And that was a sim based on top-notch equipment. Not an ageing destroyer that didn’t have half the fail-
safes and sensitive components the newer ships did. The Versatile was a basic starcruiser. Functional.
No frills. No—
He pulled up a secondary screen, his mind racing over the data. Somewhere, somewhere . . . there!
“We can manually override her slough filters!” He took his fingers off the pads just long enough to grab Winnie’s arm.
She looked at him, startled. Then her eyes grew wide in amazement. “Damn straight! Damn straight we can.”
He fed her some code strings. She segued them in, then threw the modified functions right back at him.
The first in a long row of alarm lights stopped blinking.
He tagged Lagronde’s terminal, sent her the data. A few seconds later her whoop of joy sounded over the wails of alarms just now beginning to recede.
An hour later, the containment field was lifted and a red-faced Admiral Wellinsky harrumphed through engineering and out again.
Lagronde stood with her arms folded in front of the main console. A detailed re-creation of the entire fiasco scrolled by. “Lucky as hell you came down here, Commander.”
Lucky as hell. But not for Wellinsky, who wanted to blame the Versatile for his project’s failure. But this time, he couldn’t. The slough didn’t rupture. The evidence the PRCU itself was flawed wasn’t destroyed. And Lagronde’s career, along with the careers of a few other competent, and equally as innocent, black shoes, wasn’t ruined. After all, who would dare find fault with the Wellinsky? Only the Mighty Macawley—
Who had no idea how he knew all that, but he did. Just as he knew he was standing in engineering, with Lagronde on his left and Winnie on his right, so close he could feel the heat of her body against his arm.
Winnie. He had to talk to Winnie. He grabbed her elbow, pulled her towards him as she shot him a startled glance.
“Ten minutes. Please.”
That made Lagronde turn and he knew why. It was probably the first time the Mighty Macawley had ever said “please” on this ship.
“With your permission, Chief.” Another first. “But Lieutenant Winn is mine. Until further notice.” Until all of the seven hells freeze over. And until the roof collapses on the Second Chance Saloon.
He propelled a protesting Briony Winn into the corridor. The small conference room at the end was empty. He guided her inside, locked the door.
“Sit.” He pointed to a gimballed chair at the end of the table.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.” A tired defiance played across her features. He knew his timing was horrendous. They were both exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally. And not only because of Wellinsky’s foolish experiment.
He had to make things right.
“I mind. Now sit.”
“Give me one good reason.”
He heard it in her voice. She was pissed, royally pissed at him.
He sucked in a deep breath. “My reason is that I’m going to get down on my knees and beg for your forgiveness. And that’s going to be damned awkward to do if you’re standing up.”
She sat, her eyes wide with surprise.
He knelt before her. “I’m an idiot. A moron. An unspeakable imbecile. I know you’re angry with me and I know you have a right to be. Even if I have no idea of exactly what I did.”
“You don’t know?”
Not completely. It was still only a sensation, a sickening sensation; much less than a memory. Still, he could make a stab at it. “I don’t know which of all the abysmally stupid things I’ve done tops the list.”
“Besides being ill-mannered, arrogant and insufferably rude?” She pointed her finger in his face.
“Berating and belittling every member of the crew? Then demanding we jump when you say ‘jump’, just because you’re the Mighty Macawley?”
He nodded. “Besides all that.”
She looked away from him. “I don’t like being reduced to a name to be crossed off a list.” Her voice was soft, laced with bitterness.
“This is about last night.”
“Yes. No!” She turned back to him suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. “It’s about your damned lists.
And that one list of suitably worthy women that a Mighty Macawley could spend time with, and still maintain his high standards.”
He reached for her hands. They were balled into small fists. She snatched them away.
“I don’t meet your high standards, do I? And you made damn sure I knew that, Raphael! You figured it all out from one short kiss.”
It wasn’t one short kiss. It was one of the most intense kisses he had ever experienced, packed into a very short period of time. It had scared the hell out of him, made him jump from the lumpy couch in his small quarters and turn his back on her.
And then, because she couldn’t see the agony on his face, say some extremely nasty, unkind things to a very young Briony Winn. Because he knew if he didn’t push her away then, he was never going to let her go. And that just might affect his perfectly orchestrated, Macawley-like soar to the top. His finely honed love-’em-and-leave-’em image. The facade he called his life. His former life.
“I didn’t mean what I said last night.”
She sat very still. Some of the anger seemed to drain out of her. Finally, she shrugged, but wouldn’t look at him, toyed with her academy ring instead. “It’s no big deal. You’re not the first guy to dump me.
Probably won’t be the last. I have this tendency to fall in – to pick the unsuitable.”
Fall in love. He heard her almost say it. He swallowed hard. Could you love me, Briony Winn? He hoped so. His knees were starting to hurt.
“I’m definitely unsuitable.” He reached again for her hands, grabbing hold of her before she could pull away. “An arrogant bastard. But I’m also very much in love with you.”
She raised her lashes. A small tear glistened in the corner of her eye. He felt as if an ion lance pierced his chest.
“That’s why I had to stop kissing you. And that’s why I said what I did. Because if I didn’t, I would’ve gotten down on my knees,” and he winced as he brought his left knee up, “and begged you to stay. To give me a chance. To let me love you.”
He rose – damn, that hurt! – and pulled her out of the chair. He held her hands against his chest and, when he was sure she wouldn’t back away, let them go, and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, Winnie. I want to spend the rest of my life telling you that.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. It heated his blood like no bottle of Pagan Gold ever could.
“I’ve no reason to believe you,” she said cautiously, but a haughty look crept into her eyes. “But then, I never thought you’d stand up to Wellinsky, either. I think there’s hope for you yet.”
There’s hope for you yet, Mac . A woman’s voice, sultry, yet now not much more than a fading whisper.
He lowered his face. “I’d like to try that kiss again, if you don’t mind, Lieutenant.”
She brushed her lips across his. “I think I’d like that, Commander.”
And this time the Mighty Macawley didn’t pull away when bolts of lightning arced across an imaginary sky, or waves crashed fiercely against an imaginary shore. Or a thousand imaginary stars exploded and vibrated in a little hip-bumping victory dance inside his heart. A dance accompanied by a jaunty piano tune, which haunted him at the oddest moments.
Like whenever anyone, other than Briony Winn Macawley, tried to fill the number-one spot on his list of things to do.