by H. E. Trent
Both bands chirped to indicate information had been received.
“You can head to your ship,” the porter said, grinning broadly and straightening his sagging hair knot. “You’ll wait ten minutes, perhaps. It shouldn’t be long now that most of the vessels ahead of you have been cleared.”
Luke nodded to him and gestured toward the parking slots for Autumn and Cree’s benefit.
Autumn looked where Luke was pointing, but Cree was watching the porter walk away, and wearing a wistful smile.
Autumn sighed and swatted her sister’s ponytail. “Cree.”
Cree turned and blinked in a Bambi-like way. “Hmm?”
Oh, hell.
Luke dragged his hand down his face. He hoped like hell that child wasn’t going to be in his charge because she had “boy crazy” written all over her sweet face.
“Pay attention,” Autumn said.
“I was. How old do you think he is?”
“Too old for you,” Luke murmured.
Jekhans aged damn well, but even if the porter were only twenty or twenty-one, he would have still been too old for a girl like Cree. He’d seen too much, been through too much. Her life would have been a cakewalk in comparison.
“Aw.” She pouted again.
He was just about to mimic his nonna and tell her to pay attention to her books, not her boyfriends, but that wasn’t any of his damn business. The lady beside him was his business, and he was supposed to be marrying her in a matter of weeks if they didn’t end up hating each other too much. That was the deal. They would tie the knot, or demonstrate in some other way that they’d combined households, and she’d be permitted to stay on the planet.
He got them moving toward his ship and got halfway there before he got a sinking feeling. He heard the padding of footsteps behind him, and all too quickly the familiar scent of a certain not-duke’s cologne bombarded his nostrils.
Cree squealed.
Luke quietly groaned.
Motherfucker.
“What altitude are you flying back at?” Duke asked him.
Great.
Now they’d know Luke knew him.
“Dunno,” Luke muttered. “With the fuel shortage not appearing to end anytime soon, I don’t want to burn the kind of fuel needed to get anywhere close to the upper atmosphere. I’m probably going to fly at plane altitude, or maybe a little higher if my thrusters are playing nice. Again, depends on whether I’m running on solar stores or if I’ve got some power to spare.”
The trip would have been exponentially faster if he’d been able to get into orbit rather than flying close overland, but he didn’t have the juice. Most was being routed to big cities like Buinet that were shuffling criminals off the planet and brides onto it. His sister Precious made regular runs to Earth in Luke’s ship to pick up commodities to resell on Jekh, and she was itching to make a trip soon.
So was he. The farm was running dangerously low on Terran toilet paper. The Jekhan stuff simply wasn’t tender enough for his picky ass.
“My fuel is low as well,” Duke said. “I’m running mostly on solar until the next tankard arrives in Little Gitano. I’ve got a fuel portion designated.”
“Ditto.” Luke grunted and palmed his ship’s door open. He gestured to the inside indicating the ladies should enter, and then walked back to the secondary cargo door. “So I’ll see you in, what, two days?” Luke’s initial plan had been to have a few days of getting-to-know-you time with just him and Autumn—just the two of them—but that shit was going to get awkward fast with Cree acting as chaperone. He was used to changing plans on the fly, though. The FBI had trained him well in that regard.
“Probably two days,” Luke said, scratching the scruff on his chin. He probably should have shaved better that morning. Owen’s recent lazy tendency toward scruff had been rubbing off on him and he’d gotten used to shaving far less often than he had in the past.
“If you’ll be flying against the wind through the range, you can stop in the Sisten Desert before heading toward the rock breaks. The people there have fuel boosters that’ll help, assuming they’ll trade with you.”
“They might not. I’ve never traded with them before.”
“I’ll meet you there tomorrow evening, then.”
“That’s not nec—”
“Wait.” Cree pointed from one man to the other. “Luke, do you know him know him?”
Luke groaned quietly, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and murmured to Duke, “Go away.”
Duke slung an arm across Luke’s shoulders in a collegial sort of way, took Cree’s extended hand, and kissed the back of it.
If she’d blushed any harder, the port authorities would have had to open a few more air vents.
“Mr. Cipriani and I are very well acquainted,” Duke said.
Yep.
They’d seen each other’s dicks. That counted as acquainted in Luke’s book.
Cree’s grin had a bit of mania about it.
“And who might you be?” Duke asked.
“Cree Ray. I’m Autumn’s sister.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ray.” He turned to Autumn, gave Luke’s back a discreet pinch that Luke planned to beat the hell out of him later for, and then nodded. “Ms. Ray, Alexander Hauge.”
She barely extended her fingers for a shake. “Yes, I know exactly who you are,” she said flatly.
“Then you have the advantage here.” He brushed his lips across her knuckles, a gesture that seemed to ignite the exact opposite response in her than it had in her sister.
The lady was cold as ice, and Luke wasn’t sure if he wanted to applaud her or cringe really fucking hard at the awkwardness.
“Sir, you can’t be in this area without credentials,” a depot official called out, ostensibly to Duke.
“I have them.” He held up a paper slip and then pointed back toward a travel-weary man standing near Alex’s ship.
“Who’s that?” Luke asked him.
“My business associate Oreva.”
“Did you know he was coming?”
“No. Call it serendipity, I suppose.” Duke raised a brow and in the most princely fashion Luke had ever witnessed, turned his back to the ladies. “The desert, then?” His voice had been on the cheerful side of neutral, but his expression was anything but. His face suggested a certain gravity Luke didn’t understand, but he wasn’t so stubborn that he’d ignore it. The expression said, “I have things to tell you,” and likely not things he could say in mixed company.
Oh, hell.
Luke cleared his throat and looked to the ladies.
Cree was oblivious to the silent tête-à-tête between the men and was taking a selfie with her sister, but her sister’s dark gaze was fixed on the men.
Obviously, she didn’t trust them, and that was fine. Luke wasn’t getting the warm-fuzzies from her, either. Why wouldn’t she have told him she was bringing her sister along? He couldn’t help but feel a bit scammed, but he was a cynic that way. He didn’t like being so skeptical about everything as of late, but he was going to roll with it for the time being.
“Yeah, we’ll make a stop there,” Luke said to Duke, pulling his stare from the ice queen. “You gonna ping them and let them know in case I get there first?”
“You likely will. I still have to collect Herris.”
“Right. See you there, then.”
Duke gave him a quick sideways embrace that to onlookers would have appeared as one colleague platonically embracing another, but Luke knew better. Duke knew Luke wouldn’t kick his ass for touching him if they were being watched.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to kick it later.
The porters were already loading Autumn’s luggage into the back of Luke’s little ship by the time he got the interior lights turned on. During his last day at the FBI, he’d stolen the vehicle from a lab in DC. He’d had no fucking idea how to fly it, but the good thing about having tech-minded siblings was that they could figure shit out even when he c
ouldn’t. Initially, Precious and Marco were only supposed to help him get the thing into space, but they’d tagged along with him to Jekh, not wanting to be left out of the adventure.
The US government had certainly figured out where the ship had gone, but they were looking the other way because the plans for it had been stolen from an alien race their agents had encountered off Jekh. They probably thought Luke would be the one to take the hit if the aliens ever figured out who took the specs.
The egg was on their face, though. The aliens had found out. They’d swarmed Precious a few months back when she was returning from a trading run. She’d nearly shit her pants, but once Precious told them the story, they’d thought the mess was hilarious. The specs were old as hell, and they were simply curious why anyone would have wanted them. They would have given them away for free had anyone asked, but of course, Precious hadn’t bothered relaying that to the US government. The Ciprianis had come to a rare consensus that the fewer Terrans with easy access to outer space, the better.
Cree had taken the picture and extricated herself from Autumn’s side, so he figured he should say something about the travel plans, but before he could get a word out, Cree asked in a near-squeal, “So, how do you know Alex Hauge?”
Grimacing, Luke shifted his weight. “He’s my best friend’s wife’s brother.”
Her jaw dropped.
Autumn didn’t look so impressed, though. In fact, she rolled her eyes a little. It was one of those discreet eye rolls that women who’d been taught to never roll their eyes were so good at.
Huh. What’s her problem?
He shoved his fingers through his hair again and then guided them into the ship.
He’d figure her out. She’d seemed much more lively during their couple of video communications. She’d smiled, then, and laughed at all the right times at his jokes. Her questions had been intelligent, and her responses to his had indicated a quick wit and superior awareness of the world around her.
Maybe she was tired and done with standing around. He certainly would have been after weeks of travel.
He’d reserve judgment, but as things stood, something about her wasn’t lining up.
He hated that fucking feeling.
CHAPTER FIVE
“And to think, in all this time, I didn’t think to ask him who the woman was.” Alex propped his booted feet atop his ship’s console and rubbed his chin.
Oreva, seated in the co-pilot’s chair, looked up from the text communications in his palm tablet. He’d apparently collected over a thousand messages during the time he’d been traveling. “Why would you have cared?” he asked.
Fuck.
Alex should have known to keep his musings to himself. He couldn’t tell Oreva the truth. He and Oreva may have been the best of friends, but what was—or wasn’t—happening between Alex and Luke was no one else’s concern. The consequences of such a scandal getting out publicly, and so soon after news broke of his father and grandfather’s partial financing of the colonization of Jekh, would be dire. The citizenry would probably seek to have them all ousted. There was nothing inherently wrong with homosexuality, but his family had a long track record of supporting “traditional marriage” to the exclusion of all other types. Any whiff of hypocrisy in the inner circle would likely be the straw that broke the figurative camel’s back.
“Luke is a friend of my sister,” Alex said. “We try to be cordial. I suppose I didn’t think for a moment that the woman he’d been matched with would be someone I’d actually heard of.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the rear of the small ship. Herris was seated on the edge of a bench, peering passively out the window. He’d barely spoken a word all day, and Alex wasn’t certain there was anything he could do to lift his mood. They weren’t exactly friends. Herris lived at the farm his sister resided on and had been a refugee from the Buinet Riots. He’d spent most of the past couple of years searching for the daughter he’d been separated from during the exodus from the city. Whenever he caught a new clue, he hitched a ride back into Buinet to follow leads. None had panned out.
“And if you’ve heard of her…then she’s certainly heard of you,” Oreva said after a few seconds of thought.
“My reputation in business is impeccable.” Alex faced the dash once more and drummed his fingers atop his armrests. “Her father, on the other hand, has orchestrated more self-indulgent real estate projects than Ramses II.”
“He most certainly has. Which brings her presence on Jekh into question.”
“Precisely.” Alex couldn’t help the smile tugging at his cheeks or his smug sense of self-satisfaction that Luke’s would-be bride was a fish he was going to have to throw back. It was the best possible scenario for Alex. Although he was generally a man who knew what he wanted and exactly how to go get it, Luke stymied him. For the first time, there was something Alex wanted, but couldn’t have. Not to mention the hell he would catch if he did actually get that something, but he was going to pursue it anyway.
In spite of that thing’s protestations.
Luke wouldn’t be able to resist Alex for long. No one could when Alex set his mind to getting what he wanted.
Alex dropped his feet to the floor and gave the communications panel a few precise taps. Thanks to their previous rendezvous, his ship’s computer already knew how to find Luke’s.
Luke turned on the camera on his end just in time for Alex to see him rolling his eyes.
“Well, you look to be in a superb mood,” Alex said cheerfully, just because he knew Luke hated when he was in a good mood.
Luke held up a hand and mouthed, “Wait.” Then he plugged one listening bud and then the other into his ears. He got up, then, putting his back to the camera as he motored down the retractable privacy barrier between the cockpit and the passenger area of his ship.
“All right,” he finally said in a volume that was low enough to make Alex nudge up the dial on his end.
“Why the secrecy?” Alex asked.
Luke plopped into the captain’s chair and pressed his palms to his eyes. “Maybe I’m just being considerate and letting them sleep.”
“Are they asleep?”
Luke dropped his hands from his bloodshot eyes and shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
There was a word for what Alex was feeling: schadenfreude. Glee at someone else’s misery. He was glad Luke was miserable. He shouldn’t have imported the bitch.
“What do you want?” Luke asked.
“Only to let you know I pinged the desert clan. They know you’re on the way. What’s your ETA?” If Alex put the proverbial pedal to the metal, he could probably land at about the same time as Luke. Or maybe even before him. That way, he could shape the dialogue a bit and set up their accommodations in advance. No way in hell was he going to watch their hosts usher Luke into a dwelling with that scam aficionado Autumn Ray.
Luke rubbed his chin and clucked his tongue. “At current velocity, around five tomorrow. Ship’s not moving fuel through the system efficiently at this altitude. This puppy is calibrated for efficient space travel, not domestic flying.”
“That’s the problem with most ships. Either you get a flyer that moves fuel efficiently but can’t get enough altitude to clear mountains, or you get a spaceship that requires more power to ascend out of the atmosphere and more room to launch. As far as I know, there’s nothing in-between.”
Luke shook his head. “Owen says there is, but it’s just not manufactured on-planet right now. The company that used to make them got pillaged during the Terran occupation and the tech talent just isn’t around anymore. He’s trying to get his hands on the engineering schematics.”
Alex huffed and muttered, “Well, good luck to him.”
He supposed that most in-laws had their unique brands of tension and that he was justified in not liking Owen simply because he’d married his sister. But there was something else there—something in Luke and Owen’s relationship that he couldn’t quite make sense of. The
y were either just friends and simply very familiar, or way more than friends, and either scenario ruffled Alex’s feathers.
Luke needed to keep his hands to himself…unless they were on Alex.
“I’ll send a message to the clan and let them know when you’ll be arriving,” Alex said.
Luke nodded. “How’s Herris? You find him okay?”
Alex grimaced and swiveled his seat toward the quiet man.
He was still staring out the window, his posture as erect as before, and his expression blank and immobile.
“Herris, would you like to speak with Luke?”
Herris twined his fingers and kept looking outside. “I will conference with him when we land in the desert.”
“I heard him,” Luke said before Alex could relay the statement. “No good news, huh?”
Alex didn’t know, so he shook his head. He would have thought that if Herris had good news about his daughter or even just the hint of a lead, he would have stayed in Buinet.
Luke grunted, scratched the skin under his wrist COM’s band, and then glanced over his shoulder at the divider.
Someone must have been up and about on the ship. Autumn or her sidekick.
Alex tugged at his thumb until the knuckle cracked.
What the hell was he thinking getting on that list?
A man like Luke couldn’t have been so desperate that he’d allow a stranger into his confidence instead of any one of the multitudinous Jekhans who’d been clamoring for his attention. Luke was something of a minor celebrity on Jekh. He was unforgettable. Between that grating Boston accent and his classic, tall and dark good looks, he stuck in people’s memories. He made people ask questions about him.
He made Alex want to shake the hell out of him.
Alex cracked the thumb knuckle again.
“I will thrash you if you pull that finger again,” Oreva warned.
Luke scoffed and shoved his fingers through his messy hair. “Shoot me the exact coordinates of the landing site. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
