Raina swallowed back the words she had been about to say.

The man had just awoken from stasis, and everything he knew was gone.

She had been in that spot herself not so many months ago.

The confusion she had felt in those first awful hours was still never far from the surface. Loss of memory and time was the worst kind of violation.

“I’m Raina,” she said, offering the big man her hand. “Can we start over?”

He looked at her like she might be holding a thermal detonator.

Slowly he extended his own and firmly took hold of hers.

A jolt of desire shot through her body at the feel of his warm hand around hers. Her stomach was flip-flopping again, and this time it had nothing to do with gravity.

She had already noticed that he was handsome. She would have had to be blind not to see the broad shoulders, strong jaw and dark hair hanging a little too long over startlingly blue eyes.

But Raina wasn’t the type to mindlessly drool over a guy for his looks. And she knew next to nothing about this man, beyond the fact that he was angry, and hot as hell.

But it was no use telling that to her libido, which seemed to be square dancing all over her common sense in its eagerness to connect with the good-looking stranger.

She withdrew her hand as quickly as politeness would allow and tried not to make eye contact.

“Raina,” he said, his voice husky and low.

She felt it between her legs.

“Yes,” she said, backing up a step. “And you are?”

“Nick,” he told her.

He stayed put, for which she was grateful, though her traitorous body booed and hissed inwardly.

“Nice to meet you, Nick,” she said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know your ship was occupied. I’m new at this job.”

“That’s okay. I think I’ve got some post-stasis lag. I didn’t mean to lash out at you,” he said. His expression was chastened enough that it almost made her smile.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll just send word to my captain that she needs to come back and pick me up.”

Nick got a strange look on his face.

“My comms are down,” BFF20 reminded them.

“I’ll tell you what,” Nick said quickly. “Maybe we can help each other.”

“Go on,” Raina said.

“If I’m the last living being on this ship, then if we leave together the ship will be abandoned by the time your drones get here to loot it, right?”

She nodded.

“I was assigned to guard one thing on this ship, and one thing only,” Nick said. “If you help me retrieve that, you can take anything else you want.”

“Why would you let me do that?” she asked.

“Because you’re going to help me,” he told her.

“Where is this thing that you need? Is it dangerous?”

“It’s on the far side of the ship,” he explained. “And I’m sure the most valuable things onboard are with it.”

Raina observed him carefully. She had no idea why, but she felt to her bones that this was a decent person.

Although she hadn’t planned on working with a partner, it wasn’t like she had much choice. If she didn’t work with him, she couldn’t work at all.

And comms were down, which meant she couldn’t call for help, even if he turned on her. She was as well off with him anywhere on this ship as she was right here.

Raina had always been a planner, but it seemed she would have to be flexible today.

“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly.

He smiled for the first time, and she was lost for a moment in the warmth of his twinkling eyes. A small dimple had formed next to his left cheek.

“Let’s go,” he told her.

“I’ll keep an eye on him, my dear,” BFF20 said crisply.

Raina tried to hide her smile from the courtly little droid. She moved toward the doorway Nick had gestured to.

“We’ve got a ways to go,” Nick warned her.

They started back down the corridor toward the forest. The gravity was still low, and still fluctuating.

Raina found herself having a hard time setting a pace. She was the kind of person who liked to hear her boots click a rhythm on the floor as she cast herself forward with determination. But her pace here was necessarily dreamy, no matter how quickly she moved. It was like being underwater.

“Was the gravity like this when you went into stasis?” she asked Nick.

“I don’t remember going into stasis,” he said quietly.

“Oh,” she replied, unsure of what to say. That was odd. There was usually preparation for a technological hibernation. No wonder he seemed so lagged.

“Something was wrong on the ship,” he told her. “That’s all I know.”

“Aren’t you the head of security?” she asked, wondering how anything could possibly go wrong on a ship without the security head being briefed immediately.

He didn’t reply and they kept moving.

The forest loomed overhead, and Raina feasted her eyes on the delicious greenery. She hadn’t seen trees or plants in… in centuries. Though to her it felt like less than a year.

She forced herself to think about something else. It was dizzying to imagine the years that had passed while she slept on in stasis.

“What are we retrieving?” she asked Nick.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted.

“So you were hired on as head of security, with the instruction to protect one thing with your life and you don’t know what it is?” Raina was incredulous.

“Whatever it is, if they hired me to protect it, I know it’s incredibly valuable,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find other valuable things near it.”

“How will we know what it is?” she asked.

“I have a feeling we’ll know,” he told her.

She nodded, deciding it didn’t help to question him. He was obviously sensitive about the situation, and given what he’d been through, it wouldn’t help to browbeat the poor guy.

“I like a little mystery,” she said, giving him a small smile.

He smiled back and they headed further into the ship, the graceful trees on the other side of the glass thickening even as the hallway they travelled remained as elegant as ever.