I’m Charmaine. What did Clementine tell you about what I do here?”

“Um…” Queue the panic. I wasn’t expecting a quiz. What if I say the wrong thing? Do I still get my bodyguard?

Charmaine smiles sympathetically. “I’m just trying to figure out where to start. So the beginning, then. I run a matchmaking agency that is a little different than most.”

“That part I know,” I throw in mostly because she’s being so nice about my awkward social skills. It’s not that I don’t know how to act in public. I just don’t have a lot of practice lately at having my own opinion, so I clam up easily. “I have to marry the guy. I’m okay with that.”

I thought about it and I am. Love and romance and whatnot is a fairytale. Why not use marriage as a contract the way it was always intended to be since the dawn of time?

“Yes. That is one of the requirements.” Charmaine’s gaze sharpens on mine as if she’s searching for something. “But that’s not the difference I meant. My matchmaking agency is an offshoot of the Intergalactic Dating Agency. We match displaced aliens from the planet Torvis with human brides here on Earth so they can acclimate to our culture.”

“That’s a joke right?” A laugh sputters from my throat before I can catch it, but Charmaine and Clementine don’t join in. My gaze cuts between the two of them. They’re serious. As in serious. “Aliens don’t exist.”

Which shouldn’t even be a sentence that comes out of my mouth during this conversation. But all at once, I recall how I sensed something different about Ares, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I shake it off. That’s ridiculous. Clementine’s husband is not an alien. I mean, he might be considered an alien because he’s from another country. But not because he’s from another planet.

Clem pats my arm. “It’s a little hard to process, I know. But it’s true. Penelope’s husband is from Torvis too.”

Penelope is Clem’s friend from high school who I’ve also recently become reacquainted with. So they’re both in the insanity club. Good to know.

“Why don’t we skip that, then,” Charmaine suggests just as a man strides from the hall leading to the back of the house. “This is Ajax.”

My breath literally whooshes from my lungs as our gazes lock. He’s beautiful. Literally like the birth of a supernova beautiful, with chiseled cheekbones that could cut wood and full sensuous lips that were made for carnal activities. Dark hair, thick eyebrows. I can’t blink or I’ll miss one of the million nuances of his face. I don’t want to stop looking at him.

“Hello,” he rumbles and his accent slides through me with a delicious little furl.

That’s when I realize he’s halted at the threshold of the room. Waiting for me to come to him or invite him closer. I can’t process how much I appreciate that. Does he know that I don’t deal well with it when a man crowds me? Or is it just coincidence?

“Hi,” I croak. “I’m Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn,” he repeats in his unique accent that I think is possibly similar to Ares’s but I’m going to need to hear this one talk a whole lot more to judge. I think of a few hundred questions to ask him.

“He doesn’t speak English,” Charmaine tells me in the world’s worst bubble popping statement. “He has a translator chip implanted behind his ear but it’s a little flaky, so be careful how you phrase things if you want him to understand you. He’ll learn quickly though, pending how well you teach him.”

“Me?” I don’t remember signing up for English lessons along with this deal. “Wait, did you just say he has a translator chip implanted in his skin?”

“Yes. All Torvians do,” Charmaine clarifies. “It’s one of the processing requirements when they arrive here. We can’t have them speaking Torvian to anyone outside of processing and it’s the most expedient method of helping them appear human.”

Charmaine is telling me this man is not human. I swear that’s what she just said. My gaze drifts down his body, which is frankly drool worthy. Not to mention perfect. An exact replica of what I would have asked for if given the chance to answer a survey. Muscles on top of muscles bunch down his bare forearms and his shoulders flare out under his T-shirt, wide enough to question whether he could actually fit through a door.

But he’s an alien. Apparently.

I shake my head. “I’m not sure what rabbit hole I fell down—”

“No rabbit hole.” Clem laces her fingers with mine and I am not so befuddled that I can’t appreciate the contact. “Finding out that we’re not alone in the universe is a lot to process, especially when presented with the evidence in full color. But take a minute. He’s not going anywhere.”

No, it didn’t seem so. If anything, he seemed frozen at the threshold of the room, not quite committed to entering but not poised to flee either. Like he’s in a holding pattern.

I know that feeling.

Ajax. I swirl the name around in my head. I kind of thought it was a nickname or something that’s popular in his home country. But he doesn’t really look Russian and neither does Ares, if you want to get down to brass tacks. There’s something otherworldly about them both, something extra. As if there’s more to them than meets the eye, maybe beneath their skin.

I am not giving in to this alien insanity. I’m not.

Although…now my curiosity is irrevocably piqued. “Ares said something about genetic experimentation. Tell me more about that.”

Charmaine nods to Ajax. “The Torvian government has a program to breed super-soldiers. This is their crowning achievement. Ajax has inhuman levels of strength and is a decorated member of the military.”

These are his bodyguard credentials as well. Not to mention the fact that he looks like he could take apart a rhinoceros if one got crossways with him.

“Why, um, did he leave then?” I ask because I can’t help myself.

“He doesn’t want to be their killing machine any longer,” Clem spits out with some heat. “They experimented on these guys and then control every aspect of their lives. It’s inhumane or whatever the Torvian equivalent is. The ones that get fed up relocate to Earth, or in the case of Penelope’s husband, they’re banished here.”

Eyeing Ajax again, I realize my lens has already been skewed because all at once, it occurs to me that he’s not average human size. He’s really tall for one thing and built like a flesh and bone tank.

And this is the guy I’m supposed to marry.

“Wait, wait, wait.” I drag air into my lungs as they seize up. “No one said anything about interspecies marrying. What kind of matchmaking service is this?”

“A good one,” Clem says matter-of-factly. “Ares is the love of my life, the best thing that ever happened to me. Not everyone is right for this kind of program, but I think you are or we wouldn’t be here. You need someone loyal in your corner and Ares and I can both vouch for Ajax. He needs you too. He wants to build a low-profile life here so he never has to go back to Torvis. The alien part is incidental to me, but it’s critical for you because he’s got one up on every other being on this planet. Do you want him to show you how he can crush a brick with one hand? It’s kind of cool.”

My head is spinning again. “No, that’s okay.”

Ares is an alien. I’m still trying to put all these pieces together. Slowly, it’s seeping through my beleaguered brain that this is real. I’m sitting on the couch of a matchmaker who has paired me with an alien solider who wants to hide from his government in Olympia, Washington. At my house. Posing as my husband. Not posing—we’d be legally married. He could do whatever he wanted to me I would be physically incapable of stopping him.

That was one of the worst things about Malcolm. He enjoyed the fact that he was bigger and stronger than me.

I massage my temples. “I can’t do this.”

“Okay.” Charmaine nods. “Like Clementine says. This is not for everyone. If the requirements are too stiff, then perhaps we can find someone else to match Ajax to. Eventually. The process sometimes takes a long time given how specialized it is. Your match happened pretty quickly due to Ares’s intervention.”

“It’s not the requirements, it’s—”

Me. I don’t hate the idea of a bodyguard. I hate the idea of being vulnerable to someone I’m supposed to trust. My own boyfriend, the one I chose to be with, hit me repeatedly. Controlled everything I did and all the people I had contact with. Hurt me. Damaged me.

How can I willingly put myself in the path of someone who might do that again?

“Brooklyn.”

At the sound of my name in Ajax’s rumbly accent, I glance up at him. He’s watching me with his dark eyes. Even from across the room I can see that they are troubled. This guy might be an alien, and I’m still not saying I believe that, but he’s not emotionless or even very good at holding his cards close to the vest. I can see that he’s processing everything that’s being said in the room and there’s a tightness about his mouth that might be concern.

I don’t miss the point. He’s worried about what’s going to happen to him. If nothing else, this is most definitely not a familiar place and he’s far from home. Clem said he was being controlled by his government. I wish I could say I don’t have enormous compassion for that kind of reality. My heart clenches and rips open a little.

“Why don’t we leave the two of you alone to talk,” Charmaine suggests. “If that works for you?”

I nod. I can take five minutes to make sure he’s going to be okay.

The room empties as the two ladies clear out but then it fills again rapidly as Ajax breeches the threshold. Instead of taking a seat like every other person on the planet would, he kneels at my feet. Not too close. But close enough.

Prickles of awareness sweep across my skin. From this distance, he’s more than beautiful. He’s stunning—and I mean I’m literally frozen, as if I’ve been tasered by a hidden weapon. Normally that’s due to fear but I sense no threat from him, and I have a well-honed radar for that.

This is something else. Something powerful that catches me in its talons and will not let go.

“I…earn,” he says haltingly. “You.”

Um, what? “You want to earn me?”

He nods. “Earn. Not give.”

Well, I like the sound of that. But what is he planning to earn, my love? My trust? How? I’m mesmerized by the gold flecks in his dark brown eyes, but they don’t magically start providing closed-captioning service for what’s going through his head.

“Okay,” I say and nod in kind. “Tell me more.”

His eyebrows come together and a mess of syllables tumble from his mouth that are so far removed from English—or any language I’ve ever heard spoken in my life—that I can only stare at him in confusion.

For crying out loud. I text Clem to ask her if she’ll call Ares and in less than a minute, I have a translator on speakerphone.

Ajax and Ares engage in a rapid-fire conversation that goes on for four baffling minutes. Then Ares says, “Ajax understands that you fear him. He is deeply sorry and wishes you to spend time with him before setting into motion a life-altering decision that cannot be reversed. He will be in danger of recapture if he returns to Switzerland, which will be the result of you refusing this match. Will you agree to go on a double date with Clementine and myself? Afterward, you may then judge the matter.”

Oh, God. There goes that inconvenient tearing sensation through my heart. The invitation shouldn’t be so sweet, but it is, especially when Ajax is imploring me to say yes with his big, dark brown eyes. Guess he figured out how to speak to me without words after all.

I sigh and say yes. It’s not his fault I’m afraid of him and I feel like crap that he’s aware of it. What a fantastically horrific combination for a first date.

But as Ares and Ajax and I hammer out the details in a teeth-grating mix of their language and mine, I can’t help but be a tiny bit excited that I’m going on an actual date with a sweet guy who wants to earn a place in my life. That can’t be all bad.