Chameleon: Alien Castaways (Intergalactic Dating Agency)

by Cara Bristol

  “I’d appreciate that! Thank you.” He sounded so relieved, she felt guiltier for her dirty thoughts. Two days ago, I was ready to zap him with bear spray, and today I’m looking for an excuse to get him naked.

  The two bedrooms, the bath, and the small laundry closet were off the hall. “Come with me.” She winced.

  He followed, seeming not to notice the double entendre.

  That’s because he’s a gentleman, not a dirty sex fiend like me. Not that she’d practiced any fiendishness lately. She hadn’t had sex since before being widowed. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he’s not hot. Maybe I’m horny and desperate. Any port in a storm, and all. She risked a glance at him.

  No. It was him. All him. Until he’d appeared on the scene, she’d sworn off men. Her libido had been nonexistent. Now her lust had shot from zero to sixty.

  The everyday towels would be too small, so she found a beach towel and set it on the sink, and then moved into the hall so he could enter. She focused on his throat. “Um, you can hand me your wet clothes through the door, and I’ll put them in the dryer.”

  She heard rustling and a plop as if sodden garments hit the floor. The door opened, and his bare arm snaked out with his wet clothing, a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved pullover shirt. She cleared her throat. “Uh, what about your underwear?”

  Don’t think about him naked. The towel would more than cover his modesty, and it would be uncomfortable to wear a wet T-shirt and shorts. Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about—his comfort.

  “Underwear?” he asked.

  “T shirt? Shorts?”

  “This is all I have.”

  “All righty, then.” She shoved his jeans and shirt in the dryer and fled to the kitchen. She tidied up, throwing away the old faucet, putting the cleaners back under the sink. She was bent over, wiping a cabinet, when she caught sight of bare masculine feet and calves, her lime-green beach towel printed with pink flip-flops hitting him above the knees. Some men had bony knees. His were sexy. She gulped and stood up.

  “Your, uh, clothes are in the dryer,” she stated the obvious. The squeaky hum could be heard. “It might, uh, take a little while. Your clothes were pretty wet.”

  He shrugged. “What else would you like me to work on?”

  He had that perfect V shape of broad shoulders tapering to slim hips. Smooth skin stretched taut over his muscled chest and bulging biceps. Scruff darkened his squared jaw, giving him that rugged lifeguard look. He can save me any day. Help! I’m drowning!

  Maybe the Argent town council could feature him on different billboards for different seasons. Hot lifeguard for summer, sexy ski instructor for winter. All he’d need would be a prop, maybe a life preserver or a set of skis or…

  The front of the towel tented with arousal.

  Every cell went on alert, buzzing with awareness. Her entire body burned like fire. It has been so long… She forced her gaze up to his face.

  “Maybe swap out the bathroom faucet?” she suggested, shifting and pressing her thighs together.

  “Will do.”

  She sneaked one last peek. Her reaction reminded her of the cheesy porn Dayton used to watch. Horny widow puts the moves on the handyman…

  She was glad she was wearing a good bra because her nipples were hard.

  On that thought, her eyes widened at his smooth muscular chest.

  “You don’t have nipples!” she burst out and clapped a hand over her mouth. How could she have said such a thing! “Oh my, god, I’m sorry.” Embarrassment flooded her face in a surge of heat. Either he’d had surgery or he’d been born with a deformity. She was inclined to think the latter because there was no scarring. He was still handsome, but to call attention to his condition…

  And then he turned every shade of the rainbow. Literally. As she gaped, his face contorted and his entire body turned lime green with pink patches like the towel, then yellow like the kitchen walls, then bright blue, and finally returned to a mocha shade, except for his feet. They were blue.

  “Oh my god! What’s happening to you?”

  A muscle ticked in his cheek, and he clenched his fist. “The way you affect me…I worried this would happen.”

  What did happen? If not for his reaction now, she would have sworn she’d imagined what she’d seen, that she’d been hallucinating. She pressed a hand to her throat, almost afraid to ask the question, but she’d been through too much to shy away. “How—how did you change color like that? Why are your feet blue?”

  “I’m losing the personification.”

  “The person—what?”

  “I don’t have nipples because I didn’t realize male humans had them. Where I’m from, only females have them. The man on the billboard was wearing clothing, so I didn’t know. I’m not human,” he said. “I’m Xeno. I come from a planet in another arm of the galaxy.”

  Her snort of laughter died a sudden death at the seriousness on his face. It was the craziest thing she’d ever heard, but his feet were still blue, and he didn’t have nipples. I do not have an alien in my kitchen.

  But that meteorite… Wary, she backed away. Her heart thudded.

  “I usually have much better control, but you make it hard to concentrate. I know I’m not the handyman you expected. I flooded your kitchen. I’ve made other mistakes. You were so kind to keep me on. I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I can transform myself to mimic other life-forms. But in my natural state, this is what I look like…”

  Ripples moved under his skin as it turned the color of a summer sky. He seemed to grow several inches taller and broader. As his towel fell away, any salacious ideas were erased from her mind when his back hunched and a ridged tail thrust out of his spine.

  Cam Leon still had two eyes, two ears, and one nose, but the shapes were unhuman, and his mouth—he had freaking fangs!

  An alien. A real alien. Oh my god. Oh my god. Her knees shook. Encountering an extraterrestrial for real was nothing like a science fiction movie—except for the ones where the aliens killed all the humans. This man was not human! “What are you? Stay back!” He’d tricked her, lied to gain admission to her house. Oh god. She backed into the stove.

  Cam flinched but held out a claw-tipped hand. “Kevanne—” His expression beseeched, but she wasn’t about to be fooled again.

  An alien. A real alien. “Don’t touch me! Get out! Get out of my house!” She dashed to the other side of the small butcher block island.

  His expression closed up, he turned, and he marched out of the kitchen.

  Moments later, she heard the front door close.

  Heart pounding, she crept to the living room window and peeked through the curtains to see Cam, dragging his tail, walking down the driveway toward the woods. She ran to the door and locked it then returned to the window in time to see him disappear around the bend.

  It’s cold out there, and he’s naked. I didn’t even let him get dressed.

  He’s an alien! From outer freaking space! He pretended to be human! He could have killed me. Or beamed me aboard his spaceship. When will I ever learn? First Dayton, now an alien.

  She had no reason to feel guilty for chasing him away.

  But she couldn’t forget his expression of hurt before he’d masked it. He’d revealed himself, she’d recoiled, and he’d looked crushed.

  Chapter Ten

  In the week and a half since Chameleon’s arrival on Earth, Argent hadn’t ever been this crowded. People lined up outside to get a seat at Millie’s Diner, and the bait shop and the antique store were doing a bustling business. Parked cars lined bumper to bumper along Main Street from the highway to the school.

  I shouldn’t be here. Kevanne had communicated her wishes, but he couldn’t stay away. He had to see her one more time.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed through the double doors of the gym—into pandemonium. He’d never seen so many humans congregated in one place. Their jabbering voices melded into an indistinct, cacophonous noise, overwhelming his translator. Scr
eaming children dashed back and forth. People waited in long lines at the half dozen food booths at the front of the gym, while the back two-thirds was taken up by white canopied stalls, laid out in neat rows. On the stage at the far rear, a group of performers played music, singing a ballad about a man who lost his beloved pickup truck and his girl all in the same day.

  Cam could empathize with the loss. His heart ached.

  Switching the personification had been a wise call. For sure, he would have been recognized from the billboard, and he wished to avoid attracting any attention. He would check on Kevanne, and then he would leave. She would never need to know he’d been here.

  Four days had passed since she’d ordered him out of her house. He’d guessed many humans would have difficulty accepting an alien, but he’d hoped Kevanne would be different. He hadn’t intended to ever bother her again, but then, this morning, he’d gone for a ride on the scooter and found himself in Argent.

  He started up one aisle, peering left and right and over heads. He spied all manner of handcrafted objects, primitive, yet appealing—baskets woven from grasses and reeds, colorful glazed pottery, paintings of landscapes, botanicals, and animals, hats and scarves knitted from woolen yarns, carved wooden figurines and boxes, metal sculptures, and dried bouquets.

  Down the third aisle, he spotted the sign: LAVENDER BLISS FARM. Sucking in air, he halted, and somebody slammed into him from behind. He moved out of the way and crept down the row, ducking into a space between two booths diagonal from her. In a quick perusal of his surroundings, he noted the booth on his left sold wooden toys; the one on the right purveyed fantasy paintings of…outer space, he supposed. It wasn’t any galaxy he recognized. The artist had taken creative license to a whole new level, he noticed before focusing on Kevanne. Her dark hair curled around her beautiful face, lit by a smile as she talked to customers who examined the dried floral arrangements, scented candles, bottles of lotion and vials of oil, metal boxes of tea, and sachets and tiny pillows filled with the blossoms. She looked happy and well.

  The last time he’d seen her, he’d scared her. She’d been afraid of him. His heart contracted.

  She handed each customer who talked with her or entered her booth one of the little bags. He remembered her filling them in her living room. He could smell the lavender from across the aisle. He would always associate the scent with her.

  A customer purchased a vial of oil and a tin of tea. Kevanne swiped the woman’s plastic card through her phone and bagged the purchases. “Thank you. Come visit Lavender Bliss Farm in the summer. The opening date will be posted on my website, which is on the tag.” She held up one of the little lavender bags and dropped it into the sack.

  “Will do. I love lavender. I find it very calming.” The woman left, and two other women in the booth followed her out. “Thank you for stopping by,” Kevanne said. “Here—have a free sachet.”

  She rolled her shoulders and then scanned the crowd, smiling and saying hello to people as they passed by. Her gaze skipped over him then skidded back.

  She doesn’t know it’s me. She can’t—unless I’ve turned blue.

  Quickly he checked himself and let out a sigh of relief. Still good. When he looked up, another customer had entered the booth, striking up a conversation while sniffing the oils and lotions.

  She’s fine. She’s happy. She’s well.

  He was miserable. He could temporarily alter his appearance, but he couldn’t change what he was: Xeno. Not of her world, not long to remain in her world since they’d gotten a strong lead on fixing the Castaway.

  Kevanne and the customer chatted about lavender. This was a good time to leave.

  He stepped into the aisle and strode away.

  * * * *

  Sales had been steady all morning, although they couldn’t compare to the vendor’s across the aisle. His realistic paintings of the Milky Way had been flying off the metal grid wall of his booth. Of all the stalls in the building, why did she have to be located by him? His artwork of outer space reminded her of Cam. She wondered if one of the planets depicted was the one he’d come from. She was appalled at how she’d reacted. He’d never, ever given her reason to fear he would harm her in any way, and yet she’d freaked out and hurt his feelings. Four days had passed since she’d ordered him out of her house without his clothes, without payment for the work he’d done for her.

  She had no way to reach him to apologize. He didn’t have a phone—at least he’d never given her a number.

  Every time she drove by the billboard, it was like a dagger through her heart. After the spring fling, she intended to look for his ship, certain now the meteorite had been his spacecraft.

  A tingling between her shoulder blades gave her the uncomfortable sense she was being watched. Flexing her shoulders, she scanned the crowd, her gaze skipping over the Milky Way booth then darting back to the tall blond man standing next to it. Something about his posture, the way he held his head reminded her of Cam, but he didn’t look at all like the billboard model.

  What if it is him? Cam can change his form. What if he came to see me? Her heart raced. I should go over there. Talk to him. Find out.

  What if it’s not him?

  What if it is? What if he came, but he’s afraid to talk to me after all the horrible things I said?

  She was forestalled from making a decision when a customer entered her booth. “Do you make all your own oils and lotions?”

  Kevanne forced a friendly smile. “Yes, I do. I grow my own lavender, too. I own Lavender Bliss Farm outside of Argent. Here, try a sample.” She turned her back to the aisle and showed the woman the lotion tester.

  The woman applied lotion to her hand and sniffed. “Ooh! This is nice.”

  But after sampling everything in the booth, she left without buying anything, and when Kevanne turned around, the blond man had disappeared.

  The man wasn’t Cam. He reminded her of him—and he shouldn’t. He looked nothing like him.

  Except for the similar height. How many men in Argent were that tall?

  None.

  However, the spring fling had drawn crowds from Coeur d’Alene and Spokane. There were plenty of tall men around today.

  It wasn’t Cam. Couldn’t be. After the way she’d treated him, he’d never want to see her again. If he’d taken the trouble to come to the spring fling, he would have spoken to her.

  I should make sure.

  I can’t leave my booth unattended. And it’s not him. It would be pointless and embarrassing to accost a stranger.

  She grabbed her cash box from under the counter and dove into the throng.

  “Excuse me, excuse me! Sorry!” Keeping the blond head in sight, she wove through the people.

  She caught up with the man and grabbed his arm. “Cam! Cam, wait!”

  “Excuse me?” He turned around. The eyes, the chin, the nose, the mouth were all wrong. Not only was he not Cam, he wasn’t the man who’d been standing across the aisle!

  She dropped her hand. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were somebody…I knew. Sorry.” She fled back to her booth.

  Two women were sampling lotions. Kevanne sniffed back tears and forced herself to greet the customers. “Hello! Welcome to Lavender Bliss Farm.” I lost him. Again.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Cam! Cam, wait!”

  Chameleon had turned the corner, heading away from Kevanne’s aisle when he heard his name, well, the name Kevanne called him. His heart leapt. He whipped around to see her grab the arm of a blond man.

  A funny feeling curled in his stomach at the sight of her touching another man, but then she dropped her hand, her face blushed red, and she practically ran back to her booth.

  She thought he was me. She came after me!

  Elation skyrocketed until the gravity of the situation grounded him. Nothing had changed. She was still human; he was still Xeno. The Castaway would be fixed, and they would leave Earth. Her future remained here, growing and selling lavender. His
was among the stars, finding the ’Topian refugees and ensuring their safety and that Shadow had a chance to survive by finding a mate. He needed to walk out the door and leave Argent. They had no future. Spending any more time with her would be pointless and only lead to heartache.

  She came for me.

  He shouldered his way through the crowd.

  Two women were in her booth, rubbing lavender oil on their wrists.

  “Now that I have my own farm, I plan to use organic growing methods,” Kevanne was saying.

  He wished the people here would go away! Give him ten minutes! He huffed in frustration.

  Kevanne’s head jerked, and she did a double take. The hope lighting her face sent his spirits soaring. “C-Cam?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He had to wait until the women finished smelling and sampling damn near everything in the booth. Finally they bought some oil and tea. As soon as they left, he planted himself in the center of the entrance to deter anyone else from entering.

  “You’ve changed,” she said.

  She looked the same. Beautiful. “I figured I would be too recognizable as the man from the billboard.” He twisted his mouth. “That wasn’t the best choice.”

  “I’m so, so sorry about how I reacted. I—I have no excuse for how I behaved.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not.” She shook her head. “I had no way to contact you to tell you how sorry I am. I still have your clothes and your money. I never paid you for the work you did.”

  “For flooding your kitchen?” That’s why she’d wanted to see him? To pay him? Give him back his clothes? “Keep them.” He didn’t need money now and particularly not hers.

  In four days, the castaways’ financial situation had changed. The Intergalactic Dating Agency had put them in touch with a wealthy tech magnate and investment banker named Edwin Mysk, who funded space travel and exploration projects. Mysk had jumped at the chance to bankroll the spacecraft repair in exchange for the opportunity to learn from them. The repairs wouldn’t happen overnight because 3D printers—Earth’s primitive version of a replicator—still needed to be designed and built and some factories had to be retooled, but their departure would occur sooner rather than later now.