He drew her into his arms and she started to lift her face to his, her eyes slowly closing. But he turned her so that he stood behind her and put his hand under her chin, tipping her head back toward the sky.
She was on fire with need. But he treated her like a friend.
They were friends.
Just friends.
She repeated that over and over again as he pointed to the stars. Was the passion she felt one-sided?
ACE KEPT HIS touch light on her chin as he tipped her head up to the sky. He wanted more. Hell, she was more addicting than his first taste of flying Mach 1 had been. But he wasn’t back for good and she deserved more than a summer fling.
He had always loved the stars and the sky but, more than that, the freedom they had represented. He knew life had been different for Molly. She’d had her dad and when her mom had passed she’d had Rina. She’d grown up in a house filled with love and support. He hadn’t. He’d wanted to escape and run as far away from Texas as he could get.
Ironic that he’d ended up finding his home in Houston. He’d thought he’d have to leave that city far behind to find peace, but he’d been wrong. It wasn’t the first thing he’d been wrong about and he doubted very much it would be the last.
“What am I looking at?” she asked. Her voice was soft like the gentle breeze stirring around them and her hair smelled of summer strawberries. He remembered the way it had looked falling in disheveled waves around her shoulders and was tempted to remove the elastic holding it in place now.
“Venus,” he said. “Venus takes only a fraction of one Earth year—225 days—to orbit the sun once, so we see it frequently in the night sky. Sometimes Jupiter and Mars line up with it—it’s rare, but you can see all three in a triangle in the sky.”
“Now?”
“No. Usually closer to sunrise,” he said.
“What’s it like to see the sunrise from orbit?”
He wasn’t sure he could put it into words. He wasn’t one of those poetic guys who turned their adventures on the space station into books. Despite his time with NASA, he was still more of a cowboy, he guessed, even if he didn’t want to be tied to the Earth.
“It’s awesome,” he said at last.
She chuckled.
“Awesome?”
“Yeah, got a problem with that?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Good to know that you haven’t changed all that much.”
For a moment he didn’t follow and then he remembered when he’d first come to the ranch. All he’d said to everything was awesome in a sarcastic tone.
“Forgot about that. I don’t use the word much anymore. Must be something about the Bar T that brings it out in me.”
“Must be,” she said, stepping aside. “I guess we should think about heading back.”
“If you do, you’ll miss the best part.”
“What’s the best part?” she asked, turning in his arms. She had her head tipped back and their eyes met in the inky darkness. It was hard to read the expression in hers and that made him feel a bit freer. She wouldn’t be able to read the expression in his eyes, either. He didn’t want her to see how much she affected him.
He traced one finger down the line of her neck. “You are so delicate-looking in the moonlight. Like the Carina Nebula.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said. Her words were soft, and he had the feeling she was waiting for something.
Him?
“It’s not as well-known as many of the other nebulas. It’s found in the southern sky.”
“South like southern hemisphere?”
“Yeah. Remember how I wasn’t sure where Montana was for the longest time?” he asked. He’d been so green when he’d lived here. When he was surviving on the streets, the only things that had mattered were food and staying away from the authorities. He’d never done well in school until he’d come to the Bar T and hadn’t had those worries anymore.
“I do. But you always knew the night sky,” she said. “Was it because of... I don’t know much about your family. Dad always respected the privacy of the guys who came here. Said if you wanted me to know your story, you’d tell me.”
“Nothing to tell. I knew the sky because I read a book when I was younger, before things got rough, about sailors who navigated using the stars. It just sort of stuck.”
“Probably like me and Misty of Chincoteague. If I hadn’t already loved horses, that book made me.”
He didn’t dwell on the past, especially his childhood. There was nothing but pain and humiliation there and the future had always been where he’d seen himself. But he realized now how much of the man he was today had been shaped by those events. He was a maverick, even in the Cronus program. Always pushing boundaries and going on missions that others thought twice about. It was why his boss was determined that he get back in top physical condition as quickly as possible.
He was realistic enough to know he probably wouldn’t be part of the Mars mission team since the first one wouldn’t likely happen for at least another twenty years. The test missions, though. The long-term journeys and a possible moon base. Those were all programs he was interested in.
But Cronus was close to his dream mission. They’d be taking up the components for the first base between Earth and Mars. They’d establish the way station and each mission would continue to test human endurance in space.
“Like that,” he agreed. But he wasn’t thinking about their conversation anymore. He was thinking about Molly. And how she’d always been just out of his reach. He had been afraid he wasn’t good enough for her as a teenager, and he realized now that he’d also been running from anything that hinted at a normal life. Still was.
But in the moonlight, with the horses neighing behind them, it was easy to see that none of that mattered. He cupped the back of her head and lowered his mouth to hers. Slowly, in case she wanted to pull back. But she didn’t.
She rose on her tiptoes and put her hands on his shoulders. She held him loosely for balance and he felt the brush of her breath over his lips a second before their mouths met. He moved his lips over hers and closed his eyes.
He knew he couldn’t stay, that this could never be more than a few moonlight kisses, but somehow that seemed perfect to him.
* * *
THROWING CAUTION TO the wind wasn’t her MO, but this was Jason. And she knew no matter what happened with his health, he wouldn’t stay here on the Bar T Ranch for long. He had always been destined for bigger things.
She sighed and almost let her thoughts derail her, but then she shook her head. Shook herself. Not tonight. Like she’d promised herself earlier this evening when she left her bed...no regrets.
Pushing her fingers into his hair, cupping his scalp, she tilted her head to the side to deepen the kiss. Now that they had been out here riding and talking, he tasted different to her. More like adventure and the promise of things she’d never be brave enough to take for herself.
He tasted like a man who was leaving, the same way he had that long-ago summer when she’d wanted to be sophisticated enough to seduce him into staying.
She pulled back.
“What is it?”
How could she tell him that suddenly she felt too silly, too foolish for him? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “Nothing.”
“Dammit,