What if they both met mates, but the men lived on different planets? What then? She and her twin sister hadn’t spent more than a few days apart in their entire lives. They did everything together.
For that reason, she had been dead set against Cosmic Mates. But Karma had been so gung-ho, Kismet reluctantly joined, too, hoping they’d at least meet men who lived on the same planet.
“The universe has a plan. We have been led to Cosmic Mates. We need to put our request out there, and the universe will provide,” her sister had argued.
Which sounded like supernatural doubletalk. If the universe already had a plan, what good would putting in a request do? Pointing that out hadn’t deterred her sister. Karma took after their spiritual mother, Destiny, who’d cobbled a personal faith from a variety of sources: Buddhism, Christianity, Wicca, astrology—whatever lit her candle. When Destiny sought answers to life’s questions, she meditated, prayed to Jesusandthe Triple Goddess, cast a spell for wisdom and deliverance, and consulted her horoscope. She left no crystal unturned.
Which also contributed to Kismet’s reluctance to join Cosmic Mates—she might never see their beloved mother again.
“I’m happy for you, but I wonder why you got picked, and I didn’t,” Karma mused. “We look alike. Why you, and not me? Not that I’m not happy for you.”
They looked enough alike to confuse people, but although genetically identical, they were mirror-image twins. Kismet was right-handed; her twin was a southpaw. Her smile skewed a little to the right, Karma’s to the left.
“You sound a little jealous,” Kismet said.
“I’ll let you know if I’m jealous after I see the guy. Show me his picture!”
She woke up her multipurpose communication device with a tap. A somber alien man with a head of thick blue hair, pointed ears, and three blue stripes across his nose and cheeks appeared.
“Nope. Not jealous.”
“What do you mean? He’s handsome!”
Her sister peered at the screen. “Jaryk Rullok-Myka of Kaldor doesn’t look happy. He’s not even smiling! He looks like a real wet blanket. Not fun at all. No, he’s not the one for you!” Karma dismissed him with a flip of her curly brunette hair.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, irked by the sudden judgment. “Because he’s not smiling? You didn’t read his profile.”
“I can tell. It’s a feeling.”
A feeling. One of those.She caught herself before she rolled her eyes.
“The universe—”
“Oh, the universe.” Her anything-goes twin was normally very open-minded, although she tended to rely on imaginary omens a wee bit too much.
“Okay, you wantfacts? He’s too serious, too stern.”
“Those aren’t facts; they’re your opinion,” she retorted, although she’d gotten the same impression. However, his solemnity appealed to her. Marriage, after all, was serious business and should be approached accordingly. She much preferred someone thoughtful and reserved over a person who would join Cosmic Mates on a lark. “He’s very handsome,” she said again.
“Since when do looks matter to you?”
True, she cared more about a man’s character, but it didn’t hurt that he was drop-dead gorgeous. “He’s thirty-four. He’s a government official with Kaldor,” she read from his profile. “It says his interests are horticulture, learning the ancient Kaldoran language, fostering interplanetary diplomacy, reading, journaling, and engaging in philosophical debate.”
Karma fake-snored.
“What do you mean? I like to read, journal, and I’ve been learning Latin.” She also enjoyed a rousing debate with people who made reasoned arguments. Their interests dovetailed rather nicely. She worked in government, too—albeit she was just a supervisor at the Department of Public Safety.
“Exactly! You need someoneunlikeyou—someone fun and adventurous who will expand your world.”
“I’ll ignore the fact you just called me boring because sometimes your mouth runs ahead of your brain. But, for the sake of argument, wouldn’t marrying an alien and moving to another planetopen up my world?”
“Yes, if he’s the right one for you. He’s not. You’d better pass on this one.”
This one? Like there’d been others. In the month since they’d joined Cosmic Mates, Jaryk was the only man who’d expressed an interest. They’d had the option of letting Cosmic Mates selecta match for them, but they’d drawn a hard line at that. They’d preferred to have some say-so as to who they married.
Not that she’d reached out to anybody herself. The truth was, she didn’t want to do this, and she’d kind of counted on her fickle sister losing interest so they couldunjoin and get on with their regularly scheduled lives.
Oddly, she’d started to feel a little hurt by the lack of interest until Cosmic Mates notified her she had a match.
