an open bar,” she pointed out.
“Then you have nothing to lose,” he said.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They maneuvered through the crowd, where she saw her friend Molly Tanner, owner of the Bar T, dancing with her fiancé, Ace McCoy. Ace would be leading the long-term space mission to build a way station halfway between Earth and Mars.
“Ace has it all,” Hemi said, following her gaze.
“Does he?”
“Yeah. He’s got a great fiancée, he’s first crew member and leader of the Cronus mission and he’s got this training facility up and running.”
“Do you want all that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That’s not really a first date kind of question.”
“This is a first date?” But she felt a little embarrassed that she’d asked too intimate a question. Usually, when she met people, they were on their way to do something daring, happy to answer intimate questions because there was a risk that not everyone would make it back alive. But he was different. She was curious about him. She’d spent a lot of time working around the world and was usually the outsider. People were used to her asking questions, and at times she forgot herself and followed her own curiosity.
“I’m hoping,” he said, with a wink.
That put her at ease a little bit. He had charm, she’d give him that. With his looks and body he probably didn’t have to work too hard to get women to fall for him. “We’ll see. I still don’t know what kind of story you’re offering in exchange for hearing about ten-year-old me and a great white.”
“The time I did a space walk and became untethered...”
“Obviously 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
