Текст книги "Charming The Highlander"

Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Lost me or my brain?” she asked.

He suddenly set her away with a scowl. “You,” he snapped.

Grace sighed and shook her head. “Let’s be honest now, Jonathan. We have a mutual respect for each other’s talents, and there’s friendship between us, but there’s never been any romance.”

“There could be,” he growled, his posture defensive. “If you come home to Virginia and give us a chance.”

“I am home, Jonathan,” she softly told him. “And…and I think I’m staying this time.”

He reached out to pull her back into his arms, but Grace sidestepped him and walked out of the bedroom.

“You can’t mean to give it all up,” he entreated, following her. “Grace. We’re right on the verge of making a breakthrough that will have people living on the moon in less than ten years.”

She shut down Jonathan’s computer and slid it back into his briefcase. “No, we’re not,” she said, looking up. “Because just as soon as I get my computer rebooted, I’m dumping the experiment. You’ll be back to square one then, and I have no intention of continuing this work. Not if it can be used as a weapon.”

“Dammit, Grace. You can’t mean to just walk away from your life’s work.” He waved an angry hand in the air. “You can’t expect science to come to a screeching halt simply because you have a conscience. If every scientist did that, we’d still be living in caves. You can’t stop progress, Grace.”

“No,” she agreed, nodding. “But I can stop this. I will not be a party to building a weapon of mass destruction.”

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, staring at her for several seconds before he let out a tired sigh.

“Not if you can’t unscramble Podly’s signal,” he said, sounding defeated.

He walked to the one clear window in the room. “Do you know these mountains, Grace?” he asked, looking toward TarStone Mountain. “Can you find where you crashed, and is there a chance your disks survived this weather?”

“Yes, I can find it. And yes, they’re in a waterproof case. But it could take forever to reach the crash site, Jonathan. The weather’s bad, and the terrain is rugged.”

He turned to her. “Does this town have any equipment we could use? Snowmobiles, maybe? Something that can travel in these conditions?”

Grey’s snowcat immediately came to mind, but Grace would not even consider asking his assistance.

Not after the scenes she’d just endured, first at his house and then at the Bigelows’. Ellen had actually had tears in her eyes when Grace had told her that she hadn’t been able to get any help for their trees.

“Well?” Jonathan asked, walking back to her.

“Nothing that I can think of. Most of the people have snowmobiles, I guess, but the power’s gone out,”

she said, waving at the darkened, silent room around them. “They’re not going to want to head into the mountains. They have to stay close to home to keep watch over their fires, their neighbors, and their property.”

He gave her a laconic grin. “Not even for twenty thousand dollars? You don’t think somebody in this rundown town could use that kind of money?”

She could only stare at Jonathan. “You could buy several snowmobiles with twenty thousand dollars,”

she said finally. “Why not just do that?”

“We don’t have that kind of time. Don’t you understand? Our entire future is sitting up on that mountain.”

“Where it will have to stay until this storm is over.”

“But we need those disks now. AeroSaqii’s men are probably already here in Pine Creek.”

“I’m just as frustrated as you are, Jonathan, that the transmission won’t download properly. But those men are having to deal with the same weather we are. And I doubt they’re here. Ellen Bigelow told me that the main road coming up from Greenville will likely close soon, and that’s the only way into Pine Creek. Several trees have fallen, pulling miles of power lines with them. That should buy us some time.”

Jonathan slapped the table in frustration, then picked up his briefcase and stormed into the living room.

Grace fed Baby, burped him, changed him, and set him back down to sleep in his cradle by the fire. He was tuckered out, sound asleep before his head even hit the mattress. Ellen and John must have spent the entire time playing with him.

After making sure Baby was covered up warmly, Grace went about preparing her home for the long winter siege ahead. While she worked, Jonathan sat in the overstuffed chair in the living room and alternated between talking on the phone—which had somehow escaped the wrath of the ice—and working on his computer.

Grace was glad he was occupied elsewhere and no longer bothering her. She drained what water was left in the holding tank into several jugs and set them on the counter to reserve for drinking. She filled pots with broken icicles she chopped from the eaves and put them on the stove to melt. She dug out the kerosene lamps that had been around since before she was born, and it was just as she placed them on the sideboard that she found Mary.

The Oreo cookie tin was sitting in the middle of the sideboard. Grace picked it up. There were two small dents in the front of the can, and she slowly spanned her fingers over them. They were placed exactly where two large, strong thumbs would have gripped the tin tightly in grief.

Michael must have slipped out of the house after following her to the Bigelows’ in his truck and brought Mary back here. Michael had left the house while Grace had a quick lunch with Ellen and John before she returned home with Baby.

Grace hugged the tin to her chest, glad to have her sister back and sad beyond words for Michael. It must have been hard for him to have spent the last five months wondering where Mary was and if she would return and the last twenty-four hours coming to terms with the fact that he would never see her again.

Grace wiped at the tears that kept leaking from her eyes. It seemed she cried at the drop of a hat these days.

“Oh, Mare. What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I love Baby. I can’t just give him away.”

She didn’t get an answer. Nor did she wonder about the sudden sensation of warmth pushing against her chest. She simply hugged the tin more fiercely against her aching heart.

“The fire’s going out,” Jonathan said, walking into the kitchen. He stopped suddenly, a look of annoyance hardening his features.

“You’re still talking to her, I see,” he said, nodding at the tin in her arms. He took a step closer. “Are you crying?”

She set the tin back on the table and wiped her tears completely away with the palms of her hands. “I do that sometimes, Jonathan. When people lose someone they love, they grieve.”

His face flushed to a dull red, and he seemed at a loss for words. He walked out of the kitchen, then turned around and came back. “The fire. It’s going out, and I don’t see any more wood in the box. Do you have some?”

“It’s in the attached barn, just outside the door.”

He stood there looking at her. “Should I get it?” he asked, finally realizing that she had no intention of doing it herself.

“You’ll probably want to fill the woodbox,” she told him, returning to her chores. “It burns better if it’s warm.”

She began going through the refrigerator to make room for a pot of icicles to keep cold all of the food that had magically multiplied while she was gone. The modern machine was being demoted to an old-fashioned icebox.

While she worked, she thought about her promise to Mary, Michael’s remarkable story, Grey’s offer to raise Baby, and the monumental step she had taken this afternoon in the summit house. She didn’t know if it had been a step backward or forward, but it had certainly changed the direction of her life.

No matter how mad she was at him now, Grace knew in her heart that she would never leave Greylen MacKeage. Not after what had happened this afternoon on the top of TarStone Mountain. Pine Creek was her home now, and she was standing firmly in the center between two warring men. Possibly three, if she counted Jonathan, who would keep pulling with all his might to get her back to Virginia.

Grace felt a twinge between her legs when she knelt down to move the food on the bottom shelf of the fridge. She was still tender from their lovemaking, but it was a warm, welcome kind of tenderness. It reminded her of their time together. The nice time, anyway.

The only thing that nagged at her conscience was the fact that they hadn’t used protection. A sixteen-year-old knew enough to carry a condom in her purse, but Grace had never even purchased such a thing. She hadn’t needed to. She was waiting for marriage.

So why hadn’t she waited?

It was simple, really, once she thought about it. She hadn’t been saving herself for marriage; she’d been waiting to meet a man she could love for the rest of her life.

And she had, if he ever crawled out of his cave—or, rather, his castle—long enough to see the problem from her point of view.

She couldn’t commit herself to a man who wanted her to live a lie by the next twenty years. Grey had sorely disappointed her by even suggesting such a thing.

Grace conveniently dismissed the fact that she had been seriously considering that very same lie herself.

Because, in all fairness to her principles, even though it would be so easy simply to run away with Baby and never see any of them again, her promise to Mary was still firmly in place in her heart.

It was such a mess. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. How would she feel if, say in three years from now, Michael MacBain took a wife and began a new life for himself? And they had children? Where would that leave Baby? How could she walk up to Michael ten or fifteen years from now and say, “Oh, by the way, I’d like to introduce you to your son”?

And how could she give Baby up now, after what Michael had told her today? Although Grace was starting to suspect that a lightning strike was more the culprit than insanity. Michael seemed perfectly normal to her in every other way, if she overlooked this little war he was waging with the MacKeages.

Grace stopped what she was doing and stared at the inside of the fridge. There was something nagging at her. Something she should realize. Something about the story Callum had told her concerning Maura.

Grace sat down on the floor with a large plate of brownies in her lap. That was it. The story. His engagement to Maura had taken place when Grey was only twenty-eight years old. That had to be at least six or seven years ago. And Michael claimed he had been living in this time only four years.

Which meant the MacKeages had known Michael before his supposed journey.

And that meant that the key to this whole problem lay with them. They could tell her about Michael’s past and would know if he was sane or not. If Michael had been fine seven years ago, the MacKeages would be able to tell her that.

Did she want to know? If there was a perfectly logical explanation for why Michael thought he had traveled through time, a near-death experience or something, did she really want to know he was sane?

Because then she would have to keep her promise to Mary.

She would have to give up Baby.

Grace unwrapped the brownies and stuffed one into her mouth. Her damn principles suddenly reared their ugly heads again. She would have to ask the MacKeages. Or the priest. Father Daar wouldn’t dare lie to her about something so important. And because he was a priest, if she told him Baby belonged to Michael MacBain, he’d have to keep her confidence, wouldn’t he? If it turned out there had never been a terrible storm, Father Daar still couldn’t tell her secret.

Grace stuffed the second brownie into her mouth and took another one before she stood and set the plate on the table. It was decided, then. She would speak to Father Daar the first chance she got him alone.

“Grace,” Jonathan said, walking through the door with an armful of wood.

“What?” she asked around a mouth full of brownie.

He frowned at her. She wiped her mouth, realized she was covered in crumbs, and wiped the front of her sweatshirt. “What?” she repeated.

“Someone’s here.” He walked to the porch door and looked out. “There are lights coming up your driveway.”

She looked out the window over the sink and groaned. Speak of the devil. The snowcat was slowly growling its way over the ice, grinding it up like Parmesan cheese. It stopped right behind her truck, and Grey and Morgan climbed out.

Jonathan’s eyes widened in surprise. “Well, hell. That’s a snowcat. That can easily take us into the mountains.”

“Now, Jonathan,” she said, walking over to him.

She didn’t get a chance to finish. Firewood still in his arms, he was out the door and standing on the porch. And before she could warn him not to even try, he had stuck out his hand to introduce himself.

“Jonathan Stanhope,” he said. “That your snowcat?”

“It is,” Grey answered, looking first at Jonathan’s outstretched hand and then over to her.

Grace decided to use Grey’s trick and attempted to give him an unreadable look. He merely lifted a brow at her, took Jonathan’s hand, and shook it.

“Greylen MacKeage,” he said.

“MacKeage.” Jonathan shifted the wood in his arms. “I want to rent you and your snowcat for a job I need done.”

“It’s not for hire. And neither am I,” Grey said, dismissing the request. He walked past Jonathan and into the house. Grace stepped out of the way so she wouldn’t be run over. She moved again when Morgan followed. She looked back out to the porch and saw Jonathan just standing there, stunned into stillness.

She moved once more when Jonathan suddenly dropped the wood on the porch and went running past her after Grey.

“I don’t think you understand,” Jonathan said. “I’m willing to pay you whatever you want. I need that machine.”

“Who the hell are you?” Grey asked.

Jonathan stopped his approach and straightened himself to his full height. “I’m Jonathan Stanhope,” he repeated. He nodded at Grace. “I’m Grace’s boss.”

Grey looked at her. And damn, he was playing that trick with his eyes again. For the life of her, she could not tell what he was thinking.

Morgan struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp on the table, flooding the room with soft yellow light.

He stole a brownie off the plate and leaned against the table, crossed his legs at the ankles, and stared at Jonathan as he chewed.

“I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars for the use of that machine for one day. That should put a good chunk of its cost back in your pocket,” her boss said.

Grace wanted to shake her head in dismay. Jonathan had no idea what he was doing.

Grey never even looked at him. He just kept staring at her.

“Thirty thousand,” Jonathan said then.

“It’s not for hire,” Grey repeated, still not looking at him. “Pack some things, Grace. You’re coming to Gu Bràth until the power comes back on.”

“She can’t,” Jonathan said. He moved to stand between them so that Grey would have to look at him. “I need her for work.” He waved his hand to encompass the house. “And she seems quite comfortable here.”

“What work would that be?” Grey asked, finally giving the man his attention.

Jonathan squared his shoulders. She couldn’t see his face because his back was to her, but Grace would bet a penny he was trying to use his winning, businessman-to-businessman smile on Grey. She darted a peek at Morgan. He was eating another brownie, amusement lighting his face. He stopped chewing, looked over, and winked at her.

Grace blinked. Wasn’t he supposed to be mad at her?

“It seems Grace was in a plane crash a few days ago, up in the mountains,” Jonathan told Grey. “There’s important equipment still up there, and I need to get it back as soon as possible. I’ll give you forty thousand dollars to help me find it.”

“We gathered everything we saw, lass,” Morgan said around a mouthful of brownie, frowning. “What is it you’re missing?”

“A small black case containing computer disks,” she told Morgan. “I remember taking a blank disk out of it to pack in my bag, but I must have set the case on the snow instead of back in the suitcase. It might have slipped under the fuselage.”

Apparently not caring one whit about her disks, Grey turned and walked into the living room. Stunned yet again, Jonathan pivoted and looked at her. Grace shrugged her shoulders. Morgan grabbed another brownie and followed Grey.

“Dammit, Grace. Do something,” Jonathan hissed. “We need that snowcat.”

Grey returned from the living room with Baby in his arms. Morgan was carrying Baby’s cradle. Grace moved around Jonathan to intercept them.

“I’m not going to Gu Bràth,” she told Grey in a whisper, standing on her toes and grabbing his arm. “I don’t want to.”

“Ah, lass,” Morgan said from right behind her. “We’re sorry we frightened you earlier. We promise to be civil this time.”

“You can’t stay here,” Grey said, reaching out and running a finger over her cheek, the act so privately familiar to her yet so outwardly possessive—for Jonathan’s sake, she supposed. “You don’t have water without electricity to run the well pump,” he continued, his eyes flaring with awareness. “And the hearth isn’t big enough to heat the downstairs.”

“You don’t have water, either.”

“We do. We have generators enough to run the entire resort if need be,” he told her. He shifted Baby in his arms, tucking the sleeping child’s head under his chin. “And you have a ski lift to save.”

She let go of his arm, walked to the sink, and turned to face him. By God, she would stand her ground on this issue. “No, I don’t. Not unless you set up your snow-making equipment in Michael’s field.”

“That damn equipment will get set up,” he said.

She darted a look at Morgan, then back at Grey. “By whom?”

“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” he told her. “Now, are you content to live in what you’re wearing, or do you want to pack some things?

“But…”

“Believe me, lass,” Morgan interjected. “You’re going to Gu Bràth, and it’s a lot easier if you just come along peacefully.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Jonathan suddenly said. “You can’t force Grace out of her home.”

Grey gave her boss a look that clearly said Jonathan was welcome to try and stop him. Jonathan, being the intelligent man that he was, turned to Grace for help.

“My boss comes with me,” Grace said, conceding defeat. Besides, Father Daar was at Gu Bràth, and she wanted to talk to him.

“He can stay in the resort hotel,” Grey said.

“I need to be with Grace,” Jonathan foolishly said, pushing the issue. “If you’ve got electricity, then we can use our computers. But we need to find those disks before they’re ruined.”

“I’ll get your damn disks,” Grey told him. “Just as soon as I’m free to.”

“But it can’t wait. There might be other people already here, trying to steal them from us. We need to go now.”

Grace tensed when she saw Grey’s eyes suddenly narrow to sharp slits of green ice. “Are you saying there are men here wanting something from Grace?” Grey asked in a whisper-soft voice.

Apparently reading the threat in Grey’s eyes, Jonathan nodded hesitantly. “There’s a problem with the satellite we sent up, and Grace is the only one here who can retrieve the data without destroying them.”

“Then those disks will be no good to these other men.”

Grace saw Jonathan swallow hard, obviously hoping to push his heart back down in his chest. She was getting a bit alarmed herself, seeing Grey standing so still, hearing the steel in his voice.

“They’ll…ah, they want the disks, but they also want Grace,” Jonathan whispered, swallowing again, just before taking a quick step back from the look that came into Grey’s eyes.

Grey turned that look on her. It was all Grace could do to keep from backing up herself. But then, she had the counter to hold her up. Never in her life had she witnessed such fierce foreboding.

And it dawned on her then that the raging scene at Gu Bràth had been nothing close to what Greylen MacKeage was capable of. Even his anger after the plane crash was nothing compared with the lethal rage she could feel radiating out of every pore of his body, filling the room with enough tension that even the air seemed to withdraw.

And then Grace remembered to breathe.

“Pack up,” Grey snapped. “I’m putting you in that snowcat in five minutes.”

Baby stirred in his arms, and Grey looked down at the child. Grace watched with fascination as Grey forced himself back under control. When he looked at her his eyes were still hard as flint, and his complexion had dulled only slightly, but his voice, when he spoke, was clearly controlled.

“This is important to you?” he asked, again running his finger possessively over her cheek. “These data?”

She nodded. “It could alter the future for mankind. Those data could mean putting people on the moon or on Mars to live,” she said, deciding she didn’t quite dare mention the possibility if it being used as a weapon. Grey was mad enough as it was.

“Really, lass?” Morgan asked. “You’re thinking men can travel to the moon?”

“And women,” she said, just to tease him.

His face reddened with embarrassment. “I meant that.”

“I know,” Grace said, patting his arm on the way to her bedroom. “I’ll just be a minute. I need to get some things together.” She stopped and looked around the kitchen.

“Will you put Mary in Baby’s crib, Morgan?” she asked, again enjoying first his surprise at seeing the tin, then his obvious reluctance to touch it. But bless the man, he gingerly picked up Mary and carefully set her in the crib. Now it was the crib he didn’t want to pick up.

Grace looked around the silent house. “I hate to leave this place unattended during this storm.”

“We’ll keep an eye on it for you,” Grey assured her, his voice nearly back to normal, his smile tight.

“Oh, the animals. I can’t leave them.”

“Ya can leave that damn goat,” Morgan said, rubbing his backside.

“I’ll have Callum fetch them,” Grey told her. “We can put them in our barn with the horses.”

“You have horses?” Grace asked, getting excited, remembering Ian’s claim that his horse weighed more than a thousand pounds. They must be draft animals. “For sleigh rides?”

“They are not plow horses!” Morgan all but shouted, getting red in the face again. “What is it with you people around here? You think just because they’re big, they must pull?”

“Well, what else would a ski lodge want with horses?” she asked, wondering at his reaction.

“They’re noble beasts, and they’re pets now,” he told her, picking up the cradle and walking out the door.

Morgan was like the Maine weather; wait five minutes, and he changed. He was either scolding her or winking at her, and she still didn’t know which one amused her more. Grace chuckled out loud as she walked into her room but sobered the second she was out of sight of the men.

Whew. Her insides were still shaking from Grey’s not-so-subtle display of alpha-male possession. And the sad part was, Jonathan didn’t seem to realize just how close he’d come to being flattened. It was as if all of Jonathan’s manly instincts had gotten swallowed up by the sophisticated civilization he’d been living in all his life.

Somewhere along the line, Jonathan’s male traits had been tamed, if not completely repressed, by society. How else could two men—Jonathan and Grey—be so different, being about the same age, living on the same planet, but becoming such contradictions to each other?

Jonathan had been only worried about her safety.

Grey had turned lethally dangerous at the thought of men wanting to kidnap her.

Which was why Grace’s own instincts told her that Gu Bràth was a much better choice than Virginia right now. Grey would protect her and Baby with his life if need be. And what woman wouldn’t want that kind of commitment from the man she loved?

It was exactly how things should be when two people intended to spend the rest of their lives together.

Chapter Sixteen

Daar paced the length of the north tower of Gu Bràth, stopping to look toward where TarStone Mountain stood behind low-cast, drizzle-soaked clouds. The rain would start again soon; he could all but smell it coming. This storm, it seemed, was not through raising its havoc yet.

He was on vigil again, trying to read the energy coming from the mountain tonight in waves, first with white potent authority, then with black, menacing acrimony. He could not figure out what it meant. He knew only that the two souls now loving and arguing and feeling their way cautiously toward each other were in the path of what was humming through the forest.

Daar sighed and returned to his pacing, the thump of his cane adding to the sounds of a forest straining under the weight of building ice. He had been wracking his tired old brain since he’d met her, trying to discover who Grace’s guardian had been for the first thirty years of her life. Grey would be taking over that task now, but somebody had had that charge before him.

Daar suspected it was Mary. And he also suspected that even though dead, she had not yet relinquished her duty to Grey.

Grey had already appointed himself Grace’s guardian. After he’d dropped Grace and Baby and that Stanhope guy off at Gu Bràth, the warrior had pulled Daar aside for a few words, just before he’d left for MacBain’s Christmas tree farm. Grey had quietly but firmly warned Daar to stay away from Grace Sutter.

Daar had been amused by Grey’s sudden forthrightness. It confirmed what he’d always suspected: Greylen MacKeage was aware that the priest he’d been supporting these last four years was also the person responsible for the storm that had carried him forward in time.

Well, Grey’s intelligence was never in question. But gaining the warrior’s trust would be near impossible now that Grey felt protective of Grace.

Not that Grey ever did trust him, Daar thought with a self-pitying sigh. Wasn’t that the very reason he lived in a cabin two miles away instead of at Gu Bràth? The warrior wished to keep Daar close in order to keep an eye on him, but he had no intention of living under the same roof with someone he suspected had caused such a great upset to the natural world.

Daar knew MacBain was suspicious of him also. That was the reason the young warrior had taken his men to Nova Scotia just nine months after arriving in the twenty-first century. But when all his men had died, MacBain had found himself drawn to Pine Creek. Though he didn’t visit his old priest and mentor and only nodded his head whenever Daar met him in town, Michael was at least attempting to walk the precarious line between the two distinct worlds of his life.

Daar was actually proud of Michael and had been mightily happy when MacBain had taken up with Mary Sutter—and mightily disappointed to learn she had died.

And Daar couldn’t figure out why that was. Why did Mary have to die at such a trying time in Grace’s life?

Could it be that Mary Sutter wasn’t a wizard at all but merely possessed the soul of a guardian? It wasn’t unheard of for angels to walk this earth for only a short time, to look after a charge and then suddenly disappear as mysteriously as they’d arrived.

But Grace herself, it seemed, was not willing to let her sister’s spirit completely depart. The poor grieving woman had been clinging to Mary’s ashes in an Oreo cookie tin. Grace carried that tin of ashes wherever she went. Daar had seen her place Mary on the mantel in the living room downstairs just this afternoon.

It was past time he had a little talk with Grace Sutter. More worried about the menace clouding the air tonight than Grey’s warning to stay away from Grace, Daar turned back toward the stairs that led down the north tower.

He took one last look at the stormy, unsettled sky and headed to the warm fire below. He was confident that the warrior would meet whatever challenge the stormy sky hinted at. After all, that’s why Daar had searched through all of time to find such a match for the woman who would have seven daughters.

Tomorrow, Greylen MacKeage would come face to face with his destiny—and then have to prove he was worthy of it.

Grace had not been successful in her plan to speak with Father Daar. She’d tried to talk with him twice, and each time he said he hadn’t the time. He was in the middle of a novena. She’d actually gone to the dictionary to look that up. And what she found was that a novena lasted nine days.

Which left her with Baby and the MacKeages. And

Jonathan. And the damn ski lift that she still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t blow up.

She didn’t even have any of them at the moment, except Baby, and he was busy sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Grey and Morgan were at Michael MacBain’s Christmas tree farm, setting up the equipment and hoping the temperature dropped low enough tonight to make snow. Callum had traveled back to her house to gather the hens, the goat, and the cats. She’d wished him luck when he left, and he had scowled the whole way to his truck. Ian was holed up in the ski lift shed, apparently not willing to share the house with her. Both Ian and Callum had refused to help Grey save Michael’s trees, and Grace suspected the only reason Morgan went was that he was worried that even Grey’s bitter determination would not be enough to get the job done.

Grace had caused a terrible upset in the MacKeage house by demanding they help Michael if they wanted her to help them. Ian had given her a black look when she and Baby had walked in three hours ago, and he had ignored Jonathan altogether.

And with Ian sulking in the ski lift shed, Grace couldn’t work on the lift until Grey returned. Not for all the sun in Florida would she face that angry old man alone.

Jonathan was in the dining room, back on his computer, probably trying to figure out what this little mess was going to cost him if they didn’t successfully retrieve Podly’s data. Grace couldn’t care less at the moment, and that lack of emotion toward something she’d worked so hard for surprised her. Several of the data collectors on Podly were hers. It was her chance to prove what she’d been saying all along, that ion propulsion was viable and at a reasonable cost.

But for some reason, she no longer cared if there were colonies on Mars within the decade. Sometime over the last several weeks, she’d stopped looking outward to space and turned her attention to what she had discovered to be the real challenge: living and loving and being content here on Earth.