"We've seen your family," he told her, leaning back and looking up. "I figured that now we could lob in and see mine."

She frowned. "Your parents died thirteen years ago, and you haven't seen your cousin Joe for nearly six."

"You fossicked through my records, then."

Torin spun the chair around and straddled his lap. The chair complained again, and Craig told it silently to shut up as he slid his hands up the curve of her hips to settle around her waist. At 1.8 meters with a fighter's muscle, Torin wasn't light, but he knew for a fact the chair could hold them both… while moving a lot more vigorously.

"I checked after I joined you here, on the Promise," she said. "Not before."

So her research had no influence on her joining him. He appreciated that she'd decided with her heart and not her head. "You could have asked."

"You never spoke of them and, just in case…" She waved a hand, the gesture taking in the bunk, the half-circle table, the two chairs, and closed hatch to the head. "… we don't have a lot of room for touchy subjects."

"'S truth. But unless we make one hell of a find-working tech say-even adding another three square meters'll cost more than we can afford this year." They'd used a chunk of Torin's final payment from the Corps to put in a new converter. As long as they could find ice-and if they couldn't find ice, he was in the wrong business-they could replenish both water and oxygen significantly faster than two people could use it. That and the upgraded CO2 scrubbers went a long way toward removing any residual dread of sharing the limited resources of a small ship with another person.

With Torin anyway.

"We were talking about your family." She rocked her hips forward, and his eyes rolled back. Torin had relaxed the moment the air lock telltales had gone red and they were clear of Paradise and her family. When she got like this, it was hard to remember she knew twenty-five ways to kill a man with her bare hands. "Where are we going?"