Page 2 of Star Bright
A spaceship had just crash-landed at her holiday housesitting.
No way, this was impossible. Her brain spun like the sawdust drifting down from the broken trees. It had to be an experimental aircraft or a Hollywood special effect or… A hoax, had to be. Instead of busting hoaxes, Brin had decided to start staging pranks, and Darcy was her victim. Any moment now, someone would jump out and yell, “Got ya!” She would smile…
No one jumped out, but smoke wafted toward her, tinted with the scent of firewood and something else—something hot and dangerous, like nothing in her experience.
It was a for-real spaceship.
She swallowed hard. Ug stood between her and the spaceship, his scanty fur bristling around the scales.
He wasn’t a dog, was he?
Before she could work through what that meant exactly, a knee-high door opened in the lobby wall near where she was huddled. And a slightly less than knee-high robot emerged.
Looking like a single-serve coffee maker with a shiny silver dome where the coffee would go, it rolled on a single gimbal pasther, chirping. “Welcome, honored guest! We’re sorry we don’t have our regular greeters available. We have scanned your ship’s ident and seem to have no record of your scheduled arrival, but fret not! Here at the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency, we pride ourselves on connecting interstellar citizens with eager Earther brides. Please stand by while we determine your bioelechemical compatibility with an uncontracted mate.” The little robot whirred again. “Welcome, honored guest!” Then it switched into gibberish—another language?—as it rolled toward the spaceship.
Which was still smoking, silvery curls unspooling into the dark sky.
Darcy scrubbed both hands over her face. Yup, she was awake. Dreaming was the last possible explanation that wasn’t a crash-landed spaceship. This was all so impossible…
Wait. What had the mini robot just said? Eager Earther brides? Uncontracted mate?
Intergalactic Dating Agency?
Chapter 2
Vash staggered out of the rental ship. That rough landing was going to cost him some credits, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care. The crash had left him bruised too, and he couldn’t care about that either. The ache in his head might’ve been when he’d jolted upright and smacked his head on the sleep pod lid, though he’d had trouble sleeping lately and couldn’t quite remember lying down, or maybe the universal translator implant was malfunctioning, or maybe he’d had too much coffee?
Coffee was terrible for draklings, or so he’d been warned, but he’d been desperate to feel some sort of connection to the Earther female he’d be meeting—and mating.
Because he was desperate to feel anything.
The only part of him that hurt more than his head was his heart. But why—
“Welcome, honored guest!”
He stumbled over the droid and almost fell. What was wrong with him? Had he hit his head or the coffee even harder than he’d realized?
The droid withdrew, the whining spin of its wheel making Vash’s stomach churn. Something wasn’t right. He struggled to track its retreat and stiffened when he saw the other two aliens. One was a large quadruped with imposing teeth. The other was an Earther female.
It was so dark, and his head and heart ached, and he needed to remember…
But the twist of his beast, dazed and confused, roused him with one thought, clear as a star.
HisEarther female.
She was short and round and fuzzy all over, from her large feet to the riot of brown curls shining in the spotlights. Nothing like… He took a step toward her, then the cold, hard dirt beneath him seemed to heave, and he tipped over backward.
All the stars winked out.
+ + +
Darcy just stared as the man collapsed in a puff of pine needles.
Not a man. An alien, from a spaceship. Oh, helookedlike a man (Intergalactic Dating Agency? Contracted, compatible mates?) but no man looked likehim.
Did that even make sense?Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. He was at least a foot taller and probably two feet wider than her five-five frame—at least when he wasn’t sprawled in the dirt. The rich auburn-brown of his hair glinted with golden highlights despite the dirt. Filter-perfect cheekbones, a sensuous mouth that had to be a hoax, and yeah, she was definitely dreaming.
Because like Ug, the alien’s eyes had given him away. In the moment before his eyeballs had rolled back in his head and he keeled over, twin rings of restless fire had blazed at her—beautiful, impossible,alien.
