Outlaw (The Hidden Planet Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Prologue

  Outlaw

  Sophie Stern

  Outlawed from his own planet years ago, Gaz lives a lonely life on Sapphira. Oh, he's amazing at his job. He dominates the courtroom and there's not a case he can't win, but the one thing he wants more than anything can't be found in a courtroom.

  Hayden was hurt years ago and still doesn't trust men. Except for Gaz, that is. He's different. He's kind. He's always been there for her, like a guardian angel she didn't ask for but desperately wants.

  When Gaz's brother brings him news of Orchid, he has a decision to make. Will he return home to the life he once knew? Or will he stay and fight for the woman of his dreams?

  Copyright © 2017 by Sophie Stern

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Melody Simmons // www.ebookindiecovers.com

  Contents

  Outlaw

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Alien Dragon

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  The Saucy Devil

  Prologue

  1

  For my readers

  Keep being brave

  Chapter 1

  Hayden

  Aliens have a bit of a problem with stealing.

  My brother Quinn stole a ship. He saved someone, saved the woman he’s now mated to. He did a lot of good when he took that ship and even more good when he returned it, but he still took it without permission.

  Ezra, my other brother, stole something, too. He stole a bow. He took it and he went hunting and he brought back an incredible haul, including a woman, but he still stole it.

  And Gaz, my very best friend in the entire world, he stole something.

  Only the thing Gaz stole is something he can never return. The only thing Gaz can do with what he took is to cherish it or break it because he stole my heart and I’m never going to get it back.

  I can’t remember the exact moment I realized I was in love with him. I can’t remember when things shifted between us, when I stopped viewing him as a family friend and started viewing him as something more, as someone more.

  I can’t remember.

  Because when I think about my life, and I think about the things we’ve been through, I think that Gaz has always been there. He’s always been close to us, always lingering around, always ready if me or one of my brothers needed something.

  And I love him.

  I really, totally, completely love him.

  There’s just one problem with this whole “falling in love with your best friend” thing: he has no idea how I feel.

  There’s a part of me that wants to tell him, that wants to explain how much I love him, how much I think about him, how much I want, more than anything, to be his, but there’s a more rational part of me that knows this is a bad idea.

  If I put myself out there and tell Gaz how I feel, there’s a chance he’s going to reject me. If that happens – when that happens – I know I’m never going to be the same again.

  And right now, our friendship is good. It’s solid. I’m not quite ready for things to be over between us, so I keep my thoughts to myself.

  “Hayden! Good morning.” Izzie’s voice brings me out of my daydreams and back to the present. Gaz’s receptionist is beautiful. She’s a Sapphiran, like me, so she’s tall and lanky and blue. Her hair falls past her shoulders in ringlets and for just a brief second, I wish I was half as pretty as Izzie is. She’s got the kind of beauty most girls would kill for. The craziest thing is that she doesn’t even know how pretty she is. Izzie seems to think she’s normal, ordinary, but she’s not. She couldn’t be ordinary if she tried.

  “Hi Izzie,” I walk across the small waiting room and give her a hug. She smells like flowers. “How’s your morning going?”

  “You do not want to know,” Izzie says, rolling her eyes. She says it in a way that lets me know she’s definitely going to let me know.

  “What happened?” I ask politely, leaning against the side of her oversized desk. She’s Gaz’s receptionist, sure, but she’s more than that. She basically manages his entire life. Gaz is incredible, but he’s also a busy lawyer. He doesn’t have time to deal with things like scheduling or planning. Izzie controls all of that. She’s in charge of everything from scheduling client meetings to responding to emails to managing Gaz’s meals. She even tells him when he needs to do laundry.

  That’s how much he needs her.

  Her desk is a reflection of this. There are papers covering the entire desk, but they’re all arranged very particularly. Izzie explained the entire organizational plan to me once. It was very specific.

  She keeps notes from clients on one notepad and later logs them into computer files. She keeps requests from Gaz in front of her, pinned to the top of the desk. There’s a pile of papers to her right that contain notes and important information about current cases. Her hologram messages all appear to the right of the desk and she has everything arranged so that anyone calling her holographically can’t see what’s on her desk.

  I hope Gaz pays her well because she deserves it.

  “This morning, Trevor came in.” There’s this thing about being a lawyer in the biggest city on the Hidden Planet. People expect a certain amount of privacy when they hire you. They expect you to keep your mouth shut about their case and not to divulge any information to outside parties.

  Fortunately for me, Gaz considers me to be one of his employees. I’m not. By no stretch of the imagination am I one of his employees, but I spend enough time in his office that I seem to know everything about all of his cases. Sometimes Gaz lets me help him. I watched a lot of Earth television shows growing up, so I know a lot about how arguing to win a legal case works.

  Things are different on Sapphira than they were on Earth, long ago, but the basic premise is the same: someone gets in trouble and their lawyer saves their ass.

  Simple.

  Only, there’s nothing simple about Trevor’s case.

  “What happened?” I groan. I know right away that Gaz is going to need something strong to deal with today. He won’t want to leave the office, but I’ll have to drag him to Galaxy and make him have some petal juice or something to deal with the stress.

  “Apparently, the Orchidian police arrived today with new evidence against him. Trevor isn’t just being accused of crimes on the Hidden Planet. Now they want to nail him for petty theft on Orchid, too.”

  “This guy is crazy,” I groan. When Gaz agreed to represent Trevor, he was doing it as a favor to Trevor’s mother. Mrs. Waters is one of the nicest old women in the city of Diamond, but she’s als
o naïve. She’s convinced her son isn’t guilty of any of the charges, and at first, Gaz believed both her and Trevor.

  It’s been weeks, though, and the evidence against him is mounting.

  “How did Gaz take it?” I lower my voice. Most people know Gaz isn’t Sapphiran, but few realize he himself is from Orchid. Orchidians are known for being incredibly smart, incredibly brave, and incredibly good at hearing.

  If the police from his home planet are here, chances are that Gaz knows some of the officers. He may have had to deal with some of them on a personal level, and those interactions could have brought up painful memories.

  I don’t know how much Izzie knows about Gaz’s past because she’s so discreet. If she realizes how painful Orchidian interactions are for him, she won’t say a word. Then again, she has worked with him daily for years. Chances are that she knows exactly how much this is affecting him.

  “Go to him,” Izzie says quietly. She turns back to her computer. “I’ve cleared his schedule for the rest of the day.”

  I nod and head back to his office. The hand scanner that controls the door registers my palm print. It’s one of the benefits of being best friends with the guy who runs the joint. Gaz has given me full access to the entire building, which is really, really nice.

  It’s also something I don’t deserve.

  Gaz defended my brother when Quinn needed him the most. He stood by our sides when the odds were stacked against us. He was able to get the charges against my brother dropped and help put away the man who kidnapped and hurt me.

  Gaz is incredible, but I am broken.

  Still, I can’t help but reaching out for him when I know he’s hurting or in pain. In this case, I know his stress is probably going to get the best of him. Gaz is an incredible lawyer, but he’s still just one man. He’s still a solo guy on a mission to make the universe a better place.

  He can’t do this alone.

  I move quietly down the silent hallway, passing the conference room and a couple of empty offices. The building is big enough to house several lawyers and although Gaz prefers to work alone, he definitely has the space and the ability to expand his practice if he wants to.

  When I reach the door to his office, I hesitate and take a deep breath. I’m not really sure what I’m walking into, but I know that I want to be here for Gaz. Finally, I press my hand to the sensor and his door slides open.

  “I wondered when you’d come,” he says. His back is to me. He’s staring out the window at the lake. It’s shining and shimmering in the sunlight, but all I see is Gaz.

  “You were waiting for me?”

  “You always come when I need you most, Hayden.” He turns then, and I see the stress on his face, the anxiousness there. I can’t help myself as I run across the office and throw myself into his arms.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” I tell him, even though I don’t really know that at all. What if he loses this case? It’s a big one, and with the arrival of officials from Orchid, it just got even bigger. Interplanetary crimes aren’t uncommon, but it’s different on Sapphira.

  Our world is called The Hidden Planet for a reason. For years we didn’t communicate with the outside world. We didn’t want any part of interplanetary immigration. We were fine being our own, quiet world. We didn’t need anyone else.

  Things are different now, but the attitude remains. Sapphirans often feel we are the center of the universe. We often think the rest of the planets should bow down to us, that we’re the most important ones in existence. This attitude might be wrong, but it’s pervasive on Sapphira, and it will influence the outcome of Gaz’s case.

  “You can’t promise me that, Hayden. You don’t actually know that.”

  I lean against him, resting my head against his chest.

  “I know,” I whisper.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, though.”

  “Of course.”

  I hug him for a long time, long past the appropriate platonic length of a hug, and then I let go.

  “You wanna get out of here?” I ask him. “Galaxy is open.”

  “Let’s go,” he grabs his jacket. “I could use a drink.”

  Chapter 2

  Gaz

  Fucking Trevor Waters.

  I don’t really care when my clients are criminals. It’s not my job to care if they’re good guys or bad guys. What I do care about is the fact that withholding information and blatantly lying to me doesn’t seem to bother them. That is something I don’t want to deal with.

  And this means I’m going to be stepping away from the case. I refuse to represent someone who won’t tell me the truth about their crimes and the evidence against them. I’m a damn good lawyer, and my time is precious to me. I don’t have any interest in wasting time on someone who can’t be bothered to keep me in the loop.

  It makes all of us look stupid, unorganized, and ill-informed. My reputation is important to me, and Trevor is trashing it.

  Well, fuck him.

  Hayden arriving pulls me out of my pity-party and gives me something else to focus on: her. She’s too damn sweet for me. When she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close, I can’t help but relaxing. I don’t know how she does it. Everything about her is so fucking perfect, and she’s the only one who seems to be able to free me from my own mind.

  Agreeing to go to Galaxy with Hayden isn’t a hard choice. We’ve been plenty of times before, but today we’re going because the stress of the world is just a little too much to bear right now. Even Hayden doesn’t know the entire reason I’m so shaken up by the arrival of the Orchidian police, but I’m sure after a couple of glasses of petal juice, I’m going to be pouring my royal heart out to her.

  We head out of the office.

  “Izzie,” I say to my receptionist. “Can you please cancel my afternoon appointments?”

  “Already done, sir,” she says with a smile. She winks at Hayden, and I wonder if the two of them collaborated on this. “And if you don’t mind,” she stands, picking up her leather jacket. “I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off with pay.”

  “Please do.” I wouldn’t be where I am without Izzie. Seriously. That woman takes care of every aspect of my life. Without her, my entire business would fall apart. Yeah, I’m the one arguing in court, but Izzie is the one who makes that possible.

  Hayden and I head out of the building and I pull my remote from my pocket. After inputting my ID number, my hovercar whirls around the side of the building from the parking area.

  “Talk about front door service,” Hayden slides in the passenger side. I walk around and get in my side of the vehicle. “Is this a new feature?”

  “Yeah. Programmed it myself.” Until recently, we actually had to walk to the parking area and start the hovercar. Now it comes directly to the front of the building.

  “You’re get lazy in your old age,” Hayden points out.

  “I just like to simplify my life as much as possible.”

  “It’s really not a long walk, you know. How much time did you spend getting the programming right? Probably more than it would have taken you to just walk over, get in your hovercar, and start the damn thing.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” I wink at Hayden, and she rolls her eyes.

  “You’re insufferable,” she says.

  “And you’re adorable.”

  She stiffens, and I realize maybe I’ve taken our bantering a little too far. I love Hayden. I’m super, completely, totally in love with her, but I also know that she’s not interested in me that way. She’s the little sister of two of my best friends. I would do anything for Quinn and Ezra. Anything. And I would definitely, totally, completely do anything for Hayden.

  All she has to do is ask.

  Still, she hasn’t really dated anyone since she was kidnapped. Why would she? It’s been years, but as long as I’ve known her, Hayden has been single. If it wasn’t for Quinn drinking too much one night and pouring out his sorry heart, I probably wou
ld never even have known about what happened to her.

  And it was my pleasure to get rid of the fucker who hurt her.

  Although, to be honest, I would have rather choked the bastard to death than know he’s been sent to some prison planet. It’s better than nothing, I suppose, and Hayden was so relieved when she found out he was gone.

  She became a different person: calmer, more relaxed. It was only once Hector was locked away that I saw her finally start to come out of her shell, even just a little bit.

  I don’t say anything, but neither does Hayden. Instead, my comment hangs in the air, awkwardly, and with a sigh, I start to drive. I know the way to Galaxy and although my car can drive itself with just a simple word, I want the control of doing it myself tonight.

  “You don’t want to walk to your car, but you want to drive?” She finally asks, looking at me.

  “You know me, Hayden.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “And I know it was a hard day. You know,” she sighs. “When I feel out of control in one area of my life, I overcompensate in other areas.”

  “Explain.” I think I know what she means, but Hayden doesn’t open up often. I want to hear her talk to me. Her voice calms me, relaxes me, and reminds me that I’m not just a lawyer. I’m also a male. I’m an Orchidian who needs to feel grounded, just as she does.

  “You know what happened to me, Gaz,” her voice is quiet. Hayden and I have never talked about her torturer, but it would be impossible for me to have properly defended her brother when he stole the bastard’s ship if Quinn and Ezra hadn’t filled me in.

  “I know.”

  “I think you can imagine that after something like that, control would become very important.”

  “Fuck that guy,” I growl. Even though the kidnapping happened before I knew Hayden and her brothers, I hate knowing that someone was able to take this precious girl and torture her, hurt her.

  Hayden surprises me by placing her hand on mine.

  “I’m okay, Gaz,” she whispers. “But sometimes, if I think about it too much, I begin to feel trapped again, so I try not to think about it, and I try to find other ways to experience control in my life.”