gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (12 page)

At last she let out a breath. “You’ve survived so far. Now go to bed.

“Tomorrow is the
really
hard part.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zhandar felt it first as a faint stirring along the edges of his consciousness, like a warm breeze blowing in after a long, cold winter. He’d been playing with garden layouts on his computer, moving the modular sections around, attempting to find a design that would be the most aesthetically pleasing while at the same time providing the maximum oxygen and food production. His mind had been distracted, though, drifting. The past few nights, he hadn’t been sleeping very well. It could have simply been that he was driving himself harder and harder these days, staying later here at work, even though there was no true reason for him to do so. Well, there was a reason, even if he didn’t care to admit what it actually was.

He was just so very tired of going home to an empty house.

Now, though…something drifted over him, then pulled at him. He felt it, sensing the need, the longing, awaken in him, a heat he’d never thought he’d experience again.

Someone in the building was
sayara
.

His first impulse was to get up and hurry out of his office, to see if he could find this miracle in female form before she disappeared out of his life. But then he realized the sensation was getting stronger.

She
was coming toward
him
.

Heart racing, he forced himself to stay seated behind his desk. A moment later, Nizhal, one of the junior designers on his team, paused in the doorway and said, “Zhandar? Your new assistant is here.”

He stepped out of the way so that a slight hooded female could move forward. Her voice was low, soft as she spoke.“I am sorry I’m late. I am not yet familiar with the transit here in Torzhaan.”

Late? As if he cared for that. It was enough that she was here now. His blood surged in his veins, but he schooled himself to calm. She was here in a professional capacity. Yes, his whole body was singing to him of her compatibility. However, he still didn’t know if her soul answered his.

And he did allow himself just the slightest flicker toward her, to see if he could pick up on anything she might be feeling. Her barriers were very good, though. That was desirable — no one wanted a partner who broadcast everything she was feeling — but at the same time he wished he could get just the smallest hint of what her reaction to him was as well. Generally, if one felt the
sayara
pull toward another, then that person was experiencing the same thing…but not always. There were rare occasions when it was not reciprocated.

If that turned out to be the case now, after everything he’d already suffered….

“It is quite all right,” he assured her, glad that he sounded calm enough, as if she hadn’t just touched him to his very core by her presence. “Zhanna, is it?”

She nodded.

He went on, “While our schedule is quite full right now, nothing on it is particularly pressing. Come, let me show you where you will be working.”

Nizhal took that as a sign to melt away, leaving Zhanna standing near the open door. Zhandar got up from his chair and went to join her. This close, her presence was almost unbearable — thrills worked their way down all his nerve endings, and his heart sped up. He wanted to take her by the hand and pull her to him, push down the hood that concealed her face, undo the clasp at her throat.

Control yourself,
he thought then, making that inner voice as stern as he possibly could.
The last thing you want is to frighten her.

Of course, if she was also experiencing a pull toward him, then it would not be fear that she felt.

He could see no sign of any reciprocity from her, however. She followed him in silence to the office next to his, and waited quietly while he pushed the button to open the door. Since she showed no signs of moving, was obviously waiting for him to go in first, he stepped into the office. Voice as casual as he could make it, he said, “Here is your workstation. You’ll find the yearly schedules already loaded into your computer, as well as the design libraries and plant catalogues we work with. Do you have much experience with horticulture?”

“Unfortunately, no,” she replied. “But I learn quickly.”

That response made even more heat ripple through him. He told himself he was being ridiculous, that she was speaking of something else entirely, and yet it was so hard for him to focus on anything except the low, sweet tones of her voice. Did her face match that voice? Her frame, even muffled by the robes, seemed slight, almost fragile. Unlike Elzhair, who had been quite tall, this young woman barely reached his shoulder.

“Excellent,” he responded, hoping that he hadn’t hesitated too long before replying. “I think you will find the work here quite pleasant. You will need to coordinate my schedule with that of the other divisions involved in our projects — supply, and botanical, and a few others — and set meetings. You’ll also be accompanying me to work sites to keep notes and provide your own insights. We’re a team here, Zhanna, and I believe everyone on it has something valuable to contribute.”

She nodded then, but for the first time he noted some hesitation in her manner, as if she wasn’t quite sure of her own value. It bothered Zhandar, and not merely because she was
sayara
. All of his people were taught to believe in their own strengths, and address their weaknesses. Everyone was valuable. Everyone had something to contribute.

“Where were you before this, Zhanna?” he inquired. It had been a polite question, nothing more, but she still seemed to startle, then recover herself, saying,

“Oh, I was born in Morzhaan Province. I actually had no real thought of leaving, but then.” She hesitated then. When she went on, her voice was small and still. “I suppose you have heard of the incident in Alizhaar.”

Everyone on Zhoraan had heard of it. In that maritime province on the other side of the world, a terrible earthquake and resulting tidal wave had flattened half the small city of Alizhaar.

“I lost my family,” Zhanna said. “My parents, but then also most of my relatives on both sides. I survived only because I had gone inland that day, running errands for my mother. Afterward…afterward, there didn’t seem to be much reason to stay.”

His heart ached for her. Yes, he had lost Elzhair, but he was not entirely alone in this world, even if he often chose to think so. Both his parents were still alive, in their homestead some forty kilometers outside Torzhaan, and his sister Alizha as well. She had been more fortunate than many of her generation, and had a child of her own, a daughter.

But Zhanna…no wonder she questioned her place in the world. She had lost everything, and yet had somehow mustered the strength to start over in a new place.

“I am so very sorry,” he said, and her shoulders lifted.

“Thank you. Now, though, I just want to get to work. Keeping busy is the best way to forget, I’ve found.”

How could he argue with that, when he’d been driving himself to exhaustion lately in the hope that if he just worked long enough, hard enough, he might begin to forget the hole in his world, the one that had once been filled with Elzhair?

“Of course,” he replied. “Well, if you will go to your computer, we can look at what we have lined up for this week….”

Trinity had known this was going to be difficult. But she hadn’t realized exactly how difficult until she stood in the doorway of Zhandar’s office and felt the strength of his presence wash over her. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before…a tide of heat, of warmth, of…she couldn’t even explain what she’d felt to herself. Not exactly.

All she knew was that she wanted him. It was a very odd sort of lust, since she hadn’t seen his face, knew he was an alien, and it didn’t matter. Hearing his voice was enough. Watching the grace of his movements as he rose from his chair and walked toward her, dark robes flowing away from the broad shoulders.

Somehow she’d managed to remain calm and act as if nothing was wrong. Yes, her mission was to be with Zhandar — and her body was telling her right then how much she wanted to fulfill that mission — but above even that, she had to be inconspicuous. Running up to him and pulling him to her approximately thirty seconds after they’d just met didn’t exactly qualify as keeping a low profile.

So she’d followed him into her office, listened to his warm, rich voice as he explained what her duties would be. She’d even dutifully recited the details of her back story as laid out by Gabriel Brant when he’d briefed her on her new identity. And Zhandar seemed to accept it.

Then again, why wouldn’t he? He wasn’t expecting his new assistant to be lying to him, and Trinity was exerting all her effort in keeping those mental walls she’d built as strong and impregnable as they possibly could be. She’d thought it would be hard to merely hide the truth of her identity from him. What she hadn’t counted on was having to mask these new and unwanted feelings as well.

But he didn’t seem to have noticed anything, and after an awkward few more moments as he showed her where to find certain files on her computer, he mercifully left, saying he’d let her explore a bit, but to ask any questions if she came across something she didn’t recognize or understand. Thank God the Zhore had borrowed their technology so heavily from the Eridanis, which meant it was more or less recognizable to her as the sort of thing common throughout the galaxy. Yes, the symbols scrolling across that screen were Zhoraani and not Galactic Standard, but she found if she didn’t make a conscious effort at reading the words they formed, and instead allowed them to more or less flow right into her brain, she could get along just fine.

No, it didn’t seem as if the technical aspects of her new job were going to give her any real difficulty. The real problem was the man sitting in the office next to hers.

What problem?
she asked herself.
This is what you came here for. Give it a few days so you can gracefully ease into it, then do the deed and get out. If he’s half as attracted to you as you are to him, then the whole thing is that much easier, isn’t it?

Well, that sounded simple on the surface, but she wasn’t sure it would really work that way. For one thing, just because she’d been seized by the kind of attraction that made it hard to think straight didn’t mean Zhandar was experiencing the same thing. Was this normal? Was this almost overwhelming compulsion to be with someone what made the Zhore mate for life? And if that was the case, how in the world was she, a human, experiencing it? Trinity couldn’t begin to guess, because it wasn’t something a human being was ever supposed to experience.

Then again, she possessed abilities that most regular humans didn’t. Maybe she was picking up on what Zhandar was feeling for her, and her talents…powers…whatever you wanted to call them…were amplifying his attraction.

She wanted to think that wasn’t possible, but there had been that girl on Lathvin IV. Reading between the lines of what Gabriel Brant had told her, Trinity had the impression that a Zhore couldn’t reproduce without feeling a special connection, even though human beings weren’t technically wired to require perfect compatibility when it came to choosing a mate. That young colonist — Annika Jespers — had possessed some quality that had drawn her Zhore lover to her. Which meant that maybe she, Trinity Knox, possessed the same thing, or at least something that was attracting Zhandar.

Assuming that was even true, and she wasn’t making all this up out of her head. Maybe all the stress had scrambled some of her mental wiring.

Laying her hands flat on the desktop, Trinity pulled in a breath, then another. The view out her windows, from up here on the twentieth floor of this building, was really quite astonishing. Yes, Gabriel had explained to her how the Zhore made their cities living things, utilizing practically every inch of usable space for plants and trees, but it wasn’t until now, as she looked at all that green, shimmering and waving from every balcony, every rooftop, that she realized what a difference such a practice made. On Gaia, the cities were cold, shades of gray and white and black. Most of the buildings here seemed to be constructed of materials in soft shades of ivory and warm tan and even a sort of burnished rust color. They provided a welcoming backdrop for all that vegetation, which ranged from a green so deep it was almost black to the brightest, freshest chartreuse. And the flowers, too, many of them white and blue and purple, were cool and soothing to the eye.

She had guessed it might be beautiful. She just hadn’t realized quite how beautiful.

All that beauty wasn’t enough to drive the doubt from her head. Something strange was going on here, even though she couldn’t explain what. This sort of sudden, insane attraction was nothing like her. Oh, she’d had her relationships, but she’d either eased into them slowly, never sure how long they would last before seeing into her lovers’ minds got to be too much and she had to break things off, or going for the quick and easy lay, not allowing herself to get too involved.

If only she’d been smart enough to do either of those things with Caleb.

Thinking about him was not a good idea. Scowling inside her hood, she went back to the screen that held Zhandar’s schedule for the week. It looked as if they were supposed to be headed out to a work site later this afternoon.

Together.

So check your raging hormones at the door,
she told herself.
Because whatever else is going on, I doubt the people who live in that particular building would be too thrilled to find you and Zhandar having hot sex in the petunia bed.

Not that they had petunias on Zhoraan, but still.

It was torture to have Zhanna so close to him within the confines of the air car they were driving to that afternoon’s project. Very well, she wasn’t so close — safely on the other side of the console that separated the two front seats — but even so, he felt as if he could almost breathe in her presence, feel her heart beating.

She sat quietly, watching the streets of Torzhaan flash by outside. He hadn’t asked how long she’d been here, but he guessed it couldn’t have been much more than a week or so. Her birth town of Alizhaar was much smaller than Torzhaan, and very different topographically. Here the land rolled in gentle hills, rising gradually to the Sarazhin Mountains to the east of town. At this season, they were bare of snow, although they wore white caps in the winter, even if the city itself rarely saw any real snowfall.