Her Perfect Stranger

7

The next day was spent in one meeting after another again, and by the end of it, Corrine was mentally drained.

It wasn't the work; she loved that. It was Mike.

She couldn't forget how he'd looked when he told her he thought she was ashamed of what they'd done.

She'd let him believe it, and in doing so, had hurt him.

See? This was what happened when one acted irresponsibly. And having sex with a stranger in his hotel room definitely constituted an irresponsible act.

But it was the oddest thing… she couldn't truly bring herself to regret what they'd done. Not one moment of it. She sure as hell wasn't ashamed, either. Which meant, for honesty's sake, she had to set the record straight. Then and only then could she get on with life and put her full concentration into this mission.

It took a while until she was free of the bureaucracy and red tape she had to dance through all day in her meetings with NASA officials, scientists from no less than five other countries, and a representative for the students' experiments, but finally she went in search of Mike. Her intention was to straighten this out, which in no way explained why her body was humming at just the thought of seeing him again. Nope, she attributed that to hunger.

She couldn't find him. She couldn't find any of her team. As a last resort, she hunted down Ed, one of the administrative assistants.

"They're out to dinner," he said.

"They?"

"Your team."

Was that pity in his eyes? It was hard to tell, as he vanished as soon as he'd answered, reminding her that most of the assistants lived in terror of her.

For no real reason, she told herself. Yes, she was usually in a hurry. And maybe sometimes she could be…well, abrupt. It wasn't anything personal, though.

But her team going off without her, now that, she was pretty certain, was personal.

No biggie. She didn't want to eat with them, anyway.

Much. Besides, she had work to do.

She stayed late to prove it, but she knew damn well a small part of her was wondering if any of them would come back after dinner to see how she was doing.

Ah, geez. Pathetic. She hated that she'd been reduced to thinking such nonsense.

Get over it and move on.

That night she lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The mission was far from her mind, which was otherwise occupied by a tall, leanly muscled, beautiful man who, when he smiled could talk her into jumping off a cliff.

Maybe he'd be waiting to pounce on her in the hallway, she thought at midnight, leaping to her feet, her heart racing in anticipation. But as she made her way to the bathroom, as slowly and loudly as she dared, no one grabbed her. Not then, and not when she came out.

She was alone, truly alone, just as she'd always wanted to be.

Before he knew it, their week at Marshall Space Flight Center was over. Mike and the rest of the team were leaving for Houston and the Johnson Space Center, where they would remain in training until mission launch at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

There was much left to be done. At Johnson Space Center, each of them would be run through their paces. Over and over again. Loading. Unloading. Constructing. Repairing. Reconstructing. Takeoff. Landing. Going through each possible scenario, and just when they thought they were close to done, they'd be ordered to do it again.

NASA took it all very seriously. Having had painful, painful failures in the past, mistakes that had cost billions, not to mention the taxpayers faith, they didn't care to repeat any of those mistakes.

Mike understood this all too well, and still he loved his job. He loved everything except the fact he was working for a woman he wanted to kiss stupid, and he couldn't quite get that out of his head.

He planned to travel to Houston the way he'd traveled to Huntsville, piloting himself in his honey of a plane, which he'd rebuilt himself.

Frank had also flown himself into Marshall, so he flew himself out. But Stephen and Jimmy jumped at Mike's offer to come along with him.

And to his shock, so did Corrine.

She appeared on the tarmac, her bag on her shoulder. "You have room for one more?"

"Absolutely." At the sudden, awkward silence, Mike glanced at Stephen and Jimmy, both of whom shrugged noncommittally. Their faces had been wiped clear of the laughter they'd just been sharing over some obscene joke, but even they were professional enough not to quibble if their commander wanted to horn in on their ride.

With Stephen and Jimmy preoccupied admiring Mike's work on the Lear, Corrine moved close. "I wanted to talk to you."

"You've said that before." Mike lifted a brow. "And haven't really meant it."

Shifting from one foot to the other, she let out a half laugh, and he realized with some shock that she was nervous. Corrine never looked nervous, and his curiosity twitched. She seemed so put together in her business suit, revealing none of her lush curves and warm softness. He remembered both so well that her armor didn't matter, and his curiosity wasn't the only thing that twitched.

Damn her anyway, for standing there killing him, for being so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. 'Talk away then," he said with far more lightness than he felt.

"Okay, good. Thanks." She set down her bag. "You've been avoiding me."

Yes, he had. Self-preservation. But damned if he was going to tell her that. Mike Wright avoided no one. "How is that possible? We've been working side by side for over a week now."

A breeze blew over them, but Corrine had her hair tightly back and beaten into submission. Not a strand moved, not as it had that night they'd been together, when her mane of hair had flowed over his hot flesh, teasing him with its silky scent.

"Yes, we worked together," she agreed. "But we haven't…"

It was wrong to pretend he had no idea what she was trying to say-wrong, but ever so satisfying. "Yes?" he coaxed. "We haven't…?"

She let out a huff of breath. "You know. Talked. Or…"

Even more satisfying was her blush. "Are you referring to our hot, wet, long kisses? Or the hot, wet fun we had in my hotel room?"

Her eyes darkened. Her mouth turned grim.

"It was a mistake to bring this up. I'm sorry." She went to step past him and into the plane, but he stopped her.

"It was wrong," he said in a harsh whisper. "Because you don't really want to talk about it. You want to forget it ever happened. You're ashamed-"

"No." She put a hand to his chest, deflating his sudden anger with just one touch. "I'm not ashamed. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'm sorry I let you think it."

For a moment, she actually let him see inside her, past the aloofness and into the woman he'd held so closely that night. It gave him a funny ache in his chest. "Why do you do that?" he whispered, unable to help himself from stroking her arm. "Why do you let them think of you as the Ice Queen? I know you're not."

Her eyes widened; her mouth opened, then carefully shut. "What?"

His stomach fell. "Nothing." God, she didn't know what they called her. "Nothing at all."

"What?" she finally said again, very, very softly. "What did you say they call me?"

His fault, that devastating, stricken look in her eyes, and though she managed to hide it with amazing speed and grace, he couldn't have felt worse. "Corrine-"

"Never mind." She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin high. "No need for me to be insulted when it's the truth."

"Wait…"

"No, let's not. We have a meeting this afternoon and need to hustle."

"Yes, but-"

"You going to fly this baby or what?" she snapped, stepping aboard. She nodded curtly to the others, without an outward sign that she'd just been brought to her knees.

"Final inspection complete?" she asked Mike when he slid into the pilot's seat.

"Done. Corrine-"

"Don't." Sitting there next to him in the cockpit, as if she belonged there, she proceeded to grab his clipboard and start the preflight check.

He grabbed it back. "I've got it."

She picked up his headphones and would have put them on, but in his plane, he was in charge. He took those from her as well.

"Route?" She ran her hands over the controls.

"I know how to get us there." He brushed her fingers away from the instrument panel

She shot him a look of annoyance. "Then do it."

He ignored the tone of that remark, because he understood she was hurt. But with her obnoxious, controlling attitude, he was damn close to forgetting how lush and warm and giving she could be.

He didn't like it.

In fact, he downright hated that aloofness, and decided to destroy it. He waited until they were in the air and Corrine was fully relaxed, lost in her own little world. Perfect. She was reading an aviation magazine, deeply engrossed, when he reached over and put his hand on her thigh.

She nearly leaped out of her skin.

Oh yeah, he thought, wisely keeping his grin to himself, his good humor restored. He'd gone at this thing all wrong. Letting her build up her defenses wasn't the answer; driving her crazy was, and apparently he could do that with just a touch.

"Could you hand me a tissue?" he asked, gesturing toward the small box next to her right hip. Before he removed his hand from her thigh, he stroked her, just once.

She fumbled and dropped the tissue, then jerked when she finally handed it to him and their fingers touched.

He smiled, and her gaze went to his mouth.

Bingo, he thought, pleased with himself. Very pleased. For the rest of the flight he touched her whenever possible, when no one else would see. He even managed to suck on her earlobe for one delicious second.

She nearly leaped out of her skin then, too, but she didn't say a word. Just glared at him while the flush on her cheeks and her shallow breathing gave her away.

He expected great satisfaction to course through him, as he'd indeed shattered her aloofness, but since she was clearly furious at him for doing so, it was somehow a hollow victory.

In Houston, things were different. Everyone on the team but Mike lived there, so they had their own home to go to every night. NASA had booked a hotel suite for Mike, so there were no more clandestine, late-night bathroom "meetings" in the barracks.

Corrine missed them.

A week into their training at Johnson Space Center, she knew she had a problem. It wasn't the team; they were working well together. More than well, mostly because now that she knew they thought of her as the Ice Queen, she used it to her advantage. She wasn't there to make friends, she told herself, but to lead a team.

Once again, the problem was Mike.

He was driving her crazy. Yes, he'd kept their secret; he hadn't told a soul about their wild night of passion. But he was no longer ignoring her. Well, that wasn't true. To anyone else, anyone who didn't know of their past, Mike and Corrine were working together. Period. They'd see nothing but a professional link as the two of them continued trying to make their mission a success.

Their chemical attraction remained secret because somehow Mike managed to keep his expression perfectly even, his every thought hidden behind his cool, assessing eyes. And still he strove to drive her insane with hidden touches. Often. All the time, as a matter of fact. Just a finger over her skin. A whisper of a wicked smile. A brush of his thigh to the back of hers. A million different things, each designed to drive her right out of her living mind with lust.

She couldn't take it anymore. You didn't have to be a genius to know he was trying to make a point, but she was already hot and aroused every single second of every single day, so she couldn't figure out what that point was supposed to be.

After one particularly long, hot, frustrating day, after spending hours and hours attempting to coax one of the robotic arms to do as it was told, Corrine snapped. She and Mike had been side by side for hours at a time. All that time she'd been breathing his scent, feeling his own frustration mount.

He was currently on his stomach, stretched out on the platform, toying with the apparatus they were trying to operate, trying being the operative word. Jimmy and Frank were below him; Stephen was in the control room watching the computer images. All of them were deep in concentration. Only Mike drew her gaze.

His dark hair was ruffled, from fingers plowing through it, no doubt. His sleeves had been shoved up long ago, revealing tough, sinewy forearms, tense with strain. Every muscle in his sleek back was delineated and outlined by his damp shirt. That back alone stole her breath, then she allowed her eyes to drop lower.

It shocked her how easily he pulled her out of work mode. This had to stop or she was simply going to go up in smoke.

At the end of the day, she calmly-or so she told herself-followed him out into the hall. "I can't do this," she said to his retreating back, making him stop. "I'm so on edge I can't stand myself, Mike. We have to…"

She steeled herself to look cool and composed, but he whipped around and grabbed her hand, opened another door, to a storage closet, then pulled her into the dark space.

"Mike-"

His name was pretty much all she got out before he hauled her up against him and kissed her, hard. It took her exactly one instant to wrap herself around him like a second skin and kiss him back, just as hard.

Something happened in that desperate moment. It became so much more than a kiss, and far more necessary than breathing. Closing her eyes to the dark around them, to the fact that this was really, really stupid, Corrine concentrated only on Mike, on his rough groan as he felt her with his hands, at the taste of him, at the contact of his big, hard body against hers. After a long heated moment, during which their hands fought with clothing to get as close as possible, she came up for air. "Mike."

He pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing ragged. "I know." He thrust his hips to hers, his frustration evident in the size of his erection.

"Mike…"

"Please, Corrine, don't turn back into the commander. Not yet. You just sounded so…turned on. I had to touch you."

Touch her he had. Her body was still thrumming with a burning desire, on the very edge, but she pulled back. He sighed and dropped his hands.

"You go first," he said, sounding strapped for air. "I'll stagger out when I can walk. It should only take about an hour."

She smoothed her clothing, imagining how she must look, all rosy and swollen-lipped. "We have to stop. You have to stop."

"Stop what, exactly?"

"Stop…touching me. You know, brushing up against me by accident."

"We happen to work within very close confines."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be that close. And stop looking at me," she added, ignoring his startled laugh. "I mean it. You look at me and I can't think, Mike."

"Stop touching you, stop looking at you. Is it okay if I still breathe?"

Now she'd hurt his feelings again. "I'm sorry."

"Just go, Corrine."

With as much dignity as she could, she went, horrified by her yearning to dive back into the closet and attack him like a hormonal teenager. And horrified that anyone, anyone at all, could have innocently opened the storage closet and found them, locked in their ridiculous, uncontrollable passion.