A Stranger in the Family

By Nancy S. Reece

In a world divided into two hemispheres, with conflict diminished into an informal detente, someone forgot to tell Lt. Lyric McKinney you aren't supposed to fall in love with the enemy—especially when your step-father is the leader of the Allied Forces. But how can she resist the charming, sexy Colonel Yuri Takeda?

After months of secret meetings and airport rendezvous with Yuri, Lyric's plane crashes behind enemy lines. Yuri is there to bring her to safety, but they soon discover their reunion has created a small problem in foreign relations.

The two make the decision to run away together, opening a political can of worms that threatens to blow both sides into open conflict.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781509226528

Nancy S. Reece

308 Winding Woods Trail Woodstock, GA 30189

Book preview

Inc.

Colonel Yuri Takeda was exhausted, and the lecture hadn’t even begun. His host, Dr. Matt Wheeler had spent most of the morning warning him in advance about an apparent force of nature that had a mountain of questions for him. Great. Another amateur willing to risk going toe to toe with his PhD and experience because they were certain they’d discovered a flaw no one else had considered. As they entered the hall, his eyes scanned for an obnoxious redhead.

She was easy to spot, but there was no way the goddess in the fourth-row center was a physicist with a specialty in astral-engineering. With curly red-hair and the most unusual amber eyes he’d ever seen, she looked more like an elementary school math teacher. An amazingly beautiful school teacher, but not the brass-balled bitch Wheeler informed him about. Scanning the crowd, he searched for another tall red-head, but she was it.

Matt introduced him to the crowd, and for a moment Takeda slipped into his thoughts, recalling again the order from his father which sent him on this little junket.

You need more experience in public speaking. At least in a college environment you can practice in an area you feel confident.

Personally, what Yuri thought he needed was more time away from his father.

International Airport Abbreviation Codes

ATL — Atlanta, GA

SAN — San Diego, CA

VVO — Vladivostok, Russia

HIK — Hickam Air Field, Honolulu, HI

TLV — Tel Aviv, Israel

DUB — Dublin, Ireland

SFO — San Francisco, CA

HON — Honolulu, HI

SYD — Sydney, Australia

A Stranger in the Family

by

Nancy S. Reece

The Family Devlyn, Book 2

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

A Stranger in the Family

COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Nancy S. Reece

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Kristian Norris

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Crimson Rose Edition, 2019

Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2651-1

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2652-8

The Family Devlyn, Book 2

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To my father, my very own aeronautic engineer,

and the dreams he inspired in me from childhood

Other Wild Rose Press Titles by Nancy S. Reece

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY

The Family Devlyn, Book 1

Chapter One

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, January 17th

Her briefcase full of facts and charts, her head filled with more questions than answers, Lyric McKinney parked her BMW in the reserved space on her way to confront a legend. Her position with the Allied Military Forces involved working in secret, building new fighters, which kept her moving around constantly, but Atlanta was considered ‘home’. She hoped that home field advantage would come into play in her quest to learn more about her target and his paper.

Having received her PhD the previous summer, she was back in Atlanta for an important seminar on the future of gyroscopic compass engines, a vital component for space fighters. With space travel still considered in its infancy, she and her team were working on engines destined for the first manned space flight outside of the Earth/Mars corridor. They knew they were on a wire, apparently their enemies, the United Russian Republics, were also working on a space fighter.

It was the head of the URR program giving the lecture she was hurrying to make on time. Colonel Yuri Takeda was considered by many engineers to be the expert in the research Lyric was doing, and she’d practically begged for an invitation to the lecture. An officer in the URR Special Forces, with a PhD in mechanical engineering, Takeda was notoriously reclusive and not known for taking on speaking engagements without a purpose. He was known as a world-class asshole. Also, the man didn’t proof his own work, a fact which had almost cost her her life.

She glanced down at her aviator watch and noticed there were only twenty minutes to make it half way across the sprawling in town campus. Sticking her heels in her backpack, she pulled on the fitted jacket to the deep blue suit, which she had decided to wear instead of her uniform. She’d spent hours thinking on how to not put Colonel Takeda on the defense when her interest was academic as well as military. Her tennis shoes now replacing the dress heels, she started hoofing it toward the aerospace center.

Lyric built Colonel Takeda’s engine, according to his published chart of tolerances or variables. Using her own background in aviation, physics, and celestial mechanics, she’d discovered there were some small discrepancies which needed resolved. Rather than email back and forth and possibly never get an answer to her questions, she’d come straight to the source, and she wasn’t leaving until she had answers. She’d spent a lot of personal clout wrangling this invite.

Taking a deep breath, she remembered she wasn’t an undergrad anymore, stopped running and resumed a brisk walk. Her favorite cousin’s wife, Cassie Ferguson, a professor at Georgia Tech, was constantly moving from lab to classrooms. Her one adage to Lyric when she’d arrived for college was allow plenty of time to arrive anywhere. The in town campus was wide spread, and traffic tended toward full time congestion. Even now, as she pulled her jacket closer, she cursed the second cup of coffee she’d needed to wake up. It had eaten into her reserve time window.

Although it was January, the weather was mild and the sky clear. No colder than it would be at home, remembering her childhood in Shannon, Ireland. At times her accent could be thick and even carried a southern drawl. Unfortunately, circumstances often kept her from Ireland, but she spent a good deal of time in Europe working. Her step-father was the chief reason for her travels.

Sir Lloyd McKinney, Prime Minister of the Allied Forces, as a step-father rated with his only step-child somewhere below dirt. When she was young, he’d always been busy forging his career, never there when she’d asked for his time or assistance, and the first she’d heard herself satirically referred to as ‘her mother’s daughter’, a sense of personal freedom washed over Lyric. If he didn’t claim her, then she didn’t have to follow his rules. Instead she used her internal moral compass, which had never steered her wrong. Thus far.

Lyric reached the aerospace building in good time. She changed her shoes, aware of the many males checking out her ass as they walked past. She’d learned a long time ago to stop letting the stares of strangers affect her. Between her height, model good looks, and famous family, people were always staring at her. When her sunglasses were down, she’d often stare back with her unusual amber eyes. Today however, she was in a hurry.

The lecture hall was two-thirds full, and she found a seat near the middle which gave her a great view, then she settled down to get comfortable. Something told her this was going to be a memorable talk. Takeda gave, at the most, three lectures every two years as his full-time position as a colonel in the opposition forces meant active duty in the war between their two opposing ideals. Lyric could care less about why they fought if the truth were to be learned. Her reasons for being in the military were entirely personal.

The fighter project was her passion, and her spirit represented in machine. Since childhood she’d been fascinated by flight, the ability to soar above the clouds. But once there, Lyric was more interested in the brilliant blue that stretched above the plane into the farthest horizons. She wanted to soar upward to see what lay beyond the blue, and when she took her first night flight and saw the stars above, something in her heart and head clicked, and she knew where her future lay. It started with the Allied Forces, but it would end high above there.

NASA and rocketry didn’t interest her. There was no flight or finesse in sitting on a huge gas can and hitching a ride to Mars. And the current escort fleet from Earth to Mars through the asteroid belt consisted of clunky ships with large gun arrays and little maneuverability. Lyric envisioned something else. Something sleeker, able to escort from Earth all the way, something new.

Coming across Takeda’s research while an undergrad, Lyric was intrigued with his insights on the gyro compass engine and other issues that would need to be resolved in order to break a fighter through the atmosphere and into the earth’s orbit. Her imagination challenged, Lyric and her team began working on their own ideas. That’s when the shit hit the fan, and when she’d fallen out of the sky unresponsive from gee stress, all work halted until the problem could be solved.

To her disgust, the problem was in Takeda’s work.

Once she sat down and began to study his research, break it down, learn about the cold, mechanical, full-bird colonel responsible, it dawned on her the fault wasn’t in the work but with the variables. Nowhere in his work did he take into consideration any other form of frame, wing span, building materials. It was geared for a URR modified, not for something new and untried.

That was what she needed. She needed him to reverse engineer his variables for the lightweight polymer she developed for the skin along with the carbon blend frame. Her fighter was almost thirty percent lighter and stronger than the URR machine. The problem was, she wasn’t at heart an engineer, and the engineer on their team had already thrown up his hands and quit.

When he entered the hall with her college professor and undergrad advisor, her first impression was he was tall. Really tall. Given her own height, there weren’t many men that she would have to look up to address and apparently Colonel Takeda was one of them. The next thing she noticed was how unhappy he looked. Probably at having to dumb down his work for mere humans.

From her briefcase, Lyric pulled out her recorder, notepad, and a stack of papers with charts and diagrams.

Go ahead, Takeda. Make me a believer.

****

Colonel Yuri Takeda was exhausted, and the lecture hadn’t even begun. His host, Dr. Matt Wheeler had spent most of the morning warning him in advance about an apparent force of nature that had a mountain of questions for him. Great. Another amateur willing to risk going toe to toe with his PhD and experience because they were certain they’d discovered a flaw no one else had considered. As they entered the hall, his eyes scanned for an obnoxious redhead.

She was easy to spot, but there was no way the goddess in the fourth-row center was a physicist with a specialty in astral-engineering. With curly red-hair and the most unusual amber eyes he’d ever seen, she looked more like an elementary school math teacher. An amazingly beautiful school teacher, but not the brass-balled bitch Wheeler informed him about. Scanning the crowd, he searched for another tall red-head, but she was it.

Matt introduced him to the crowd, and for a moment Takeda slipped into his thoughts, recalling again the order from his father which sent him on this little junket.

You need more experience in public speaking. At least in a college environment you can practice in an area you feel confident.

Personally, what Yuri thought he needed was more time away from his father. As the eldest son of Grand Marshall Dmitri Takeda of the URR, it was assumed since the moment he was conceived he would be the second generation to lead. The fact he hated command only meant hiding his true person deeper each time he had to perform as ‘the son of the Grand Marshall.’ Such as these press junkets.

Stepping to the podium, he pressed the audio-visual controller in his hand and the presentation began. As man moves beyond our first home and into the solar system, new horizons call for new ideas, new technology, new approaches to old problems.

He knew the speech by rote, when to pause for effect, when to press on to the next area. One hour, thirty-seven minutes. He’d timed it so he would arrive at the Atlanta airport with time to grab one last American beer before his flight to Tokyo. When the lights came up and the ‘Are there any questions?’ phase of the program began, he was surprised when Miss School Teacher shot out of her chair like an electric bolt.

Colonel Takeda, I have a few questions about your variable tolerance chart and whether or not you performed any testing on carbon-fiber polymers or next generation aluminums?

Interesting. She knew enough to read the charts and footmarks. We used the same carbon fiber used on the current URRSF Firehawk, our fifth-generation prototype undergoing testing beginning next year. I don’t think the current aluminums in production can handle the transitions out of the ionosphere and upward.

So you admit this table is only for URR carbon fiber?

Yes. Out of personal curiosity, why?

Hypothetically what about an aluminum titanium compound for your internal framing system? Wouldn’t that change in material affect your final weight?

The difference would be absorbed in another department. Total weight would end up equal.

But you have no confidence in any other materials simply because you didn’t use them?

Now he was getting irritated. I didn’t use them because you have to think about the incredible heat factors. Exiting and re-entry are precisely calculated for each launch. Nothing available today can achieve that without using a tradition delivery system up past the atmosphere into low orbit, where they can be safely launched without subjecting a human pilot to the stress of leaving Earth.

Dr. Takeda. I believe there is a compound which will not only lighten the internal frame but allow that heat to dissipate before overloading the heatsink. But there’s another problem with your figures as well. Did you actually run live tests on these figures, or simply the computer simulations? Because I’m here to tell you, I have, and I have a medical file full from falling out of the sky like a stone.

Her eyes were flashing like lightning, and it was apparent the room was split two ways, with one group enjoying Takeda’s growing irritation while another wished the red-head would sit down so they could all leave. Luckily Dr. Wheeler was prepared.

Dr. McKinney, why don’t you and Colonel Takeda take this off-line after we’re done. He has time before his flight, and the rest of us won’t have to be caught in the cross-fire. Thank you, Lyric.

She smiled, and it brightened her face like a winter sunrise over the Pole. Unexpected to say the least. Once she sat down and he answered a few more basic questions, it dawned on him what Matt Wheeler called her.

Dr. McKinney,

Dr. Lyric McKinney??

As in only child of Sir Lloyd McKinney, Lord of Shannon and Prime Minister of the Allied Forces? His father’s political equivalent in the opposition to the URR? He didn’t even know McKinney’s daughter was smart, much less a supposed prodigy. Of course, the man was a stick in the mud, rigid and willing to be over-run for his outdated policies. Nothing like this fiery teacher.

She waited for the crowd to clear before heading in his direction. Without staring, he studied her as she approached. Tall, willowy, curves to die for, amazingly unusual amber eyes which were quite animated when irritated, like now. And, more important, intelligent. Even Matt Wheeler had given her that.

She earned her PhD three days before her eighteenth birthday. She’s brilliant, a prodigy really, but no one has ever told her no and stuck with it. Mostly because she’ll find her way around any restriction placed on her. Don’t take it personally when she questions your work. I swear she’d tell Edison he did the light bulb all wrong and then re-work it for him.

Brilliant, and beautiful? Not usually his type. But something about her made him willing to listen to her pitch. After all, what could it hurt to hear new ideas?

Chapter Two

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

January

Lyric took about fifteen seconds to decide Yuri was hot, but incredibly full of himself. Easily six feet, three inches with broad shoulders, he had a lean physique such as swimmers, rather than the bulky muscles most URRSF tended to parade about. His hair was sandy blond and wavy with a hint of red, but it was his eyes that pulled her to the front of the lecture hall at the end of his presentation.

They were light, almost an ice, blue, and as she approached, they met hers and like lasers seemed to zing straight through her. For a moment she faltered, almost turned, and left without asking her follow up questions. She’d monopolized the Q&A portion of his lecture, challenging some of the math in his paper. In frustration her professor invited her to stay and speak with Dr. Takeda privately. Now that the moment was there, she found herself tongue-tied in the presence of a legend in the flying community.

He walked straight up to her, and it was strange to have to look up at a man. Lyric was tall, almost five feet, nine inches when barefoot, and when in heels, not many professors could match her height. She held out her hand, and he grabbed it firmly, then instead of the handshake she was expecting, he raised it to his lips and brushed them across the back of her knuckles. Her blush rose from tits to eyebrows. How very, European, matching his boarding school accent.

Ah yes, he murmured. The math teacher.

The blush disappeared as her anger quickly rose. I’m a physicist and aerospace specialist, not a math teacher. And a pilot. Have you actually run any real-time simulations using this chart? Because your gee factor is off. It might be fine for a person your size, but most pilots aren’t as tall as you. Using my height for example, would change the gee factor appreciably. Also, I think if you could rework this using a different building material, you’d see my problem. I’d be glad to email you the specs to plug into your formulas.

Her professor glared at her presumptive attitude, as Dr. Takeda’s eyebrow rose, and a smile played around the corners of his mouth. Did you know when you get angry, your Irish accent becomes extremely pronounced? It’s very distracting.

Yes, actually I’ve been told that before. Hello, my name is Dr. Lyric McKinney. Astrophysicist. Pilot, Allied Special Forces Lieutenant. Nice to meet you. Your table is wrong.

Daughter of Sir Lloyd McKinney, Prime Minister?

Step-daughter. My father died before I was born. My mother married Lloyd when I was six months old.

Wouldn’t that rate him the title of father after all these years?

The man might look fine, but he was getting on her last nerve. While it isn’t any of your business, he’s the one who prefers the term. Can’t have me stand in the way of any legitimate child that might come along, my mother is still a young woman. Now that we’ve dissected my family can we please talk about your paper?

His mouth twitched. Have dinner with me, and we’ll discuss it at length.

Excuse me?

I have never been to Atlanta before, it’s almost dinnertime, people have to eat. Take me somewhere we can talk and eat. NOT fast food, nor the Varsity. I was warned about that before I arrived.

She smiled at that and had to laugh. Do you like steak?

Very much.

I know just the place. We can have a quiet booth and work out your problems.

Dr. Takeda motioned for her to lead on. He carried his briefcase and computer bag, along with a rolling suitcase.

Are you leaving already? She was trying to keep him even with her, not behind where he could stare at her ass, which she had already caught him doing, twice. Good to know there was something normal about the man. Otherwise he was abnormally quiet.

My orders require me to be in Tokyo in two days. So, if I leave tonight, I can actually get to Tokyo without being a zombie when I arrive.

Oh. I’m due back to my group at the Academy next week, but that’s only to San Diego. Not a bad time change, but it still messes with me. I can’t imagine going that many time zones ahead.

He was staring at her intently until it became a bit unnerving. She was so jittery, she ran into the outside door, forgetting the pull and trying to push. She slammed a little hard, bashing her forehead, and whispering, Ow, under her breath.

Dr.