Spicy Romance & Recipes #1

By Mimi Riser

Welcome to the Spicy Romance & Recipes collection, where every volume brings you something different...something daring...something to really sink your teeth into... Volume 1 contains the novella “Back to the Garden” – an offbeat romance with an upbeat message! – plus deliciously fruity salad and salsa recipes...
“Back to the Garden”: Abducted by aliens and facing “training” from the lava-hot Deuce, Samantha battles to keep her cool. But the issues are large, the stakes high, and appearances can be deceiving. Soon she and Deuce are wrapped up in each other and an escape plan that could melt the ship (if it doesn’t melt them first). If they succeed, a much bigger mission awaits them. If not...well, at least they’ll die smiling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mimi Riser
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310007644

Mimi Riser

Mimi Riser is a longtime author of fiction and nonfiction, including several series and spanning a variety of genres (with flavors ranging from sweet to spicy hot). Her books celebrate the upbeat, the offbeat, and “beating the odds.” She began life in the urban northeast, but now resides in the rural southwest with her best friend & husband Rob.

Book preview

"Mimi Riser displays her sassiness and wit in this delightful novella… if you want a hilarious read filled with hot sex, then this is it… and the ending is brilliant! A definite keeper to read when life gets you down. ~TwoLips Reviews

SPICY ROMANCE & RECIPES #1:

Back to the Garden

Abducted by aliens and facing training from the lava-hot Deuce, Samantha battles to keep her cool. But the issues are large, the stakes high, and appearances can be deceiving. Soon she and Deuce are wrapped up in each other and an escape plan that could melt the ship (if it doesn’t melt them first). If they succeed, a much bigger mission awaits them. If not…well, at least they’ll die smiling.

MIMI RISER

www.mimiriser.com

Smashwords Edition:

Copyright © 2016 by Mimi Riser

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

[Disclaimer: This novella is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. (Note: This novella was originally published under the title Samantha White & The Seven Dwarves.)]

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Chapter 1: The Romance

Back to the Garden

Boy, people were jerks, weren’t they? Whoever invented humanity had a lot to answer for. Thinking grim thoughts, Sam shot a bird at the driver who’d just cut in front of her. He was lucky she didn’t have a gun. She glared through her cracked windshield at the bumper-to-bumper traffic, knowing she was going to be late for work.

Again.

Knowing her wheezing auto was overheating.

Again.

What she didn’t know was where she’d find the money to get it fixed, not to mention pay her rent and utilities—especially if she got fired, as seemed likely since she was already on probation at the job for mouthing off to an ass-pinching sleazeball…who’d turned out to be the firm’s newest, biggest client. Sheesh, you’d think she’d been the offender and not him. Could life get any worse?

Funny she should ask that.

Without warning a blinding flash struck! A buzzy, fuzzy, tingling rush and—whizzz—car, traffic, all her earthly worries were far away. Earth itself was far away.

And she had a whole new set of worries.

Holy shit, she muttered, hoping the sound of her own voice would add an element of sanity to the situation.

It didn’t.

She stood frozen, staring, her heart racing and eyes popping. She’d read about happenings like this in the tabloids while waiting in line at the supermarket (on those rare occasions when she could afford to buy groceries), but she’d never believed those absurd headlines. She wasn’t sure she believed them even now.

What the hell was this? A space ship? It looked like something straight out of Star Wars, like something Han Solo might fly—if he was really down on his luck—dusty, rusty, loose wires dangling everywhere, and it stank like…

Shit, she repeated. I’ve been abducted by aliens.

Smelly aliens.

She counted seven before her on the bridge of the craft. Small, grotesquely humanoid figures in a motley assortment of tights, tunics, and curly-toed booties. The Ren-faire costuming struck an oddly jarring note against the sci-fi setting, making her head swim. The creatures had stocky little bodies, broad faces with big bulbous eyes, and bright, bushy shocks of hair sticking straight up from their scalps. Hair that traveled the color-spectrum from screaming red through orange, yellow, green, turquoise and blue to pulsating purple, each alien with his own separate hue. They made her think of three-foot high troll dolls, or almost. They also had wicked-looking yellowish points protruding over their lower lips. Terrific. Troll dolls with fangs.

She locked her wobbly knees to stay upright. Good frigging grief, this was like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on acid. Except her name was Samantha White, not Snow, and she wasn’t exactly the fairy tale princess type. She was a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe—the bane of her existence. Men never took you seriously when you looked like a sex-goddess. They just took you. Jerks. And too often she’d let them. Stupid her.

Or lonely her. Lonely years in an orphanage, praying for a family to love her—and wondering if God were dead or just deaf when no family ever appeared. Lonely years since, searching other avenues, hoping sex would lead to love, that she could turn a frog into a prince with a kiss. Okay, a lot more than a kiss, but it all proved as effective as her prayers, so she’d scrapped that approach, too. Three months ago, in fact.

Three long, itchy, bitchy, horridly hormonal months. Her libido was on its last frayed nerve, but she refused to be ruled by it. She had her priorities straight now: Lift a guy’s hood and take a good look at his engine before jumping behind the wheel and grabbing his stick shift. How else would she ever find someone