“BOMBSHELL, YOU GOT a minute?”
Izzy glanced over her shoulder and noticed Thor, whose real name was Hemi, standing on the sidewalk. He had a box under one arm and wore a pair of wraparound shades to block the sun.
“Sure,” she said, nodding at Antonio and heading over to see Hemi. “What’s up?”
As she got closer she noticed that the box was full of notebooks. Another new training module, no doubt.
“We’ve had a chance to discuss the teams and they aren’t as even skill-wise as we’d like them to be. What are your thoughts on Stephen Miller and Velosi? We’re thinking of switching one of them off red team.”
“I don’t know much about Miller,” Izzy asked.
“He’s from the EU space program. He is very nearly a double for Velosi in skill set. And, to be honest, you and Curzon are the same way on blue team.”
She saw the opportunity and seized it. “It might make more sense to switch me,” Izzy said. Then she wouldn’t be in such close proximity to Antonio.
Thor nodded. “Okay. That would work. I will talk to everyone tonight at the get-together at the lake if you are fine with the change.”
At an excited bark, they looked around to where Antonio and his little Carly were waiting. Hemi waved them over and dropped to one knee. Antonio let the leash slip from his fingers as the dog ran to greet Hemi ecstatically.
“These two are great friends,” Antonio said to her.
“I can see that. Hemi and I were just discussing the fact that the teams aren’t as well balanced as they would like. I volunteered to switch with someone on the other team.”
“Who?” Antonio asked.
“Stephen Miller. Do you know him?” Hemi asked.
“Yes, we’ve worked together many times. I’ve read all of the profiles for the candidates. Are you moving him because of his similarity to Velosi?” Antonio asked.
Hemi nodded, giving Carly one more pet before getting back to his feet. “Why do you ask?”
“Bombshell and Velocity are both NASA and have worked together many times. It might be better to mix things up and separate them,” Antonio said. “Just a suggestion.”
“Not a bad one,” Izzy said. She and Velosi had been together since basic training and they knew each other very well. They worked like cogs in a well-oiled machine.
“Fair point. So would you like to switch with Stephen?” Hemi asked Antonio.
“Sure,” Antonio said.
They talked to Hemi for a few more minutes before he left to confirm the change with the others. Izzy wanted to say something light and breezy, but she wasn’t really good at light.
She was intense and focused on attaining her goals. She realized she had no real personal skills, and most of the time, that didn’t matter. But things had gotten too intimate with Antonio for her to go back to her normal way of freezing him out.
She wanted to do it. Wanted to keep treating him the way she always had, but something had changed inside of her and that was just no longer possible.
“So we should talk,” she said at last, sounding lame even to herself.
“Yes. It’s a good idea to see where we want to go next,” he said.
Izzy chewed her lower lip and then started walking toward the path that led away from the bunkhouses and toward the main ranch house. She heard the jingle of Carly’s tags as Antonio followed her. Soon they were walking side by side and she knew she had to say something.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “A part of me didn’t expect to feel anything other than some sexual relief when we were done.”
“I always knew there would be more,” he said quietly.
“How did you know that?”
“We have always been like...water and oil—we just don’t mix,” he said.
She smiled at him. “We don’t mix. So why was sex so... Never mind. This is not a conversation I want to have. I think it would be best—”
“Wait a minute. I do want to have that discussion. Sex was good, querida. Mind-blowing, even, so now I’m wondering—was it a one-time thing?”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Me, too. But we don’t have time for a relationship. I don’t want to blow my chance at making the inaugural mission and unless you’ve changed a lot I don’t think you do, either. New relationships are distracting and take a lot of care,” she said. She’d seen it enough times with her mom as she moved from one man to the next. Always falling passionately in love with them and losing herself in the process.
“They do. And I agree the timing isn’t the best, but honestly, Izzy, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to resist you.”
She felt the same. Still, he needed to know that the mission came first for her. Even if that wasn’t really what she felt at this moment. “We are going to have to try. What if we were on the mission vehicle or on the space station? We’d have to keep our hands to ourselves. Let’s think of this as one more test.”
“A test?”
“Yes. Let’s see who can last longer,” she said. “Who breaks first.”
Fear was driving her, making her think of ways to keep Antonio away from her. “We are going to be in different groups, so we shouldn’t see each other that often.”
“Except in the gym,” he said.
The gym.
She was pretty sure that she’d be doing all of her running outdoors from now on. Except for the AlterG machine. She’d have to be inside for that. And she dreaded it because she knew there was no way she’d be in the gym and not remember Antonio.
* * *
AS IF THE emergency bells that had gone off right after they’d made love hadn’t been a big enough wake-up call. The dividing of the group into teams and the leveling of those teams had confirmed it. The basic training time was over.
Antonio hadn’t come to Cole’s Hill, Texas, and the Mick Tanner Training Facility to hook up with Izzy. In fact, he’d planned to stay as far away from her as he could. And calling it “hooking up” wasn’t right. It had been more than sex. And he knew that it had been for Izzy, too.
But, as she’d said, they needed to focus. The competition for those remaining team positions on the first mission was fierce. He wanted to make it and he wanted Izzy to make it. He had a few other candidates that he hoped would be on the team as well, but he knew that at this point it was each person for themselves. And there were only three spots left. He respected that. But the roles for those three slots weren’t to be filled by just anyone. It was now down to specialty.
He was already distracted having his horse and now a dog here at the facility with him. And being on a ranch. It brought up all the stuff he’d always been running from. The life that he had never wanted but seemed to fit so easily into. His older brother had laughed his butt off when he’d heard that Antonio had to move out of his high-rise penthouse apartment and back into a bunkhouse on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country.
So of course this thing with Izzy would blow up now. It seemed like it wasn’t only the Cronus program director and his commanders who were challenging him. Life itself was throwing up all of his baggage and making him deal with it.
Or at least acknowledge it.
“Sí, okay, we will do it your way,” he said. “I don’t want to jeopardize anything for you or for me.”
She gave him one of her rare genuine smiles, full of joy and a touch of innocence that made him want to pull her into his arms and claim her. Promise to protect her from the world and ensure that he was the one who made her smile like that.
But he couldn’t do that.
She wouldn’t let him even if he’d dared to try.
They were both bold and made their own paths. They could do this. He would do this. He didn’t want to break first.
She started walking again. “Let’s be friends, though.”
Friends.
Yeah, that was going to help him. Like getting to know the woman who was setting his senses on fire was going to help him keep her at arm’s length.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said.
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head, stirring the hair she had pulled back into a ponytail and causing a strand to fall forward. He reached out and tucked it back behind her ear, and a shiver of heat ran down his spine. Unless he figured out a way to get his lust under control, he was doomed.
The funny thing about his call sign was that he didn’t have a rapacious appetite for women. Sure, he’d always enjoyed them. Liked talking to them, touching them, listening to them. And that had drawn them to him over the years.
Now he was this close to the one woman whose story he really wanted to hear, and he felt it would be dangerous to hear it. Plus, he didn’t want to go back to the way things had been, when they’d only traded barbs.
“Okay, friends,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “We were friends those first few weeks at basic training.”
“Yes, we were. You were very kind to me,” he said.
“You noticed me as a person and not just an hourglass figure with a nice rack,” she said. “That made you easy to be nice to.”
He’d forgotten how tough some of the other men had been to her and how sweet she really had seemed those first few weeks, before she’d had to toughen up and prove to everyone in their training group that she was the baddest thing since Rambo.
“So, friend, what do you want to talk about?”
“Ranching,” she said. “Do you have any cowboy tips? I think I mentioned I do not really like being on a ranch.”
He started laughing. “Me, neither. My brothers have been ribbing me about the fact that the very thing I left Argentina to avoid is now part of my daily routine again.”
“So you’re not any good at it?” she asked. “I’ve been spending my Sundays off taking horseback riding lessons on a neighboring ranch to improve my skills.”
Of course she was. Izzy always made sure she did whatever was necessary to succeed. And he had to do the same.
“Actually, I’m really good at it,” he admitted. “But nothing could really compete with the thought of being up there in the stars. Racing toward a planet that no other person has been on.”
“Same,” she said. “I think we are going to be very good friends.”
* * *
GOOD FRIENDS. SHE could do it. It made a sort of sense, since she wasn’t going to be able to just ignore him. She’d been friends with guys before... Velosi and Hemi sprang to mind.
“How many brothers do you have?” she asked as they walked around the man-made lake. There was a path that was bordered with stones and gaslights. Over by the dock she saw a few of the ranch hands swimming. It was April in Texas, which meant it was hot. She’d grown up in Vegas so she was used to the heat.
“Four. I’m smack in the middle,” Antonio said. “What about you?”
“Only child,” she said.
“Did you ever wish for a sibling?” he asked.
“No.” Maybe because her mom had had several marriages when Izzy was growing up, and some of the men had kids from previous marriages. She’d always found that she was most comfortable by herself with her nose in a book. “Did you ever wish to be an only child?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t imagine life without my brothers. We are very close. Sometimes they’re a pain in the ass, but when I need them they are always there for me.”
That was one thing she didn’t have. Her mom was always there for her, but it was just the two of them. Her mom had stopped with the serial marriages around the time Izzy turned eighteen and had spent the last ten years on her own. Discovering herself, as she liked to put it.
“Before I came out here the closest I’d been to a cowboy, aside from Ace, was at the Professional Bull Riders championship every year in Vegas. But that’s got some flash. This is just hard work,” she said. “Was that why you didn’t want to be a cowboy?”
He shook his head as they rounded the lake and started up the path that led back to the bunkhouses. “If it was, I didn’t choose wisely. Being an astronaut is a lot of hard work, as you know.”
“What did draw you to the program?”
“Just always spent a lot of time looking up at the stars, wondering if there was life out there.”
“Do you think there is?” she asked. “I mean, when I was on the ISS, I thought about encountering something else. Probably just a leftover fantasy from my teen years.”
“Me, too. It would be ignorant to think we’re the only beings in the universe.”
“I agree. Some of my friends from high school asked me if I wanted to meet an alien. As if that was why I wanted to be an astronaut,” she said.
He nodded. “I think most people are both hoping there is something else out there and afraid of what it might be. Probably because of Hollywood versions of aliens.”
Izzy wasn’t too sure. She knew logically there had to be someone else out there, but a part of her—the part that didn’t really like change—wasn’t too keen on finding another species. The Earth inhabitants might not be the only ones who were trying to get to a planet like Mars. Or maybe even to Mars.
“Maybe,” she conceded.
“Want to hear something funny?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“My oldest brother, Salvatore, always warns me about hostile aliens. He’s pretty sure that anyone we meet will be scared and it might trigger a confrontation.”
She laughed, as she suspected he was speaking more about her than about aliens. “When I was cleared for my first mission I started having nightmares where I was on the spaceship from Aliens. And I couldn’t run. You know how we sleep up there, all strapped in and everything. I didn’t sleep for the first three days as I got used to it, and then my body just forced the issue,” she said. She could still remember the cold fear in her stomach as she’d thought of encountering something malevolent in space.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. Cronus is going to be our first successful foray beyond our orbit and I think we are going to discover many beautiful things out there,” Antonio said.
He made it easy to believe. Just by spending time with him, she was already uncovering things that she’d never thought of before. A part of her wished that she’d gotten to know him sooner, but she knew she might not be here if she had. Something about Antonio made her feel she could easily fall in love with him.
And if she were anything like her mom, chances were she would have put his career on the fast track and her own on the back burner.
They parted ways at the bunkhouse and, as she watched him walk away, Izzy made up her mind to keep her distance from Antonio. She couldn’t be just friends with him, because she knew she wanted so much more than friendship. She’d freeze him out. It might hurt to cut him off, but better to deal with that loss now than to lose something bigger—like her chance at the Cronus mission.