by Karen Kelley
Lara didn’t look at all comforted by this knowledge as she straightened. “You’ve succumbed to Earth’s temptations,” she lightly scolded.
What person didn’t want to pet a puppy? So what if Kia was tempted to cuddle them? What difference did that make?
“Which Elder is it, and what do we need to do to help find the cure?” Kia returned to the subject at hand, looking genuinely worried as she set the puppy back on the floor.
“Torcara.”
Kia drew in a sharp breath.
Sam felt sorry for her. He knew the Elders were the ones who ruled Nerak. This one must mean a lot to her.
“The disease came from Earth, so this is where I’ll need to find the cure,” Lara explained. “I must test the plants and see if one of them will work as a remedy.”
“Yes, of course. We have plants here.” Nick said.
Lara looked at Nick, then just as quickly turned back to Kia. Sam frowned. This Nerakian was starting to piss him off.
“I’ll work here then. You’ll take me to where these plants grow.”
“We don’t actually have a place here,” Nick tried to explain.
“Then you lied?”
“No, not exactly,” Nick said. “This is the city. Plants grow in the country, unless a nursery will work. That’s a place where people grow plants from seeds and cuttings.”
“You will take me to the country. I need to test them in their natural environment.”
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” Sam asked. He wondered if she realized how many plants there were on Earth.
“I’ll know it when I find it. I only need one that will react with the chemicals I will be adding.”
Kia and Nick looked toward him at the same time and acted as if he was supposed to say something.
“What?” he finally asked.
“You can take her to your cabin,” they spoke in unison.
“Me? Uh-uh. I’m not taking her with me.” This was his vacation, and he damn sure didn’t want to spend it with this…this Nerakian who thought she was better than everyone else.
“Please, Sam,” Kia pleaded. “For me?”
This wasn’t right. Not right at all. They shouldn’t even ask. Not that it was going to do them a bit of good.
“I’m not taking her to my cabin.”
“But…” Kia started.
He shook his head. “No way, nohow. It’s not going to happen.”
Chapter 2
“H ow much farther is this cabin?” Lara sat stiff as a board on the passenger side of his pickup.
Was she afraid she might accidentally touch him and soil herself? Oh, hell, he’d hate for that to happen. It would be a crying shame.
“Don’t you ever get tired of asking the same question?” Sam glared across the seat at her.
“You keep saying the same thing, ‘not long,’ but I think you’re lying because we’re still not there. So, how long before we arrive at this cabin where I’ll be able to do my research?”
“Not long….” He watched her mouth turn downward.
What the hell was he supposed to say? She probably didn’t know what a mile was. When she continued to stare at him, he decided he wasn’t going to win this round.
“We’re about to turn off the highway, then we’ll go down another road until we get to the cattle guard and cross it. We’ll go over a small ridge, and the cabin is sitting in the middle of a cluster of pine trees. There, are you satisfied?”
“Don’t you have a craft that goes airborne?” she asked, changing the subject. “This ride is very uncomfortable. I can feel every bump. On Nerak, we have aero units. The ride is quite enjoyable.”
“Well, you’re not on Nerak. You’re on Earth, and no, we don’t have aero units for everyone to fly around in.”
“That’s because this is an inferior planet.” She turned her gaze out the window.
He really liked his pickup and had gotten a sweet deal when he’d traded in his car. It was a rusty brown—more rust than brown—but he planned to have it sanded and repainted someday.
“Your craft appears quite antiquated,” she continued, and he wondered if she got a kick out of irritating him. “Will it complete the trip?”
Sam gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. It was safer that way for Lara. He couldn’t very well strangle her if he was choking the steering wheel.
“It will.” He didn’t add that she might find herself sitting on the side of the road, though.
Nick would owe him for this the rest of his life, and a few years after that. How the hell could he let himself get talked into taking Lara on his… his vacation? This had to be the most harebrained thing he’d ever been talked into doing.
He was a sap. That was his problem. Kia had kept looking at him with those beautiful deep blue, pleading eyes of hers, silently begging him to help.
He’d crumbled like a stale cookie.
“I have to use the elimination facilities,” Lara said.
“You have to what?” It dawned on him that she needed to use the bathroom. “Why didn’t you go when I stopped for fuel?” Exasperating woman—no, make that alien.
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t need to go at that point in time.”
“Worse than traveling with a bunch of kids,” he grumbled but took the next exit.
When he stopped the pickup, she waved her hand as she had from the moment she’d arrived. At the apartment, whenever she’d waved her hand, Kia had rushed to open the door for her, treating her like royalty. Now she was doing it again, as if he was a damned flunkey or something. He gritted his teeth, then strode to her door and opened it. He should make her open it. Force her to wait on herself.
The bathroom was inside the gas station. He went with her, noticing how everyone stared. Why the hell wouldn’t they when she wore her green robe thing that she held up so it wouldn’t brush the floor, like she was a queen or something. She certainly acted like royalty.
A royal pain in the ass!
“There’s the ladies’ room. Just go in, and you’ll see the…uh…toilets. You know how to…uh…use one of them?” This was damned embarrassing.
Her eyebrows shot up again as if he were an ant beneath her foot and she was about to squash him. He should tell her that he didn’t squash quite so easily.
“I’m quite capable of understanding how to use the equipment, even as primitive as it must be.” She waltzed toward the ladies’ room, waved her hand, and then ran smackdab into the door.
“Ow.” She reached up and touched her forehead, then looked accusingly at him. “The door is broken. Just like the door on your craft and the ones at my sister’s dwelling.”
“This is a primitive planet, Princess. You said so yourself.” He pushed on the door. “You have to open it manually.”
Okay, so maybe he’d been wrong about the waving hand thing she’d been doing. That must be the way they opened doors on Nerak. Must be nice.
The look she was giving him right now made him wonder just what she was thinking, though. He had a feeling her thoughts were about him, and maybe he didn’t want to know.
Lara didn’t care for
Sam’s attitude at all. She frowned. Why had he called her a princess? She wasn’t of royal blood. She had a feeling he was being sarcastic. How rude of him. She’d only been pointing out the truth. Compared to Nerak, Earth was primitive.
It was as the Elders had warned before she left. Men would try her patience if she had the misfortune of coming into contact with them. How right they were.
“You going inside, or do you want me to just stand here holding the door open all day?”
She raised her chin and walked inside the facility without saying a word.
“A thank you would’ve been polite,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder. “Thank you.” She would not get angry with this man; instead, she would learn his customs while on earth.
As soon as the door closed, she bit her bottom lip and glanced around. Her nose twitched. There was an odor here that did not please her.
She quickly reminded herself why she was here. She would deal with doors that did not open, the smells, and Sam. It was her duty to the Elder, and Nerak, to face these hardships.
She barely managed to fit in the tiny stall with her voluminous robe. Maybe she should’ve listened to Kia and changed into something more earthlike. But she had refused to abandon the ways of her people. Still, Kia had placed Earth clothes in a carrier that she called a suitcase and sent them with her. Not that she thought she would need them. They’d looked quite uncomfortable.
She finished and moved to a counter imbedded with basins. But when she ran her hands beneath the spouts, nothing happened. There were no beams of light to rid herself of bacteria. How did one clean her hands on Earth? Or the rest of her body, for that matter?
A woman came out from one of the stalls and gave her a funny look before going to the counter where she turned a knob. Water poured from the spout.
“Water!” She turned her knob, and water poured from hers, too. Amazing. She rotated the handle again, and it stopped. She opened it, and once more, water came out, then she stopped it from flowing again with another turn.
“You okay, honey?” the woman asked.
The woman looked nice enough—for an Earthling—although she talked rather oddly. She’d drawn out the word okay so it sounded more like okaaay.
Lara turned the spout on, then off again. “Water.”
“Yeah?”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“I come from Nerak.”
“Thought as much. A foreigner. But that’s okay. My name is Mary Lou.”
“I’m called Lara.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
Lara turned the water on again and splashed her hands beneath the flowing stream, then splashed it on her face. Laughter bubbled from her. Water was fun.
There was another spout, only smaller. She pushed it, and a blob of pink stuff dropped on the palm of her hand. She held it toward the other woman. “And what is this?”
“Soap. You rub it between your hands. It’ll clean them, and it kind of smells nice.”
She cautiously rubbed her hands together. Oh, this was marvelous. Tiny bubbles appeared, and when she blew on them, they floated away.
“You okay in there?” Sam called from the other side of the door.
“Yes,” she called back.
The other woman handed her some brown paper. “This is to dry your hands.” She smiled.
Lara took it from her and copied what the other woman had done. She remembered what she was supposed to say. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Enjoy your time in Texas.”
The woman tossed her paper in a can that stood in the corner and left. Lara tossed hers in the receptacle as well. It was going to be quite easy adapting to Earth. She left the elimination facility, remembering to push on the door to open it. Very primitive.
“You discovered water, I see,” Sam said as she joined him.
She looked down at her robe. It was quite damp in front. She didn’t care. The water had been fun.
But when she returned to the pickup, she realized she’d inadvertently enjoyed one of the temptations that Earth had to offer. The Elders had not mentioned how insidious these temptations would be when they’d briefed her prior to her journey.
No, they’d only discussed men and something called chocolate. Apparently, both could be very addictive, and she had to be careful.
She glanced across the seat. Sam had been infuriatingly rude. She didn’t think she’d have any problem resisting him.
He was nice to look upon, though, with his dark hair, blue eyes, and wide shoulders…but he had a bad attitude, and she had a feeling he didn’t like her. That was hard for her to comprehend. Everyone liked her on Nerak. What wasn’t to like?
She was kind and generous and a healer. She could take care of Nerakians if they became ill. Except no one ever became ill on Nerak.
That is, until now.
It was quite an exhilarating feeling knowing someone needed her. Not that she wished the Elder this disease that wracked her body with chills and fever.
But Sam couldn’t see how important she was to her people and that she was due respect. She had a feeling she would have to remind him often. How tedious.
He turned off the road he’d called a highway. Finally! Her backside was sore from all the bumping and jarring. She had thought the torture would never end. This other road would have to be smoother. It couldn’t be any worse.
Or could it? Her eyes narrowed. “It isn’t as wide as the other road,” she said as he turned onto it.
“Wow, you’re really observant.”
“You’re being sarcastic again, aren’t you?”
“Ya think?”
She didn’t say anything. What could she say?
He drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I usually don’t talk to women like this.”
“Only me.”
“You rub me the wrong way.”
“I haven’t rubbed you at all.”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Oh.” She thought about what he’d said for a moment. “How do I rub you the wrong way?”
He frowned. “It’s your attitude. I guess I expected you to be different.”
“How could you expect me to be different when we’ve never met?”
“Kia showed me a hologram. You looked very…very…”
“Very what?” She was curious to know what he’d thought of her.
“Very beautiful.”
“And you don’t think I’m beautiful?”
She noticed that his forehead wrinkled as he concentrated on what he would say next.
“Yes, you’re very beautiful.”
“I know,” she preened.
“That’s it!”
She jumped. “What’s it?”
“It’s your ‘greater than thou’ attitude.”
“Earth people are so very confusing. First, you tell me that I’m beautiful, but I’m not supposed to agree with you. Yet when I look at my reflection, I know I’m beautiful. Am I supposed to lie and say I think I’m ugly?”
The creases in his forehead deepened. �
��No, but you don’t have to be so thrilled when you’re right.”
Her head was beginning to ache. She needed a relaxing smoothie. Earthmen were so very difficult to understand.
And the road he’d turned on was worse than the last one. So much so that she thought her teeth would jar loose and fall out. But the passing scenery was beautiful. She couldn’t deny that. The trees reached across like a canopy above their heads and cast patterns of light and shadows on the road in front of them.
Maybe there was something good about being on Earth. She would try to explore some of this land while she was here so that she might report back to the Elders.
But she would have to be very careful of temptation. Like the water and puppies.
They had been adorable. She’d wanted so badly to pick one up and cuddle it, but she’d quickly seen the puppies for what they were—a trap.
As was Sam. He’d made her body grow warm in a way she’d never experienced.
Until she’d been around him for a while. She wasn’t sure he was so much of a temptation anymore. Unless it was the temptation to do bodily harm to him. But healers didn’t cause bodily harm. They healed.
She’d have much to tell the Elders when she returned. About men, puppies, and water, too. Water was good, but it still wasn’t enough to make her want to stay.
They went across a row of pipes that caused her to bounce on the seat. Thankfully, it didn’t last long, or she wouldn’t have been able to stand it. The Elders would certainly give her high praise for being so brave.
Maybe she would even get a shining star to hang on her wall. There was nothing better than a shining star. It didn’t do anything, but it was pleasant to look at. She had many on her walls now.
“Listen,” Sam began, “I haven’t been the nicest person, and I know you don’t have the same customs as we have on Earth. I’ll try to be a little more understanding.”
She respectfully lowered her gaze. “I accept your apology,” she said. She would also try harder to understand this Earthman.
“Here we are,” he said, his voice thickened with pride.
