Publisher's Synopsis
Download for FREE with Kindle Unlimited This is a 8,000 words CLEAN stand-alone story with an HEA, so no cliff-hangers! New Orleans transplant Judge Lefebvre, an agnostic drawn to Sedona's beauty, gives Hummer tours to the red rock vortexes. Judge's brother Thom, CEO of a Flagstaff bank, keeps challenging Judge to get a real job. Inya Oshkolte, a Yavapai native to Verde Valley, drives a taxi in order to avoid returning to the reservation. When Inya drives an inebriated Thom Lefebvre back to his resort, he implores her to meet his younger brother and talk some sense into him. Ensign Uyuda, a non-combatant specimen collector dispatched from Messier 31 galaxy, arrives in Bermuda on assignment. A darknet warning from a friend and colleague leads Uyuda to desert her mission; she wants no part in an alien seeding project that would eliminate millions of earth humans. To keep alien insurgents from extracting the data recorded in her arterial network, Uyuda must transmute into a human host. She finds the perfect host in Sedona: twenty-one-year-old Inya Oshkolte, a human female whose elimination would create an ethical dilemma even in the minds of the alien insurgents. Inya and Judge, romantically drawn to each other from their first introduction, have a surprise in store. Inya, who cannot have children, is suddenly impregnated with an alien fetus. Judge, who simply does not accept such ideas, is now being told through its host, Inya, that he is of alien origin. Judge and Inya have a difficult choice: raise the alien baby-which would allow insurgents to extract the data and ultimately eliminate scores of humanity-or allow Uyuda to fuse her mind with Inya's. ---------------------------------------------------------- EXCERPT FROM BOOK Inya had just settled back in her seat when an open-air Jeep coated in red dirt came wheeling up alongside her taxi. The occupants, fashionably grimed, were transfixed on the tour guide's commentary. Inya slid a little lower in her seat and listened. "I don't place a lot of confidence in the vortex theory," he said. "If, say, you define a vortex as a place where nature is exceptionally alive and healthy, then Sedona actually has far more than four." He smiled at his occupants, and Inya sank even lower in her seat. Damn, she thought. Where has he been hiding? That hunk of a guy was no doubt the most requested. Working his ass off, that's where he's been. His sleek, black hair hung free about his shoulders. As he continued to talk, he casually fished a rubber band out of the Hummer's console and tied it back, showing a prominent jawline and imploring dark eyes that could melt even the most jaundiced of souls. Though Inya was five-eight-a typical height for the longer and more muscular Yavapai women-she could see that he would easily clear her by six inches. His body reminded her of some of the squash competitors she'd known at Coconino Community College-muscular thighs and full shoulders, built for speed and endurance. "I wouldn't analyze too much about what you feel or don't feel out there," he went on. "We know that Sedona was once underwater, which creates much of the beauty you see around you. Everywhere." At that opportune moment, he glanced over at the taxi, black eyes riveting on Inya. She pulled her baseball cap's bill down over her eyes, rolled up her window a few inches, and pretended to be napping. Under the shade of her ball cap's bill, she sensed the passengers disembarking and making their way across the highway toward Blue Moon Cafe. By her cell phone clock, he had less than five minutes before his next tour. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a 9,000 word stand-alone story with an HEA, so no cliff-hangers!
