Cosmic Rendezvous

скачать книгу бесплатно


Ever since she’d been a child, she’d wanted to be an astronaut, and she’d done everything she could think of to make herself attractive to NASA. She’d attended Space Camp at sixteen, received her pilot’s license at twenty-one and earned her master’s in aerospace engineering by twenty-five. She’d even completed survival training with the marines after graduate school.

Yet, despite all her hard work, she’d been turned down three times in a row. That still didn’t mean she was ready to give up. She would do whatever she could to get backdoor training for a space flight.

When she’d accepted the position training astronauts on Draco, she’d known she had some bargaining power. Even though military restrictions prevented her from hitching a ride into space, she’d negotiated the right to train on all the equipment and simulators for the mission.

When NASA received her next application, it would be her strongest effort. But it would also be her last. If she was rejected again, Shelly would have to face facts. Maybe she wasn’t meant to become an astronaut.

Linc stepped out of the shower, rubbing his tired muscles. What had possessed him to make a date after the first day of training?

Initially, he’d wanted to spend as much time as possible with Anisa before she left for Milan. But over the past few days, his interest in her had begun to fade.

Walking into the bedroom, Linc eyed his pillows with longing. It had been a much more stressful day than he’d anticipated. Watching his nemesis choke on her food because he’d been teasing her had rattled him.

Thankfully, he’d been able to help her, but that didn’t ease his guilty conscience. Hadn’t he resolved to be more sensitive toward her? It had just been so difficult when she was challenging him at every turn.

On the other hand, it had forced him to raise his game. He stayed on his toes around her, and he was starting to look forward to their verbal sparring.

It had been a long time since he’d come across a woman who wasn’t interested in dating him—one that might actually share some of his interests.

Linc thought about that for a moment. Why wasn’t she interested in dating him? He was one of the most eligible bachelors in America. People magazine had said so.

Shaking his head to clear it, Linc reminded himself that Shelly wasn’t his type, anyway. Models, actresses, women who spent time and money on their looks—they were his type.

Shelly’s face came to mind. She didn’t spend a lot of time on her hair; she wore glasses and had no makeup at all. But she had smooth cocoa skin that was clear and creamy, and wide, full lips that were plump for kissing, and her dark brown eyes were a pretty almond shape.

The doorbell rang, and Linc found he was still sitting on the corner of his bed, in his bath towel. Throwing on jeans and a T-shirt, he rushed to let Anisa in.

He pulled open the door, and Anisa crossed the threshold, reeking of that cloying French perfume she loved. “Just look how you’re dressed. I thought you were taking me out.”

Linc gave her a regretful smile. “Work did me in. Do you mind if we stay in?”

“Staying in is a great idea, sugar,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek.

Linc winced as her lip gloss left a sticky mark on his skin. He studied her face, her false eyelashes, layers of purple and green eye shadow, and shiny lips, and suddenly it all seemed like too much. He had no idea about the woman beneath those layers of makeup.

Trying to keep up his spirits, he led his date into the living room. “The problem is that we don’t have any food in the house. Do you mind if we order pizza or something?”

“Pizza?” she said, curling her lip in derision. “Why don’t we get my favorite French restaurant in the city to cater dinner?”

Linc gritted his teeth. He just wasn’t in the mood for all that fuss. He also wasn’t in the mood for rich food, an expensive bill, and the huge amount of time it would take to get a delivery to his ranch from downtown Houston.

Anisa seemed to read the look on his face. “You don’t like that idea, do you?”

He gave her a sheepish nod. “I’m afraid it might be more hassle than I’m up for tonight. If you don’t want pizza, how about Chinese or Mexican food?”

Her lip curled again. “How about I call some girlfriends and hit that French restaurant downtown, and you crawl into bed and get some rest?”

Linc’s first heartfelt smile of the night broke out. “I think that may be for the best. I’m absolutely exhausted.”

“I’ll take a rain check,” Anisa said as she headed for the door.

Linc nodded, kissing her on the cheek, even though they both knew that check would never be cashed.

Shelly noticed a significant change in her relationship with Linc over the course of the week. After her conversation with her sister, Shelly couldn’t help feeling a bit embarrassed and ashamed of herself. On top of that, now that she’d opened her mind to seeing him without bias, she was starting to admire him.

Yes, she could now be counted among his silent groupies. Worse still, she’d started appreciating his confident but graceful strut, and the way his flight suit conformed to his leanly muscled body. She’d even caught herself studying his chiseled profile when no one was looking.

As a result of this confounding development, she avoided Linc as much as she could. She laid out the training parameters and supervised the overall exercises, but when one-on-one contact was required, she used members of her engineering team as go-betweens.

Linc made her life easy by following suit. The problem was that their mutual avoidance of each other hadn’t gone unnoticed.

He sat at the back of the room when she was running briefings, he no longer publicly gibed her, and they sat at opposite ends of the table at lunch. By the end of the week, everyone seemed to have noticed the change.

“What’s gotten into you and Lightning?” Quincy asked that Friday at lunch.

A slight blue tint under Quincy’s eyes showed that he was tired, and his atypically rumpled shirt indicated that he was probably a bit stressed. Although those were common states for an engineer under a deadline, they never kept him from checking in on Shelly.

She shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, at the beginning of the week, the two of you were at each other’s throats. Now you’re both acting like the other has the plague. Is there something going on between you two?”

Shelly’s blood rushed to her cheeks. “Why would you leap to that conclusion?” she asked, hoping he couldn’t see the telltale reddening of her face. Had she suddenly become transparent? Could Quincy look right through her and see that her heart had changed toward Linc?

She’d die of embarrassment if anyone guessed how much Lincoln Ripley was getting under her skin. She felt like her libido had betrayed her brain by falling prey to his good looks.

The humbling truth was that she was just a typical woman. One who responded to bulging biceps, chocolate-brown eyes and a sexy voice.

But in defense of her brain, he was also getting to her on a higher level. At the start of the week, she’d seen Linc as just a pretty boy who’d gotten lucky on a shuttle mission and was riding that success onto Draco. Now, at the end of one full week of training, she knew his reputation had been hard earned. Linc had smoked flight simulator records from day one. Those lightning fast reflexes—they weren’t a myth. Despite her pride, she had to acknowledge, Lincoln Ripley was the real thing.