Billionaire's Holiday Bride: A Bad Boy Christmas Romance

by Serena Vale

  “Based on how you’ve carried on this last two weeks, how you throw yourself into my service – and therefore the service of everyone that my company works for, that is to say the world – then I believe that I can trust you.” He paused and put his hands together at his waist. “I have more to share with you than the secrets that I’m keeping behind this door. But I won’t force them on you. If you’d like to go back to your room and pretend that everything we’ve discussed tonight was just a dream… or perhaps maybe a drunken conversation that we’ve had – say the wine went to my head – for instance, I’ll accept that and we can go on as we have these last two weeks.”

  There was something pleading in his voice. It was as if he was somehow asking her to trust him though he was not voicing his question aloud. Like so many other times before now, he was leaving it up to her to make her own decisions… he valued her intellect and her ability to resolve the difficult issues her for herself.

  This was a tremendous thing… to think that there could be alien equipment behind that door? Part of her was easy to dismiss such a thing as nonsensical ravings. But the voice in the back of her head countered that. He’s a genius in command of his own company that pretty much owns the world. Some lunatic.

  That was a valid point. But another part of her mind could not deny that she was more than a little curious about a number of things. How could Ian have gotten something like that inside this building without anyone noticing? Not unless he lied as to its true nature so no one would be suspicious… or paid well to have the whole thing covered up… or even discovered and assembled such a thing himself? Maybe whatever this technology was it was small enough to fit inside his pocket and he had brought it into the building without anyone even knowing?

  All of these questions added weight to her curiosity. And it was a curiosity that was quickly weighing her down with a need for answers.

  Don’t think… just react, the little voice in her head said.

  “I… I want to know,” she said. But as the words left her mouth her mind became divided into two camps, one believing that her employer was a few circuits short of a full computer and the other was filled with childlike wonder.

  Ian smiled softly at her. The expression was warm and inviting. To the invisible voice that ran the building Ian said, “Mercy, please upgrade Ms. Church’s security level to Gold One.”

  The computer responded instantly. “Status upgraded, Mr. Madison.”

  Ian held out his hand, offering to hold hers.

  Just react… the voice echoed.

  Lanie reached out and took his hand, feeling warmth inside of his gentle grip that seemed to match how he usually affected the very space in which he stood. Without bothering to open the door he stepped forward and Lanie almost yanked him back to keep from colliding with the hardened wood…

  They passed through the door as if it wasn’t even there and emerged on the other side in near total darkness. The darkness was so deep it was as if she had been cast into oblivion itself. She could not see the floor… or any walls… the ceiling… or even Ian.

  “Wha…?” she began, suddenly realizing that Ian was no longer holding her hand. She seemed alone inside this strange new place. Her voice echoed as if she were speaking inside some kind of an acoustic bubble. The sound seemed to echo without end. “Ian?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” he said, his voice sounding even more hypnotic here. “Don’t be afraid.”

  She spun around, the leather of her shoes clicking against something solid beneath her feet. At least she knew that there was a floor. But everywhere she looked there was no sign of her employer. And by the sound of it, she knew that this room was certainly something unusual. She knew the dimensions of Madison Tower, right down to the living space that Ian reserved for himself, and it was impossible for something so large to exist here.

  “What… what is this place?” she asked softly.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Light sprung to life in the darkened room and she flinched as it did so, it appeared so suddenly… but soundlessly. She had expected to hear the clanking of switches or the thrumming of power. But no such thing had occurred. The lights came on so silently that a falling feather would have made more noise.

  What she saw was an image of the Earth, a beautiful image full of the usual blue of the oceans, the white of the clouds, and the brown and green masses of plant-rich continents. It hung in the air like a holographic projection… but better than anything that she had ever seen. Even the technology developed by Madison Tech didn’t come this close. She stepped forward, inching closer and inspecting the image.

  “Ian… I’ve never seen a projection like this,” she said, her voice echoing.

  “Aside from myself, no one has.”

  “Did you design this?”

  “No… I didn’t,” he said with a small chuckle from unseen quarters, though his voice seemed to be circling her. “Actually, my great-to-the-something power grandfather designed it.”

  She froze, felt her brow furrow, but couldn’t look away from the image of the floating planet. “Excuse me?”

  “Just what I said… one of my great ancestors designed and built this. It’s been in the family for a long time.”

  She began to feel the nagging sense of speaking to a madman again. “Uh… Ian… that’s not possible. That would mean that your ancestor had a working knowledge of computer engineering… three-dimensional mathematics… holographic projections… and even—”

  A shimmering light appeared behind her, one that seemed so dazzling that it drew her attention away from the projection of Earth. When she turned she saw something that was definitively otherworldly. And it stole her breath away.

  Some kind of specter stood before her. It was shaped just as a man was, but made of a brilliant white light, and it was without a face. It reminded her of images of figures described in holy texts. But this was different. The figure that stood before her shimmered over its entire surface and that familiar sense of the air turning warm, almost to a boil, washed over her.

  “Electricity?” the figure finished… with Ian’s voice.

  Lanie felt her eyes widen, her shock was so profound that she couldn’t even bring herself to take cautious steps back. She was rooted to the spot, unable to look away and unable to speak.

  The figure… Ian… waved its – his – hand and the image of the Earth, the entire room for that matter, changed behind her. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but around the entire room elements that reminded her of tactical displays began to float across the air.

  More images formed around her. New orbs began to float in the air… she recognized the planets of the solar system. Characters that she couldn’t read and something that looked like tactical arches began to circle them all as they moved and the images would have put any planetarium to shame.

  Ian in his new form – she still couldn’t believe what she was looking at – stood beside her. He held his hands up like a conductor about to bring an orchestra to life and with a sweeping gesture the image expanded. The floating orbs of the solar system were reduced in size to a quarter of what they had been and more images, akin to miniature models of other solar systems, came into being. The same arches and characters that she had seen around her home system covered these facsimiles as well.

  She was without words.

  “What you’re looking at,” Ian said, stepping forward and circling each miniature system as if he were looking at displays in a museum, “is the most advanced weapons system in the world… in any world.” She noted – for the first time – that this white and dazzling light did not seem to have eyes… that he was made of nothing but… electricity? Plasma? Neon? Whatever the case, he seemed to be able to see without the organs necessary to do so. “And it’s what keeps those nasty aliens like those you see in the films from attacking.”

  She forgot all about the display – weapon – whatever it was, and focused more on her host. More questions came to
her mind. “Ian… this is what you do when you come in here? You protect the planet?”

  “Yes. My people are called the Paladin,” he said, his voice just as mesmerizing as his body. “Or at least, that’s how our name would translate in any language on Earth.”

  “Guardian,” she supplied, knowing the word.

  He gave a nod. “We’ve guarded Earth and thousands of other worlds like it for millennia.”

  “We?” she asked, feeling astonished. “You mean that there’s more than one of you here?”

  “On Earth? No, I’m the only one… I’m all that is needed to stand guard.”

  “Guard? Against what?” she asked, though considering everything that she had seen in the last sixty seconds she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know.

  “You’re much happier not knowing,” he replied, the comment making her think that he was attuned to her thoughts.

  Shit! Maybe he is! He’s a fucking alien!

  “I… I don’t…”

  “The scientists of your world believe that Earth is a conglomeration of random chances that are rare – nearly impossible – in the rest of the galaxy. Water that is in a liquid state… an oxygen atmosphere… more forms of life than can be counted… rest assured these things are not exclusive to Earth. Not by a long shot.”

  She took a tentative step forward. “There are others?”

  “Millions,” Ian replied. “Scattered so far across the cosmos that even with the technology of my own people, it would take a century to reach the nearest habitable planet with intelligent life upon it.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “That sounds pretty far.”

  Ian turned to look at her. “It is. It’s a wonderful place, I’m told.”

  She looked around at the floating images. “And all of these have life upon them? And what? You can attack them all from here with this… weapon?”

  “No… not at all,” he said. “What you’re looking at is a real-time projection of every system that has elements upon it that are… hateful towards Earth. I can track and monitor them all, yes, but the weapons systems are meant to protect the Earth primarily.”

  “Wait… what do you mean hateful?” she said, feeling a pang of panic.

  “There is one thing your science fiction films tend to get right. It is a place where other envious species would very much like to come to pillage your world for one very specific resource.”

  “Liquid water?” she guessed.

  “No.”

  “The people… slave labor?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Oil? Vegetation? Minerals?”

  “No, no, and no.”

  “Then what?”

  Ian folded his hands at his waist once again, a gesture that was humanizing and familiar. Somehow it comforted her to see him do so. “Reproduction.”

  She felt a nerve twitch in her forehead. “Come again?”

  He began to walk again, circling her. “Biological reproduction… evolution… basically, they wish to learn more about sex.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was hearing. It was as if he had told her that the Earth was actually just painted on the face of the galaxy’s largest balloon and that their world could pop at any moment. “Wait… what?” she said firmly.

  “It would take too long to explain it in its entirety, Lanie. But the simplest version would be to say that countless species all over the universe – while mostly organic – have gotten to the point of technologically surpassing others. But by doing so they diminish themselves biologically… evolution loses its grip because of their tinkering with their own genetics and such. I can think of a dozen species who utilized machines for reproduction… and eventually they became so dependent upon such things that they couldn’t survive without them. Something was… lost. They would very much like to try and find it again. And they would not be gentle in their means of doing so.”

  She felt a lump form in her throat as dark images formed in her mind. “And so… how do we fit into all of that?”

  “Humans are not so different from the countless species of the galaxy, Lanie. You develop machinery to aid you in every little effort… communication… transportation… computers… refrigeration… microwaves… light… heat… others have done as much before. But the one arena where you have not developed technology to replace similar facets of your lives is how you reproduce.”

  She shook her head, finding a weak spot in the argument. “But… there have to be species out there that can… I don’t know… clone themselves or something in order to keep living.”

  “Indeed there are… some can grow entire populations within a day. But as I said, but doing so, they’ve lost something critical. Nature… natural selection… reinforcing the gene pool… selective mutation as nature intended… you humans have not lost this, despite your many advancements.”

  “But… we use technology for reproduction all the time. Conception implants… genetic modification… artificial insemination…”

  “All true,” Ian replied, “but you – as a species – don’t use such devices as a sole means of procreation. You… uh… what is the best way to describe it? Still do it the old fashioned way?”

  She was silent.

  Ian rocked on his feet, a thing that she knew he did in his alternate form when he was nervous about something. Such a thing did not happen often. “Now that I’ve said that, I suppose now would be as good a time as any to share another secret of mine.”

  She waited.

  “Lanie… the form you see me in now is only half of what I truly am.”

  “Huh?”

  He sighed. “There is one universal constant for all species in the galaxy, Lanie. We’re born, we grow old, and we die. And it falls to our progeny to replace us when we’ve gone.”

  A chord in her heart struck her. “Oh my God… are you dying?”

  “Am I—? What? No, no, no, no,” he said quickly. “No, I’m not dying… and hopefully not for a long time yet.”

  She felt relieved.

  “No… what I mean to say is… I need an heir,” he said carefully, almost nervously. It was the first time she had ever heard him sound like that.

  “An heir?”

  “Someone to take over all of this,” he said, gesturing the impossibly large room and encompassing everything in it, “when I’m too old to carry on.” He faced her and she had the overpowering feeling that he was staring at her, though he had no eyes.

  The implication struck her like an industrial dump truck.

  “Wait… you mean…?”

  He stepped forward took her darker flesh into illuminated hands. “Lanie… I didn’t just choose you for your intellect, although that was a largely contributing factor. That implant in your hand… it does more than just open doors.”

  The small implant in her right hand suddenly seemed to grow very hot beneath her skin, yet she remained unharmed. “It’s… it’s some kind of a genetic reader, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Not everyone gets one here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. You’re the only one in fact. And that day I brought you to the doors here and asked you to touch them? You remember what happened?”

  She recalled the sensation. “That sting that I got?”

  He nodded. “All life is composed of energy, Lanie. Most are radically different from one another… like nuclear fusion versus steam power. But there are some that are so similar that they’re almost identical, like electricity and lightning.”

  “Lightning is electricity,” she pointed out.

  “No… lightning is naturally occurring plasma, provided by nature. Electricity is the result of burning coal, or friction derived by wind power or hydrodynamics. One is man-made, the other is not.”

  Oddly enough, she saw his point.

  “Lanie,” he said, his grip gentle upon her hands, “I chose you because you’re keenly intellectual… because I knew that somewhere deep inside you were curious about the work that we did here. The company w
orks to provide and make things better for mankind. That is exactly what I do from within these walls. But what I can’t do is go on forever.”

  She nervously licked her lips. “Ian… you’re asking me to… have your child?”

  “I am,” he said, though he said so plainly and not as though he wished to press her for an answer.

  She was silent.

  “My mother was also human, Lanie.”

  She looked at him curiously.

  “That is why I said I am only half of what I appear to be. We – the Paladin – do not have genders… not as you understand them. But when my first ancestor came here, many thousands of years ago, we discovered that this post had many problems. It was too far away from home for one. We were years away from our home world… we could not simply go back and forth as we wished. We had to make some… adjustments.”

  She knew where he was going with this. “You started taking human wives?”

  “Ones that were carefully selected,” he confirmed. “Once we realized that the energies of our bodies were compatible we realized that we did not have to go back home. Earth became our home. And the mission of my greatest forbearers became the mission of the next generation, all the way down to me. And now, my time has come.”

  “So… what… you’re looking to retire?” she asked.

  “Eventually,” he said, “but not today… and certainly not for many years to come.” He sighed, and the sound was tinged with self-disappointment as if he were failing to achieve what he had set out to do. “What I said about other races utilizing machines to reproduce… the same is true for me… as it was for my ancestors, only our dependence relies on biologics now rather than technology. My genome has changed since the time of my first ancestor. If I were to return to the Paladin home world, I would not be able to procreate with anyone there. I need a woman… a human woman if my mission is to continue.” His grip on her hands became lightly firmer, pleading, “I want that to be you, Lanie.”

  The oddity of this whole event seemed to melt inside of her like butter. She had imagined a man saying words like this to her for her entire life. That a rich, powerful, and handsome man might do it was the stuff that other women dreamed of.