A Titan for Christmas (5 page)

"What are you doing?"

Grayson's voice startled her so completely that she fell back from the pallet and her ass hit the metal floor. Jenna imagined what she must look like –  buck naked, awkwardly sprawled in the cargo bay – and burst into laughter.

Grayson, on the other hand, was not laughing. His dark eyebrows scrunched together as he squinted against the fluorescent light. "I told you not to go in here."

Jenna made a clumsy attempt at trying to fold her body into something a little closer to graceful. "I just needed to stretch out a little."

The muscles of his jaw flexed. He pointed at the open box. "Find what you were looking for?"

Jenna fumbled with the top of the box but couldn’t get it closed. "Oh, I was just -"

"You were just snooping in a room I specifically told you not to enter!"

Opening the box had been a simple curiosity, but now, Jenna wondered what Grayson was up to that would make him so protective. Transporting unmarked boxes was illegal in itself, but was what they held illegal too?

“What’s in the tubes?”

“None of your business.”

Well, if that wasn’t defensive…
Anger blossomed in her chest. “You brought me on this ship. You made it my business! If you’re caught, there’s no way the police are going to believe I wasn’t involved.”

Grayson had been ready with another comment, but his mouth stopped before he made a sound. The thought of getting caught probably hadn’t even occurred to him until then.

“What’s in the tubes?” She asked the question this time with more compassion, a touch of begging in her tone.

“It doesn’t matter,” Grayson said. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

He moved toward her, but she was closer to the boxes than he was to her. She snatched one of the tubes from the box, noticing a brownish sludge inside of it. She read the label.

Methanocaldococcus titanae

Ice flooded her veins. She knew more about pumps and gear ratios than taxonomy, but she recognized a species name when she saw it. “It’s biological.”

He yanked the tube from her hand and placed it back in the box, securing it closed. “You shouldn’t wave that around. It’s dangerous.”

“No shit, Grayson! You think it’s dangerous here in this hermetic ship sealed inside neat little boxes thousands of miles from any planet? What about when it gets to Earth?”

“They assured me all precautions would be taken.”

“It won’t matter how careful
they
are.” Jenna’s heart thudded in her ears, fueled by a combination of fear and rage. She had been a fool to trust any man so quickly; the universe was proving that to her. “There’s a damn good reason transporting biologics from Titan to Earth is expressly forbidden by every single government and private entity. They still can’t agree on whether slavery is wrong, but they agree on this – doesn’t that tell you anything?”

An epic weight pulled down his shoulders and darkened his eyes. “I don’t have a choice.”

The sadness she saw in his expression did very little to abate her temper. “Why the hell not?”

He grabbed her arm and led her to the cargo bay door. His anger was returning. “I need the money, OK?”

Jenna jerked out of his grip and stomped down the hallway to the bedroom quarters. How could she have been so stupid as to sleep with a man who would risk Earth’s entire ecosystem for money? A year of not dating had apparently destroyed her judgment when it came to men.

Chapter 7

They didn’t say a word to each other for twenty hours. Jenna used the quiet time to figure out what she should do. Reporting him to the authorities was a no-brainer, but should she try to do it before they entered Earth’s atmosphere or wait until they landed? The former would be safer for Earth, but she had no idea how far Grayson would go to keep her from turning him in. He didn’t really seem like the violent type, but she had already been wrong about him once.

A rumbling shudder tore through her entire existance, ripping Jenna awake. She must have fallen asleep at the kitchen table. She had so far resisted lying down in the bed again. Every time she looked at it, her face flushed with the memory of what they had done. How he had made her feel like she was wanted, needed. She knew she couldn’t handle being so close to that memory, to feel it in the way the sheets rubbed against her skin and smell it in Grayson’s scent that lingered there.

The shudder deepened and rose to a full-on quake. Grayson darted past her toward the engine room.

“What’s happening?” she shouted over the noise of vibrating metal, chasing after him.

Just as he reached the engine room door, the shaking and the noise stopped.

Everything stopped.

Lights flicked off, replaced by the soft glow of emergency luminescence. The propulsion engines didn’t hum. Jenna’s feet rose from the floor and the two of them floated once more. The whispering of the air through the vents was silenced.

“Shit,” Grayson said.

“How long will the air last?”

He shrugged. “I’ve had it shut down for four hours before while I hid on an asteroid. But that was just me and I didn’t notice the oxygen levels.”

She told her mind to skip right over the speculation about why he was hiding on an asteroid and focus on getting the life support back on.

Crisis mode. Emotions would only get in the way. “You’ve got gloves?”

Grayson floated to the drawer underneath the bed and pushed a folded-up pair towards her. She pulled them on, tucking the sleeves of her coveralls into them, and started pulling herself to the engine room.

“You may want some, too,” she called back to him. “It’s going to get very cold in here.”

**

Getting the life support and secondary systems back online turned out to be as easy as replacing a fuse. It’s what had caused the fuse to trip in the first place that was the real problem: the propulsion system. With twenty-six hours until Christmas Day, they were dead in the water and Jenna couldn’t do anything to fix it.

“What do you mean you can’t fix it?” Grayson asked, pacing back and forth in the galley.

She sighed and rubbed her hand across her forehead, smearing the grease there. Hadn’t she just explained it to him? Maybe if she put it in simpler terms.

“There are many necessary parts in a propulsion engine. One of these parts is broken, snapped in half, essentially. Without a spare, I cannot fix it.”

"Can't you unbreak it?"

"Maybe if I was more familiar with propulsion systems I could come up with something, but this isn't even close to my area of expertise. I'm a mining engineer. That engine room is a disaster, you're lucky this hasn't happened sooner."

He ran his fingers through that gorgeous curly hair and pulled at it in frustration.

"I fixed the communication system, though. We should be in com range. Just call for a tow and maybe we'll both make it home in time for Christmas Dinner."

Grayson's eyes went wide. "I can't call for a tow."

"You can't not call for a tow!"

"Tow ships will only take you to one place: government docks. With Customs. That's not an option."

"So, what?" Jenna crossed her arms over her chest. "We're just going to float here until someone passes by?"

"I have some friends I can call."

"You're going to call a friend to come four hundred and fifty million miles to pick you up on Christmas Day?"

"Sure."

Jenna sunk down into a chair. "I'm never going to see my sisters."

Grayson clenched his jaw. "You will," he growled. "I promise that, at least."

**

Grayson had been in the cockpit for two hours. Jenna needed to know what was going on. She found him leaning over a control panel, head in his hands.

"Any word?"

He jumped and stared confusedly at her for a few seconds before answering. "I sent out a few calls. Waiting to hear back."

She slumped down in the other seat and laid her head back. Avoiding the bed had exhausted her, body and mind. She was halfway between sleep and awake when Grayson's quiet voice pulled her back.

"Stacy's twelve." He cleared his throat. "Our parents died in a shuttle crash when she was three, so it was left to me to raise her. Though if you ask me, she took more care of me than I ever did of her. Even in the wheelchair."

"Wheelchair?"

Grayson swung his head to look at her, like he hadn't really been aware she was listening. "She was in the same shuttle. She didn't die, but her spine was severely damaged."

"That's terrible."

His eyes shone. Blinking a little too quickly, he turned back to stare at the communication console. "It gets worse," he murmured.

"How so?" Jenna asked.

He stared at the screen as if he could will a response to pop up with the force of his gaze. "Hm?"

"How does it get worse?"

His green eyes turned to her once more and lingered, searching her. Then he shrugged, like a man resigning himself to some terrible fate. "I guess you already know my darkest secret. You might as well know why."

He licked his lips and swallowed like it was a chore. "A year ago she started having complications. At first it was just terrible pain, which was bad enough. But then her appendix failed. Then her kidneys. Organ after organ."

Tears built up in her eyes and spilled over at the anguish in his voice. "But they can fix all that, right?"

"Only so many times. And it's just going to keep happening."

"I'm sorry." Jenna placed her hand gently on his and squeezed. She may have been angry with him, but she wasn't heartless.

"There's hope, though." A broken smile flashed across his face. "My grandmother found a doctor who can regenerate Stacy's damaged spine, give her her whole life back. It won't just save her life, she'd be able to walk again. She could do whatever she wanted, without me weighing her down."

"That's great," Jenna said, but he didn't confirm it. "Isn't it?"

"He's in Japan."

She suddenly understood everything. The stupid, dangerous transport job – that was probably also very lucrative. Grayson, who didn't seem like the criminal sort, breaking the only law every nation agreed upon.

Healthcare in America was free to every citizen – but only if the treatment was fully approved, which sometimes took decades. Desperate people often went to other countries with less strict medical approval processes for radical, life-saving treatments. But it was expensive. And Japan was the worst. It would cost an American more than most people would ever have just to get in to the country.

"I'd been rejected for every loan and grant I could find. A buddy of mine knew I needed lots of cash and he heard about this job. I turned it down the first time. But then Stacy's liver failed and her heart fell to fifty percent capacity. The doctors gave her three months, at best."

"Oh." It wasn't eloquent, but that one little word conveyed everything. She couldn't say she would have done any different if it were Jamie or Janice and she had no way of raising the cash. Carrying xenobacteria to Earth may have been dangerous, but who wouldn't risk the world for the one person they loved the most?

He rubbed his hands vigorously over his face. "How’d this get so messed up? This is why I didn't want you to come with me; I didn't want to get anybody else in trouble."

"So why did you?"

"I don't know." He gestured fiercely at her. "You were standing there, so sexy with grease smeared all over the place. And so full of despair. I was risking the world so that my sister might live to her next Christmas; how could I deny you when all you wanted was to spend the holiday with yours? I even tried to discourage you with that ridiculous fare, but I guess I underestimated your conviction."

All Jenna got out of that explanation was one word. Sexy?

Silence fell between them.

“I see,” Jenna finally said and turned to gaze at the thousands of unmoving stars out of the ship’s front viewpane.

Chapter 8

Jenna woke up in the bed. She had just enough time to wonder how she got there before a tinny clanging sounded from the galley. Stretching her arms over her head, she walked towards the noise. Her eyes squinted against the harsh light.

"Ah!" Grayson called out in surprise. "Not yet, not yet! Turn around."

"Grayson," Jenna began. She wasn't in the mood for more secrets.

He rushed to her, placed his strong hands on her shoulders, and gently spun her. "Please, Jenna. Just one minute. I'm almost done."

She sighed in surrender and leaned against the door frame. "How'd I get in the bed?"

"I'm sorry, I know you were avoiding it."

He noticed?

"But you passed out in the cockpit and you looked like you might break your neck if you slept there much longer. So I moved you."