Page 1 of Alien's Challenge
Prologue
Alice
“Hello!” A figure waved in the distance.
Oh no. Alice’s stomach sank. Not that Miriam wasn’t a nice person, but what the hell was she doing here?
“Miriam! How unexpected,” Alice said. She stood from her folding camp chair.
“Am I interrupting?” Miriam’s too-perky voice verged on teasing as she looked around the campsite.
Tent for one. One sleeping bag. One chair. Yeah, Alice was alone. She’d been alone since her last boyfriend ditched her and didn’t have the emotional strength to trifle with romance again.
“It’s just me and the mosquitoes,” Alice said.
“I brought pizza.” Miriam held up a flat cardboard box and gave a shy smile. “It’s low-carb with a cauliflower crust.”
What kind of abomination was that?
“Great,” Alice said, voice flat. “But what—”
“I’m not commenting on your weight,” she said quickly. “You were talking about cutting back on carbs, so I thought this would be a nice olive branch.”
Alice didn’t think the low-carb pizza had been a comment on her weight, but now she did.
And yet, Miriam continued, “If you want, I can get you a buddy membership at my gym. I can show you some exercises that are really great at working your glutes—”
Alice rolled her eyes. Well-meaning people kept offering unsolicited tips and advice about exercise or food. It wasexhausting. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
This was a one -person camping trip. Super exclusive. Just Alice and her fat butt.
“Oh, I wanted to apologize,” Miriam said.
“You could apologize on Monday.”
She bit her lower lip. “You’re mad at me. Is it the pizza? I’m not making a dig about your weight. Really. I like the cauliflower crust. I order it all the time.”
“It’s not about my weight,” Alice snapped.
But thanks for bringing it up twice.
“I know I messed up. You’re my friend and I’m sorry,” Miriam said.
Alice took a deep breath, willing the tension to leave her body. That was the point of the camping trip, right? Commune with nature. Relax. Forget the world and the damn internet for a few days.
Until the root of her problems showed up with a cauliflower pizza.
Miriam wasn’t her friend. They were colleagues. Yes, they were friendly at work, but they never socialized outside of work hours. That, Alice suspected, was her fault. She was prickly, and Miriam was so damnniceit was suspicious. Fresh out of school, she was so eager about everything.
Okay, that was definitely on Alice. She had a cold, cynical heart.
Maybe, just maybe, it had a little to do with how her ex-husband, Travis, dumped her because he “just couldn’t support her self-destructive life choices” and immediately started flirting with Miriam. Like, right in front of Alice in the library.
First, enjoying food was not self-destructive.
Second, having your husband hound you into going to the gym before work when you wanted to sleep did not make you a fan of working out. It made you resentful.
Third, it was a remarkably bad idea to work at the same school as your ex. She should have transferred to another school in the district.
