Parallel Desire (3 page)

Jake laughed up at her, blood gurgling from between his swollen and bruised lips.

She blotted at his mouth with her sleeve. "This ain't funny. You're in a shit storm now 'cause you didn't listen."

"You're that pretty little medic with a southern accent," he announced wondrously, both eyes rolling back in his head.

She just clucked her tongue. "That I am, boy. That I am."

"He's about to kick my freaking ass." He managed to focus his gaze again, leveling her with his startlingly beautiful green eyes.

"He's already done that, but I'm getting you out of here before he finishes the job."

With a one-eyed squint Jake studied his human opponent. "I'm not done with him yet."

"Jakob," Shelby said with an intense, meaningful glare, "say you're sorry. Just go on, now."

"All right." Jake wrestled to sit up straight, his legs finding a semblance of the floor, his back pressed up against the wall. "I never called anyone a
slav'nrksai
"—he kicked Redneck Guy in the shin—"especially not your mother. I don't need that word for someone like your mama."

Shelby barely heard the roar before she saw the pale human's fist rip into Jake's jaw like a ball-peen hammer bludgeoning a melon. "Oh, no." She ducked out of the way at the very last minute.

Some aliens just never learned, especially the green-eyed, wickedly handsome kind.

Jake's head cracked back against the wall, and hard, but not before she managed to half whisper, "Lieutenant, good thing I came after your ass."

"H
oly hell, that hurts."
Jake moaned, ducking away from the medic's efforts at working on his bruises. His first thought was that he hadn't managed to get himself killed in that bar, not like he'd wanted to after that pointless call with Hope. Moaning, he tried to force her from his thoughts, glancing about him in an effort to determine where he'd passed out.

Obviously, he'd slept the damn brawl off, but somehow—some way—he seemed to have wound up in a motel room. Not his own room, in the center of what passed for a town around here, but one off a local highway. He could tell that much because of the occasional sounds of trucks and other vehicles busting past their thin door, the way it rattled with the roadside vibrations. Somewhere else around here he had his own room, a dingy bit of a place where he'd been keeping his pack and measly belongings while he trailed the real Jake Tierny around half of Texas.

"Holy hell?" Shelby repeated, bending over him until her long blonde hair tickled his throat. "You done become a real Texan, boy. Haven't you?"

Jake growled up at her, ducking away from the damp cloth she was working over his bruises, and spit at her in low Refarian. If the dainty little medic was going to accuse him of going native, well, by All, he'd fight her fair. He was no more Texan than she was, what with that pretty little accent of hers, fake through and through.

The both of them had been raised on a planet far, far away—so far away that they'd learned English in their own separate manners. Shelby Tyler had apparently done so right here in Texas a few years back. Jake, on the other hand, had learned the language on the endless transport from Refaria to Earth, the computerized dialect and linguistic files training him. He'd always prided himself on his accentless English, that it could belong only in the United States—not Great Britain or elsewhere on the planet. He and his fellow aliens hadn't made their home in London or Sydney, and his bland accent reflected that fact.

But not Shelby; no, her version of English, from the very first time he'd met up with her five months ago on the base back in Wyoming, had been heavily infused with a southern accent. Quite Texan, he'd later realized as they kept talking—and that fact had been confirmed once he'd ventured down to this part of the United States. Hers was an authentic drawl bought by time in the trenches. His questions as to how, precisely, she'd earned that time, well, he figured they'd be answered eventually. She'd told him vaguely that she had been posted to their Texas facility prior to its decimation by their enemies—and while that explained some aspects of her acquired Texan nature, it hardly explained it all. This woman had passed plenty of time among the locals, not something any of the soldiers at the Texas facility would or should have ever done.

"Who are you, Shelby Tyler?" he asked softly, staring up into her clear blue eyes, finally letting her blot at his bruised jaw without ducking away. For a long moment she seemed arrested by his question, staring back at him wordlessly, hand frozen midair.

"You know exactly who I am." Her words were careful, precise. No more Texas accent, not this time.

"I don't know
meshdki
about you, Medic Tyler. So start talking."

"And if I don't?"

He propped his head along one elbow, giving her a smile. He hoped it looked wicked, seductive, even though he felt too battered at the moment to really mean it. "Well, I'll have to extract that information."

"Don't even try and go that devilish, charming route with me, Lieutenant. Seen it all from you before."

He narrowed his eyes, studying the pretty blonde medic In their few interactions he had no memory of having been either devilish
or
charming. Maybe there was something between them that he couldn't recall?

"Say what you mean, Shelby Tyler."

She removed the damp cloth from his face, making a great show of folding it first in half, then over again. "I know all your moves, sir, that's what I'm saying. Gone a few rounds with you down in the medical center and come out on the … well, the winning side, I'd say. You'd say different, no doubt."

"Are you talking about when you stitched up my belly?" He remembered how she'd tended him after his fight with the Antousians months back.

"Not your belly. Good lord, more than that. I mean when I was your night nurse, sir. Took care of you after your legs were shot out from under you at Warren."

Jake's eyes slid shut. "Oh. Him."

"Yeah, him—your younger self, that's who."

"You're talking about Scott Dillon. He's the one you tended to after Warren, not me." He shifted on the mattress, fighting a wave of nausea. "I'm not him, and I keep telling all of you that."
After all, Hope certainly knows that's true
, he wanted to add.

Shelby sidled closer, wedging her hip right up against his as she leaned down over him. "Um, then, who are you, sir? I mean, really? You're him, come back from ten years in the future; of course you are."

Jake turned away from her, putting his face to the wall. "Go away, Shelby Tyler." He groaned, working a hand at his temple; it throbbed with a hangover from last night's drinking and brawl. "Honestly, just get away while you still can."

"You denying it?" She pressed her face into the small space between the wall and his body. He couldn't avoid her, not like this—especially not with her wide blue eyes peering right into his own so openly.

He burrowed his face into the flimsy pillow. "You took care of that knife wound of mine, end of story. Now, go away."

"Our king charged me with a duty—to bring you back with me to Wyoming."

He had to hand it to the woman: She was persistent if nothing else. "Tell him I wasn't willing."

"I can't do that, now, can I? We're talking about Commander Bennett. Imagine me reporting something like that back to our king? No way, no how. You're coming, too."

Jake rolled onto his back, shoving Shelby back across the bed. "Look, Nurse Tyler, clearly there are a few things you don't understand right now. One"—he raised his index finger—"I'm not Scott Dillon, not anymore. I don't have his body, or the exact memories your Lieutenant Dillon has … or that his wife does, either." Jake battled a spasm of intense, choking pain for a moment.

"And two?" Shelby prompted, blue eyes alert and waiting.

"Two, is that my business down here isn't finished. I have to find Jake Tierny, the one who murdered Hope in the future, and stop him from killing her again—in this timeline."

She nodded thoughtfully, but still he knew that some kind of snappy retort would be forthcoming. The only surprise was that it took about fifteen seconds, not two. "So, sir, you were what? Just renting that body back in Wyoming? The one that still belongs to Scott Dillon? That wasn't you?"

He flopped back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. "Where is this going?"

"I'm just trying to be clear on why you won't go by your proper name, that's all, sir."

Jake bolted upright in bed, clasping Shelby's arm tightly. His fury always simmered just beneath the surface, ever since the day of Hope's murder at the hands of the real Jake Tierny. "I died when I took his body," he snarled. "Don't ever ask about it again. Do you understand?"

She met his steely gaze with an unwavering, purposed one of her own. Never flinching, never backing down. "Understood, sir."

"And don't call me
sir.
Not for the reasons you're doing it."

"You weren't still serving our king in the future?"

Of course he had; and he'd been a lieutenant, too—but she was trying to make him into Scott Dillon, someone he'd long ago ceased to be. "Call me Jakob. Or Jake. Either one, and I'll answer."

She chewed on her lip, glancing down at where he still clasped her arm. He released her, holding a palm up to indicate his desistence.

"I've got some aspirin for you," she volunteered, popping to her feet. In a few seconds, three tablets were extended toward him in the center of her palm, and a bottle of water was held out with the other.

"You take nursing pretty seriously, huh?" He downed the medication, tossing his head back.

"Very seriously. But there's one thing I'm even more serious about, and that's following my king's directives."

Jake lifted an eyebrow. "That again?"

"If you aren't going to come back with me, I need to know what to tell him. I know you, sir, and I also know how you love Jared Bennett. I can't imagine you'd want to hurt him or defy him—not at all."

And of course she had him strung up like a roped calf. He sat up in bed, leaning his back against the wall. "What did Jared say exactly?"

Shelby walked across the room to a desk and pulled a chair out, and then she dropped into it right beside his bed. "Well"—she drew in a breath, and he guessed it was because she wouldn't stop talking anytime soon and needed to store up—"our lord has been increasing with his intuitive abilities since our queen became pregnant. They're tuned to each other, their respective gifts heightening." She sucked in another breath and dove back in. "Anyway, he's been plagued by bad visions concerning you, quite frankly, sir—uh, Jakob."

"Bad visions, huh?" He rolled his head against the wall and wished like hell that the aspirin would start their work. "That's pretty general, Medic Tyler."

"Call me Shelby."

"Shelby, why should bad visions concern me? My whole damned life is a bad vision at this point."

There was a long, heavy silence, so profound it caused Jake to open his eyes again. "He's foreseen your death, Jakob," she told him softly, her gaze never wavering from his face. "Here in Texas. It's why he wants you back."

Jake returned her stare for several silent moments, then sat up in bed. "All right, fair enough. But before you insist that I return with you, there are a few things I need to show you first."

S
helby stared at the battered
wallet and other documents that Jake had spread across his desk. They'd left her motel room, riding in his mud-encrusted pickup to his place on the far side of town. If you could call Hell's Creek a town. More like an opportunity—or a state of mind—but surely not a real town, not from what she'd seen so far. It was a windy dust bowl dotted by sagging doublewides, abandoned storefronts, and a main street that consisted mostly of rolling tumbleweeds. Unless you counted the bars; too many bars for so few people, at least by her reckoning.

During their short drive, he'd made it pretty clear that there was something she had to understand about his situation down here in south Texas. One thing was obvious: He had no intention of obeying their king's directive to return to the main base.

"So what is all this?" She reached for the wallet, but he caught her hand roughly.

"Before you open that, I need to explain." He bent down slightly, lowering his hefty shoulders in order to meet her gaze head-on. "You should understand what you're seeing."

After months alone, Jake was clearly relieved—more than he'd ever willingly admit—to debrief her on his activities. "Go on," she urged.

His bright green eyes narrowed with an almost predatory glint, and he gave a brisk nod, turning toward the desk. He jabbed a finger at the wallet. "I took this off of Tierny the night he killed my wife."

"Hope." No way would she let him objectify the situation. She'd been through enough grief and loss to last more than three lifetimes, and understood the temptation to depersonalize. "You took it from Tierny the night he killed
Hope
," she clarified.

"Yes." He leaned a little closer, his large shoulder brushing against hers as he bent to open the wallet. "The night of Hope's murder, this was all that remained of the man who did the deed. This wallet and"—he braced both hands on the desk, slowly rotating his head until their gazes locked—"this body."

"So you killed him … took his form because he'd killed her?"

Jake swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing wordlessly. Finally he whispered, "Payback."

"I understand payback, sir." He cut his eyes at her continued use of the formality, and she lifted a hand. "Jake, I'm sorry, but it's danged hard to relinquish the chain of command."

His shoulders sagged and his grip on the desk tightened. "If you need to call me
sir
, then do so, Shelby."

"I'm more comfortable that way."

"So long as you have a clear handle on the facts."

"Which are?"

"That I am not the man you're convinced I am. I changed after Hope's death, after taking this body"—he tapped his chest—"and this man's identity. You can't understand it; you're not Antousian."