“Tolan won’t fuck up,” Kirill said with an emphatic head shake. “I did vodka toast with him beforehand to help loosen him up.” I shot Kirill a dirty look. He’d already been shooting vodka with Tolan. And he was judging me on my beer?
“Because everything’s better with alcohol when it comes to Russian protocol, right?” Noah glanced over at Kirill out of the corner of his eye. “I heard a rumor Conrad Barrett is over there.”
My brows shot up even as Hammer nodded vigorously. “I also heard that and texted Victoria to confirm. No reply yet.”
I sipped my beer thoughtfully, sad that my bottle was almost empty. Yet I’d have to debate with myself whether it was worth the shit I’d get from the guys to order another one. Conrad Barrett was one of the top five richest men in the country. For him to sign on to our project and help fund it would be huge. Huge. So huge it could make all the difference.
XVenture, an already successful private space exploration company, contracted with companies and governments all over the world on unmanned missions to send their satellites into space and even resupply the International Space Station. But now, for the first time ever, they were adding a manned program. The very beginnings of privatized human exploration: the XVenture Private Astronaut Corps. And for such a monumental addition, they needed new funding. And a lot of it.
But if we got it, I’d be able to fly the test flight this fall as planned. God, I wished the rumor about Conrad Barrett was true. And while I was at it—I also wished I had another full bottle of beer sitting in front of me.
And almost as if I’d hit a call button, our cute waitress, Cheryl—a new girl—was at my side again, leaning in so that I could get a good view of her lovely rack. My eyes fastened onto her cleavage like glue before I willed myself to pull my gaze away. Her grin widened, and she licked her lips, having noticed.
Don’t shit where you eat, the saying went, and I ate here often enough not to follow up on her obvious interest. Besides I already had a very lovely—and enthusiastic—bed partner lined up for tonight.
“Another beer, Commander Ty?”
I blinked, my mind running through the possible outcomes of another order. The struggle was real. “No, thank you, Cheryl. Maybe some ice water.”
Without even looking at the other guys at the table, she hurried to fill my order. There were scowls and rolled eyes, but she was back in minutes with the glass of water.
But again, she ignored the guys to lean in. “Can I please ask you a favor? My nephew is a huge fan. Can I get you to autograph a cocktail napkin for him?”
I patted my jeans pocket, checking for a pen, but came up empty. Noah had already whipped one out with an emphatic eye roll and presented it to me with a flourish. My face heated a little. God, I hated doing this shit in front of the guys. They always made sure I heard about it afterward. For far too long.
Jealous bastards.
“If your nephew’s an astronaut fan, you know, all these guys have been to space, too. Some of them for longer than me. And they also give autographs.”
She looked at the others, laughed and shrugged, but she didn’t ask them to sign anything. Apparently, only “space heroes” got that honor. I clenched my teeth against the ever-present resentment that NASA had relentlessly branded me that way.
She laid a fresh cocktail napkin before me, and I poised my pen above it. “What’s your nephew’s name?”
“Uh.” She blushed again. “Well, actually, it’s for me. My girlfriends can’t believe you’re one of my customers.”
I signed the napkin with my usual cheesy tagline.
For Cheryl,
Keep reaching for the stars!
Commander Ryan Tyler
“Don’t forget your phone number. It’s what she’s really after,” said Kirill in Russian, and the other guys snickered.
“Zatknis,” I snapped without missing a beat. With his smartass mouth, it wasn’t an unusual command to order him to shut it on a regular basis—in either language.
“What did he say?” Cheryl asked as I handed her the napkin.
“He wants your number,” I replied, and Kirill belted out a laugh, leaning back in his chair.
She grinned big and smiled, glancing quickly from me to him, probably sizing us both up to decide which one she liked better. The only thing I had on Kirill was darker hair, several TV appearances, and questionable notoriety that often served as tabloid fodder.
Two seconds later, Cheryl was leaning close to me, angling her phone in front of our faces. “Selfie time!” she chimed in a singsong voice, positioning the device and snapping three photos in quick succession.
“Please don’t tag that with the location if you’re posting it online,” I begged. That was all I needed. More astronaut groupies.
“No way! I want to make sure you stay all mine.” She reached down and patted my cheek before I pulled away. When she frowned, I smiled to cover for the awkward moment. She then quickly asked the others if they needed anything, took their orders and then walked away.
“Check out her ass, Ty,” Hammer said. “You screwed the pooch turning that down.”
I shrugged. “I’ll save it for later. Suzanne’s coming over tonight. We’re training together.”
“Ah…training together,” Kirill mocked, making air quotes, as usual, on the wrong word. It never ceased being hilarious how he always got it wrong.
“No, Kirya, it’s training together,” Hammer corrected him with his own air quotes.
“Bah! Who cares? He’s fucking her. That’s what it means.”
It sure as hell better mean that or I was in for some disappointment, and I’d had more than my share lately.
That letter from the director of NASA had arrived only the week before, but it felt like a year or more. We feel this is in the best interest of all parties involved and wish you well in your future endeavors.
Fuck him. Fuck NASA. I clenched my jaw, and the guys all exchanged looks as if having easily detected the change in my mood. We’d spent hours, months and years training together—sometimes in the direst of circumstances. We’d crisscrossed mountain tops in Alaska during high-altitude training. We’d locked ourselves into a twenty-foot square isolated habitat for weeks during space travel analog training. We’d spent countless hours submerged together in one of the largest indoor pools in the world, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. And we’d run simulation after simulation. We knew each other’s body language and the slightest change in voice tone—in more than one language. We read each other.
If any small group of men was more attuned to each other than we were, I had no idea who they’d be. I’d only known this close of a camaraderie when I’d served in the teams as a Navy SEAL during my pre-astronaut days.
Noah seemed to perceive it first, his head tilting in my direction as if directly receiving my melancholy. I darted guilty eyes at him and then away. Noah was the hardest to be around. He’d been there the day of the accident—not on the station with us, but down in Houston, guiding the astronauts through our spacewalk as the voice of the mission, our CAPCOM.
He cleared his throat. “What’s up, Ty? Is that flat-earth fucker still harassing you? I heard something about him filing a lawsuit against you for punching him. I never know when to trust the tabloid headlines.” He shook his head. “The idiot had it coming.”
Kirill laughed and slapped the table with his large hand. “He’ll keep his distance now. His nose did not look pretty after it met Ty’s fist.”
I pinched the skin on the bridge of my nose.
And that image brought up the fact that there was now a lawsuit pending, and the story had gone viral. Being known as Ryan Tyler, American Hero was at least better than being known as the drunk astronaut who’d punched out a flat-earther and gotten fired from NASA. Curiously, the tabloids hadn’t mentioned that the asshole had literally shoved a Bible in my face and called me a fucking liar for refusing to swear to the truth on it for him. He’d told me that my best friend was
alive and well in the witness protection program somewhere and had not suffocated in his own suit during a spacewalk hundreds of miles above the surface of the earth.
The worst part? How much I wished his “truth” was the correct one. How much I ached to have Xander alive again—even if hidden away under a fake name and identity. At least he’d still be walking this earth instead of having his corpse burn up in the atmosphere months after his death.
All I had to show for that dumb-ass confrontation was a bruised hand, a probable lawsuit, and tabloid headlines. And the “fuck off” letter from NASA, of course.
“There’s Victoria,” Kirill said, running a large hand over his dark-blond hair to smooth it down.
“How cute. Someone’s got a little crush,” said Noah with a loud chuckle.
“Russians don’t have crushes,” he growled back.
Hammer spoke up with a hilariously exaggerated Russian accent. “In Soviet Russia, we do not crush on women. The women crush us!”
“Very funny. I make rude gestures at every one of you,” he replied. But in spite of his words, he didn’t, because Victoria Breckenridge, a very attractive African-American woman, approached us, looking almost like a buttoned-up business version of a femme fatale in her dark red business suit, perfect updo and designer stilettos. Someone I didn’t know lingered at her side and a step behind her. A thinly built woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with a picture of a planetoid and the slogan: Pluto: Never forget. 1930 – 2006. Her dark-blond hair was tucked up into a NASA baseball cap. I couldn’t help but laugh at the shirt and wonder about the young woman wearing it.
My eyes drifted back to Victoria, Public Relations Director for XVenture in charge of publicity for the XPAC. I almost winced at the possibility that she might ask me to hit the talk show and radio circuit again. During the past year since the accident, NASA had not hesitated to parade me around like their trained pet bear. And like the trained bear, I’d gone along with it, hoping it would help me make good on my promise. I should have known they’d disappoint me—yank that away and leave me with no future with them.
In truth, I’d kill to avoid that whole publicity circus again, but if it was my only way back to space, I’d already resigned myself to the possibility I might have to endure it for the sake of the new XPAC. If it meant I’d fly again, I’d jump through flaming hoops like a tamed lion.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
In any case, I had a very important promise to keep.
The two women approached our table and, with his old school eastern European manners, Kirill immediately shot out of his seat. He never sat when a woman nearby was standing.
Victoria came to a stop and smiled wide, her dark lipstick glistening on perfect lips. “Hey boys, we’re here to double-check on the catering order for our investors. They’re on the tail end of the big tour and almost ready to eat. Tolan pulled out all the stops with simulated launches and everything.”
“They’ll think they’ve died and gone to Disneyland,” I said with a grin, and she tilted her chin up and laughed.
“How is Tolan doing? He hasn’t vomited from nervousness, has he?” Kirill asked.
Her grin widened. “Not yet. But he hasn’t had to do much. He’s mostly following along with the tour and making small talk as they walk along. Crossing fingers for now.” She held up a perfectly manicured hand with scarlet-tipped fingers twisted around each other to demonstrate. “They’ll go into the conference room and talk business over lunch. That’s about an hour from now, so I want to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.”
Her eyes fastened onto the now-empty beer bottle sitting on the table, and, after everything, I started to feel a little sheepish though her expression didn’t change. Always the smooth operator. “You boys all know Gray, right?”
“Who’s that?” I blurted before noticing that Victoria was gesturing to the nonentity in the planetary sweatshirt and baseball cap beside her.
“She’s recently joined the behavioral health team,” Victoria added, ignoring my interruption.
The girl—she looked young—peeked out from behind the thick frames of her glasses underneath the bill of her cap. Now that she was closer, I could get a better gauge on her. She was of medium height, with a slender—almost boyish—build. When she turned her head to look at Victoria, I spied a short dark-blond ponytail peeking out from her baseball cap.
“Hey, guys.” She smiled nervously. “Good to see you all again.”
To our credit, none of us groaned, though I was sure we all wanted to. Flight psychologists were the bane of every astronaut’s existence at NASA. We had to answer their questions, suffer their evaluations and, ultimately, live or fly by their decree.
I doubted it would be anything more than the same here, too. Kirill, who was still standing and would remain standing for as long as the women were on their feet, reached for her hand. She shook it with an enthusiastic nod, a becoming smile on her lips. I rose from my seat beside Kirill, reaching out my own hand.
“I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Ryan Tyler.”
The smile melted off her face immediately, and she stuffed both her hands into her pockets. An awkward silence hung in the air. Apparently, Kirill’s hand was good enough to shake, but not mine. What the hell?
“We’ve met. You don’t remember,” she replied curtly, staring at the floor. Hammer snickered across from me as I stood there with my hand still extended like a fool. Like I had some kind of disease or something—maybe even the type of disease that wasn’t spread from a handshake. I got checked regularly—no danger of that.
Noah and Kirill both joined in the laughter now, making the situation that much worse. And she refused to meet my gaze, hands shoved so far down in her pockets she could practically touch her knees. So that’s how she wanted it to be? Fine. I didn’t need a fucking counselor sniffing around me in any case.
Pulling back my extended hand, I held my palms out. “No worries, sweetheart. You can’t handle this? Not every girl can.” I punctuated my smartass remark with a big ol’ shit-eating grin. Okay, it was a complete douchebag thing to say, and I realized it after the fact. I may even have apologized had her reaction not completely distracted me.
She immediately flushed a deep pink, her thick brows knitting above the rims of her glasses. Infuriatingly, it made her look adorable and even more innocent. I pulled my gaze away from her troubling green eyes and fell into my chair, effectively turning my back on her.
Gray. Who named their kid that anyway? Especially a girl. It was the blandest color ever. Why not pick Mauve or Chartreuse instead? Not that I even knew what colors those were, but they sounded much more interesting. Gray was the color of miserable weather, mammals at the bottom of the food chain, and dirty socks that had been worn way too long without being washed.
Hammer finally stopped laughing—the ass—and leaned forward. “Hey, Victoria, you never answered my text.”
“Haven’t even had time to look at my phone. What did you need, Hammer?”
“I heard a rumor that Conrad Barrett is over there. Is that true? Please say it is, and that he’s a big space fan.”
Victoria and Fifty Shades of Bland Gray exchanged a long look before Victoria responded. “Half is true. He is over there. Not sure how much of a space fan he is, but I’m hoping he’s a much bigger one than when he entered the factory today.”
“And hoping he lays down some of his fat money to go along with it,” Noah whistled, holding up crossed fingers. “Let’s pray anyway.”
Kirill knocked three times on the table and jerked his head toward his left shoulder, a Russian gesture for luck.
I sipped at my ice water before interjecting. “Eh. Conrad Barrett is well known for being a self-righteous tightwad. Wanna bet he throws in with the flat-earthers instead?” In spite of my flippant attitude, I hoped it was true, too. That bastard could mean the difference between this program getting off the ground or not. I hated—so much—that it was
all coming down to us being at the mercy of investors. But in corporate America, what else could you do?
Victoria shook her head and checked her fancy smartwatch. “We need to go check on that order. You guys are on call for a few more hours in case the investor group wants to meet you. We’ll call you over. In the meantime, no cocktails or beer. You’re on imminent flight status.” She arched her eyebrows up as if she were a scolding mother trying her best to speak “astronaut” to her wayward boys.
“We’ve been officially schooled, guys,” Hammer muttered as we watched both women retreat. I couldn’t help but notice that the newcomer had a nice little butt inside those jeans despite her boyish silhouette from the front. Her fists were still thrust deeply inside her pockets, and her shoulders were rigid. Was she upset about something? Or maybe she had a permanent stick up her ass. Who knew? Fifty Shades of Uptight.
I checked my watch and sat back with a sigh. We were in for a long wait and all needed something to take our minds off it. Either this meeting went well and we got our money, or it would be months yet, more months of limbo while we waited.
I clenched my teeth, then forced them to relax. When Cheryl came to the table again, we asked her to turn the channel on the TV to the game, hoping to ease the tension of anticipation. We settled in uneasily and waited for our time on the stage.
Chapter 3
Gray Barrett
It was definitely one of the universe’s cruelest jokes that the more toxic and junky the food, the better comfort it gave. Half-gallon cartons of ice cream and a spoon for breakups. Gallons of coffee and/or caffeinated soda for frenzied all-nighters. I was now adding greasy potato chips for nervous anticipation to that list.
I anxiously paced outside the conference room, a nondescript reception area with tables, desks and futuristic-looking chrome office chairs. The brilliant lime-green-and-cyan color scheme splashed across a white marble floor.
Halting in my tracks, I trained my eyes on the extra-large bag of salt and vinegar chips that my friend and coworker, Parvati “Pari” Sharma, now dangled in front of my face. It had all the promise of calming the rambling mind of the nervous wreck I’d become over the past week.
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