Star Dust (17 page)

“I need a lot of things.” The lust had returned.

Her cheeks felt febrile. The man was killing her. “I—I’ll see you to the door.”

She led him to the back, and then, as if she were sleepwalking, she followed him out. Moving with sudden speed, he pinned her against the back of the house and kissed her deeply.

She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Whatever else was true, she loved this part: the weight and heat of him. His hands at her back and sides, his mouth against hers. She went up in flames for him, and if they’d skipped some steps, she didn’t remotely care.

She whimpered, and her hands knit into balls in his shirt.

And then he let her go.

“Thank you for dinner.” His voice was even, and she was confused. Gently, he disengaged her hands. “Sleep well.”

And with that, he was gone.

Kit threaded the worm very carefully onto the hook, trying to avoid the barb. He could pilot to the edge of the atmosphere, break air-speed records, and fly a Perseid rocket, but catching a fish without stabbing anyone was serious business. At least it was to Freddie and Lisa Smith, who had never been fishing.

They were at the edge of the dock on the man-made pond, Bucky watching them curiously. He clearly didn’t get fishing’s appeal.

The entire Smith family had appeared at his door this morning, fishing poles in hand. “These were a gift from my parents,” Anne-Marie had explained, a subtle tightness to her jaw. “Apparently, since we have a pond, we should go fishing.” She said
fishing
as if being drawn and quartered was higher on her list of desirable things to do.

“Those are nice poles,” he told the kids. “Should we go try them out?”

So here they were. On something dangerously close to a
family outing
. Anne-Marie had felt so comfortable with the idea that she’d left the kids with him while she got a picnic together.

He’d done his best not to crow about it. Maybe he was making progress with her.

“There you go, honey.” He handed the baited pole back to Lisa. “Now Freddie and I are going to step back, and you can go ahead and cast off.”

Lisa gripped the red and white bobber with deadly intent. Those guppies—dear Lord, he hoped there were guppies in there—had better watch out.

He and Freddie backed down the dock, and she let out some line. Then with a flick of her wrist, or maybe two, she sent the hook, worm, and bobber flying over the edge and into the water.

She turned on her toes. “I did it! I did it!”

“Good job. Your turn, buddy.”

He repeated the process and a few minutes later, Freddie’s hook was soaking in the water.

“What do we do now?” Freddie asked.

The kids were watching him with wide and impressionable eyes.

This was what had always frightened him about children. Well, okay, two things: one, they thought he was perfect. They saw the uniform, or the astronaut helmet, and they thought that was all there was to the business: fame and glory and the American way. They didn’t see the part where he’d taken their mom to bed. Where he’d taken a lot of women to bed. Oh hell, he probably shouldn’t even be thinking about that in front of children. But they didn’t realize he had flaws, was human.

So, two, they cared about what he thought. This question, for example: What do you do while fishing? They didn’t know, and whatever Kit—their idol—said, that was going to shape how they thought about fishing for the rest of their lives.

He didn’t know how Anne-Marie handled the pressure.

“Well, you eat sandwiches. Your mom should be along with those.”

He looked around, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“And you tell stories. And jokes. And you wait.”

“For what?” Lisa asked.

Just then, her bobber shot under water.

“For that!” He pointed. “Do you see?”

“You’ve caught a fish!” Freddie almost dropped his pole he was so overcome.

Kit rested a hand lightly on Lisa’s shoulder. The girl was frozen, her eyes bulging out of her face. He squeezed her and she nodded in acknowledgement. “Now you’ve got to reel it in.”

Lisa went the wrong way at first and advanced more line. Kit could see the bobber, submerged a few inches under water, pull out further into the pond. But then she turned the reel correctly and the bobber started to slowly edge back toward the dock.

At last she managed to pull the hook out the water. Dangling from it was a six-inch… well, maybe a red fish. He wasn’t quite sure.

When the line was about a foot below the floor of the dock, he got down on his knees and hauled it up. The fish danced around, his mouth opening and closing indignantly, the barbed hook poking dangerously from its lip.

“Look at that.”

Kit turned at the exclamation to find Anne-Marie standing behind him, a cooler in her hand and a bemused expression on her face.

“Lisa caught dinner,” Freddie shouted.

Anne-Marie looked at her son, and she laughed. She closed her eyes and threw her head back and she dissolved. Her shoulders were shaking, her frame vibrating, all the lovely places he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about in front of children shimmering with amusement.

It was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

He’d gotten used to her cold looks and the way she rolled her eyes. Honestly, they aroused the hell out of him now. He knew she didn’t mean them. Her ice princess routine was a shield she’d constructed against all the ways in which the world had trampled her. Her frigid demeanor was how she fought back—and he liked that she was a fighter.

But damn, it was good to see her like this too.

When she managed to control herself, she looked back at Kit and wiped her eyes.
Can you believe these two?
her expression said. His heart leapt in his chest exactly like the bobber on Lisa’s line. He loved that she was treating him like an ally.

Then she turned her smile on Freddie. “I… Well, it’s a bit small to feed us all, don’t you think?”

“Can we keep it?” Lisa asked.

Anne-Marie looked at the fish, who was flapping around like a tornado. Then she crouched and said to her daughter, “It looks like a baby to me. Do you think it would be fair for us to take it out of the lake?”

Lisa frowned and stared longingly at the fish. She wanted to keep it. “I suppose not,” she said slowly.

“Do you think we should put it back and let it get a bit bigger?”

“Yes.” That was dutiful. Anne-Marie had these kids well trained, that was for sure.

“Can you, um, remove it from the hook?” Anne-Marie asked Kit.

“Yes, ma’am.”

It took a bit of doing, but he got it off.

“Say goodbye,” he instructed Freddie and Lisa.

“Goodbye, fish,” the kids chanted.

Lisa’s expression tacked on,
I’ll be back for you later.

He stretched out over the dock and released it as gently as he could into the water. The fish shot out of his hand, heading for the bottom as fast as it could. He held there as the fish escaped, with the kids and Anne-Marie watching him.

Was it really this easy, being around children? He didn’t have to be a hero here—all he had to do was stick a worm on a line, encourage Lisa to reel it in, then set the fish back into the water. Simple stuff, but it felt heady with a receptive audience.

And with Anne-Marie.

When he was confident the fish was gone, Kit swished his hands around in the water to clean them and rolled to his feet.

When he turned, he found Anne-Marie watching him with heat in her eyes. “Commander Campbell, you move very well for a man of your age.” Sass lit her voice.

Before he could respond, she was cracking the cooler open. “It’s just a pick-up lunch, I’m afraid, but who wants some?”

She distributed sandwiches and thermoses of juice. While they ate, the kids explained the basic principles of fishing to her.

Once they had finished, the kids went back to their rods and he sat next to Anne-Marie.

“You sure know a lot about catching defenseless beings,” she whispered. “Fish, blondes…”

“The girl next door?”

The expression in her eyes was a mix of sweetness and lust that he felt in every cell in his body.

He should have had an affair long ago. Party girls like Miss Delancy had their place—the first part of his life. But since they never stayed around very long, Kit had never developed jokes with them. Hadn’t realized that could be part of the fun.

Then Anne-Marie winked, actually winked at him, and it took self-control he didn’t know he had not to tackle her down to the dock.

He resettled and rubbed at his finger, needing a distraction. He had caught himself on a hook at some point.

“You okay?” she asked, her tone level but concerned.

“Just a scratch.”

“Need a bandage?”

“Nah, it’ll heal. How’s yours?”

“Oh, better. Thanks to you.”

For a while they sat in comfortable silence. They listened to the kids arguing about how to best hold a pole. They watched a gull swoop overhead and fly off.

“You know a lot about fishing,” Anne-Marie said at last.

“My dad taught me.”

“He still around?”

“Yeah, he and my mom live in Omaha. He’s retired.”

“Are they proud of the astronaut in the family?”

He shifted a bit. “Yes. They…”

He paused to find the right words. They were proud, they’d always been proud, but they also wanted him to be satisfied with less. With a house in a city like theirs. A wife. Kids.

He shot a glance at Anne-Marie, who was contentedly watching her children and waiting for the rest of his story.

“They don’t understand why I want to see the stars,” he said at last.

“They didn’t read
A Princess of Mars
?”

He chuckled. “Burroughs was from the library. They were happy I joined the Navy, but the ambition, the things that came later…”

“They don’t like it when Jack Paar talks about you on TV?”

“My mom likes that. My dad… he’s fairly private.”

“Ah.”

She understood. After everything that had happened, she was private too. Privacy was the main reason she wouldn’t date him. That and her children, of course.

He looked up to see if the kids were listening in, but Freddie and Lisa were too busy discussing the monsters from the picture they’d seen the day before.

“I don’t like the publicity, either,” he said to Anne-Marie finally. “But it’s worth it to me.”

She picked at the dock. A tiny silver of wood came off in her hand. She twirled it around and then tossed it into the breeze. “I understand.”

There was something sad about how she said it, something wistful and different and he wanted to ask what it was. But before he could, she’d stood up.

“Okay, kids. You’ve got some homework.”

“But I haven’t caught anything yet,” Freddie whined.

“I did!” Lisa interjected.

“We put it back,” her brother replied.

Anne-Marie held up a hand and the arguing ceased. “I promise this isn’t the last time you’ll go fishing. It’s just down the street. And you have rods now.”

Reluctantly, the kids packed up to leave. Anne-Marie held herself ramrod straight, her eyes focused on the children and the cooler, everything about her posture ordering him to back off.

Not wanting to make a scene and not wanting the kids to notice that something was off, he did.

“See you, Kit,” Freddie said sadly as he followed his mother home.

“Hey, be happy,” Kit instructed him. “It’s still a good day even when you don’t catch anything.”

After a second, the kid smiled and Kit trailed them home. Anne-Marie didn’t look back at him once the entire time.

It started out innocently enough with a phone call from Margie.

“You know the Perseid launch?” the astronaut’s wife began as soon as Anne-Marie answered.

“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Anne-Marie said, trying not to laugh. The launch was the only thing anyone in Lake Glade could talk about—and it was still a week away.

“Well, everyone is good and anxious. So I thought I would host a dinner party tomorrow—”