Jenna wandered into the star party by accident, but she was glad for it. She hadn’t had the opportunity to use a telescope since she was ten years old, and the modest gathering of people near the observatory, peering up at the darkening night sky through a whole array of expensive telescopes, caused a little flutter in her chest. She joined the group and waited patiently for a turn at one of the telescopes, then peered through the device to get a stunning view of the stars above. Her brain opened a book she’d closed a long time ago and pulled out the names of most of the constellations, and she made a game of timing herself to see how fast she could find all the major star configurations in the summer night sky.

A couple minutes in, someone walked up behind her, and she pulled away, thinking it was one of the organizers about to tell her to give someone else a turn. But it turned out to be Cade, who was standing sheepishly off to the side, running his hands through his close-cut hair. “You a big fan of space?”

Jenna considered whether or not to answer. She eventually replied, “I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid.”

“An astronomer? Not an astronaut?”

She shook her head. “No, an astronomer. I wanted to study the stars and planets. I found them fascinating.”

He frowned, and she guessed he was recalling her earlier admission that she hadn’t been able to go to college. She didn’t have the heart to tell him her dreams of learning physics and becoming a scientist destined to unravel the secrets of the universe had been crushed much earlier than her college hopes. They had ended the day her father sold her telescope as part of a yard sale to raise money for her mother’s chemotherapy. They’d practically sold everything in the house, even some of Jenna’s clothes. A lot of good that did, in the end, she thought bitterly.

“Did you take astronomy in college?” she said instead.

“Actually, no. I don’t think I ever studied astronomy.” He glanced up at the sky. “I think I can find the Big Dipper though.”

She looked over her shoulder to see if there was a line behind her, but the closest people were about five feet back, talking amongst themselves. So Jenna gestured for Cade to come forward and have a peek through the telescope. “I can show you a few of the major constellations, if you want.”

“Oh? Cool.” He bent down and peered through.

Jenna pointedly ignored his close proximity—and his tight butt sticking out toward her—as she said, “The one you’re looking at now is Draco, the ‘dragon’ constellation. It’s what’s known as a circumpolar constellation, which means it’s always visible in the northern hemisphere but never the southern, and it doesn’t fall below the horizon.”

“I see it,” he said with an edge of excitement. “Looks like a big snake, yeah?”

“Yep, that’s it.” She tapped his shoulder to get him to move away from the telescope and adjusted it until she found Ophiuchus. She directed Cade to look again, and rattled off a few facts, then repeated the whole process a few more times.

“Man.” Cade rose to his full height and rolled his shoulders. “You sure are well versed in this stuff. You still study astronomy as a hobby?”

She shrugged. “No time.”

“That’s a shame.” He fiddled with his sunglasses, which were tucked into a pocket on his jacket. “I hope you get some time soon. You should definitely get back into it when you have a chance. It’s clearly still a passion for you.”

A pang of longing struck her in the chest. “Yes,” she murmured, “it is.”

Pity flashed across his face, and he started to say something.

Jenna cut him off—she didn’t want to delve into uncomfortable topics with this guy she hardly knew. “So, do you have an ingenious plan for getting us back to our motel without the angry biker squad pursuing us and knocking in our doors?”

He ran his tongue across his lip; she attempted to not find that attractive. “Well,” he said, “I was thinking our first move should be to wait for the heat to die down. If we don’t come back anytime soon, whoever is watching the place will eventually get lax in his duties, giving us a better chance of slipping back in unseen. So I say we kill a few hours.”

She crossed her arms. “Need I remind you I am a busy person? I have a conference to prepare for.”

“All night long?” he asked.

“Of course not. But I have to be ready in the morning to meet with the conference staff, and it’s going to be an exhausting day. I can’t be dead on my feet.”

He chuckled. “We don’t have to do anything physically taxing—unless you want to.”

She scowled. “I hope that wasn’t another pickup line.”

“Nope,” he lied through his teeth.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” She tapped her foot on the ground, which would have made a more impressive sound if she wasn’t standing on grass. “We go out for a night on the town? Some kind of date?”

“We don’t have to treat it like a date, no.” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I was thinking more along the lines of two friends seeing the sights. I mean, I was planning on working my way through my list of LA attractions alone, like I usually do”—Jenna wondered why he would choose to do that, a handsome, educated man like him, purposefully walking the world alone—“but since you’re here, and you just blew into town too…”

She inhaled deeply. “I don’t have much money to spend. I used most of my surplus on the motel room.”

“Then I guess money can be the first step of my apology for getting you into this mess with the bikers.” He raised his shoulders in lieu of his hands. “How about it? I take you out to see LA so you can actually have a little fun while you’re here, on my dime, and then afterward, we figure out how to sneak back into the motel like a couple novice spies?”

The strict and stingy side of Jenna immediately ordered her to turn Cade down, and her lips parted to mumble a weak rejection. But something stopped her. She didn’t know if it was the memory of that stunning ride through the LA streets, the wind screaming past, the sights rolling by, a dozen and one places she could identify and desperately wanted to visit, or if it was the unexpected pleasure of getting to use a telescope for the first time in over a decade, or if it was the sincerely apologetic look on Cade’s face, the expression of someone wanting to right a wrong.

Whatever it was, she snapped her jaw shut, swallowed the rejection, and said, “If it’s on your dime, then I’m in. Where exactly are you planning to go?”