Page 47 of Holiday with the Aliens

Molly’s lips pressed together tightly until her face burst into a bright smile. “I’m not sure that you can.”

“Can what?” He couldn’t stop touching her, fingers playing with her hair and ears, other hand cupping her hip and pulling her close. She felt so good, like coming home, and he didn’t want to let her go.

“Lose your mysterious allure.” She snorted out a laugh and shook her head, face showing disbelief. “What are you doing to me, Tav?”

I’m your mate. He could have said it just yet, but something stopped his tongue. This was still too new, too fresh, and he didn’t want to frighten her before she gave him a chance. “I’m as drawn to you as you are to me,” he promised.

She opened her mouth but shut it quickly and sucked in a breath, as if pulling back whatever words she’d been about to say. After a stuttered moment, she said, “I didn’t cause you any problems yesterday, did I? I kind of kidnapped you.”

“I was where I needed to be,” he assured her. Things had been handled on his end, not perfectly, not exactly as he would have done it, but the ship was being repaired and the passengers had accommodations for the duration of their stay.

A loud crash sounded from the other room and they both startled. Molly looked around him, curling around to get a better look. “We’d better go back,” she said regretfully. “I’m sure the kids have managed to get into trouble while mommy was gone.”

“What is your role, exactly?” She was clearly planning something, but they hadn’t discussed what they did when they met. And they’d been too busy kissing this morning to say anything else.

“I’m planning the winter party,” Molly said. “I think I told you that?”

Now that she mentioned it, he recalled something like that. “But what is your role on the station?”

“Planning the party,” Molly repeated. “I’m here specifically for that, I don’t normally live on Honora Station. I travel around and plan events. I kind of fell into it by accident when I ran out of money on a space cruise a few years ago. I offered to do some work for the ship to pay off my bill, and the rest is history. I’ve been going around from stations to planets and offering my services. Some places like the human touch, it’s a bit different than what their own people can offer.”

“Interstellar party planner, I didn’t realize such a thing existed.” He often met those in interplanetary trade, diplomacy, and war, and very few of his passengers worked at bringing joy to others.

“Neither did I,” she admitted. “But it’s fun. I don’t know how else I would have afforded to stay off planet for so long.”

“Is there something wrong with your planet?” They were a long way from Earth and news could be delayed.

“I just wanted to see bigger things, you know? When the entire universe is out there, it’s hard to stay bound to a single blue dot.” She squeezed his arm before letting him go and walking across the room to find one of her helpers, leaving Tav adrift for the moment.

He wondered if his denya would feel the same if she didn’t have a true home to return to. Tav had never known the security of a planet where he truly belonged. Detya had been destroyed long before his birth and though Jaaxis had a decent Detyen population, they were still outsiders there, refugees with no chance of ever returning home. He didn’t want to wallow in tragedy, not when the future was waiting for him with a smile on her face. Molly beckoned him to come closer and Tav moved. He could think more on that later. Right now he had a mate to help.

Chapter Four

“You’re saying thatallof the wire is missing?” Molly couldn’t believe it. No, shecouldbelieve it but she really didn’t want to. One of her displays lay in a collapsed heap in the far corner of the room. Her only consolation was that this time it wasn’t the tree.

“I’m sorry,” Qavis, one of her best workers, a Jaaxian, replied. “It looks like most of it was removed sometime last night.”

Removed. Stolen. And this time there was no way it was a misunderstanding. A large amount of metal wiring had been removed from an already constructed decoration, something Molly was certain had been in one piece the day before. “We have a thief,” she muttered, bristling with anger that was barely caged by the time Tav joined her and Qavis.

“A thief?” he asked, looking from her to Qavis.

For a moment Molly wondered if she should drag Tav into this. He wasn’t a part of her problems, he’d just been willing to go along when she conscripted him, and his kisses gave her the promise of something more. But the concerned look on his face went a long way to alleviating her worries. This might have beenher problem, but he was willing to step in and help her deal with it.

“A thief,” she confirmed. “It started with small things, but it’s escalated since then.”

“Have you reported it to the security team?” he asked.

She let out a huff of breath and curled her fingers into fists. “Yes, for all the good that’s done me. Apparently it wasn’t worth investigating when it was just small time shit. I can’t say that they instilled a great deal of confidence in me.” What was she supposed to do? Molly had the horrible image of arriving for the party in less than a week and finding everything gone, stolen away by some kind of space Grinch who was unwilling to learn about the magic of Christmas—winter, whatever. “We have more chance of finding this thief ourselves than trusting station security to do it.”

“Okay, how do we do that?” Tav surprised her with his readiness to dive in. Who was this guy? He showed up on one day and became her perfect helper, and then the next kissed her breathless, and now he was ready to take the space station apart to find the thief on her word alone. He was almost too good to be true, and she might’ve been suspicious that he was the culprit trying to cover for himself if she hadn’t known that he had only just arrived on the station. Even thinking that felt wrong and Molly was glad to dismiss the tiny inkling of doubt.

“You’re not going to tell me to mind my own business? To let the people whose job it is to find bad guys do it?” Molly hadn’t had many boyfriends—not that Tav was her boyfriend or anything. But any of her relationships that were more than just casual flings tended to self-destruct when the people she was with didn’t like her tendency to try and handle her problems by herself. And yeah, she had gotten into trouble before by not being as cautious as she should have, but life was short and she wasn’t going to waste it waiting for other people to catch up toher. Knowing that Tav was already going her speed made her smile on the inside, even as she was utterly pissed by what was going on around her.

Tav studied her for several seconds, his dark eyes narrowed. She could feel his gaze like a caress and wanted to lean into him, wanted to feel his hands running against her naked skin. But that was for later, if they could find the time. Not while a thief was on the loose, and her party had to be planned. “Those people aren’t doing their jobs, you just said. I am here to help you in any way you need.”

“Who are you?” He seemed like some sort of gift handed down from a benevolent being, maybe even Santa Claus. Was it Christmas Day on Earth? It was hard to keep track of her home calendar when she was not on the planet. “I think you’re too good to be true.”

Tav grinned at her, a wicked smirk that tied her insides up in knots and made her want to forget about the trouble at hand. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready,” he said cryptically.

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