by Julie Cannon
Andrea woke, and for a moment she panicked. Her arms and legs were bound, and she didn’t immediately recognize where she was. Slowly it dawned on her that she was in the guest bed, Kenner’s bed, the sheets wrapped around her like a cocoon. “Oh, God,” she said, remembering the events of the night before.
She had deliberately picked a fight with Kenner on the way home, and when Kenner had demanded to be let off at her hotel, Andrea had readily complied. She’d had a drink—no, wait, two drinks—and somehow ended up in this bed. And her dreams. Dear God, she’d dreamed of having sex with Kenner all night.
First it was in this very bed, soft and sweet. Andrea usually could remember only vague aspects of her dreams, but she recalled every touch of Kenner’s body on hers. The sound of Kenner’s voice whispering to her, “Tell me,” was so clear she turned her head to make sure she really wasn’t there. She remembered how splashing in the pool had turned from lighthearted fun to something much more serious. Another time she was wrapped in Kenner’s strong arms rolling in the sand, which was probably how she’d ended up almost mummified in her four-hundred-thread-count sheets. Just thinking about her dreams made her clit throb, and she involuntarily squeezed her legs together. That was a mistake, and she groaned as she forced herself up and out of the bed.
Andrea looked at herself in her bathroom mirror as she waited for the shower water to heat. “Oh, my God,” she said to her reflection in the large mirror above the sink. Her hair was disheveled, she had circles under her eyes, but her face was flushed. She was a wreck, and after glancing at the clock she realized she didn’t have much time to pull herself together.
Freshly showered, she carefully pulled on her clothes. After the last twenty-four hours she needed some extra self-assurance and donned her “don’t fuck with me” suit. It was black with thin, white pinstripes, its matching jacket featuring a mandarin collar. Her gray shirt was the perfect accent, as were her patent-leather loafers and belt, so she was ready to face the day…and Kenner.
*
Andrea sat in her car debating whether to take Kenner’s duffle inside or leave it here for her to pick up later. Then she realized that if she took it in, people would ask questions, and that was the last thing she needed. She got out of the car and slammed the door a little harder than necessary, frustrated over her lack of sleep and then sitting in her car for five minutes debating something as stupid as a duffle bag. She scanned the parking lot with as much casualness as she could without drawing attention to the fact that she was, in fact, looking for someone. She was looking for Kenner, and when she realized she didn’t even know what kind of rental car she had, Andrea was even angrier at herself. She practically stomped through the parking lot, bulldozed her way through security, and didn’t say a word to anyone she passed through the hallways to the elevator.
She was alone in the elevator, the doors closing, when a hand shot between them, activating the sensor to reopen them. Kenner dashed in, breathless, obviously having run to catch the elevator.
“Sorry, thanks,” Kenner said as she hustled into the car. She stopped, suddenly noticing Andrea for the first time.
The picture of a breathless, naked Kenner in her dream swam into focus. The image was so overpowering Andrea had to take a step back and grab the handrail. The air in the small car suddenly wasn’t sufficient, and Andrea fought to keep her breathing steady. Her body was screaming something unfamiliar, and her head started spinning. Visions of Kenner in her bed below her, on top of her, inside her were all she could see.
Andrea knew where she was but had no idea what was happening to her. The sensation that had taken over her body was foreign to her, and she struggled to pull herself back to the here and now before she completely humiliated herself here in this elevator.
“Andrea?”
Kenner’s voice penetrated her flashback. “I’m sorry, what?” Andrea somehow managed to say.
“I asked if you were all right. Your face is flushed, and it looked like you went somewhere else for a minute.”
“I’m fine,” she replied, hurriedly dragging her eyes from Kenner’s face to focus on the ascending numbers above the door. Andrea didn’t trust herself to know what was real or fantasy, and before she made a fool out of herself she needed to get out of this elevator, and she needed to get out right now.
The doors opened on the floor below hers, and before two men entered the elevator she hurried off, not looking behind her. She didn’t want to see the confused or concerned look on Kenner’s face. She hurried up the stairs to her floor.
Andrea dropped her keys on the floor in front of her office door. Her hand were still shaking, and she cursed that, as she bent to pick them up, her forehead hit the door knob. She took a deep breath and tried again, this time successfully opening the door. She closed it behind her, crossed to her desk, sat down, and held her head in her hands.
It was going to be a very, very long day, and she never felt like that. Usually she was so busy she’d sit down, and before she knew it, it was way past time to go home. She had thought she’d sleep better with Kenner out of her house and no longer her responsibility, but then she’d had the dreams. Not wanting to go down that memory lane again, Andrea stood up so fast her chair slid backward and bumped into the credenza behind her. She hurried out the door and to the break room down the hall. She needed a good, strong cup of coffee to get everything back on track.
Don’t look for her, don’t look for her, Andrea repeated to herself as she walked toward the control room. Andrea had told herself to stop thinking about Kenner and definitely not look for her the instant she entered the room. She had to focus, get her team to come up with results. Barry was breathing down her back, and the head of NASA was due on-site in two days.
When Barry had told her Richard Marconi was coming down from Washington, D.C., along with several members of the Office of Management and Budget, she’d been more than a little annoyed. That was the last thing she needed. Marconi was a U.S. Senator and chairman of the committee and probably wouldn’t know the space shuttle from the Mercury capsule. Of course Andrea tried to never think about anything other than the fact that he was the head of the agency that employed her and therefore deserved her respect. But she didn’t need the egotistical bastard and his purse-string cronies crowding her control room. Not when they had so much work to do. She’d have to find a way to get them in and out in record time.
She was still thinking about their guests when she showed her badge to the guard at the main control-room door. She wanted to ask if Kenner had arrived but forced herself not to. Don’t look for her, don’t look for her, she repeated with each step as she entered the room and the door closed behind her.
Andrea wanted to look to her right at the workstation Kenner had occupied the past few days. If she wasn’t there she was usually looking over the shoulder at another station or had her feet up on her desk, or she was shooting hoops. Andrea wouldn’t know if Kenner was here until the morning briefing in, she glanced at her watch, fifteen minutes.
The phone on her desk rang and she keyed her headset. “Flight Director Finley,” she said, trying to anticipate who was on the other end of the line.
“Ms. Finley, this is Richard Marconi,” the gravelly voice said in her ear.
“Senator Marconi, hello. How are you?”
“I’d be better if you told me those seven astronauts were on their way home.” His voice sounded nothing short of irritated.
“I wish I could, sir, but we’re working on it.”
“When do you think you might have something, Director Finley?”
Andrea thought carefully before she spoke. This was her boss’s boss, after all, and she was already on thin ice with him. “Senator Marconi, you know better than I,” she said, giving him credit that wasn’t due, “that we have to be very careful as we figure this out. If we rush it, have one misstep, one incorrect calculation, one number transposed, we could have a very public disaster on our hands.”
�
�A bigger one than those astronauts starving to death or suffocating from lack of oxygen on the moon on live TV?”
Obviously her approach to get him to back off hadn’t worked. “No sir, of course not. We have to bring them home, and my team will do that.”
“Then what is the holdup?” he demanded.
This man couldn’t be this clueless, she thought. He wouldn’t know exactly, but he had to have some idea of the complexity of the hundreds of systems and millions of lines of code that were involved with getting to the moon and back. She rubbed her eyes. God, she was tired.
“Senator, we are doing the best we can. We have the brightest minds in—”
“You brought in Hutch, or Starsky, or somebody like that from some think tank?”
“Kenner Hutchings,” Andrea told him. His reference to the street-wise, crime-fighting detectives in the 1970s television series was insulting to her mission and all of NASA, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Whoever,” he said dismissively. “She’s costing the taxpayers a fortune, who, by the way, pay your salary as well.”
His threats did not intimidate her. “Senator, if you don’t have anything else, I have to get back.” She paused for a moment just to be polite, then said, “You’ll know something as soon as we do, Senator. Thank you for calling.” She hung up the phone and had an almost desperate need to wash her hands and face.
*
Andrea stepped through the door, kicked her shoes off, and set her briefcase and keys on the counter. She didn’t know why she’d opened the refrigerator door, because it didn’t have anything substantial in it to eat. But she needed something, so she scrambled a couple of eggs, tossed in a handful of cheese, and dinner was served.
On her way to the table she took her phone out of her briefcase and thumbed through her personal email between bites. She’d seen too many accidents caused from texting and driving, so she eliminated any temptation by putting her phone and briefcase in the trunk. She had a note from her sister acknowledging that she was probably extremely busy but to give her a call when she had the chance. Andrea tapped on the shortcut for Beth and, while the phone rang, finished the remaining eggs on her plate.
“Hey, stranger,” came the familiar voice from the speaker. “I didn’t expect to hear from you for a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah. Well, I actually had a minute and out of all the things on my To Do list, I pushed you to the top.” That was a lie. She’d just had an unusual need to talk to someone.
“Aren’t you sweet,” Beth said, the sound of a baby crying in the background.
“How’s Annie?” Andrea asked after hearing her new four-month-old niece.
“Just a little fussy. Paul has baby duty tonight.”
“He’s a keeper, Beth.” Her sister’s husband was definitely a jewel. There were times in Andrea’s life she wanted to find a girl just like Paul, but the thought always quickly vanished. She didn’t have the time or the interest to devote to cultivating a relationship like that. She never had, and she probably never would.
“How are things?” Beth asked.
Even though Beth wasn’t specific, Andrea knew she was asking about the mission. “We’re making progress,” she answered vaguely.
“You don’t sound very optimistic.”
No matter how hard Andrea tried, Beth could always see right through her. Even through the magic of a wireless connection.
“Talk to me, Andi.”
“I don’t know…” Andrea didn’t have “girl talks” so she wasn’t sure how to begin.
“You don’t know…how to solve it? If you’re going to be able to bring them home?”
“No, I’m sure we will. I have to.”
“Andi, the fate of this mission does not rest on your shoulders alone.”
“Beth—”
“I know, Andi. We’ve been through this before, and I’m going to say it again. There is no I in team and there’s no U in it either. You have, what, a hundred people working on this mission?”
“More like three or four,” Andrea replied.
“Okay, you have a boatload of people working on this mission. Everyone has a part in the success, and God forbid the failure, including you. But not only you.” Beth emphasized the point she’d made many times before.
“I know.”
“I realize you do. But I also know you. You’re not eating right, and you’re probably not sleeping more than a few hours a night. You can’t function that way. You are not responsible for what happened.”
“Maybe not, that will be determined later, but I am responsible for fixing it.”
“No, Andi. You are not responsible. Maybe you’re responsible for getting it fixed. There’s a difference, a big difference. You’re always too hard on yourself,” Beth said in a more comforting tone. “You expect too much from yourself. I know this mission is important to you. I know it’s the culmination of everything you’ve worked for your entire life. You’d never admit that to anyone, but I’m sure of it. So tell me what’s happening.”
Beth always offered to listen. She got the general idea of what Andrea was talking about, but when Andrea delved into the more technical aspects, she recognized when she lost her sister. However, talking things out with someone she trusted, who in no way would pass judgment on her professional ability or her doubts and concerns, was immeasurable. It helped her think things through. She could talk out loud, think out loud, and hypothesize out loud. She could dare to verbalize wild, crazy ideas. And at the end of the conversation she usually realized what she had to do.
“We had to bring in an outsider,” she said. Anyone who didn’t work for NASA or one of its many hundreds of contractors was referred to as an outsider.
“And you hate that.”
Andrea couldn’t help but smile a little at her sister’s absolutely correct statement. “Am I that much of a snob?”
“Generally no, but definitely a NASA snob.”
This time Andrea actually laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that except with Kenner at the steak restaurant. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“So what does this outsider do outside of the almighty National Aeronautics and Space Administration?” If anyone other than Beth had asked such a question, it would be a barb that would fester inside Andrea. But Beth had a way of talking that made it nonthreatening.
“She comes from a think tank and is twenty-six goddamn years old. She doesn’t fit in. She wears jeans, boots, and T-shirts. Her hair is about an inch long all over her head. Her boots are on the desk, her keyboard in her lap, and she plays basketball on the court downstairs in the middle of the day.”
“And?” Beth prompted her.
“And she’s brilliant. She’s scary smart.” Admittedly Andrea was in awe of that fact.
“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” Beth asked carefully.
“That’s the point. It shouldn’t be, but I don’t know why it is.”
“So what is this Albert Einstein’s name?”
“You know Einstein wasn’t a genius.”
“There you go again,” Beth said, a smile in her voice. “Ruining my perception of an old guy with bad hair. Anyone who has hair like that has to be a genius. You know I always said there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. What’s her name?” Beth asked, reverting back to her original question.
“Kenner Hutchings.”
“What kind of name is Kenner?”
“I haven’t asked.” It wasn’t like Andrea to delve into something so personal. Hell, anything personal.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just…I’ve never had to work with someone like her,” Andrea said, trying to explain and not doing a good job of it.
“Okay…” Andrea knew she still wasn’t making any sense.
“And is there a problem with her being there?”
Boy, was there ever, Andrea admitted, but only to herself. She didn’t dare go there with Beth. Howeve
r, her sister had other ideas.
“What’s the real problem, Andi?”
Andrea hesitated.
“Andrea?” Beth prompted her in her older-by-only-three-minutes tone.
“She’s a lesbian.” Andrea grimaced in expectation of her sister’s response. Beth always called her on her bullshit, her smoke screens, and her half-truths.
“So?” Beth asked, surprising her. “You didn’t hire her to sleep with the crew. You hired her to fix the problem, right?”
“Yes.” Andrea noted that her sister had used almost the same words she’d used with Barry.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Before Andrea had a chance to figure out what her answer would be, Beth jumped in. “Oh, my God, Andrea. You like her.”
“What? I do not.” She replied way too quickly. Beth knew when Andrea was lying, upset, or hiding something, and she often finished her sentences for her. Sometimes it was creepy and others downright irritating. They looked nothing alike, and other than sharing the same parents and birthdate, they were complete opposites. But sharing a womb had connected them like nothing else could, and even though her sister was a royal pain in the ass, especially at times like this, Andrea cherished her.
“You like this woman,” Beth said again, seeming more confident in her deductive reasoning.
“Jesus, Beth, you make it sound like we’re back in the sixth grade.”
“Okay, you’re attracted to her. You want to sleep with her.”
“Now I think you’ve gone a little overboard.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, you have,” Andrea shot back but was unable to come up with any other substantial rebuttal.
“Then why are you struggling over her? You never have problems with your employees.”
Beth was right; she never had any issues with the people who worked for her. They were all equally committed to the mission and knew what was expected. “Because I can’t get her out of my control room.”
Beth laughed.
“What?” Andrea asked. When had this conversation become funny?
