Executive Decision

By Alice Archer

Dar loved his career... until he did his job too well.

Dar Riley never imagined his expertise as a dry stone waller would lead to a dead-end job he can't escape. He plods through the days with little to look forward to. A stone placed just so. A bath when he gets home.

The stranger in the electric blue suit who compliments Dar's work is Pierre Catalan, owner of a multi-planet transportation empire—a polished, powerful man Dar considers way out of his league.

When bad news blindsides Pierre, he lowers his guard, and Dar steps in with an executive decision of his own. Attraction intensifies a clash of wills into the possibility of something more—but without answers for impossible situations, love will die off-world before it can begin.

Executive Decision is a speculative fiction romance set in an alternate reality, a standalone short story with an HEA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shine Even If
• Release date: Feb 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734249316

Book preview

ALICE ARCHER

Executive

Decision

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Decision

Thank You

Also by Alice Archer

Acknowledgments

About Alice Archer

Copyright

The truly efficient laborer

will not crowd his day with work.

Henry David Thoreau

EXECUTIVE DECISION

All day, visitors from the gathering center have been strolling over to where Dar is working on the stone wall. They stand just out of chatting range and gape. Sometimes they forget to close their mouths. Fingers twitch over video comms, recording Dar to show to off-world friends. Dar tells himself to ignore them and focus on his work.

Stop staring, Dar snaps at his assistant, Miko, as he points to a stone. If the overseer gets back before we’ve rounded that corner, he’ll dock my pay again.

I’m trying, Miko says, exhaling hard as she lifts the big stone. I heard they’re from way down the line, on Earth for the first time. Glory, take in the hairstyle on that guy. How does he get it to do that?

We’re bugs in jars checking each other out, I guess, Dar mumbles to himself. Pulsing anger makes him lose his grip on the stone and scrape his knuckles through his gloves. Again. Crap.

Miko turns her gaze back to Dar and huffs. Okay. Sorry. I’ll focus.

They lapse into their familiar rhythm of gestures, vocal checks, and practiced movements, a grounding melody of dust and muscle and breath, the music of stone sliding against stone soothing as the final course of the wall moves along foot by foot.

Top it, Dar says, and Miko leans in to steady the corner top stone as Dar finesses it into place. After knocking the same knuckles bloody for the third time, he holds up his hand. Stop. Go have lunch and gawk at the gawkers. Thirty minutes. Don’t be late coming back, okay?

Sure. Fabulous. Thanks. Miko flings her gloves onto the wall, clips her battered video comm to her cap, and strides away toward the group of off-worlders.

After stepping around the half-finished corner of the wall to escape the crowd, Dar sits and removes his gloves to examine his scraped hands. Too tired of himself and his life to do anything but lift food to his mouth, bite, and chew, he shuts his eyes to blot out the world, pushing back against the harsh words he’s had for himself lately. Too much bad luck for far too long, with no hope in sight.

The tension along his jaw forces Dar to reach for something to feel good about, something simple—anything. How about… the chocolate croissants he picked up on the way to work for a treat during his bath tonight. He reaches back to feel inside his carry bag and check on… aw, hell. Smashed flat—he must have stepped on them at some point.

Try again. He takes a big breath and another bite and opens his eyes.

Oh.

Okay. That’ll do.

The lean, square-shouldered man who arrived at the center a few days ago stands on the only patio visible from Dar’s position. From a distance, across an old-fashioned herb garden with gravel walkways, the man in the off-world outfit looks polished, like he spends his days in perfectly tailored business suits and his nights leaning against a buffing machine.

Dar scowls down at his filthy coveralls, lifts the sandwich off his lap to brush the worst of the stone dust away, but then stops, because what does it matter? "It doesn’t matter."

That doesn’t stop him from looking.

For twenty minutes the businessman stares blankly at the little garden and talks on his comm unit. He looks stern, like he’s doling out important instructions.

With a headshake, Dar stands up, grateful