In Love With Alien Santa Claus Read online

  In Love With Alien Santa Claus

  A Sci-Fi Alien Holiday Romance

  Zara Zenia

  Illustrated by

  Natasha Snow

  Edited by

  Elizabeth Lance

  Copyright © 2018 by Zara Zenia

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Natasha Snow Designs

  Edited by Elizabeth Lance

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.

  Contents

  Mailing List

  Prologue

  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

  About Zara Zenia

  Also by Zara Zenia

  Alien Prince Charming Preview

  Sign up to Zara’s mailing list and find out about her latest releases, giveaways, and more. Also get a free book! Click here!

  Visit her site: www.zarazenia.com

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  Prologue

  Sixteen years earlier…

  Christmas Eve

  Jessica Lane lay in her hospital bed in the children’s ward opening her early Christmas present from her foster mother, Janice. She carefully slid the ribbon off and broke the seal on the tape, then peeled the wrapping paper back. The box under the paper was small and pink. Carefully she lifted the lid to see a small white teddy bear. She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart. I’m sorry I can’t stay with you tonight.” Janice brushed a tangled curl from her face.

  “It’s okay. Do you think Santa will find me here?” she whispered, terrified that he wouldn’t.

  “Oh honey,” Janice said with a sigh. “You know we’ve talked about this. Santa is only a myth, remember?”

  Jessica frowned. She knew what Janice had told her, but, she also knew she was wrong. She’d seen Santa before. He’d come the previous year, before she’d gotten sick and before her parents had left her and disappeared. Santa hadn’t been visiting her, but she had seen him on the roof of her neighbor, Billy’s house. She’d known it was him, because the next morning, Billy’s mom, who had been dying, was miraculously better. They’d called it a Christmas Miracle, but Jessica had known the truth. Santa had granted Billy’s wish.

  When she got sick with Leukemia right after that Christmas, and left at the hospital by her parents who disappeared, she’d prayed and prayed that Santa would find her. When she went into remission, the state had placed her with Janice and she’d thought she’d be all right, but then the Leukemia came back and here she was, once again in the hospital. She just hoped Janice wouldn’t abandon her like her parents had and she once again prayed every night for Santa to visit her, as he had Billy.

  “I know,” she whispered to Janice, not wanting to upset the woman who cared for her.

  Janice smiled and kissed her forehead. “Get some sleep, sweetheart, and I will see you tomorrow morning.”

  Jessica nodded and watched Janice leave. She fell asleep shortly after and began to dream. She woke with a start several hours later when something bumped her bed. Blinking her eyes, she couldn’t believe it! He’d found her!

  “It’s you!” she exclaimed in a soft voice, not wanting to wake the others in the room. “It’s really you!”

  The red coated man with the white beard and hair turned to her and grinned. “Ho, ho, ho. You should be sleeping, little princess.”

  Jessica smiled. “I know, but I prayed and prayed that you would come. Did you get my letter?”

  There was a distinct twinkle in his gray eyes. “I did. Now, let me see what I can do.”

  Jessica nodded. She watched as Santa leaned over her and placed his hands on both of her arms. Then his hands began to glow and the glow moved over her, making her shine as though she were a Christmas light. She let out a small gasp at the sight and then looked up at the man with as much love and affection as she could. He was her hero.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  December 24th

  “I know, Mom,” Jessica said into the phone for the thousandth time. “I know that you think I was mistaken as a child, but I just think that Santa exists in some form. I mean he is based on an actual man, Saint Nicholas of Myra who gave away his wealth to the poor and saved people from certain disasters. My thesis shouldn’t have caused my advisor to break into gales of laughter and then kick me out of his office. I am studying Folklore after all. You would think he’d be more open to my theories on the subject.”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sure that you made a very sound argument for your thesis, but to believe that someone in today’s day and age is going around performing those kind of miracles is just… well, it is very unlikely, sweetheart.” Janice sighed and then changed the subject. “You are coming for Christmas dinner, aren’t you? Your brother and his wife will be here later, for desert. They are having dinner at Wendy’s house.”

  “I’ll be there, Mom. You know I wouldn’t miss Christmas dinner. You have the tree up, right?” she asked.

  “I put it up today. You know I don’t like to have it up for too long. All those needles just leave a mess all over the place. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t put it up at all.”

  “Thank you, Mom. I know you don’t enjoy the holiday like I do, but I’m glad you decorate for me.” Jessica smiled.

  “It’s fine, sweetie. Okay, I’ve got to go, my stories are on, and you know I don’t want to miss them. They just found JT’s body in the lake and Kinsey has been charged with murder, but you know it was really Barbara who did it, so I have to know what happens. Love you!”

  “Bye, Mom. Love you too,” Jessica said with a giggle as she hung up with her mom.

  Jessica glanced around her small duplex. She’d made sure when she moved out on her own two years earlier that her place had a fireplace, because she wanted to have a way for Santa to visit, should he decide to check up on her as he had every Christmas Eve since that fateful night she’d awoken to find him hovering over her. She could still recall the gray of his eyes with the merry twinkle that reminded her of the Northern star and the way his rosy cheeks were like twin apples beneath his snowy white beard. His white hair had been long, much longer than the mall Santas ever wore theirs, because she recalled it flowing gently down his back like silvery white icicles. It had been so pretty.

  She settled herself on her sofa and clicked on the TV to the Hallmark channel and started watching the marathon of romantic Christmas movies and daydreamed of the man who had saved her life sixteen years earlier. She did this every year at Christmas time, recalled every detail of the man in her mind because it made her feel closer to him. The way his eyes twinkled, the dimple beneath the fine white whiskers on his rosy cheeks, the long white silver hair, the jolly red suit with white fur. And then the way his hands had glowed and taken away her Leukemia. She’d fallen asleep right after that, but as soon as she’d woken, she knew. Santa had saved her.

  The doctors had been astounded and had called her recovery a miracle
. Not one cancer cell remained in her body and she was as healthy as every other normal little girl on the planet. Of course, the doctors eventually decided that it was the treatments that had been the saving grace and not what Jessica as a six-year-old child had shared with them. Because according to them, Santa Claus wasn’t real. So it had to have been the treatment.

  They were wrong and Jessica knew it. She hadn’t imagined the jolly man’s visit. And she certainly hadn’t imagined the cookies, carrots, and milk she’d left out every year being eaten and drank by anyone other than him and his reindeer because when she’d been a child she’d hidden them from her mother and brother. When she moved out on her own, she continued the tradition, and the cookies and carrots were still eaten and the milk drank.

  Explain that, oh ye of little faith! Jessica thought with a smile. No, she knew, Santa was real and he had healing powers.

  It was nearing eleven p.m., so Jessica went to her refrigerator and pulled out the milk. Taking a wide lipped glass from the cabinet, she poured a cup and then returned the container to the fridge. She’d spent the day making homemade from scratch chocolate chip cookies and took four out of the green star shaped Christmas canister and placed them on her ‘Cookies for Santa’ plate. When she’d seen the plate while shopping at Macy’s a few years earlier, she knew she had to have it.

  She set both the plate of cookies and the milk in the middle of her coffee table, so Santa would be sure to see them when he came down her chimney later that night. She returned to the kitchen and made up another plate, this one of sweet baby carrots, for his reindeer, of course, and then set it next to the plate of cookies.

  “Oh, I hope he comes soon, I don’t want the milk to curdle,” she said out loud. She turned off the TV, and the small table lamp, but left the tree lights on. She wanted him to be able to see when he came for his visit. She gently touched the glittery snowflake that hung prominently displayed right at eye level and smiled.

  With a sigh, she took herself off to bed. Dressing in a pair of red and black plaid pajamas, she brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

  Chapter Two

  Eight hours earlier…

  Kristarkon Clausarkar sat at his desk in the control room going over his list again. The list contained the one hundred children that he’d deemed most in need. He looked at his map and his planned route using his antigrav sleigh and his herd of flying, near-immortal reindeer. Thinking of them made him think of Blitzen, the tiny female Svalbard reindeer who had been on his ship along with the rest of her herd when he’d suddenly found himself in the middle of a meteor storm. As a xenobiologist, he’d been studying them as well as other Earth flora and fauna centuries ago.

  Unfortunately, the meteor storm had caused significant damage to the ship and its anti-gravity field, leaving him stranded on Earth for the last several centuries. The leak of the anti-gravity field had had a strange effect upon the reindeer herd, giving them the ability to fly and allowing them as long of a life-span as his own, or so he presumed, as well a higher level of intelligence than they’d previously had.

  Blitzen, with her white, gray and brown coat, full antlers and a silver-white ruff, had stolen his heart with her bold and creative mind. It was she, who had truly given him the idea of becoming the Earth people’s mythical Santa every year. A group of children back in the early eighteen hundreds had seen him working with the reindeer and he supposed they might have seen Blitzen in flight. She’d overheard their excited screams of Santa Claus and had apparently investigated further. She then conveyed the story to me.

  It seemed that a story had been written a year or two earlier and it had made its way all the way to Norway. Children everywhere were excited to hear a story about a jolly man who delivered gifts in a sleigh that flew through the air pulled by flying reindeer. He had to wonder if the writer of the story had somehow caught a glimpse of his herd at some point. Either way, he had the flying reindeer and the means to make a sleigh. With the help of his engineer, Grix, and his cousins Jenndal and Savann, they’d created the sleigh and costumes. However, unlike the Santas who delivered gifts to children all over the world like in the booklet A New Year’s Present or in the poem that was published a year or so later, called A Visit from St. Nicholas, he decided to continue the work of the original Saint, Saint Nicholas of Myra. Saint Nicholas was said to have saved women from prostitution, saved three men from wrongful execution, and resurrected three children from death after being pickled in brine. It was the last that stuck with Kris.

  Not the horror of what those children had been through part, but the bringing them back from the brink of death part. He had gained the ability to save humans from certain death sometime during that meteor storm. Something in his body chemistry had changed, making him immortal and capable of supernatural healing, as well as a few other things. It was the healing though that was important. He wanted to be able to do as Saint Nicholas had done, not for the fame of it, but to help and give back to humanity selflessly.

  As the stories of Santa evolved over the years, so had their rendition of the man. His first appearance as Santa had only included him in a red suit, the reindeer and sleigh, landing on roof tops of children in Norway who were so ill they would die without his help. Now, nearly two hundred years later, all four of them took on different parts of the Christmas story and they were able to help children and families all over the world.

  His crew hadn’t been well please to take on the job of the ‘elves’, but they now indulged him every year, putting on the curl toed shoes and hats with bells when they helped out with the Christmas parade and when they were out and about working with the reindeer. Grix was the only one who really grumbled about it, but even he got a little thrilled when he was able to help make some little child better, or help out a family in true need of rescuing. Kris had seen his stash of ‘It’s a Christmas Miracle’ newspaper articles from all over the world.

  Kris went back to his list, looking for a particular name. “Ah, there he is,” Kris said staring at the name. “Michael Johnson, age five, heart defect.” He skimmed over his summary of the child. Mike had been chosen more for location than for actual need, though his family did indeed need help.

  Mike had just recently been diagnosed with Aortic Valve Stenosis. He’d been unusually tired, and dizzy and had a few bouts of fainting spells. After the first of the year, he was going in for surgery to try to widen the valve, which would allow him to live a more normal life, though it was expensive and he would always need to be under a doctor’s care to make sure everything was working well. His parents both worked, and had insurance, however their deductibles were incredibly high and it was going to take a very hard toll on them financially.

  Kris had chosen him in particular because he actually happened to live in the same neighborhood as one of the children he’d helped in the past. Jessica Lane. The sweet little princess with Leukemia he’d saved sixteen years earlier. She’d woken when he’d accidentally bumped her bed, and he’d been wrapped around her little finger ever since. He liked to check in on her every year and enjoyed the milk and cookies she always left for him. And Blitzen and the girls loved the fact she always managed to leave them a plate of carrots.

  Over the last couple of years, Kris had begun to notice Jessica had grown up. A lot. And into a very stunning and beautiful woman. Just thinking of her warmed his heart in a new and different way.

  Since she’d turned twenty and moved out of her foster mother’s house, he’d gone out of his way to keep tabs on her throughout the year. As himself though, and not in his Santa disguise. The Santa disguise made him look much older than his actual appearance. On top of keeping an eye on her daily through their surveillance system, once a week, he would go out to the college where she was a grad student and check in on her. He always made sure to keep a distance away, because he knew that the energy he’d shared with her would cause her to feel him close to her, though she may not realize that was what it was. Still, he didn’t wish to scare h
er by being too close.

  He knew he should stop, now that she was grown, but he couldn’t bring himself to break their connection. It was stronger with her than with any of the other children he’d helped over the last two hundred years. And it felt different, more intimate than it had with the others. Maybe because she was the only one in all that time to have awoken as he healed her.

  “Are you ready? I’ve got the reindeer all hooked up to the sleigh. Kris!”

  “Hmmm?” Kris looked at the dark-skinned, pointy-eared gnome like man, Grix, and frowned. “Where is your hat?”

  Grix rolled his yellow eyes and ran his hand over his bright orange hair. “Seriously? Do I have to wear that? Again?”

  “We’ve gone through this every year for the last fifty years, Grix! You’re supposed to be an elf tonight. You have to wear the whole outfit when you’re out there. What if a tour group managed to see you?”

  “I doubt they could with the camouflage bracelet,” Grix grumbled. He pulled the wadded up hat out of his pocket and put it on his head. “There! Are you happy?”

  “Definitely.” Kris grinned at him. “Everything’s ready?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, the jingle bells on his hat tinkling, “the sleigh was a little buggy earlier, but I think I got it all fixed.”