A brilliant young teacher. A seemingly cold alien ruler. A love Earth Central Command tried to prevent.
High school teacher Marianne Woolsey was teaching Spanish in rural Iowa when Central Command decided her linguistic talents would be better exercised teaching human languages to the daughter of an alien ruler on a planet 24 light-years from Earth. Deeply wounded by a childhood trauma, she has always avoided men, but now she’s thrown into close contact with a man who is as gentle as he is dangerous.
Driven by duty, deadly to anyone who dares cross him, the Sural has ruled his province and led his planet far longer than he can admit to his daughter’s human tutor, and he hides much more from the space-faring races of the Trade Alliance than he is willing to admit. What he doesn’t want Central Command to know, he has to conceal from Marianne, but she is keeping her own secrets from him – and as an empath, he knows it.