Take Her to HeVan (Nephilim Book 6) (2 page)

Having spent the last hundred or so years surrounded by men and no women, he didn’t consider his looks as anything special. The light brown hair, hazel eyes, and chiseled planes of his cheeks and jawline seemed ordinary to him. His naturally dusky skin tone had paled after so many years in space. The combination was arresting and any female with a pulse would notice.

“Diagnostic complete,” the computer announced a little while later.

“Report,” he said, then listened carefully while the computer went over all the systems as he left the bunk and made his way to the front of the shuttle. Both the communications unit and the emergency beacon had sustained damage. Everything else appeared to be in working order, but he was low on fuel. He tapped the control board and the navigation system blinked onto the screen. The anxiety gripping his chest loosened. If he were lucky, he would have just enough fuel to get to the Nephilim property in Wisconsin known as The Sanctuary. They would be able to treat his injuries there.

He checked the placement of the sun. In relationship to his current planetary position, he had a few hours until daylight. By the time he finished his pre-flight checks, it would remain dark enough for a cloaked shuttle to make its way to Sanctuary. He decided to begin takeoff procedure immediately. It didn’t matter that it was in stealth mode. The longer it sat, the more visible it became, as dust and dirt accumulated and settled on the treated panels. His poor health condition was another reason not to wait.

From the pilot’s chair, he set his course, turned on the main engines, and began his start-up sequence. He would be flying below the surface radar kept by the local government. He expected the trip to take no more than an hour or an hour and a half.

His head still hurt and he was quite dizzy. He needed medical attention, as the scanner had diagnosed a concussion. Leaning back, he closed his eyes to take a few minutes of rest. From one moment to the next, he fell asleep. Several hours later, when he regained consciousness, he continued with his checklist, unaware of the change in time. He pushed aside the disorientation he felt to do his job. Help was available; he just needed to get there.

After lifting off, he was preparing to engage the thrusters when alarms sounded and everything in the navigation system went haywire. The course heading and navigational controls locked him out, and the shuttle started heading back to the ground. He was going to crash, and nothing he could do about it. Looking up at his flight path, he saw he had only traveled a short distance, more than fifty miles but less than a hundred. He was still a long way from his destination.

“Computer, landing sequence!” he shouted, trying to stop the pre-programmed flight.

“Unable to comply. The navigation system has been locked out of the pilot’s control by orders of Councilman Hend,” said the computer.

Karlo could see the ground approaching and ran through his options. He didn’t have many.

“Computer, scan crash zone for life signs,” he said.

“Life signs present,” said the computer.

“Override navigation to avoid life signs,” Karlo shouted, hoping he’d found a way around Hend’s sabotage.

“Negative. The course plotted by Councilman Hend is locked in. Engaging landing thrusters to avoid life signs,” said the computer.

“Try to avoid buildings. I’d appreciate it if the pilot of the vessel were also kept alive,” he remarked to the computer sarcastically.

“Override of safety protocols in effect. Life signs will be avoided.”

Karlo had done all he could. He pulled his straps tight and waited for the crash.

*****

Marla Jones left the hay barn and slogged through the mud toward the house with her dog Rusty at her side. With so much necessary maintenance on a ranch, putting down fresh gravel had fallen to the bottom of her priority list. Her day had started before the sun rose. Luckily, she had put the porch lights on a timer, because it was now after dark.

She walked up the stairs. After scraping off as much mud as she could, she entered the mudroom. As she removed her muddy boots, she made plans. The rains would be good for the alfalfa fields; she would have a good crop to harvest in another few months. Leaving her boots on the floor, she put on her house shoes. She then grabbed a towel and leaning over, cleaned Rusty’s paws. Once she knew neither of them would be tracking mud into the house, she opened the door into the kitchen.

Looking into the pantry, she remembered she was out of dog food.

“Rusty, sorry, boy,” she said.

She took his dog dish over to the counter and scooped up half of the stew in the crockpot. After putting his dish on the floor, she scooped up the rest of the stew into her own bowl. She would have to go shopping soon; the pantry was getting really bare and the freezer was empty. Unfortunately, that meant no ice cream for dessert.

Some people looking at her curvy figure might think it was a good idea for Marla to skip a few desserts. Marla was happy with her body image. With her short curly blond hair, wide spaced blue eyes, and dimples, she had the look of an overfed pixie. Anyone not willing to accept her as she was wasn’t worth her time; but she was bummed to be out of ice cream.

After washing the dishes, she decided to make an early night of it. Her alarm clock would be going off at five-thirty in the morning. She was all alone now, running the ranch by herself since both her grandparents were gone. It had only been she and her grandfather for the last three years of his life and picking up a pen to mark another day off her calendar, she noticed she’d been on her own now for over a year. She made a mental note to call her matchmaker in the morning. She then shook a mental fist at her grandfather for putting her future in jeopardy.

Turning off the downstairs lights and checking all the doors, she completed her security rounds with Rusty by her side and then headed for the stairs. Running her hand along the nicked wood, she flashed on the first time as a child she’d tried to slide down the banister. She had fallen off and broken her arm. Her grandfather had yelled at her even as he rushed her to the emergency room. It wasn’t until she overheard him talking to the doctor that she understood how much she had scared him. She never told him that after she got her cast off, she kept trying to slide down the banister until she’d succeeded. She’d always been a stubborn child.

Giving the banister a pat, Marla went into the bathroom to take her shower and wash off the dirt of the day. She needed her stubbornness because the grandfather, who had loved her and raised her, had also screwed her over. He had met her grandmother when he was stationed in England during World War II. She had been a British war bride. They only had one child, a son, her father. Complications with the birth meant she could no longer have children.

Her father was happy to grow up on the ranch and married a local girl. Except for her college years, Marla had always lived on the ranch; it was all she knew. Her parents had died when she was three. They had left her at home with her grandparents while they took the vacation of their dreams. With another baby on the way, they had wanted to have a romantic fling before being buried in diapers again. On their way home, their plane had crashed a few minutes after take-off. Marla had always consoled herself that they had gotten their vacation and they had been together. Because she was so young when they died, their deaths didn’t have as much of an impact on her as when she lost her grandmother and then her grandfather.

Which mentally brought her right back to being angry toward her grandfather. Reaching into the shower, she fiddled with the hot and cold knobs trying to get the right temperature. She had to get them just right or the water would be too hot or too cold. There was something wrong inside the plumbing and she wasn’t knowledgeable enough to fix it. When she was relatively sure she wouldn’t scald or freeze herself, she flipped the knob to send the water from the spigot to the showerhead and climbed into the tub, pulling the shower curtain closed.

Dozens of things flashed through her brain as she washed her hair. The two thoughts that stuck were
—
she needed to get her hair trimmed; her short blond curls were starting to get in her eyes. Of course, she now had less than ten weeks to get married or she was going to lose her land. Land that had been in her family’s possession since the State of Colorado was settled. She was going to lose it for such a stupid reason, because she wasn’t married.

She hated that she had been a disappointment to her grandfather. She had joined the FFA and 4-H to please him, but he’d known the truth. She hated seeing animals she raised sold for their meat. She had thought he understood her dream and it had been painfully obvious for over a year now that he hadn’t.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have written a will that said if she wanted to keep the ranch, she had to be married. He obviously wanted a son-in-law to carry on his legacy since she wouldn’t. She especially had a hard time with him putting in his will that if she weren’t married, the land would be sold. It was the final knife stab to her heart.

Any second now she knew the hot water would cut off, so she reached over and turned off the taps. Pushing the shower curtain aside, she picked up the smaller towel and wrapped it around her head. The larger one she used to run over her arms, and then pulled it around her body. Carefully stepping out of the tub, she finished drying off. Setting the towel over the toilet seat, she sat down and reached for her body lotion; working out in all kinds of weather was hard on the skin.

She thought back to the way her grandfather kept inviting the hands to dinner; he was practically pimping her out. Taking a deep breath, she calmed down. No, he hadn’t ever treated her like a tool to be used to get a man; she was just so sad about the entire thing.

Finished with the lotion, she took the towel off her hair and rubbed it a little. It was mostly dry, so she put the two towels back on the rack and took down her nightie from the hook on the bathroom door and pulled it over her head. Turning to the mirror, she put on a stretchy headband; she definitely needed a trim. Then she brushed her teeth and put on her face moisturizer. Was her face one that someone would fall in love with and just have to marry, all in the next ten weeks? Somehow, she had a hard time believing that.

Getting depressed all over again, she turned off the bathroom light and left to go down the hall to her bedroom. As a teenager, she’d hated not having a connecting bathroom. Now she could move to the master bedroom and have a connecting bath, only habit kept her in the room she’d grown up in. If she were going to have to sell the land in a couple of months, she decided she was moving into the master bedroom tomorrow.

Marla turned back the covers and sat down on the edge of the bed to check her alarm clock. Alarm set, she saw Rusty come into the room from performing his own last check around the house and settle in his dog bed. She lay down and rolling onto her side, she picked up her e-reader. She had a weakness for erotic romance and loved being able to order books and read them instantly. Reading had the added benefit of letting her forget about her problems for a little while. She buried herself in the world of shifters who knew at a first glance who their mates were. There were also many heroines like her in these books; women with big asses and larger than average racks. The thing about the shifter heroes in the books she loved even more than the fact that they appreciated a woman with her body type, was they didn’t cheat. Once they met their one and only, that was it. They didn’t cheat and they didn’t stray.

That thought blasted her right back down memory lane. When her grandfather’s will had become common knowledge in town, several men had tried their luck with her. She was flattered at first and even dated one guy, Jake O’Brien
—
forever after only known as ‘Jake the Snake’ with a capital‘s’ for nearly eight months. She figured he was the one guy who couldn’t be after her land, as his ranch was three times the size of hers and not adjoining.

She found out how wrong that assumption was, when she overheard him talking to a friend one day. She had gone to visit him at lunchtime, hoping to catch him free. Noting his office door was open a crack, she crept up to surprise him and ended up getting surprised herself and not in a good way. He’d been explaining to his friend how the deal was in the bag and he’d have the land in a couple of months. How she wasn’t too much to look at, but he didn’t plan to give up sex on the side.

She was really angry and decided to test what she’d heard. At that point, she’d snuck away like a thief, tiptoeing out passed his empty secretary’s desk until she reached the main door in reception. Gripping the knob, she carefully reopened the door. Looking out in the hallway, she was happy to see there wasn’t anyone there to see her. She closed it again louder than the first time and called out for Jake’s secretary. A moment later, Jake opened his office door. After poking his head out and seeing her, he stepped through.

“Hey, honey, I came by so you could take me to lunch. Now that you’ve sent over a couple of hands to help me out, I have some free time now and then,” she said.

She had put on a fine act; Jake never doubted a thing. As she suspected, he said he was happy to see her and invited her out to lunch at her favorite place. She waited until they were sitting down in the middle of their meal before speaking.

“I don’t know why you want my land so much you’re willing to marry me for it. I have to say, it’s not my idea of a good reason for marriage to me,” she said as she dug into her steak.