Okay, she’d hated him.
He’d shown up to work in a pair of ragged jeans with a T-shirt and a flippant attitude that had set off her ire immediately. She took her job seriously, while Ace took few things seriously—or at least it had seemed like that in the beginning.
It wasn’t until she’d seen him in action that she’d developed some respect for his abilities and learned that he really did take his job with the same grave responsibility as the rest of them.
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Since he came from aHollywood family, he was a consummate actor. But that too left her wondering what the real Ace Krux was like. How much of even this charming man eating with her was real and how much of it was an act?
He paused while cutting his steak and looked at her. “Why do I have the sudden feeling that I’m some lab experiment gone wrong and you’re the scientist trying to figure out why?”
“You’re perceptive. Not about being an experiment. I was just wondering howa guy like you ends up working for the government.”
He wiped his mouth before taking a drink of his beer.“In a nutshell, Joe.”
That wasn’t what she was expecting to hear. “Joe?”
“Yeah.We went to college together out inCalifornia . I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, other than anything that didn’t haveHollywood in it. I didn’t even know what to major in. When I started my second year, Joe was my roommate, and even though he was only nineteen, he knew exactly what he wanted. While the rest of us went out drinking and partying all the time, he stayed in the room studying.”
“That sounds like Joe to me.”
“Yeah.One night, I actually got him totally bombed out of his mind and found out a lot about him. He wasn’t there for aneducation, he was there because he wanted to make a difference. He wanted his life to matter to people and he could care less if he made any money so long as he could help the people who needed it. He was the most driven human being I’d ever met, and it was the first time in my life that I ever really respected anyone.”
Rhea agreed. Joe was a hard man not to respect. “I still can’t understand why a guy like you wanted to save the world. You just don’t strike me as an altruist.”
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He snorted at that. “You want to know the real truth of why I’m here?”
She nodded.
“While we were roommates, I found out that Joe had never been to DC before and that one of the things he wanted most was to see the Smithsonian before he died. It was the same year that they were doing the Star Trek exhibit, which I thought would be cool to see since one of the costumes they had on display was one my mother had worn when she played some alien princess out to seduce Kirk.”
In spite of herself, she was intrigued that she had probably seen that episode a dozen times in her life without ever guessing that one of the women after Kirk would have a son who would one day end up working with her. “Your mother was in a Star Trek episode?”
“Oh, yeah.She made tons of appearances in shows and movies before she married my dad and started having us.”
Rhea hated to admit it, but she was fascinated by Ace’s past. He’d had quite a childhood out inHollywood . “Given that, I can see why you wanted to go, but it was really nice of you to take Joe along.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, I admired him and it wouldn’t have been half as much fun alone.So the two of us were there in the Smith along with several hundred other people, including families with small children and babies in strollers, when this voice came over the intercom telling us that there was a bomb threat and that the entire building had to be evacuated immediately.”
Rhea saw red at that. It was just that kind of needless panic and fear that she hated.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life,” Ace confessed.
“You were scared and you admit it?”
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