Alien Diplomacy

colors, and I was a desert girl.
    I noted someone lounging against a tree that was bragging to the other trees about how it was a proud Maple of the American Revolution and explaining how its leafy branches made the rest of them look inferior. I’d have missed him if I hadn’t been doing a morose study in comparative botany.
    He was a big guy, built along Jeff’s lines. As he smiled and gave me a nod, I realized he was someone from our class, Malcolm Buchanan, one of the few who didn’t really “group” with anyone. He was sporting the tall, blue-eyed, brown-haired, big and broodinghottie look. I had to admit that if I were single, I’d have been interested in seeing if he was interested in hanging with me.
    However, I wasn’t single, and, if he was in the Washington Wife class, he wasn’t either. So I went for the semi-friendly wave. He grinned as Eugene turned to see who I was waving to. “You friendly with him?” Eugene asked, sounding displeased.
    “Not really. Not enemies, either, though.”
    “Oh. I don’t like him.”
    “Why not? Has he been a jerk like the people we just left?”
    “No. He just…he makes me nervous. He’s always watching us.”
    I turned around. Buchanan was indeed watching us. He didn’t seem fazed by the fact that I was looking back at him. In fact, he winked. I felt my cheeks get hot.
    I turned around, and we kept moving while I worked to stop blushing like an idiot. These days I wasn’t used to anyone but my husband making me blush.
    We walked on and reached the parking lot Eugene used in a couple of minutes. He drove himself. I would have, but the A-Cs were against it for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that A-C reflexes were so fast that they couldn’t actually drive, fly, or use other human machinery safely.
    I wasn’t an A-C, despite the lovely parting gifts that having our daughter, Jamie, had given me. We’d done the mother and child feedback thing, and since her daddy was a mutated alien thanks to some of our many enemies, Jamie had shared some mutated alien genes with me. I could still drive and fly. But as the Co-Chief of Mission, no one wanted me to.
    I was used to it. When I’d been the head of Airborne for Centaurion Division, Tim Crawford had been my driver. Tim had my old job now, and, from what he told me, he was having a great time. It wouldn’t be hard to have more fun than I was having, I had to admit.
    Of course, we hadn’t found a human driver I clicked with yet. And since I was already miserable, Jeff was going out of his way to try to find someone, anyone, to make me a little happier about our major job changes and their required location. So far, not a lot of luck, but then again, there was only one Tim, and he was busy saving the day and kicking evil butt.
    Normally Eugene dropped me off at the A-C Embassy. I got to avoid upsetting the latest human operative who’d been given Driving Miss Kitty duty, and it gave us more time together withoutanyone else telling us we sucked. But today there was a gray limo at the curb, parked, with the motor idling.
    A big, tall, droolingly handsome man with rather broad features and dark brown eyes under a great head of dark, wavy hair was leaning against the side of the car. He was in a black Armani suit, crisp white shirt, and black tie, with a black overcoat on. He gave me a wide smile.
    I ran and jumped into his arms. Jeff pulled me to him and kissed me. As always, his kiss was amazing, and it washed away any thoughts about my inadequacy, the horrible high school reenactment we’d just gone through, or other men. As also always, my thoughts instead happily turned to getting our clothes off as soon as possible.
    He ended the kiss slowly, eyes smoldering. “How’re you doing, baby?”
    I sighed. “Much better now. What brings you here?”
    He shook his head. “The two of you are giving off suicide-level depression,” he said in a low voice Eugene was unlikely to hear. In addition to his other talents and with the assist from some drugs he’d been unwittingly given by those aforementioned enemies, Jeff was the strongest empath in, most likely, the universe. He always monitored me, and, again due to the mutation said drugs had caused, he could read much of my mind. He’d started monitoring Eugene, too, because Eugene was with me when no one else Jeff trusted was.
    Jeff kept one arm around me and put his other hand out to Eugene, who was politely waiting nearby. “How’s it