Her Perfect Stranger

Which didn't explain why after his shower he stood staring down at the rumpled bed, yearning and burning for something just out of his reach.

He dressed and ate as if it was just any other morning, and everything was normal. Same old, same old.

But it wasn't. He wasn't.

He knew he had last night to thank for that. He'd known from the moment she'd set foot in that bar, soaking wet, head high and eyes bright, that she was going to shake things up.

She'd done that and more; she'd shaken him to the core. He tried not to think about that, and also about what he could have felt for her, under different circumstances.

How could that happen, he wondered, after only a little conversation and some good sex?

Okay, great sex.

Regardless, it wasn't like him to be mooning on the morning after. He'd always been the one running. But she'd left him, without a word or note, and he would have sworn that's exactly what he wanted.

So why was he entertaining other thoughts, about things like relationships and family and white picket fences? He had missions to fly and hopefully someday command. A wife and kids sounded nice, but for far, far, far down the road. Not now.

At 0900 hours on the dot, he entered the Marshall Flight Center. He expected to leap right into work, expected to be whisked into the whole rush of it immediately.

He didn't expect a conference room filled with smiling people and good food-usually an oxymoron when it came to government-provided meals.

Though he'd spent very little time in the United States since his Air Force days, many of the people milling around were familiar to him. The space industry was like that-very incestuous. Even during the Cold War, when politicians from one country wouldn't speak to, or even recognize, politicians from another, science had managed to remain universal. As countries, Russia and the United States might have ignored each other for years, but their scientists hadn't. They'd been sharing the designing and planning of expeditions and experiments since the very beginning, and nothing had changed since.

Few people on the outside realized how closely Russia, Japan, the United States and many other countries were working together to build the International Space Station, and even now, just thinking about it made Mike's chest swell with pride at being a part of it.

'Welcome, Mike!'

He found his hand being energetically pumped by Tom Banks, an old astronaut training buddy who now worked in ground control. Mike was surprised to see Tom had lost some hair and gained some weight since those training days.

'I heard the good news!' Tom was grinning. 'You're back in the States, filling in for Patrick.' His smile faded. 'Poor guy. Can't believe he biffed it so badly parachuting. Sporting three pins in his leg, did you hear?'

'Ouch.' Mike wondered exactly how selfish it was of him to be grateful for the miracle of that mishap, and also the fact that the backup pilot had contracted hepatitis.

Probably pretty damn selfish.

But he'd been training for exactly this opportunity for years. He'd been in space twice before and couldn't wait to get back up there. So far, all he knew was that the mission would carry and install the third of eight sets of solar arrays that, at the completion of construction in 2006, would comprise the space station's electrical power system, converting sunlight to usable energy. It was a project he was intimately familiar with, as he'd been working on it in Russia for years. 'How is it all going?'

'It's going,' Tom said, nodding. 'They're thrilled to have you, as your reputation precedes you.'

That, Mike knew, could be good or bad.

'Hey, heard about last year,' Tom said. 'How you limped back after the payload fire midflight.'

Limped. Kind word for nearly losing it, as in crashing back to earth, becoming fish food, biting the big one. Thanks to some quick thinking on Mike's part-and he was convinced anyone on that team could have done the same, he'd just gotten there first-he'd managed to contain the fire and put it out before it destroyed them beyond repair. 'I don't care to repeat that experience,' he said in grand understatement.

'You were a lucky bastard, that's for certain. All of you.'

'Have you met your team?' Tom turned to the two men who'd just come up to them. 'Mike Wright, meet Jimmy Westmoreland, Mission Specialist-One. And Frank Smothers, Mission Specialist-Two.'

As it turned out, Mike had met both men before. They'd come to Russia several years back to study some of the communications equipment for the space station in its planning stages, so it was more of a reunion than anything else. A few moments later he was introduced to Stephen Philips, the fifth member of the team and their payload specialist.

'You've met everyone now,' Tom said. 'Not bad for your first ten minutes here.'

'I haven't met the commander.' Oddly enough, Mike felt his first flash of…not apprehension; that was far too strong a word for a man who felt so utterly comfortable in his world. But just as the space industry was notorious for its small population of overeducated overachievers, it was also notorious for its big egos, and no one, absolutely no one, made it to commander status without a significant sense of self-importance.

Added to that was yet another problem.

This commander was a woman.

Everyone knew Mike loved women. He cherished them, dreamed about them, wanted them, enjoyed them.

Take last night, for example.

But working for a woman? As in, directly beneath one?

He didn't want to think of himself as biased or sexist, but honest to God, he couldn't imagine why a woman would want to be commander of the space shuttle, he just couldn't. It took strength, a tough-as-nails demeanor and, well, balls.

'Corrine Atkinson?' Stephen craned his neck, as did Tom and the others. Unlike Tom, Frank, Jimmy and Stephen were of average height or taller, and leanly muscular. They wore the short, short buzz cut that screamed military, and all of them had the look of tough, rigidly controlled, well-trained athletes.

Unfortunately, astronauts on the whole were not nearly as serious-minded as their reputation might lead the general public to believe. In fact, for the most part they were great pranksters and troublemakers, not one of these guys being an exception.

'The commander is here somewhere,' Stephen assured Mike. 'She just came in from Houston.'

'She flew in to meet you, in fact,' Frank said, far too innocently. He ruined it by grinning. 'Don't worry. We told her all about you.'

Jimmy joined in with his own evil grin. 'Yeah. We started with that time we came to Russia and you brought us to that party, remember?'

God help him, he did.

'And those women jumped out of a cake,' Jimmy added, though Mike already knew the rest.

'They were some great lookers,' Frank said. 'But then we found out they were prostitutes. You tried to send them home, Mike, remember? They didn't have a ride, so we offered to give them one-'

Mike groaned at the recounting of the bachelor party for one of his comrades. 'Tell me you didn't tell her this.'

'Oh, yes. We did. She especially liked the next part.' Frank grinned. 'You remember…the naked part.'

'Okay, that was not my fault.' Mike rubbed his temples. 'And when they pulled their guns to rob us, we didn't get hurt. Did you tell her that, I hope?'

'We were safe only because they had a crush on you,' Jimmy pointed out. 'They still took our wallets and cash.'

'And our clothes,' Frank added. 'Don't forget they took our clothes and then our keys, and left us by the side of the road.'

'It started to rain,' Jimmy recalled with a shiver. 'Hard.'

'Yeah.' Frank smiled in fond remembrance. 'Good thing it wasn't winter.'

'The commander,' Mike said weakly. 'She found that story particularly fascinating, I suppose.'

'Oh, yeah.'