"But you lasted," Patrick said. "So you must have kept your silence for a number of years."

"That's right. I never said a word till I retired and all this talk about Roswell began to resurface. I was older by then, more open to what it might mean. I started thinking maybe the government ought to start telling people the truth about what happened. I had grandkids to think about. I started wondering how many more UFO incidents were being covered up and if that was the smart thing to do."

Julie scratched a few words in her notebook. "In one of the articles I read, it said that more than five hundred people in some way connected to the Roswell incident have now come forward."

"That's right, counting the office staff, officers' wives, children of the people who were involved at the time it occurred."

"If the Roswell incident really happened," Patrick said, "why doesn't the government just admit it? After all, it happened over sixty years ago. What difference could it possibly make now?"

"Every difference, my friend. Once the truth is out and an extraterrestrial presence is confirmed as a fact, every facet of government will have to be directed toward the problems that go with it. They'd have to consider military defense, communication with another life form, protecting the public from possible alien diseases-the list is endless. What head of government wants to deal with all that?"

Julie said nothing and neither did Patrick.

She thought of Laura and nervously shifted on the sofa. "Do you think it's possible they could still be out there? Watching us, I mean...perhaps even studying us?"

He grunted. "Anything's possible, I guess. I know UFOs are real. That's about all I can tell you. The rest you'll have to figure out for yourself."

Julie stood up and so did Patrick. "Thank you, Colonel Beeson."

"Don't thank me-I enjoyed the conversation. Kids all live pretty far away. Don't get down here very often." He walked them to the door. "h.e.l.luva story, ain't it? Be a d.a.m.ned good tale, even if I just made it up."

Julie's head snapped around. "You didn't, did you-just make it up?"

Colonel Beeson chuckled. "I was there, remember?" He didn't say more and she didn't press him. It seemed the truth was always a nebulous thing.

They left the house and Patrick opened her car door, went around and climbed into the pa.s.senger seat. "You didn't really believe that old man, did you?"

She had pondered that question since the moment she met Lee Beeson. "Frankly, yes I did. At least the part about the ship itself. I've read other accounts that agreed with that part of what he said. And there were quite a number of them. Hundreds of people say the Roswell incident really happened."

Patrick shrugged, moving the long sinews across his shoulders. "It's possible I guess, but even if it is the truth, that doesn't mean your sister was abducted."

"No, but it certainly gives the theory more credence." They were driving through the mountains, taking the back way home to her Malibu beach house. "Did you know that in the piney woods of east Texas in 1980, two women and their little boy claim they drove under a UFO that was taking off? They suffered radiation burns that are fully doc.u.mented, and radiation sickness that lingers even today. The weirdest part is they sued the U.S. government for damages. Even in the '90s the suit was still going on. I haven't read how it ended."

"Why would they sue the government?"

"Because as the disk took off, twenty-three military helicopters rose out of the woods to surround the craft and follow it away. They obviously knew it was there, so they must have known there was danger. Dozens of other people in the area saw both the object and the helicopters, but the government denies any of it ever occurred."

Patrick released a slow breath of air. "I'm afraid I'm still a skeptic."

"Why? Why are you and so many other people so sure this couldn't be real?"

He smiled. "The answer's very simple-physics."

Julie frowned. "Physics? What does physics have to do with this?"

"Well, if you remember back to your college days, it's a basic principle of physics that an object can't travel faster than the speed of light. Since that is the case, even at a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second-almost light speed-it would take s.p.a.ce travelers hundreds, even thousands of years to get here. That makes the whole thing d.a.m.ned hard to swallow."

Julie mulled that over. "Okay, that makes a certain amount of sense. We'll put the topic on hold till I can gather some more information." She looked over at him and smiled. "In the meantime I'm starving. You said you'd buy me dinner. I'm heading toward Malibu. I thought we'd pick up something we could take home...maybe later take that walk on the beach. What kind of food shall we eat?"

Patrick grinned. "How about j.a.panese?"

Julie rolled her eyes. "I think I've created a monster."

They drove along in silence for a while, winding their way through low rolling hills covered with stiff shrubs and wavy brown gra.s.ses. The sun felt warm on Val's face, but a cool ocean breeze made the heat of the day bearable. The top was down on Julie's little Mercedes.

Val glanced over at the woman who drove with expert skill through the winding mountain pa.s.ses. She wore a gauzy white scarf tied around her dark red hair and she was smiling, enjoying the challenge, the speed, and perhaps, he hoped, the company of the man who sat beside her.

All afternoon she had been different. He had felt the subtle shift from the moment she'd agreed to let him come along. She seemed a little more relaxed than she usually was, as if she had made some momentous decision and now had simply to carry it out.

They stopped for Chinese takeout, the closest they could find to j.a.panese along the way, then sat out on Julie's sundeck to eat it, accompanied by tall gla.s.ses of Perrier. A bottle of Pouilly Fuisse Owen Mallory had brought over the night of her birthday party remained untouched on the counter.

Val had stripped off his jacket and tie and unb.u.t.toned the collar of his blue Oxford shirt. Julie had changed into a sleeveless flowing caftan that fell close to the body, outlining her feminine curves. The paisley silk whispered against her skin as she moved, and it was all he could do not to reach out and touch her.

By the time they'd finished eating, darkness had fallen and the moon had come up, a huge white glowing orb that hung over the mountains to the east.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Julie stood beside him at the rail, listening to the roar of the waves against the sh.o.r.e several stories below.

"Magnificent..."

"I saw you watching it the night you came to dinner. I hadn't realized you were such a romantic till I saw the way you stared at the moon."

A brow arched up. "And just how was that?"

"As if you had never seen it. As if you had just discovered it and found it completely fascinating."

He smiled, thinking she was nearly correct. There were no moons on Toril, and studying it from s.p.a.ce wasn't the same as watching it rise, seeing it turn everything in its path a shimmering silver.

"It's quite a sight," he said. "I don't think I could ever grow tired of seeing the way it lightens the sky, or does something as simple as reflecting the scarlet in your hair." He reached up, wrapped a bouncy dark red curl around his finger, felt it slide across his skin.

Julie turned a little and he cupped her cheek in his palm. "You and the moon. Both of you so beautiful." Bending his head, he kissed her, felt her soft mouth tremble under his. Inside his chest, his pulse began a rapid thudding. At the same time his blood seemed to thicken and grow sluggish. It pooled low in his belly, making him hard, making the hunger he had learned to suppress rise up with primal force.

"Patrick..." Tilting her head, Julie molded her mouth to his, fitting their lips perfectly together, opening to him and urging him to deepen the kiss. He drew her bottom lip into his mouth and sucked it gently, then tasted her deeply with his tongue. The walls of her mouth felt smooth and slick, her tongue rough and sensual, making the heat slide into his groin. His arousal strengthened, pressed insistently against the front of his pants. He couldn't have imagined the incredible sensations, the building power of his desire.

The loose flowing robe she wore dipped low in back. He ran his hands over her skin, tracing the smoothness, allowing the pleasure to slowly seep through him, savoring each new sensation. Tilting her head back, he kissed the column of her throat, trailed moist kisses across her shoulders. He worked the zipper down the front of the caftan and eased the garment down to her waist, baring her lovely milk-white b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

A jolt of heat spiraled through him, made the perspiration break out at his temples. Bending his head to a dusky tip, he felt it tighten beneath his tongue, and a groan slipped from his throat. His body pulsed, felt hot and heavy, throbbed in a way he wasn't prepared for, and his hands grew suddenly unsteady. He opened his mouth, took more of the rounded swell, sucking deeply, then filled his palm with the heavy, hard-tipped fullness. He could feel her quivering even as she clutched his shoulders, began to work the b.u.t.tons on his shirt.

He kissed her again, deeply, erotically, letting the unbearable heat burn through him, wanting her and fighting to stay in control. He felt her hands on his chest, tracing the ridges of muscle across his rib cage, twining through his curly black chest hair. She stripped the shirt away then worked the b.u.t.tons on his pants and slid down the zipper, her fingers trembling, suddenly a little uncertain.

His hands shook as he cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, ringed them with his tongue, and a rush of fire speared through him. His loins felt heavy, full, his shaft rock-hard and pulsing. Taking her mouth in a ravaging kiss, he stroked deeply into the sweetness inside, wanting to possess her, craving her like a drug.

He was shaking all over, on fire with need, his control badly slipping. When she touched him again, wrapped a small hand around his s.e.x and began to stroke him there, waves of pleasure broke over him, and a need so great he had to clamp down on his jaw to keep his body from exploding.

Panic shot through him, making his heart race even faster. His blood was pumping, burning through his veins, his skin felt flushed and damp, and his body tingled all over.

He groped for control, tried to wrest it from the depths of his mind, but all he could think of was burying his hard length inside her. He wanted to tear off her clothes, drag her down on the deck, force her legs apart and thrust himself into the place between her legs. His mind was a swirling haze of pa.s.sion, his body thrummed with heat and need, pulsed with a hunger so strong he could taste it on his tongue.

His hands tightened on her shoulders. He searched for the strength he needed, the means to regain his control, but found nothing but primitive, mind-numbing hunger.

Fear splintered inside him, devouring his tenuous hold on reason. What if he hurt her, lost control completely and took her by force? He had to stop, had to gain control of himself, couldn't allow himself to rage so wildly out of control. His grip grew fierce, his eyes dark and forbidding. With a last determined effort, he jerked himself away, worked to drag in great breaths of air.

"Patrick?" Julie stood trembling in the moonlight, her green eyes luminous and uncertain. "Is something wrong? Did I do something...?" With shaky hands, she caught the front of the caftan and pulled it up to cover her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, clutching the fabric protectively around her.

"No." He shook his head, his voice ragged. "No. It isn't you. It's me." Turning away from her, he grabbed his shirt off the floor and shrugged it on, fumbled with the b.u.t.tons, gave up and tucked the tail into his pants, then zipped them up. He raked back his hair and started for the door, barely aware that Julie followed.

"Where...where are you going?"

"Home. I'll catch a cab from the shopping center down the street."

Her chin came up. "I brought you. I can take you home."

He only shook his head. "I need to walk. I'll get home all right. You don't need to worry." He was out the door before she had time to argue.

If he lived five hundred years, he would never forget the confusion and hurt he saw on her beautiful face.

Eleven.

Gripping the thin silk caftan over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Julie stared at the front door Patrick had just closed behind him. She could hear his heavy footfalls on the stairs leading down to the street. Her chest hurt. Tears spilled over her lashes and trailed down her cheeks.

"Oh G.o.d, Patrick, what did I do?" But silence was her only answer. For the last eight years, she had harbored a secret physical desire for Patrick Donovan. She had fought it, defeated it, filed it safely away. But since his heart attack, things had changed.

It had been easy to refuse the selfish, hedonistic man he had been. But this new Patrick, this gentle, caring, concerned Patrick Donovan was a man she could not resist. She had been frightened of the risk she was taking, but it never occurred to her that Patrick might be having reservations, too. Or perhaps he had discovered he no longer wanted her the way he had believed.

Blinking back a fresh round of tears, Julie walked into the living room. She grabbed a tissue, her hands still shaking, dabbed at her cheeks and blew her nose, then sank wearily down on the sofa. Her heart still pounded. Her insides tingled. The ache of unspent desire throbbed through her veins.

What had just happened? What had she done? Julie clamped down on the urge to cry again. It never did any good and usually made her feel worse. Besides, she should have known something bad would happen. He was Patrick, after all. What had she expected?

Still, she hadn't been with a man for the past three years, not since she had ended her affair with Jeffrey Muller. Once she had made the decision to sleep with Patrick, she had wanted everything to be perfect. The time seemed right: a beautiful night, a full moon, the soothing sounds of the sea battering softly against the sh.o.r.e. She had wanted Patrick so very badly, and at first he had seemed to want her. She didn't know what had gone wrong or how she was ever going to face him again.

Her throat ached, and her stomach churned with embarra.s.sment at Patrick's cold rejection. She rubbed her temple, hoping it wasn't the beginning of a headache, thinking that the way things had been going lately, she shouldn't be surprised by anything that occurred.

First the terrible migraines, then Laura's paranoia and outlandish claims. Now there was Patrick and the awful realization that nothing between them would ever be the same.

She thought of his behavior and her own erotic desires, felt her face go warm with humiliation. She stiffened her spine. The headaches were slowly getting better. She was sure in time they would disappear. Her sister needed her help-she would do what she could to take care of her.

As for Patrick...Patrick Donovan could go straight to h.e.l.l.

Val paced the bedroom of his apartment, stopped and turned and paced the length of the room again, his shoes making a squeaking sound on the carpet with each of his long, agitated strides. Before he'd left for work that morning, he had completed his required communication with his superiors using a small, powerful device the size of a credit card he carried in his wallet.

As soon as he had returned home tonight, he had begun work on his journal, which lay open on the desk a few feet away, the pages overflowed with words he had written about what had happened at Julie's. Personal impressions he wasn't yet ready to share with his superiors aboard the ship.

I thought I was prepared. I was not. My experience with Julie Ferris was more intense, more powerful than anything I had imagined. More than any Torillian could begin to imagine. Combined with the things I've learned since my arrival, along with the knowledge in Patrick's memory banks, it has made me see these people in a different light, understand them as I never have before.

I try to find the words but they do not come easily. Suffice it to say that although there are ways our cultures seem the same, their world is nothing like ours. They are nothing like us. Perhaps in simplest terms, I could say that pa.s.sion dominates their nature. It is there in all they do, in everything they feel. They are absorbed by it, swallowed by it. Each of their experiences is more intense because of it. At times it controls them. Their pa.s.sion stirs anger, fear, murder, and even wars, driving them to lengths we cannot comprehend.

He paused for a moment, thinking of the words he had written, thinking of the things he had experienced tonight. Though he had not actually completed the act of s.e.x as he had intended, the pa.s.sion he had experienced had given him an insight into feelings a Torillian could not fathom. For the first time he was beginning to understand the intense degree of emotion humans felt.

He paced the floor thinking of all he had learned, all he had yet to learn, thinking of Julie Ferris.

Wanting her still.

His body continued to throb with the ache she had stirred, still pulsed with the heat of his desire for her. He could feel the weight of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands, recall the erotic taste of her skin. He wanted her more than ever, craved to know the full extent of what he might discover from their joining. But now, because his body's needs had frightened him so badly, he had destroyed their growing bond, and the odds weren't good he would be given a second chance.

Val felt another sweep of emotion, this one tightening a hard knot in his chest. He wasn't sure what it was, a mixture of pain and something deeper, more intense.

He didn't know how to ease it, how to make it go away.

And part of him was afraid to find out.

Julie didn't see Patrick all the next day, which was the only stroke of good fortune she'd had. Laura had called early that morning. Dr. Heraldson had arranged for her to sit in with Peter Winter's abduction group at 7:00 p.m. that evening.

"I was kind of hoping you could come with me," Laura had said over the phone.

Julie pondered that. "I would have to rearrange my evening appointment with the Harveys. They're supposed to sign the escrow papers on the condo they just bought, but I can probably meet with them tomorrow." She still felt funny about steering them away from Patrick's condo project, but she had rarely seen him so adamant on a subject as he had been that day, and the condo the couple had finally purchased might turn out to be the better deal.

"I'd really like you to come," Laura urged.

Julie heard the anxiety in her sister's voice. "Then I will. In fact, I'll pick you up. Where will you be? At home or at work?"

A long silent pause. "I'm not working at The Boutique anymore."

An equally long pause on Julie's end. "Why not?"

"I didn't like working so late. I didn't like coming out of the building after it got so dark."

Julie thought of her sister cowering in terror the night of the birthday dinner, and her heart went out to her. "I'm sure you'll find something else. In the meantime, this will give you plenty of time to work with Dr. Winters. I'll pick you up at six."

She rang off, worked for a while on her escrow files, showed a big Palos Verdes estate to a friend of Owen's who was thinking of moving, then bought a couple of submarine sandwiches she and Laura could eat on the road, and set off for Venice Beach.

Dr. Winters's abduction group was meeting at a residence in Long Beach, not that far away. It turned out to be a lovely two-story home that backed up to one of the scenic ca.n.a.ls. It wasn't what she would have expected. Neither was the group of people who had gathered to discuss their fears.

"I'm Robert Stringer." The owner of the house waited for them on the porch and invited them in. "You must be Laura, and this must be your sister, Julie."

"I'm Laura," her sister corrected, since the man had reversed their names. "This is Julie."

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Stringer," Julie said, wondering if being shorter made her a more likely victim than her taller, more willowy sister.

"It's just Robert. We're all friends here." He was a dignified man in his early forties, the head of Digital a.s.sociates, a big computer software company. The last person she could imagine believing in alien abduction.

As they walked into the foyer, a small man in jeans, penny loafers, and a long-sleeved white b.u.t.ton-down shirt stepped forward. "Welcome. I'm Dr. Winters."