Space in His Heart (3 page)

The silence lasted just long enough to be
slightly uncomfortable, and Deke wondered if he’d missed something
that she said. He wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to her
words as the occasional glimpse of cleavage he caught as she
reached to her laptop to click on the next slide.

“What is the sexiest thing about space?” she
challenged, crossing her arms and damn, just deepening that
enticing valley enough to truly distract him. “Astronauts. Daring,
handsome, risk-taking, gravity-defying, reach-for-the-stars space
cowboys.”

Suddenly, the image of a man in a blue flight
suit leaning against a Navy F-18 fighter jet filled the screen
behind her. Deke tore his gaze from the presenter to the face on
the wall.

Familiar black hair that had been smashed by
a helmet stuck to a forehead and touched the collar of the suit in
the back. A hint of laughter teased the lips of the photo’s
subject. Recognition numbed his senses as he stared at the
screen.

“Move over, George Clooney and make way,
Russell Crowe. America’s about to fall in love with Commander Deke
Stockard.” The audible gasp from nearly every person in the room
punctuated her sentence and sucked all the air out of his lungs.
“From his outstanding biography and obvious affinity for the
camera, we’re confident that we can make Commander Stockard a
household name and, in the process, make America swoon over space
once again.”

Each word detonated in his head like
unexpected grenades.

“And just how the hell do you plan to do
that?”

At the sound of his question, her eyes
flashed and she peered into the crowd, but she answered without
missing a beat. “Although most of the world doesn’t know this, it’s
a far more scientific process than you realize.”

“Scientific?” he shot back, aware that heads
had turned his way. “You’re in a room full of scientists.”
Scientists having adolescent fantasies about cleavage, but
scientists just the same. “You better explain exactly what you have
in mind.
Miss
.”

Just as he uttered the condescending final
syllable, her gaze landed on him. She raised her chin, giving him a
clear shot of her throat as she took a long, hard swallow.

“That’s an excellent question.
Commander
.” Her ebony eyes narrowed, as piercing as her
laser pointer. “We do it through strategically placed photo ops and
a blitz of TV and print coverage that keeps the public wanting
more. We set him up on red carpets at movie premieres, side by side
with celebrities. Then we make sure it all gets into
Entertainment Weekly
and on E! Television. We get him on Jay
Leno. We drop candid photos on the wire services. We seat him in
the front row of the seventh game of the NBA playoffs. It’s an
orchestrated campaign. That’s what a great PR firm does.”

Who the hell did she think she was,
plastering his picture on that screen and making pronouncements
about
sex
appeal?

He started down the steps toward her. “We
don’t go to NBA playoff games or movie premieres. We don’t seek
celebrity status.” He let the disdain drop like bombs with every
word and every step. “We are aviators and engineers and explorers.
We develop experiments to advance medicine.” He paused as he
reached the halfway mark, his gaze locked on his pretty target. “We
send satellites into orbit to monitor terrorism.” He moved closer,
purposely letting his voice intensify with each step. “We fix
billion-dollar telescopes so scientists can see into the past and
the future.”

At last, he stood on the same level, a few
feet away from her, glad for the advantage of his height since she
wore those stilts on her feet. “That’s what
we
do.” He
leaned in closer so she’d inch away. She didn’t. “It doesn’t
involve Jay Leno.”

A spark lit her eyes, but he was blind now to
her fiery appeal, furious with himself for admiring her physical
assets while she was busy announcing that he’d become some sort of
NASA poster boy.

They stood face-to-face, the audience no
doubt spellbound at the unexpected showdown. He waited for her to
back down.

But, son of a bitch, she just crossed her
arms and took a step toward him.

“Without tax dollars, Commander Stockard,
there will be no experiments, no exploration and no telescopic
views into the present or the past.” He could hear the tiniest
shudder in her voice, but she held her ground and his gaze. “NASA
has called in experts to reverse an extremely negative tide of
public opinion. This is one tactic that hasn’t been tried and one
we know can work.”

You are sorely mistaken, sweetheart
.
He was nobody’s
tactic
. He finally broke their eye contact
and brushed by her to leave the room.

“Count me out, spin doctor.”

* * *

Oh, boy. Professional purgatory might be
worse than she’d feared. Jessica watched the imposing figure
disappear, along with about a quart of blood from her head. She
turned and offered a tenuous smile to her audience, hoping the
perspiration that had started when she got off the plane in this
swamp didn’t start forming a puddle around her feet.

Stuart Rosen, bless him, immediately closed
the meeting with assurance that the kinks in the program would be
worked out. As the room emptied, Jessica took a chance that Stuart
was truly the good guy the Washington-based NASA account team had
promised when she had accepted this hellacious assignment.
Your
idea, your job,
Tony had said.

As if she’d had a choice.

“Stuart,” she said, tapping papers into a
manila file, “couldn’t you have warned the poor man ahead of time
that he’d been hand-picked to be the next household
heartthrob?”

Humor twinkled in Stuart’s warm eyes. “And
ruin that classic NASA moment?” At her flabbergasted look, he
laughed. “Just kidding. In all seriousness, I thought Colonel Price
had
told him. We’d better go see our fearless leader right
now.”

She eyed the burly, slightly balding man who
would now be her daily client contact. She had only met him a few
minutes earlier, when she arrived at Kennedy Space Center for her
first meeting to brief NASA’s public affairs team on the plan.
She’d been uneasy at the sight of so many people at the
presentation, but Stuart had assured her this was standard
procedure.

“Then you might have warned
me
he’d be
lurking up in the cheap seats.”

“Didn’t your colleagues at the agency let you
in on the NASA secret, Jessica?” He smiled and shrugged. “Brilliant
engineers. Lousy communicators.”

“I don’t know about that. Commander Stockard
certainly made himself clear.” Jessica turned to the image of a
larger-than-life astronaut that still burned on the screen.

The blurred photo really didn’t do him
justice. It didn’t capture the intensity of eyes so blue they were
downright navy. It certainly didn’t reveal his power or the way he
could slash a person with a few words. Mesmerized, she had been
barely able to breathe, let alone look away from him while he
ranted about explorers and telescopes and terrorism.

“If he has the same effect on the women of
America,” she muttered, “we could actually pull this off.”

And that, Jessica reminded herself as she
removed his image with a single click of her laptop’s mouse, was
really the only thing that mattered. Complete success if she had a
snowball’s chance of preserving everything she’d worked for years
to achieve. Her whole world basically hung in the balance, and she
wasn’t about to let some astronaut with an attitude tip the
scales.

A few minutes later, Stuart and Jessica stood
in the lobby outside James D. Price’s office. She squeezed the
leather strap of her briefcase and studied a dramatic oil painting
of a space shuttle poised for launch. A metal plate captioned the
picture with five words.

Failure is not an option
.

No kidding. She simply couldn’t go back to
Boston a failure. She’d rather take on all of NASA, including the
insolent Commander Stockard, than lose her shot at the highest rung
of the ladder she’d been climbing. Much as she hated leaving home
and the visibility she needed as she vied for the top job in
Boston, this was the biggest opportunity she’d ever have to prove
herself to management. Nothing—make that no one—would ruin it for
her.

Stuart leaned closer and spoke in a hushed
tone, “By the way, our boss is retired Air Force, but everyone
still calls him Colonel.”

She nodded in understanding.

“We don’t want to waste his time,” Stuart
continued. “So please go straight into your agency’s backup
plan.”

“Backup plan?” Jessica squared her shoulders
and turned to face Stuart. She had a cardinal rule in business and
it served her well: pick your battles.

This one was worth fighting.

Plus, they had no flipping backup plan.

“I promise you we have a winner here.
Commander Stockard is exactly what we need to make this work.”
Jessica thought about the force of his penetrating gaze, his
classically handsome face. “Central Casting couldn’t have sent a
better guy for the job.”

“Jessica, I’m afraid you don’t know Deke
Stockard. I do, quite well. He’s a pretty strong force around
here.”

She remembered the towering figure descending
on her like a trapped jaguar. “I don’t doubt that.”

“He has the Colonel’s ear and his opinions
count. He was brought over from the Navy not just for his legendary
piloting skills but for his management and engineering capabilities
as well. He’s got a central role in the safety of every shuttle
launch—a position very few astronauts enjoy—and NASA has him on the
fast track.”

She tilted her head and winked at him. “I
have him on a faster track.”

Before Stuart could respond, the Colonel’s
office door flew open and six feet of royal blue burst through it.
At the sight of her, Deke Stockard stopped cold, none of the
animosity gone yet from his blazing eyes. His gaze stabbed her and
he opened his mouth to say something, but a stocky man came up
behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Let me talk to her, Deke. We’ll work out
some kind of compromise.”

Jessica didn’t like the sound of
compromise
, but it was better than
backup plan
. She
held Deke’s gaze, then stepped out of his path as he strode past
her with an expression so stony she almost smiled.

No wonder Bill Dugan was so anxious to pass
this assignment off to someone else. Who’d want to spend three
months trying to turn that beast into America’s sweetheart?

“Miss Marlowe, it’s a pleasure.” Jim Price
offered a warm handshake and a gestured invitation into his
office.

Greeting him, she noticed that his thick
black brows contrasted with a shock of white hair, as though they
somehow hadn’t gotten the message that this man had passed fifty
years of age. His wide shoulders must have looked commanding in an
Air Force uniform, although his charcoal business suit still
offered an aura of power and control. Jessica had been informed
that he used that control, and few words, to his advantage.

“You caused quite a stir around here this
afternoon,” he commented as he took a seat behind his immaculate
oak desk.

“I believe that was my assignment,
Colonel.”

“Your ideas are not universally popular.” He
straightened the one pen on his desk. “At least not with certain
members of the staff.”

Jessica leaned forward, ignoring the
increased thumping of her heart as she faced the man who could make
or break her game plan. “Colonel Price, I understood that Commander
Stockard had been briefed and agreed to this assignment.”

She distinctly remembered the conversation
with Bill when he’d promised to handle the background work with the
client. He’d briefed NASA and told Jessica they were one hundred
percent behind the unorthodox plan.

The Colonel nodded. “I discussed it at length
with Washington and it was decided that he should hear the plan
directly from your agency to fully understand the rationale.”

“Perhaps I could talk to him personally,
Colonel,” she suggested. “I can explain how little will be expected
of him. I’ll do all the logistical work on the campaign. That’s why
I’m here.”

That and the fact that Carla Drake had
somehow convinced Tony Palermo that since Jessica had thought of
the brilliant plan, it was only right that she go to Florida to see
it through to success. Leaving all of Jessica’s accounts and staff
in Carla’s hands for three months.

Jessica forced herself back to the
conversation with Colonel Price and away from the office politics
that nagged her.

“I happen to like the idea, and I think I
understand why you’ve selected Commander Stockard,” the Colonel
said. “However, our situation has changed slightly. We’ve made a
commitment to get the next shuttle,
Endeavour
, up on time.
There are several folks floating around on the International Space
Station who are a touch anxious to get home. One of the Russians,
in particular.”

Jessica noticed the look that passed between
Stuart and Jim and wondered just how a homesick Russian could
impact her plans with one astronaut on Earth.

“Deke plays a critical role in getting each
shuttle ready and his time for non-mission-related work is
limited,” the Colonel said.

Scheduling problems she could handle. “This
won’t take a lot of Commander Stockard’s time. He just shows up,
gets his picture taken, does an interview and he’s done.” She held
her breath, waiting for him to contradict her slight
exaggeration.

“Is it possible we could find another
astronaut for your project?”

Not a chance. She’d been through the bios.
They were all so
ordinary
compared to Stockard. Short or
balding or nerdy. Or married.