No Limits

“Hey, you all right?”

She shook her head. “Just—”

Her voice, heavy with tears, sounded deep and almost unintelligible.

“It’s okay. I miss Mick, too,” he said.

Miss him. She ached with his loss. She still wasn’t ready to be on her own with the ranch or in life. She needed her father’s advice. Now more than ever.

More tears fell and all of a sudden she was sobbing. She had heard it said that grief was the photo negative of love, but she wasn’t ready to accept it. It was just a huge hole in her that could never be filled.

Jason cursed and then pulled her into his arms. He didn’t do anything else. Just held her as sobs racked her body and her emotions fell in a gush of tears. She had no idea how much time had passed until she was hiccupping softly and the tears had almost dried up.

“Sorry for that,” she said, taking a step backward.

“I’m not,” he admitted. He wiped the trail of moisture off her face and then sighed. “I’m also here because...I have a few health concerns after spending a year on the International Space Station and my commander wants me to take a break.”

“Oh. I appreciate your honesty. So what’s wrong with your health?”

“Nothing that some time in Earth’s gravity shouldn’t fix. Everyone is betting on that. But I’m mainly at the ranch for the reasons I gave you before—because we need to talk, to figure out what we are going to do with this place,” he said.

“And kissing me was...what was that?” she asked. Oh, God, had she once again thrown herself at Jason? What was it about him that made her abandon common sense?

Aside from his rock-hard body, chiseled jaw and brilliant blue eyes. Those were things any woman would find appealing. But she didn’t normally throw herself at men just because they were attractive.

“That was us. I guess it’s always been there between us, but we never really took the time to pursue it,” he said.

She arched one eyebrow at him. She felt energy and anger coursing through her, but she knew focusing on these feelings was just an easy way to pretend she wasn’t still missing her dad. “Pursue it?”

He shrugged. One of those gestures men make when they know better than to answer a woman.

“You just admitted you are leaving as soon as you get the all clear from NASA,” she said. “We aren’t pursuing anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said, moving closer to her. She felt the heat of his body and found it very hard to look away from his naked chest. Besides the scar on his left side, he had a tattoo that read To boldly go.

He took another step closer and she put her hand up. Kissing him had been foolish. She was a practical woman. She always had been. And now, with Dad gone, she really needed to think rationally. The ranch was in financial trouble, as it had been for years, and she needed to focus on that.

Not wonder what it would feel like to run her finger over Jason’s tattoo.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. His voice was low and it brushed over her senses like a warm breeze. She wanted to close her eyes and tip her face up, but she didn’t. She’d had her kiss. And it was hotter than she had ever expected. But now she had to go back to being Molly.

“Nothing.”

Nothing. Really? She was intelligent and her remarks had been known to leave men speechless, but with Jason she felt like she was sixteen-year-old Molly in the throes of her crush.

“Well, nothing I want to talk about with you,” she admitted. “I’m not myself tonight. And I want to be like Scarlett and put my troubles off for another day.”

“I’m not myself, either,” he admitted. “Who is Scarlett?”

“Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind. She’s famous for saying ‘Tomorrow is another day.’”

“Well, she’s right,” he said. “But for tonight we have two choices.”

“Only two?”

“Well, two that won’t get us into trouble,” he said.

There was a touch of mischief in his expression and she realized it had been too long since anyone had teased her. Everyone had been treating her as if she was fragile since her dad had died.

“I’m listening.”

“We can get that bottle of Maker’s Mark out of the cabinet and drink until it’s empty,” he said.

“Or?”

“Or we can saddle up the horses and chase the moon as it moves across the sky,” he said. “I recall that used to be one of your favorite things to do.”

She swallowed hard. It still was.

How could a man she hadn’t seen in thirteen years be the one person who knew her that well?

“Ride,” she said.

“Good choice. Meet you at the stables in ten?”

She nodded and walked away from him. She didn’t think as she changed into her favorite pair of jeans and her cowboy boots. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and walked out into the night.

* * *

THE STABLES HADN’T changed since he’d first visited them as a teenager. The barn was big and cavernous, the scent of hay and sweet corn welcoming him as he stepped inside. There was a narrow aisle between the horses’ stalls. Mick’s horse, Rowdy—named after a TV character from a Western Mick had watched in his youth—had always had the first stall.

As a teen, Ace hadn’t really appreciated being sent from Houston to some ranch out in the middle of nowhere. It had felt like the punishment it was meant to be. And he’d been just bratty and angsty enough to act like an ass for the first three months he’d been at the Bar T Ranch. But Mick kept giving him chores and allowed him the distance he needed to wake up and figure out that he’d made a mess of his life and that he was the only one who could fix it.

He walked past all of the hands’ horses before he came to the few horses Mitch kept for visitors. He saddled one with the name Carl on its stall door. Then he found Molly’s horse in the second stall. Molly had always used the stall next to her father’s. And while it housed a different horse than he remembered, the wood-burned sign she’d made when she was fifteen still hung outside the door.

He heard Molly’s footsteps behind him and turned to face her. He regretted leaving his bedroom when he’d heard her in the hall. She was a complication. Someone he’d never figured out how to deal with. Even from his moody, teenaged perspective there had been something about Molly Tanner that had made him want her.

“I saddled your horse,” he said.

“Thanks.” She took Thunder’s reins and led him to the mounting block.

Ace watched the way she moved. The long easy strides that made her hips sway with each step. The denim fabric of her jeans as it pulled tight around her thighs when she mounted the horse. She settled into the saddle and then glanced over her shoulder at him. Her chestnut hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and he couldn’t take his eyes off the long sweep of her neck.

“You coming, Jason?”

He nodded. NASA trusted him with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and paid him for his opinion and his thoughts, but at this moment he knew he wasn’t worth a dime. He was speechless watching this cowgirl in her element. She was at home here. Even if something happened and God forbid she lost the ranch, Molly would know who she was.

He’d never felt fully himself until he’d been above the Earth, the blue planet so beautiful at a distance and the rest of the universe spread out before him. If he was permanently grounded because of his health...who would he be? It was his goal to be part of the Cronus test missions, but that might be out of reach now.

Cronus wasn’t an acronym for anything. All of the NASA missions were named for Greek gods and Cronus had been chosen for this program because he’d fallen from the sky and started a civilization on Earth, according to mythology. Many were hoping the Cronus missions and the Mars manned missions would do the same for that planet.

Before Ace had gone up to the ISS for a year, Dennis Lock, Deputy Program Manager for the Cronus mission, and Dr. Lorelei Tomlin, the team medic, had designed a fitness routine to get him ready for the long-term mission program and to see if they could counteract the expected impact of spending a year outside the Earth’s gravitational field.

He’d had very little spinal-fluid loss, which was the result they had been hoping for, and he’d recovered relatively quickly from the standard loss in muscle mass, but the bone-density loss he’d suffered—and the raised calcium levels in his blood that came with it—continued to be a concern. At his medical exam Doc Tomlin had been as upset as Ace was by the unusually slow rate of improvement. He’d taken a leave to see if being away from Johnson Space Center and a different, off-site exercise regimen would help.

Osteopenia had the power to end the part of his career he loved most—actually being up in space. Something he wasn’t ready for. He was determined to beat this any way he could.

He mounted Carl, and Molly touched her heels to her horse’s sides and made a clicking sound, leading the way out of the barn.

The night was cool, not cold, and the sky was clear. Early May in south Texas wasn’t really hot yet, at least at night. For a minute he forgot about riding and just stared at the sky. His heart took a punch and he felt a sense of fear and loss. He had to be cleared for more missions.

“You okay?” she asked.

He thought seeing the stars would remind him of who he was, but it just emphasized what was at stake.

“Yeah,” he lied.

She loped along the fields past the grazing land where the cattle were kept, and he stopped thinking and just followed her.

Her ponytail flew out behind her head as she rode and it took all of his skill to keep up with her. Eventually he realized that Molly wasn’t riding with him. She was racing away from something.

Her dad.

He stopped trying to keep up and let her ride as hard and fast as she could. Even though he knew there was no running away from the ghosts that were carried in one’s soul.

Molly pulled up a few hundred feet in front of him and tipped her head back to the sky. He couldn’t help noticing again how long and slender her neck was. Everything about her body was sleek and elegant.

When he pulled up next to her, he noticed that her eyes were wide and wet.

“I forgot how much I love to ride at night,” she said.

“Me, too. It’s exhilarating.”

“It is. Thank you for this. I know you came here to figure out what to do with the ranch, not to deal with Mick’s hot mess of a daughter.”

“You’re not a hot mess,” he said. “I came back for you, too. We both have to decide what to do about this complicated legacy Mick left us.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But not tonight.”

“Definitely not,” he agreed. “Where to now?”

She tipped her head back toward the stars again and he did the same. His breath caught as his eyes skimmed the sky finding what he was looking for. The International Space Station. Knowing where to look made it easy for him to spot it. He watched it moving slowly in orbit and thought of all the time he’d spent up there. He’d clocked more time than most of the other guys on his team.

“What are you looking at?”

“The space station,” he said.

“Where is it?”

He lifted his arm and pointed. “It’s in a slow moving orbit.”

“What’s it like up there?”

He shrugged. “Better men than me could probably put it into words. I just know up there...I’m free.”

“Like me when I’m riding,” she said, quietly.

He didn’t respond, just looked up at the sky, realizing he was going to do whatever he had to in order to get mission-ready again. He wasn’t done with that life. Not yet.

* * *

THEY GOT OFF their horses and left them to graze as they continued, walking. This was a side to Jason she didn’t know. In fact, there was a lot to the man she had no idea about. He’d been a boy when he left to go into the military and started on his path to becoming an astronaut. And though they’d lived in the same house for a few years, they’d never had deep conversations.

Tonight she thought she finally had a glimpse of the real man.

“What’s going on with you and your career?” she asked. “You said there was a medical issue.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Which means you don’t think I will understand it or you don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re one of the smartest women I’ve ever known,” he said.

She smiled. “That’s because I whipped your butt at AP calculus back in the day.”

“I’m a little better at it now,” he admitted.

“And I never have to use it. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Life is complicated,” he said. “Way more so than we ever could have guessed in high school.”

“True. So you don’t want to talk about your health and I can respect that, but I need to know if you are in danger. We’re a good forty-five minutes from the nearest hospital.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “It’s not anything that’s going to kill me while I’m here.”

Health concerns.

He’d said it like that because he didn’t want to talk about it and make it seem more real. Giving it a name would mean he was fighting something serious. Instead of, say, a cold or a muscle strain. Those were things anyone could beat. This? He wasn’t sure. But being purposely vague would just make it seem more mysterious to her and he doubted she’d leave it alone.

“I have some symptoms of spaceflight osteopenia.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Molly said. “But it sounds like osteoporosis. Does it have something to do with your bones?”

“Yes. In microgravity, astronauts don’t put weight on our back or leg muscles, and the longer we’re up there the more they start to weaken and get smaller.”

“Have you lost height?” she asked.

He shrugged. “When I first returned to Earth I was a bit taller, but now I’m back to normal. They are more concerned with my raised calcium levels and loss of bone density.”

“What can you do?” she asked.

“I’m doing it—or I will be, at least. Working on the ranch, lifting, putting my body to good use, all of these things are going to help,” he said with more than a bit of hope and bravado. “I’m supposed to be tested again in three months. I did an advanced regimen during my time on the ISS and if Doctor Tomlin’s theories are correct I should improve more quickly than others have in the past. Part of my mission on the ISS was for her to test the effects of prolonged exposure to space. She has me trying different exercises and a special diet to decrease my recovery time.”

Molly nodded. He’d shared his medical information but hadn’t really told her what that meant to him.

“How long are you going to stay?” she asked. She needed to know. She needed to make plans. That was what she should be doing instead of walking in the moonlight with Jason McCoy. But here she was.

“It’s three months to my reevaluation. That should give us some time to figure out what to do with the ranch.”

“I don’t want to sell it,” she said. “And I can’t buy you out. Not now.”

“Oh. I was really hoping to sell my half to you. My life isn’t here at the Bar T.”

“Dad borrowed some money from you, so you must know the ranch isn’t as profitable as it once was,” she said.

“I could just sign over my half to you. NASA pays me well enough, and by rights the ranch should be yours.”

That idea didn’t sit right with her. After all, he’d already put money into the ranch and never got a cent back. “No. Thank you for the offer, but Dad wanted you to have this for a reason. He wouldn’t have felt right not paying you back, at least. And even though I don’t understand or appreciate why he made us full partners in this ranch, I won’t go against his wishes. Maybe you will find that you like the ranching life.” Every once in a while the breeze blew in the right direction and the scent of his aftershave wafted on the wind.

“I don’t think I will.” He stared up at the stars again, looking as if he would fly up to them now if he could and leave everything earthbound behind.

“There’s a lot more to you than I remember,” he said. “Though, to be fair, I don’t remember much except that you could outride me.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “All I remember was that I really wanted to kiss you and you were determined not to get involved with me.”

He laughed.

She watched him a second and then smiled. It was the first time since her dad’s death that she’d felt...happy.

He noticed her watching him and raised one eyebrow at her.

“You made me smile.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “I like your smile.”

“You do?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shook her head. “How many women have fallen for your ‘aw shucks’ routine?”

“A fair few,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “Not everyone is impressed with my being an astronaut and having stayed on the ISS.”

“Really?” she asked. It gave her the shivers to think of the things he’d done and seen. “I am.”

“You are?”

“I’ve only left the state of Texas once and that was just to go to Louisiana to pick up a bull Dad had purchased. So you having left the planet is a big deal,” she said, wondering who would disagree.

He stopped walking and turned to look at her. His features weren’t clear in the darkness, but she felt his attention on her.

She licked her lips and tried to step back because she was a hot mess, as she’d said earlier. And Jason was feeling uncertain and worried about his future. This was the worst possible time to be kissing him. And more—she wanted more.

She knew that.

She’d been alone for too long. It had been over eighteen months since she’d ended her last relationship and most of the time she was just fine getting her romance fix on television or in books. But tonight, standing out here in the moonlight with him, she craved...something more.

She never gave in to impulses. That was a lie—she had tonight. She’d left her room, gone into the hallway. He’d kissed her. And when their lips had met...she’d changed.

Something fundamental had shifted inside of her and she was honest enough to admit she didn’t know how to react to it. She should never have kissed Jason. She should have left him in the past, in those teenage-girl dreams.

But he was here and that kiss was fresh in her mind. Her lips tingled and she realized that being this close to him stirred something inside of her that she usually did a good job of ignoring. Stirred the passion and the desire that she preferred to think she was the master of. That she had been able to control until Jason.

“Jason...”

“Yes?”

“Why did you stop walking?” she asked.

“Because I wanted to show you this,” he said. He drew her into his arms and she started to lift her face to his, her eyes slowly closing. But he turned her so that he stood behind her and put his hand under her chin, tipping her head back toward the sky.

She was on fire with need. But he treated her like a friend.

They were friends.

Just friends.

She repeated that over and over again as he pointed to the stars. Was the passion she felt one-sided?

3

ACE KEPT HIS touch light on her chin as he tipped her head up to the sky. He wanted more. Hell, she was more addicting than his first taste of flying Mach 1 had been. But he wasn’t back for good and she deserved more than a summer fling.

He had always loved the stars and the sky but, more than that, the freedom they had represented. He knew life had been different for Molly. She’d had her dad and when her mom had passed she’d had Rina. She’d grown up in a house filled with love and support. He hadn’t. He’d wanted to escape and run as far away from Texas as he could get.

Ironic that he’d ended up finding his home in Houston. He’d thought he’d have to leave that city far behind to find peace, but he’d been wrong. It wasn’t the first thing he’d been wrong about and he doubted very much it would be the last.

“What am I looking at?” she asked. Her voice was soft like the gentle breeze stirring around them and her hair smelled of summer strawberries. He remembered the way it had looked falling in disheveled waves around her shoulders and was tempted to remove the elastic holding it in place now.

“Venus,” he said. “Venus takes only a fraction of one Earth year—225 days—to orbit the sun once, so we see it frequently in the night sky. Sometimes Jupiter and Mars line up with it—it’s rare, but you can see all three in a triangle in the sky.”

“Now?”

“No. Usually closer to sunrise,” he said.

“What’s it like to see the sunrise from orbit?”

He wasn’t sure he could put it into words. He wasn’t one of those poetic guys who turned their adventures on the space station into books. Despite his time with NASA, he was still more of a cowboy, he guessed, even if he didn’t want to be tied to the Earth.

“It’s awesome,” he said at last.

She chuckled.

“Awesome?”

“Yeah, got a problem with that?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Good to know that you haven’t changed all that much.”

For a moment he didn’t follow and then he remembered when he’d first come to the ranch. All he’d said to everything was awesome in a sarcastic tone.

“Forgot about that. I don’t use the word much anymore. Must be something about the Bar T that brings it out in me.”

“Must be,” she said, stepping aside. “I guess we should think about heading back.”

“If you do, you’ll miss the best part.”

“What’s the best part?” she asked, turning in his arms. She had her head tipped back and their eyes met in the inky darkness. It was hard to read the expression in hers and that made him feel a bit freer. She wouldn’t be able to read the expression in his eyes, either. He didn’t want her to see how much she affected him.

He traced one finger down the line of her neck. “You are so delicate-looking in the moonlight. Like the Carina Nebula.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said. Her words were soft, and he had the feeling she was waiting for something.

Him?

“It’s not as well-known as many of the other nebulas. It’s found in the southern sky.”

“South like southern hemisphere?”

“Yeah. Remember how I wasn’t sure where Montana was for the longest time?” he asked. He’d been so green when he’d lived here. When he was surviving on the streets, the only things that had mattered were food and staying away from the authorities. He’d never done well in school until he’d come to the Bar T and hadn’t had those worries anymore.

“I do. But you always knew the night sky,” she said. “Was it because of... I don’t know much about your family. Dad always respected the privacy of the guys who came here. Said if you wanted me to know your story, you’d tell me.”

“Nothing to tell. I knew the sky because I read a book when I was younger, before things got rough, about sailors who navigated using the stars. It just sort of stuck.”

“Probably like me and Misty of Chincoteague. If I hadn’t already loved horses, that book made me.”

He didn’t dwell on the past, especially his childhood. There was nothing but pain and humiliation there and the future had always been where he’d seen himself. But he realized now how much of the man he was today had been shaped by those events. He was a maverick, even in the Cronus program. Always pushing boundaries and going on missions that others thought twice about. It was why his boss was determined that he get back in top physical condition as quickly as possible.

He was realistic enough to know he probably wouldn’t be part of the Mars mission team since the first one wouldn’t likely happen for at least another twenty years. The test missions, though. The long-term journeys and a possible moon base. Those were all programs he was interested in.

But Cronus was close to his dream mission. They’d be taking up the components for the first base between Earth and Mars. They’d establish the way station and each mission would continue to test human endurance in space.

“Like that,” he agreed. But he wasn’t thinking about their conversation anymore. He was thinking about Molly. And how she’d always been just out of his reach. He had been afraid he wasn’t good enough for her as a teenager, and he realized now that he’d also been running from anything that hinted at a normal life. Still was.