Gabe's Destiny (Alien Mates Book Three) (3 page)

“I know. So glad she didn’t think I could eat all of this.”

Gabe pulled out a stool and sat beside her filling his plate. “Don’t worry, I eat a lot. I have a high metabolism and need to keep my energy up.”

“Then I better get seconds while I have a chance.” She threw a grin at him. It wouldn’t be a problem, him eating a lot. In fact, she was willing to cook the food for him if only he were coming home to her.

Stop, she told herself. Fantasizing about a man when he was right beside her wasn’t something she wanted to do. Thinking she could fall in love or even lust would just take her one step closer to losing herself.

“What do you do, Taya?”

She opened her mouth and then shut it. How could she tell him she used to be a hospital administrator? He would probably think she was lying. Look how far away from that she had come.

“It’s complicated.”

“I understand complicated. How did you get to Newburg? Did you grow up here or come in on the greyhound?”

“I came on the greyhound but how did you know.”

“Either you are born here or you come on the greyhound. No one new ever drives into town, strange but true. If you ever have free time, you should just sit around and watch when the greyhound comes into town. Most times people get off, go to the café to eat, and then get back on. It might take months or longer before someone actually gets off to stay. In the end most of them end up here.”

“If I had known I would have just started by coming here,” she teased in a slightly flirtatious voice.

“All that matters is that you’re here now.” The smile he gave her was wide and open.

She took a bite of her potatoes and smiled to herself. Yeah, she couldn’t afford to get involved, but even she deserved a meal with light flirting and butterflies in her stomach. This was more than she ever got when she was back home.

They finished the meal in silence. Gabe got up and began putting the left overs away.

“Let me help you,” she stood and reached for a plate brushing against Gabe’s hand. Power, dark and needy surrounded her, holding her in place.

He pulled his hand back and lowered his eyes as he turned away from her. Taya was beautiful, he tried not to notice her but everything about her appealed to him. Just the touch of her hand burned him, bringing him to an awareness he never felt before. Her grey eyes were warm with flecks of gold in them. Her smile was bright, the kind that invited you to get close and stay a while. She had a waterfall of straight black hair that looked silky soft. His fingers itched to touch it. Her curves were enough to drive him crazy. He was so used to very thin women coming up to him. He liked curves and she was actually eating. The women who tried to hang around him ate so much salad that he hated even seeing it now.

She laughed off the touch and the way he stared at her for a minute. If she got scared she was going to run, and there wasn’t any other place to go unless the thought of sleeping in the street appealed to her.

Carefully she maneuvered around him and took the dishes to the sink. She would speculate about what happened later. She washed the dishes and he dried, neither of them talking until the kitchen was clean.

“I think people are still sitting on the porch. It’s a beautiful night; would you like to join them?” Gabe asked her.

What would she do if she didn’t? Go to her room look at the walls. There was a television but she wasn’t in the mood for it.

“I would like that. I never got to ask you what you did for a living.”

“My brother and I write music, both the lyrics as well as the actual music.” They walked out the kitchen into the dining room.

“Wow, I wonder if I have heard any of your songs.”

“We have several in the top forty right now. So you have probably heard them.”

“You guys must be famous.” They walked out on the porch where everyone else was sitting.

“We write under different names so no one will know it is us.”

“Anonymity, I understand that.” She took a seat on the top step with Gabe sitting next to her.

“We never wanted to be famous,” Rylan chimed in. “We simply love music.”

Taya took a look around her. Rylan was sitting in a lounge chair with his daughter asleep in his arms. Aviana was holding his hand as she sat next to him. Selma and Victor were on the other side of the porch with their son asleep in his father’s arms. Cal and Paige weren’t too far from them. Sitting alone on the banister was someone she hadn’t met when she came in.

“Taya, that’s Joaquin.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” he gave her a small smile.

“Nice to meet you also.”

“Now you’ve met everyone who lives here,” Gabe told her.

“How are your rooms?” Selma asked.

“They’re beautiful.”

“Nice to hear.” Selma stood up. “Victor, we need to put Vick to bed.”

He gave her a wicked grin before standing. “Right behind you, Darling.”

“Have a good night, everyone.” They disappeared into the house.

Rylan stood cradling Mckayla in his arms. “We need to get Kayla to bed also.”

He threw a look at his brother before saying goodnight to everyone and walking in the house. Aviana followed him with a smile and a wave goodnight.

“It’s so peaceful around here,” Taya commented.

Paige laughed as if she couldn’t help herself. “It’s peaceful right now. I think of it like we have entered the eye of the storm but it’s still raging around us and moving our way.”

Taya nodded. It was actually a good analogy for how she felt.

Paige and Cal stood up. “It’s time for us to retire. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.” They entered the house followed by Joaquin who said goodnight.

“Wow, which one of us scared them away do you think?”

Gabe chuckled. “I think it was the two of us together that did it.”

“Why?”

“No one has ever seen me. They always see my brother or see the two of us as one. When you came out here you didn’t look at Rylan then look at me as if you were seeing double. When you looked at him you didn’t see a twin but a separate person. That’s rare, unique, and they wanted to give me a chance to be alone with someone who saw me for me.”

She slid her hand over to cover his.

“I would hate it if everyone looked at me and thought I was interchangeable with another person. You’re not, you know. I see how different the two of you are and I’ve just met you. As far as the rest of the world, it’s their lost if they can’t see what a terrific person you are.”

“Well, you’ve won me over. How about going for a walk? There’s a gazebo not far from here.”

“I’d like that.”

He stood and stretched out his hand to help her up. She took it and descended the porch steps. They walked slowly, her wrapped ankle didn’t throb too much but she didn’t want to aggravate it.

Add a movie and this would be the best blind date she’d ever been on, except this wasn’t a date. Blind or otherwise and she needed to remember that.

“How much of this land do they own?”

“They own all of it and probably more than half of the town. They have been here a long time.”

“Families do that. They hand down what they own through the generations.”

“Your right and one day this will all go to Vick. Although something tells me that before it’s over Mckayla will own the other half of the town.”

“Two powerful families under one roof.”

“Something like that.”

The walk to the gazebo was beautiful. The leaves were unfurling and the trees were coming alive. The soft grass under her feet seemed to whisper with the beauty of the night and her heart beat loudly because he was still holding her hand. It truly was magical.

“This is nice.” She stepped on the gazebo feeling like she was in an old fashioned movie—one where the male would go down on bended knee and produce a ring as he declared his undying love.

You’re moving too fast, Taya, she cautioned herself. Let’s back it up and picture the captain of the football team taking off his letter jacket, placing it around your shoulders, and going in for a clumsy kiss, because there can never be more than that.

“What are you thinking?”

Her cheeks flushed and she turned to look at the flowers beginning to bloom.

“Nothing really. I…I was thinking about football. Do you play?”

“No, I stayed away from contact sports growing up. Did you play sports growing up?”

“No, I always thought I was too big for them.”

He looked at her with blank eyes.

“Too big,” she ran her hand over her body to emphasize what she meant.

“You’re beautiful with your grey eyes and your black hair along with those kissable lips, but you’re more than your face. You have a gorgeous body that is full of beautiful curves that I would love to touch.”

She blushed as she imagined his hands sweeping over her curves, appreciating them.

“Thank you, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”

“No thank you is needed. I was only speaking the truth.” He slowly moved into her space holding her eyes.

Her breath caught in her throat. He was going to kiss her; she was ready to feel his lips. You don’t know him. She stopped her mind cold. Sometimes you need to do something you wouldn’t normally do, besides she argued, he wasn’t really a stranger anymore.

There was pain in her side as if she had been hit by something hard. It knocked her to her knees making her pant and bringing her back to the reality that she was being hunted. What was she doing standing here like she was free to feel Gabe’s lips on hers?

“Get down,” she screamed, tugging at his pant legs.

He vaulted over the side of the Gazebo moving toward the woods.

“Gabe no, he’ll kill you.” She called out as she watched him disappear into the trees in the direction the strike had come from.

What had hit her? She pulled up her shirt to see a bloody blackened wound in her side. Something had struck her, but it was no longer there. Her eyes scanned the area around her unable to find the weapon. She took a deep breath before she allowed her fingers to explore the wound; it was roughly an inch wide and didn’t seem too deep. She would live, this time.

“Whoever it was is gone.” Gabe came back to kneel at her side.

He moved her fingers and checked her wound. “It’s superficial. I can fix you up at the house. Who’s after you, Taya?”

She looked at him fear deep in her eyes, “I don’t know.”

Taya was sitting on the side of the bed while Gabe bent over her tending the wound. He had washed it out carefully, then placed a suave on it that he swore would keep it from getting infected and now he was bandaging her up.

“I’ll be cleared out in ten minutes. Sorry for bringing something like this down on you and your family.”

“My family and I have lived through much worse. Why don’t you tell me what’s happening and how you got to Newburg?”

She wasn’t sure what this place had to do with it, but after what happened she owed him the truth. Would he laugh when she was done?

“It started about a year and half ago. I can remember the exact day I woke up and felt different inside. Silly me, I thought it was a good thing, like maybe everything was finally coming together for me. Ever feel like you were a stranger in your own body? That’s how I felt all my life but not that day. It was a good day to be alive. I remember singing in the shower and I never do that.

“I hopped into my car and drove to my favorite coffee shop. I was never good without a steaming cup of preferably white mocha with a dash of raspberry and a breakfast sandwich. That’s when things got weird. I walked in and looked at some of the same people I saw every day but they didn’t look the same anymore. Some looked like monsters where others looked like they could be animals. I almost lost it but then I realized I must be delusional and it would past, but it never did.

“I even went to a shrink who gave me medicine that never helped. I was losing it and then one day by chance I turned a corner and saw the most repulsive thing ever. Some woman was fawning all over this monster. It was the last thing my mind could take. I screamed and began to throw up before I ran off. I could still see it licking its lips and telling me I would be his.”

Her breathing came in deep pants as she closed her eyes rubbing them trying to disrupt the memory.

“From there it was easy. I eventually left my job as it kept coming after me, teasing me like I was a mouse in its trap. I went to the greyhound station leaving my car because I thought I would be harder to track this way. I picked the first bus going far, far away. Turns out there was a bus coming to Newburg, Pa. I’ve never heard of this place so I bought a ticket, waited for the bus, and here I am.

“I’ve been here for roughly a year living on my savings. I’ve taken a few jobs but something stupid, strange or weird has happened at each of them and I lost them. As far as the places I’ve lived, they’ve all been a hole in the wall. Nothing near as nice as this and still I’ve managed to get kicked out of all of them. Now I bring my problems here.”

“Did the monster chasing you look like he was floating on air with a head full of eyes?”

“Yes!” She jumped up to look at him. “How did you know?”

“It’s a Sudir, my people are at war with them.”

“A Sudir? Your people? You mean humans?”

“The Sudir are an alien race that followed my people to Earth after they destroyed our planet. Not all of the Sudir’s came, only the ones that mutated and now look like what I described to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s start with you. If you’re wondering, you are human—just a little advanced. You’re one of the few humans who can mate with my people. You have a natural power within you that can fight the Sudir but it also attracts the Sudir. They would use you as a source of nutrition.”

“Great, I’m alien snack food.”

His mouth quirked up as she fell on the bed her arms all akimbo.

“Please don’t stop, tell me more.”

“They are also able to use my people and have in the past. Not something I recommend. They’re hard to kill and almost unstoppable but we have been stopping them one at a time. So it would be foolish to run. I assure you we are your best chance of fighting them.”