A Titan for Christmas (2 page)

"Is there anybody who's leaving earlier? I really want to be there for Christmas with my family."

Most of the men shook their heads sympathetically. One of the guys, wearing a baseball cap that obscured most of his sun-damaged face, gave Jenna a long look. His gaze flickered to Jack, who apparently was the de facto leader of this little group.

"There's Grayson," the baseball cap guy said.

"Who's Grayson?" Jenna scanned the faces of the group, looking for the owner of the name.

"You don't want to ride with Grayson," Jack said.

"Is he leaving for Earth soon?" Jenna asked.

Jack nodded with reluctance. "Today."

"Then I want to ride with him," she said, forcing every bit of authority she could muster into her voice. "Where is he?"

Jack shook his head in a way that reminded Jenna of her father, intensifying her desire to get home as quickly as possible. A dull ache spread through her chest when she thought of her two little sisters staying up the night before Christmas Day, filled with the excitement of seeing Jenna, who wouldn't arrive if she didn't find this Grayson.

"Please," she said. "Let me decide whether or not I want to ride with this guy."

Nobody answered.

She looked at the guy in the baseball cap. "Please."

He shot another glance at Jack before returning his gaze to her. He sighed heavily and jerked his thumb behind him. "Last ship on this dock. Hurry, he's planning to leave any minute."

Jenna started walking to the end of the dock before the guy even finished his sentence. She turned to face the men. "Thank you, thank you."

"Good luck," Jack said. For some reason, she didn't think he meant he wished her to catch Grayson before he left.

Jenna turned and walked as quickly as she could toward the end of the dock, about three hundred meters. She started to hear the gentle sounds of a ship starting up. Giving up on her last grasp on her composure, she ran for the ship.

Chapter 2

The last ship in the row loomed up before her, a gray and battered hulk about the size of a small house. She spotted a man just inside an open cargo door, leaning over a pallet of small, neat boxes that were carefully strapped down. He wore basic navy coveralls, like her dad would wear when he was working on a car. But his were unzipped, the top half hanging from his waist.

"Excuse me? Mr. Grayson?"

He spun around in surprise, his eyes wide and shoulders hunched, reminding her of Bubba when Jenna caught him digging in the trash. He took a second to inspect her and she did the same. Unlike the other guys circled around the card table near the Concourse's entrance, he was not old or grisly or drunk. No, what he was unsettled her more than any of that.

The first surprise was how young he was, close to her age. Most men who owned their own ships had worked on other ships for years, saving up money to buy their own. Bright green eyes peered at her from underneath long lashes that curled toward Saturn. Despite the so very pretty eyes, he had a strong face with sharp angles that cast shadows from the harsh overhead cargo light. A slight overbite gave the impression of a permanent pout. Dark curls tumbled lazily from his head to his shoulders.

In one word: gorgeous.

Another word: dangerous.

Just the thought of spending two days in a small space with this man sent her breathing into a frenzy.

"It's just Grayson." He brushed past her to pick up a wooden box on the dock.

With the coveralls pulled down to his waist, the only thing covering his torso was a white, thin, sleeveless undershirt. His considerable arm and back muscles bunched as he lifted the crate. He certainly didn't look like he spent most of his time in a cramped spaceship.

Jenna shook her head.
Focus, Jenna
. "Jack tells me you're heading for Earth today." It wasn't entirely true, but she didn't know the name of the guy in the baseball cap.

A derisive laugh escaped Grayson's lips as he walked past her, carrying the crate. "I'm sure that wasn't all he said about me."

Jenna didn't know what kind of history these two had, but she didn't care. She just wanted to get home to her family before Christmas.

"Well is it true?"

Grayson shrugged. "I don't know. Which story did he tell?"

Jenna pulled at her ponytail. "No, about you leaving for Earth today."

"That's true. Leaving in about..." He stopped and turned his head to listen to the sounds of the ship warming up. "Thirteen minutes, I'd guess."

"How much?" Jenna asked. She knew enough about private pilots to get money matters out of the way first.

"How much for what?" Grayson let his eyes trail suggestively from her lips, to her chest, and down her long legs. A tiny smirk lit up his face.

"Don't be trite," Jenna said, ignoring the thrill that shot through her at that kind of attention from that gorgeous of a man. "How much will you charge for me to ride along with you to Earth?"

"Nothing." He passed her again to pick up the last box sitting on the dock.

Nothing? Was he going to let her ride along for free? Even the kindest of pilots – and Jenna had a guess Grayson didn't fall into this category – would at least charge her for the extra fuel consumption. Surely he didn't think she'd provide any
other
kind of compensation.

"I never take passengers. Don't plan on changing that anytime soon, either," Grayson said, passing her once more with the box in his hands.

Her heart sank to her stomach, leaving a trail of torment in its wake. Grayson, as unfriendly as he was, was her last chance to get home in time.

"And don't think your cute little pouting bit is going to work on me," Grayson interrupted her begging before she even began. "I don't take passengers. Period."

Cute?

He placed the last box in the cargo area and pulled out a roll of twine from his pocket to secure it to the walls.

"Please," Jenna said. "I missed my flight because I had to fix a broken hydraulic line. I'm just trying to get home to spend Christmas with my family."

"You're an engineer, then?" Grayson asked, stopping his work to look at her for a second.

A little light of hope spread in her chest at his pause. She nodded.

"Willy's leaving in a few days."

The light distinguished, like a candle left on a drafty windowsill.

"He won't make it to Earth until the day after Christmas," Jenna said.

Grayson finished securing the last box with an expert twist of his fingers. He tugged on the knot to test it and nodded, satisfied. "That's better than nothing."

"I can pay you."

Grayson moved slowly around the cargo bay, testing all of the knots. Jenna's eyes flicked back and forth between the pallets, trying to avoid staring at his perfectly-shaped ass as he bent over some of the boxes.

"I don't imagine you'd be asking if you couldn't," he said.

Hope slid away from her like strands of silk being pulled through her fingers.

"Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?"

"Nope."

He walked up to the control panel and pressed a button. The ramp gently groaned in protest as it slowly made its transformation from ramp to cargo bay door.

"But I promised!" Jenna yelled. Then, a little quieter. "I promised my little sisters I'd be there to open presents with them."

The door stopped silent with just a meter left to go. Jenna's heart threatened to pound out of her chest. Did she say something that got to him? Or did the door break? With her luck lately, it would probably be the latter.

Dark brown curls pop out of the opening, followed by that gorgeous face. "Your sisters?"

Jenna thought carefully about her next words. They meant the difference between making it home by Christmas Day and … well, not.

"Janice is seventeen; it's her last Christmas before she goes to college to study Literature or History, I'm not sure what it is this week. Jamie's fifteen. She wants to be a mining engineer, like me." Jenna laughed, remembering. "She follows my father in the garage all day, just like I used to."

Grayson stared at her in a way that made Jenna doubt if he had even heard her.

"The last time I got some com time with them, six months ago, I promised I'd be home to open presents with them Christmas morning." Jenna's voice broke with the force of the memory. "I pinkie-swore."

The hint of a sad smile flitted across Grayson's face. "I know a thing or two about keeping promises to your little sister."

He hit the button and the cargo bay door started a slow descent open. Jenna fought the urge to do a victory dance. He was going to take her! She would make it in time for Christmas. Her heart soared with the image of her sisters welcoming her home with hugs and jokes about her hair.

"Two thousand credits."

This squashed her urge to dance. "The private shuttle was seven hundred."

"I know," Grayson said. "But they
want
passengers."

Jenna hesitated. Should she try to talk him down? He didn't seem too confident in his decision to let her on board and she didn't want to give him a reason to change his mind. But two thousand credits was steep. Her salary coupled with the fact she didn't have to pay room or board on Titan meant she had more than enough money. But she didn't like knowing she was being taken advantage of.

"Two minutes," Grayson said. "With or without you."

So much for going home to grab her clothes and taking a shower.
Screw it
. Jenna scrambled on to Grayson's ship like it might jettison from the dock any second.

Chapter 3

A very quick tour of the ship followed. Jenna was instructed she was not to go into the cargo bay, which took up about sixty percent of the ship.

Grayson then informed her his bed was the only on the ship, so they would sleep in shifts. Jenna didn't tell him she'd be sleeping on top of the covers. The small bedroom quarters included a surprisingly pristine toilet/sink/shower combo room, standard at one square meter for a craft this size.

The engine room was her favorite part, but Grayson simply flashed the hatch open and closed it just as quickly, smirking as her eyes moved to catch the last glimpse before the latch snapped shut.

Behind the cockpit, a simple galley was home to a bolted-down metal table with two matching chairs, a food reheater, a fridge, and clear plastic drawers stuffed to the brim with instant food packages. Not a single piece of decoration personalized the slate gray walls of the ship but at least it was clean.

Home, sweet home.

"How long is the trip?" Jenna asked.

"Three days." He swung open the door to the cockpit and held it open for her to enter.

"Three? Willy said it would take two."

"It's not too late to go back and ride with him."

Jenna was starting to think that might not be a terrible idea, but it would guarantee she'd arrive too late for Christmas. No, she'd stick with Grayson.

"You'll need to strap in in the front with me until we break atmo. Once we're away from Saturn's pull, you should bunk up."

"I
should
?"

"Yeah, at least eight hours," Grayson said. "You look like you need it."

As she buckled herself into the seat next to Grayson's, Jenna searched the cockpit until she found her distorted face reflected back at her in the glass of a navigational monitor. Aside from the smeared grease she had completely forgotten about, dark circles hung under her eyes. She didn't realize her shoulders were so slumped until she saw it in the glass.

Now that she was sitting down, exhaustion washed over her, making her head spin a little. Henry and she had worked around the clock to fix that hydraulic line in the hopes it would be done in time for her to make her shuttle. Other than the four hour nap she had unwittingly taken while waiting for a toolset to arrive from another station, she couldn't remember the last time she had slept.

Jenna laughed at her reflection. Grayson certainly didn't have a great first impression of her. No wonder he was so hesitant to take her on as a passenger; she probably looked like a lunatic running up to his ship like she had. And laughing at nothing now probably didn't help her cause. She snapped her mouth shut and focused on acting like a sane, normal person so he didn't make a last-minute reversal on his decision and leave her on the docks.

**

A gentle nudge roused Jenna from sleep that had come on like a sudden thunderstorm, nourishing and destructive in the same time and space. The lack of sleep must have made her drowsy because she awoke feeling... floaty. Her eyes labored open as she stretched her arms up and back.