All Fixed Up (2 page)

Dr. Carson—“Phil” to her friends, which made her “Dr. Phil” to my giggling inner middle-schooler—was a PR dream for NASA. She had PhDs in aerospace engineering, biochemistry, and human reproductive technology—your basic brainy overachiever. And her atmospheric IQ came wrapped in a package worthy of the cover of a fashion magazine: tall, black, and willowy, with super-short auburn hair, high cheekbones, and translucent honey-gold eyes. In other words, gorgeous.

The reflection I saw in the mirror when I was wearing her aura was enough to set my insecurities nibbling at my ego with piranha teeth. Recently I'd been working on filing those teeth down, but it wasn't easy. When you're a height-challenged, next-to-boobless wonder, with freckles (
ugh!)
, strutting through life with bravado takes determination. But at least my own strawberry blond hair and pale green eyes aren't too horrible, and, judging by how often I've caught Billy staring at my lips with lust in his eyes, my mouth must be okay.

One thing I
didn't
envy about Dr. Phil at the moment: she was at one of my undisclosed client hideaways, keeping company with a private (and very discreet) doctor and nurse while passing a kidney stone. A luxurious remote island setting probably doesn't help much when you're in pain.

See, kidney stones are a big no-no for astronauts. Once you have one—even if you pass it without complications—you're pretty much a permanent fixture on the No Go list as far as space flight is concerned. “Prone to kidney stones” is not a label the medical professionals at NASA are comfortable with, no matter how stoic an astronaut might be. If the Powers That Be found out their mama-candidate was dealing with the issue, they might decide to scrub the mission. Or worse, as far as Philippa was concerned, call in a willing understudy.

Phil, having worked long and hard on this project, did
not
want to hand it off to someone else at the crucial time. It would be the scientific equivalent of training your whole life for the Olympics, making the team, and then having to drop out at the last minute due to a minor injury. In other words, soul crushing.

Phil's brother, Rudy, happened to work with CIA agent Mark Fielding, aka my big brother's best friend and the primary star of my deepest fantasies before Billy entered the romantic picture. (Okay, okay. So Mark still sneaks into my dreams sometimes. The nighttime ones, not the daydreams. You can't control a sleeping mind, for Pete's sake.)

Phil's brother, whose Agency clearance was high enough to know about Mark's adaptor abilities, had approached him with his sister's dilemma. Mark could have done the job himself, but since he was pretty much always busy with some super-secret matter of national security, he'd asked me to do it. Which was incredible progress in our professional relationship. He used to be so obsessed with protecting me he wouldn't even consider referring a potential client to me. Proving myself capable in his eyes hadn't been easy, and I still wasn't sure I was completely there. I suspected this job might be some sort of a test—one I fully intended to pass with flying colors.

It was poor timing for me that the Vomit Comet flight popped up during my job. If it had been a few days later, answering questions from the press would have been the worst I had to contend with. But I was used to poor timing—it defined my relationship with Mark.

As the plane went into another dive, Alec leaned back, allowing me the space to rise again. Since the camera was still rolling, I tried to do it more gracefully this time. It was getting easier.

Once up and floating, I tucked my currently long legs (man, was I ever going to miss those) close to my chest and rolled forward—on purpose this time—executing one of the flawless somersaults I'd been told Phil had perfected on her inaugural Vomit Comet flight, back when she was an ASCAN herself. Score one for me.

“That seems more in character,” Alec said.

I spun my head toward him.
Crap
. I was supposed to know this guy? He hadn't been in Dr. Phil's dossier.

“It takes a few minutes to get your sea legs back,” I said, making it rueful. Maybe he'd attribute my lack of recognition to preflight nerves.

He nodded. When he lowered his camera the expression on his face was perfectly professional.

“Say, listen,” I said, “sorry if I've been, um, distant. It's a bit overwhelming trying to reacclimate to the program.” I gave him what I knew to be Phil's man-melting smile.

He cocked his head, quirking his mouth. “If you say so.”

I didn't know enough about him to delve more deeply into any possible connection between the two of them. If I'd somehow offended him by treating him as a brand-new acquaintance instead of a friend, the good doctor would have to smooth things over when she was back.

On the other hand, if it was only Billy giving me some shit … well, I'd just have to kill him later.

When the end-of-flight announcement came, we all drifted toward our seats at the back of the plane. After normal gravity was restored, Alec buckled himself in beside me, in preparation for the gentler descent of landing. One good thing—after surviving this, I doubted flying commercial would ever bother me again.

I settled back comfortably, feeling pretty cocky about how well my first reduced gravity flight had gone. A measly national news conference ought to be a piece of cake comparatively.

Alec leaned close to my ear and said, “Where's Dr. Carson?”

So much for cocky. I swallowed hard and turned toward him, hoping like hell to see the light of Billy's laughter in his eyes. If it was there, it was doing a damn good job hiding behind the cold, hard suspicion.

Still, I tried. “If this is one of your jokes, you can stop now.”

“I'm not the one ‘joking' here,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. “I mean it. Who are you? Or should I say, what are you?”

Uh-oh.

 

Chapter 2

The Johnson Space Center was a hive of buzzing reporters by the time we arrived from Ellington Field, where the Vomit Comet had mercifully touched down without incident. I'd been whisked away from the plane—and, thankfully, Alec Loughlin—by Steve Richards, the distinguished older PR representative who was my on-the-ground handler for the day. Alec had been driven back to the Center by his assistant, in their work van, so he could edit the footage he'd taken into an acceptable digital video to be shown at the press conference. It's amazing what you can do in a short time with a powerful laptop and the right software.

The screening for the reporters, which began with random, fun scenes of the ASCANs and me performing our floating gymnastics and ended with my rather startling announcement, had been like throwing a lit firecracker into the middle of the press corps. The questions continued, rapid-fire. I'd already responded to umpteen inquiries about the why, when, where, and for-God's-sake-
how
of the mission (and one statement expressing disappointment that the big announcement didn't concern irrefutable proof of aliens among us). The newshounds persisted like they hadn't been fed for a week and I was prime rib on a platter.

An incongruous image of slavering hybrid bee-dog with an Uzi in one hand and microphone in the other sprang into my head. I ignored it, and continued projecting the calm, cool, and collected persona of my client.

“Dr. Carson … Dr. Carson! Won't you be taking a huge risk with your future unborn child?”

I smiled and shook my head at the thirty-something, heavily pregnant reporter. I sympathized with her concern, but I'd already answered the question at least fifteen different ways. Did she think I was going to tell her something different this time?

“We are certain the risk is minimal. I will either conceive or I won't. If I do, there is nothing in our data to show a statistically significant likelihood of harm to the developing blastocyst, or later to the embryo. Again, I refer you to the press packet you were handed as you arrived. You'll find the essential parameters of the experiment laid out for you there,” I said, hoping I sounded sufficiently like a brainy scientist trying her best not to talk down to the public. Of course, if anyone asked me what a blastocyst was, I was screwed. Biology hadn't exactly been my favorite subject in school.

“Dr. Carson … over here!” came a male voice, young and demanding. I ignored it.

“Dr. Carson—hey, Dr. Phil!” a woman's voice called out from the other side of the room.

Ha.
Guess I wasn't the only one to note the name similarity to the celebrity talk show host. I scanned the crowd of curious faces, and nodded at the newshound with the sense of humor—a woman who looked like she'd been working the beat since the Apollo 11 moon landing.

“Are you
sure
you won't be sneaking your husband along on the mission with you?” she asked, a prurient gleam in her ancient eyes.

I refrained from rolling my own, not wanting to put a blemish on Dr. Phil's PR skills. What was it with the repeat questions? Only thing I could figure was, it must take at least ten times before the answer sticks.

“Only the essential parts of him, I'm afraid,” I said, keeping it light. I was tempted to elaborate with “you know, his wigglies” or “his swimmers” this time, but I was going to assume the grownups present knew which parts were essential to conception.

Another reporter—the demanding young man—called out, “But your husband is a cosmonaut, right? He's qualified to go along, isn't he?”

I swallowed a sigh and revived Phil's smile. “
Retired
cosmonaut…”

It was true. Dr. Phil and her husband, Mikhail Yurgevich, had met and fallen in love when both were speaking at a European Space Agency symposium in Paris. Yurgevich owned a private U.S.-based company, where he concentrated on research and development of twenty-first-century cargo transport. Spaceward Ho was starting to give Virgin Galactic a run for its money. Most people thought the company's name—the “Ho” part, anyway—was poking fun at the competition, though the founder claimed it was merely a play on the old “Westward Ho” pioneer spirit. Personally, I suspected it was a bit of both.

Mikhail being Russian had probably tipped the scales in favor of Phil as the human guinea pig. The Russians might not be at the point of testing human conception in zero-G themselves, but they sure didn't mind having a fifty-percent PR stake in any future little half-Russian possibly arising from the U.S.'s research. Mikhail wasn't a Russian citizen anymore, but they still laid claim to his heritage.

“Will Spaceward Ho transport you to the space station? Maybe he could go along for the ride. Er, so to speak.” The demanding young man couldn't have infused more innuendo if he'd waggled his eyebrows. Hmm. Maybe
he
was Billy.

I looked at him sternly, resisting the urge to slap him down—verbally, of course—for his impertinence. “As far as I know, the transport arrangements haven't yet been finalized. And, as I already explained, the International Space Station is quite small.
This
experiment will be centered around the viability of human
conception
, not sex. One step at a time. Some day, in the future, once we're certain conception itself is a feasible prospect, then the various methods of achieving it might be explored further.”

Then, thinking to lighten the moment, I added, “Hopefully when there's more room available and, you know, some privacy. Maybe some Norah Jones”—Norah was listed under Music Favorites in Phil's dossier—“and a little champagne.”

During the ensuing laughter, the PR spokesperson for NASA took my place at the microphone and told a disappointed crowd, “That's all for now, folks. We'll keep you updated.”

I rode a wave of shockingly personal questions out of the room, thankful I'd be handing the reins back to the real Dr. Phil soon. Let
her
figure out a polite answer to whether her husband was upset about being replaced by a turkey baster. Me, I just smiled, waved, and pretended to be deaf.

Once we were out of the press's earshot, I ditched my handler on the pretext of needing to use the restroom, and found a quiet stall to make a phone call. Billy answered on the third ring.

“Where are you?” I said, using my own voice so he'd recognize me.

“Gee, I was hoping for ‘What are you wearing?' Assuming you miss me as much as I miss you, and this is phone sex, which I'm afraid is our only option until my job is over.” There was laughter in his voice, which almost always calmed me down, but not this time.

“Billy, you didn't happen to ride along with me on my job today, did you?”
Please say yes, please say yes, please …

“Sorry, sweetheart. Much as I love me some zero-G, I'm in the middle of something that can't wait. Well, not if I want to collect a sum hefty enough to maintain my lifestyle for the next year or so.”

“So you're honestly not here in Houston?” I said, trying my best to keep the panic out of my voice.

His voice got serious. “Ciel, what's wrong? Tell me. Now.”

I sighed. “It's the photographer. He knows I'm not the client. He
knows
it, Billy! What am I supposed to do?”

“First of all, breathe. Slowly. Don't hyperventilate. You're probably feeling paranoid from the seesawing altitudes. Blood rushing in and out of your head can't be good for rational thought.”

“He told me flat out. Asked me what I was. Not who.
What
.”

There was a pause. “Strange. What'd you tell him?”

“I ditched the subject entirely by pretending to feel airsick. Kept my face buried in a barf bag, dry-heaving for the entire descent”—there hadn't been much pretending involved, the possibility of discovery having made me queasy in spite of the behind-the-ear patch, something Billy didn't need to know—“and we were taken back to the Space Center for the presser as soon as we landed. Alec—the photographer—was there, in the back, taking pictures of me the whole time. I'm afraid he's going to come looking for me any second. What if he knows something for real?”