Page 12 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

I made myself stop before cracking open a second liquor bottle. I moved to the kitchen window, watching another shooting star blaze across the sky, brighter than the others, its trail lingering like a question mark. The oddly moving, blue hued comet was gone. Could I make another wish? The first falling star was long gone.

What would I wish for if I could have anything in the world? Not money—though that would solve my immediate problems. Not success—though that would prove Derek wrong. Not even for Mystery and Sassafras to suddenly fall madly in love—though that would save my ranch.

No, what I wanted more than anything was to prove to myself that I wasn't just decorative. My hands weren’t only made for manicures. My mind wasn’t a paperweight. My will was just as strong as some knuckle-headed, cowboy hat wearing man’s. I was more than the pretty redhead who'd looked good on Derek's arm at agricultural galas and horse auctions.

The stars blurred slightly as unwelcome tears filled my eyes. I blinked them away, angry at my own weakness. Crying solved nothing. Neither did sitting here feeling sorry for myself.

The tears halted when my gaze caught that strange light in the sky again, moving in a way no star or plane should move. It seemed brighter now, though that could have been a trick of my alcohol-blurred vision. Was it getting closer?

I closed my eyes, shaking my head sharply.

“Get it together, Tucker,” I scolded myself.

I parted my lashes, finding the light again.

For a heartbeat, it really did appear to come closer to the ground and hover directly over my property before drifting toward the distant tree line that marked the border of Sunflower Hills.

"Send help if you're aliens," I called out to it, laughing at my own absurdity. "Preferably in the form of horse aphrodisiacs or lottery winnings."

The light pulsed once, as if in acknowledgment, then disappeared behind the trees. I shook my head, blaming the whiskey for making me talk to strange lights in the sky. Next thing you know, I'd be having heart-to-hearts with the refrigerator about its rattling noise and how it wasn’t helping my mental state.

Inside the house, my bed called to me—the one luxury I'd allowed myself when purchasing this place, a memory foam mattress that cradled my exhausted body at the end of each grueling day. Tomorrow would bring another day. Another new beginning. Another matchmaking attempt.

Whatever happened, I'd face it on my feet, not on my knees begging for a savior. Derek had been wrong about so many things when it came to me. I was determined to make sure he was wrong about this too.

I might lose my ranch. I might lose my horses. I might lose everything I'd worked for. But I wouldn't lose myself. Not again. Not ever.

4

CYRO

Navigation is for morons from Mars!

My tentacles flicked across the navigation console, the touchstones of my home world’s technology familiar and reassuring. I’d trained on this system for several solar cycles; I knew it like the back of my tentacles.

The ship was an extension of myself and my kind. It pulsed around me in rippling waves of bioluminescent aquamarine, responding to my commands as we prepared to enter Earth's atmosphere. This primitive planet, mostly water with inconvenient landmasses interrupting the oceanic perfection, would yield samples critical to my research. Our own seas back home were drying. If we couldn’t replenish them, we’d need to abandon our planet.

As we sliced through the weak atmosphere easily, I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction, my skin shifting to a pleased lavender hue. After all, I was Cyro, respected xenobiologist of the Thalassar system, and this mission was proceeding exactly according to plan. I expected no different; I’d led a dozen flawless trips to various worlds.

"Trajectory locked for deep trench insertion," I announced to my crewmates, not bothering to hide the smug undulation rippling through my mantle. "As predicted, the gravitational pull is precisely as calculated in my pre-mission assessment. We should be able to collect and extract within six terradunes."

The living walls of our vessel contracted and expanded in a rhythmic pattern. The artificial intelligence and the oxygen-dependent nature of the newer vessels made them feel truly sentient. My companions and I had coined the ship Shada-Vey.

“Slight fluctuation in the salinity system,” Kalith notified me, the tips of three tentacles flying across his own engineering station.

“Concerning?” I questioned, shifting my eyes, not my head, easily watching him through narrowing slits, the colors around me highly contrasted as light split and flowed around objects.

“Barely a blip,” he lifted two tentacles into the air, curving them and using them to shrug dismissively.

“What have I told you, Kalith?” I admonished.

“If it’s not important, keep my mouth shut?” Kalith mumbled in irritation.

I monitored the readouts with half my attention, confident in my calculations. The other half of my consciousness was already anticipating the water samples we would collect—pristine specimens from Earth's deepest trench, crucial components for my synthetic terraforming research. From early probes, we knew various creatures protected the fathomless bottom of what humankind coined the Marianas, but they were peaceful unless provoked.

The first sign of trouble came as a subtle vibration through the gelatinous floor beneath me. I dismissed it initially as minor atmospheric turbulence, nothing more. The second sign was harder to ignore: a discordant tone from the navigation array, followed by a ripple of crimson warning lights across the console.

"Interesting," I murmured, three of my primary tentacles stretching toward different sections of the control panel. The ship's interior, normally a soothing, watery blue, began pulsing with anxious amber hues that matched my rising concern.