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But the living room looked better with a coffee table in it, and at least now her alien would have something to put his feet on while he was wearing Dan’s clothes and watching Dan’s favorite show.

Maybe she was wrong about the whole alien-angle. Maybe she’d really died and then gone to Hell. She didn’t think she’d been a very bad person in life, but she hadn’t done too much church-going, and so now she was in Hell and instead of being disemboweled by pitchforks for all eternity, she was being forced to watch a complete stranger slowly usurp the void Dan had left in her life.

It wasn’t that it hurt so much just to think of Tagen in Dan’s old sweats. What hurt was the fact that it didn’t hurt. For six years, she’d been living with all his stuff in his old study, shut away where she didn’t have to look at it because she knew it would be too painful to bear. Now she had another man living in there, and the ugliest thing about it was that somehow, somewhen, somewhere, she’d gotten over it anyway and hadn’t even noticed.

The thought was physically nauseating. She turned her back on the coffee table and went down the hall to make a pitcher of iced tea. It was going to be another scorcher. She didn’t know how her alien could stand to wear long sleeves.

As she was measuring out tea bags, Tagen came into the room with an armload of plates and bowls. “We are not alone,” he said.

Her thoughts were still in extraterrestrial places; his statement hit her with more significance than she thought he really intended. Warily, she said, “We’re not?”

The doorbell rang.

“Oh. The grocery guy.” She drew a centering breath and moved resolutely for the door. “This’ll just take a minute.”

He nodded once and followed her, taking up position next to the sofa and clasping his hands behind his back. He looked like the poster boy for the At-Ease command.

Daria opened her door and there was Troy, the delivery boy from G.O.D.—Groceries On Demand—standing on her porch with the invoice in his hand. He smiled at her and gave her the same sly wink he always did, but somehow, it was impossible to feel the same queasy discomfort when she had something like Tagen to worry about at the same time.

“Hey, Mizz C. Looking good.” He held out the clipboard and his gaze skipped over to Tagen. For a moment, he looked utterly thrown. Then he looked back at Daria with a knowing grin. “Say hey!”

“He’s my cousin,” Daria blurted, and was instantly annoyed with herself. She could feel her blush fanning out from her cheeks and down her neck. She couldn’t even see the signature she put on the bottom of the invoice. “Just put it in the kitchen, please,” she said in what she hoped was a frosty tone and what she feared was a nervous one.

“Sure.” To her supreme irritation, Troy tipped Tagen a wink before going back out to the delivery van.

Tagen watched him go and then slid his eyes toward Daria.

“What?” she snapped.

Tagen said nothing. He moved past her and went upstairs.

Fine. Better with him completely out of the way, anyway. Daria waited by the door for Troy to come back with his handcart full of groceries, already keyed up to damned near the verge of tears and hating herself for it.

Troy glanced into the empty living room as he hupped the cart over the threshold and grinned. “Your cousin doesn’t say much, does he?”

“I guess not.” Daria went ahead of him to the kitchen.

“Wow, look at all this junk.” Troy gave the cluttered countertops a cheerful once-over. “I never seen it look so messy in here before.”

Daria immediately started putting dishes away.

“How long is your cousin gonna be staying?” His tone was casual, but he didn’t even try to disguise the direction of his eyes as he looked her legs up and down. Troy had been delivering her groceries for six months now, and he’d been coming on to her a little stronger every time. There was a certain smirk he used each time he looked her in the face, a smirk that said he knew damned well he was G.O.D.‘s gift to lonely women. “I mean, I don’t see a car outside, so—”

“A few days.” She picked up cans and bottles from the counter and packed them into the cupboard without looking at them. She avoided reaching up too high. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

“You’re sure laying in a lot of eats for one guy.”

“He’s one big guy,” she argued. “Leave the chicken in the fridge, please.” She’d cook it up today and have a cold chicken salad tomorrow, if she ever found her big salad bowl. She wondered if aliens liked chicken. Then she wondered if she was ever going to randomly run into the perfectly innocuous human food that was horribly toxic to his people, the way it was always happening in the movies. Still, the movies weren’t exactly batting three-for-three where aliens were concerned so far.

Troy opened his cold-storage crate and started unpacking into her freezer. “Lots of cold stuff. How’s this weather, huh? I notice you got no A/C.”

“It broke.” She could feel his eyes crawling over the front of her shirt and all of a sudden, she really wished Tagen would wander in here and do some male looming.

“Pretty hot, though. What say we ditch the stiff and go sit in a cool movie theatre tonight?”

Oh Christ, and there it was. The proposition.

“Just put the non-perishables on the counter,” she said.

“Sure.” He came right next to her, just as though there weren’t fifteen feet of counter spread throughout the kitchen. She inched away, tucking cat food and chicken broth into her cupboards indiscriminately, trying to ignore him as best as she was able. She reached up to push a short stack of tuna fish onto a less-packed shelf and then it happened.

The back of his hand grazed her breast, not quite a full-on cop, but damned close. Daria jerked back as if burned, but couldn’t manage even a yelp of surprise. When a swimmer swallows that first unexpected gulp of water, the airway closes. What kills you isn’t the water, but the panic of drowning. So it was for Daria; panic closed on her all at once, and she had no breath to scream, no power to slap, no nothing. She stood there and stared at him and drowned in the open air.

Troy merely looked back at her with that smirking surprise, still holding the box of cereal he’d been setting before her. “Oops,” he said. “Did I tag ya? Sorry.”

He didn’t look sorry and he didn’t sound sorry, but at least the question gave her the permission her fear-locked brain needed to reply.

“I’ll get the rest of it. You can just leave.” Her teeth started to chatter; she had to clench her jaws tightly to keep from giving in to shivers.

She could see him thinking about it as he continued to stand there, visibly weighing possibilities and potential. Then he smiled, and she knew she was in real trouble. She wanted to order him furiously from the room and stumbled back a step instead.

“You’re not a bad-looking lady, you know.” He came towards her and she kept backing up. “You’re really not. You can barely see ‘em.”

Daria’s hand flew to her face, covering her scarred left cheek. She tried to back up again and hit the wall instead. “I want you to leave,” she said, hating the shrillness that stole into her voice.

“No, you don’t. I know what you really want. Come on, lighten up a little.”

“I’ll call someone!”

He laughed at her. “I’m not even touching you!” And then he made a liar of himself by closing in and putting a hand on her hip. She tried to jump back and succeeded only in banging herself a damned good one on the counter. “But you want me to touch you,” he said smoothly. “I know you do. I can make you feel like a whole woman. Come on.”

She pushed at him, almost blinded by terror and yet determined not to give in to it like a ninny. It wasn’t like he was going to throw her down on the tiles and rape her, for God’s sake. “Let go of me right now!” she hissed. “Right now!”

“One kiss,” he said, and he even made it sound like he was being reasonable. “One kiss, and if you don’t like it, I’ll let you go.”

“Get out!”

He was stronger than her; he was pulling her to him, his hands not in the least shy about grabbing her ass to keep her from wriggling away. “Just one kiss.”

His mouth was stalking hers. No matter how she twisted, he pursued. He let go of her waist to grab her head and hold her still. “Just relax,” he was saying, still almost laughing, as though her terrified struggles were a joke she were playing on him. “Just relax, you’re gonna lo—”

And then he was flying backwards, banging into the wall and thumping to the tiles.

Daria scrambled away, whistling gasps tumbling out of her as she clawed her way to another corner. “Get out!” she screamed, but the choice wasn’t Troy’s anymore.

Tagen picked the delivery boy off the floor and pushed him into the wall at eye level. Troy’s sneakered toes hung fully a foot and a half over Tagen’s socks. Very quietly, Tagen said, “You will leave this house.”

“Yes, sir,” Troy whispered.

Tagen set him down and stood back, clasping his hands behind his back and glowering. Daria could see the claws flexing and curling.

“I was just—I was—I’m very sorry. I thought we were just playing around.” Troy grabbed for his handcart, shook the last box off it, and fled.

Daria continued to huddle where she was, checking and re-checking the lie of her clothes even though there had been no real pawing. Her adrenaline was high, her heart hammering in her ears. The sense of narrow escape, as unreasonable as it was, continued to press and claw at her.

Tagen turned to face her, his gold eyes narrowing, and something in her snapped.

“I don’t need your help!” she shouted and burst into tears.

She was furious with herself for crying, as furious as she was with him for watching her, and most of all, she was furious at the gratitude that swelled through her for him being there. Her white alien knight to the rescue, saving her from the grabby hands of Troy the delivery boy. Jesus Christ.

He watched her cry, his brows drawn together to form that faint line between them. “Then I apologize,” he said, once her private storm had turned to sprinkles. “It was not my meaning to offend you.”

“I know,” she sniffled. “God damn it.” She swiped her eyes dry, kept her palm to her cheek, and started throwing food into the cupboards entirely at random. “He’s a jerk, but he’s completely harmless. He was out of line, but so were you.”

“I am a police,” Tagen said. “And some things are always wrong.”

“It was harmless!”

“Perhaps on your world.” He didn’t bother to pretend he was convinced.

“Oh please! He’s been hitting on me for six months!”

Tagen’s hawk eyes widened and his body went rigid at once. “He has
hit
you?” he demanded.

“What? No!” Daria picked up a bag of elbow macaroni and then put it down again, suddenly tired. “No. Hit is one of those words that have two meanings. Look, just forget it. Forget it ever happened.”

He said nothing, emphasizing the futility of even trying to unmake memories.

“I was making you some iced tea.” She motioned listlessly toward the pitcher on the counter. “Let me just get this stuff put away and I’ll put some ice in it. You look hot.”

Tagen glanced skyward and then looked directly at her and said, “What would you have had me do, Lindaria Cleavon?”

“Daria!” she interrupted, at a full shout, and slammed both hands down on the countertops with a bang. “God! I have told you and told you!”

He backed up, plainly startled by her vehemence, and then his eyes narrowed. “It was the name you gave me,” he said defensively.

“Right, the name I gave you when you got me high!” she shot back. She yanked open the refrigerator and pulled out the chicken quarters, still frosted from the ride in G.O.D.‘s freezer, and banged that down on the counters, too.

He frowned, but didn’t look very guilty.

Daria busied herself with pulling out a baking dish and preheating the oven and skinning the chicken, all the while feeling his wary eyes on her.

“It’s just Daria now,” she said, more calmly. “Just Daria.”

“Why?”

“Because.” That answer wasn’t going to satisfy him, and she knew him. She squared her shoulders and faced him directly. “Do the names on your planet have meanings?” she asked.

He looked somewhat unpinned by the shift in conversation. “Yes.”

“What does Tagen mean?”

He was obviously expecting the question because he’d started to look irritated before she’d even finished asking it. He searched the ceiling for several seconds, formulating his reply and aligning his English. “It is…a straight line. In definition, it is the same base word as to mean ‘wind’, but it refers in fact to…to point…” He suddenly mimed the drawing and firing of a gun, so effectively that Daria flinched.

“To shoot,” she said shakily.

But he shook his head, looking frustrated. “To hit…no. To intend to hit…to…”

“To aim,” she said.

He seized on the word, visibly testing it, and finally nodded. His hand returned to his side. “Yes. Good aim.” He regarded her with his watchful eyes. “What does Lindaria mean?”

“I’ll show you.” She slammed the chicken into the oven and turned it on, and then marched from the room.

He followed her outside and around to the herb garden. It was mostly dead now, a victim to the drought and her determination not to pay higher water bills than she already had to, but there was still a little green. Some rosemary sprigs, some sage, and of course, the thing she wanted him to see, the only thing she hadn’t planted. It was growing up through the decorative rock wall, despite the weather and every other effort to kill it off.

“That’s lindaria,” she said, and grabbed hold of the ivy vine skulking into the sun. She pulled it free with a pop and showed it to him, her lip curling. “This ugly, sneaky little weed. It gets in everywhere. It chokes out everything. You can’t kill it. You can’t contain it. It’s worse than blackberry bushes, because at least those give you fruit once in a while and make a decent pie. This is poisonous. It’s just an ugly, awful, useless plant.”

His eyes went to the rock she’d pulled it from and came back to her. He said nothing.

“So don’t call me Lindaria,” she said, crushing the ivy in her fist. “I’d rather you go back to calling me ‘human’ than Lindaria. At least humans have some good qualities.”