Parallel Desire Read Free Page A

and I are staying here at Warren Air Force Base indefinitely," she told him. "Working with the Joint Alien Task Force. So it's safe for you to go back, and you should. Make a life for yourself with your own people." How easily she dispensed her advice, how simple she made it all sound.
    "Are you happy?" he asked, a stab of pain digging into his chest.
    She hesitated, blew out a sigh. "How do you want me to answer that?"
    "I want to know it was worth it, everything I gave up. Everything I've lost with you. I need to know that you're happy with him. …" He paused. "And that he's happy."
    "You remember what we shared in your past," she admitted in a thick voice. "You already know what it's like."
    "Oh, gods," he half moaned, shaking his head. "Look, I gotta go."
    "Jake, please—"
    He cut her off, positioning his finger over the end button. "Gotta … go," he repeated, realizing that what he needed was to get shit faced and lose himself in a bottle. But he didn't tell her that. "You take care, sweetheart," he said in a choked voice, and quickly disconnected the line.
    S ome guys just ought to know when to stay down. When the jaw took a certain kind of hit, when the guy clubbing him had all the advantage, well, hell, that was the time you should just play possum. Of course Jake Tierny wasn't one of those guys, and Shelby would have been disappointed if he had been. Still, she winced watching him flip backward over the pool table, his long, lean legs buckling over his head.
    "Hey, hey," she tried to intervene, peering across the table at her fallen friend. "Enough's enough, no?" She looked up at the red-faced hitter, who tossed her a glare, then revved his fist up once again, ready to deliver another blow.
    "He had it coming, okay? He brought this shit down."
    "I'm sure that's true." She pressed her eyes closed, not wanting to see yet another fist pummel into Tierny's already bruised face. "But surely a guy's paid his price after, oh, an hour's bout or so?"
    "An hour !" The jerk straddled his awkwardly crumpled opponent on the far side of the pool table. "Hell, we ain't been at this but five minutes."
    A gathered group of onlookers parted for her, an assortment of potbellied men with alcohol-reddened faces who'd been cheering the whole thing on. A few of the fools even hung their heads shamefully. "Sorry, ma'am," one of them muttered, cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
    She squeezed through the pack, rolling her eyes in disgust at the lot of them. Men could behave like such overgrown children when it came to their egos and territory. She stepped carefully past a splintered pool stick, tempted to pinch her nostrils shut. The nauseating scent of aggression permeated the bar, nastying up the place with its twin odors of sour alcohol and day-old sweat.
    She dropped to the floor, squatting beside Jake. "What have we here?" She chuckled, balancing her hands on both knees as she bent closer to examine Jake's injuries. Her patient squinted up at her, lifting a broken beer bottle in a toast. Then all of a sudden Shelby was being airlifted, Jake's assailant having slid his pair of beefy hands beneath her armpits. She flailed with her sandals, one of them flying like a dagger at the far wall, clattering as it bounced off the vinyl-paneled surface.
    "You. Let. Me. Go !"  She writhed her hips, bicycling her legs until she finally managed to kick her attacker. He dropped her with a painful thud onto the cement floor of the pool hall, climbing past her to get at Jake.
    Huffing like he'd just run five miles, the human took advantage of Tierny's prone, drunken position. He snatched Jake's broken beer bottle right out of his hand, drawing instant blood with a slice to Jake's forehead.
    Shelby had truly, finally, and completely had enough.
    She grabbed the brown bottle out of the attacking redneck's hand, gesturing toward him with its sharp edge. "Do that again, and you'll lose half that pretty face of yours. Okay? This is just