remembered everything about that time.
“What happened?” Jason asked as he signaled to exit the highway.
“Well, I was worried so I went there to see him. He’d hooked back up with his high school girlfriend. He was going to tell me when he got back to Houston. Didn’t want to break up over the phone, blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to die. Not so much because of the emotions, though they hurt, but because I’d been so foolish. I misjudged him.”
“His mistake,” Jason said. “He missed out on something special.”
She had thought so at the time, but now, feeling what she did for Jason, she knew that the college boyfriend had never been right for her. He’d been someone new and different but not the love of her life. “It took a while for me to realize that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to trust myself and my judgment with a guy again.”
“Who changed that for you?” he asked.
“Do you really want my romantic history?”
“I guess not. I was just... I wondered how you got over it.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist and thought about it. “Going home was the best tonic for that heartbreak. Made me realize what was really important. Dad and Rina both let me have some time to figure things out and that was all I needed. I started to realize it was mainly humiliation I was feeling, not really a broken heart. That helped the most. What about you? Ever had a broken heart?”
He glanced away from the road for a moment to look at her. Then he turned his attention back to the traffic. “I don’t think so. I’ve been pretty casual in all my relationships. Didn’t want anything to interfere with my commitment to NASA.”
“What about now?” she asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished them back. She stared straight ahead and tried to pretend she hadn’t just asked him how he felt about her.
“I’m not sure. You’re different, Molly.”
He pulled up to the security gate at the space center and lowered his window to talk to the guard. Then he started driving again. She had more questions, but now wasn’t the time. She was disappointed, she admitted to herself as he parked the car in front of the program manager’s office, but she tried to shake it off. She tried to compare what she felt now to what she’d experienced back in college and it was impossible. There was no way to equate a crush and her first sexual experience with what she felt for Jason.
He looked over at her and she sensed he knew she was thinking about what hadn’t been said in the car.
“Want to meet my boss?” he asked.
Not really. But this was what she was competing against for his affections. She should learn as much about the program and the people involved as possible. If he was cleared to return to space, they were the only part of him that would be left here in Texas. And she would be working with them on the training facility.
“Sure.”
She slung her purse over her shoulder and walked up the steps, aware that she looked like a country mouse who’d come to the city. But it didn’t bother her. She was who she was. Jason put his hand on the small of her back as they entered the air-conditioned building and walked down the long hallway past crew photos and pictures of different missions. She tried not to look at them, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to see “Ace” in his element because then it would make it real that he belonged at NASA and not on the ranch with her. When she saw a large photo of Jason by himself in his space suit, holding his helmet, she stopped and stared.
She saw the intensity in his eyes and she knew then that she was being silly about a man again. There was no way a woman could compete with something that made him feel that way. It wasn’t just his career. It was his calling. Being an astronaut was who he was. He belonged in the space station or exploring a distant planet, not repairing fences on the ranch.
AFTER INTRODUCING MOLLY to Dennis Lock, Ace went to Dr. Tomlin’s office. She ran the blood tests as soon as he arrived. Then he was put through a battery of other tests, which included simulations of space-enforced gravity, zero gravity and pulling Gs. Ten hours later he was exhausted and felt as if he’d completed an Ironman triathlon and followed it up with a marathon. His body was tired and he ached. He had been running at the ranch, following the diet plan that Dr. Tomlin and Mona had outlined and doing other chores and the extra weight training Molly had interrupted. But he’d hoped for more time and more warning about the tests.
“I’m beat,” he said to the doctor when she came back in to take his blood again.
“Good. That was my intention. I want to create a good baseline for you before you train for your next mission.”
“Will I be going on another mission?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. But that’s the goal,” she said. “You can go home now. Be back here at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow for another round of tests and I should have more of the results then.”
“Will they be final?”
“We will see,” she said. “I still haven’t found anything conclusive. The raised calcium levels in your blood were alarming when you got back and I didn’t see them improving at the rate I expected after your intensive rehabilitation. But so far we’ve seen no development of kidney stones.”
“Was that a concern?” he asked. “I spent a lot of time on the ARED when I was up there. Way more than the recommended two hours a day.”
She put her hand on his arm. The ARED was a treadmill that was used on the ISS and equipped for the astronauts to use in microgravity. “I know. Believe me, no one wants your results to be promising more than me. A lot of your routine over the last year was based on my theories.”
He nodded. He knew everyone was anxious to see how he’d improve. “How do I match up with the other candidates?”
“I’ll need to see all the test results to get the full picture, but, based on what I’ve seen today, this is what I can tell you so far. Your improvement at the six-week mark...isn’t the same as theirs. In some areas you are way ahead.”
“Which ones?” Ace asked. He’d keep doing whatever worked.
“Muscle strength and stamina. But your blood work...that still has a long way to go. It could be due to the extra three months you spent up there.”
He wanted to punch something, like maybe the wall, but—given the state his bones might be in—that didn’t seem like a wise choice. “What can I do?”
“Continue with the diet and exercise program you’ve been following. I’ve invited Candice O’Malley to meet with you shortly. She is having a different recovery than yours. Maybe you two can share notes.”
“Sure,” he said, glancing at his watch and noticing he only had ninety minutes until he was supposed to meet Molly at Rocket Fuel. He figured he was going to need a beer after this day. “I thought I’d be done by eight.”
“You will be.”
“Okay.
