by Tasha Black
Part of A Slender Start’s impressive success ratio was that the place was run like a military camp. On arrival, they had taken Margot’s phone and credit cards. She’d had to write an email to all her family and friends letting them know she was off the grid for a month and that they should not respond to her if she got in touch before the month was up - no matter what she said.
It wasn’t a military camp. It was a cult.
And she wasn’t sticking around to drink the Kool-Aid.
2
Kent
Kent tapped amiably on the top of the car and waved good-bye to his driver, Al.
Al grinned and waved back, looking a bit out of place in just his undershirt, with his hairy arms hanging out.
Kent was currently wearing Al’s other shirt. He had borrowed it to disguise himself after he snuck out of the theater to visit his friend at the gas station.
The shirt was bright red with large white blossoms. Al had described it as a Hawaiian shirt. Kent recognized the style from the indomitable Magnum PI.
It was very lucky that the shirt fit both men. Al was short and round and Kent was tall and very muscular. This wasn’t the first time they had done this, but each time Al removed an item of clothing he shook his head in wonder when Kent pulled it on.
“Thank you, Al,” Kent called to him.
But Al was already looking at his mobile phone. Al had a girlfriend he liked to communicate with by typing words and symbols into the phone’s screen.
Kent wasn’t sure why they spoke that way when Al could easily turn the phone into a camera and see his girlfriend. But Al just laughed and said not on company time when Kent suggested it.
Humans had strange ideas about propriety.
But Kent was patient. In time, he hoped, he would understand them better.
“Hello, darling,” the owner called to him from the doorway of the little gas station.
“Good morning, Geraldine,” he said politely. “How is Juniper?”
“She’s laying in her spot,” Geraldine said, shrugging. “She’ll be glad to see you, I think.”
Kent jogged across the gravelly lot to follow Geraldine inside.
Kent was much larger than the average human - his body had been lab-designed to be big, strong and attractive. He had to duck slightly as he followed the small, older woman under the little bell that hung from the door to her store.
Kent gazed with satisfaction over the rows of cellophane-packaged snacks and the shining refrigerators full of cold drinks.
Juniper the cat sat on top of a box of car air fresheners near the large front window overlooking the gas pumps. The sun shone through the window at just the right angle to dapple her striped fur as she lounged.
“Hello, Juniper,” Kent said softly.
Juniper flicked her tail as if in annoyance and he instantly felt the soothing green sensation of truthfulness the cat always brought. Even if she wasn’t glad to see him, he was delighted to know her mind.
All of the aliens from Aerie possessed some form of gift that made them a little more than human. No one was sure why - the scientists thought it had something to do with the process of migrating their once gaseous forms into human bodies.
Kent’s gift allowed him to get a sense of the truthfulness of any given statement.
It had caused him some trouble when he first began to communicate with the citizens of Earth and learned a surprising fact:
Humans were confusingly deceitful in even the most innocuous situations.
That’s why he respected the cat - she was always truthful.
How was he supposed to learn a new culture if everyone was always lying a little?
His brothers didn’t share his dubious gift. They had gifts of their own, but at least they were able to traverse this new planet taking their host’s words at face value.
“Can I help you with anything today, Geraldine?” he asked, turning back to the proprietor.
“Oh, no, child,” Geraldine said. “I’m just fine.”
But a red mist hung around her words as they left her mouth.
Lying.
Kent understood this falsehood, though. It was a simple lie of politeness because she didn’t want to trouble him. Back on his home planet of Aerie, manners were very important, so he understood her reasoning, even if he didn’t approve.
“I was bored today, so I came to see you,” he told her carefully. “Are you sure you don’t have anything at all that I can do?”
She looked up at him, smiling sunnily.
Kent loved Geraldine’s beautiful face. Many lines and creases adorned her visage. Larger ones pointed from her nose to her wide grin, and dozens of smaller ones radiated out from her smiling eyes like sunlight through the trees.
When it was explained to Kent that the lines were from age, he was even more impressed. Each furrow demonstrated the tenacity of this tiny woman. She had survived many changes of the green and blue planet with both her merry smile and her store intact.
Geraldine’s age had also given her wisdom, which she lavished on Kent with abandon.
“Never tell an older person you are bored and want to help,” she advised him now. “You’re liable to find yourself snowed under.”
“I will remember, Geraldine,” he assured her, though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure what she meant by snowed under. He could puzzle out the words when he got back to his brothers.
She laughed and pointed him to a stack of crates in the corner.
“Soda man came today, and it will take me all afternoon to move those back to cold storage,” she said. “I don’t suppose you wanted a little exercise?”
“It will be my pleasure,” he told her, striding through the rows of snacks to reach the crates of soda.
He eyed them up. Each crate held eight 2-liter bottles. There were four crates.
“One at a time, sugar,” Geraldine called back to him. “Those are real heavy.”
Without her admonition Kent might have forgotten and tried to carry two or three crates at once. He was exceptionally strong. But he did not wish to alarm his friend by demonstrating it.
He grabbed the first one from the stack and heard her opening the door to the back of the store.
It was good he had come today. Geraldine would have had to carry one soda at a time. It really would have taken her all afternoon to accomplish this task.
“Remember, always lift with your knees,” she told him. “Not with your back.”
He nodded at her advice and tried to picture how to lift a crate with his knees. How would he walk with it?
But it was too late now, he had already lifted this crate with his hands. It would have to do.
He followed her into the cold storage room and listened to her describe how her husband, Ray, used to throw out his back lifting up soda crates and other heavy objects the wrong way.
When they were finished moving everything, he hoped she would give him cold sweet tea and a snack cake, and then tell him stories about her adventures traveling on a cruise ship every other Christmas with Ray, before his death a few years ago.
And if Kent was lucky, Juniper would deign to descend from her box and leap effortlessly onto the counter or his shoulder to share his snack while they listened, making her delightful purring sound, which gave off a green glow of genuine happiness.
It was going to be a good day.
3
Margot
Margot staked out her quarry, hands trembling slightly from the incoming rush of adrenaline.
The old bicycle leaned haphazardly against a trashcan.
Maybe it had been abandoned there on purpose. Or maybe someone had just left it for a minute and would be sad to find it gone when they returned.
Either way, after hiking through the woods all day and finally finding her way to the road, Margot was eager for a better mode of transportation back to town. The village was clearly farther away from A Slender Start than she had thought.
She made a mental
note of the house number on the mailbox so she could return the bike later, or at least mail them a check when she got back to her real life.
Then she took a deep breath, darted out of the trees, grabbed the bike, hopped on and pedaled frantically back to the street.
She held her breath for a moment in anticipation, but no one yelled out for her to stop. She took off down the hillside with the thrill of having pulled off a minor heist.
The simple joy of riding a bike on a pretty day was surprisingly exhilarating. Margot tilted her head back and enjoyed the feeling of the breeze lifting her hair and fluttering her grass skirt as she flew past the trees and cottages.
A few minutes later she hit a small dip in the road and landed hard with a jolt, nearly crashing back into the woods.
Margot dismounted right away and examined the bike.
The front tire was low, almost flat. It probably had a slow leak that had been sped up by the unexpected bump.
She looked back in the direction of the house where she had obtained the bike, but it was already well up the hill and out of sight.
She weighed her options for a moment, then opted to walk the bike down toward the village and hope to find a service station where she could fill and patch the tire when she arrived. It really couldn’t be that much further. And it would be good to have the bike to take her wherever she was going after that.
Although she knew she should be frustrated, it was impossible not to enjoy the gorgeous day. The sun was shining, birds were singing overhead, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wonderful was about to happen.
She passed a sprawling family farm with a welcoming, hand-painted sign:
Welcome to Martin’s Bounty
Pick-Your-Own-Peaches Season is Here!
The smell of the ripe fruit was absolutely intoxicating.
When she came around the next curve, her good mood got even better.
A small service station with a gravel lot awaited her under the shade of two beech trees. In the far corner was a pump with a placard that said Free Air.
She walked the bike across the lot toward the store. All she needed was something to patch her tire with and everything would be perfect. Hopefully someone was on duty today.
As if she had caused it with her thoughts, the door to the service station opened.
Margot froze in place, her mouth hanging open slightly.
A man was coming out of the store.
But not just any man - one that was so gorgeous it defied logic.
Tall, dark and handsome didn’t begin to describe him. He was enormous, his muscles practically exploding out of his Hawaiian shirt. His dark hair hung long in front of his forehead, drawing her attention to his soulful brown eyes.
Whoa…
Margot gripped the handlebars of the bike so hard her fists went a little numb.
“Hello,” the man called to her in a friendly way, his deep voice sending a little tingle down her spine.
“Hi,” she squeaked back.
“Are you having trouble with your bicycle?” he asked, striding up to her confidently.
“Yes, I have a flat tire,” she said, trying not to ogle him too obviously.
“That’s too bad,” he told her.
At first she wasn’t sure what he had said that surprised her. Then she realized it wasn’t what he’d said, but how he said it. There was something so sincere in his words. He was genuinely disappointed at her misfortune.
And he was closely examining the bicycle now, definitely not trying to look at her boobs.
While TV audiences might complain about her un-willow-y body, Margot’s experience in real life was that men responded to her curves like kids in a candy shop.
But this angelic man simply ran his hands down the side of her bicycle in a gentle way that made her want to knock the bike over and hop into his arms herself.
“Your tire has lost its air,” he noted calmly. “We’ll need to patch it.”
“That sounds good,” Margot said.
Just then, a tiny older lady came out of the shop.
“Looks like you need a patch,” she said, holding up a small repair kit. “Kent and I can help with that.”
“Thank you,” Margot told the lady.
Kent - that’s a nice name.
The lady looked back and forth between Margot and Kent and smiled like she’d just remembered a particularly funny joke.
“Matter of fact, Kent can handle this himself,” she declared, handing the patch over to the big man.
“Certainly,” Kent proclaimed. “I can do that.”
The lady gave a little wave and went back into the station.
“Let’s find this leak,” Kent said, heading toward the air pump with the bike.
“Wait,” Margot said, feeling suddenly mortified. “I don’t have my wallet with me. I can’t pay you. Maybe I’d better walk. I can come back later for the bike.”
“Don’t worry,” Kent said kindly. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Oh, no,” Margot said. “I can’t let you do that. I’m fine to walk. I like walking.”
But Kent was already popping the tire off her bike.
“What did you drive the bike over?” he asked politely.
“I’m, um, I’m not sure,” she said. “I went over a bump and it seemed to be flat when I landed.”
She couldn’t exactly tell him that it might have had the hole when she lifted it from someone else’s trash can area.
“I found it,” he exclaimed, holding up what looked like a tiny piece of a rusted nail.
She watched as his big hands worked on the tire, prepping the troubled spot and applying the little patch.
They were quiet for a moment.
“It’s funny that we’re both dressed for a luau,” she told him, smiling at the thought of their matching outfits. If there had been someone like him at the party, she might not have been in such a hurry to leave.
He looked up into her eyes, startling her with the intensity of his expression.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, wondering if he was messing with her. “Just that you have the Hawaiian shirt and I have the grass skirt. We look like we should both be at a Hawaiian party.”
He smiled at her and it was like the sun shining out from between the clouds.
“I see,” he said. “I like your skirt. Do you have to water it?”
She laughed, knowing now that he was kidding.
“You’re pretty funny,” she told him.
“Thank you,” he said politely.
He finished his work and straightened.
She noticed how big he was all over again. He towered over her in a way that she might have found intimidating if he weren’t so obviously gentle.
She watched him fill the tire with air.
“Here you are,” he said proudly, presenting her with the bicycle again.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m absolutely going to come back and pay you.”
“It’s not necessary to pay,” he said, smiling down at her.
She felt that smile, a warm sensation washing over her. It made her bold.
“If you want to give me your number, I can be sure to come back when you’re working,” she said.
He blinked at her.
“I don’t have a phone,” he said sadly.
Wow. Margot had been rejected before, but never with so little effort to hide the fact that it was a rejection. Who didn’t have a phone?
“Why don’t you give me your phone number?” he suggested. “Then perhaps I can use my friend’s phone to contact you.”
Margot opened her mouth and closed it again.
Her phone was back at A Slender Start in the manager’s safe.
Damn.
“I, um, don’t have a phone right now either,” she said.
They stood looking at each other a moment longer, until the sound of a car coming quickly down the road above broke the spell
.
Margot pictured the manager of A Slender Start, a formidable woman who might be the type to stop at nothing to recapture a lost charge.
“I’ve gotta go,” Margot said to Kent, hopping onto the bike and taking off without looking back.
She pedaled downhill as fast as she could, her hair and skirt flying out behind her.
When the sound of the car engine got closer she veered off into the trees and dismounted, her heart pounding in her ears.
A moment later a dark sedan passed. She couldn’t see the driver, and had no idea what kind of car the manager drove, but she was glad she had avoided a potential catastrophe.
She paused a moment, half-tempted to go back to see the man at the gas station.
But the position of the sun told her that it was late afternoon. She didn’t have extra time to drool over a hot guy. It would be much better to reach town before dark.
She walked the bike back to the street and mounted it again, heading downhill.
***
Thanks for reading this sample of So You Think You Can Marry an Alien!
Want to find out what happens when Margot ends up as an accidental contestant on a TV show where the grand prize is a marriage to the hunky alien of her dreams? Will Kent fall for her before he learns she’s not who she claims to be? Will Margot be able to control her feelings for him long enough to keep her secret carry out her plan?
Grab your copy now to find out!
So You Think You Can Marry an Alien
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