The bricks were literally disappearing under water one by one. The contractor had done shoddy work and now they were going to have sue to get it fixed. He would have to rally the condo board to get behind that idea soon.
A lawsuit wouldn’t come cheap which would mean their condo dues would go up. No one was going to like that and he couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t in love with the lawsuit idea either but that was the problem with the state of their society, nothing got done unless you forced someone to do it. Sometimes when he was alone at night, he’d imagine there was a better way to live. Some place where people from other nations and places would all come together to work toward a common purpose. Obviously, he had gotten lost reading some sort of 1960’s propaganda but he still couldn’t get it out of his mind.
He sighed and pushed himself harder. The cool mist on his face rapidly turned into small raindrops, not surprising for March in Edgewater, New Jersey but he still didn’t like it. He would swear he’d been born to live in warmer climates. But that was impossible. His family had been in the Northeast of the United States since they’d arrived on the Mayflower. As his father had liked to say, they were cool weather people and he should suck it up.
He looked at the group of runners who passed him in the opposite direction. Two men who were maybe in their mid-fifties and a woman who appeared about forty years old. She was probably older. Plastic surgery did wondrous things to disguise age. They nodded at him and he did the same. Hell, with that much contact they were practically old friends, passing each other on their morning runs every day of the week even in bad weather. But he’d never meet them. They’d forever be the running trio and if someday they disappeared he’d always wonder what happened to them and he’d never find out.
The watch on his wrist beeped twice reminding him that he needed to cut his run short. Today, he had three clients coming into his office before noon and he required at least half an hour to prepare to meet with all of them. A touch to his watch stopped the beeping as his legs pumped.
The button stuck and he fooled around with it then slammed into the brown haired beauty that stepped out into his path.
“Arg.” She said something he couldn’t make out. He reached out with his arms to stop her descent toward the bricked ground but wasn’t fast enough. Whoever she was, he’d just knocked her into the ground beneath them.
He knelt down to grab her. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going. Are you okay?”
She made a noise that was something between a parrot’s squawk and a grunt. In any case, he was sure she hadn’t spoken English. Great, he’d run into a brown haired, blue eyed goddess who probably wouldn’t understand anything he said to her in English but was bound to know the words lawsuit and liability.
She placed a hand on her head and shook it slightly before looking up to grin at him. “Acton.” Her smile was flawless. He wondered how much she had spent on dental work to look that good and he was glad he hadn’t knocked out any of the veneers. He’d have to get the name of her dentist; some of his clients would want to know.
He held out a hand to help her up. “I’m sorry I ran into you. Are you hurt?”
“Acton.” There was that word again. What the hell was she trying to say?
“Well if you’re okay…then I’ll just be going.” He shook his head. Except he knew he wouldn’t be. He’d never leave a woman who might have a potential concussion on her own after injuring her. Especially one that couldn’t speak English. What if she was lost?
A strange sensation filled his mind and he blinked his eyes twice to clear the feeling. He’d never been lost and confused on these paths. He’d grown up in this area for goodness sake.
The brown haired stranger shook his arm, hard. He furrowed his brow and stared at her. What did she want from him?
“Acton.”
He shook his head. “What is an Acton? I don’t speak your language. Parlez-vous Francais?”
He didn’t speak French that well either but he could communicate a little bit in the Romanesque language. Enough that he could find out if she needed to go to the hospital.
She looked at him, her right eyebrow raised slightly as if she considered him for a moment, not sure what she wanted to say next. She glanced up at the sky for a moment and shook her head.
“Hmmm.” He knew that noise, and he was sure it was the same in every language. It was female displeasure. He had done something to irritate this woman and he had a feeling it had nothing to do with their earlier collision.
She said something else he couldn’t understand and looked down at her watch. He observed, as she seemed to be fooling around with the dials. Her smile when she made eye contact with him again caused his heart stop beating for a moment. What was it about the small woman staring up at him that made him think of otherworldly things?
He realized he had puffed out his chest like a turkey trying to attract a mate and he quickly took a deep breath and tried harder to act cool. He didn’t date very often and when he did they were usually women that he was set up with by a colleague or a friend. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was for asking out women who didn’t speak his language that he just happened to have knocked down on the ground.
A blue light surrounded his body and he reached out to see if he could touch it. His heart pounded. What the hell was happening to him?
“What have you done? What is this?” He shouted and sounded insane but he really didn’t care. This was nuts. Was this an out-of-body experience? His every cell seemed to vanish and he had the sensation of floating. He thought he heard her utter that strange word again. Acton. He still had no idea what that meant.
In front of his eyes, he watched his hand start to disappear. How was the possible? His torso went next followed by his legs. A black void surrounded him and he wasn’t sure if he’d live to see another day.
Chapter Two
Lizbeth chewed on her thumbnail. She’d quit the disgusting habit of nail biting when she’d been a toddler but every once in a while, when she was really stressed or nervous, she found herself chomping down on her poor defenseless nail.
Acton hadn’t been at all as she expected to find him. Captured, she’d anticipated; injured, she could have handled. But living as a human as something called an attorney—that had taken her aback. He hadn’t even understood her when she’d spoken his own natural language. The last two hours hadn’t gone much better but their engineers had finally found a way to incorporate the primitive earth language they called English into the translator program and they had finally been able to communicate adequately. Although some phrases seemed to still cause them trouble. She still had no idea what coffee was or why he kept asking for it or why he kept uttering something about rights and needing to phone someone. She sighed. Why had she thought this would be easy?
On a positive note, he looked fantastic. Earth air and its gravitational pull had obviously agreed with him physically. Of course it could have been the fact that he had experienced the rays of real sun for years instead of just the synthetic kind. In that way she was jealous of him. Even as a child, she’d only see the sun for one week out of every year. Hell, Acton looked positively tan.
She rubbed her hands up her arms. In comparison to the women he’d been used to looking at, how awful must she look? She laughed quietly to herself. They had just gotten him back. There were years—decades really—for her to convince him he should consider her as a mate. But damn it, she wanted him now. Maybe he’d consider it. The whole experience had to be stressful for him; perhaps he could use a little release. Shaking her head, she forced the inappropriate thoughts from her mind.
Shifting from foot to foot she stared at the ship’s doctor. He seemed to be taking his sweet time examining the captain. Lizbeth couldn’t really blame him. No one would want to be accused of missing some physical ailment they should have found on their captain. But Troy wanted a report and if she didn’t contact him soon, he would come down here in person. Des
perate to avoid his presence at all costs, she cleared her throat.
“Well?”
“I’m still looking, Lizbeth.” She didn’t mind the doctor’s informality but if Troy arrived in the medical bay, they would have to go back to a more formal way of addressing each other.
“Lizbeth?”
Acton looked at her; his brown eyebrows sloped down slightly. Hadn’t she told him her name? The problem was that she kept expecting his memory to return and that he’d know their entire history. Convenience aside, if it didn’t come back soon she would need to fill him in on a huge amount of their personal business. Not to mention the military history and strategic know-how of the whole ship. They would need that to return as soon as possible. But truth be told, she wanted him to remember her first. It seemed pivotal to her happiness that he did so.
She nodded. “That’s right. That’s my name. Technically, my designation is Agent Suwanee but you prefer to run a more friendly ship. Just another thing that changed when you were taken from us.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that. There’s been a terrible mistake.”
The machine attached to his arm beeped loudly and the doctor, his gray hair partially in his eyes, his eyes flaring, glared at her.
The doctor slammed down the book he’d been examining. “Lizbeth, I have the authority to throw you out of here if you continue to make my patient upset. I need him to remain calm. This situation must be stressful for him, to say the least.”
Lizbeth took two steps away from Acton. She needed space in the worst way but she couldn’t just leave him in here, not with Troy likely to make an appearance at any time. It wasn’t like they had a precedent for this in their database. In general, one’s captain didn’t disappear from the bridge to be found living happily in the Hydro system. She sighed.
“Clark,” she said, using his first name to keep the sense of camaraderie between herself and the doctor. “Troy will be down here within seconds if I don’t call him with a report. I think I can say neither one of use really wants that.”
Clark nodded. “Truth is, I’m done. I’m still trying to figure out why he has no memory. Clearly this is Acton. But he thinks he is Charles Roswell, Earth person.”
“I don’t think I’m anything. I know who I am.” He pounded on the medical bed. “I know my entire life story and by the way—this whole thing is nuts! Aliens or people from the future or whatever you are don’t kidnap people like me. That doesn’t happen to rational, normal human beings. Do I look like the kind of person who is going to sell my story to a tabloid? You aren’t getting any publicity out of me.”
There he went again. Lizbeth couldn’t make any sense out of the last part of what he had just said and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. What kind of trauma must have happened to him to degrade his mind to this degree?
“Any idea what could have caused this?”
The doctor shook his head. “Just a theory. I think the extreme exposure to the Vitamin D from the Earth’s sun might have slightly warped his mind. I believe we can get it back but who knows? It’s just a theory.”
She walked to the side of his examining table and took his hand gently into hers. “Acton,” when he opened his mouth to object again she held up a hand and amazingly he stopped talking. “Listen to me. I know that for whatever reason you think you are Charles Roswell. I’m sorry that we can’t let you come back to yourself organically, in your own time, but we’re running low on that particular luxury right now.”
How much to tell him? Clark cleared his throat and casually walked to the back of the room like he wanted to give them privacy. For what? She and Acton had never been an item. Had everyone on the ship, with the exception of her, known she was in love with him? She shook her head; there was absolutely no way she could get dwell on any of that now.
Acton crossed his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you tell me who you think I am so I can adequately refute your mistake?”
He had phrased that as a question but it was a demand if Lizbeth had ever heard one, which was fine by her it meant he was getting back into his captain mode. She hoped. Not to mention she always found this side of Acton to be really sexy.
“Alright. Where to start? You are captain of this ship we call the Instigator. It is a type 2-galaxy traveler designed to both initiate and defend the Alliance from any enemies that threaten its borders. You are the first person to captain this ship. In fact, you are so good at it there are some people who say they should retire the ship when you step down.”
“Stop right there. I don’t even like to drive a car on the highway.”
If she hadn’t wanted to throttle him for his obtuseness, Lizbeth would admit what she really desired was to reach out and stroke his hard jaw line. Most men of her acquaintance couldn’t hold a candle to Acton’s sheer masculinity. So why had it taken her so long to notice?
Lizbeth opened her mouth to respond when the ship jerked once, sending them flying into the wall of the medical bay. Acton landed on top of her, his body pressed down on top of hers.
She stared up into his brown eyes. As she tried to catch her breath from the impact she delved into them. For years she counted on being able to read his thoughts, needs, and ideas through their brown depths. Now was no different. She might as well be able to read his mind. He was stressed, that was certain, but not defeated. Even in this seemingly impossible situation for him, he still plotted and planned.
But there was something else too. With the hard line of his chest pressed against hers, his warm breath on her face, she would swear she saw desire radiate from the unknown depths of his soul. The ship jerked again sending them onto their sides.
“Does this happen often up here in space?” Any thoughts of desire faded fast as she heard the annoyance in Acton’s voice.
She shook her head. “Never.” Touching the communicator on her side she spoke clearly. “This is Agent Suwanee.” She hated the designation but it was better to use it than be lectured by Troy for an hour on protocol. “Report.”
Troy’s voice slurred through the communicator. “Suwanee, get yourself down here immediately. We are under attack by unknown assailant. Repeat, we are under attack.”
Lizbeth forced herself into an upright position. “On my way, Captain.”
Thoughts of Acton’s brown eyes left far behind, she ran for the door to the medical bay. They should have just left the Hydro system. Who in the galaxy would have the capability to attack them in the middle of nowhere and why would anyone want to?
Shoving thoughts of Acton aside she ran. The crew needed her on the bridge. Her hands fisted at her side, she silently swore that if Troy had caused this she would melt him in hot lava as soon as she got a hold of some.
* * * *
Charles watched the ever more enticing Lizbeth run from the room. Had he heard correctly over the communicator? Were they being attacked?
That would be just his luck. First, he got kidnapped, knocked on his ass, and now he was going to be blown up in this science fiction disaster. Pushing with his arms he stood and tried to regain his center of balance. The whole ship felt like it had tilted to the left. He was sure there was a more sophisticated term for this but as he didn’t own a boat and, despite what the hot little lady insisted, had never before been on a space ship. He just didn’t know what to call what had happened.
He turned around to stare at the doctor who just minutes earlier had been poking and prodding him as if he’d crawled out of the sludge in a horror movie. Letting out the breath he held, he tried to remember that the man, who looked human despite the purple hue to his skin, had only been doing his job.
“You all right there, doctor?” What had Lizbeth called him? Clark?
He shook his head. “I’m fine, Acton, thanks for asking. I imagine you’ll want to get to the command bridge?”
He raised one eyebrow. Why on earth would he want to do that? As if reading his mind, the doctor continued. “Sometimes it helps to regain your memory if you go ba
ck to doing the things you used to do. As Acton, you would never not be in control of the ship during an attack. Hell, as Acton you would never allow us to be attacked. We’ll be lucky if Troy doesn’t get us blown to the great beyond.”
The doctors eyes looked so pleading, the same feeling he’d gotten from Lizbeth whenever she tried to talk about this Acton person. He sighed. He’d never been very good at saying no to gorgeous women and old people. In this case, he was being coerced in both of those areas.
“I don’t know how to get to the command bridge.” Or what he would do once he got there but he did want to see this Troy person. They all seemed to be both terrified and disgusted with him. An interesting combination. Not to mention he was a trained negotiator; maybe he could put a stop to this debacle and save his own behind in the mean time.
Clark grunted as he limped toward the door.
“Are you okay?” He didn’t know what he’d do for the man but there was no way he was going to leave him alone if he was injured.
Waving his hand in the air in a dismissive gesture, Clark laughed. “You have no idea who you really are but every once in a while I hear you, and you’re still in there. Don’t worry about me, Acton, I’m fine.” He placed his hand to the left of the door. “CB.” The door opened and lights illuminated the pathway. “Just follow the lights.”
Nodding, and strangely filled with purpose, Charles walked out into the passageway and stared at the blue illuminated dots indicating the direction he needed to go. The blue lights glowed brightly against the brown shaded walls, helped a great deal by the fact the lights in the hallway seemed to have been knocked out during the attack.
Three crewmembers passed him running quickly through the hall. One of them looked back at him, a stunned look on his blue face. The poor guy practically tripped over himself trying to get a better look at him.
He picked up his pace. They must really be in dire straits if they all thought he was this Acton person. Wishing he could do something to help them he shook his head. There was no use pretending, he wasn’t this Acton—no way, no how.
Yes, Captain Page 2