turned back around, settling against his chest once again. “I am. It’s different and we haven’t done anything new here in forever.”
“Nervous at all?”
“I’m more nervous about going to Houston with you.”
He squeezed her close. “Why?”
“Everyone will know we’re together,” she said. “Or assume it. And you know how the ranch is...so gossipy. Once you leave—”
“If I leave. This is going to be the trip that makes the difference, Molly. This test will decide my future.”
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “You will decide your future. The test is going to just point out the possibilities.”
“That’s very wise,” he said.
“Dad said the same thing to me. When I dropped out of college, I said, ‘I guess I have no choice except ranching.’ He told me I had the same choices I’d always had. I’d simply eliminated one possibility.”
Mick had been such a good dad, Jason thought. As long as he’d known him, the older man had always had a long vision of the future. It was hard to imagine the world without him in it, but Mick lived on in Molly and in everyone whose life he’d touched.
“I miss him. I could use his advice right now,” Jason said.
“He’d say something ambiguous and make you think he’d told you something wise,” she said. “Then you’d make your decision and he’d nod like you were the smartest person in the world. God, I miss that. He could make me feel like I’d chosen correctly with one nod.”
“Because you knew he had your back,” Jason said.
“Exactly. Well, whatever happens, I have your back, Ace.”
* * *
“THAT MEANS MORE than you can know,” he said.
She didn’t elaborate. Didn’t tell him she wanted him to stay. Even when she’d been keeping her distance, every moment he’d been back on the Bar T had just made her fall a little more for him. There was something about Jason. It wasn’t good looks—though he was very handsome in a rugged, sexy sort of way. It was something deeper.
The way he’d jumped right in and taken on all the ranch’s problems and helped her come up with a plan. Granted, it was a plan she couldn’t have executed without him, but he’d done something. He hadn’t just stood by and waited to see what she could do.
She hadn’t needed him to save her, but it was nice to have him by her side. She guessed some might say she was projecting the feelings she’d had for her dad onto Jason. Though she didn’t really know him any better than she had when he’d left the ranch as a teenager, she knew that there was more between them.
A lot more. And it wasn’t just the sex, even if that was amazing.
“What will you do if you can’t go back into space?” she asked. His hands were moving restlessly on her body, almost as if he was absently caressing her.
“I haven’t thought much about it. I think Dennis would give me a role in management if I wanted it, or I could take on more responsibility training the other astronauts at the facility.”
“Would you do that?” To her it seemed like the worst kind of torture for him to be close to something he wanted but would never be able to have.
“I guess. I can’t imagine being grounded permanently.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. I haven’t taken the medical yet.”
* * *
THE WATER HAD started to cool, but Ace didn’t want to let Molly go. Not yet. He stood up, lifting her with him and put her on her feet next to the tub.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not ready to get out yet, but it’s getting cold,” he said.
He bent over to drain and then refill the tub. He felt her fingers tracing the last part of his tattoo, the word go. “You are very bold,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because you test your limits in space, for everyone’s benefit. You don’t let anything stand in your way, do you?”
“Not for the things I love,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her.
She was gazing at his side, biting her lower lip, and her fingers were lightly moving over him. She looked...sad again. He had made it clear from the beginning that he had one foot in this world on the ranch and the other in his gravity boots, ready for the next mission, but that didn’t make it any easier for her, he imagined. He knew it wasn’t easy for him.
“You don’t love very much, do you?” she asked, glancing up, blushing when she realized he was watching her.
“No. I’m discerning. A bit like you, I’d say.”
She nodded, dropping her hand to walk over to the shelf where she kept the scented bath salts. He considered it lucky that he wasn’t going to Houston until tomorrow. Her salts and bubble bath were both lavender-scented. And while the smell was soothing, he didn’t even want to contemplate the ribbing he’d get from the other guys if he showed up smelling like flowers.
She dumped a small handful of the salts in the bath and then looked over at him.
“What?”
How could he put into words that just watching her move turned him on? The last five weeks had been long. Too long. He had dreamed of her each night and had then been tortured during the day as he’d watched her just going about her routine. There was something inherently sexy about everything she did.
He shrugged.
He didn’t want to say anything that would make the situation between them even more impossible than it already was.
He wanted her. He liked her. He wanted to protect her. But he was leaving. No matter what, he was going to find a way to go on the Cronus missions and if he let her get any closer, it would be harder to leave.
He flicked off the faucets as the water reached the correct level and then turned his back on her. Didn’t want to look into her eyes with that knowledge in his own.
He held his hand out to her and she took it hesitantly.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. If he said it enough, maybe the words would eventually become true. Faking it. He’d been faking it for so long, trying to be like the men who had inspired him. Like Mick, here on the ranch—acting like there wasn’t anything he didn’t know. Like Dennis at the space center—pretending that nothing about the universe and the unknown scared him. And...well, like every image of the perfect lover, for her. He wanted to give her everything when inside he wasn’t sure he had that much to give.
“Kiss me,” he said. He needed to be lost in her. Lost in her kiss, which had the power to make him stop thinking and just feel alive and complete. He felt like he was enough when she was in his arms.
She stepped closer, pressing her naked body to his and wrapping her arms around his torso. Leaning back for a moment, she kissed the center of his chest then moved to the left, tracing his tattoo with her tongue. Then she looked up at him. Their eyes met and he realized he wasn’t fooling her.
The expression in her eyes seemed as ageless as the land the Bar T sat on and as vast as the universe he wanted to explore. Sometimes he honestly felt like everything he’d ever been searching for was found in her.
“You boldly go,” she said. “Don’t forget that, Ace. You came from the streets and made it to the stars. Nothing is going to keep you grounded. Not your bone-density problems, not this ranch and, I promise you, not me.”
He