“It’s three months to my reevaluation. That should give us some time to figure out what to do with the ranch.”
“I don’t want to sell it,” she said. “And I can’t buy you out. Not now.”
“Oh. I was really hoping to sell my half to you. My life isn’t here at the Bar T.”
“Dad borrowed some money from you, so you must know the ranch isn’t as profitable as it once was,” she said.
“I could just sign over my half to you. NASA pays me well enough, and by rights the ranch should be yours.”
That idea didn’t sit right with her. After all, he’d already put money into the ranch and never got a cent back. “No. Thank you for the offer, but Dad wanted you to have this for a reason. He wouldn’t have felt right not paying you back, at least. And even though I don’t understand or appreciate why he made us full partners in this ranch, I won’t go against his wishes. Maybe you will find that you like the ranching life.” Every once in a while the breeze blew in the right direction and the scent of his aftershave wafted on the wind.
“I don’t think I will.” He stared up at the stars again, looking as if he would fly up to them now if he could and leave everything earthbound behind.
“There’s a lot more to you than I remember,” he said. “Though, to be fair, I don’t remember much except that you could outride me.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “All I remember was that I really wanted to kiss you and you were determined not to get involved with me.”
He laughed.
She watched him a second and then smiled. It was the first time since her dad’s death that she’d felt...happy.
He noticed her watching him and raised one eyebrow at her.
“You made me smile.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I like your smile.”
“You do?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shook her head. “How many women have fallen for your ‘aw shucks’ routine?”
“A fair few,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “Not everyone is impressed with my being an astronaut and having stayed on the ISS.”
“Really?” she asked. It gave her the shivers to think of the things he’d done and seen. “I am.”
“You are?”
“I’ve only left the state of Texas once and that was just to go to Louisiana to pick up a bull Dad had purchased. So you having left the planet is a big deal,” she said, wondering who would disagree.
He stopped walking and turned to look at her. His features weren’t clear in the darkness, but she felt his attention on her.
She licked her lips and tried to step back because she was a hot mess, as she’d said earlier. And Jason was feeling uncertain and worried about his future. This was the worst possible time to be kissing him. And more—she wanted more.
She knew that.
She’d been alone for too long. It had been over eighteen months since she’d ended her last relationship and most of the time she was just fine getting her romance fix on television or in books. But tonight, standing out here in the moonlight with him, she craved...something more.
She never gave in to impulses. That was a lie—she had tonight. She’d left her room, gone into the hallway. He’d kissed her. And when their lips had met...she’d changed.
Something fundamental had shifted inside of her and she was honest enough to admit she didn’t know how to react to it. She should never have kissed Jason. She should have left him in the past, in those teenage-girl dreams.
But he was here and that kiss was fresh in her mind. Her lips tingled and she realized that being this close to him stirred something inside of her that she usually did a good job of ignoring. Stirred the passion and the desire that she preferred to think she was the master of. That she had been able to control until Jason.
“Jason...”
“Yes?”
“Why did you stop walking?” she asked.
“Because I wanted to show you this,” he said. 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,
