“Sometimes I think the priorities are a little screwed up around here.” His gaze stopped at the American flag and NASA insignia emblazoned on its side. “All right, I’ll meet you over at Headquarters. I want to talk to Skip for a second.”
“No sweat. I’ll save you a seat,” Jeff promised and turned to leave.
“Don’t bother,” Deke called back to him. “I’ll stay in the back for a quick getaway.”
He heard Jeff chuckle, but Deke hadn’t meant it as a joke. He looked back up at the giant nozzle of Endeavour’s main engine. Every instinct told him the insidious hydrogen leak that had nearly destroyed the shuttle Columbia during the last launch could occur again on Endeavour. This time, the crew might not be so lucky.
He shook his head and walked away. Damn, it could be right in front of him. Literally under his fingertips. The last thing he wanted to do was listen to a bunch of PR blowhards from some big agency tell them to have another press conference in space.
Deke scanned the vast shuttle bay of the Orbiter Processing Facility for the aging figure of Skip Bowker, the man ultimately responsible for the safety of every mission. He figured he’d find him leaning against the glass wall of one of the offices, his signature coffee cup in his hand, looking a little too damn calm considering the next launch was a mere three and a half months away.
But Bowker was missing and Deke knew he didn’t have much time to make the ten-minute walk across Kennedy Space Center to the NASA Headquarters building. He knew better than to be late for a Colonel-Price-issued invitation, no matter how foolish the topic might seem. It was odd for the Colonel to insist any of the astronauts and flight crew attend the meeting, but it wasn’t worth questioning the order. He liked to rack up points with the Colonel for when he really needed a favor.
Using a side door, he entered the auditorium and bounded up two steps at a time, bypassing the seven or eight rows of stacked seating to lean against the wall in the back. He nodded to a few colleagues but avoided being pulled into a conversation. He wasn’t staying long. He’d catch the essence of the meeting, be sure Colonel Price’s secretary saw him, and then he could slip back to the Processing Facility for another few hours.
Deke was mentally reviewing the wiring when Stuart Rosen, the head of Public Affairs at Kennedy, started to address the group. With his mind on some vague dates on the engineering log he’d seen that morning, Deke had to force himself to listen to Stuart. Public Affairs was so damn far removed from the real business of flying space shuttles and operating the space station.
Still, he knew that image was everything to Americans and, last time he checked, that’s who covered his paycheck. Plus, he liked Stu. He just hated the BS that had nothing to do with what really mattered in the program.
Stuart droned on about a woman vice president from the Boston office of some supersized marketing firm called Ross & Clayton. She’d come to Cape Canaveral to invigorate NASA’s image. Deke almost snorted, visualizing the engine he’d just been examining. If Endeavour blew up over the Atlantic Ocean, they’d need to invigorate a helluva lot more than their image.
Stuart stepped off the stage and led a light applause for the Madame Vice President named Jessica Marlowe from Bahston. Oh, brother. It was bad enough NASA had to pay outsiders to do their PR; did they have to clap for it, too? Deke braced against the wall and checked the path to the nearest exit. He’d give her five minutes, seven tops.
From the front row, a young woman rose, set a laptop on a nearby table and then replaced Stuart at center stage. As she turned to the crowd, she flashed a mega-watt smile to get their attention.
She certainly got his. Holy hell, after staring at frayed wires and the inside of a shuttle exhaust all day, this girl was a vacation for the eyes. And he took it.
He drank in every inch from her deep brown hair twisted neatly in something his sister would call an up-do, all the way down to a pair of high heels that might be hell to wear but were pure heaven to watch. In between were a whole lot of nice curves and long legs.
She stood straight and confident, as close to attention as a civilian could manage, clearing her throat before she smiled again. This time, it hit him right in the gut. He couldn’t help it. He smiled back even though he knew she probably hadn’t noticed him among her rapt audience of nearly thirty people.
He watched her take a deep breath and smooth a stray hair. Cute. She was nervous under all that poise. He crossed his arms and settled back into his spot on the wall. Maybe he’d give her fifteen minutes.
“Ladies and gentlemen. NASA is in trouble.” She clicked a button on the laptop and the screen filled with reprints of negative articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post that appeared fifty times their original size. Brutal headlines, all reinforcing her point that outside of Cape Canaveral and Houston, most of the world didn’t give a crap about the space station and thought the whole shuttle program was a waste of precious tax dollars.
“The fact is, very few Americans know that we have a space station up and manned and even fewer could tell you what it does.” She let a laser pointer illuminate a particularly nasty quote from a congressman who wanted to slash NASA’s budget. “Space isn’t important to America right now. It doesn’t touch a chord in our hearts. Not the way it used to.”
She switched off the damning headlines and the screen backlit her, showing off her feminine silhouette and giving her an unintentional halo. “The goal of public relations is to create support for NASA and ultimately protect and increase the funding it receives. To do that, we need to make space relevant to the average American.”
Did Stu Rosen just say that she’d be staying at the Cape for a while? Now that was relevant. Deke took another lingering glance at the way her skirt hugged her backside. Relevant and nice.
“Ross & Clayton is the largest public relations firm in the world. We’ve spent a great deal of brainpower on the problem and we have a simple plan. It’s the oldest and most effective marketing technique in the world.” She paused and lit the room with that sexy smile again. “NASA is about to get some sex appeal.”
The echo of his unprofessional thoughts jarred Deke out of his musings and he joined in the uncertain, nervous laughter of the audience.
She clicked to a new slide, her magnificent eyes balancing her serious demeanor with a touch of humor. He didn’t know her qualifications and doubted she was thirty years old, but she’d obviously studied this sex appeal stuff pretty thoroughly.
“I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that in a space suit, all astronauts look the same.” She paused for more laughter. “We propose to give NASA a face. An unforgettable, grab-at-your-heart kind of face.”
You got one of those, sweetheart. Her heels clicked in rhythm as she crossed the stage, a sound as completely feminine as she was. “Then we’re going to give NASA a personality. Engaging, attractive, and even a little mysterious. A personality that is the polar opposite of the staid, conservative, and stuffy reputation you are…” she said, teasing them with a wink, “enjoying right now.”
She had them and she must have known it; a glimmer lit her eyes. “We’re going to change your image through one individual who will embody a new NASA.”
The silence lasted just long enough to be slightly uncomfortable, and Deke wondered if he’d missed something that she said. He wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to her words as the occasional glimpse of cleavage he caught as she reached to her laptop to click on the next slide.
“What is the sexiest thing about space?” she challenged, crossing her arms and damn, just deepening that enticing valley enough to truly distract him. “Astronauts. Daring, handsome, risk-taking, gravity-defying, reach-for-the-stars space cowboys.”
Suddenly, the image of a man in a blue flight suit leaning against a Navy F-18 fighter jet filled the screen behind her. Deke tore his gaze from the presenter to the face on the wall.
Familiar black hair that had been smashed by a helmet stuck to a forehead and touched
the collar of the suit in the back. A hint of laughter teased the lips of the photo’s subject. Recognition numbed his senses as he stared at the screen.
“Move over, George Clooney and make way, Russell Crowe. America’s about to fall in love with Commander Deke Stockard.” The audible gasp from nearly every person in the room punctuated her sentence and sucked all the air out of his lungs. “From his outstanding biography and obvious affinity for the camera, we’re confident that we can make Commander Stockard a household name and, in the process, make America swoon over space once again.”
Each word detonated in his head like unexpected grenades.
“And just how the hell do you plan to do that?”
At the sound of his question, her eyes flashed and she peered into the crowd, but she answered without missing a beat. “Although most of the world doesn’t know this, it’s a far more scientific process than you realize.”
“Scientific?” he shot back, aware that heads had turned his way. “You’re in a room full of scientists.” Scientists having adolescent fantasies about cleavage, but scientists just the same. “You better explain exactly what you have in mind. Miss.”
Just as he uttered the condescending final syllable, her gaze landed on him. She raised her chin, giving him a clear shot of her throat as she took a long, hard swallow.
“That’s an excellent question. Commander.” Her ebony eyes narrowed, as piercing as her laser pointer. “We do it through strategically placed photo ops and a blitz of TV and print coverage that keeps the public wanting more. We set him up on red carpets at movie premieres, side by side with celebrities. Then we make sure it all gets into Entertainment Weekly and on E! Television. We get him on Jay Leno. We drop candid photos on the wire services. We seat him in the front row of the seventh game of the NBA playoffs. It’s an orchestrated campaign. That’s what a great PR firm does.”
Who the hell did she think she was, plastering his picture on that screen and making pronouncements about sex appeal?
He started down the steps toward her. “We don’t go to NBA playoff games or movie premieres. We don’t seek celebrity status.” He let the disdain drop like bombs with every word and every step. “We are aviators and engineers and explorers. We develop experiments to advance medicine.” He paused as he reached the halfway mark, his gaze locked on his pretty target. “We send satellites into orbit to monitor terrorism.” He moved closer, purposely letting his voice intensify with each step. “We fix billion-dollar telescopes so scientists can see into the past and the future.”
At last, he stood on the same level, a few feet away from her, glad for the advantage of his height since she wore those stilts on her feet. “That’s what we do.” He leaned in closer so she’d inch away. She didn’t. “It doesn’t involve Jay Leno.”
A spark lit her eyes, but he was blind now to her fiery appeal, furious with himself for admiring her physical assets while she was busy announcing that he’d become some sort of NASA poster boy.
They stood face-to-face, the audience no doubt spellbound at the unexpected showdown. He waited for her to back down.
But, son of a bitch, she just crossed her arms and took a step toward him.
“Without tax dollars, Commander Stockard, there will be no experiments, no exploration and no telescopic views into the present or the past.” He could hear the tiniest shudder in her voice, but she held her ground and his gaze. “NASA has called in experts to reverse an extremely negative tide of public opinion. This is one tactic that hasn’t been tried and one we know can work.”
You are sorely mistaken, sweetheart. He was nobody’s tactic. He finally broke their eye contact and brushed by her to leave the room.
“Count me out, spin doctor.”
* * *
Oh, boy. Professional purgatory might be worse than she’d feared. Jessica watched the imposing figure disappear, along with about a quart of blood from her head. She turned and offered a tenuous smile to her audience, hoping the perspiration that had started when she got off the plane in this swamp didn’t start forming a puddle around her feet.
Stuart Rosen, bless him, immediately closed the meeting with assurance that the kinks in the program would be worked out. As the room emptied, Jessica took a chance that Stuart was truly the good guy the Washington-based NASA account team had promised when she had accepted this hellacious assignment. Your idea, your job, Tony had said.
As if she’d had a choice.
“Stuart,” she said, tapping papers into a manila file, “couldn’t you have warned the poor man ahead of time that he’d been hand-picked to be the next household heartthrob?”
Humor twinkled in Stuart’s warm eyes. “And ruin that classic NASA moment?” At her flabbergasted look, he laughed. “Just kidding. In all seriousness, I thought Colonel Price had told him. We’d better go see our fearless leader right now.”
She eyed the burly, slightly balding man who would now be her daily client contact. She had only met him a few minutes earlier, when she arrived at Kennedy Space Center for her first meeting to brief NASA’s public affairs team on the plan. She’d been uneasy at the sight of so many people at the presentation, but Stuart had assured her this was standard procedure.
“Then you might have warned me he’d be lurking up in the cheap seats.”
“Didn’t your colleagues at the agency let you in on the NASA secret, Jessica?” He smiled and shrugged. “Brilliant engineers. Lousy communicators.”
“I don’t know about that. Commander Stockard certainly made himself clear.” Jessica turned to the image of a larger-than-life astronaut that still burned on the screen.
The blurred photo really didn’t do him justice. It didn’t capture the intensity of eyes so blue they were downright navy. It certainly didn’t reveal his power or the way he could slash a person with a few words. Mesmerized, she had been barely able to breathe, let alone look away from him while he ranted about explorers and telescopes and terrorism.
“If he has the same effect on the women of America,” she muttered, “we could actually pull this off.”
And that, Jessica reminded herself as she removed his image with a single click of her laptop’s mouse, was really the only thing that mattered. Complete success if she had a snowball’s chance of preserving everything she’d worked for years to achieve. Her whole world basically hung in the balance, and she wasn’t about to let some astronaut with an attitude tip the scales.
A few minutes later, Stuart and Jessica stood in the lobby outside James D. Price’s office. She squeezed the leather strap of her briefcase and studied a dramatic oil painting of a space shuttle poised for launch. A metal plate captioned the picture with five words.
Failure is not an option.
No kidding. She simply couldn’t go back to Boston a failure. She’d rather take on all of NASA, including the insolent Commander Stockard, than lose her shot at the highest rung of the ladder she’d been climbing. Much as she hated leaving home and the visibility she needed as she vied for the top job in Boston, this was the biggest opportunity she’d ever have to prove herself to management. Nothing—make that no one—would ruin it for her.
Stuart leaned closer and spoke in a hushed tone, “By the way, our boss is retired Air Force, but everyone still calls him Colonel.”
She nodded in understanding.
“We don’t want to waste his time,” Stuart continued. “So please go straight into your agency’s backup plan.”
“Backup plan?” Jessica squared her shoulders and turned to face Stuart. She had a cardinal rule in business and it served her well: pick your battles.
This one was worth fighting.
Plus, they had no flipping backup plan.
“I promise you we have a winner here. Commander Stockard is exactly what we need to make this work.” Jessica thought about the force of his penetrating gaze, his classically handsome face. “Central Casting couldn’t have sent a better guy for the job.”
“Jessica, I’m afraid you d
on’t know Deke Stockard. I do, quite well. He’s a pretty strong force around here.”
She remembered the towering figure descending on her like a trapped jaguar. “I don’t doubt that.”
“He has the Colonel’s ear and his opinions count. He was brought over from the Navy not just for his legendary piloting skills but for his management and engineering capabilities as well. He’s got a central role in the safety of every shuttle launch—a position very few astronauts enjoy—and NASA has him on the fast track.”
She tilted her head and winked at him. “I have him on a faster track.”
Before Stuart could respond, the Colonel’s office door flew open and six feet of royal blue burst through it. At the sight of her, Deke Stockard stopped cold, none of the animosity gone yet from his blazing eyes. His gaze stabbed her and he opened his mouth to say something, but a stocky man came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Let me talk to her, Deke. We’ll work out some kind of compromise.”
Jessica didn’t like the sound of compromise, but it was better than backup plan. She held Deke’s gaze, then stepped out of his path as he strode past her with an expression so stony she almost smiled.
No wonder Bill Dugan was so anxious to pass this assignment off to someone else. Who’d want to spend three months trying to turn that beast into America’s sweetheart?
“Miss Marlowe, it’s a pleasure.” Jim Price offered a warm handshake and a gestured invitation into his office.
Greeting him, she noticed that his thick black brows contrasted with a shock of white hair, as though they somehow hadn’t gotten the message that this man had passed fifty years of age. His wide shoulders must have looked commanding in an Air Force uniform, although his charcoal business suit still offered an aura of power and control. Jessica had been informed that he used that control, and few words, to his advantage.
“You caused quite a stir around here this afternoon,” he commented as he took a seat behind his immaculate oak desk.
“I believe that was my assignment, Colonel.”