wasn’t unusual. Many of NASA’s astronauts were pulled directly from the military, particularly the Air Force, since jet flight experience was valued so highly. But, Shelly knew her background in aerospace engineering should have made her sufficiently qualified under normal circumstances.
Every move Shelly had made in her career was to prepare her to become an astronaut. NASA relied heavily on its private contractors, and Shelly had gone to work for Welloney Incorporated straight from graduate school because they held contracts for some of NASA’s most high-profile projects.
When she learned GRM wasn’t going to get her into space, Shelly had almost thrown in the towel then and there, but there had been a silver lining. For her hard work on the project, she’d been promoted and sent to Houston to train the astronauts on Draco. It was hardly the next best thing to riding a rocket into space, but the money was good, and Shelly needed a change.
She’d be damned if she’d sit back and watch some hotshot pilot take Draco for granted. If she couldn’t man the craft herself, she at least wanted astronauts that saw the mission as more than another notch in their belts.
Shelly shook her head over the argument she’d just had. He’d been trying to intimidate her. Lincoln Ripley was clearly the kind of man who was used to having his way.
Why else would he have leaned over her like that? He’d probably expected that she would get a lungful of that designer cologne he wore and swoon. Or maybe he’d thought she’d be mesmerized by his chocolate-brown eyes and offer him whatever he asked for.
This was the first time Shelly had seen Linc up close, and she couldn’t deny, he was every bit as handsome as the rumor mill suggested. The women in the administration office called him Mr. Right Stuff. But that little fact only annoyed her more.
She hated men like him. The kind that never had to work hard at anything. Panties dropped at their feet with a glance, they made touchdowns without breaking a sweat, and their egos…Shelly was surprised Linc could keep a plane in the air with the weight of his ego on board.
No, this wasn’t the kind of astronaut she wanted on her mission, but they were stuck with each other. Yet, if Lincoln Ripley thought he was going to bat his thick eyelashes and get what he wanted from her, he was sorely mistaken.
She was in charge, and she wasn’t going to let him forget it.
Two days later, Linc was still trying to figure out what he was going to do about Shelly London. It seemed she’d set her mind on riding him hard.
He smiled at the double entendre. If she were any other woman, he might try making the other meaning of that statement a reality. But Linc couldn’t get past her hard edge long enough to see her that way. Prim updo. Glasses. She was clearly wound too tight. And Linc liked his women soft and loose.
At first, he hadn’t known why she was dead set against him, but he’d been certain it was an opinion she’d formed long before they’d ever met.
Sure, from the outside looking in, it might seem to her that flying her spacecraft wasn’t a priority to him—an assumption that couldn’t be further from the truth. But his gut told him that was just a surface excuse for her to continue despising him.
Linc had to admit, having a woman hate him on sight was a new sensation, and it had thrown him off his game for a minute. But he’d never been one to run from a challenge.
So what if she didn’t want him piloting Draco? Colonel Murphy, the mission director, had made it clear that losing him wasn’t an option.
His next move had been to turn the tables on her. If she didn’t want to work with him, why couldn’t she go back to Washington and turn the work over to the remaining team members? After all, Draco was nearly built. What did they need her for now?
He needed to know exactly what kind of enemy he was up against in Shelly. That meant finding out whatever he could about her.
Getting information out of her engineering team had been easy. They were a bit starstruck in his presence and were eager to answer his questions. From them, he’d learned that she was as hard to ditch from this mission as he was.
He hadn’t placed much weight on her words when she’d bragged about designing Draco. Spacecrafts were designed by teams, and being the project manager didn’t exactly make her a genius.
Except in this case. Apparently, she had been a junior member of the design team and had graduated to PM based on her development of a system that could increase propulsion while reducing fuel usage. It was technology that had never been seen before, making Shelly the absolute authority.
Using that fact as leverage, Shelly had lobbied to be included on the flight team as an engineer. Of course, she hadn’t had a chance in hell of that happening. Draco would only be boarded by military personnel. That was a mandate that had come from the vice president himself.
Linc had spent the better part of his morning grilling engineers, but at least now he’d figured out why Shelly had it out for him. She wanted to be an astronaut. And she probably resented him because he epitomized everything she wanted but couldn’t have.
Now that he understood her a bit better, he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy for her. With that in mind, he decided to take the first step toward forming a truce.
Just before lunch, Linc headed toward her workstation to find her. He hadn’t gotten any farther than the hallway outside the GRM offices when he saw Shelly coming at him.
Her brown eyes were like flashing warning signs, but he still took his chances. “Hey, I was just going to look for you—”
She stopped in front of him, arms crossed. “So you finally decided to go to the source?”
He frowned at her bitter tone. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been checking up on me, haven’t you?” Her eyes narrowed, becoming thin slits, and he resisted the survival instinct to back up.
“Well, I just—”
“What exactly was your plan? Did you think turn-about was fair play? Were you looking for some way to get me ousted from GRM so I’d be out of your hair?”
Caught off guard, he didn’t have time to mask his guilt.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. If you were really the hotshot astronaut everyone thinks you are, you would have put this much energy into brushing up on Draco instead of prying into my background.”
Linc had been silent out of pure incredulity, but now his temper snapped. “Give me a break. I didn’t hire a private investigator to follow you around and dig up dirt. I asked a few of the engineers about you. I wanted to know why you have such a giant chip on your shoulder.”
“My chips and my shoulders are none of your concern. The only things you need to concern yourself with are the specifications for the spacecraft. We start training next week, and I don’t want to fall behind schedule because you don’t know what’s going on.”
Linc saw red. “I know everything I need to know about Draco.”
She smirked. “Really? How many days can Draco stay in orbit?”
“Two
