Star Dust by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner Page A

week.
    “He’s going to go into space,” Lisa said, helpfully breaking into the moment.
    “I didn’t say that.” Kit shook his head. “I’m the back-up for the guy who’s going to go into space.”
    And how he must hate that. She smiled at the thought.
    Freddie broke the hug and turned around. “But the next one, the next mission, that’s when you’ll go right? Tell me about the rocket. Is it true what I read about the modifications to the control panel?”
    She glared at the back of her son’s head. “Where were you reading about the control panel?”
    “In Boy’s Life . But is it true?”
    “Well, you know, I didn’t read that article,” Kit said. Unease held his smile tight, a pause stretching as if he were searching for the next thing to say. “How about you tell me about it?”
    Freddie launched into a breathless summary, with Lisa assisting with revisions now and again. Clearly she’d read the piece too. Anne-Marie watched the recitation skeptically. Kit nodded along, his smile sticking, although he didn’t look quite easy. At least not as easy as he had when he was teasing her the other day.  
    “How was work?” her mother asked eventually, proving that even when it came to impressing the astronaut next door, there were limits to how much technical talk she could abide.
    “Oh, fine.”
    “Where do you work?” Kit asked.
    She looked up, feeling her cheeks heat. Something about him knowing, and wanting to know more, made feel self-conscious. “Uh, Lakeview Travel.”
    “You’re a travel agent?”
    “Well, I am now.”
    She needed a little more practice talking about work. His question was a perfectly reasonable one, and somehow it brought out the worst in her. Which fit: pretty much everything about him brought out the worst in her. Though that bit might be mutual—she hoped he at least felt guilty realizing he’d hit on a woman with children.
    “She’s decided to go to work since… you know,” her mother tacked on. The divorce was still incomprehensible to her mother. In the eighteen months since Anne-Marie had thrown Doug out, she hadn’t heard her mother use the d-word more than three times.
    Anne-Marie rubbed her brow, half to soothe the headache that was beginning to boil there and half to hide her face from Kit. “Yes. Well. Let’s say goodnight to the astronaut, kids. You can talk to him about the control panel later on.”
    “But we haven’t thrown the ball for Bucky!” Lisa whined.
    She looked down at the dog, who’d wandered over and lolled at her feet halfway through the control panel discussion.
    At the sound of his name, Bucky lifted his head. His tongue sprawled out and trailed on the ground.
    And the children wanted one.
    “Um, tomorrow maybe.”
    “It’ll have to be later this week, kids,” Kit said. Was that relief? “Tomorrow I’m off for the Cape.”
    “That’s in Florida,” her mother said.
    “I know that.” Anne-Marie was a travel agent, after all. She had a handle on geography. “I hope you have a good trip.” At least this meant she’d be spared him, and his voice and late-night conversation and his come-ons, for a few days. Maybe when he returned, she’d have figured out how to keep him in the detached, neighborly box in which he belonged.
    “What about Bucky?” Freddie asked.
    “My friend Carruthers is going to watch him.”
    Oh good. For once Kit was helping her out.
    “The astronaut Carruthers?” Lisa asked.
    Freddie said, “He’s a great pilot.”
    “Does he live near here, too?” her mother asked. “This neighborhood truly is splendid.”
    It was as if her family had never met men who wanted to strap themselves to big rockets and fly out of the atmosphere before.
    Kit took all of this in stride. It probably happened to him all the time. “Yeah. He’s over on Harbor Wind.”
    “Does he need any help with Bucky, do you think?” Freddie said. “‘Cause we could walk him.”
    “I’m sure he’d like that.”
    No. One