“Now you catch me!” I said.
We chased each other for twenty minutes before we ran into his uncle and his smoldering frown.
Cleb wasn’t intimidated by him at all, but I was. I don’t know how anyone couldn’t be affected by that sizzling glare.
Maybe it was the argumentative streak in me, but I wanted to tear him down and make him drop to his knees and beg for mercy…
Or maybe that was how every girl reacted in his presence. It was clear half the female staff couldn’t keep their eyes off him. He was tall and broad across the chest but he was all business and without mirth, as if God forgot to add humor to the mix.
No… I sensed that wasn’t quite right.
In his purple haze eyes, I saw a spark, something not too dissimilar from Cleb, a mischievousness streak he kept buried deep down.
Did he want to join in? To chase us?
And tickle my belly when he caught me?
Yes, please.
As strict and as harsh as his old governess undoubtedly was, and as successful as she might have been at driving the worst of his instincts out, she hadn’t completely succeeded.
A tiny filament remained, like a crack in the foundations of a majestic building.
Ready to be exploited.
And boy, did I want to exploit.
“I want you to be his governess,” he said. “I’ll give you the same deal I gave the previous one.”
“Oh no,” I said. “You’re going to do no such thing. You’re going to give me something a lot better than what she got. You can bet your bottom credit on that. And that’s if I decide to accept the position. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some toys to go look at.”
I felt good about myself that I’d bested Traes. But it was a pipedream. There could be no relationship between us. He was a rich alien dude in charge of a vast business of some sort and I was a poor former-slave girl just trying to make ends meet and return home.
It could never work out between us. Even if I wanted it to.
Which I didn’t.
Not at all.
Nope.
But boy, his ass looked good in those dark pants.
One of the most important things when developing trust with kids was keeping your promises.
I left to go find Cleb’s room and got lost immediately. The place was huge! I asked one of the maids for directions and she was very happy to take me to Cleb’s room personally.
When we reached his room, I thanked her and knocked on the door.
Cleb got up from the bed. He’d been reading a book.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had to talk with your uncle.”
“That’s okay!” he said, thrilled I’d turned up.
“You said you wanted to show me your toys,” I said. “I can’t wait to see them.”
He had a ton. Some were so advanced they wouldn’t look out of place in the United States military. Others were constantly moving mounds of gelatinous mass much like a lava lamp. Most had a thin layer of dust on them, suggesting they rarely, if ever, got played with. The ones Cleb directed me to were a set of cheap and nasty mass-produced plastic figures of little men with fast cars and attractive women.
“What are these?” I asked.
He looked at me incredulously.
“You don’t know Captain Titan?” he said.
“I’m not from around here, remember?” I said.
He lay down on the floor so the little figures were no more than a few inches from the end of his nose. I got down there with him. He seemed surprised—and pleased—I did. He picked up a little figure of a handsome man armed with a pistol.
“This one’s Captain Titan and this one is his enemy, Titus,” he said. “This is his car and these are his super special weapons.”
“What do they do?” I asked.
“Everything,” Cleb said. “When he presses the button on the steering wheel, lava spills out the back and runs over the road so other cars can’t follow.”
“Wow,” I said.
It was the response he was hoping for.
“And another button makes him fly out of the car and sometimes he can turn the car into a spaceship or submarine.”
He had a vivid imagination. I thought that might be the case. The action figures sounded very much like James Bond from Earth. I used it to form a plan of action.
“Do you like playing with your spy toys?” I said.
He nodded.
I checked over my shoulders to make sure no one was listening. I leaned in close and whispered.
“I have a secret to tell you,” I said.
“What?”
I shook my head.
“I can’t tell you unless you promise you won’t tell anyone,” I said.
“I promise.”
“It’s really, really important no one knows. Can I trust you?”
“Yes,” he said. “You can trust me.”
“Words are cheap,” I said. “I need proof I can trust you with my super deep secret. On my homeworld, we do this when we make a promise.”
I crossed my fingers.
“It means that when I make a promise, I have to keep it, no matter what,” I said. “Do you know what happens if I don’t?”
He shook his head, mesmerized.
“Something bad will happen!” I said.
“What bad thing?”
“Nobody knows. That’s what makes it so scary. Maybe it will be something small and you’ll fall over. Or maybe it will be something big and your nose will fall off.”
He gasped and placed a hand over his face.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll grow back. But until then, you have to wear a fake nose. And they’re very uncomfortable and very smelly.”
“How is it smelly if you don’t have a nose to smell it with?” he said.
Damn. This boy was sharp.
“Even though you lose your nose, you keep your sense of smell,” I said. “But you can’t smell nice things. You can only smell bad things.”
“Oh no!”
“So, if you want to know my secret, you have
