The Best Of Blaze - Six Sexy Romances

They left about thirty minutes after Jason arrived. He was quiet as they drove toward downtown rather than to his quarters on base.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“A hotel. Is that okay? I’ve had enough of NASA for today. And I thought it might be nice to do something we don’t get to do often. Go someplace and be pampered. Sleep in a king-size bed with you and forget the world exists.”

That appealed to her. More than he could know. He hadn’t spent all day as she had—realizing they were truly from two different worlds. Even building a training facility on the Bar T Ranch wasn’t going to provide them with a ton of common ground. It would be good to avoid all the reminders of their differences, at least for a little while. But she knew there must be something else driving Jason to this decision.

“Okay. That sounds nice,” she said, putting her hand on his thigh.

He covered her hand with his, lacing their fingers together until they pulled up in front of one of the big-name hotels in the downtown area. He gave his keys to the valet and checked them into a large luxury suite.

It was a three-room suite, the kind she’d read about in travel magazines and had seen on television shows, but had never been in one herself.

Jason started kissing her as soon as the door to the suite closed behind them. He had her clothes off and her on the bed in record time. He brought her to climax again and again, but held himself back until finally—when she felt as if she wouldn’t be able to come again—he entered her, thrusting hard, driving her higher.

She came with him and then collapsed against him. He lifted her up and carried her into the shower, holding her in his arms as the warm water poured over them. Mentally and physically exhausted, she rested her head against his chest.

He held her to him and she realized he hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the room.

“What did the doctor say?” she asked when they were both dried off and in bed.

But he didn’t answer her. and when she lifted her head and stared down at his face, his eyes were closed.

But she knew he wasn’t sleeping.

It must have been bad news for him. Was that why he was clinging to her so closely?

15

WHEN THEY GOT back to the Bar T the next evening, they learned they’d won the bid for the Cronus training facility.

Lynn flew into Houston two days later and joined them at the ranch soon after. Construction needed to start immediately, and Molly was hopeful this would snap Jason out of the funk he’d been in since they’d returned. It seemed like he’d shut himself off from her. He hadn’t said what the doctor’s prognosis was, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it hadn’t been good.

Lynn was fun and very used to being in charge. She arrived on the ranch with her assistant and spent three days at the location where the facility would be built. Jason was with her every moment, and when they came back for dinner on the first night, Molly was pleased to learn they, NASA and Axiom, wanted to name it the Mick Tanner Cronus Training Facility. She was really touched they’d named it after her dad.

So why wasn’t she sleeping now? She was walking that long dark hallway again, but this time there was no Jason out here to join her. She realized that was what she was waiting for. When had she become so cowardly? She should just go and knock on his door...but she was unsure he would want to see her. She had the feeling he was fine with being alone, but she wasn’t.

She didn’t embark on affairs lightly, and this was the most intense one she’d allowed herself to have in a really long time. She just felt...well, very adult now. Her parents were both gone. She had no close relatives. She was alone in the world except for her extended ranch family. It had taken her a little while to get used to that feeling.

She walked to Jason’s room and stood there staring at the door.

The answers to her questions were on the other side. All she had to do was raise her hand and knock. She could do that.

Hell, she would do that.

She was a Tanner. They never backed down. Maybe she should get that tattooed on her body to remind herself.

Molly rapped on his door and waited. Heard the bedsprings creak and then the heavy sound of Jason’s footsteps before the door opened a crack. He looked through, saw her and opened the door wider. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and had zipped but not buttoned them. The fatigue written in every line of his face made her heart ache.

“Can I come in?” she asked, but she’d stepped forward as she’d posed the question, and he moved back to allow her in.

He closed the door and leaned back against it. A small night-light illuminated the room and she thought about how most of the conversations they’d had so far—the heavy ones—had taken place in the near dark.

“What do you want?” he asked. There was no belligerence in his tone at all, just weariness.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Jason, enough of this. Based on your reaction from the moment you came back from the doctor’s office in Houston, I can only guess that the medical exam didn’t go as you’d hoped.

“So?”

“So. Your life isn’t over. You talked me into this Cronus program and I need you to be present and help me with it. I know you’ve been inspecting the site with Lynn for the last three days, but I’m your partner, too. And I’m out of my depth here.”

He rubbed the tattoo on his side. To boldly go.

“If this is something you can’t do—train others to go on missions when you’re grounded—then say so now. There are decisions that have to be made if you’ve changed your mind about being involved in this.”

“I’m not going to change my mind, Molly. I’m a man of my word.”

She took a deep breath.

“At this moment you don’t seem like the Jason I know. You seem like you’re defeated. If you need to take some time, then do it,” she said. “Maybe it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I don’t know what else to say.”

He pushed away from the door and stalked over to her like a predator coming after his prey. She mentally shook herself. She’d come in here and poked at him until he’d reacted. She wasn’t sure if she was prepared to handle whatever he dished out.

“I needed to hear that. I am dealing with the fact that there is little I can do to improve my bone density. I’m also a bit freaked out that after spending the last few years training to be the first commander of the Cronus missions, I might not be in that position.”

She sat down on his bed and looked up at him. “I get it. I really do. I was completely thrown when Dad died. I figured that my life would take one path and all of a sudden I was faced with something I hadn’t anticipated. Sure, I knew Dad would die one day, but I thought... I never imagined it would happen so soon. I never pictured the ranch without him.”

“Dammit, Molly, you make me feel like an asshole,” he said, sinking down next to the bed, resting his head on the mattress. “I am feeling sorry for myself.”

“I know. I did the same thing. The situations are as different as they could be, but our reactions—the heartbreak we feel at not having life go the way we want it—that’s the same.”

He leaned over, putting his head on her knee and hugged her leg to him. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been handling this very well at all.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I can give you more time to adjust, but I just need to know that you are going to be back here with me soon. I need your guidance when it comes to all this space stuff.”

* * *

JASON HAD BEEN brooding since Dr. Tomlin had given him her rather vague but still grounding prognosis. He hated it. And he had been acting like a brat. But it was hard to mourn the probable death of your dreams. Maybe he should have stayed in Houston and talked to people like Dennis, who’d made the move from active astronaut to program manager successfully.

But he hadn’t been able to because of everything he’d put in motion with the facility. He was stoked that the training center was going ahead. Who wouldn’t be? The opportunities that would come from it were numerous. And while he’d been thinking all along about how generous he was, saving the day for Molly, maybe he should have been thinking more about what it meant for him.

She was right. She couldn’t do this on her own and he was pretty sure Mick was trying to figure out a way to kick his ass from the beyond.

Her words had been humbling. He knew she’d meant them to demonstrate that she understood where he was coming from.

“It’s hard to remember that you are still dealing with your grief. You always seem to have it together,” he said.

“Ha. You know me. I’m a big mess and I always have been. But no one is going to put up with that kind of attitude here. Rina would probably make me scrub the floors or something until I straightened up.”

He smiled. That sounded a lot like Rina. “I should probably volunteer for a few days of floor scrubbing.”

He felt her hand on his head, just rubbing gently. “You can have a rain check on that. We need you to liaise with Axiom.”

He laughed, but it sounded hollow even to his own ears. She was trying. Too hard, he realized. She wanted to know what was happening with them. He sensed it. He’d been avoiding anything personal from her.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, but I am sorry.”

“It’s okay. I think you’ve lost yourself a little bit. You were always confident you were going to get into NASA. Being an astronaut became your identity... I get that.”

She rubbed the light stubble on his jaw and looked down into his eyes. Always, he radiated confidence, but at this moment it was banked.

She imagined if she’d had to sell the ranch she might feel like Jason did now. Ranching was in her soul the same way that being an astronaut was in his.

She shifted on the bed. “Come on, get up,” she said.

He slowly got to his feet.

“Now, take a seat.”

“What are you doing?”

“Distracting you,” she said, as she put her hands on his shoulders and then straddled him. Reaching for the hem of her nightshirt, she pulled it up and over her head and tossed it on the floor. Next, she took his hands in hers and brought them to her breasts. She felt his cock moving under her, lengthening and hardening, and she moaned as he squeezed her breasts.

She rocked back and forth over him as her head fell back. His palms moved in a circular motion over her nipples, making them hard and intensifying the need deep inside her.

This wasn’t the patient lover she’d had before, she realized, as he moved his hands to her waist and rolled her beneath him. He pushed his underwear out of the way and drove into her with one quick hard plunge that set off a chain reaction within her.

She called his name as she met his thrusts with equal intensity and they both came hard and fast, clutching at each other. He stayed on top of her for a couple of minutes, keeping his weight on his arms as his breath sawed in and out. Then he rolled to his side and she lay there wrapped around him. Neither of them said a word. But she felt...damn, she felt like everything had changed between them.

She cared for him. She was hesitant to use the L word but it was there in her mind. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to hide from the truth.

She disentangled his arm from her leg, slid off the bed and put her nightshirt back on. “I know how you feel. And as much as I would miss you, if I had the power to make it so you could go on this mission, I would do it.”

* * *

HE LOOKED AT HER. Somehow without his intending it, she’d become his best friend. She got him. She understood him in ways he wasn’t too sure he wanted anyone to, but she did.

“Mol,” he said, “what am I going to do?”

She came closer to the bed and touched him gently. “You’ll figure it out.”

“How?”

“I have no idea. But I know you will. And I can promise that it’s not going to be what you expect, but it will get done, anyway.”

“I’m sorry I’ve shut you out,” he admitted.

“Me, too. I was worried you’d treat me like a consolation prize if you couldn’t actively participate in the Cronus missions,” she said, turning her face away from him.

Damn. He’d worried about that himself. He’d been afraid that he’d make her his whole life because he wouldn’t know what else to do. That fear was still there.

What kind of man turned to a woman when he no longer knew who he was?

Jason couldn’t answer that. Hell, he kept hoping...but hope wasn’t realistic. For the first time in many years he felt as he had when his mom died. He’d spent all those nights praying it was all a nightmare, that he’d wake up hearing her key in the door...

Now he knew that hope was a fool’s dream. And he needed to own this new life.

Parts of it weren’t bad. Not at all.

This bond with Molly was something that soothed the savage part of his soul. The part he’d always tried to suppress and hide from everyone. Finally, he didn’t have to anymore. And that was what he’d been waiting for. Space had given him the accolades and the career he’d always craved, but Molly had given him back a piece of himself that he’d never realized was missing.

“Thank you,” he said.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to thank me. It is partially selfishness that brought me here. I need you.”

She needed him.

He thought of all the men he’d been pretending to be for his entire life and knew that in this moment he had to stand up and do it for real. She needed him and he wanted to be the man who was there for her.

He shifted to the edge of the bed, sat up and put his arm around her, hugging her close to his side. “I think I need you, too.”

“Think?”

“When Mom died, I promised myself I’d never depend on anyone again, but I feel different with you.”

* * *

MOLLY KNEW THAT Jason was a man who’d lost everything, so letting his words affect her as deeply as they did probably wasn’t wise. But it was hard not to. He was the man she’d always wanted. She wished she’d known that long ago, but it was something that had only been revealed with time.

“I’m different with you, too,” she admitted. “I almost didn’t come here tonight. You wouldn’t have believed how timid I felt standing in the hallway.”

“I can believe it. I’ve wanted to reach out, but I feel so broken. And I know the kind of man you deserve. The kind of man I thought I was. And now—”

“Stop it,” she said. “You are still the man you always were. It’s just a change in direction, not a completely different path. You won’t be cut off from everything you’ve known and done before.”

He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders and she had the feeling that maybe she was making it too easy for him to be with her, devaluing herself. She wanted him. But she needed to be wanted for herself. Not as an outlet for his mixed feelings about his own future at this moment.

But then he leaned over and kissed her, whispered in her ear how glad he was that she was there with him.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to his bed.

“Talking about our feelings is different for us,” she said.

He gave her a half smile. “It is, but maybe this is how we will be from now on.”

“From now on?” she asked.

“Yeah, you and me. This isn’t just a fling, is it?”

She propped herself up on her elbows. She’d come here to get him motivated and make sure he was committed long-term to the facility and in some small way to her. Of course, she wanted whatever was happening between them to last, but something didn’t feel right.

“It’s not a fling, but I think we should take it day by day, for now. You are going through a big change...”

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked, putting his hand on the bed next to her hip and leaning over her.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I think you are confused about what’s going on with your career. You haven’t even told me the doctor’s latest prognosis. Are you out for good? Is there a chance you could be called back to active duty?” she asked.

She had a lot more questions, but having come in here and nudged him out of his melancholy she wasn’t ready to stop. She needed to know more before she just said yes to Jason. And it wasn’t like she had tons of other offers or men waiting for her. There was just Jason and a part of her acknowledged there would probably only ever be him. She realized he made her feel alive and in love. And she didn’t want to take a chance on ruining that feeling by letting herself believe he also loved her when he just needed a distraction from his life.

“Okay,” he said, moving over to sit next to her on the bed. He propped a pillow behind his back and leaned against it.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you what the doctor said. The change in bone density, while positive, is small. I mean, if I only make progress at the same rate over the next six weeks...” He trailed off and she realized that before this he’d believed he could easily lick this bone-density problem, but now he wasn’t sure.

He’d taken a hit to his confidence.

“Okay, well, I don’t know much about your recovery, medically, but I do know that you sound like a man who’s given up and that’s not the Jason—Ace—McCoy I know,” she said.

“You’re right. No one knows for sure—even Dennis said he wouldn’t decide until the initial three months were up. He was hoping that Doctor Tomlin would find something concrete and she’d be able to give me a green light early. But seeing how little things had improved was a wake-up call,” he said. “No matter how hard I work or how well I eat I might not be able to fix this.”

“What kind of wake-up call?” she asked.

“The kind that makes a man take stock of his life. If I’m not going to be on the Cronus missions, then I need to make a life for myself here on Earth.”

“With me?” she asked.

“That’s what I want, but I get that you aren’t ready to commit to me until we know for sure.”

“That’s not it. Life doesn’t work like that, does it? We can’t predict what’s going to happen next. If we could, I’d have been prepared for Dad’s death and for you coming back here. And you would have known you were going to have health problems,” she said. She was trying to guard her heart. That was why she’d thought they shouldn’t commit to each other, but the truth was she already had fallen for him and he wanted her.

“I was scared. Trying to keep myself from getting hurt if you went back to Houston and started to go on long missions again, but the truth is no matter what we do after tonight it will still hurt if you leave.”

16

THE NEXT MONTH flew by as the facility on the eastern part of their property went up quickly. They got a lot of local interest, and Rina’s brother’s construction company was hired to redo the bunkhouses and make most of them into astronaut quarters. Lynn flew back and forth but mostly left overseeing the project to Jason and Molly.

He wasn’t himself, but then he was still dealing with the possible loss of his dream and trying to adjust to the idea of a new role in NASA.

Molly wanted to believe the way Jason smiled at her and talked about the facility’s future every night before dinner, but she saw past it. He wasn’t the kind of man who could spend the rest of his life so close to what he keenly wanted but couldn’t have.

But on mornings like this when she was riding next to him checking fences, it was easy to delude herself that they would be together for a long time. That the love growing inside of her was really growing between them.

“Sunrise is always my favorite time of day,” she said, handing him the thermos of coffee that she’d brought in one of her saddlebags.

“Really?” he asked. “I like sunset.”

“I knew that,” she said. That was when the stars and planets were prominent and Jason’s dreams of being up there were stronger.

“Just like I know that you like to get out of the house first thing to beat the heat of the day.”

“Well, it is Texas, and it does get hot in July.”

“Yeah, it does. What’s on the schedule for today?” he asked.

“Nothing. The construction crews are done. Rowdy, Rina’s brother, said that once NASA signs off on everything we’ll be ready for the interior fitting. Which isn’t his thing. So today everyone has the day off.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, Jeb has a skeletal crew doing the chores, but then we’re going to have a barbecue by the pond. Good food, swimming and celebrating.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Is Lynn here?”

“She is, along with a few of the other experts that have been hired,” Molly said. “I was pretty excited that Jessie Odell agreed to do the survival training.”

Jason smiled over at her. “I forgot you two knew each other. She’s one of your oldest friends.”

“She is,” Molly said. She’d been worried about Jessie for the last year. Her longtime lover, Alexi Volkov, had died in his third attempt on Everest. Jessie had been climbing with him when conditions had turned hazardous and he’d fallen into a ravine. Molly had taken a few days to fly to her friend. Later, Molly’s dad had died and Jessie had come back to the ranch for a few weeks to keep her company. When the ranch was approved for the NASA facility, Molly had approached Jessie to see if she was interested in being involved in some way. Her friend had decided that she needed something new in her life, and this was it.

“She is. I’m so glad she got this gig. She hasn’t been herself since Alexi’s death.”

Jason turned to look at her, his hands resting on the saddle horn and a straw cowboy hat on his head. “What about you?”

“What about me? I haven’t lost my lover, have I?” she asked.

He shook his head. “But your dad died. How are you feeling now?”

She thought about it. She was so different now from the woman she’d been six months ago when Dad had died or even since the beginning of May when Jason had come back to the Bar T Ranch. She thought she’d evolved. “I think I might be Molly 2.0. A new version of myself.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “I guess that makes me Jason 4.0.”

“I guess so. Are you happy?” she asked. “Sometimes I think you are, but other times...it feels like you’re trying too hard.”

“I am trying,” he said. “That’s all I can do.”

“I wish I could make this easier for you. Find a way to fix this.”

“You can’t. All I can do is continue to work out and hope for the best,” he said.

He pushed his hat back and looked over at her. She wasn’t sure she liked what she saw in his eyes.

“I keep telling myself I have a very slim chance. But I doubt that much has changed since the preliminary tests in Houston.”

“What if it has?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. I feel stronger. It doesn’t mean I’ll be cleared to go back.”

But he still hoped he would be—she could tell. This wasn’t a surprise, but she felt hurt and embarrassed anyway that she’d been falling in love with him and he’d been biding his time. She should have known better. She did know better, but she couldn’t help herself and she definitely couldn’t deal with these feelings right now. She clucked to Thunder and loped away from Jason.

But there wasn’t enough land even on 760 acres to run away from her emotions or her heartbreak.

* * *

JASON WATCHED HER go and knew he had to go after her. Working together to integrate the new facility with the ranch during the last month had been nice. More than nice. He’d seen a life he hadn’t thought he’d ever find. One that hadn’t been his dream but that he was coming to enjoy and feel more at home in every day.

He hadn’t been completely truthful with Molly just now. Each week he sent a sample of his blood to Dr. Tomlin. She was watching his calcium levels and last night he’d gotten an email from her that said she saw some improvement. She’d also shared some new information about Candice’s blood work. Candice was scheduled to go back up to the International Space Station in one month’s time. She’d do a shorter stint, the shortest that NASA ran, just four weeks on the station, and then she’d be back for another evaluation. He wasn’t sure what all this meant for his prospects and he didn’t want to worry Molly until he knew for certain.