Contact

SOAR TO THE HEAVENS WITH JET PILOT AND RISING STAR SUSAN GRANT!

CONTACT

*RITA Award Winner (Best Paranormal)
*P.E.A.R.L. Award Winner
*PRISM Award Winner (Best Science Fiction Romance)
*Sapphire Award Winner (Best Science Fiction Romance)
*Best Alternative Romance—All About Romance
Annual Readers’ Poll

“Fans will not be disappointed!
Contact
is exhilarating [and] unique.”

—Romance at its Best

“. . . Splendid visual imagery, natural dialogue, and superb characterization . . . [
Contact
] will wring your emotions and touch your heart [and] leave you breathless.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Drawing on her unique credentials and front-line perspective, Susan Grant has delivered a story of unusual depth and power.”

—All About Romance

“
Contact
is a superb military science fiction romance loaded with action.”

—Harriet Klausner

THE STAR PRINCE

*Winner of the Dorothy Parker Award for Excellence
*
Romantic Times
Reviewers’ Choice Nominee
*Winner of the 2002 Colorado Award of Excellence

“Susan Grant [takes] readers on an exotic exhilarating adventure . . . Ms. Grant proves she has a true gift for storytelling.”

—Romantic Times

Ms. Grant keeps “the reader amazed and entertained. . . . An out-of-this-world story you don’t want to miss!”

—Scribes World Reviews

MORE PRAISE FOR
AWARD-WINNER SUSAN GRANT!

THE STAR KING

*RITA Award Nominee (Best Paranormal)
*P.E.A.R.L. Award Winner (Best Futuristic Romance, Best Sci-Fi)
*Best “Other” Romance Award—All About Romance
Annual Readers’ Poll
*Sapphire Award Finalist
*Writer-Touch Readers’ Award Winner

“Drop everything and read this book!”

—Susan Wiggs

“Excitement, action, adventure and wonderful romance!”

—Romantic Times

“It has an air of exuberance that is worthy of any swashbuckling futuristic. Evocative and exciting!”

—Mrs. Giggles from Everything Romantic

ONCE A PIRATE

*The Francis Award Winner (Best Time-Travel)
*Two-time RWA Golden Heart Finalist

“Grant’s background . . . brings authenticity to her heroine.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The best romance I read this year!”

—The Romance Reader

“A delightful, sexy story [that] you won’t want to put down. A real winner!”

—Affaire de Coeur

“
Once a Pirate
is a fast and rollicking adventure. Following [Grant’s] career as she hones her craft will be a pleasure!”

—The Romance Journal

Barb’s eyes swerved to the television. What she’d thought was a commercial was in fact a news broadcast, a special report. The reporter was standing in an airport terminal building, a chaotic scene behind him. “Again,” he said grimly, “reports are unconfirmed—a Boeing 747 bound for San Francisco has disappeared from radar. United Flight 58 departed Honolulu International Airport at twelve thirty-eight a.m. Two hundred seventy-one passengers and twenty crewmembers are onboard. . . .”

Barb’s hand went to her throat. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room to breathe. . . . Tightly, she said, “Honey, shut it off.”

Roberta glanced up and her brows drew together. “Are you crying, Grandma?” the little girl asked in a serious voice.

Barb flopped onto the couch and hugged her close. “Mommy’s airplane got a little lost. There are brave rescuers looking for her right now. Try not to be scared.”

“She’s not in the ocean.”

Barb moved the child back and searched her face. “What do you mean?”

“She’s in the sky.” Roberta moved her hand in a sweeping motion over her head. “High up. Not in heaven. In the sky.”

Other
Love Spell
books by Susan Grant:

THE SCARLET EMPRESS

THE LEGEND OF BANZAI MAGUIRE

THE STAR PRINCESS

THE ONLY ONE
(Anthology)

A MOTHER’S WAY ROMANCE ANTHOLOGY

THE STAR PRINCE

THE STAR KING

ONCE A PIRATE

S
USAN
G
RANT

DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

March 2011

Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2002 by Susan Grant

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4285-1623-6
E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-1624-3

The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Visit us online at
www.dorchesterpub.com
.

A special thank you to the following individuals, without whom this book would not have made it from mind to paper: Catherine Asaro, who makes discussions on dying in space disturbingly fun; Charlotte Wager, a wonderful bookseller and person who didn’t mind reading in a pinch; Rose, another great lady who said that lovely word, “yes,” when I’d asked the same thing; the Thursday night readers group at the Book Barn, always willing to share the “opinion from the trenches”; Theresa Ragan, for those treadmill brainstorming sessions and pity parties; my loyal readers, the ones who have stuck with me from the very beginning; and Chris Keeslar, whose teaching, encouragement, and badgering continues to make me a better author with each new book
.

C
ONTACT

The thunderstorm appeared in front of the Boeing 747 without warning. At 33,000 feet on a calm, clear night over the Pacific Ocean three hours out of Honolulu International Airport, it should not have been there.

“It always happens during dinner,” grumbled Brian Wendt, the captain of United 58, the redeye from Honolulu to San Francisco International. “There wasn’t anything on the radar five minutes ago.”

First Officer Jordan Cady set aside her half-eaten meal and leaned forward to adjust the weather radar display. On an otherwise black screen loomed a bright oval with crisp edges and a solid center soaked in hues of magenta, red, and yellow. A radar return of that size and color indicated an intense, isolated storm cell. “It’s about sixty miles off the nose,” she said.

Captain Wendt lifted his dinner tray off his lap and slid it onto the empty cockpit seat behind him. “So much for an
uninterrupted meal. Get us a heading around it.”

Jordan typed the request to veer off their assigned flight path to air traffic control, using one of the three cockpit keyboards. UAL 58 REQUEST 100 NAUTICAL MILES TO THE LEFT FOR WEATHER.

As the captain lifted the hand-microphone to his mouth and transmitted over the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts,” Jordan scrutinized the radar screen. Other than the bright, multicolored blob, periodic sweeps of green speckles showed a storm-free sky, an ideal night to fly over the Pacific.

A chime announced the incoming message from ATC: clearance to skirt the storm. The captain turned a knob connected to the autopilot, banking the 747, while Jordan lowered the lighting in the cockpit and peered into the night.

One good peek outside is worth a thousand sweeps of the radar
. That was an old saying among pilots of the modern era. And it was usually right. Far below, tiny puffs of clouds glowed in the light of a quarter moon. Below the clouds, the sea was smooth. No lightning flashed on the horizon. Nor did Jordan see any towering cumulus clouds to back up the radar’s warning. Yet, on the odd chance the thunderstorm was too far away to be seen or was obscured by wispy cirrus clouds, standard operating procedures dictated that they circumvent it. Common sense, too. And whatever common sense Jordan wasn’t born with, she’d learned. Sometimes the hard way.

For eight years, she’d been flying around the world, and through more bad weather than she cared to remember. Even one-million-pound jumbo jets couldn’t risk flying through thunderstorms. She knew—she’d read the post-accident reports of those who’d tried. There was no faster way to end up as a smoking hole than to think you could outfly Mother Nature. Hail punched holes in hulls and snuffed out engines; lightning knocked out electrical and
communication systems; extreme turbulence wrenched off wings. Jordan preferred her life to be less exciting.

A lot
less.

She had enough on her plate as a single mom who juggled flying for a living with raising a six-year-old. Flying paid the bills. But every heartbeat, every breath, every cell in Jordan’s body was devoted to her daughter. That wasn’t to say that at thirty-two she wasn’t proud of her accomplishments—graduating flight school, getting hired by the airlines, making sure she was good at what she did—but existing as one of the many anonymous cogs in United Airlines’ global transportation wheel was fine with her. Unlike her retired fighter pilot father or her fire chief older brother, she didn’t go looking for action. Dull as it sounded, glory was not her goal. Maybe the limelight might have appealed to her, once. But these days, her idea of adventure was braving the Saturday afternoon checkout lines at Costco.

The captain aligned the aircraft on a safe heading. Jordan reached for her dinner tray and balanced it on her lap. “I don’t care how many times we have to go around phantom thunderstorms tonight, Brian,” she said. “Nothing’s going to ruin my mood. The minute we land I’m officially on vacation.”

“Big plans?”

“Two weeks in paradise—Colorado. My family owns land along the Front Range. Two hundred acres.”

Brian whistled. “Ranchers?”

“Not even close. My father’s a retired Air Force officer . . . went to the Academy in Colorado Springs, class of ’sixty-six. Started buying the land when he was a freshman, and kept adding acreage a little at a time.” A wry smile played around her mouth. “Until he met my mother, who wasted no time telling him he was insane if he thought she’d leave the suburbs for the wilderness. But Dad couldn’t bear
to part with the land. So there it sits, undeveloped. Waiting. . . .”