His eyes widen. “I . . . Yeah. Were you one, too?”

I laugh. “Oh no. I was a total dumbass. Still am, for the most part. I just thought it might be a good guess.” It fits the persona, too. He doesn’t come across as insecure, not quite, but he’s cautious. Withdrawn.

I lean back in my chair, feeling the thrill of having puzzled him out a little better. I’m usually not this dedicated to figuring out the backstory of everyone I meet, but Ian is just interesting.

No. He’s fascinating.

“So, how was it?”

He blinks. “How was what?”

“Being there with mission control when Curiosity landed. How was it?”

His expression instantly transforms. “It was . . .” He’s staring down at his feet, as if remembering. He looks awestruck.

“That good?”

“Yeah. It was . . . Yeah.” He chuckles again. God, it really does sound great.

“It looked like it. From TV, I mean.”

“You watched it?”

“Yup. I was on the East Coast, so I stayed up late and all that. Looked up at the sky out of my bedroom window and cried a little bit.”

He nods, and suddenly he is studying me. “Is that why you’re in grad school? You want to work on future rovers?”

“That would be amazing. But anything that’s space exploration will do.”

“NASA can put your maze-solving skills to great use.” His dimple is back, and I laugh.

“Hey, I can do other things. For instance . . .” I point at the third monitor on the desk, the one farthest away from me. It displays a piece of code Ian hasn’t walked me through yet. “Want me to help you debug that?” He gives me a confused look. “What? It’s code. It’s always nice to have a second pair of eyes.”

“You don’t have to—”

“There’s an error on the fifth line.”

He frowns. Then he scans the code for a second. Then he turns to me, to the monitor, to me again with an even bigger frown. I brace, half expecting him to lash out defensively and deny the error. I’m familiar with the crumbling egos of men, and I’m pretty sure it’s what any of the guys in my Ph.D. class would do. But Ian surprises me: he nods, fixes the mistake I pointed out, and looks nothing but grateful.

Wow. A male engineer who’s not an asshole. The bar is pretty low, but I’m nevertheless impressed.

“Would you really be up for going through the rest of the code with me?” he asks cautiously, surprising me even more. The contrast between his gentle tone and how . . . how big and guarded he is almost has me smiling. “It’s the work-around to fix the two-second delay in the pointing issue. I was going to ask one of my engineers in Houston to debug, but . . .”

“I got you.” I roll my chair closer to Ian’s. My knee presses against his, and I nearly move it away automatically, but in a split-second decision I decide to leave it there.