Twelve parsecs before Christmas, aimed at nowhere Montana,
Comes a hurting heart who’s never heard of Santa.
He seeks a mail order bride for his half-broken family
And turns out, there’s a lonely Earther named Darcy.
Except, oops, she doesn’t believe in aliens from afar.
But her gift this winter will be love, bright as a star.
Failed cryo-sleep + a spaceship crash + some cozy family chaos…
It’s Christmas at the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency!
🐲 Alien dragon shifters
🤔 Touch of amnesia
🛏 Only one pillow fort
❄ Snowbound (but plenty of cocoa and cookies)
💖 Home for the holidays
After getting dumped right before a Caribbean Christmas, Darcy needed a place to spend the holiday. Petsitting at a mysterious resort in Montana, while the whole place is closed for a winter break, seems like exactly what she wants: peaceful, quiet, and alone.
Until a spaceship—?!?!?—makes a very hard landing on the back patio.
Now she’s getting a crash course in drakling head wounds, interstellar hardware, and hearts broken worse than hers. This catastrophe definitely calls for extra whipped cream with chocolate sprinkles.
The universe might be near infinite, but sometimes it’s the littlest things—whether wrapped in ribbons or unwrapped in the middle of the night—that matter most. Happy Holidays!
Excerpt from STAR BRIGHT
Darcy got up from the little fort she’d made from extra furniture and a couple white sheets with throw pillows. Most of the facilities were locked up while the center was closed for the holidays, but the three-story central lobby had floor-to-ceiling windows that curved overhead, framing the dark sky. Unlike the rest of the place, it felt wide open.
But lonely. Maybe that was why she was spending most of her hours here, hunkered down with a bunch of books. As petsitting opportunities went, this one was weird but at least she had somewhere to be.
Speaking of which… “C’mon, Ug. Last stop of the night.”
When she opened the lobby door, he lumbered past her. Supposedly the dog had free range of the property and she wasn’t to worry about him running off, but Darcy still didn’t feel right about letting him roam unattended. Slipping her huge fuzzy socks into even bigger clogs, she followed him out onto the patio.
“Watch out for bears,” she reminded him, as she’d done every night, pulling her slouchy fleece cardigan so tight around her that the cartoon cats looked like they were stretching. “And cougars. And ticks. And whatever else is out there.”
Not that she’d seen anyone or anything. Just quiet and lonely, while it seemed like everyone else in the world was busy with friends and family for the holidays.
“At least we have each other, right, Ug?”
Not surprisingly, the dog didn’t answer. Instead, his oversized head was tilted upward in a strange stance for a dog. He pivoted, tracking something above the roofline that she couldn’t see from her angle. She stepped toward him, turning to follow his focus.
Nothing.
Her skittering heartbeat didn’t ease. Ug was too big to get grabbed from above by an owl, but no point in risking…whatever else was out there.
“Maybe we should just call it a night, hmm?” She made a little shooing gesture. “C’mon now—”
A howling roar drowned her out just as the tops of the pine trees shattered. A huge, metallic gray shape smashed toward them, and she could only stand there gaping.
Ug reared up, knocking her back toward the protection of the lobby awning while branches and needles rained around them. Ah, the irony of being impaled by Christmas tree debris…
She landed on her ass, and the impact finally jolted a breath from her, but her “what the f—” was drowned out by the cacophony of the mass that slammed into the manicured lawn just beyond the patio. She threw her hands around her head, recoiling. The gray bulk—big as a bus, but a bus with wings?—groaned as it settled back from its nose-in position, thudding hard in the torn-up dirt.
After what seemed like forever, the night was quiet again, except for Darcy’s muttered, “Fuuuuck…”
It was a spaceship.
A spaceship had just crash-landed at her holiday housesitting.
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