you made it back,” she said.
“Obviously, but it was pretty dicey for a little while. What’s your poison?” he asked as they got to the bar.
Yak butter tea. But she knew that wasn’t what he meant. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
“Ah, I don’t drink,” he said. “I have to keep my body in top condition. How do you think I’m doing?”
She let her gaze skim down his body. His shoulders were muscled, his broad chest tapered to a lean waist and long legs. She arched one eyebrow. “You look good, but it could be the cut of your clothes.”
He shook his head. “Play your cards right and I might let you see me out of them.”
She rolled her eyes at him. It was an over-the-top comment and he knew it. He ordered them each a cranberry juice and sparkling water, and then led the way to a high bar table off the beaten path.
When they got to the table, Hemi handed her one of the highball glasses. Their fingers brushed and a zing went up her arm, leaving goose bumps in its wake.
“To new friends and great adventures.”
“To new adventures.” She lifted her glass and took a sip.
“New adventures,” he repeated. He took a swallow and emptied half his glass.
“Why are you at this party?” he asked. “Are you one of the trainees?”
“No. I prefer to keep my feet on this planet. There are still so many areas I haven’t explored,” she said, but she knew it was a pat line, no longer true. She’d lost the spirit for adventure. But this man, tonight, awakened her sense of fun and excitement. She wasn’t too sure it would last, but fun sounded like a nice change of pace.
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m the survival training instructor. I’m here to make sure all of you spacemen and women know how to survive in any conditions.”
* * *
INSTRUCTOR.
It explained why someone like Jessie Odell was here. She was well known for her adventures and her television shows. So much excitement percolated amongst the trainees now that Ace had been cleared for preflight, and Dennis Lock, the deputy program manager for the Cronus program, had set their first mission for nine months from now.
“Good to know that they got the best,” he said. He had a bit of a fanboy crush on Jessie. She was gorgeous—tall and sexy—and she looked glamorous tonight. Her thick blond hair was pulled up in a twist at the back of her head, with a few tendrils falling to frame her face. Her eyes were the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean around the house he’d grown up in back in California. Her toned arms and long, strong legs were showcased by her silvery dress, and the plunging neckline revealed a hint of the curve of her breasts. “Like what you see?” she asked.
He nodded. “Most definitely. You clean up pretty good. But I think I like you better in a bikini.”
“I haven’t been in a bikini on screen since I was a teenager.”
“I was a teenager, too,” he said with a wink.
“Fair enough. So you were going to tell me about almost drifting off into deep space. Is that why you want to be a part of this mission? Did you see something that made you want to keep going?”
She’d put her forearms on the high table and linked her fingers together, and her long diamond earrings swung as she leaned forward. She watched him with those bluer-than-blue eyes and he realized that most people didn’t do this. They scanned the room or glanced at their phones. It had been a long time since someone paid such close attention to him.
“I suppose it is part of why I want to go back into space. But I would have wanted that even if I hadn’t become untethered.”
“How did it happen?”
“Lack of gravity and mechanical failure. The clip on my suit had a small flaw in it and when I lost my balance...it placed too much stress on it and it snapped.”
He remembered that moment when he’d felt the snap and started tumbling over, drifting away from the space station. Ace had been wearing a jet-propelled backpack and had come after him, but for about thirty seconds he was free falling into infinity. He’d never been so scared in his entire life, but he’d been cataloging the situation and trying to figure out how to direct his motion back toward the station.
She nodded. “I had a carabiner break one time when I was going up Annapurna in the Himalayas and started sliding down into a ravine. I used my ice pick to stop the descent. But you wouldn’t have had anything to grab on to. How did you get back?”
“Ace. He was close by and he came after me. I owe that man my life. Without him...if I’d been up there with anyone else, I’m not sure their reaction would have been as quick.”
“It’s good to have faith in your crew. There are maybe three people in the world I trust to always have my back in dangerous situations,” she said.
“Three? Well, I’ve got a lot of faith in my crew,” he said. “The ones I’ve been up with, at least. The new candidates I won’t know about until we’re up there.”
“Doesn’t that frighten you?” she asked. “That’s a bit like relying on luck.”
“Don’t knock luck. I’ve seen it serve you well,” he said. “That shark attack was incredible. I remember the first time I saw that episode—the network put up a warning at the beginning about its graphic nature. Honestly, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. What was it like?”
“It was dicey. The truth is, my dad saved me. You probably saw that on TV. The situation was a bit like yours. That cage had been reliable and we’d never had any problems with it, but there was a flaw in the steel that no one could have known about until the structure caved in. The shark lunged, clamped down on the bar and part of my leg...my dad sort of shoved me up to get me out of the way, but the shark got me anyway. Dad punched it hard, on the nose and...”
He put his hand over hers. She seemed fine about the incident. Talked about it the way he might describe falling off his bike when he’d been a kid, but he knew there was more to it than that. It must have been scarier than her tone revealed. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Asking about it,” he said.
“It’s okay. You’re not the first. And it’s an old memory. Not as fresh as some others.”
A fresher near-death experience? He hadn’t really followed her career since he’d joined the Air Force to pursue the space program. “Want to tell me about it?”
She shook her head and then took a sip of her drink. “Definitely not.”
“Dance?”
“I’m not very good,” she said, but put her glass on the table.
“I am,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
“Really?”
“I always tell the truth.”
“Always? Really?”
“Yes. Even when I shouldn’t,” he said. “One of the things my dad drilled into me and my brothers when we were little. My mom is the one who insisted we learn to dance. She said women like to dance and men who won’t are missing out.”
She smiled. “Sound like good lessons.”
“They were,” he said.
The band started to play Blake Shelton’s “Sangria” and he took her hand, leading her to the dance floor. He pulled her into his arms, leaving a small gap between them. With one hand on her waist and the other holding one of hers, he started to guide her around the dance floor set up in the barn. He soon