Val nodded. “Don’t get him started on all that stuff, or you’ll get an earful. Of course, that’s true of any topic you pick.”
Airin was about to say something else when Hunter spoke. “Thanks for the ice packs, Val. I was thinking of ordering pizza for dinner tonight. How does that sound? It’ll be my treat.”
“I never say no to a free meal. I need to eat by six, though. I’m giving a lecture at eight.”
“Got it.”
Once she was gone, Hunter turned to Airin. “You seem to be getting along with your new housemates.”
His tone was neutral, but sort of carefully neutral, as though he wasn’t really saying the thing he wanted to say.
She spoke tentatively, trying to feel him out. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I guess.” He turned away for a moment, going to the desk for one of the ice packs. “You should sit down and ice your ribs for a while. How long did the doctor say?”
“Ten to twenty minutes.”
She went over to the bed and propped the pillows against the wall, sitting cross-legged against them. Hunter came over and handed her the blue pack, and the clammy wet chill of it was depressing somehow.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked abruptly.
Hunter paused as he was hoisting one of her suitcases onto the end of the bed. “What?”
“It’s just that you seem . . . I don’t know. Disapproving? It made me wonder if I said something wrong.”
“Of course you didn’t say anything wrong,” he said gruffly. “Just the opposite, in fact. You sure made a big hit with Dean.”
She was more confused than ever. She was tempted to let it go, but a sudden wave of determination stiffened her spine. If she was going to make this whole living-in-the-world thing work, she had to face uncertainties—and people—head-on.
“You make it sound like that’s a problem,” she said. “What exactly bothers you about me making ‘a big hit’ with Dean?”
Hunter lifted her other case onto the end of the bed. Then he went over and sat on the desk chair, swiveling it around to face her.
“Here’s the thing. You want to live on your own, right? Have a chance to experience the world?”
“Yes.”
He rested his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Then you can’t be naïve.”
She stared at him. She was holding the ice pack against her rib cage, and the feeling of numbness spreading outward was an exquisite relief.
“What are you talking about? How am I being naïve?”
“Dean is attracted to you, Airin. A lot of guys will be. You need to start adjusting to that reality if you want to keep yourself safe. I mean, not every guy is going to be as harmless as Dean. You need to be aware of the ulterior motives of the people around you.”
She blinked. “I see.”
“You just need to—”
“I want to show you something,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone—the new one her mother had given her to replace the one she’d lost.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hang on a minute.”
It took her less than that to find what she was looking for. She centered the relevant paragraph in the screen and held it out toward Hunter.
“Read that.”
He rose from the chair, came over to the side of the bed, and took the phone from her.
“‘Dean Bukowski lost his husband to cancer in 2013. After that tragedy, he—’”
Hunter broke off, looking down at the phone for a moment. Then he handed it back to her, went back to the desk chair, and sat down.
There was a short silence.
“Dean’s gay,” he said finally.
She nodded. “Dean’s gay.”
“I didn’t know that,” he muttered, frowning at the floor.
“Why didn’t you? Don’t mission team members get to know each other really well?”
He looked up again, his expression almost defensive. “Not always the personal stuff. And Dean and I weren’t on the same crew.”
“Right.”
Was she enjoying this moment a little too much? This was the first time since she’d met Hunter that he’d seemed in the least embarrassed. He was always so in control, so cool and competent.
She had seen him angry, though—that first night in the bar, when the racist tourist had threatened her. Remembering that, she sat up a little straighter and spoke.
“If this is going to work—me living here, I mean—then you can’t always be thinking of me as someone who needs to be protected. Not everything is going to be a threat to me. Not every guy I meet is going to look at me through some kind of sexual lens. Even the straight ones might see me as a person first and a woman second—even if you don’t.”
There was another silence, this one a little more tense.
Hunter’s eyes were full of things, but she didn’t know what they were. What was he thinking? What was he feeling?
“Airin,” he said finally. “This probably goes without saying, but . . . you know nothing’s going to happen between us, right? Physically, I mean.”
Actually, no. She hadn’t known that. But based on the way he’d been acting the last few days, she probably should have guessed.
“Because of my injury?” she asked, hoping she sounded cool and detached.
“Not only because of your injury. I just think it’s a bad idea. It was one thing when I was some kind of adventure you were having, a one-time thing with a guy you’d never see again. But things aren’t like that now.”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “Because now you’d have to actually see the woman you slept with. After the fact, I mean.”
He didn’t like that. She could tell by the way his brows drew together.
“I’m not some kind of player. I’ve been in relationships. But only when—” He stopped.
“Only when what? When the woman wasn’t a virgin?”
“When both of us knew the score.”
“The score,” she repeated, drawing the word out. “Of course. The score. Which is what, exactly?”
His gaze shifted away as he dragged a hand across his short hair. He looked like a man who didn’t want to be where he was right now.
“I’ve always thought astronauts are better off single,” he said finally. “I’ve had relationships, but only when both of us understood it wasn’t going anywhere. Anywhere long-term, I mean.”
“And you think I wouldn’t understand that?”
He met her eyes again. “That night at the beach, things were different. I was going into a biosphere for eight months. We both knew one night was all we had. But now . . .” He shook his head. “Now you’ll think I have a choice. And you could get attached.”
Attached. Like she was a stray puppy.
Her skin smarted, as though she’d been scraped raw by something.
Well, she’d wanted real life. Real interactions with people. What could be more real than a guy saying he wasn’t into commitment?
But that wasn’t the whole story. She was sure of it.
“My mother said something to you at the hospital. She told you to stay away from me. She threatened you or yelled at you or—”
“No. She didn’t.”
“Then what did she say to you that day? You never told me. In fact, you’ve kept your distance from me ever since.”
He looked stung. “Kept my distance? I was in the hospital with you every day.”
That was true.
What she’d meant, of course, was that the dynamic between them had changed. But how could she put that into words without sounding . . . desperate? Clingy?
One of those girl things men didn’t like. Especially when they thought she might get “attached.”
“I know she said something awful to you,” she said instead, reverting to a subject she was sure about: her mother’s instinct to be interfering and overbearing where her daughter was concerned.
“No, she didn’t.” Hunte
r rose to his feet and looked at the two suitcases on the bed. “Do you need me to unpack for you?”
So much for getting an answer out of him.
“No, I’ll be fine. The doctors said I can do most normal tasks if I take it slow.”
“Okay. But if you need anything at all, you text me. I’ll be downstairs.”
“I could, you know, just call out for you.”
“Don’t do any shouting. That might hurt your ribs. Just text I need you, and I’ll come. All right?”
Something about that sentence was way too appealing—especially after the conversation they’d just had.
“All right.”
And then he was gone, closing the door behind him.
Chapter Twelve
Hunter couldn’t sleep.
He had Liam’s room, which was across the hall from Airin’s. He wished like hell he was downstairs. He’d made a fool of himself today, and being twenty feet away from her wasn’t helping.
He was jealous, and not for the reasons she thought.
He remembered meeting Airin that first night and feeling like he really was her first contact on this planet. That she’d come from afar to visit Earth, and he was the lucky human being who got to meet her and talk to her—and kiss her.
And now here she was interacting with other people, and they had one important advantage over him in being part of Airin’s life.
They weren’t going behind her back to talk to Dira.
Of course that wasn’t their fault. The corner he’d backed himself into was all of his own making. His choices, his decision, his betrayal.
It’s not a betrayal, he told himself for the hundredth time. He was just letting Dira know how Airin was doing. He wasn’t going to advocate for her mother’s point of view or mediate that relationship or try to convince Airin to do what her mother wanted her to do.
So why did he still feel so shitty about it?
Because it was shitty.
He’d called Dira to give his first “report” after dinner, letting her know that her daughter was eating lightly—she’d only had one piece of pizza for dinner—but that she was in good spirits. She liked her housemates, she liked the house, and she’d managed to put him in his place within ten minutes of their arrival.
Okay, he hadn’t actually mentioned that last part. But to his mind, that moment was the best indication yet that Airin was going to be okay . . . and that she might not be the helpless babe in the woods he still worried—and her mother believed—she was.
It had also been a wake-up call in another way.
Not every guy I meet is going to look at me through some kind of sexual lens.
For her sake, he hoped that was true. But the fact was, at the very moment she’d said that to him, at least 80 percent of his brain had been focused on one thing and one thing only.
She was holding an ice pack against her ribs, and the coldness, while hopefully easing the pain of her injury, was also having another effect on her body.
Her nipples hardened.
The fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra—which he’d noticed the first instant he’d seen her that morning—meant that he could watch it happening with only the thin blue silk of her shirt in the way.
He’d never seen a woman with more perfect breasts.
Not that he was picky when it came to breasts. If a woman he liked was willing to get naked with him, he was pretty much good to go.
The same went for legs and butts. He didn’t have a “type” the way some guys did. A woman either did it for him or she didn’t, and if there was an algorithm to that—tall or short, curvy or flat-chested, plus-size or skinny or whatever—he hadn’t yet figured out what it was.
But there was one thing he was sure of. If there was an algorithm, Airin Delaney had broken it. She turned his crank like no woman ever had before.
From this point forward, she would define his type.
A woman taller than five foot six would be too tall, and anything less than that would be too short. He would never again be able to call a blonde or a redhead the ideal of female beauty. Only jet-black hair and dark brown eyes could lay claim to that.
And only breasts of that shape—soft, on the small side, perky as hell—could ever be called perfect.
That night at the beach, he hadn’t gotten to feel them against his palms. But the sight of her hard nipples under her blue silk shirt made it all too easy to imagine the contrast they’d make with her butter-soft skin.
And right now, lying in bed staring up at the lazy movement of the ceiling fan blades, imagining that sensation was enough to get him hard.
Fuck.
He’d told himself his arrangement with Dira would make Airin so off-limits it wouldn’t even be an issue. But apparently his body didn’t care about the moral reasoning his mind came up with.
He tried to think about other things. He thought about his meeting with the Mars project team tomorrow, to talk about the next eight months. He’d be doing pilot simulations and hardware evaluation and all the experiments the scientists had lined up for Jones. And then, of course, there were the inevitable presentations and interviews—most via Skype since he’d moved to Hawaii—that astronauts were always expected to make.
“Our job is half PR,” he always groused—though never to anyone with the power to make flight assignments.
You didn’t grouse about anything to them. There were too many people who wanted to take your spot in the food chain. Candidates who didn’t complain, ever. Candidates who scored high on the psych chart for “adapts successfully to situations without trying to change them.”
This was a critical skill for astronauts, who had to solve problems using limited resources and without any backup.
Play the position you have, not the one you think you should have.
That made him think about the DelAres deal. When he and Dira had spoken after dinner, she’d suggested he not quit his job with NASA while Airin was staying with him. That, she’d said, would make Airin ask questions.
“Why would I quit my job with NASA?”
Dira had sounded surprised at the question. “Because you no longer need them to reach your goal. I’ve offered you the chance you want to go to Mars, and once things with my daughter are resolved, you’ll be working for me.” She’d paused. “Unless you don’t trust me to fulfill my side of the bargain.”
“No,” he’d said. “I trust you.”
Dira Delaney had a reputation for impeccable integrity and for keeping her word. But even so: “I trust you, but I don’t have a signed contract or job offer in hand.”
“You can’t expect me to generate that kind of paperwork during the Airin situation. I can’t take the risk she might learn of our arrangement.”
“I get that. But I’m planning to operate like nothing has changed. After the ‘Airin situation’ is resolved, I’ll expect to see a contract from you. We can figure out a transition then.” He’d paused. “And anyway, you contract with NASA. I know you want to beat them to Mars, but they’re your ally more than your enemy. It’ll be in everyone’s best interest if I’m in good standing with them. And that means working out a transition that satisfies both parties—when the time comes.”
Yeah, he’d keep working for NASA. He’d work his heart out for them, doing his best to redeem himself after bailing on the biosphere mission. He’d take whatever they threw at him, including all of Jones’s responsibilities.
That seemed to be doing the trick. Thinking about all the shit he’d have to do in Jones’s place was boring enough that he was actually starting to feel a little sleepy. Maybe if he closed his eyes and—
A scream of terror ripped through the night, and he sat bolt upright in bed.
The voice was Airin’s.
He was on his feet before he could blink, out of his room and into the hallway. There was a light on in the bathroom, and he lunged for the doorway.
Airin was naked.
She was standing in the middle of the b
athroom floor, her hands pressed against her mouth, her whole body rigid with horror. He followed the line of her gaze to the bathtub and saw two of the immense winged cockroaches that flourished in the tropical climate of Hawaii.
Ah.
Feet were pounding up the stairs, and he stuck his head out into the hallway to say, “It’s okay, guys. Airin’s first encounter with Periplaneta americana.”
Dean and Val, pajama-clad and disheveled, understood immediately. Val merely nodded and padded back downstairs. Dean asked, “You want me to get them out?”
He shook his head, conscious of Airin’s nakedness. “We’re good.”
“All right. Good night,” Dean said, turning to follow Val downstairs.
Trained as he was to react quickly under pressure, it nonetheless took Hunter at least three seconds to make his next decision.
It wasn’t even a complicated one. Did he allow himself one more look at the most perfect naked female body he’d ever seen, or did he respect Airin’s privacy?
After a brief struggle, he came down on the side of honor and decency. He stepped into the room, keeping his back to Airin as he grabbed a towel. He kept his back turned as he held it toward her.
“Here.”
A beat went by. Then she took it from him, and after another moment, he figured it was safe to turn around again.
The white towel was wrapped tightly around her torso, and she held it closed with a hand at her sternum. She was trembling.
“What are they?” she asked. “My God, what are they? What the hell is a Periplaneta americana?”
“Cockroaches,” he said, wishing he hadn’t been so damn honorable. Seeing her in a towel that covered her from just above her breasts to just below the juncture of her thighs was doing terrible things to his peace of mind.
Airin stared at him. Then she looked back at the two insects, every detail of their brown bodies visible against the white enameled surface of the bathtub.
“They’re too big to be cockroaches. They’re . . . giant. Like something out of a nightmare.”
He moved slowly toward the tub. There was a window above it, and he raised the screen, his movements still measured. Then he crouched down and his hands shot out, grasping the bugs lightly but firmly.
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