Earth Bound (20 page)

“You girls look so good,” Stan Jensen said, beaming at them like a proud papa.

And that was why she hadn’t kicked in protest when Hal had told her she had to get her picture taken. Jensen had deemed this part of the mission, and she didn't want to give him any cause to think she wasn’t utterly devoted to ASD. Although it was a bit embarrassing to have his attention for something like this instead of oh, say, her work.

“Miss Cannery?” the photographer asked. One of the female astronauts perked up. “Could you please turn so we’re getting your left side?”

“No,” she snapped. “My right side is my good side.”

Miss Cannery was the most famous of the Virgo Three, and she struck Charlie as something of a publicity hound. Miss Brixton hadn’t said much at all, and Miss Peyton looked bored.

This certainly was a lot of fuss for a program Charlie suspected was designed to fail from the beginning. There were rumors the higher-ups were bringing in a new astronaut class—all male—and adding more men to the line of astronauts already waiting for a mission meant these women would always be at the back.

Oh, they’d be trotted out like this to prove ASD was doing something about the problem—but they’d never actually move forward in the line. Never actually get any closer to space.

“All right, girls,” the photographer said. “Big smiles.”

Jensen grinned at them as if to demonstrate how they ought to do it.

“Great, great,” the photographer muttered as the camera went
click-click-click
.

Several employees had stopped to stare at this point, making the exposure that much more agonizing. Charlie hoped Parsons would come along and shoo them all away. He’d be livid to find people gawking like this in the middle of the day.

But she also didn’t want him to see her like this, a stupid grin stretching her face as she pretended to be a “lady” of ASD.

The photographer kept snapping away, arranging them first this way, then that; Virgo Three in the front, then to the side, until he ran out of permutations. And still he kept snapping.

Charlie’s mouth hurt and frustration rubbed her temper raw. Didn’t this photographer understand they all had work to do?

She felt, rather than saw, Parsons enter the atrium. It was as if he were the world’s largest magnet, the force of him pulling at the very iron in her blood.

Being unable to see his face, she could only guess at his mood. Was he irritated? Indifferent? What did he think of all of them arrayed before the photographer’s gaze?

No, that wasn’t what she really wanted to know—what did he think of
her
like this? Because she knew, in the same deep way she knew the fundamental laws of motion, that he was watching only her.
 

“All right, ladies, thank you.”

The photographer’s dismissal so startled her, she fell back against the stair railing, catching herself with her hand.

“You all right?” Dot asked.

“Yes, of course.” Had he seen? Of course he had—he’d been watching her, which was why she’d stumbled. “These heels… I only turned my ankle, nothing serious.”

Dot nodded. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee before I head back. Want anything?”

Charlie shook her head and Dot followed the rest of the group out.

She lifted her hand from the rail and grimaced. There was something cold and greasy and clear on it—vacuum grease. Some engineer must have had some on his hands and oh-so-conveniently left it here. And now she'd need a handkerchief, which was all the way back in her desk.

“Damn,” she muttered under her breath.

“Do you need this?” A square of white linen appeared in her vision. When she looked up, she saw it was being offered by one of the Virgo Three. Only she couldn’t remember which one. Brixton or Peyton? Definitely not Miss Cannery—she knew that much.

“Thank you.” Charlie took the scrap of fabric and began rubbing at her hand. “Only a smudge of vacuum grease. I’m Charlie Eason.” She waggled her hand in hello rather than offering it for a shake.

“Geraldine Brixton. You’re one of the computers, aren’t you?”

Charlie was surprised she remembered. “I work with the computers, the electronic ones.” One last wipe, and Charlie’s hand was clean. “And you’re an astronaut.”

Miss Brixton’s cheeks flushed a charming shade of rose. “I hope to be.”

Charlie hoped Miss Brixton would be as well. She handed back the kerchief. “Thank you.”

“Miss Brixton. How nice to see you here.”

Parsons’s voice came from Charlie’s left, low enough to resonate through her. She kept her gaze carefully on his shoes, the most innocuous part of him.

“Mr. Parsons.” Miss Brixton gave him a smile that made something unpleasant curl in Charlie’s belly. “I’m glad to be here.”

“Getting your picture taken?”

She made a face. “I’ve had my picture taken so much since all this happened. I suppose the Perseid Six had to deal with this too, but it seems so…”

“Silly?” Charlie supplied.

“Yes. I’d rather be training.”

That was an answer to warm Parsons’s heart. The unpleasant thought poked Charlie's belly from the inside out.

“Miss Brixton!” Jensen appeared back in the lobby, gesturing for the astronaut. “This way.”

“I’d better go.” She waggled her fingers over her shoulder as she strode away. “Nice meeting you.”

Charlie turned to find Parsons scowling after the woman. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t like bullshit,” he muttered.

“Pardon?”

He gestured toward where Miss Brixton had disappeared. “Jensen is only bullshitting with these ‘Virgo Three.’ He’s wasting all our time.”

“You don’t think they should fly?”

His brows rose in surprise—she had been rather sharp. “No, exactly the opposite. Their initial testing proves they have great potential, and they can’t be any more reckless than the astronauts we already have.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Although Charlie privately agreed with him.

He glanced around the lobby, his gaze oddly furtive. But there was no one left to see them. He leaned toward her, his mouth aiming toward her ear, his aftershave tickling her nose. Her breath came short and shaky, anticipation humming through her.

She wasn’t supposed to think of their time together in the motel here, but it was suddenly all she could think about, the memories rushing in to crowd out any rational thoughts.

“Listen,” he began, “I—” His expression shifted, as if he had realized how close they were, as if the motel room was all
he
could think about now too.
 

She ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, her mouth unbearably dry. “What?”

He half-closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I was going to say, I won’t treat it like a joke. And if the rest of us don’t either—if we do everything we can to help them—Stan Jensen is likely to stop thinking it was ever anything but a done deal to send them up.”

Were they entering a conspiracy together on this? It felt like it, with him so close and speaking so low. But perhaps she was only muddle-headed from his nearness.

“I’ll be serious about it,” she promised. She wasn’t certain what she could do to help, other than what she already was to ensure the missions were a success. But she could at least do that.

“I know you will.” He said nothing more, but he didn’t move away. His fingers drummed against his thigh, as if he were itching to do something with them. Touch her, perhaps?

Oh, she wanted him to. Even the slightest brush of her arm would be more than welcome.

And dangerous.

The memory she’d tried hardest to suppress—even to eradicate—bloomed in her mind.

I don’t want you on your knees. I want us face to face.

I don’t want you—I want us.

It terrified her now as much as it had then—
but that wasn’t quite what he’d said
. She thought they’d put it behind them. She’d thought everything was fine. But it returned now and again and was driving her quite insane.

“I have to go.” She stepped back, and came up against the stair railing. “I have so much work to do.”

From the corner of her eye—she was definitely not going to meet his gaze, lest the intensity of it send her into complete meltdown—she saw him step away, clearing her path to flee.

So she did, without looking back.

November 1962

Charlie pulled up to the gate and flashed her badge at the guard. She recognized him, though she couldn’t remember his name or glimpse his nametag to remind her. But her parents would probably think it was odd that she knew the guards, so she didn’t say anything.

In the passenger seat next to her, her father’s lip curled. “So it’s like working on a military base?”

What precisely was the Manhattan Project like, Dad?
Except of course she didn’t say anything. She only had to get through a tour of ASD and dinner with her parents and her father’s favorite post-doc. It couldn’t possibly be more painful than the two-hour-long staff meeting she’d endured on Monday. And after this visit, she wouldn’t have to think up an excuse for not going home for Thanksgiving.

After the guard had waved her through, she answered her father: “Well, yes. What we’re working on here has national security implications. Of course there’s security. Doesn’t Tom have something even more rigorous to pass through when he walks into work?”

Of course he did. Los Alamos was locked down even tighter than it had been in her parents’ day. But they likely never chided him about security checks.

In the backseat, her mother patted Stewart’s arm. “So different from IAS, isn’t it?”

“I’m amazed there aren’t more trees,” Stewart answered.

Charlie gave Stewart a quick glance in the rearview mirror. She’d say this for her mother’s taste: Stewart was certainly good-looking. Close-cropped blond hair, a slim build that she wasn’t sure how he maintained with all the hours he must be putting in in her father’s lab, and even a dapper pocket square. She understood why her mother had insisted on dragging him along on this ridiculous conference/matchmaking excursion.

The problem was, Charlie felt nothing more than a faint flicker of amusement at all of it. She wasn’t interested, or even angry. It was entertaining, or it would be if she didn’t have so many other things competing for her attention. She didn’t have an afternoon to show her family around and an evening at which her mother could play at Cupid.

But Charlie also didn’t want to infuriate her mother, so she’d make up the hours on the weekend after they’d left.

They stopped by the visitor’s center to pick up badges, then Charlie drove to her normal spot, the same one where she’d been parked the night she’d embarked on her affair with Parsons. The thought amused her and she couldn’t suppress a smile.

“Is something wrong, Charlotte?”

“Oh, no. I was remembering something from yesterday’s staff meeting.”

“I’m glad space exploration gives you so much to smile about,” her mother tittered in the backseat.

Charlie ground her teeth together. This would all be over soon. “I’ll show you the computing department. Then we can stick our heads in and see what’s happening over in the training simulator. I don’t know how interesting it will be.”

She always did that with her parents. If she wasn’t apologizing for her work, she was underplaying it. There was no scientific or engineering project in America the public was more interested in than this, but she was making excuses for it because she wasn’t concerned with what America thought but with what they did.

But of course knowing what she was doing and actually changing her behavior were two different things. So all Charlie did was hold the door open while her parents and Stewart shuffled in.

Parsons was standing in the vestibule.

“Oh, hi,” she stammered. “These are my parents, Victoria and Walter Eason, and my father’s post-doc, Stewart Greene. Everyone, this is Eugene Parsons.”
My boss and sometimes lover.
“The director of engineering and development.”

“Ah, an engineer,” her father said. “I’ll speak a little slower then.”

“Dad,” she hissed. Of all the people for him to try an engineer joke with…

“It’s all right,” Parsons said. She couldn’t tell if he was amused, offended, or simply confused. “I do understand humor. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Everyone shook hands and murmured greetings.

“They’re in town for a conference,” Charlie explained to Parsons. “I was going to show them the computing department. That is, if you don’t mind.”

It was, after all, his department more than it was hers. Actually it was no one’s more than hers, but he had a stronger official claim.

Parsons blinked at her several times as if her question didn’t make any sense. “No, no, you should. Is Hal around?”

“He’s in Virginia.”

Thank God. There was a real tension in this visit. She knew her parents would be disappointed, or at least unimpressed—which amounted to the same thing—but she wanted them not to be. However, she didn’t want Hal to see her attempts to get them to like or at least respect what she did. She had enough problems without him knowing about her family.