Page 13 of A Protector For Phoebe (Love will OUT 2)

I try to make light of the situation. Hailey in no way, no how prepared me for crazy clients. I thought I’d be dealing with a bawling woman carrying on about her cheating husband. I don’t have any experience with emotional women, but I’ve been one too many times to count. I could have dealt.

But crazies? I have no experience with people who let their freak flag fly. Well, except Suzie, but she’s perfectly harmless. At least to other people.

“What about listening devices?”

I open my mouth to ask him if aliens use different listening devices from humans but stop myself. Instead, I lie. “I swept the place for bugs before you came myself.” Never mind I have no idea what a bug would look like, let alone how you do a sweep for them.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” He exhales and relaxes in his chair.

“Now, what can I do for you?”

“I need you to find the aliens that abducted me.”

I blink rapidly to stop my eyes from widening in disbelief. I guess I should have expected some outrageous alien abduction story when he walked in with the tinfoil hat. In my defense, I’ve never seen a man in real life wearing a tinfoil hat.

What do I do? Play along? Tell him I’m not a ghost hunter and ask him to leave? But I can’t let Hailey down. She asked me to represent You Cheat, We Eat, and I will do my darndest to handle this the way I think she would. Except I have no idea how Hailey would handle crazy guy.

“Why do you need me to find them? Wouldn’t you rather forget all about the incident?” And by forget, I mean stop pretending you were abducted.

He squirms in his seat. “They have something of mine.”

I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’m too curious not to. “What do they have?”

“My sperm.”

I must have heard wrong. He didn’t say sperm. I’ve never heard an adult male say the word sperm before. I guess my previous life was more sheltered than I thought, despite having traveled all over the world.

“Um. How did they manage to take your…?” I clear my throat. “… sperm.” And do I want to know?

“Sex obviously, which was surprisingly pleasurable since they can control your mind.”

“But.” How to put this delicately? “If you …er… ejaculated into the alien, then the sperm has been used. I’m not sure how we could get it back.” I’m sure my face is flaming red considering the heat emanating from it. Am I dreaming? Surely, I’m not sitting in my office discussing sperm and ejaculation with aliens?

“They also extracted my sperm in other ways.”

And I’m done. I’m not asking him how they extracted sperm. I do not want to know what ‘other ways’ means. There’s a limit on how many times I can say sperm and ejaculate in one lifetime and I’ve hit it.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Havers, but I’m afraid we don’t handle alien retrievals.”

He frowns. “But you’re the fifth investigation firm I’ve met with.”

And I bet he’s going to meet with a whole bunch more before he finds a taker.

I stand. “I’m sorry. We’re a small firm. We simply don’t have the manpower to pull off an operation involving aliens.” Wow. I’m making stuff up as I go along, but my excuse didn’t sound at all like I pulled it out of my ass. Go me.

“I understand.” He stands and we shake hands.

After I escort him out of the office, I watch as he slinks along the wall of the hallway. His eyes are wide as he scans the area. I don’t know what he’s scanning for since there’s no one around. The elevator door opens and Hailey steps out. When Mr. Havers sees her, he starts screaming before running off down the hall with his hands waving in the air.

“Don’t take my sperm!” is the last thing I hear before the stairwell door shuts behind him.

Hailey shakes her head. “I take it we don’t have a new client?”

“Um, no, unless you know how to retrieve sperm from aliens.”

“Nope. I never did learn how to locate aliens. I could ask Wally, but I think that dude,” she points her thumb in the direction of the stairs, “would shit his pants if he saw Wally.”

“Probably.” I agree because Wally still scares me on a good day. But if aliens do exist, he would be the one person to know about it.

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