Chapter One

SAMANTHA

Moving and getting married are two of life's most stressful events. I know it's true; I looked it up on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale. I'd put myself in quite a situation this time - I was getting married to an alien I hardly knew for an unknown amount of time. As part of the deal, I would move to a planet that was flooding and gradually losing all its natural land.

I couldn't stop nervously twitching my legs. I suppose the reality of my situation was starting to overwhelm me.

I had it easy compared to Ashlyn. She never even met her future alien spouse, Nathaniel, before they got married. I had met his brother Jori before, and we had interacted with each other. Nathaniel and Ashlyn had concocted a scheme where Jori and I would get married through TerraMates, and good things would happen for both of us. Nathaniel knew a guy, who knew another guy, and manipulated the TerraMates matching algorithm. We ended up on each other's lists of potential mates, and we picked each other.

To put it kindly, this wasn't a dream marriage for me. It's not like Jori chose me because he loved me or even cared about me. He was in trouble with the law.

Jori needed a wife so he could appear to be a stable, upstanding, and contributing member to Vandwan society. In theory, his post-marriage life would convince the parole board that he was a different person. If he failed, Jori would go back to jail to serve the rest of his sentence. He still had over a year of time remaining. On his planet, the authorities could extend his sentence if they thought he had not actually reformed.

I didn't want to tell my parents I was marrying an ex-con. In my mind, I was convinced Jori wasn't a terrible person. Otherwise, why would I marry him? He must be misguided and misunderstood.

A smile crept over my face as I brought up the image of Jori in my mind. I had to admit one of the reasons I entered into the marriage contract was Jori's fantastic body. His lips helped convince me too. I wasn't doing this for sex, but I wouldn't say no if the opportunity arose. It had been a long dry period since my last steady boyfriend. Come to think of it, I wasn't doing this only for money either, although it was a pleasant bonus. TerraMates paid well for going to a foreign planet and marrying an alien.

I was getting married to have an adventure in a new world. It would be safe; TerraMates monitored the relationship to make sure there wasn't any abuse. After a year, they would help me divorce if I wanted to, no questions asked.

Strangely enough, not many of the arranged marriages ended in divorce. My friend Ashlyn's marriage was a perfect example. She and Nathaniel got married. They didn't even know each other, and they ended up falling in love.

That wouldn't happen with Jori. He wasn't husband material at all, but he was sexy as hell.

One thing about TerraMates was that I didn't have to sleep with him if I didn't want to. The contract did not require sexual relations; Sex only happened if both parties consented.

I wondered if I was going to consent.

I stared out the window into the blackness of space. I tried to appreciate the beauty of the stars and distract my mind. I didn't know when I would be able to be in outer space again; I wanted to enjoy it, and not become overwhelmed with my future. Just as I started to calm down, an announcement blasted through the air.

We are now approaching Vandwa, and beginning deceleration procedures. Be advised: mild nausea can be a side effect of the deceleration process.

People around me rushed to their seats and strapped themselves down. I had been on a few space flights before. This part of the journey always felt like a violent change in speed. I managed to make my way back to my seat just as I started to sweat. I felt hot, and all I wanted to do was get off the ship. My stomach was churning. I had suffered from motion sickness all my life. When I was a child, my parents would take us on trips to a neighboring city two hours away. It was fun once we got there, but I typically spent the traveling time vomiting.

On my first trip to Vandwa, I realized my motion sickness would cause complications on the planet. Boats were the primary method of transportation. The last time I was there, I thought I might die from nausea. The only thing that made me feel better was medication from Earth, but I didn't like putting foreign substances into my body. I hoped Jori didn't have extensive travel plans in the future. I looked forward to getting to a building on land, and staying there. If we needed to go anywhere, we could walk.

The view of Vandwa out the window was much different than the appearance of Earth. My home planet was a big blue marble with several land masses. Vandwa was a big blue marble covered in black swirls. The strange black irregularities were known locally as The Barrier, a Vandwan construction that was visible from space.

A long time ago, Vandwans constructed The Barrier to protect themselves from dangerous aquatic creatures. Some wildlife on Vandwa was safe, but other animals, like the slepyi or rajywth, were merely bags of teeth and fins, and only lived to eat things.

As the population expanded, they needed more space to live. They pushed out The Barrier to expand their territory. No person or committee planned the expansions. The result was a hodgepodge of barriers all over the planet.

Since they lived their lives in safety on the right side of The Barrier, and they had constructed it so long ago, modern Vandwans were afraid of what lived beyond it. I was too. I was certain there were undiscovered horrible exotic animals in the ocean, waiting to consume me.

Even though it was difficult to see land in the ocean waters, it existed. For now. The tides were rising, and the available natural land was decreasing rapidly. Ashlyn and Nathaniel were environmental scientists working to solve the Vandwan housing crisis. They were practically national heroes for their innovation - their idea was to build artificial land masses anchored to the ocean floor.

Their companies had made a few test cities in places without natural land. Some environmental refugees now had places to live, but nearly half of Vandwa's population had refugee status. Many people waited for accommodations, but the government could only work so fast.

After we had landed, I needed to take a boat to Jori's address. The boat drove itself. Even though I hated being on the ocean, it was nicer than having to deal with motion sickness in a spacecraft. The fresh breeze helped me overcome my problems.

Jori was supposed to pick me up, but I couldn't find him at the spaceport. I tried not to let it bother me. We weren't a couple, and Jori wasn't a thoughtful person. I had to squash the feeling of disappointment in my stomach.

When I got to his apartment and knocked on the door, there was no answer. I found myself stuck outside and didn't know what to do. I wondered where the hell he was. He knew when my spacecraft was scheduled to arrive, and I wasn't late. I sent him a message and waited, tapping my foot.

There was no response. What was I going to do now? My stomach started growling.

I turned around. I had a passing familiarity with the area, but I couldn't read Vandwan. The signs for most buildings were incomprehensible to me. I remembered a restaurant across the street that served exotic food I was able to digest.

Most of the dishes on this planet were seafood.

That was an understatement. Everything they ate here was seafood, which wasn't my number one choice for a meal. If there were tentacles or shells on the food, maybe humans were not meant to eat it. But I was hungry, and I was going to be here for a while. I needed to work on adjusting my palate. I made up my mind to get myself a bite to eat.

My luggage was heavy, but I wasn't going to leave my belongings at Jori's front door. I dragged everything behind me, wondering if I had brought too much stuff to Vandwa. It was difficult choosing what to take with me and what to leave on Earth. I couldn't stand to leave some things back on Earth that were part of my personality. At the time, I couldn't do without them. Right now, I speculated that perhaps they were not as important as I thought at the time.

I went into the restaurant and remembered a few seafood-lite dishes I thought I could swallow. Getting some food into my mouth helped me calm down, even if it was a taste I didn't enjoy.

I wished Jori would contact me. I wondered if I would have to stay in a hotel tonight, or if he had changed his mind about the marriage. He could still back out. We weren't married, and he would have to pay a penalty, but he was rich.

My mind wandered to different possibilities. I suppose he might have had an accident, or be hurt in a hospital. Perhaps I was fuming at him needlessly.

I pursed my lips into a thin line. I hoped he wasn't hurt, but if he was all right, I felt like punching him for treating me like this.

After my meal, I ordered Tlisihsh, a delicious Vandwan drink that was one of my favorite things on the planet. I couldn't dislike everything on Vandwa. Finally, because I couldn't stomach another bite, I trudged back across the street and up to Jori's apartment, lugging the heavy suitcase behind me up the stairs.

I had sent him several messages while I sat alone in the restaurant. When I dropped my suitcase outside his door and sat on it, I sent him one more, just in case.

Waiting for you outside your door. Where are you?

There was no answer, and I felt like a crazy person sitting there.

The flight from Earth to Vandwa took forty hours, and I spent two more in customs. Add in two hours at the restaurant and another waiting around at Jori's apartment, and the total of time spent on my space adventure was forty-five hours. I was too exhausted to stay angry. I lay down on the floor, put my head on top of my suitcase, and dozed off.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a handsome man gazing down at me with a concerned look on his face. I could hardly believe it was Jori. As he saw me regain consciousness, his expression changed into a frown.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

I felt myself becoming defensive immediately.

Jori put me in a position where I had to get myself home from the spaceport, made me wait hours for him to arrive, and had the nerve to ask me what I was doing here?

"What do you mean, what am I doing here? I'm here to marry you. Isn't a better question why weren't you here? I hope this isn't setting the tone for the rest of our relationship."

"Samantha." He cut me off with one reserved word. "Your flight was supposed to come in tomorrow."

"I was supposed to come in today, and I did," I said, getting revved up again. "I don't mind getting myself from the airport to your place, but you could have been here to meet me. I've been waiting for three hours. How come you didn't answer my messages?"

"Samantha," he said, holding up his hand in an ineffective attempt to stop the flow of my words and anger. "I'm sorry. Your message said you were arriving tomorrow. I was going to pick you up, and I didn't make you wait on purpose. I must have been in a communications dead zone, and I didn't get any messages."

"Oh," I said. My anger should have died immediately, but I was still hot. It had been a misunderstanding, but I still felt disappointed and wronged.

He stared at me, and I realized I must look like a mess. There was no showering allowed on the space ship as water was scarce. I hadn't had a shower for two days. I had moved from one grungy spaceport to another, and I had spent the last hour sleeping on top of a suitcase. I smoothed down my hair. I knew I looked nasty.

"You look tired," he remarked, scanning his retina to open the door.

"That's why I was sleeping on the floor," I said, getting up and going into the apartment.

Jori took my suitcase into a room opposite the bathroom.

"I set up the spare room for you," he said. I ignored a flash of disappointment. It would be crazy to sleep in the same bed with him. We weren't in a relationship; we were getting married.

The room had a view of the ocean. I went back out into the hallway and checked out the rest of the apartment. Every room here had a view of the ocean. Jori lived in a city that was constructed on artificial land. There were houses, apartment buildings, businesses, and boardwalks that looked like streets. All the buildings floated together in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.

The apartment was minimalist and had an air of simplicity paired with technology. I had noticed this combination everywhere I went on Vandwa. There were stairs in the apartment, but a retina scanner was on his door. The oceans had a combination of old sailing vessels and modern, computer-driven boats. It was charming to me.

"I know it's late, and you might want to sleep in tomorrow, but I've rescheduled the wedding for nine o'clock."

"Nine in the morning?" I said, horrified. My brain was hardly active at that hour; I was an evening person. I wasn't sure what time it was currently because of the space flight, but on Earth, I didn't like getting up until ten at the earliest. On my days off, I slept in as long as possible. "I can try, but I'll be a zombie."

He frowned at me. "It's a TerraMates stipulation that we must get married within twenty-four hours of your arrival. We will only have a few hours of emergency time if there are any complications and we have to postpone our appointments. We're pushing the boundaries of TerraMates already. We should follow their rules or your Vandwan citizenship could have problems."

I'd forgotten all about the TerraMates paperwork.

There was a reason we were using TerraMates instead of getting married on our own. The mail order bride agency could expedite my citizenship papers. If we had to navigate the complicated bureaucratic process by ourselves, I might never get what I needed. The fact that I was trying to marry a convicted criminal also complicated things.

It didn't hurt that TerraMates was going to pay me 500,000 credits. I was going to invest it all in my retirement fund. My job at the coffee shop back on Earth wasn't going to pay for my golden years.

"I forgot," I said. "Don't worry, I'll be there."

After a moment's hesitation, he said, "Ashlyn mentioned you brought a dress."

My cheeks flushed. I wished Ashlyn hadn't said anything to him.

"It was my mother's."

I didn't meet his eyes. I was afraid I might cry in front of him. "Mom gave it to me so I could have something that was hers at the wedding. She wanted to be here, but it was too expensive."

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have paid for her flight to Vandwa, but I didn't know."

My jaw dropped open. I had hinted several times about my parents and their poor financial situation and how disappointed they were to be stuck on Earth. If he had understood me earlier, I could have my mother with me right now.

I didn't want to say what was on my mind. "It doesn't make sense. We'll be getting a divorce in a year. It's not a real wedding, so my parents don't have to be here. It's too late now."

I closed my mouth. The half-truth left a bad taste in my mouth.

"Right," he said, gazing at me with his intense green eyes. "I guess you're right." He seemed about to say one thing, then stopped and started saying something else. "The bathroom's across the hall if you want a shower. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator. If you wake up, and I'm not here, I'm probably just out for a run or taking care of last minute wedding details in the morning."

I nodded. "Okay."

A hug would feel nice right now. Or even him reassuring me that our marriage through TerraMates was a good idea. Anything that would make me feel like I wasn't alone on an alien planet.

Jori wasn't a touchy-feely person. "See you in the morning," he said.

"Sure. Good-night."

He was gone, leaving me by myself. But what had I expected? Jori wasn't my boyfriend. He wasn't even my friend. We were virtually strangers. Strangers who were going to get married in the morning.

The exhaustion, his cold treatment, and the thought of being married to him for a year made me burst into tears.