LITMIR.BIZ

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he did feel at a disadvantage that he was just joining the Cronus training program here in Texas. He was pretty sure that many of the other new candidates felt the same way.

      “No one is. I think today just proved how high the bar is being set. What if that alarm had gone off ten minutes sooner?” she asked. “We both would have been...”

      “In a very delicate position,” he said. He didn’t regret his intimate time with Izzy—how could he? He’d spent years dreaming of having her in his arms. And if today had proved anything, it was that the bond between them was a strong one. At least physically.

      “Exactly. I don’t want to take a chance on screwing up. Even though I do feel like you took the easier path—” she held up her hand to stop him from responding “—we both have worked too hard to jeopardize our shot at getting on this mission.”

      “I agree. We have worked hard. What are you trying to say?” he asked.

      “That we keep our distance. Work together as we have to in the training sessions, but no more—” She gestured to the two of them, her hand going back and forth.

      “I don’t know what that means,” he said, curious that a woman who was truly one of the boldest, bravest people he knew was trying to avoiding saying anything intimate.

      “It means no more hooking up,” she said.

      He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “Fair enough. You know, you came on to me.”

      She put her hands on her hips and gave him a hard glare, and then she threw back her head and laughed. “I did, didn’t I? I thought that if we cleared the air we’d be able to work better together. I never expected it to go so far.”

      “I did,” he admitted. From the moment he’d seen her, she’d been a fire in his blood, and nothing had changed that. “But from now on, we can keep our distance.”

      “Yes,” she said. “I think I’m done grooming this horse.”

      “Vaquero, you in here?”

      “Sí, I’m back here,” Antonio answered.

      Jeb, the ranch foreman, poked his head around the stall and leaned in. “Ma’am. Antonio, I could use a hand with some fence repair if you have the time. And I talked to Ace—you can keep Carly in your room at the bunkhouse for now. We are looking around in town to find her owners.”

      “I have a meeting at 1900, but I think I could help out for a little while,” Antonio said.

      He glanced over at Izzy, who was simply watching him and Jeb. “Wanna help?”

      * * *

      “NO” WOULD HAVE been a perfectly acceptable answer, Izzy reminded herself as she held a length of fencing in place as Antonio hammered a nail to fix it. The setting sun shone brightly and it felt good doing something instead of being back in her room remembering that scary moment when she’d found Molly.

      She kept getting flashes in her mind of finding her friend’s slumped body in the corner of the room. And the acrid smoke that she’d breathed in seemed to burn the inside of her nostrils every once in a while.

      “Izzy?”

      “Yes?” she asked, glancing toward Antonio. His hands were on his hips and he was watching her. He looked good dressed as a cowboy. Some of the other candidates looked like they were playing dress-up, but he wore the clothes with a natural air that made him seem a part of this landscape.

      “I said that’s it. Are you ready to head back?” he asked.

      She nodded and turned toward her horse but stopped. “I keep thinking about Molly. What if something like that had happened in space?”

      She didn’t hear Antonio move and jumped when he put his hand on her shoulder. “We’d cope with it, same as we did today. But it is scary. We have to be able to rely on the team completely.”

      “Exactly. I mean I know Velocity really well, so I’m happy to have him at my back, but some of these people...how are they going to make us into a team?”

      “With a lot of hard work,” Antonio said.

      “Do you know the people from Space Now well?” she asked. She’d worked with everyone who had come through NASA, or else she knew them by their reputations. She’d read the dossiers on all of the new candidates, as she assumed they’d done with her, but she’d worked with very few of them and hadn’t even heard of some of them.

      Antonio echoed her thoughts. “Some of the Space Now candidates are new, people I haven’t worked with, but most of them I know. They were rigorously vetted before being sent here.”

      She put her hand up. “I wasn’t judging them. I was thinking more from my own perspective. It’s hard to build trust. I imagine that’s what Thor and Ace are going to be trying to get us to do while we learn how to use the equipment that we will need to build the way station.”

      “It will work out,” he said.

      She turned to face him, caught between him and her horse. She looked up at his tanned face, hidden from the sun under the brim of his straw cowboy hat. He had deep laugh lines around his eyes, and his eyelashes were thick. His eyes as he watched her seemed cautious. But then, maybe she was projecting that onto him since she wanted to be watchful around him. Careful not to let him slip past her guard again.

      What if it doesn’t work? But she didn’t ask him. Instead, she just closed her eyes, which was a mistake. The sun disappeared and she flashed to the hallway filling with smoke, hearing echoes of the alarm. Her eyes popped open and she saw that Antonio was studying her.

      He put his hand under her chin and looked down at her with an expression she’d never seen on his face before. It was tender and almost sweet, and it made her realize that she’d made more than a basic mistake in letting him in. She’d made a critical error. The kind that could cost lives in space and, if she wasn’t very careful, possibly her place on the Cronus mission.

      She pulled back, turning away from him and trying to mount up. She got her foot in the stirrup, and the ranch-trained horse stood still as she tried to use her arms and a hop to get up in the saddle.

      He cursed under his breath in Spanish, which somehow sounded more elegant than it did in English. He put his hand on her butt and gave her a boost up into the saddle. She swung her leg over and seated herself before turning to thank him. He’d already sauntered over to his horse.

      Arabella.

      The horse named after one of the spiders NASA had sent into space. She realized the stakes were high for Antonio, as well. She had to remember that. Sleeping with him hadn’t just affected her. Antonio was going to have to deal with the fallout, too, and if the way he clicked his heels and started galloping across the open field was any indication, he was as frustrated as she was with the attraction that was still there between them.

       5

      “THANK YOU ALL for meeting back here. Ace is with Molly, who will be fine, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. She suffered some low-level smoke inhalation,” Thor said as he addressed all of the candidates.

      Izzy stood in the back next to Velosi and some of the others who’d been here since the beginning. She and Velosi had been at the Mick Tanner Training Facility since day one and they were familiar with the program. But today the stakes had been raised. Sundays were downtime. Everyone knew that.

      Not anymore.

      The smoke hadn’t been an accident. It had been a test. And while Izzy had no problem participating in tests and honing skills, she did think it was a little sneaky of Thor, Ace and program director Dennis Locke to have implemented this one the way they had.

      Dennis stepped up next to Thor. Dennis was in his fifties but was fit and looked younger.

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