“I tried to memorize them all, but exobotany is not really my field,” she confessed. “Is that one from your homeworld?”
“Nay. But it reminds me of…” He released the flower. “Never mind. I’ve consulted with the crew about the fluctuation. Anything to report from the passengers?”
She pursed her lips. “Fluctuation? Is that what it was?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she shrugged. “Our guests weresomewhat alarmed, not surprisingly.” She peered at him. “You said it was a programmed systems cycle.”
“It could have been.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“All systems are operational.”
She stiffened. “You’re freaking me out.” When he was silent another moment, she added, “That means—”
“I understand the Earther idiom. Which is why I summoned you here, because you are serene in this place.”
Her cheeks flushed with angry heat. “Whatever you read in my personnel file, I don’t need any special treatment.”
“No one survives in space without special treatment.” He touched the flower again. “But your file disclosed no particular accommodations. I just noticed you come here when you are troubled.”
She swallowed back a retort about not being troubled. With her feelings button flickering like an EKG on a trampoline, it was hard to pretend at the moment. “Should I be troubled?”
“If there is any breakdown in operations, I’ll need all crew ready to act.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t ready.” Frustration churned through her. How dare he watch her when she was feeling vulnerable? How much worse that he called her on it. “If you doubt me—”
He reached out to wrap his fingers around her arm. He held her with the same care that he’d cradled the flower. “I just wanted to be sure you weren’t…freaking out.”
She lifted her chin to meet his golden gaze. “Well, I’m not.”
“So why is your heart beating so quickly?”
Ooh, she’d thought he was touching her by way of apology for questioning her ability and reliability, but he was testing herheartrate? She yanked her arm out of his grasp. “Maybe I just don’t like being jerked around.”
When he straightened to his full height, his mane brushed against the flowers. “I would not jerk you. I know you are fragile.”
“Not physically.” She glared at him. “Not professionally or emotionally.” She realized how that sounded and quickly backtracked. “I amnotfragile.”
The long, stiff hairs of his whiskers swept forward—like a hunting cat. “Your…feelings?” His golden eye narrowed, dropping lower.
If he made a comment on her bosom, which might’ve been heaving a bit in her annoyance, she would— No, he was focusing not on her breasts but on her button.
She popped it off, thrusting the tattletale tech out of sight. “Absolutely not. You don’t get to pocket your feelings while harassing me about mine.”
The tufts of his ears, mostly hidden in his mane, flicked forward and back. “Isn’t this cruise all about feelings?”
“For our passengers, not us.” Which of course he knew, so why was he needling her? She narrowed her eyes back at him, wishing she at least had more than a vestigial tailbone she could lash as a warning. “Why did you dance with me? Why did you almost kiss me in the alcove?”
Ha, that made him take a step back, deeper into the canopy of flowers. Maybe she wasn’t so defenseless after all.
“You asked me to come to the salon.” His voice was edged with something like a growl. “You demanded.”
Despite that dangerous rumble—maybe because of it?—her pulse ratcheted up another notch, not with anxiety but with a strange recklessness. “I asked you to welcome the guests, nothing more.”
“They are here to journey through a spectacle of sensation and sentiment. According to the brochure. Maybe as captain, it is my duty to lead the way.”
She bit the inside of her lip. “That’s why you danced with me. It was your job.”
“As it is yours. Should there be another reason?”
