High Risk (Point of No Return Book 1)

by Brenna Aubrey

  I’d taken some measures last night when he’d gone to his room, so I’d have to check later to see how much I could trust that he’d behaved while I was gone. If he let me back in, that was.

  Opening the door, I was startled out of my skin by the hulking shadow hovering nearby. I turned and gasped in fright before realizing Ty was waiting for me outside the bathroom door. I put a hand over my heart and coughed—hoping to cover for the loud clicking as my heartbeat raced.

  He grimaced and muttered his apology, holding out a folded bit of cloth. It was my T-shirt from the night before, laundered and without a stain. “I figured you’d probably prefer to wear something more your size.”

  I took it from him slowly. “Thank you. I would…not that I don’t love wearing a NASA shirt. But…” I waved to point out the baggy fit. But I’d forgotten about cinching it tight around me so it wouldn’t slip like last night. It fit me so tightly now that it hugged me like a second skin.

  His eyes followed my action, gravitating to my chest. There was something in that look, an obvious pop of tension where he noticed me. Noticed me in a way that men didn’t usually notice me—or at least not as far as I knew. For myself, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his mouth. I heated again, remembering that kiss. And—damn it—my nipples tightened just reliving it. The shirt wasn’t thin, but I didn’t have a bra on. I gulped. Did he notice?

  My hand squeezed tight around my own T-shirt, and we stood in silence before he finally looked up. “I thought that—as an apology for yesterday—I’d come along and help you gather your things.”

  I blinked. Say what?

  In response to my obvious befuddlement, he cracked a smile. “I’m not an asshole all of the time, Gray, only some of the time. Okay, maybe most of the time.”

  I frowned. “Commander—”

  “Ty. Everyone calls me Ty.” He laughed. “Or better yet, call me Ryan.”

  I hadn’t heard anyone call him Ryan. I blinked again. “O-okay.”

  “Besides, who knows how long I’ll hold that rank? Technically, I’m still in the Navy, but I have no idea for how much longer.”

  His voice trailed off, his blue eyes drifting out the window. Astronauts who had entered NASA from the military were still on active duty, still held their rank—and were promoted—while they served as astronauts. But since Tyler had broken with NASA, it was as yet undetermined what his status in the Navy was. He might have to retire before his test flight in September. But I suspected he might be having trouble letting go of his rank.

  I almost—almost—asked him about it. But he’d immediately target that question as “shrink talk.” Far be it from me to threaten this newfound détente between us with a violation of the rules he’d set yesterday.

  He nodded toward my guest room. “Why don’t you get changed, and I’ll take you in my car? I have air conditioning, after all.”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded, retiring to my room to make quick work of changing my shirt and grabbing my phone and keys. I met him near the front door.

  He’d changed into jeans, grabbed his own keys and had put on a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. His butt looked fantastic in those jeans. And those glasses. Oh God. He had hotshot pilot written all over him. I took a breath and blew it out. I am a rock. I am ice.

  We got into his hybrid SUV—a far cry from the flashy sports cars the astronauts of the Space Race era drove. It still had that new car smell and appeared as clean as if he’d driven it off the lot yesterday. I was relieved he’d chosen to use his car instead of my sweatbox full of empty coffee cups that rolled around on the floor in the back seat whenever I made a sharp turn.

  Our small talk turned interesting when we hit the freeway. “This is a time-consuming way to apologize, you know,” I began. “I’m sorry takes probably three nanoseconds to say. And then you have hours of your weekend day to do whatever you want.”

  He made a face at me. “I doubt it. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a figure of speech. I’m just saying, two words are easier than…all this.”

  He shrugged with one shoulder. “I prefer action to words.” Hmm. Unsurprising. It was probably easier to do it this way than to admit he’d been wrong to go loudly sex up the trainer while I was waiting to meet with him. But I let it stand.

  I shot him another glance while he kept his eyes on the road. “Are you feeling okay with all of this?”

  “This fake romance BS?” he clarified for me. “It doesn’t matter how I’m feeling about all of it. If it’s my only way back up there, then I’m doing it.”

  I frowned. “Of course, it matters. It’s important to understand your feelings going forward, because—”

  He held up his hand abruptly in a chopping motion to stop me as he stared out the windshield. “Is that shrink talk? I thought we had a rule about that.”

  “You have a rule about that.” I folded my arms and gazed out the window, trying to think my way around the roadblock he’d thrown up so quickly. Damn. It was not going to be easy to get this man to open up about himself.

  “I’m trying to say…” I started again. “That first and foremost, I’m here for your support, okay? I’ve got your back.”

  “We say I’ve got your six. And in my line of work, trust is earned.” His words were stern, but his tone was mild.

  I turned to him. “Well, then I hope to at least be given a chance to earn it.”

  “We’ll see.” He cryptically ended the subject by turning up the volume on the talk radio station that had been playing in the background.

  It being Sunday, the freeway was clear, and we made good time to my place. I invited him in, and he followed me up the steps to my one-bedroom condo on the second floor. “I can show you around if you like. It will only take a fraction of the time it took you to show me your place.”

  My place was modest, and he voiced almost immediately what I knew he was thinking—what I’d heard before. “Not where I expected the daughter of Conrad Barrett to live.”

  I shrugged. “I like it. Dad is known for sensible investment, so I followed his advice and bought a place I knew would have good resale value.”

  His eyes immediately flew to my hodgepodge décor—a beautiful framed poster of the iconic shot of the earth rising over the Moon taken during the Apollo 8 mission. Space memorabilia I had collected during my teenage years. Mission patches from the Space Shuttle era. Some model Redstone and Saturn V rockets propped along the top of a black bookcase. Colorful and exotic paintings of imagined planetscapes on the walls.

  I left him to study one of them while I packed a suitcase in my bedroom and scurried around the apartment to grab toiletries and personal items.

  By the time I was ready to hit the road, it was well past lunchtime, and this time, his stomach growled loudly. With a laugh, I suggested a nearby, quiet English-style pub. Since it was a student haunt, usually, when school was out for the summer—and on long weekends, of which today was both—the place was mostly dead.

  Nevertheless, before we got out of the car, he donned a red Angels baseball cap and kept his mirrored sunglasses on. I threw him some major side-eye, knowing he feared being recognized. “All you need is your hoodie to complete the starter pack.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “Your Marvel Civilian Starter Pack. They all wear them in the movies—Tony Stark, Steve Rogers. You fit right in. Cap, hoodie, sunglasses. It’s a foolproof way they are never recognized when they don’t want to be.”

  “Too bad we’re not in the movies.”

  He chose a back table along the wall behind the empty stage that usually hosted live musicians on the weekends. We quickly placed our orders—his double-bacon heart-attack-on-a-plate avocado cheeseburger and my fish and chips.

  While we were waiting, he struck up the conversation again. “Did you go to school here, at Cal State Long Beach?”

  I shook my head. “No, I attended a tiny women’s colleg
e, Scripps, up in LA. And UCLA for my doctorate.”

  “All-girls’ tiny school.” There was an enigmatic smile on his lips. “I should have known.”

  My brows twitched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Declining to answer, he merely smiled and shrugged while fiddling with the salt and pepper shaker. He instead asked another question, apparently the self-appointed King of Curiosity today.

  “So tell me how a woman who is obviously crazy about space and space travel came to study psychology instead of going into a STEM field.”

  “You really don’t like psychologists, do you?” I laughed, now feeling nervous.

  His face was unreadable. “I had to speak to my fair share after the accident...and it wasn’t by my choice.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Hmm, no wonder he had that brick wall up and determined to keep me out.

  “So, are you going to answer my question or just stall with another question to me?”

  My brow twitched. Touché. Usually, I was the one who asked the questions and controlled the conversation. It was weird to be on the receiving end. But I reminded myself that it was a good sign. If he was asking questions, it meant he was interested in looking for common ground and hopefully finding a way to work with me. I took out a few of the sweetener packets from the plastic box and idly rearranged them on the dark wooden table in front of me, thinking through my answer before looking up again.

  “When I was a kid, I insisted on wearing shiny space suits instead of princess dresses. And I decorated my bed like a rocket ship. When I was afraid to go to sleep, I’d imagine myself taking flight in my ship and that I’d wake on a new planet in the morning. I grew up in LA, right on the edge of Griffith Park, and my mom liked to take walks all up through the hills. We’d often end up at the observatory planetarium. I spent so much time there looking at the exhibits, the displays. The moon rocks. It fascinated me.” I shrugged and rocked from side to side on the wooden bench where I sat. “I’ve wanted to be an astronaut since I was tiny—and I’m sure you’ve heard a bazillion little kids tell you that.”

  He listened intently, considering my words with his head tilted to the side. “I have, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. I had no desire to be an astronaut when I was little.”

  Interesting. I opened my mouth to follow up that tidbit with another question of my own when he headed me off. “So why psychology? Why not physics or aerospace or engineering?”

  I began to stack the packets on top of each other like miniature beanbags. “You mean why not a valid field of study instead of a ‘soft’ science?” Typical STEM snobbery. Only the smartest people went into STEM fields. I’d heard it before.

  “Well—” he began, but I didn’t let him finish.

  “Because I wanted to work with astronauts.” My eyes flicked up to meet his, which widened in surprise by my interruption. “I’m fascinated by the human element in space flight. We won’t be able to go and explore out there until we figure out how to keep people sane and healthy during long-duration space flight and planet-side missions. And while it will always be possible to build a bigger, faster, better spacecraft, the one element that won’t change—until we evolve—is the human element.”

  He pushed the salt and pepper back into their cubby and sat back. “Valid points,” he said noncommittally.

  My fingers fiddled with the stack of packets. “Besides, it became clear to me very early on that becoming an astronaut was out of my reach, due to my health issues. I never gave up that dream, though. I just decided to tweak it a little so it would work with my personal circumstances. I did the next best thing. I would have tried for a job at NASA if Tolan hadn’t been ready to start up the XPAC. You can agree with me that this is way more exciting. And I got lucky. Very lucky.”

  Our gazes locked and held when I looked up, and there was this moment—much like the one the day before—where something changed between us. A noticeable thickening in the air. He didn’t blink, his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, and the glimmer in those blue eyes—was it my imagination, or did it look a bit like grudging admiration?

  I drew back when our server—a good-looking college kid around my age—showed up with our plates of food. “Fish and chips for the lady. And…one out-of-this-world burger for Commander Ty.” Ty grimaced at being recognized but recovered quickly, looking up at the guy. “I also brought you a beer, on the house. The bartender insisted.”

  He plopped the beer down in front of Ty with several coasters and a pen. “Commander, can we get your autograph?”

  Ty was very polite, but not chatty. So, once he’d signed the coasters, the server scooped them up, slipped them into his apron, and walked off.

  “Jeez,” Ty said before picking up his burger. “You’d think people wouldn’t be so starstruck in LA.”

  I laughed. “You aren’t a star, Commander. You’re a hero.”

  His gaze sharpened as he poised his burger in front of his mouth. “You’re not calling me that anymore, remember?”

  “Right…sorry, er, Ryan.” I pursed my lips awkwardly. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

  “Well, get used to it. And no using the h-word either.” I nodded affably, pondering that. He seemed more annoyed at me for using the word hero rather than messing up and using his rank.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked after swallowing his first bite.

  I picked up the bottle of malt vinegar and began drenching my fish and chips. “I’m waiting for my fries to cool off. I always wait at least five minutes. I don’t like burning the roof of my mouth.”

  His brows twitched up for a moment. “Ah, you’re playing it safe. I should have known.”

  I fought rolling my eyes, but just to annoy him, I picked up a fry, blew on it, and then popped it into my mouth. It was hotter than I would have liked, so I proceeded to suck down a bunch of ice-cold lemonade while he laughed at me.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Needs more vinegar,” I said, raining down more on the fries so that they grew soggy—which seemed to baffle him.

  “How long has it been since your valve replacement?” he asked after having devoured most of his burger.

  For someone who’d forbidden me from talking like a “shrink,” he certainly was asking a lot of questions today.

  I popped a couple more fries into my mouth to stall my answer. When I’d swallowed, I shot a question right back at him. “How’d you know it was a valve replacement?” Stupid question, Gray.

  He shrugged. “I’m no Sherlock Holmes. Just observant. The clicking heartbeat was my first clue. The blood thinners were another.”

  He’d seen the hideous scar too. But mercifully, he didn’t mention that. Open heart surgery survivors all had some variation of the zipper scar—enough to call themselves members of the zipper club or even incorporate the scar into some cute little tattoo that implied the same. Some wore their scars proudly, like battle wounds.

  I wasn’t usually so self-conscious about mine, but I didn’t go out of my way to show it off either. And something about Ryan knowing my situation made me more insecure than normal.

  “I was sixteen for that surgery. So, nine years ago.”

  He brought his hands up to lace his fingers together and rest his chin on them. His focused gaze grew unnerving. “What was your diagnosis?”

  “It’s a congenital heart defect,” I said, moving the remains of my lunch around on my plate to keep from fidgeting. “I was born with a hole between the chambers of my heart, some thickened walls, and valve deformities.”

  When he would have followed up with another question, we were interrupted again—this time by the bartender. He brought Ty another beer though he’d only drunk half the previous one.

  “Commander Ty—I’m Jay, your bartender.” He held out his hand, and Ty shook it. “I had to come meet you after you signed the coasters for me and my buddy. Thank you.”

  Ty nodded and smiled and immediately scanned the bar, pr
obably hoping people wouldn’t notice the fuss. It was still pretty empty in here as it was well past the lunch hour and a few hours before dinnertime.

  Jay pulled out his phone and showed something to Ty. “Can you settle a bet with me and my buddy? I say these NASA photos are evidence of structures on Mars, but he says no way.”

  He plopped down a blurry black-and-white photo—presumably from a satellite in Mars orbit—in front of Ty. Pointing at some blurred angular edge among darker mountains, he said, “I mean, that right there. That looks like architecture, don’t you think? Man-made structures. It’s an anomaly.”

  Ty blinked. “I dunno, man,” he said evenly. “I haven’t been to Mars yet.”

  Jay’s eyes widened. “But you’ve been to space—and lived there. You work for NASA. You guys are all in on this, right?”

  Ty’s face immediately darkened into a scowl, and I could only think that he was associating this guy with the flat-earth creep who’d pestered him the previous month. Anything that implied he or the other astronauts or NASA as a whole was lying was bad news.

  I leaned forward to catch Jay’s attention. “We’re in a hurry to get going. Can we get our check?”

  Jay barely glanced at me before turning back to Ty, who bolted out of his seat and pulled out his wallet. “Yes, I gotta get going. Thanks again for the beers, Jay. I guess I wasn’t so thirsty.”

  Our server appeared beside Jay, and we took care of the check on the spot. I insisted on splitting it, and Ty was in such a hurry to get out of there, he didn’t argue.

  On our way home, we laughed about it. “You should make up some random crap,” I said. “Something really out there. Like green Sasquatch on Mars. Or like you saw some guy in a bad gorilla suit floating around in space outside the station trying to monkey with the equipment. Nightmare at 250 Miles.”

  We laughed together about it, and I wiped my eyes. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Way too much.” He shook his head. “And while you think it might be funny to mess with people. It’s not so great when you see your own words—either said jokingly or willfully taken out of context—printed all over the tabloids. And then people treat you a certain way based on it. When everyone writes down your words or wants to sell a photo of you to the press, you’re accountable for everything that comes out of your mouth.”