Earth Bound (9 page)

“Parsons said you wanted to discuss the launch procedure, gentlemen,” she said, keeping her voice low. “So let’s talk.”

Only someone who knew her well would be able to hear the tension, the anger in the aspirated K.

None of these men had that pleasure.

“We have some questions about the tracking computer,” the ASD director from Virginia said. His words were careful and a bit neutral, as if he were afraid he might scare her off. “About the coding process.”

She bit back the question she wanted to ask:
Tell me what you know about coding, and I’ll know how to calibrate my explanation.

“It’s a derivative of a von Neumann machine,” she said equally slowly, as if she were talking to idiots. She smiled to soften the edge of her tone.

“You worked with him at Princeton,” Stan Jensen said. Well, he said it, but it was a question. He was asking her to confirm something he didn’t quite believe.

“Yes. I started in his lab when I was sixteen.”

Something strange happened when she said that: She felt Parsons shift next to her. It felt like a gesture of… support. As if he wanted to give her his imprimatur.

She didn’t need it.

“I was only a coder, of course, a support staffer. Compared to what we have now, the machine was crude. Vacuum tubes, no FORTRAN, but we could predict the weather and that was the point.”

“Dr. Eason is herself an accomplished computer,” Parsons said. “She’s promised to be the backup for the machine during the next liftoff. She predicts she’ll be able to manually confirm we’re a go in twenty-two seconds.”

“That’s not quite what I said,” she corrected. “I gave a range of—”

He shook his head. Barely. Imperceptibly. Like he didn’t want her to do anything to take away from her genius in these men’s eyes.

But she hadn’t said twenty-two seconds; she’d said less than thirty-five seconds, and she’d emphasized her average was in the mid-twenties.

Before she could get all the details out, the man from Virginia went on as if Parsons had never spoken up for her. “This is quite a bit more complicated.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, her words both sweet and tart at once. “Let me tell you about what the department is working on.”

The
department, not
my
department, though of course it wasn’t hers. But neither she nor they would have known that from the way she talked for the next ten minutes, explaining the range of machines and human backups, their goals and safeguards and backups.

When she’d finished, they were speechless—which of course had been the point.

“That’s all very… thorough,” Stan Jensen said at last.

It had been many things. That she’d been thorough was indisputable.

“We’ll pass along to Hal how informative that was,” the other ASD director said. Because Hal was evidently her keeper.

Parsons stood up, so she did too. “Let me know if you have any other questions,” she said. And she swept from the room.

She went back to her office. Along the way, she ignored or gave half-hearted waves to everyone who greeted her—though that was hardly unusual.

She picked up the report she was supposed to be reading. She set it down. She opened the cover, took her pen in hand… and slammed it back down.

It would never be enough. No matter how many papers she authored, no matter how many projects she successfully completed, deadlines she met, or snafus she navigated, all they’d ever be able to see were the breasts.

All she could hope for, the very best, was to be treated like a trained bear. A pat on the head and a whispered “freak” as she left the room: that was the best-case scenario.

Maybe her parents were right—perhaps she ought to leave ASD and scuttle back to academia. Find a suitable professor husband and raise the next generation of scientists, as they had.

Mother would say, “I told you so.” Not in a mean way—well, not completely mean—but she would.

Although working here wasn’t entirely bad. Parsons, for all his flaws, was better than the rest because he was never astonished. He was also never pleased. A thing was either good, which was to say
sufficient
, or it was not (usually not) and that was all he ever had for anybody.

Needing to move, she stood up and started pacing.

She shouldn’t be shocked; she shouldn’t be upset. She should be able to take this afternoon’s meeting and put it in the case along with the fifty other meetings she’d had like this one, all the times when her sex had surprised the men across from her and had stayed surprising the entire time.

But today, she couldn’t. She’d been happy here. She had started to feel like maybe, just maybe, she could be happy at ASD long-term, that her work would be enough to overcome the limitations everyone else placed on her.

She stopped and listened. She’d been back in her office for an hour or so. Everyone else had gone home. She was alone. She turned on her heel and did another circuit around the room.

In some ways, Parsons was in the same situation. He wasn’t a woman—and of course that changed things. But he was eerily good at what he did and congenitally unimpressed, and thus he stepped on toes constantly.

They called him a freak, too.

That was probably why, as the clock ticked closer to six, she headed toward his office.

She didn’t bother to knock. She simply opened the door.

His jacket was off and so was his tie. His shirt was mostly unbuttoned. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. His feet were crossed on his desk, and his chair was pushed way back. Parsons himself was craned back, and he was playing toss with a wadded-up piece of scratch paper.

She closed the door and leaned against it. He hadn’t acknowledged her, but that was probably good. She needed a moment to collect herself. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing here—except she didn’t feel like quite so odd a bird around him.

When at last she ventured all the way in, she chose the chair closer to him. She could have taken the small sofa, but instead she went with the hard, unvarnished wood. Unlike in the meeting, she tossed herself down. No performance, no gimmick. He wasn’t looking at her, and she didn’t care anyway.

Seconds passed. She watched him surreptitiously, but then with steady awareness. His fingers were long. Callused at the tips. The way he moved was gentle, expert. He snagged the ball of paper out of the air and flipped it up again. Higher and higher it flew each toss.

Her gaze swept lower, over his forearms dusted with dark hair, his flexing biceps in his sleeves, and down to the surprisingly trim plane of his stomach beneath his shirt.

Parsons was a man. He wasn’t a disembodied brain. He was warm and real and only a few feet from her.

The realization hit her with a tang. Her breathing went shallow.

Before she’d gotten it under control, he spoke. “That meeting today, I—”

“Don’t apologize.”

He caught the paper and looked at her, straight on. “I wasn’t going to.”

Of course not. But his tone frosted the words, blurred them. He thought he had nothing to apologize for. As she’d noted in the meeting, he was mad, but not at her.
 
He was mad at the men who’d been mean to her.

That piquant detail made her cant forward and ask, “Why did you tell them I could do the calculation in twenty-two seconds?”

He pursed his lips and exhaled. “You’re bright.”

“Noted.”

“No.” He waved her sarcasm off. “Beyond being smart, which you obviously are, you’re… competent. More so than any man working here. Their dismissal of you was outrageous.”

There was no getting control of her breathing now. She could feel her cheeks heating and sweat blooming on her palms.

She didn’t say anything, although she repeated his words over in her head several times.
Bright, smart, competent
.

She knew that she was. She didn’t get through the things she had without knowing it, deep within her. The knowledge was like a secret idol she’d visited on her own. She alone kept the votive candles lit there.

But maybe she had an acolyte.

Parsons glared hard at the wall for a moment, as if it were Stan Jensen and he could correct the man with a mean look, but then he softened and turned back to her. “I probably… well, I was trying to help.”

“There’s no help for the problem they have.”

He glared at the wall again. “Maybe. But we have a goal here, a mission. I want the people I want for what I want them for. If we get the job done, the rest is immaterial.”

Wasn’t that adorable? He believed so naively in meritocracy, she should probably cut him down to size.

But something held her back. Or rather, she decided to prioritize something else.

From the moment when he’d helped her out of the capsule, a potent draw had seemed to be between them. She’d worked to erase the memory—but maybe it didn’t have to be a memory.

All the times she’d catch him glaring, or when she’d wanted to rub his nose in her work, they’d been building to this.

Charlie licked her lips. Every inch of her was charged to capacity, ready to throw off a terrific spark, at least if he responded in the affirmative.

She whispered, “What do you want me for?”

Oh stupid, impetuous words. She wanted them back the moment she’d spoken them. They were undeniably suggestive. That she’d said them, and
how
she’d said them, was going to make it hard to play off—if they wanted to play them off.

But then Parsons wet his lips and looked at her. His eyes were dilated behind his glasses and glazed, if she wasn’t mistaken, with lust.

No, she didn’t want the words back at all. She wanted… well, she
wanted
.

This was terrifically ill thought out. He was the only man in the place who treated her decently—at least the only one with any power who did. He’d been flattering her, and she wanted to what? Get sweaty and naked with him?

Yes, to begin with at least.

She could feel her pulse between her legs as Parsons watched her, weighing how he ought to respond. She realized how long it had been since she’d been in bed with a man. It had been a long time. Too long.

This was a bad idea. But it was also a very good one.

“I want your skills,” he said at last. Then he swallowed. Hard.

“Mm.” She leaned onto his desk. “Just at the office?”

He smiled. It was sheepish and titillating and surprised and it made him look twenty. Then it was over. The door he’d opened with the smile slammed closed.

Was he rejecting her?

He swung his feet onto floor and snapped up before she could decide. “We can’t talk about this here.”

“We’re not talking about anything.”

He began buttoning his shirt. “Where are you parked?”

Oh. That sounded promising. “Near the north gate.”

He stood, pivoted toward the wall, and shoved his shirt into his pants. Without turning, he asked, “Do you want to get out of here?”

Since he wasn’t looking, she didn’t hide her smile as she said, “I’ll get my purse.”

This might be improvised, but she didn’t care. She didn’t allow herself to think or question as she dashed back to the computing department to collect her purse and close up.

Three minutes later, she found him in the parking lot beside his car. It was a balmy autumn night. The humidity was beginning to leach from the air, and the light was lavender and gold as twilight flamed out.

She pointed to her Dodge. “This is mine.”

“Follow me.”

She did. He left ASD and took one left and another. He pulled off onto an access road. They were building a new wind tunnel over here, but the gates of the base hadn’t been extended yet.

Parsons pulled off into a field and parked. The workmen were long gone. Directly across from them was a field. In it, an oil derrick pumped away and a single longhorn steer stood chewing his cud.

She pulled alongside his car and watched as Parsons walked around and opened her door.

She left the keys in the ignition. He couldn’t be serious. She raised a brow at him.

He was as silent and inscrutable as ever. His hands were braced on her car, but he hadn’t moved beyond that. He seemed to be weighing some difficult decision.

She should probably offer to help. Instead she teased, “Come here often?”

He didn’t answer with words. But he did lean in and unbuckle her seat belt. Then he reached to the floor and pulled the lever between her legs. The entire front seat slid back six inches with a firm
click
.

She drew a sharp breath and watched as he wrapped his fingers around her ankle. He tugged gently, turning her toward him.

“We never talk this about at work,” he said.

His face was in shadow. What little light there was shone off his glasses, made it impossible to read his eyes.

“Talk about what?” Lord, her voice was breathy.

Instead of telling her, he showed her. He ran his fingers up her leg, over the stocking covering her calf. When he reached the back of her knee, he grunted in arousal.

Everywhere he touched, he set off sparks. She was playing it cool, keeping her features even and her reactions contained. But she couldn’t resist squeezing her thighs together and testing her growing arousal. She felt swollen, and gloriously willing.

And he’d barely touched her.

His free hand fisted the hem of her skirt, and he began to pull it up. To tug, really, with no finesse or thoughtfulness, though it was all the more dizzying for the jerkiness. He wanted her. Badly. She knew the feeling.

She lifted her hips, helped him expose her garter belt and drawers.

“Christ, you’re lovely,” he whispered as he knelt in the grass.

This was crazy. It was insane. Fifteen minutes ago they’d been colleagues in his office and nothing more, and now he was going to… oh good God.

She didn’t touch him at all. She watched him watch her. Watched his fingers skate up her leg until they arrived finally at the inches of bare skin at the apex of her inner thighs.

He nudged her panties aside and skimmed through her curls.

She was throbbing and wet between her legs, so ready for whatever he was going to do next.