Craig lifted his head and smiled. “And humble too.”
“Mostly.” Looking into his eyes, Raja swallowed down her anxiety and rested her head against his shoulder. “We could use some guidance. We could use someone with your unique skills.”
“Raja.” Craig set her back. He had stopped swaying and instead was delving into her with those stimulating eyes. “What are you trying to say? Do you want to go back? Is that it?”
The gentle way he asked made her sinuses act up again. Her eyes grew moist and her nose stuffed up.
“I—I—” Please hold me. I can’t say this.
Answering her unvoiced appeal, Craig reached for her hands and guided her back to their chairs. She dropped down on one and he followed, their knees touching, their hands still clasped.
“There are many things I like on this planet, but it is not my home,” she pleaded. “All I have ever known since the day I was born is the Horus. I need my lab. It is my domain. It empowers me.” Crestfallen, she added, “It is why Gordy said what he did. Men don’t like me. They look towards the extroverts—not some recluse in a lab.”
“Hey,” Craig hooked his pointer finger under her chin and gently drew her face up. “There’s one guy who happens to like women who live in labs. Your work saved my life. Forgive me if I sound chauvinistic, but that was quite a turn-on.”
Perhaps she didn’t completely understand the words, but there was no denying the tenderness in his expression. He did not find her odd. He was not put off by her being a recluse. He cared about her.
“I would stay on this planet just to be with you,” she whispered from the heart.
A shadow of pain lanced Craig’s face. “I would not ask for such a sacrifice.”
“I would,” she said tremulously. “I would ask you to sacrifice your home to come with me. That makes me a horrible person.”
“No Raja,” he smiled. “It means that you are in love.”
Her breath snagged. Panic made her neck feel like it had burst out in flames. “I—”
The cushion of his palm touched her cheek. “If you are offering me the opportunity to travel to another galaxy—to see things I could never possibly imagine, I would relish the chance.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but his finger brushed across her lips so that he could add, “But if you are asking me to travel to another galaxy to be with the woman I have fallen in love with—” he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. It was a soft kiss, yet filled with so much promise. “—I would drop to my knee, overwhelmed with happiness.”
A tear slipped from her eye. It startled her and she jerked back in shock. Craig did not seem upset by the fact that her eye leaked. He leaned in and erased that dollop of water with his lips. The sensation caused her heart to squeeze and refuse to beat for a few seconds. Finally, she gasped out, “You’d do it? You’d come with me?”
“Yes, my beautiful little alien.”
“Your parents—”
“Have not seen much of me in many years. In my line of business they have learned to expect that. I will talk to them. They will just assume I’ve gone underground again.”
“Craig.” She was overwhelmed—incapable of speech.
“We’re going to have to find a way to transport donuts without them going stale.” He grinned.
“Ladies. Ladies.” Jennifer Patterson called out. “I need you all to stand up.”
Stand up? Why? Raja had lost all the power in her legs, how was she possibly going to stand? Before Craig could even assist her in rising, she felt an object pelt her in the face and drop into her lap. Startled, she discovered another clump of flowers resting above her knees. What was with these people and the flowers?
“Raja!” Aimee rushed forward, “You caught the bouquet!”
“I didn’t catch it,” she defended. “You threw it at me.”
“Details.” The auburn-haired bride waved off the comment and then winked at Craig.
* * *
Aimee walked into the woods on the other side of the lake.
“Are you ready for this?” Zak asked as they approached the shoreline.
She hugged her arms about her despite the early morning humidity that crept up with the rising sun.
“Yes.”
“Aim.” He brushed his knuckles below her shoulder. “Talk to me. Wars are waging inside that beautiful head of yours.”
Aimee slipped her arm around his waist and tucked her head against his collarbone. God, how she loved this man. He was what mattered the most. He, and their combined life now growing inside her.
His hand settled on her stomach. “Are you feeling okay? How is the little one today?”
A smile stole over her. It made her feel like she glowed from the inside. “Baby Zon or Zonda is way too small to share how he or she is feeling.”
“You don’t have to name our child after my parents, Aim.”
She clutched him tighter, her voice slightly muffled against his chest. “We’ll give them an Earth name, but to us the baby will be Zon or Zonda.”
When she looked up she discovered a newfound serenity on Zak’s face. For so many years his countenance had been etched by angst and inner demons. Here, though, on the shore of this lake, with his arms around her, Aimee saw peace in the exotic eyes of her husband. Every step, every challenge, every year of her wild journey was worth it to witness that tranquility.
“I’m serious,” he said softly. “Are you alright with this decision?”
“Don’t get me wrong. There is a big part of me that longs to go back there—and we will,” she vowed. “We will go back there, Zak. If the terra angels really can travel this far, heck, we can commute—start a frequent-flier program. We will travel to Ziratak. Your father is going to want to meet his grandchild.”
Zak hugged her tighter and she could see a clog of emotion bob down his throat.
“That we could, Zer-shay. That we could.”
They fell silent, watching the placid water flecked with patches of gnats, and listening to the song of the cicadas. They would forever sound like a North Carolina summer, Aimee thought. Those same cicadas sang to her as she would lay on the shore of her pond daydreaming about knights and castles until Ziggy barked and chased the daydreams away.
“I went through everything with Gordy and JOH,” she proclaimed thickly. “It looks sound.”
“They are very capable, Aimee,” Zak assured. “And I agree, the TA does look secure.”
“What if they don’t have enough power to make it back? What if they only make it halfway and end up stranded on a hostile planet?” She tugged out of his grasp and inched down the muddy bank. “We should be with them.”
Zak caught her arm as she slipped on a slick, algae-coated rock.
“Aimee, I don’t want to risk you traveling. After the baby is born we can rethink things, but for now that has to be the focus.”
“They need us.” Her head dropped.
“Hey,” Zak touched her cheek to bring her eyes to his. His patient smile soothed. “You are having a tough time accepting that Gordy has grown into an intelligent and downright skillful man now. Do you want me to hit you with the brutal truth?”
She knew that look. She was about to be schooled.
Climbing back a step to safer ground, she crossed her arms and gave him a bemused smirk. “Okay, big guy. Hit me.”
Zak gauged her readiness and nodded. “The truth is—Gordy knows more about that ship now than you ever will. This time it was he that was involved in the engineering and design. He knows every nuance that craft is capable of, and he would not take off and risk the lives of Raja and Craig—and yeah—JOH, if he didn’t feel it was safe. Zer-shay, you have to accept the fact that—”
“I’m getting old? Are there any other jabs of wit you wish to share?”
“That is not what I was going to say. What I was going to say was that you need to accept that it’s time to extend faith to others. Don’t you think that I’m jealous of Gordy’s k
nowledge? Yeah, I could get in and fly that thing right now. The navigational controls retained their traditional forms...but I am not as accustomed with it as he is. I would not be as skilled a pilot as him at this point.”
Grudgingly she knew that what Zak said was true. Hell, Gordy could even shoot a star laser with uncanny accuracy now. Times definitely had changed.
“And yes, I do have one more jab,” Zak murmured.
She lifted her head in challenge and saw his white teeth flash in a sexy smile. “I love you.”
It still tickled the inside of her chest to hear those words from him. Bonded. Hers for life. She would love him fiercely every step of the way.
Aimee cleared her throat. “Where in God’s name did you pick up charm along the way? Surely not as a warrior. Surely not as a rebel on Ziratak. You’ve only been on Earth for a short time…”
He swept his hands into her hair and tilted her head back for a swift kiss. “Right here.”
A sound like boiling water arrested their attention. Side by side, their arms around each other, Aimee and Zak stepped back as waves began to lap the shoreline. About twenty yards away expanding rings formed a widening orbit in the lake. A hum like that of a high voltage power line sounded from that vicinity. As the circles grew large enough to reach shore, Aimee whispered, “You can barely make it out. Look, I actually see us in the reflection.”
“There.” Zak pointed. “See the anomaly in the surface. That’s the nose.”
Aimee glanced over her shoulder and peered behind Zak’s back, afraid to discover that some child on a bicycle had suddenly appeared on this unoccupied land. There was no one. It was 6am, and though they intended to take off in the middle of the night, a thunderstorm with continual bursts of lightning caused them to delay.
Endeavoring to reduce the amount of disturbance on the lake surface, the terra angel rose with a constrained ascent. A rush of suction and the cascade of water splashing revealed that the bulk of the fuselage was above the water now.
“They can see us.” Aimee waved, wishing desperately that she could see them wave back.
Zak lifted his hand. “Safe journey, my friends. We’ll be together again soon.”
He looked down at Aimee. “Does Raja know about the baby?”
“She knew before I did. It’s why I took the test. She said something about the reflective layer over my eye.”
Zak stooped and peered into her eyes. “I don’t see anything—well, except for beautiful eyes.”
“Charm. There it is again.” She kept waving. “I didn’t notice anything either—but she was right.”
An undercurrent of electricity hummed louder now. The water grew still.
“They’re hovering just above the surface. I can see it now,” Aimee rushed. “Instead of looking at the trees on the other side of the lake, the trees behind me are reflected back. It really is huge!”
Irritably, Aimee swiped at her eyes. She didn’t want to miss this behind a veil of tears. “Once Gordy engages the thrusters, they’ll be out of our atmosphere before NASA, the military, or anyone can even acknowledge the breach.”
A high-pitched whine alerted that the propulsion systems were about to be employed. Aimee blew a kiss towards the area she guessed to be the nose, and then a loud pop followed by the suction of her hair above her head confirmed their launch into space. The trees rustled angrily and a swarm of birds vaulted into the sky, protesting the upheaval.
And then it was still.
It was hard to tell how long they stood there.
Aimee stared up into a sky of the finest shade of blue. It reminded her of Ziratak, where two suns clashed with the red sand to produce an azure atmosphere so achingly similar to the glory she gazed into right now. This was not the only planet with a blue sky, and Aimee knew it was just a matter of time before she discovered others.
THE END
About the Author
Maureen A. Miller
USA TODAY bestselling author, Maureen A. Miller's first novel, WIDOW'S TALE earned her a Golden Heart nomination in Romantic Suspense. Working in the software industry for fifteen years in a job that required extensive travel, Maureen chose to write during those lengthy airport layovers. Escapism at its best. Five novels were produced in those years of travel. Recently, Maureen branched out into the Young Adult Science Fiction market with Beyond and the BEYOND Series. She is having fun keeping her head in the stars!
To learn more about Maureen please visit her website at www.MaureenAMiller.com, and to learn more about the BEYOND series please stop by www.Beyond-Book.com
Website
http://www.maureenamiller.com
Beyond Series Website
http://www.beyond-book.com
Beyond : Series Bundle (9781311505637) Page 64
