Pushing the Limits
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Katherine Garbera
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Chapter 1
JESSIE ODELL STOOD in the corner as the party raged on. The gala for the new Mick Tanner Training Facility was in full swing at the Bar T Ranch just outside of Cole’s Hill, Texas. Astronauts, astronaut candidates, government officials and private investors ready to fund missions that would take humanity to Mars all mingled in the converted barn. But she’d had enough of talking about her adventures and the famous people she’d met. That part of her life ended when Alexi slipped into the crevasse on Everest. When she hadn’t been able to save him.
She’d known that when she got back to base camp the grief would hit her...except it never had. She’d become icy inside and out. Her old life of making adventure films for television was over—both the thin mountain air and the drive compelling her to move forward. She was tired of having every moment of her life played out for the cameras. She was ready for some privacy.
So this job at the new Cronus mission training center had been a godsend.
“Don’t like parties much?” a man asked, coming up on her left to lean against the poorly lit wall.
“Not really,” she admitted. He was hard to see clearly in the shadows, just a silhouette of a man in a well-fitting tuxedo. She could tell he was taller than she was—which was saying something, as she was five foot ten and wearing three-inch heels. Her mother had told her to never apologize or cower because of her height and she never had. It was part of her and she couldn’t hide it.
“Me either,” he said. “I’m Thor, by the way.”
“Jessie. Thor, huh? You don’t look Nordic.”
He laughed and it made her smile, the sound loud and joyful, not low and subtle the way Alexi’s had been.
“Yeah. Sorry, it’s a force of habit when I’m talking to NASA guys. I guess I should have introduced myself as Hemi. Hemi Barrett. Thor’s my call sign and what I answer to. I’m part of the astronaut crew training for the first Cronus mission,” he said, stepping from the shadows and holding out his hand.
“You sound American but that name is Maori, right?”
“Yeah. On my mom’s side. She and my pops met in Hawaii and I was raised in LA.”
His strong jaw and dark stubble accentuated the fullness of his lips. She stared at his mouth for much longer than was acceptable, feeling a spark of instant attraction. She’d never had that before. Normally her sexual desire grew out of friendship with a man.
But this was different. He was different. And this was definitely lust.
His eyes were like melted dark chocolate, decadent and sinful. His skin was tanned and there were laugh lines around his eyes as well as a one-inch scar on his forehead above his right eye. There was also a birthmark around his right eye. The Maori people called those with these marks ngā kanohi ora o rātou mā kua wehe atu, which meant “the living faces of those who have gone on before us.” Many believed that the wearer had been marked by the gods for greatness.
He arched one eyebrow at her and she realized she must be staring at him, but she didn’t care. She had grown up surrounded by nature. Her first instincts were always driven by the laws of the wild. In the animal kingdom, and in life, she’d found she never regretted not backing down.
She’d spent time with a Maori family on one of her New Zealand adventures. She had also read the personnel files of each of the candidates. But a report couldn’t capture the personality of Hemi.
His lips curled in a half smile and he took a step closer. She put her hand out, settling it on his arm, feeling the strength in him under the fabric of his suit jacket. She flexed her fingers. All the men she’d known were lean from surviving in the wilderness. Not him. He was muscled, with coiled strength inside.
His handshake was firm but not meant to intimidate.
“Jessie Odell.” He said her name with a hint of awe. That meant he’d seen her show or read her books.
“Yes.”
“Wow. I used to watch your parents’ show when I was a kid,” he said.
Well, thank God for that. She was a part of so many people’s childhoods because of those shows. Her parents—marine biologists—had followed in the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau and had brought her along on their yacht as they filmed their adventures. She’d rather talk about her childhood than her last ascent up Everest. She needed to distance herself from that, which was why she was here in Texas, in a job that would be a cakewalk compared to what she’d done before.
“I bet you hear that a lot,” he said.
“Some. Other people want to hear what it was like to snowshoe in the Arctic.”
“That’s cool,” he said with a wink. “But I’ve been to space.”
She laughed and it surprised her. She hadn’t expected to laugh tonight, but he was right. She was in a room full of men and women who’d done something extraordinary, as well.
“What’s it like?” she asked.
“Buy me a drink and we can exchange stories. I want to hear about the time you were in the shark cage off Africa.”
“It’s 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 up there.”
“Doesn’t that frighten you?” she asked. “That’s a bit like relying on luck.”
“Don’t knock luck. I’ve seen it serve you well,” he said. “That shark attack was incredible. I remember the first time I saw that episode—the network put up a warning at the beginning about its graphic nature. Honestly, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. What was it like?”
“It was dicey. The truth is, my dad saved me. You probably saw that on TV. The situation was a bit like yours. That cage had been reliable and we’d never had any problems with it, but there was a flaw in the steel that no one could have known about until the structure caved in. The shark lunged, clamped down on the bar and part of my leg...my dad sort of shoved me up to get me out of the way, but the shark got me anyway. Dad punched it hard, on the nose and...”
He put his hand over hers. She seemed fine about the incident. Talked about it the way he might describe falling off his bike when he’d been a kid, but he knew there was more to it than that. It must have been scarier than her tone revealed. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Asking about it,” he said.
“It’s okay. You’re not the first. And it’s an old memory. Not as fresh as some others.”
A fresher near-death experience? He hadn’t really followed her career since he’d joined the Air Force to pursue the space program. “Want to tell me about it?”
She shook her head and then took a sip of her drink. “Definitely not.”
“Dance?”
“I’m not very good,” she said, but put her glass on the table.
“I am,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
“Really?”
“I always tell the truth.”
“Always? Really?”
“Yes. Even when I shouldn’t,” he said. “One of the things my dad drilled into me and my brothers when we were little. My mom is the one who insisted we learn to dance. She said women like to dance and men who won’t are missing out.”
She smiled. “Sound like good lessons.”
“They were,” he said.
The band started to play Blake Shelton’s “Sangria” and he took her hand, leading her to the dance floor. He pulled her into his arms, leaving a small gap between them. With one hand on her waist and the other holding one of hers, he started to guide her around the dance floor set up in the barn. He soon realized she knew how to dance. Her legs brushed against his and she watched him with the intensity she’d had when they’d been talking.
“Your mom did good,” she said.
“She did her best with four rowdy boys.”
“Four boys? That must have been some household. Where did you fall in the siblings?”
“Guess,” he said. Most people thought he was the firstborn because he had a strong type A personality, but all the Barrett boys did. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t think he could accomplish whatever he wanted.
“You’re confident, but I’m guessing from what you said about your parents that all the brothers are. You’re spoiled, too...so youngest.”
“Spoiled? What makes you think that?” he asked.
“You expect to get everything you go after,” she said.
“Well...that’s just because I’m good. Has nothing to do with being spoiled.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Was I right?”
“You were,” he said. “Most peg me for the oldest.”
“I can see that, but you don’t have that mantle of responsibility. I think if you were the oldest you’d never go to space and leave your family behind.”
“Wow. That cuts a little close.”
“I always tell the truth, too. Plus, I already know you’re a man with his future up in the stars.”
“I am. Did you want something else?”
“Like you said, that’s a little intense for a first date.”
“So this is a first date?” he asked with a wink.
“It might be.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. If there’s a first date, that means there’ll be more.”
“Let’s see how this one ends before we go making assumptions,” she said.
He liked her.
More than he’d expected from someone he had a fanboy crush on. He’d just seen her in the corner, standing alone, and he’d almost let her stay that way. But there had been something about the quietness of her that had drawn him across the room. Her long, gorgeous legs had helped him make the decision but he hadn’t imagined she’d be so real, so genuine, and when she looked up at him with those wide blue eyes, her pretty pink lips parted, she made him think of tangled sheets and long nights spent in each other’s arms.
“But I don’t think another date is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
As the music ended, she said, “Because I’m your instructor, so I think we should keep our relationship strictly professional. Thanks for the dance.”
He didn’t agree with that. Not at all. There was no reason they couldn’t be more than student and teacher. She stepped back as someone called his name. He turned to see who it was, and when he turned back she was gone.
