Page 28 of Hijack!
He scoffed out a hard breath. “You can’t make everything about love.”
Sitting side by side, she was still much shorter than him, but somehow when she looked up at him, he felt as if she was staring into his depths. “That’s literally my job.”
They both pivoted to stare at the quiescent anomaly.
He rumbled under his breath. “We’re arguing about feelings while we’re trapped with a power glitch that hijacked this ship.”
She lifted her chin another notch. “Maybe it seems silly to you, but I’ve noticed there is always an excuse—a monster right there to explain why we shouldn’t make everything about love.”
He gazed at her a long moment. “Who was your monster, Felicity?”
The way she slipped her hand out of his to clutch the place over her Earther heart—where the IDA button had been—told him he’d struck too close. “They weren’t monsters. Just… Myfamily didn’t believe in sharing feelings, so we stayed stuck in that darkness. Our own little closed worlds. Now they’re farther away than ever, and that’s that.”
A heavy silence settled around them, like a weight turning down the corners of her mouth, and he longed to reignite her smile. But considering their situation…
“So,” he said, very casual. “Impregnated?”
She made a noise somewhere between amusement and embarrassment, a soft flush rising to brighten her cheeks again. “It’s…an alien thing in Earther horror movies.”
He glanced askance at her. “And yet you chose to work for an alien dating service?”
She let out a little huffle of breath, squirming so her shoulder bumped his. “Well, not just horror. It’s also a thing in our romance novels.”
He grunted. “No wonder the debate about whether to officially contact your planet remains unresolved.”
“Which is unfair. From what I’ve seen, the rest of the universe can be just as problematic as my world. But we’ll get there, someday.”
After a moment, her hand crept across the cushion to nudge his. “Except now you’re stuck here with me. Sorry about that.”
He entwined his fingers with hers. He’d already realized that she appreciated physical contact as much as his people did. “I would not leave you alone with this.” Hearing the undertone of possessiveness, he amended, “You are part of my crew.”
“And it’s been the best two and a half sunset tour of my life so far.”
He gave her a narrow look, but as always, she seemed sincere. “Isolation protocol says we stay in place until we clear the med scans.” He tapped the datpad that had tumbled from her pocket. “You need to authorize the scans, and anything not relevant tothis situation is coded for your privacy. When those are complete and the isolation period over, we can return to active duty.”
Even as she initiated the scan through her own device, she cast a sidelong glance at the viewport where the distortion had been. “If none of the sensors detected it… But I guess it’s like my therapist warned me: No matter how many lists and references I have, I can’t be ready for everything.” She shook her head. “As if finding out about the Intergalactic Dating Agency hadn’t proved that.”
He checked his own scan. In addition to the physical review, there was a time delay. Perhaps to see if they exploded—possibly with alien offspring.
He squelched the unsettling thought. “Before I took this post, I vetted Evens’ Big Sky enterprise. Surprisingly little information. That he was able to open an IDA outpost on a closed world raises questions.”
Felicity shrugged. “I confess, I didn’t ask many questions at all. I was just happy he told me the truth. Living in Sunset Falls, I experienced things that made me wonder sometimes if I was going crazy, so finding out it was just aliens was actually a relief. Maybe if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have needed a therapist.” She raised her hand a little under his and then let it fall back to the cushion with a sigh. “And since I’m being honest, I was happy to leave Earth.”
There was no real reason for him to need to know the details of her arrival on the Love Boat I. He’d reviewed her crew records and already seen enough of her in action to know she was competent and dedicated, if headstrong. And yet he heard himself asking, “Why?”
“I guess because I couldn’t find what I wanted there.”
“What did you want?” It was everything he could do not to tighten his grip.
“My therapist asked me that too. And if I could’ve answered it, maybe I wouldn’t have left.” She let out a long breath. “And now there seems to be a question whether I’ll have the chance to figure it out.”
“I’ve been in worse situations than this.”
He couldn’t believe he’d said that either. Because of course it made her look at him, her Earther blue eyes wide with a sort of hope. “You have?”
Now he had to tell her or risk extinguishing that shine. “You already know about the pirates.”
“You didn’t say much about it.”
