Hannibal: Stargazer Alien Mystery Brides #1 (Intergalactic Dating Agency)
Hannibal
Stargazer Alien Mystery Brides #1
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2020 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.
13th Story Press
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Swarthmore, PA 19081
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Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
About Hannibal
Hannibal
1. Violet
2. Hannibal
3. Violet
4. Hannibal
5. Violet
6. Hannibal
7. Hannibal
8. Violet
9. Hannibal
10. Violet
11. Violet
12. Hannibal
13. Violet
14. Hannibal
15. Violet
16. Violet
17. Hannibal
18. Violet
19. Hannibal
20. Violet
21. Violet
22. Hannibal
23. Violet
24. Violet
Fletcher - SAMPLE
1. Jana
2. Fletcher
Intergalactic Dating Agency
Tasha Black Starter Library
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!
Get your FREE books now at tashablack.com!
About Hannibal
Together they can solve any case. But when it comes to unlocking her heart, he doesn’t have a clue…
Violet Locke has always been great with puzzles. Her intellect and eye for detail let her solve just about any problem. But when it comes to people, she often finds herself without a clue. When a hunky alien moves in downstairs and immediately falls for her, will she learn finally to listen to her heart instead of her head?
Hannibal and his brothers are doing their best to assimilate to their new lives on Earth. Desperate to find mates among human women, they know their adventure will be cut short if they fail. Earth customs can be super confusing, but one thing Hannibal knows for sure is that curvy, brilliant Violet Locke is destined to be his mate. All he wants is to use his superhuman strength and powers to sweep her off her feet.
When Vi’s latest project turns into a race against time to find a neighbor’s missing dog, the two will have to work together to track it down. Though they might be close to finding the kidnapped pooch, Hannibal is afraid Vi will fail to discover that what has truly been missing from her life is love.
Author's Note: This steamy, small-town mystery is an alien romance homage to the great Sherlock Holmes!
If you like strong women, hunky aliens, wild adventures, steamy sensual scenes, and happily-ever-afters, then you’ll love the world of Stargazer! The Stargazer Mystery Brides are an alien romance homage to the stories of Sherlock Holmes.
Stargazer Alien Mystery Brides:
- Hannibal
- Fletcher
- Spenser
Hannibal
1
Violet
Violet Locke heard a creak on the stairs.
She looked around quickly, wondering how much evidence she could hide before the maker of the creak arrived.
Spread out on newspaper on the antique handwoven carpet were several beakers of compound, a pair of medical grade scissors, and assorted claws from various animals.
Late morning sun had the scissors gleaming like diamonds. Vi was pretty sure she had started this experiment in the evening. She wondered how long she’d been at it.
But it was too late to figure it out, and too late to clean it up. Someone was already knocking on the door.
“Vi, it’s me, I’m coming in,” a cheerful voice said.
“Most people knock and then wait for someone to actually invite them in,” Vi groused as the door swung open to reveal her landlord.
“Most people answer the door instead of ignoring it,” Tony replied tartly, giving her a wink.
He was wearing his favorite smoking jacket, the purple velvet one. He was also wearing shoes. Normally, he padded up in his slippers to say hello.
“Special occasion?” Vi asked.
“You might say,” Tony replied. “How did you know?”
He smiled at her in open anticipation like a child about to watch a magician make a balloon animal. Which was impressive, since Tony had to be in his seventies.
“Just a hunch,” Vi said, not wanting to perform like a pony today.
“Oh, come on,” Tony said, rubbing his hands together so that his rings clicked. “I love when you do it.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re wearing your lucky jacket and you have proper shoes on your feet, so I know you’re having company. You smell like aftershave but the spicy one not the floral, so I know it’s a stranger.”
“Incredible,” Tony breathed.
“You shaved, which you do every day, impeccably,” Vi went on. “But you missed a spot which you never do, so I know you’re anxious.”
“I missed a spot?” Tony patted his face in horror.
“I would say tax auditor or business opportunity, but I know you don’t have any money,” Vi noted. “So the tax man won’t bother with you. Which means… you’re meeting with a potential tenant for the second-floor apartment this morning.”
Tony clapped his hands and grinned at her in delight, which made his wrinkles temporarily disappear. For a moment he looked almost like a young version of Al Pacino, then he relaxed his face and looked more like the regular Al Pacino again.
“I am, and this time it’s a good one, Vi,” Tony said, an edgy look appearing on his face.
“You’re going to ask me for a favor,” she said warily.
“You know I love you girls,” Tony began, and she knew it was bad. “But you can be… a little noisy and unorthodox as neighbors.”
Vi nodded and tried not to wince when she spotted the exact moment that Tony noticed the array of animal claws and chemicals on the hand-knotted carpet.
“Anyway,” he said, “Micah and I are hoping you and Jana can just kind of… cool it for the next hour, while we show the guy around.”
“Cool it?” Vi asked.
Vi was incredibly gifted at picking up anything factual. But subtle social stuff wasn’t exactly her forte. And “cool it” was exactly the kind of phrase that caused trouble for her.
“No tuba playing, no Nordic vocal exercises, no weird chemical explosions or smells,” Tony said carefully.
“We’ve been very quiet this morning so far,” Vi guessed out loud. She definitely hadn’t blown anything up.
At just that moment Jana’s voice emerged from the bathroom. She was belting out the chorus to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
“She’s got a callback for the Cyndi Lauper Story,” Vi explained. “They’re going to workshop it at the Public.”
“Please, Vi,” Tony begged. “We need the money. Sweet Micah misses his cappuccinos.”
Tony and Micah were the most romantic couple Vi knew. This was classic Tony, wanting small luxuries for Micah more than he wanted anything for himself.
He was a good m
an. And a great landlord.
“Fine,” Vi said. “Fine, fine. I’ll tell her. We’ll stay quiet.”
“Thank you,” Tony said with his usual warm smile. “Now, do I want to know what’s going on here?”
He gestured at the claws and scissors.
“Nope,” Vi said, hopping up. “See you later.”
Tony headed back downstairs as she had hoped he would.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Vi muttered to the claws.
She strode through the dining room, which was as full of scattered sheet music as the living room was full of science experiments, and past the tiny kitchen.
On each side of the kitchen was a door leading to a bedroom and bath. The set-up was perfect for the two women.
“Jana,” she yelled, banging on the door.
Jana responded with a startled shriek.
“It’s just me,” Vi said reasonably.
“I thought someone was breaking the door down,” Jana said, peaking her head out. “Take it easy, slugger.”
“Sorry,” Vi said, even though the intensity of her knock had been directly proportional to the amount of noise Jana had been making on the other side of the door. “Tony just came up. He said he and Micah are showing a potential tenant around, so we have to pretend to be normal for an hour.”
“Good luck with that,” Jana replied. But her voice was decidedly playful, so Vi didn’t worry. “I guess I can stop singing for that long.”
“Cool,” Vi said. “See you.”
She headed back to her experiment, which she had decided was very quiet and therefore would surely not violate Tony’s request.
Besides, this might be the one that finally paid off, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about being a tenant anymore.
Violet’s grandmother had been, to put it as plainly as possible, stinking rich. And she had left Vi a fortune, but it was locked up in a trust fund, which trickled out living expenses but could not be fully unlocked until Vi opened up and ran a successful small business for one year.
Granny Locke was very fond of small business enterprises. After all, it was her own entrepreneurship that had built the Locke family fortune. And she was even more fond of her hometown of Stargazer, Pennsylvania.
The small town had rebranded itself in the eighties after sending a sort of time-capsule into space with a friendly message inviting any alien tourists in the area to drop by. All of the businesses had adopted space themes, and even the streets had been renamed. After a few decades, the residents had shown no signs of getting tired of it.
And then the big event finally happened.
Vi wondered what her grandmother would think about the fact that after so many years, the aliens had finally answered the call and landed in Stargazer.
She thought that, like herself, Vi’s granny would have been interested, but she wouldn’t have swooned all over the hunky aliens that now seemed to be on the cover of every magazine and the source of most of the click-bait on the internet. Vi and her grandmother had always shared a certain pragmatic outlook on life.
But unlike her granny, Vi hated the idea of opening a small business. She just wanted to be alone with her experiments. The idea of interacting with the public, day in and day out, was terrifying.
But Granny had set up that trust ten years ago, and the cost of living kept on rising. If Vi wanted to have enough money to live on, and buy supplies for her scientific work, she had to unlock that trust.
Which brought her to her experiment today.
Vi had done the research. Both Baby Boomers and Millennials were more likely to own pets than generations before, after and between. Together, these two generations represented just over forty-four percent of the total US population.
The Boomers no longer had kids in the house, and the Millennials were having fewer children. This meant that the pets belonging to these groups were enjoying a luxurious lifestyle.
Vi planned to cash in on that to build her successful small business. And if she could keep the doors open for at least a year, the Locke fortune would be hers and she could close the business, buy herself some nice lab equipment, and happily shut herself away with her experiments for the rest of her life.
Just the thought of it made her feel pleased. She hummed a little as she applied the first experimental compound to a claw using a tiny paint brush, then reached for her trusty notebook to record the results.
2
Hannibal
Hannibal strode down the street, taking in the sights of the small town.
Stargazer, Pennsylvania looked a lot like the villages in the movies he had watched to learn about Earth culture. Cars traveled in the center of the street, happy people walked under the canopy of small trees, whose scarlet and golden leaves drifted into colorful piles on the sidewalk.
He gazed into the shop windows. Many of them were exactly what he expected, selling human food and clothing.
But some sold technology that looked unfamiliar to him. Most of his knowledge of the planet had come from the media the people of Earth had sent into space as part of their welcome message. Now that he was finally among them, he was quickly learning how much of their world had changed from the nineteen-eighties version he’d been expecting.
It was all so marvelous.
He was so busy looking in the window of a store that seemed to sell tiny telephones, that he nearly bumped into a group of women.
“Excuse me, ladies,” he said politely.
They all sighed at once, like a herd of zysoons, and smiled at him.
He nodded and jogged ahead, hoping he hadn’t blown his cover. Dr. Bhimani had told him it was best to keep his true nature a secret, at least at first.
Hannibal turned onto Crescent Street and scanned the numbers on the houses as they slowly increased, until at last he arrived at the black door marked 221B.
He took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and pressed the button.
A pleasant-sounding chime rang inside, followed by light footsteps, and then the door opened.
Inside stood a small man wearing a purple jacket. At first his face was covered in the grooves that told Hannibal he was an older person. Then he smiled and suddenly looked very young.
“Hello, there,” the man said enthusiastically. “I’m Tony. Please come in.”
“I am Hannibal,” Hannibal responded politely. “Thank you.”
He followed the small man back through a wood paneled hallway and into an apartment whose walls were covered in movie posters that seemed to predate Hannibal’s limited timeframe of expertise.
Another older man, as large as Tony was small, sat on the sofa, holding a fluffy white dog who let out a low growl at the sight of Hannibal. The man wore a long kimono and the dog wore a matching, jewel-encrusted collar.
“Hannibal, this is my husband, Micah,” Tony said, indicating the man on the sofa.
“Hannibal,” Micah repeated in a rich voice, stretching out the name rapturously. “That’s a name you don’t hear often enough. Charmed.”
He lifted his hand, palm down, to Hannibal.
Hannibal accepted it and shook briskly, just like he’d practiced.
Micah laughed.
“You have a firm grip,” Micah said approvingly as the little dog began to bark furiously. “And this is Maybelle. She’s just saying hello.”
“Hello, Maybelle,” Hannibal said to the dog.
Maybelle stopped barking and studied him for a moment, then opened her mouth and panted, her small pink tongue hanging out in a very silly smile.
Hannibal smiled back.
“Well, that settles it,” Micah said decidedly.
“No, no, Micah,” Tony scolded. “Let’s all get to know each other first. Please sit down, Hannibal. Let me fetch us some tea.”
Hannibal sat very carefully in the chair Tony had pointed him to. It looked almost skeletal, with its slender wooden frame.
“Don’t be shy,” Micah chuckled. “If it will hold me, it will hold y
ou.”
But Hannibal wasn’t so certain. His muscular frame had been designed to be appealing to the people of Earth, but he had already learned that sometimes it meant he was quite a bit larger and stronger than people expected.
He lowered himself down very slowly, hoping to avoid ruining his first impression with this lovely couple.
Sure enough, the chair held him. He smiled in relief.
“You’re a big guy, huh?” Micah asked.
“I was designed that way,” Hannibal explained as Tony returned with a tea tray holding three mugs of tea and a plate of delicious looking muffins.
He knew it was okay to talk openly about his true nature with these men. Dr. Bhimani had called ahead to explain the situation.
“Is it true that you used to be a ball of gas?” Tony asked, then held a hand to his mouth. “Oh dear, is that rude to ask?”
“Not at all,” Hannibal reassured him. “On Aerie, everyone is a gaseous mass. But when we discovered the message from your planet, our scientists designed and grew human bodies for us in the lab. Then we migrated into them and learned to use them.”
“Incredible,” Tony said, shaking his head.
“They made us like this in order to maximize our appeal to humans,” Hannibal said, looking down at his big body.
“Well, bravo, honey, they nailed it,” Micah told him with a sly wink.