changed, too, and looked like the cowboy he was. He had on a pair of faded denim jeans that clung to his thighs and rode low on his hips. His boots were worn but good quality and he had on a button-down ranch shirt. He held a straw cowboy hat loosely in one hand and a bandanna was tied around his neck.
“Come with me and find out,” he invited. He held his hand out to her and led her not toward the bunkhouses but away from the Mick Tanner facility and onto the path that led to the Bar T.
“Why are we going toward the ranch?”
“So I can show you why I haven’t been hanging out in the common room,” he said.
“And it’s on the ranch?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She smiled to herself. He sounded like the ranch hands on the Bar T. They all had good Southern manners, and it was sort of amusing to hear Antonio talking like them in his Spanish accent.
“I think I’m seeing the vaquero side of you,” she said.
He gave her a half grin over his shoulder. “You might be. As much as I always wanted to be in the space program, there is also a part of me that loves the land and ranching. So when I have some downtime I’ve been working with the hands.”
She was a step behind him and couldn’t help noticing the way his jeans hugged his butt. She caught herself and blushed. “So what’s the secret?” she asked.
He led her to the barn and down the aisle that was bordered with stalls on each side. He stopped in front of a stall that was labeled Arabella.
“Is this your horse?”
“Yes. I had her brought up here from my family’s estancia,” he said. “My brothers like to tease me about her name, but I picked it for a very specific reason. Can you guess?”
She walked into the stall with Antonio as he started running a brush over the sides of his horse. She was beautiful—even Izzy could see that and she wasn’t really familiar with horses. Arabella. She ran the name through her mind, trying to come up with a connection that made sense. Then she remembered the two spiders that were part of early NASA experiments, spinning webs while weightless in space during the Skylab project in 1973. Anita...and Arabella.
“Skylab ’73,” she said.
“Very good,” he said with a wink.
“So this is your secret?” she asked. “I think some of the other candidates that have ranching backgrounds have brought their horses.”
“They have,” Antonio said, putting the brush down as he walked around behind the horse to a pile of blankets in the corner. “This is my secret.”
She came closer and noticed a small dog nestled in the blankets. The dog bounded to her feet as Antonio came closer, dancing around his legs as he bent to pet her.
“Who is this?”
“Carly. Near as I can tell she’s a mix of dachshund and corgi. She just showed up during one of my morning rides and followed me back here. I’m waiting to hear back from Jeb about her staying on the ranch—do you know the foreman?—so I’ve been letting her bunk in with Arabella. But I have the feeling she was a house dog and not a ranch dog. She pretty much stays in the stall.”
“So you are going for morning rides and you have a secret dog named Carly. Why did you pick that?” she asked. She wanted to keep Antonio at arm’s length and this certainly wasn’t helping. But realizing there was so much more to Playboy than she’d expected also helped distract her from her thoughts about the risks of spaceflight.
“It’s short for Carletta, which means manly. I figured with such a silly little dog I needed something strong,” Antonio said.
But the dog wasn’t silly, Izzy thought as she watched Antonio stroke her. She’d only ever seen him as the competition or as someone to be avoided. But now she had a glimpse into the man...the man she’d made love with, and she realized that this might be more dangerous than fighting a fire.
* * *
ANTONIO HAD PLACED a quick call to his boss at Space Now while he’d been getting cleaned up. Unlike Izzy, he’d never been up on a mission, despite the fact that he’d been assigned to two and had been training for the better part of ten years. In the US only forty-eight astronauts had gone on long-term missions, and working within NASA, Antonio had quickly realized his chances of making it to space were minimal.
He’d used his family connections to the tech billionaire Malcolm Pennington to get himself a role as a senior astronaut with Space Now. He had the same training and skills as many of the NASA candidates; the field was simply smaller at Space Now.
Mal had been informed of the smoke test from Antonio and was en route to Texas to oversee this last phase of training and selection. He wanted to make sure as many of the Space Now candidates as possible were named to the Cronus missions.
Antonio was very aware of the fact that he and Izzy were going for the same role on the mission. And he thought that his employment with Space Now gave him an edge. After all, NASA had placed two of their candidates already on the team with Ace and Thor. The agencies outside of NASA who were equal partners in the financing and development of the mission wanted to have the same number of astronauts on the missions.
He glanced at his watch and realized they had twenty minutes before they were due back at the training facility for the debriefing.
“Want to help me groom Arabella?” he asked.
“I have been avoiding as much of the ranch chores as possible,” Izzy admitted, pushing a strand of her platinum-blond hair behind her ear. “But grooming the horses is one that I don’t mind.”
He handed her one of the grooming brushes and went to fetch a second one for himself. She worked on one side, he on the other.
“Why is that?” Antonio asked after a few minutes had passed. He loved the sounds of the barn. As a child he’d spent many hours grooming his horse, thinking of the future and dreaming of being in space.
“I could name the physical benefits of working out with one arm, but that’s not why I do it. There is something so soothing about standing here and looking after horses. I like the smell of the barn, all leather and hay—”
“And other scents,” Antonio reminded her. But he liked it, as well. As soon as he stepped into the barn, his other worries left. He was grounded here as much as he was when he got into the simulator at Space Now.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But most of the time it’s so solitary. Just me and the horse and the sound of the brush as I move it over her coat. And it gives me time to think and analyze whatever problems we’ve been dealing with at the facility. Working this way helps to soothe me.”
“Me, too,” he admitted. “Sometimes I think you and I have a lot in common.”
She looked over at him with those wide gray eyes of hers. “Some things. But when the trainees for the NASA program swelled in number, you were able to leave to go to a smaller private company...”
“Are you jealous?”
“Sure.
