Guardian Alien: a sci-fi alien romance (OtherWorldly Men Book 1) Read online

  The branch splintered and went down. Like a tick on a dog’s tail, she held on. The branch smacked into the one that had snagged Peter and knocked him loose.

  At the last second there was a whoosh of wind that seemed to slow his fall, and he landed on his feet. He made eye contact with her and dipped his head once, probably to thank her for unhooking him.

  Jana grinned and waved, maybe a little too hard. Her branch made a grinding sound and flipped over. She yelped and hung on. Somehow, she was still attached to the limb when the spinning stopped.

  She opened one eye. Then the other. The good news was that she was still alive. The bad news was that she now hung upside down like a possum. If not for her fear of hitting the ground headfirst, she would have been wild with embarrassment about her panties showing.

  The magical boy waited below, looking worried for her, but the branch was broken; she couldn’t climb back the way she came. Her only choice was to fall. She let go with her legs and hung by her hands. It was a long way down to the ground. Bend your knees when you hit. That’s what Jared would say.

  Jana let go. For a frightening second, wind shrieked past her ears. She hit the ground and rolled onto her side. That wasn’t so bad. She climbed to her feet, shaking off leaves like a dog shook off water. With a big grin, she spun in a pirouette and curtsied. But the boy was jogging backward so fast that he stumbled. Looking even more upset, he jumped up off the grass and escaped into the shadows.

  A gust of wind blew through the garden, whipping Jana’s hair around her face. A row of plastic daisy pinwheels spun, clicking and clacking, and near the barn, a gate creaked open and slammed shut.

  “Squeee!” From her pen near the barn, Jana’s frightened potbellied pig squealed above the commotion. Before Jana could reach the pen to soothe her, Minnie had pushed the gate open and escaped.

  The prissy little pig scurried down the path leading away from the garden. Minnie! Jana thrust her feet into pink rubber flip-flops lying on the patio and raced after her pig.

  No blue-green glow. Peter was nowhere to be seen. Was he afraid of her? He’d sure run away fast.

  Her flip-flops scraped on the gravel as she hurried along the dirt path behind the barn to a place where Minnie liked to forage. Min, she thought urgently. Minnie, come back!

  Then, something rustled in the dark. Tingles raced up her arms. The air felt strange. Tickly. Someone’s watching you. Jana’s tingles turned to goose bumps, and suddenly she wished she were back in bed.

  A crackling noise came from the shadows. Whatever it was, it was coming closer.

  “Squeee!” A round, little shadow darted out of the thigh-high weeds—and ran straight to Peter, who stepped onto the path and grabbed Minnie before she escaped.

  The glowing boy was holding her pig! Fascination and wonder froze Jana in place as Peter walked toward her. She met his gaze and sucked in a silent breath. The air felt electric. Magic. All the hair on her body stood on end.

  “Squee,” he said and offered her Minnie.

  She took the pig and hugged her close. Thank you, she mouthed. Peter’s smile filled her stomach with squirmy butterflies.

  A twig snapped from somewhere in the bushes. They jumped apart and took off running—Peter into the fields, and Jana toward the house. The magic boy! She’d met him! She skipped all the way back to the yard to put Minnie away. After making sure the gate was latched and locked, she ran to the back door, punched in the secret code for the keypad that disarmed the security system, and ran upstairs to bed.

  “Peter,” she whispered in a dreamy voice. Resting her chin on her hands, she curled up by the windowsill. He’d be back; yes, he would. Peter would come before morning and transport her to Neverland—she was sure of it. But the next thing she knew, she was waking bathed in sunshine in exactly the same place as before.

  CAVIN BURST THROUGH the hatch and into the familiar surroundings of his ship that floated above the forest floor. The vessel was invisible to anyone without the proper technology, something no one on this primitive world had. Excitement pulsed through him as he stood in the decontamination shower to wash off his soiled biobubble. He’d been to a hundred unexplored alien worlds traveling from planet to planet with his scientist father, but never one like this. Never one with anyone like her. The incredible alien girl!

  Cavin leaped out of the shower, his heart bursting with folk songs…which died in his throat as soon as he saw the worry in his father’s eyes.

  “Your vital signs are elevated, Cavin.” The man frowned from where he sat at a worktable littered with samples he’d collected since they’d landed. “Pulse high. Body temperature in the caution zone. What have you been doing out there, son?”

  “I, ah—”

  “You didn’t go too far from the ship, did you? There is a humanoid settlement in the area, and you mustn’t go near it.”

  Cavin took a seat at the table. Crocks of hot food sat next to research gear and data files. It was a man’s ship. No frills. No softness. Sometimes he wondered if his father had purposely eradicated all signs of femininity after Cavin’s mother died.

  Hungrily, Cavin ladled soup into a bowl and dug in.

  “Cavin?”

  His father studied him with a concerned look on his face. It felt strange to have the man’s full attention. It so rarely happened. “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you approach the settlement at close range?”

  “I got caught in a tree,” Cavin answered without exactly answering. He turned around and showed where the branch had snagged him. In an instant his father was scanning him, taking more readings.

  “Was there a rupture?”

  Cavin shook his head. Though there might have been if he’d tried to rip himself free of the tree. If she hadn’t gotten to him first. But it had been worth it, the entire embarrassing fiasco. He had finally got to meet her after watching her for days and developing a curiosity that resulted in him swooping in too low and getting stuck when he’d tried to get a closer peek at her dwelling.

  “You’re lucky it was only a tree that caught you, son. If you’d been captured by the locals, it would have put this entire mission in jeopardy—and maybe cost you your life.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” He didn’t want to put his father at risk. He’d be more careful next time.

  His father pulled another biosphere off the shelf filled with many similar spheres of scurrying creatures and went back to work.

  The trapped animals were terrified, Cavin realized. Just as he’d been, caught in the tree. “Why did we come here, Father?” he blurted out. “To this planet out of all the others?” He’d never paid much mind to the samples they took, or his father’s job as a whole, but then he’d never visited a world that mattered. The girl had made this world matter.

  “The same reason as always. To determine if this planet can be classified as fit for habitation.”

  “One look around could tell anyone that.”

  “For Coalition habitation, son.”

  Cavin put down his utensil. A minute ago his stomach had been growling; now he’d lost his appetite. “So, if the Coalition likes the data you send them, this place goes on the invasion list.”

  “It goes on the acquisition list.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  His father gave him a funny look as he injected a white gas into the biosphere that held a long-eared mammal with a jumping nose. It sagged onto its side, as if asleep. Bio-stasis solved the problem of feeding the samples during the long voyage. “If a planet is deemed to be of use, the population will be removed to another location and replaced with Coalition citizens. By definition, it’s acquiring, not invading.”

  “But the people here are humans like us. Don’t they have a say?”

  “The galaxy is littered with humans, Cavin. Seeded with our DNA so long ago no one really knows why or how. But not all humans are part of the Coalition, and the Coalition is who we serve.”

  Cavin frowned at his bowl of soup. “It
just seems wrong to take this world without asking.”

  “Tell it to the Coalition,” his father said irritably, knowing full well that Cavin wouldn’t dare do it. No one in their right mind would, unless you wanted to disappear and never be heard from again. Then he sighed. “I’m a scientist, not a government man. I collect data and pass it on. I do my job, and they do theirs.”

  “But when is it going to happen? When’s the Coalition going to come here?” He needed to know. This time, it mattered.

  “Even if the planet is determined to be of use, it could be years, son. Many, many years. Maybe not even in your lifetime.”

  Ah, gods. For the girl’s sake, Cavin hoped not.

  AT BREAKFAST, Jana’s grandfather carried the Sacramento Sun and a cup of coffee to the table. “When I went outside to get the paper, the alarm was off.”

  Jana’s face burned. She’d forgotten all about resetting it when she came inside last night.

  “I distinctly remember turning it on before I went to bed. But this morning, it was off.” He opened the paper with a loud snap, eyeing Evie, Jared and Jana in turn. “How do you suppose that happened?”

  Jana turned her gaze to her cereal to avoid her grandfather’s eyes.

  “You weren’t sneaking out to meet a girl, were you, Jared?”

  “I wish,” her brother muttered.

  “Hmm. And you, Evie? Is there a boy?”

  “No!” She sounded indignant.

  Jana sneaked a peek at Grandpa. He lifted a brow at her. “I know it wasn’t you, Jana.”

  She sank down in her seat. Evie and Jared watched her with sudden interest.

  “Jana?”

  By now, her chin was level with the edge of the table. Minnie, she mouthed bashfully to her sister.

  As always, Evie filled in the blanks. “Minnie got out again and Jana had to go find her.”

  “Good thing you found her,” Grandpa said. “Because we’ve got some unwelcome wildlife coming around. Something damaged the oak tree last night. Broke a couple of branches. I’d say it looks like a bear’s work if I thought they came this far down from the hills.”

  It wasn’t a bear. It was Peter! Jana giggled. All eyes went to her again.

  Jared winced. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with her,” Evie said. “But she’s definitely acting different.”

  Because today I am different. Jana sighed.

  As Grandpa worriedly read the ingredients on the side of the cereal box as if it would somehow explain her behavior, Jana tossed her bowl into the dishwasher and pirouetted into her parent’s bedroom.

  Brightly painted Russian matryoshka dolls decorated her mother’s night table. Each doll held smaller, identical dolls nestled one inside the other. Jana gathered up the egg-shaped matryoshkas and carried them to her room. With reverence, she spread them out on her comforter. Every one held a love note from Dad, which was, as he always said, the only way a brand-new assemblyman visiting Moscow as part of an official California agricultural delegation had stood a chance at winning the attention of a beautiful Russian ballerina. Every couple of days over the course of a few weeks, he’d send Mom another doll with a new letter tucked inside. “My marrying your mother was a long shot,” he’d say, wearing a funny little smile as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “But I did. Never be afraid of going for it, even when someone tells you your chances of succeeding are one in a million.”

  Jana was going for it, too. Tonight. Despite one-in-a-million odds, she’d find Peter again.

  IT SEEMED TO TAKE forever for the house to grow silent, but as soon as it did, Jana sneaked out the back door. She crawled onto the patio glider with a blanket to wait for Peter. The rising moon was huge and full. Everything was still, hushed, waiting for something to happen.

  There’s magic in the air tonight. She wasn’t sure what she sensed but it was out there all the same.

  Evie would have told her that love was in the air. After catching Jana watching Peter Pan for the third—no, fourth time, she’d forced her to sit down for a “talk.” Jana did her best to explain Peter, only to have Evie declare her to be in love. “But now’s not the time to get emotional, Jana,” she’d said. “He owes you three wishes. Okay, so he rescued your pig, but you saved him. It’s the same as letting a genie out of the bottle. Three wishes, Jana. Don’t forget…”

  Don’t forget… Jana smiled and hugged the blanket closer.

  “…SQUEE.”

  Jana opened her eyes. Her chin was resting on her chest. She was curled up in a blanket on the glider. Why was she outside? And why was Minnie whispering? Heart pounding she stared confused into the darkness.

  “Squee?”

  It wasn’t Minnie. It was a voice—a boy’s voice.

  Peter! In an instant, she was fully awake. He waved to her from behind an oak tree as he glanced around nervously. His suit glowed softly around him, but she could see him clearly, from his braids to his boots. When he met her eyes, his expression lightened. “Squee,” he said, as if it were the only thing he was able to pronounce.

  Her heart swelled up. Peter battled with words, too.

  He took a few steps backward and motioned for her to follow. On his left wrist was a thick, black cuff. She’d noticed the bracelet the night before but not the lights blinking on it. When he pressed something on the cuff, leaves scattered in a whirlwind. The breeze whipped Jana’s hair around her head. The wind whistled, louder and louder, as it had last night in the garden, then Peter’s feet lifted off the ground.

  Jana’s heart pounded with awe and delight. He could fly!

  He didn’t go very high, and after a few seconds, he came back down, but it was magic, real magic.

  Jana clapped her hands. Peter grinned. In another whoosh of wind, he rose up again, bouncing on his rubbery boots when he landed.

  She ran to him, but he lifted off before she could reach him. Stretching out her arms, she tried to catch him, but he floated away. Laughing, she came up on her toes like her mother had taught her, pirouetting through the shimmering grasses as the wind shook the trees.

  My turn, my turn. She ran to him when he landed, her arms wide open. With a questioning look, he pointed skyward. Jana nodded like crazy. Yes, yes. I want to fly.

  He grabbed her around the waist and tried to take off with her. He managed to get into the air for a couple of seconds, but her feet dragged and never left the ground. The commotion woke a family of quail. Jana laughed at the sight of the birds fluttering into the air in the light of the full moon. Let’s chase them. Peter lifted her again and they crashed, laughing as they hit the ground.

  But that didn’t stop them. They tried again, and again, each time too heavy to fly. Only after they were completely exhausted, did they stop to rest.

  Jana gasped to catch her breath, holding her palm to a stitch in her side as she followed Peter to the end of a dock jutting out on a small pond on the property. They fell to their stomachs, chins held in their hands, to watch the moon reflected on the water. Peter stuck out his arm, palm up, to blow a gentle wind from his wrist cuff, just enough to shatter the moonlight into a million little pieces.

  Jana clapped. Peter’s face glowed in the light from his bubble-skin. A funny, soft, happy feeling she’d never experienced before filled her. For once she didn’t feel the pressure to speak, to struggle to explain what she felt. This was the best night of my life.

  Then Evie’s voice echoed in her mind: “Don’t forget.” Jana showed Peter three fingers. Three wishes.

  He shook his head in confusion.

  She dipped her finger in the water and drew a wet number three on the dock. Peter stared at the number as if he didn’t know how to read. He studied the fingers she showed him, then also using pond water, drew a symbol. She shook her head. Was it another language?

  “Jana!” a man’s voice bellowed.

  Grandpa.

  Peter shot to his feet. His panicked eyes begged her to understand something but she di
dn’t know what. He had to go; that much was obvious. Why was he so frightened of being seen by Grandpa? It made her wish for words—not from her for once, but from him.

  Reluctantly, she left Peter by the pond. A moment later, a gust of wind told her he’d escaped.

  “Jana! Where are you?”

  The harsh beam of a flashlight arced back and forth. Anxiety made wiggles in her stomach as Jana ran to meet her grandfather. “You scared me, girl. Scared me good. What are you doing out here this time of night? You’re covered in leaves and burs.” He reached out, snatched her by the wrist and pulled her back to the house.

  At the back patio door, Grandpa crouched down. He grunted, knees creaking. “Why did you leave the house? Talk to me, Jana. Find the words.”

  Peter—he came and we played. He’s magic. Oh, Grandpa, when I’m with him, it feels like I can do anything.

  Anything but talk, she realized, the words knotting up in her throat. Without his glasses, Grandpa had trouble reading her lips in the dark, but she kept trying. The more she wanted to explain, the less she was able to do it until she finally gave up. Tears of frustration pressed behind her eyes.

  A leaf dangled from her bangs as she bowed her head. Despite his angry expression, Grandpa removed it tenderly. “Jana, your imagination is a wonderful thing, but sometimes you have to stop to consider the consequences of your actions. I didn’t know you were out playing. I thought you were missing. And that maybe someone had hurt you.”

  Jana tasted a bitter rush of guilt. She wasn’t used to being the one who misbehaved, and she wasn’t sure she liked it, either.

  Grandpa took her hand and brought her back to her bedroom. He turned on the light and picked up one of the colored-pencil drawings on her desk. “Who’s this? Is he a friend of yours?”

  Yes! She nodded with enthusiasm.

  His expression hardened. He thrust a pad and pencil at her. “Tell me who this boy is, who his parents are, and how you know him.”