Taken by the Alien Next Door (Aliens Among Us #1) - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,16

when something caught his eye—the mailbox door was ajar. As he reached forward to close it, he paused, glancing down the street in the direction Tabitha had gone. Were there any humans truly so interested in mailboxes as to warrant the vigorous inspection she’d given his?

Zevris turned his head again, this time looking toward Tabitha’s house. One of her windows—the kitchen window—was visible from where he stood, albeit at an angle. He could make out what looked like a curved sink faucet at the forefront, with the top of a chair and her table visible beyond it.

Last night, he’d seen only darkness in that window. The reflections on the glass had been just strong enough to disrupt his vision. But he swore he’d felt eyes upon him. Her eyes…

Had she seen him? If so, how much had she seen?

Zevris gritted his teeth and coiled his tail tighter around his leg. It was almost like he wanted to be discovered lately. What was the human phrase? Blowing his load, or something along those lines?

No…not load, cover. He wasn’t fully certain, but he suspected that first phrase had a very, very different meaning. Regardless, he could not allow his true nature to be exposed. His people were relying upon him.

Althicar Zevris Akkaran had conducted countless dangerous missions during which the slightest mistake would’ve meant his death, and he’d never suffered a single moment of doubt or hesitation. Why should he suddenly doubt now?

He dropped his gaze to the mailbox again and tilted his head when he caught a glimpse of white through the gap. It had been empty when he’d reattached it to the post last night, and the mail carrier usually didn’t come around until early afternoon.

Zevris opened the mailbox and removed the envelope lying within. It had no postage, no postmark, no addresses. There was only a name printed in large, flowing letters. Logan.

Turning the envelope around, he opened it and removed the contents—a check with a bright pink sticky note attached to it.

So, SO sorry about yesterday.

Please use this for boots and mailbox.

It was written in the same big, bubbly letters as the name on the front of the envelope, signed by Tabitha and marked with two dots and a curved line. A smiley face. The little face was slightly crooked, and the dots were larger than usual, granting it an unexpected charm.

Logan removed the sticky note. The two-hundred-dollar check beneath it was made out to Logan E. The note line simply said, Sorry!

His understanding of the way humans assigned value to their belongings, time, and money was still vague, complicated in large part by the fluidity of their economy and the way those values constantly shifted and changed, often based on seemingly arbitrary factors. But he had dealt with humans on a more personal level often enough to know that for most of them, two hundred dollars was not an insignificant sum.

Zevris chuckled and shook his head. Perhaps he should have been clearer in communicating that he’d expected no compensation from her, but he had a feeling that she would’ve done something out of guilt regardless.

Not purely guilt. She has integrity. That’s what drove her to this.

His dispute with the movers hadn’t been about money—it had been about them accepting responsibility for what they had done. A genuine apology would likely have been enough to appease Zevris, but that had apparently been too much to ask of Frank and his coworker. But Tabitha, who hadn’t even caused the accident, had taken personal responsibility for it.

Perhaps the matter of her dog urinating on Zevris’s boot could be looked at differently. The beast was her responsibility, and it did not seem to respect her commands. But Zevris couldn’t see it that way. Dexter had a mind of his own. Even falorans, for all their advanced technology and millennia of spacefaring history, were sometimes subject to their instincts.

He could not consider the Dexter incident to be Tabitha’s fault—and she’d already taken responsibility and apologized, regardless.

He walked back toward his dwelling, his attention divided between his destination and the handwritten note. He still couldn’t understand the human insistence on using paper for communication when their digital means of connecting were so much faster and less wasteful, but there was something about Tabitha’s gesture, about the thought she’d put into it, that was…endearing. Writing something out by hand, in ink, just seemed more intimate than tapping some virtual keys on a touchscreen.

As he reached his front door, he paused and succumbed to the