Indiana: Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides #6 (Intergalactic Dating Agency)
Indiana
Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides #6 (Intergalactic Dating Agency)
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2017 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
Indiana
Indiana
1. Nikki
2. Nikki
3. Indiana
4. Nikki
5. Indiana
6. Nikki
7. Indiana
8. Nikki
9. Indiana
10. Indiana
11. Nikki
12. Indiana
13. Nikki
14. Wade
15. Indiana
16. Nikki
17. Honey
18. Wade
19. Indiana
20. Nikki
21. Wade
22. Nikki
23. Indiana
24. Nikki
25. Nikki
26. Wade
27. Nikki
28. Indiana
29. Nikki
30. Nikki
Lobo (Sample)
1. Veronica
Tasha Black Starter Library
Intergalactic Dating Agency
About the Author
One Percent Club
Tasha Black Starter Library
Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!
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Indiana
She needs to get this gorgeous alien undercover.
And all he wants is to get her under the covers.
Nikki Fortune has a secret. Her friends think she’s at Maxwell’s Family Resort to teach drama and take endless tennis lessons. But her real purpose forces her to dig deeper into the network that runs the resort than she ever imagined. If only the distractingly handsome alien, Indiana, weren’t there she might be able to keep her eye on the ball.
Indiana has a lot on his mind, not the least of which is figuring out Nikki Fortune. Why does she disappear every Sunday morning? What’s on that laptop she always carries? Why would someone who obviously hates tennis keep taking lessons? And why, gods, why, is she so blindingly stunningly, achingly sexy?
When Indy stumbles onto some answers the two realize they must work together if they want to uncover the truth. But the only way to do that is to trust each other.
And someone still has a secret.
Indiana
Nikki
Nikki Fortune felt out of place, even among her best friends.
Right now the six of them - three women and three men - were sitting cross-legged on a king-sized bed in one of the nicest rooms at Maxwell’s family resort.
Addy and Remington were pretty much canoodling. Kitt and Honey looked like they wanted to be.
And Nikki and Indiana sat next to each other, a tense, six-inch buffer of air sizzling between them.
Indiana was tall, dark and as handsome as they came, with a mischievous personality and a laid-back energy that made him completely irresistible. The hunky alien leaned back on his elbow, looking sexy as hell.
And Nikki sat beside him - stiff as a paper doll.
She pulled one of her corkscrew curls straight and then let it go, a habitual gesture she really should have shaken when she was in her teens.
It was Sunday morning. Now more than ever, she was forced to remember that she wasn’t part of this group - not really.
Nikki was an imposter.
And sooner or later the shit would hit the fan.
Which meant that although she might find herself liking these people, really liking them - she knew better than to be fooled into thinking they would care about her when they found out what she really was.
“I can’t believe what Mr. Abrams just said to you,” Honey said to Addy.
“I can’t believe we’re getting breakfast in bed,” Addy replied, licking her lips.
“Breakfast in bed is a small price to pay for what you did to help Mr. Abrams save his resort,” Kitt pointed out sagely.
“You’ve never had breakfast in bed before, have you?” Addy demanded.
Honey laughed, and then Kitt laughed too. Remington’s booming laughter echoed off the windows.
“Are you okay?” Indiana asked softly.
Nikki looked up. He was talking to her. Of course he was. And as usual, the sound of his voice and the sight of his lazy smile were sending her hormones into overdrive.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just… I’ve got to go.”
She hopped off the bed as if it were on fire, and dashed to the door.
“I’ll see you guys later,” she said over her shoulder.
“Oh,” Honey said sympathetically.
“See you later, babe,” Addy said with a wink.
Nikki slipped out the door before anyone else could say good-bye.
All of them thought they knew exactly where she was going.
All of them were wrong.
Nikki knew that they thought she snuck off every Sunday morning to attend church.
And although Nikki had never said or done a single thing to lead them to believe this, she also had not disabused them of their mistaken notion, which was as good as lying in her eyes, and would surely be in theirs as well, one day.
Honey and Addy were so good-natured. She knew they made allowances for the times when she was stiff or weird by chalking it up to her being deeply religious.
They were good friends. They deserved better than her.
But how could she resist?
The whole situation was mouthwateringly perfect. She could no more have turned away than if she were starving and someone handed her a milk shake.
Nikki
The lobby of Maxwell’s was pretty, in a nineties sort of way. Nikki smiled when she caught herself admiring the curlicue wallpaper on her way out the back door to the employee parking lot.
Nikki had been out of New York for so long, living in that screened porch of a cabin with Honey and Addy, that she had forgotten what a nice lobby looked like. She tried to picture the mahogany walls and hand knotted carpets of the Algonquin.
But all she could see was Nala Payne, her mentor, sliding her spectacles up her nose, leaning heedlessly across her untouched plate of food in the dim light of the Round Table, encouraging her to go undercover for this piece.
She replayed the conversation in her mind as she got in the car and headed out of the gravel lot and over the one-lane bridge toward town.
“But Nala, what if I can’t get anything out of him?”
“Travers is so full of himself, I question whether you can shut him up once you’ve got him feeling safe on his own territory.”
“I’d have to leave the city for so long, and drop everything else I’m working on.”
“Nicola Fortune, listen to me. Print journalism is dying. No one is going to hire you just to show up. So you have a choice to make if you want to write for a living: either take a shit job reporting click-bait crap with spooning celebrities, or sacrifice some time and effort to freelance an important, career-making piece like this one. Besides, T
ravers is a dirty insider trader, and if you don’t flush him out, he might never get what’s coming to him.”
Nala had been right, of course, she always was. As one of the first female African American journalists to win big accolades in the heyday of her youth, Nala had gone on wild and sometimes dangerous adventures to get her stories. A summer working in the Catskills would have been a vacation.
Nikki drove on. The road wound around the lake.
When she got to the other side of the lake she would be in the little town of Purple Mountain.
The island in the center of the lake blocked the view of Maxwell’s from town, and vice versa. This was handy, because it meant that Nikki could be close to the resort, yet as far as anyone living there was concerned, she might as well be in another galaxy.
Another galaxy…
She had come here to do an exposé on Sam Travers.
And she had walked right into the story of a lifetime.
When she was leaving for Maxwell’s her fellow journalism grads were heading to Stargazer in droves, desperate for any scrap of info about the boys from space.
And they had landed right in Nikki’s lap. Although in a less literal sense than she might have secretly liked.
She pulled into a parking spot between the Lutheran church and a small café, soaking in the breeze from the car’s weak air conditioning as she twisted her hair in a tight bun and slid on a pair of sunglasses. Nikki’s dark curls were her most prominent feature, so she hoped if she made them disappear and covered her blue eyes, she might not be recognized, even if someone from the resort did show up in town.
By the time she reached the seating area on the lawn of the café overlooking the lake and the other side of the island, the waiter was coming out to greet her.
“Hey,” he said with a big grin. “Right on schedule.”
She laughed.
“Want to sit inside today?”
He looked hopeful and she felt bad for him that he had to come out in the heat to wait on her.
But she couldn’t do what she needed to with an audience. So they would both have to suffer.
“Oh, it’s too pretty out here to sit inside,” she said with a smile.
He smiled back, smitten and uncomplaining.
It would have been cute, except that Nikki would have preferred he not remember her very well, or pay her too much attention.
“I’ll bring your lunch,” he said.
She nodded and headed to her table.
The lake was sparkling in the morning light. And though it was humid, it wasn’t steamy yet.
She slid out her laptop and the phone she didn’t use over at Maxwell’s.
Nala picked up on the second ring.
“Nikki,” she sang out in her rich contralto. “How are you?”
They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes. Nikki got to hear about the new craze in the city - a gluten-free croissant doughnut hybrid that could only be found at one Soho bakery with a line around the block.
Then they talked shop.
Nikki was still trailing Travers. She needed to keep her routine the same anyway, and there was no reason not to have two good pieces up her sleeve.
But they mostly talked about the aliens, what she should be asking them about, what people might like to know about who they were, what they were like with each other and with the others at the resort.
And at last the conversation rolled around to the thing Nikki both hated and perversely loved to talk about.
“So…” Nala trailed off.
“So what?”
“So what about Indiana? Did he find a woman to click with yet?”
“Nope,” Nikki said. “But Remington and Addy clicked.”
“Indy really likes you, huh?” Nala chuckled, not taking the bait about the other couple.
“I guess he does,” Nikki admitted.
“And he looks as good as the other ones, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, they’re all really… healthy,” Nikki said, wondering if that might be the understatement of the year.
Nala hummed thoughtfully. “I’ll bet they are.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen,” Nikki said quickly.
“I know you’re not,” her mentor said, suddenly serious. “Because if you did, all your hard work and good luck would turn into a joke.”
“I know,” Nikki said. “I can’t get involved with my subject - that’s Journalism 101.”
“Arguably, you already are involved with him,” Nala said. “But yes, if you play your cards right you could wind up with a Pulitzer for this. On the other hand, if you get in bed with that boy, it’s a salacious tabloid piece at best, and the end of any serious career.”
Nikki bit her lip.
She was a lucky woman. She’d managed to secure scholarships and graduate with minimal student loans. She had lucked out with Nala as a mentor. She had stumbled into the alien story while chasing the Travers piece.
Landing a man like Indiana would have been the icing on the cake.
But she was going to have to suck it up and do without.
Her access to these men - who weren’t really men - was a gift that should be shared with the whole world. If she could peel back the layers of what made them tick, her work might help promote peace between the two planets. The truth was more important than her own happiness. And she could not write an impartial story if she gave in and fell in love with him.
“You can do it, kid,” Nala said, the smile in her voice encouraging Nikki more than any words.
“Thanks,” Nikki replied softly.
“Go write something,” Nala advised. “Write it out.”
“Okay,” Nikki said. “I’ll call again next week.”
“Bye, love.”
By the time she hung up, the waiter was headed her way with a pitcher of fresh orange juice.
She slid her laptop out so as to have an excuse not to chat with him.
Keeping nice guys at bay was starting to become her MO.
Indiana
Indiana ran a hand through his hair and straightened his collar.
He looked fantastic. The suit he wore to wait tables made him feel like an international spy. He gave himself a sly wink in the mirror and headed out of his cabin and across the lawn.
Breakfast in bed would have been excellent if Nikki hadn’t suddenly departed before the meal arrived.
The others had given her sympathetic smiles. Honey had once pulled Indiana aside to explain that Nikki was pious and she went to church on Sunday mornings.
Indiana had been very curious about Nikki’s religion, and this curiosity caused him to research the local churches to see if he could learn more about her philosophy.
There were several churches in the little town, and Indiana had at first been scandalized that such a small place could have such varied belief systems.
But a bit of research showed him that each institution’s mythology and views on proper human conduct were so similar that it made them nearly indistinguishable from one another.
And it also showed him that Nikki wasn’t attending any of them.
Indiana had what humans liked to call a photographic memory. It was easy for him to recall just about anything he’d ever seen, in perfect detail. He had perused the signs and brochures at each of the local churches, and the times for the services lined themselves up in his head like a train schedule.
None of them coincided with the times when Nikki left or returned each Sunday.
So his sweet Nikki was somewhere today, but it was not church.
One of the lifeguards was headed up the lawn in the opposite direction - Clark or Clem, he wasn’t sure which. And he’d never seen it written down.
“Hey, C,” he called to him, to be safe.
They all loved Indiana. He was a people-person, according to Dr. Bhimani back at Stargazer.
But Clark/Clem waved awkwardly at him today and marched past without making eye contact.
That w
as odd.
Indy shrugged it off and sucked in a delicious breath of cool air.
Everything here was refreshing compared to life in the lab. His human body seemed designed to be outside, communing with the rest of the planet’s biology.
Indiana approached the big stone house that was the main lodge at Maxwell’s. A couple of the waiters stood outside on break, looking at the screen of a phone that one of them held.
“Gentlemen,” he said with a wry grin.
“Oh, uh, hey,” said Sam awkwardly, putting his phone away without making eye contact.
That was odd, since Sam was normally one of Indy’s favorite guys to hang out with.
The others waved stiffly.
A shiver of doubt trailed down Indiana’s spine.
Had he done something wrong?
He marched past them into the kitchen.
It was the same wild cacophony as ever. The banging of utensils and the roar of the dishwasher were a welcome blast of normalcy.
Indiana strode over to the chalkboard where the day’s specials were written. He made a show of standing in front of it for a few minutes each morning, like the other waiters. Though he knew it inside and out from the first glance, he felt it was better not to draw any attention to his gift.
“Good morning, boy-o,” the mellow sound of Malik’s British accent told Indy that his boss was right behind him.