She looked at Mason’s pale face. ‘You’re lucky there was someone there to help you today.’ She wasn’t about to lecture him—the police would probably talk to him at some point—but she wanted him to understand how much danger he’d actually been in.
‘Who was the guy?’ asked Mason.
‘He’s called Austin Mitchell. He’s one of the astronaut candidates training at WSSA.’
‘I was rescued by an astronaut? How cool is that?’
Corrine sighed. It was a typical teenage response. Of course he would think it was cool that an astronaut had rescued him. He wouldn’t give any consideration to the fact that coming into a restricted area with a jet bike could actually have injured some of the divers in the water. If Austin, or any of the others, had come up at just the wrong moment...
She couldn’t even think about it. These guys had worked so hard for their places on the training programme. Fate had already dealt them one tough card. They didn’t need any others.
Austin stuck his head in the back of the ambulance. ‘Corrine, are you going with the ambulance?’
She nodded and dug in her pocket for her car keys. ‘What’s the name of the trauma centre?’
The paramedic looked up. ‘It’s the Flynn and Grier Memorial Centre.’
She tossed her keys towards Austin. ‘Could you get someone to take my car back to the base?’
His gaze was steady. ‘Why don’t I just follow you to the trauma centre then take you home?’
Her stomach gave a little flip. She wasn’t sure exactly where they stood. She hadn’t wanted to presume he would do that for her. And there was something about the way he said those words. Although they were very safe and innocuous it almost seemed as if she were getting into trouble.
‘Thanks,’ she answered brightly, then turned back to her patient.
‘That guy’s an astronaut?’ Mason had that schoolboy-admiration look in his eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Corrine sharply. ‘And you could have taken his head off, or any one of my other astronaut candidates today. It wasn’t your finest move.’
Mason baulked as the paramedic gave her a smile and pulled an oxygen mask over Mason’s face. The doors slammed shut behind them and the ambulance started the bumpy journey back to the main road.
Corrine sighed and sat back to monitor her patient. This was going to be a long day.
* * *
Austin swallowed as he watched the ambulance disappear up the road ahead of them. Abe Rosen appeared at his side with a bottle of water. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You did good. One look at that arm nearly had me gagging. Don’t know how I’ll do when it comes to the first-aid stuff.’
Austin took a welcome slug of the water. Abe was a fellow candidate, but an engineer. He’d been pretty quiet since they’d started training.
Austin looked at him. ‘Haven’t you got two kids? I thought you would be used to blood and guts and all sorts.’
Abe laughed and shuddered. ‘I tend to close my eyes when anything involves body fluids.’ He wagged his finger. ‘I’ll have you know that my claim to fame is that I can change a diaper with my eyes closed.’
‘You’re really that bad?’ He was amazed. He’d just thought all these things went hand in hand with parenthood.
Abe nodded as he walked alongside. ‘Oh, yeah. My own personal gag reflex is the smell of regurgitated baby milk. It’s even worse when you don’t know they’ve barfed on you and you get a little waft a few hours later and realise it’s been on your back the whole time.’
Austin laughed. Abe hadn’t said too much before this. But Austin had his own theory about that. ‘So, what do your wife and kids think about you going into space?’
Abe hesitated. ‘Let’s just say she’s anxious that I get back.’
Austin bit his lip. They didn’t talk much about the dangers. Even though these were drummed into them at every briefing, every test flight and highlighted in every manual—the fact there might be a tiny possibility that you wouldn’t come back didn’t really come into the general conversation.
They focused on the positives. How to overcome any problems they might encounter in space. How to plan for any possibility. Even the unlikely Apollo Thirteen scenario, where you had to think about every tiny piece of equipment available on the space or command module and how it could be used to get you back home.
‘What about the kids?’
Abe shrugged. ‘They think it’s great. Daddy is going into space. Brody just asked me if I’d meet his favourite cartoon character. It’s not real to them. Daddy always worked in a lab before. This is much more exciting.’
‘You couldn’t have done all this before you got married and had kids?’
Abe gave him a thoughtful glance. It was almost as if he could see exactly where Austin’s train of thought was going.
He nodded. ‘Maybe—in an ideal world. But...’ he held his hands up towards space ‘...before I met Anne...once I got into space I would have wanted to stay there. The space station wouldn’t have been enough. I would have been the guy who was signing up for the one-way mission to Mars. Now, I have something to come home to. Anne and the kids ground me. They make me realise that what I do is just a tiny part of things.’
He nudged Austin. ‘Believe it or not, the world doesn’t revolve around you and me. It’ll keep on turning whether we’re here or not.’
Austin nodded. His mind was swimming. He didn’t even want to acknowledge the kind of things that were floating around in there. Because those kinds of thoughts weren’t him. They never had been.
‘Maybe you need someone to ground you too.’
It was like a whole snow dump over his head. It didn’t matter that he might be a little cold anyway, walking along the side of the lake in his wetsuit. A shiver worked its way down his spine. His whole head was playing games with him.
Right now, if he closed his eyes for a second he could see Corrine, sitting in her shorts, on her rocker on the porch of that yellow clapboard house. That was what made him feel grounded right now. And he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Trouble was, he was starting to get a little of what Abe said. The world didn’t revolve around him. And when you’d spent most of your life as a selfish so-and-so it was a bit of an adjustment.
His friends probably wouldn’t call him selfish. He’d do anyone a good turn. They would probably call him single-minded.
But it wasn’t just Corrine on his brain. He’d had another call from the Head of Research at the university. They still wanted him. But the reality was they couldn’t wait for him. The research needed to be started in the next year. He would still be completing his astronaut training. Then, if he was successful, he’d have to wait his turn to be scheduled for a mission. Chances were he’d spend the next ten years of his life here at WSSA—just as he’d planned.
The timing drove him crazy. The cancer research needed to be done now. Not in ten years’ time. He got that. He really did.
But the Corrine stuff? It was driving him even more crazy.
It wasn’t just the insane chemistry and attraction. It wasn’t just the sex. It was all the distracting stuff around about that.
He’d never met a woman who’d captured his attention like Corrine. He’d never actually been with a woman that he wanted to spend every single day with. A few dates a week had been fine. Sometimes even too much. But Corrine was different. Work kept that apart. And for the first time in his life he actually resented that a little.
Something had changed in him. Something had altered. It was as if the earth’s gravitational pull had just tilted a little. And it had put him on a collision course with her.
He’d had women declare that they loved him before. He’d had women weep and wail when he’d finished with them. But everything about Corrine was different.
She kept him guessing. He didn’t even know if she really liked him.
He’d had to control the spurt of rage that he’d felt when she’d revealed an ex had hurt her in the past. If he ever found out who that was...he didn’t want to be responsible for his actions.
And he wouldn’t even care that those actions would probably get him thrown off this programme.
That was it. That was what was scaring him so much. The strength of his emotions for Corrine. It was making him think thoughts like that.
Then there was the fact that Corrine had just treated him as if he were some casual passer-by.
There. That was what stung the most today. It was almost as if she hadn’t even considered the fact he might drive her car and pick her up. He couldn’t work out if she was just distracted by doing her job, or she was trying to keep a professional distance between them. Or if she really didn’t care at all.
It surprised him how much that burned.
Abe touched his arm and nodded in the direction of the ambulance. ‘Guess you’d better go and get our doc.’
Austin tried to keep his voice level. ‘I guess I’d better.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘YOU’VE BEEN TRANSFERRED over to me.’
‘What? Why?’ Austin couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Blair King was sitting behind the desk, tapping away on his computer. The printer beside him whirred and Blair pulled out a multi-coloured chart.
‘Here’s your training programme.’
Just what he needed. Another training programme. He glanced down at it. ‘Why have I been transferred over to you?’