The Fiancée Fiasco by Alyssa Kress Page B

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    "Good." He took the card and slid it into a wallet he extracted from the back pocket of his white jeans. "And I'll take care of that." He reached for the boxed dress in its large department store bag.
    Roseanne handed it over. It was his dress, he could haul it around if he wanted.
    "I thought we might grab something here for lunch," Win told her, straightening from the jewelry counter. "After that, I'd like to show you the Johnson Space Center. It's one of the few truly unique tourist attractions we have here in Houston."
    Roseanne glanced up at him. He'd like to show her . Now why did he have to go and put it like that? It was impossible to refuse his offer without appearing churlish.
    And what good reason did Roseanne have for avoiding Carruthers' company anyway? Spending time with him was part of the deal, after all—a deal she, herself, had gone to great lengths to effect.
    "Something wrong?" Win asked as they moved into the mall's wide inner street.
    This earned him another keen look. Did he actually care if something were wrong? "No, the Space Center sounds fine." She'd keep to the deal. Do things with him in public. Even try looking like she was enjoying it. "Although rockets and all of that don't make much sense to me," she warned.
    His lips curved into one of his shy smiles. "I'll have to see what I can do to change that."
    Disarming. Literally. That's what his smile did to her. Took away her firepower, robbed her of weapons. How could you shoot at a man who looked as though he might bleed if the bullet connected? When Win smiled like that, it was hard to remember he was the cold-hearted bastard who'd put his young wife out on the street.
    All the same, the Johnson Space Center would not have been Roseanne's first pick for a place to spend a sunny afternoon. She hadn't been lying to Win. Science and technology didn't do a thing for her. She didn't experience a chill looking at space suits and rockets.
    At least, she'd never experienced such a chill until they got to the Space Center and Win stopped her in front of a gleaming Saturn rocket on outdoor display, then explained how it worked.
    "This baby has to reach twenty thousand miles an hour in order to break the earth's gravitational field." He took in the rocket with evident admiration. "That's about the speed of a bullet leaving a gun."
    Roseanne, too, gazed at the tons of sleekly sculpted metal. The speed of a bullet—that huge thing? Imagining it, she felt a little thrill go through her.
    "Does your company make rockets, Win?" she thought to ask.
    He gave a soft chuckle. "No. But we do make some small parts for rockets."
    She glanced over at him. There was a suspicious pride beneath this modest claim. "Small parts? How small?"
    "Very small."
    She smiled. "But important."
    Win raised one shoulder. "Well, it's true the rocket wouldn't get very far off the ground without them." He took a pencil out of his shirt pocket. "Think of trying to balance this in the palm of your hand, tip down. That's a rocket on the point of liftoff. No way to balance. Carruthers' Engineering makes the little box that tells the thing how to keep straight up and down, nice and steady, as it lifts into the air."
    "Incredible," Roseanne breathed, and to her surprise, it was.
    "The stars, outer space—they've always held a fascination for me." Win started to move down the outdoor path toward the next display. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut."
    Roseanne stepped along by his side. "But when you got older you got more interested in the science behind moving an astronaut into space."
    "That's right." He gave her a peculiar look. "How'd you know?"
    She shrugged. "An astronaut has to be firmly rooted in the practical, physical world. Thinking isn't as important as acting. You're a thinker, and your roots are in a few dozen worlds besides the mere physical."
    Win continued to look at her. "You seem to have made a close analysis of my character."
    Roseanne's gaze wandered away