Space in His Heart (15 page)

“I’d like to
have a word with you,” Jessica whispered when she found Liza in the
crowded control booth, watching the show on sixteen different
monitors and whispering hushed directions to the camera crew
through her headset.

She glanced at
Jessica. “I know, I know. Caro likes to play tough, but he was
fine.”

Jessica knew
she had to tread carefully, but the anger simmered just under the
surface. “Why didn’t you warn us? We had every right to be more
prepared for that.”

The producer
put her hand over her mouthpiece and frowned at Jessica. “Look, the
leak came out of contacts in Russia, not NASA. Anyway, we spoke
with someone from your agency yesterday for confirmation or
denial.”

A chill swept
over her. “Who did you speak with?”

“Some woman in
Boston who works with you.”

Jess stepped
aside as Liza brushed by her to get to the set. “Why would you call
Boston on this interview? Why not the Cape? Why not NASA PR?”

“One of the
other producers heard NASA was now your project. He called your
office and was put through to whoever’s taken your place in Boston.
They were supposed to get in touch with you and tell you. I gotta
go.”

Jessica
squeezed her eyes shut. She had no more fight with the
producer.

* * *

With his face
cleansed of the sticky makeup they had put on him, Deke continued
to rub his cheeks and chin with a rough hand towel provided for
guests in the dressing area. The room was empty, but he wouldn’t
have cared if the President of the United States stood next to him.
He whipped the damp towel into the porcelain basin and stared at
his reflection. “What the goddamn hell is going on? Why didn’t she
know what I was getting into?”

He took a
deep breath and continued to stare but didn’t see his reflection.
His logical brain was trying to figure out the events, to
understand where a leak could have come from and, much more
troubling, determine how close these people were to the truth. How
sick was Petrenko? What if they didn’t get up there in time? Could
they be sure
Endeavour
could
fly safely?

There’d
be hell to pay everywhere for this. Starting with that
know-it-all
-
‘it’s going
to be just like Leno’ Jessica Marlowe. She probably let him go on
just to bask in the glory of getting her client on the
Today
s
how. No doubt that was the big
time in her business.

No,
no. S
he was
too smart for a stunt like that and she had to know that the
fallout from this could be fatal to the program. No doubt the
phones on Capitol Hill were lit up with angry constituents who
would like to kill NASA’s budget and start a Save the Cosmonaut
campaign.

He flung his
jacket over his shoulder and went to find her and figure out what
she planned for damage control.

Deke looked
around the studio for the tall, lithe figure with shiny hair he’d
spent so much time admiring when she wasn’t watching. There was no
sign of her. She must have slithered out in shame. It wasn’t her
style, but a quick tour through the open areas of Studio 3B made
him begin to doubt that he knew her at all.

Deke left the
studio and immediately saw the crowds gathered outside. Pausing to
watch them, it occurred to him that he could still save this. He
could do the damage control they’d desperately need. But why should
he? It wasn’t his job to make Americans love and trust NASA.

Aw, hell.

He walked right
up to the crowd as they pressed against the roped-off areas
reserved for the brief visits from the hosts and special guests.
Someone called out his name and he waved in response and witnessed
the mob reaction as a buzz of excitement vibrated through the
group. The crowd grew around him, everyone shaking his hand and
asking for an autograph.

“
Way to
go, Deke. You gave ’em hell, Commander!”
o
ne man exclaimed gruffly and patted him on the
back.

“You were
fantastic, Deke!” yelled another. He thanked them and signed some
autographs, including a quick scribble on one of the “DEKE” signs,
whose owner rewarded him with an embarrassed smile. A moment later,
the jovial, warm weatherman approached Deke, microphone in hand and
cameraman in tow.

“Good morning,
Commander. I’m Mark Dobson.” His eyes twinkled as he shook Deke’s
hand. “Nice of you to come out here. I’m about to go to the
weather. Can I get you in this shot for one more comment? I promise
I’ll be cool.”

Deke returned
his handshake and agreed to one more minute on camera, wondering if
he’d lost his mind.

Crouched below
the minicam in front of them, a studio crewmember gave the
ten-second signal to Mark, then counted down before pointing to the
weatherman to indicate he was live.

“What a crowd
we have braving the icy cold New York air today!” The cheers of the
visitors cut him off. “We are just at the edge of a fairly major
storm here in New York and we should see some of the white stuff
soon. But folks, who cares? We’ve got America’s favorite astronaut,
Deke Stockard, out here with us!” Again the crowd reached a slight
frenzy.

“These folks
love you, Deke!”

He gave his
best “I can’t imagine why” smile when he really wanted to ask why
the hell anyone would want to be a celebrity. “No, Mark. They love
the space program that I’m a part of, not me.”

“
Are you
kidding?” Mark rolled his eyes for the camera. “
I
love you, man!” More cheering. Mark gushed for a
few minutes about the heroes of space and how half the
breakthroughs in meteorology were a result of NASA inventions and
satellite technology. Deke shook some more hands and kissed the
windburned, cherry cheek of a baby boy whose mommy thought he would
grow up to be an astronaut, too. The camera rolled.

When the
excitement died down and it seemed safe to slip away, Deke backed
off from the crowd, then looked beyond it. He touched his chin as
his eyes scoped the entire area with the skill of a fighter pilot
doing a visual check of the skies and accepted that Jessica was
gone.

He turned back
toward the skating area to catch a cab on Sixth Avenue. Then he
spotted her. She was sitting on a bench across the rink, a white
coat wrapped around her against the cold, black boots tapping while
her fingers furiously punched numbers on her cell phone. All
determination and fury. He watched her hold the phone to her ear
and talk, then took the circuitous route around the rink and ended
up standing beside her without her ever seeing him coming.

She
gasped. “You scared me!” Her eyes were huge, the deep color
of
ink
flecked
with
gold dust
, the
thick lashes wet with something he’d never seen on her before.
Tears.

Her body
shivered in reaction to the icy temperatures, or maybe in response
to him. The urge to kiss her hit him so hard, it stunned him.

“Would you like
to go inside and get warm?”

Her mouth
dropped open in surprise. Clearly, she expected anything but
kindness.

* * *

Jessica
had braced herself for
Deke’s
icy attack, prepared for it to sting worse than the frigid
air. When she couldn’t find him in the studio, she was certain he’d
left without her, too disgusted to even bother with a
confrontation. But here he stood, with a look so unbelievably
tender that the hard and painful lump building in her throat nearly
exploded, threatening to ruin her remaining shreds of
composure.

It would have
been easy to start on the offensive, but she knew the blame for his
ambush lay squarely on her shoulders. “I’m really sorry.”

“So you sneak
off like a thief, too ashamed to face me?”

“I didn’t sneak
off.” The lump lodged in her throat. “I went to talk to the
producer and then couldn’t find you.” She toyed with the cell phone
and looked back at him. “When were you going to tell me about the
sick cosmonaut?”

“If you had
done your homework on this interview, you would have found out they
had that story. Then we could have avoided this altogether.”

True enough,
she thought. “But if I had known something like this was going on,
I might not have pursued the interview.”

“
And give
up a chance to shine? Not Miss ‘
I’m going to succeed at any
cost
.’ Never. You’d hang
me from a billboard in Times Square if you thought it would help
your cause.”

The criticism
stabbed at her already guilt-laden heart. “I screwed up, Deke.”

He sat on the
bench next to her. “Don’t they usually warn you about these rumors?
I thought you had such a great relationship with all these media
types?”

How could she
possibly tell him the truth? He would never understand such petty
rivalries with so much at stake.

“
Someone
in the agency knew, but
didn’t get the message
to me.”

“I find that
hard to believe since I’ve never seen you when you aren’t wired to
a cell phone and a PDA.”

She reached
into her bag and slipped on a pair of black leather gloves over her
numb hands. “The account team in Washington is meeting with NASA
right now. We’re going to issue a joint statement with Russia.
It’ll die down soon.”

“It won’t.” He
turned away from her and watched the skaters. “I’m not happy that
you put me in that situation, but I guess we shouldn’t have kept
the facts from you.”

Damn right. She
swallowed the retort. “Tell me the whole story now. Please.”

He turned
back to her. “Micah Petrenko developed deep vein thrombosis shortly
after he arrived at the space station.” At her questioning look, he
nodded. “That’s a blood clot. Right now, it’s not serious, but it
could be. By mid-February, the supply of anticoagulant medicine on
the space station will run out.
The do
ctors feel it’s critical to get him out of zero
gravity by then.”

“
So, is
he coming home on
Endeavour
?”

Deke shrugged.
“If we can get to him in time.”

“What could
happen if you don’t?”

“He could have
a stroke or heart attack. A fatal embolism is the most common and
serious complication.”

“It just
confirms what all the critics say about the cost in human and
dollar terms of manned space travel,” she added.

“You’re
catching on, Jess.” He patted her hands with a bittersweet smile.
“Now you see why I hate all this time away from inspections and
launch prep. A life literally depends on getting up there on
time.”

Her cell
phone jangled, startling her. When she heard Tony Palermo’s
secretary’s familiar voice, she couldn’t fight the urge to pour her
story out. “Mimi, don’t tell me, Tony’s on the line to rap my
knuckles. Tell him to cool it. I have plenty to tell
him.”

Although Deke
stepped away to give her privacy, she knew he could hear her end of
the conversation. Trying to concentrate on what Mimi was saying and
block out the Christmas music guiding the rhythm of the skaters,
she put a finger to one ear and looked down self-consciously.

“Well, he can’t
talk to you now,” Mimi informed her.

“
Didn’t
he see the
Today
s
how?”

“Oh, yes. He
saw it.” Mimi’s thick New York accent dripped with disdain and
Jessica’s heart sank a little.

“Why can’t he
talk to me?” The black ball of disappointment numbed her limbs even
more than the cold.

“
His
schedule just booked up completely with some client problems.
Including the NASA issue.”

“Then he must
want me to help with damage control.”

“He’s working
with Bill Dugan.”

She was
worse than in the doghouse. She was dead.
Emerging Technologies, here I
come.

Deke walked
back to the bench when she hung up, studying her face. “I take it
this is not your greatest moment at Ross & Clayton.”

Once again, his
gentle tone got to her. Far worse than his attacks. Surprising her,
the burn of tears started swimming in her eyes and suddenly spilled
over. She tried to swipe them with her gloves and laughed at her
clumsy effort to hide the obvious. “My whole career is about to
crumble. And it’s not even my own doing.”

He sat down
close to her and handed her a white handkerchief with the U.S. Navy
insignia on the corner. “What drives you so hard, Jessica?”

The combination
of tenderness and intensity nearly unraveled her. She dabbed at her
eyes and avoided his gaze. “The same thing that drives you, Deke.
Motivation to succeed. Really, what else is there?”

He stared at
her for a moment, and she couldn’t help looking back into his navy
blue eyes. “I don’t want to succeed for the sake of succeeding,” he
told her. “I have a job to do and I want to do it well. You seem so
focused on the reward and not on the process.”

She tried to
laugh a little. “You’re such an engineer.”

“Guilty.” He
nodded. “And maybe that makes me too analytical. But, I don’t think
I’ve ever met a woman like you. Even the female astronauts and
pilots I know… they all want something more.” He paused and
searched her face. “At the risk of sounding horrifically
old-fashioned, don’t you want to get married, have babies, you
know, follow the ticking of the infamous biological clock?”

She folded the
white cotton square on her lap. “I love my work. I don’t want to
give it up.”

“
Why
should you give it up? Lots of women do both. My mom did. She had
two jobs—a science teacher and a newspaper columnist. Three if you
count raising Melissa and me.” He laid his arm on the bench behind
her and she thought of how much she wanted him to wrap
his
arm around her and just…
comfort.