Maybe it was just the sugar rush from the almond mini croissants, but Sage was feeling fantastic as she pulled out of the gravel lot in Grandma Helen’s pick-up truck.

The morning was clear and pleasant, still cool after last night’s showers.

Riggs sat by her side. His big body barely fit in the cab and his thighs, encased in skintight jeans, were so close to hers she could practically feel the heat pouring off him.

He looked out the window, a pleased expression on his handsome face.

“It really is nice out,” Sage agreed with his unspoken thought. “It will probably heat up this afternoon though. Hopefully we can be the first one at the printers’ and pick up early too.”

“Mmm,” Riggs agreed.

“You know, I can’t believe that Grandma Helen did all this herself every year,” Sage marveled, not for the first time. “I mean she had a few hired hands, but all the cooking, organizing the tourist picks, keeping the books, she did it all herself.”

“Was it difficult for her?” Riggs asked.

Sage thought about that as they passed the last of the farmland and neared the little village.

“I’m sure it wasn’t easy,” she said. “There were bad years. And even in a good year, there’s so much work to be done. But she always seemed happy. Do you know what I mean?”

Riggs nodded thoughtfully.

“I mean there’s a certain kind of person who is busy and they talk it to death,” Sage said. “I’m so busy, I’m so stressed. That wasn’t her at all. And there’s the kind of person who wears thin under stress. They might be suffering in silence but you can see the exhaustion in their eyes. But Grandma Helen enjoyed hard work, so I think it was difficult, but that kept it interesting for her.”

She smiled, thinking of Grandma Helen at the end of a long day on the farm, sitting in her rocker out on the porch, telling little Sage and Tansy funny stories about the chickens or the farm hands or her own blunders.

“Do you miss her?” Riggs asked.

Sage’s breath caught in her throat.

Of all things, she had not expected that question. But his instinct was right. It was just like Riggs to listen so well that he could get to the heart of the matter.

“I do,” she said, nodding.

Riggs nodded too.

“I guess I’ve been so busy worrying about Tansy’s mourning I never really thought about my own,” Sage said after a moment.

“You’re like her,” Riggs said.

“Like Tansy?” Sage asked.

“Like your grandmother,” Riggs said softly. “You work hard to care for your sister and for the rest of us.”

Warmth bloomed in Sage’s chest. It was a wonderful compliment. The more so because she was surprised by it, yet knew it was true.

“Grandma Helen was a good example for us,” Sage allowed.

They had arrived in the little town. She pulled into a space right across from the post office.

“Here we are,” she said.

Riggs hopped out and opened the door for her before she even had her purse out of the console.

“Thank you.” She rewarded his chivalry with a smile, which he returned.

It was still quiet in town. The coffee shop on the corner was bustling, but almost nothing else was open.

“It’s this one,” she told Riggs, indicating the copy shop.

Since the arrival of the aliens in Stargazer, the little town had re-embraced the outer space theme they’d taken on decades ago, when they first expected extraterrestrial contact.

The print shop’s formerly faded sign had been replaced by a purple awning with Cosmic Copies emblazoned on it in gold lettering.

She pushed open the door, setting the sleigh bells hung over it jingling.

“Someone’s up early,” Howard crowed from behind the counter.

“Hey, Howard,” Sage called to him.

Howard Gillespie had been working at Cosmic Copies since Sage was a little girl. And he was an old man with a white beard back then.

“Hey yourself, Sage Martin,” Howard chuckled. “Oh, who’s your friend there? Paul Bunyan? Ha.”

She gave him a moment to laugh at his own joke.

“I am Riggs. I work on the Martins’ farm,” Riggs explained politely.

“I’ll bet you do, son,” Howard said. “You look like you could work the whole farm all by yourself.”

Sage worried that Riggs would not understand the joke.

But the big alien wisely kept his trap shut, studying the elderly printer carefully, as if he might contain important clues.

“I’d love to get flyers made,” Sage said.

“Oh, right,” Howard ripped his eyes away from Riggs. “Same Peach-Pickin’ flyers on orange stock, like your grandma always ordered. Not a problem.”

He didn’t even look up from his computer.

For a moment, Sage thought about just going with what Helen had always done.

“Sage has designed a new flyer,” Riggs said.

Howard looked up at her over his bifocals in surprise.

“You did, eh?” he asked. “Let’s have a look.”

“I can email it to you,” Sage offered as she pulled it up on her phone.

Howard pointed to his email address on his business card on the counter.

She tapped it into her phone and hit send, then waited for him to open it.

“Well now, let’s see,” Howard said, bending over the computer screen and scowling at it, as if he were trying to figure out alien technology rather than just opening the email program he used each day to do business.

At last he succeeded.

“Peachy keen,” Howard said from behind the counter. “That’s cute, Sage. It’s simple and funny - really nice work.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sincere smile.

Although she knew her accounting talents were wasted designing flyers for a tourist farm, Sage enjoyed the praise.

Once the farm was up and running in the black, there would be no place for her. Tansy and Burton could hire some hands. Arden and Drago would most likely stick around too.

And Sage would get back to her entry level accountant position at Myriax Pharmaceuticals. She’d already burned through a lot of the unpaid time off she could legally take on the Family Medical Leave Act.

She found herself considering how Riggs might fare in the real world.

She watched him looking around the print shop. He spun to take in the brightly colored sheaves of paper, the tiny boxes of paperclips and pencil erasers. She wondered what he made of it all.

Though all three men had adapted to farm life quickly and knew the place inside out, it was moments like this one when she realized how unrealistic it was to expect that they could easily join the regular world.

She and the other women had experienced a lifetime of preparation in language, culture and manners beginning when they were incredibly impressionable, and too small to walk or talk.

As she watched, he fingered a pyramid of unsharpened pencils.

The lowest one slipped out and pencils rained down on the floor.

“My apologies,” Riggs muttered, bending to retrieve the pencils. “I thought it was solid.

“No worries, son,” Howard said. “Just stick ‘em in the bin. I just stack them up for fun.”

“Thanks,” Sage said, leaning over the counter again.

“The pretty ones are never the sharpest,” Howard whispered and then gave her a garish wink. “Fifty copies on white card stock okay?”

“Uh, yes, thank you,” she said, trying not to be offended on Riggs’s behalf. “We’ll be back after lunch.”

Howard nodded. “Anytime after eleven is fine.”

She turned to see Riggs had re-stacked the pencils in a pyramid shape already.

“That was quick,” she said. “Ready to go?”

Riggs winked at her - a nice friendly wink, very much unlike the one Howard had just given her - and nodded.