man, but right now he wasn’t feeling it. He was more lost than he’d been after the first evaluation.
“Good news first.”
“Okay,” she said.
“We might have won the bid for the facility,” he said. “I’m supposed to call Lynn. Dennis got some insider news that he’d be happy with the winner of the bid. He thinks that means us.”
“Good,” she said. “Jeb is getting pretty excited about the facility and the land’s ready for construction now.”
“Yeah. He told me that if he’d been better at science, he would have tried to become an astronaut. Flying’s in his blood. His old man was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.”
“Really?” Molly asked. “I never knew that.”
Jason knew he was stalling, but he didn’t want to say out loud that he might not make the cut for the program. That his space dreams might be over when they’d barely started. And he knew that wasn’t fair. He’d spent way more time among the stars than most other astronauts had, but he wanted more. He needed more.
Molly put her hand on his wrist, drew it up her body and kissed his knuckles. “Just say it. Whatever your bad news is. It’s not going to get better keeping it to yourself.”
She was right. He knew that, but once he said it... “Dennis is being pressured to name the commander for the first mission. He wants me, but I’m still grounded. He asked me to come to Houston and take a slew of tests to see if I’ve made improvements. If I have, he will push back, say he wants me and that I’m recovering.”
“If not, he’ll name someone else,” she said, filling in the rest. “That sucks. So when do you have to go?”
“Tomorrow. I’ve done everything I can.”
“I know. What’s the process?” she asked.
“Usually, they have us do a series of blood tests and then spend many hours in a specialized room where they can see how being in a zero gravity simulation affects the body.”
Molly turned in the tub so she could face him. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.
“At least you’ll know,” she said.
“I don’t want to,” he said at last. “I wanted the full three months so that I could be further along in my recovery from the yearlong mission.”
“What can you do?” she asked.
“Nothing. Dennis said it best—they don’t want to bring me back in pieces.” Jason was trying to make it sound like a joke, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to give up on being a part of the Cronus missions.
She shook her head. “It’s not funny.”
“I know. If I don’t laugh, I think I’m going to cry.”
“Do you want me to go to Houston with you?” she asked.
He hadn’t thought of bringing anyone along. All of his adult life he’d been on his own. By choice, he realized, because Mick might have been more involved in his life if he’d asked him. “I would like that. Can you be away from the ranch?”
“I don’t see why not. Jeb says I get in his way.”
Jason could imagine Jeb saying that, but they both knew how important her work on the ranch was. “I won’t be able to spend much time with you. I mean, I’ll be in the testing facility for the most part.”
“It’s okay. I want to see the space center and do some more research on the kind of training we’ll be providing if our bid goes through. When are we going to call Lynn?”
“Not until we get out of this tub. Are you excited about the facility?”
She 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
