III. THE REST OF THAT DAY: MEL

The moment the phone rang, Mel dropped what she was doing and hurried to answer it. She hadn't heard from Cole in days, not since he'd taken the air shuttle from Heathrow to Orly, in fact, and the toll of not knowing if he was okay was preying on her more than usual. And it usually preyed on her a great deal.

Mel knew there was always the possibility that one day Cole might not return from the mortal dangers he faced when in pursuit of a Collection. She lived with the constant unspoken anxiety of knowing that each time he walked out the door could well be the last time she'd ever see him. Although it was something that had been part of their relationship since the beginning, she sometimes obsessed about it to near madness. But this was the nature of his job and she had to allow him to focus, couldn't let him know the extreme depths her terrors sometimes plunged her into. She dutifully tried to keep her fears locked deep in her heart and away from her everyday being, tried to keep her mind busy with normalcy. The trouble was, by now it had become like living under heavy bombardment in a war zone and she didn't know how much longer she could endure the unrelenting stress. Nothing was normal' for her any more, she knew Cole wasn't immortal, and she was reaching the end of her rope, thoroughly exhausted from the constant effort of putting on a brave front.

But the call wasn't from Cole. It was Vic. Again. His second call of the day.

Mel dangled the phone by its cord a distance away from her ear so that Vic could air his happy blatherings to the room at large and firmly pinched two fingers over the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. A nasty, many-clawed demon of a tension headache was beginning to roil, simmering through her brain synapsis like a poisonous witch's brew. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

The diamond was burning a hole in his pocket, Vic said. He wouldn't feel it was safe and secure until the ring was where it belonged: on her dainty finger. His mother was ecstatic that the last of her sons was finally – finally! – getting married and wanted to throw a small engagement party just for the immediate family (the Brunos were an enormous family!) and about two or three hundred of their very closest friends. His Grandma Sophia was in tears because Mel wasn't Italian, while his Grandma Maria kept yelling at Sophia that it didn't matter what she was so long as they could teach her to cook Italian. (Isn't that cute?) But they both agreed that the Watchfire would have to be sold. It just wasn't properly respectable for the wife of a Bruno to be the proprietor a bar. His younger sister Rose wanted to take her shopping to pick out her wedding dress, while his older sister Anna felt that was tacky, that she should have the dress custom made and knew just the seamstress to do it. Quite reasonably, too. And what about the church? His Uncle Vito – the one from his father's side of the family – had submitted a list of more than a dozen dates during the next eight months of when his catering hall wasn't booked and wanted to know which date they wanted. Would it be okay if his 4-year old niece was the flower girl? She really was so adorable! His other Uncle Vito – the one from his mother's side of the family – was in real estate and would help them find a home. Did she have any particular preference as to neighborhoods? Three of his cousins, all in the travel business and none on speaking terms with any of the others, had declared war as to which one of them would be booking the honeymoon arrangements. What did she think about a two-week Caribbean cruise? Hawaii? Maybe Paris? And Vic's mother wanted to know what her color scheme was to be because she dearly wanted to help pick out the stationery for the invitations. After all, poor little Mel didn't have her mother or grandmother or any family left to ...

"Dammit, Vic!" Mel finally screamed into the phone. "I told you I would think about it! That means I'm considering it! It doesn't mean you'll have your answer in a few minutes or a few hours or the next day even in a few days!" Vic began making soothing noises "And regardless of what anyone in your family may have told you, it doesn't mean that I'm only being coy or playing hard to get!" Vic was giving her more soothing noises, which only made her scream louder "Didn't anyone ever teach you that maybe' might mean just that? And how dare you assume you know what my answer is going to be before I've even had the chance to figure that out myself, much less get the chance to tell you!?!"

Now, of course, Vic wanted to come over, wanted to talk with her, wanted to have dinner with her. Mel flat out told him no and said that she was very tired and would be going to bed early, which he thought was a wonderful idea. Very testily, and enunciating very clearly, Mel made it plain that she'd give him her answer in a day or so but she didn't wish to either see him or speak with him until then and that she would be calling him. Then she slammed down the phone before he could say another word.

God! No matter the species, the males are an entirely different species!

Mel could not believe that she'd actually spent more than three-and-a-half seconds of her life seriously toying with the idea that maybe she should marry Vic. It would never work. It would be a disaster. Vic was a third-generation Chicago cop. Both his grandfathers had been cops; his father and one of his father's brothers had been cops; three of his mother's brothers had been cops; his youngest brother was a cop; Anna was married to a cop. There were even more cops heavily sprinkled throughout the family tree, more than enough to staff an entire squad! And all of them male! The entire family had a typically paternalistic cop mentality, the job always coming first, the wives seeing to the home and children, keeping themselves pretty like hot-house flowers, and living for the return of their blue warrior men, not really a part of their lives at all. And definitely not equals in any modern sense of the word. Mel simply couldn't picture herself fitting into the confines of such a role, that of a cherished and adored pet.

Vic was basically a good man, a decent man, a caring man – a real sweetie, in fact – but he was also a product of both the Old World values of his family and the Chicago PD and he could sometimes be cold or even dismissive. It had to be his way or the highway. And he could be a royal pain in the ass about it. He could also be oblivious to the needs and sensibilities of others if they happened to conflict with his own or with those of people he considers close to him.

As he was and always had been oblivious to most of hers.

With Vic, the job and his career would always come first. Then his cop buddies and the union. Then sports. However beloved, no wife of his would ever be better than number five.

She loved Vic as a friend and (what would have to be past tense now) as an occasional lover. But he didn't love her. Not as she needed a man to love her. He didn't even know who she really was, refused to even see it. He only loved his idea of her, his image of her, what he wanted her to be to him.

Mel breathed a slight sigh of relief. At least one of the decisions she had to make was now settled and her thoughts about it all straightened out. Now all she had to do was get Vic to accept it. It wouldn't be an easy thing to do, and it would have to be done in person, but right now an even harder and, to her mind, a much more important thing than Vic needed to be dealt with and confronted.

Cole.

Funny how things often seem to come to a head together. Must be a type of domino effect', one tile inexorably leading to the knocking down of the next until they were all in a flattened heap.

Mel put the phone back on her nightstand, went to the bathroom to swallow two Excedrin for her headache, squared her shoulders, and then marched herself back into the War Room.

Everything had already been swept up, the garbage dumped and all else put away in its appropriate place. All except Doctor Janet Sullivan's "Love as Worship: A Man's Complete Guide to the Art and Soul of Sex". The book remained on the floor exactly as she'd first swept it out from under the shelving. She hadn't picked it up, hadn't even touched it. It's cover was semi-gloss black with embossed red lettering in an elegant flowing script. A color photo of the author was in the lower left. The title and the few lines of cover blurb promised a tasteful and sensitive approach to unlocking the erotic secrets of a woman's body, to understanding how a woman's body and emotions are often linked, and to learning how to stimulate and please both to communicate with her soul.

The cover was scuffed, the spine broken, and several pages appeared to be torn and loose. But the book itself seemed more than just another tired paperback. It reminded her of a black widow spider. For all she knew, fangs were concealed in those pages in the form of underlining or in Cirronian glyphs scribbled into the margins. Or in something else entirely. Did she want to find out? Did she dare?

She'd never, ever had it this bad over any man before. And it had snuck up on her so gradually. Cole's very presence had now become a constantly felt physical pressure of awareness on her, his amazing hazel-brown eyes softly caressing, his oddly-accented baritone like a gentle stroking. Yet there were so many things she didn't know about him, many that instinct told her she would be best off not asking about and never knowing at all. And no matter the gorgeous human form he wore, Cole was an alien species, not of this world. Still, what they had shared – what her heart so hoped was shared – in that one kiss at the Seminar had obliterated all the boundaries of them being two different species from two different worlds. At least for her it had. It had penetrated so deep to the very core of her, so deep into her soul, that it had ignited her entire essence and left her branded. The very idea of never being able to have more with him was as inconceivable to her as living the rest of her life without oxygen.

And it wasn't just about lust. It was so much more than just that, exponentially intensifying what had already become an intense emotional attachment to him. Lust alone was something she knew very well. Lust was a glorious, animalistic hunger of raw physical need, the pleasurable frenzy of wet, hot bodies mindlessly joining in the primal drive for sexual satisfaction. Lust is what she had shared on occasion with Vic. It wasn't love.

Mel shuddered, her nipples becoming achingly taut, her skin rippling with gooseflesh, her body reacting to an all too vivid mental image of being locked in such an intimate embrace with Cole and both of them being able to fully express that degree of intense emotional attachment, letting her know in no uncertain terms the profound impact he'd come to have on her.

Did he ever think of her in those terms, as she did of him? Is that why he had the book? Had that kiss they shared affected him the same way? Had he felt what she had? Had he? Were all of her previous thoughts and conclusions on the matter incorrect? And if he had, and if they were, then why were they now the way they were? And what could she do about it?

She simply couldn't bring herself to reach down and actually pick the book up.

The Excedrin wasn't helping. She needed a drink. A big, stiff gin martini. A double. No, she didn't need a drink. She needed therapy. Very serious, very heavily medicated therapy.

Turning on her heel, Mel again left Janet Sullivan's book right where it was and went downstairs, catching Pat before the end of her shift to ask her if she would please take the night shift as well, pleading a headache and exhaustion and explaining that she wanted to get to bed early. As Pat could well use the extra money for her daughter's tuition, she was more than agreeable and began fussing over her like a mother hen, insisting that the only sure cure for a headache is food (as her own well-padded backside could attest), preferably pasta (this from an Irish woman) and lots of it, followed by a sinfully healthy overdose of dark chocolate (which in and of itself can cure almost anything).

The mention of the word food' was enough to bring the sharp-eared Lela bustling over from out of the kitchen to put in her two-cents worth. She clucked like the even bigger hen she was and pointed out that Mel was already too scrawny (in her estimation, anyone who weighed less than 200-pounds was too thin and probably malnourished as well – unless they happened to be less than five-feet tall) and nobody should ever go to bed without a good, stick-to-the-ribs hearty dinner in them or they ran the grave risk of dying in their sleep from starvation.

Before she knew it, the outnumbered and outgunned Mel was being firmly hustled back upstairs by her two well-meaning employees, laden with two loaves of garlic bread, a big bowl of salad, a one pound bar of Hershey's semi-sweet dark chocolate, and a huge deep-dish platter of Lela's outstanding lasagna to nuke up in her microwave for her dinner – "... with enough left over for your nice Mr Hauser when he gets home. A big man like him needs lots of energy!" Then Lela winked at Pat and they both giggled, Pat slyly adding, "And you certainly do want a man like that to have lots and lots of energy, don't you?" Besides, both knew that Cole was simply wild about Lela's lasagna and, like Jess before them, they both well appreciated a man who could eat with such obvious gusto.

Mel was left mumbling to herself in her kitchen, coming to the conclusion that somewhere along the way her life had become an amalgam of a Marx Brothers movie, the X-Files, Saturday Night Live, the Twilight Zone and Third Rock From the Sun. With overtones from both versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

Breaking off a square of chocolate to console herself with, Mel tried to get a grip. Okay! She'd eat a nice quiet dinner, wash her hair, take a long and luxurious bubblebath, and then go to bed early. Somewhere in the middle of that utter normalcy she'd amble back into the War Room and simply put Sullivan's book up on his shelf with his other books and be done with it. Heck, she may as well do it right now. Breaking off a second square of chocolate for courage, Mel marched back into the War Room.

One of Cole's computers was in the middle of doing an automatic download of something from somewhere, some system or other he'd probably ... Oh, what the hell did she know about any of it, anyway, beyond the fact that Tracker' coincidentally rhymes with hacker'? And Cole paid absolutely no attention to her repeated lecturings that he shouldn't be doing these things. (Alien cops, of course, have the right to completely ignore any and all human laws they choose to as long as they're the good guys. Everybody knows that! Especially alien cops!). She watched the frantic on-screen activity for a moment, Cirronian glyphs running up one side, English words down the other. Apparently, the security system knew the firewalls were being breached and was going nuts about it. Windows kept popping up, the word downloading' kept flashing. She looked closer. Oh, great! He's got automatic access to the highly classified top secret files of the Central Intelligence Agency, too. Well, why not? He was also into the Chicago PD, the DMV, the FBI, NORAD, NAASA, British Intelligence, Interpol, the Mossad, the Pentagon and who knows what all! Even Bill Gates probably wasn't immune. There didn't seem to be any system anywhere that Cole couldn't hack into whenever he damn well pleased, for anything he damn well pleased. Good thing Cole was the good guy. Download complete, Cole's program went into it's final scramble' mode. By this point in time Mel knew enough to realize that, even if the CIA did try to trace that breach, it would likely lead them to a seven-year old's school laptop in Zanzibar or something. The screen abruptly went dark. Show over.

"Love as Worship: A Man's Complete Guide to the Art and Soul of Sex" was still there on the floor. Mel gingerly poked at it with the toe of her shoe. Nice spider, good spider. Damn! It's only a book. Right. Like she's only human.

Before that Marital Bliss Seminar Cole was such a toucher. It had taken her a few weeks into their relationship, however, to realize that he was only a toucher with her, that most of the time he seemed, at best, to be uncomfortable with touching, or being touched, by anyone else. He'd eventually accepted Jess' exuberant attentions, albet reservedly, but still wasn't fully at ease with a simple gesture like shaking hands. From the very beginning, however, she could do most anything, grasp his wrist to direct his attention to something, take his arm and just lead him along like a well-trained dog placidly following at heel, and he never objected or attempted to pull away. She could even pull his shirt off as if he were her very own Ken doll to correct his wearing of it if he'd put it on backwards or inside out. No matter what she did – comb his hair or push it back off his forehead, put her arms around him from behind to show him how to properly floss and brush his teeth, give him a manicure, even bathe him, for pity sake! – he seemed to behave as if she had every right to do so.

And then there was that damn Cirronian thing he did, that throat pet or stroke or caress or whatever it was. He'd first done it to her just a few minutes after they'd met, when she pulled the car over, determined not to drive all the way to Chicago with a nearly naked man sitting beside her. She'd gone into the car's trunk, taken out the never-worn pink sequined stretchy top her grandmother had given her for her twenty-first birthday and an old pair of her jogging sweatpants, and brought them around to the passenger side for him. When he didn't seem to know what to do with the offered garments, she became impatient and just pulled the top over his head. Cole nearly freaked at that, like a fish suddenly finding itself caught in a net, but froze stock still when she yelled "Hey!", looking up at her uncertainly. Their gazes locked for a long moment, then he reached up and gave her throat a gentle, tentative stroke, absurdly reminding her of a nervous puppy offering a quick lick to seek reassurance. But amazingly, her impatience, as well as the somewhat-more-than-just-a-touch of fear she had of him, simply vanished. And he then quietly accepted her help in donning the clothes without any problems.

That throat stroke had evolved considerably over time, too. Once restricted to just the base of her throat and upper chest around her collarbone, it eventually encompassed the entire front of her neck from her chin down. And Cole seemed to do it for almost any reason at all – in greeting or acknowledgement, to seek or give assurance or reassurance, to indicate trust, for affection, to calm or soothe, to give thanks – and very often for no particular reason that she could discern. And he never (to her knowledge) stroked anyone else's throat. Moreover, the sensation of it went from initially feeling odd to feeling quite good, sometimes even almost erotic in a strange sort of way. By accident, she discovered that if she should happen to respond to it by touching his chest, especially over his heart, he'd always lean into her hand, apparently enjoying that particular touch from her immensely. Certainly Cole permitted no one else to touch him on the chest. No one. And she had to admit to a certain guilty pleasure in it as well because she could then savor his body's clean and unique spicy-musk scent and feel his body heat, a temperature so high that one would think he was very ill with fever except his warmth was entirely self-contained and didn't radiate, wasn't even noticeable, in fact, unless he was actually touched.

It was all somehow very sweet and private, an intimacy just between them.

Now, however, there was very little of any of that between them any more. Too distracting'. (Oh, no! Mustn't have any of that!) Now they were both walking on eggshells around each other, oftentimes deliberately avoiding each other altogether, almost working up an unspoken schedule of when each would be either upstairs or down at the bar so that the other could mostly stay away. It wasn't so bad when they were in public together or when he needed her assistance for a Track but otherwise, most of the time when they were both alone together upstairs, Cole was in his War Room with his door closed and she was in her bedroom with her door closed. Each offered the other the occasional olive branch but, unless they were heavily into a Track together, they couldn't seem to really connect and stay connected for more than a short period of time. They still had their sometime moments, to be sure, sometimes great and extensive moments, but they rarely even ate together anymore, even their regular late night after-hours snacks and Sunday morning brunches together much a thing of the past.

It had long since gone beyond the point of being ludicrous, except that the more they didn't see one another, the more distant they were with each other, the more nervous and uptight Mel become. She still badly wanted Cole to touch her, badly wanted to span the growing breach, but at the same time she didn't. And the internal conflict was tearing her apart. She was simply just getting too many mixed signals from him! How could she be both a distraction' and his idea of home'? What did he want of her? And as much as she valued his friendship, her feelings and her hormones were getting in the way and it had become just too frustrating, too ego-debilitating, too tense, too painful. Everything had begun to seem like an empty, meaningless promise with little, if any, hope of fulfillment.

Cole just seemed to become more reclusive, even secretive. No distractions' that way, she guessed. Otherwise, she had no idea what he was thinking about all of it, or her, at all. If at all.

She had even been starting to think that she should just ask him to move out, find his own place to live, give them both some space. That way they wouldn't be on top of each other all the time and she could maybe then handle them being just friends. And he wouldn't be bothered by distractions'. Nothing else between them would have to change. She'd still help him, of course, but strictly as his friend, as she helped any friend, without him also being her underfoot live-in and constant source of desire just in the next room. Then in quick succession she discovers that her grandfather was a Cirronian, just like Cole, and she now has a very dangerous Vardian, one who'd killed her once before already (or nearly did), locked in an underground vault just beneath her.

How could she possibly ask him to go now? She was too damn terrified to be without him!

"Love as Worship: A Man's Complete Guide to the Art and Soul of Sex". Why is a book like you even here? What do you have to do with Cole? With me? With us? Black widow spider, if I reach down and pick you up, will you bite me? And if you do, will I survive it? She was losing it. No, it' was already lost. Mel again poked at the book with the toe of her shoe. She had half a mind to kick the damn thing back into it's spidery hiding place under the shelving. Cole certainly wouldn't be any the wiser.

But she would.

If only there was someone she could talk to openly and honestly about all this, someone she could unburden herself to, someone she could seek guidance from. But of course there wasn't. There was only Cole. And he was her problem! Hey, gang! Guess what? I've fallen madly, passionately, head over heels hopelessly in love with this alien Tracker from the planet Cirron, see ... They'd sic the white-coated little men with the big nets on her for sure if she tried to explain. This was nothing short of total and complete emotional and psychological isolation, more so than she'd ever known before. Mel knew that she'd always been more than just a somewhat uptight person. Hell, she bordered on anal retentive, if she wanted to be honest with herself about it. But now, with no true outlets for this with anyone, with having to remain always on her guard, always secretive about so much that she knew, always reserved and restrained about so much that she felt, she'd become what she could only describe as grossly inhibited. And she hated herself for becoming like this, for being like this.

Before she met Cole, Mel had thought that she was finally on the road to personal salvation and fulfillment, had thought she'd finally turned a major corner in her life by ceasing her self-sacrifices for the sake of men, concentrating instead only on herself. She had tried to drastically simplify her life, removing any and all of the endless series of complications her life had, starting with every relationship she was in that wasn't going as she wanted it to, even if it meant being alone. Vic could testify to that. Oh, boy! Now she found herself floundering without a compass in the most complicated, most complex relationship imaginable. With no satisfactory way in or out that she could see.

With tears rolling down her face, she left the War Room to nuke up her dinner, again leaving the book exactly where it was.

As she forced herself to eat, Mel found herself obsessing, again questioning her sanity or, at the very least, her basic intelligence. She repeatedly wondered whatever had ever possessed her to slip so easily into such a close relationship with a man she knew almost nothing about save that he truly seemed to be gentle, honest, caring, intelligent, kind, intuitive, quietly spiritual, often inadvertently funny, completely trustworthy – and was by far the most interesting and unusual man she'd ever met.

Yet although Cole had been living with her for the better part of the year, Mel had to admit that she knew relatively little about him personally. She knew the broad outlines of his life, to be sure, but few of the little details most people usually provide over time to fully sketch out their backgrounds. He readily talked about his family (especially his daughter) and at least some of the aspects of his work, about worlds he'd been to, something about their historys, philosophys, natural historys, societies and cultures, but he offered very little concrete information about himself or even the society he came from, just a basic resume. While he never avoided answering any of her direct questions about these things, he usually answered only to the letter of her question, rarely offering to say much, if anything, beyond that. It was as if he really didn't want to talk about himself and his world at all. This oftentimes made her wonder if Cole was really everything he seemed to be, if there wasn't some sort of hidden identity to him concealed beneath numerous layers of camouflage.

Certainly his thoughts usually shone bright and clear in those amazing eyes of his, but other times she had the distinct impression that what he was really thinking was kept well hidden, like treasure sunken beneath the waters of deep dark waves. While he was the most quietly humble man she'd ever known, there was also a fierce pride and confidence about him as well. He had enormous strength, but beneath that strength surged a molten core of vulnerability that could easily be touched. And while a raging storm of emotional pain seemed to be tightly contained within him, it churned all but unseen beneath an outward aspect of gentle serenity and acceptance.

Mel wasn't even certain if Cole's human form was in any way an accurate indicator of old he was. Sometimes when she watched him, especially when he was deeply focused into his work and his naiveté as a human wasn't visible or even a factor, she thought she could detect an aura of age and experience shimmering about him that went so far beyond the some four to four-and-a-half decades he appeared to be it was almost frightening. More, she saw Cole as a man who often just seemed to know things, to keenly sense things, to be a man with secrets locked deep in his soul. And, on some fundamental level, no matter how innocent' he appeared, she paradoxically saw him as a man who had somewhere along the way forgotten innocence's true meaning, forgotten it a very long time ago.

Mel knew that there had to be one or more explanations for all these oddities, but those that she could come up with just didn't seem to quite fit. They were like keys which will easily slide into a lock but can't open the door because, although all the mitered groves line up, the notches are slightly off.

By the time she was finished with dinner, Mel's mind had gone numb. She was also more thoroughly exhausted, both physically and emotionally, than she could ever remember feeling. Half asleep, she cleaned up the dinner dishes, then washed her hair. Shortly thereafter, she nearly dozed off in the fragrant warmth of her bubblebath with a glass of wine. She was just toddling off to bed when she again remembered Dr Sullivan's "Love as Worship: A Man's Complete Guide to the Art and Soul of Sex" laying where she'd left it on the floor of Cole's room and hesitated in the doorway of her bedroom.

She closed her eyes a moment and with a deep breath she detoured, once again forcing herself to enter the War Room. The book was (obviously) still there, looking completely innocuous. After all, it was only a ratty paperback. Sure it was. Annoyed with herself, Mel finally picked it up. There, now. That wasn't so hard. She speculatively turned it over in her hands, then randomly began to thumb through it.

True to its cover blurb, it was a detailed yet lyrically written and extremely tasteful sexual primer, one that would be quite suitable for a man (or even a woman) of any age or experience. Even the many graphic line art illustrations were beautifully and poetically handled. There was no underlining of passages as she'd imagined, no Cirronian glyphs. Although nothing about it told her why Cole had the book in the first place, she somehow felt better.

She was just about to place the book on the shelf along with Cole's other books when the broken spine automatically opened it to the title page. Dr Sullivan had signed this copy and had written a personal message:

"Dear Mr Hauser – This is only a basic driver's manual. Read it, study it, check out at least some of the equipment, then imagine yourself behind the wheel. But until you've actually driven, and allowed yourself to be driven, the two of you will never truly know the shared joys and wonders of the road.

"I sincerely wish you and your lovely new wife every luck in the world. I've never known a couple more deeply in love than the two of you. Please listen to your heart, and hers, and may God bless you both. – Janet Sullivan."

The book dropped from Mel's suddenly nerveless fingers. With a straggled sob she kicked it under the shelving and fled the sufficating confines of Cole's War Room.