Her Perfect Stranger

professionally, with no personal hangups between them. The mission depended on it. NASA counted on it. Billions of tax dollars were at stake. There could be nothing dragging them down emotionally. 'There is no 'this,'' she said with a finality she didn't feel.

He ran a finger over her jaw, down her throat to the base of her neck, where her pulse had taken off. 'Liar,' he chided softly as her nipples beaded and thrust against the material of her shirt.

'Mike.'

'Yeah.'

She let out a disparaging sound. Oh, Mike. Why couldn't she forget? What was it about what they'd shared in the dark, dark of the night with no music and no candles, no romantic devices, nothing but the two of them turning to each other? They'd needed nothing but each other, and that scared her.

Hell, it terrified her. 'There can't be a this,' she whispered.

'Oh, there's a this.' His finger continued its path over her collarbone to her shoulder, nudging the edge of the tank off it. Stepping even closer, he clipped his head and nipped at the skin he'd exposed, while his fingers continued their seductive assault on her senses.

Thunk. The back of her head hit the wall as she lost the ability to hold it up. 'Mike-'

'How can you ignore me?' He dipped his head so that she could feel his breath on her skin. 'After what we shared?'

'It was…just… sex,' she panted as he dragged that clever mouth back up her throat now, feasting as he went, his fingers toying with the edging of her top, and the curve of her breast.

'Yeah. Sex. Great sex.' He waited until she cleared her glassy gaze and looked at him. 'I made you come, remember?' His hips slid to hers. 'Over and over, until you were screaming.'

She was going to scream now. 'Stop.' Since she wanted to mean it, she put a hand to his chest. 'I want you to forget all that. If we're going to make this work, you have to forget.'

'Corrine-'

'Forget, Mike.' And while she still had the strength, she wrenched away. But instead of going back to bed, she went into the bathroom and cranked on the shower.

Cold.

As she stripped and stepped beneath the icy spray, she could swear she heard Mike's soft, mocking laughter.

6

The meeting was not going well. Corrine knew this, and she tried to get a handle on things- things being mostly her own emotions. But with Mike sitting there so calm and put together at the conference table, it was all but impossible.

She could feel his eyes on her, searching and intense. And though it had to be only an illusion, she thought she could smell him, all clean, sexy male. She certainly could feel him, and he wasn't even touching her.

She'd dreamed about that, his touching her. He did it far too often. Always in such a way as to seem innocent, of course. A brush of an arm here. A thigh there. Here a touch, there a touch, everywhere a touch.

She was losing it.

'Facts are facts,' she said into the tense silence. 'We've been asked to conduct these experiments, and we will.'

'But we can complain about it, at least. They're not NASA based, or even university experiments,' Frank said. They'd been having this bickering session for an hour. 'It's a bunch of elementary students from Missouri, and they want to test seeds. I think we can all agree that, with the unknown time factor involved in repairing the already installed solar panels, combined with constructing the new ones, we have better things to be worrying about than kids with seeds.'

Both Jimmy and Stephen nodded. Corrine looked at Mike.

He returned the look, his expression closed, and said nothing.

'I hear what you're saying,' she said, a bit unsettled by how that simple exchange could rattle her wits. 'But these kids-middle school, not elementary-won a national contest in D.C. It was a publicity stunt, designed to bring the public's attention back to the space shuttle and the International Space Station in a positive way.' That she personally agreed with her team-that they had far better uses for their very limited time in space-didn't matter. Her hands were tied. She had no choice. 'We have to do this. The president promised we would.'

'Commander, surely he could-'

She shook her head at Jimmy, hating that she couldn't find her cool, purposeful calm with Mike sitting there watching her. This should be easy, persuading her team to do whatever she wanted them to do. She shouldn't feel their bitter disappointment in her inability to change the unchangeable. 'The president personally asked NASA for this favor, and we agreed.'

'Yes, but when we agreed,' Stephen pointed out, clearly annoyed, 'it was before we knew about the additional time problems we were going to face, both in transport and on the station.'

As the payload specialist, he had viable concerns regarding the time constraints. Corrine knew this, which didn't make her tough stance any easier. The International Space Station, or ISS, had had its share of problems, the current and biggest being the defective solar panels already in place. Since astronauts were housed on the ISS on a permanent basis, repairing the problem was crucial.

No one wanted to spend critical hours every day of their ten-day flight baby-sitting the students' projects, which included exposing seeds, hair, bread, hamburger and even bubble gum to the weightless environment of space to see if they were affected by the change in pressure, altitude or anything else.

'We still hadn't figured out how to add the required replacement parts to our payload without crushing the original load,' Jimmy said. 'Much less allow time for the repairs Stephen has to perform.' He lifted a troubled gaze to both Corrine and Mike, who as commander and pilot, together would run the ship. 'We're running out of time.'

'Not to mention, maneuvering into the tight area of the ISS is going to take a miracle,' Frank added. 'Are you prepared for that? Prepared to tell the other countries in this mess with us that we couldn't figure it all out because we were too busy handling amateur science experiments?'

'You don't understand the pressure NASA is under to have the public on side in this huge tax expense,' Corrine said evenly. 'The microgravity of space has become an important tool for developing new and sophisticated materials.' She purposely didn't look at Mike, so she could let her famed iciness fill her voice. She was in charge here and had the final say, whether they liked it or not. 'And the public is losing interest.'

'Good,' Stephen said, and both Jimmy and Frank laughed.

'Not good,' Corrine corrected. 'We need a total of forty-three flights to build the ISS. That's quite a bit of taxpayer money.'

'We're already committed as a nation,' Stephen said. 'It's too late for them to decide they don't want in. I'm with Frank and Jimmy. Dump the experiments.'

'Stephen,' Mike said softly. 'This isn't a democracy.'

Corrine took a deep breath but didn't look at Mike. He was siding with her, apparently. Because he agreed, or because she'd slept with him? She hated that she questioned it. 'We're not ditching the experiments.'

Stephen's jaw tightened.

Jimmy looked irritated, too, but asked calmly, 'Can we agree to shelve them if we have a problem up there?'

'We'll make that decision when and if the time comes,' Corrine said.

''Well, let's work on the timetable then,' Stephen said, still grumbling. In a low mutter he added, 'And make sure nothing conflicts, especially a PMS schedule. Geez.'

The rest of the men appeared to fight for control of their facial expressions, and lost. Jimmy and Frank grinned.

Mike wisely looked down at his clamped hands.

But Corrine was infuriated, anyway. Why was it if a woman had a strong opinion, or needed to get her group