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Even as I try to convince myself Robert Rackman is the man for me, I can feel exactly where my beautiful savior stands. His presence is like a flame, drawing me closer, warming me as it does, but leaning into his heat would mean risking getting burned. If he’s not crew then he’s probably paired with one of the female billionaires. I’m sure she wouldn’t like me poaching her man, anymore than my partner wants to see me flirt with another guy right in front of him.

I’m not a bitch.

I also can’t help the visceral reaction my body is having to the sexy Russian to my right.

I don’t have to look at him to know he’s looking at me as intently as I’m thinking about him.

Robert turns to my rescuer and offers his hand. All business, my Robert is.

They shake and he grins madly. “The Marek Volkav. What an honor. And to think, we’re right next door to you.” Robert gestures to the wall to the left of the bed I’m sitting on. “Suite 2.”

I stare at Marek Volkav. The Marek Volkav. Now I know why he looked familiar. I must have hit my head pretty hard for it to take me this long to place him.

Marek Volkav isn’t one of the crew, or even one of brains paired off with a billionaire. He is one of the billionaires. The billionaire, actually. The one billionaire on the whole list I desperately prayed I wouldn’t get matched with. This entire Lottery system was his brainchild. He’s the one who invented the terraforming technology that has made Mars habitable for humans. They say he’s a genius, one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Also one of the richest.

He’s got enough money to do a terraforming remodel of an entire planet.

He could have saved the one we had.

Instead, he built an escape pod for the rich and elite and let the whole world burn.

I despise him.

And now I also owe him my life.

2

MAREK

“Mars is there, waiting to be reached.”

—Buzz Aldrin, American Astronaut

* * *

My name lands like a bomb in the room, and if her scowl could detonate it we would all be dust.

So… she is not an admirer of my work. I am not surprised by this. Many who would benefit from my skills would just as easily shun me for using them. People tend to react in one of two extremes upon meeting me; they either despise me based on who they think I am, or desire me based on the same. Either way, it is not me they are seeing, but their idea of who and what I am.

As familiar as this reaction is, it makes me uneasy that this beautiful, bold woman who risked her life to save a tree thinks so little of me.

I remain quiet as her assigned partner meets her, but I cannot help but notice how her eyes seek me out as desperately as my own seek hers. Despite the dozens of tasks and to-dos that usually occupy my mind, Azalea Clark now dominates every thought.

She talks.

He talks.

I shake his hand.

He seems nice enough.

That is something of a relief. I do not even know this woman but already I feel protective of her. She deserves to be with someone kind.

I have always been good at reading people and I can tell Robert is a decent man who has been savvy in his business dealings. He made his money in real estate development and used that wealth and expertise to secure a spot on this ship. Now that I’m meeting him for the first time, I trust he will actually be an asset to our new colony rather than a once-rich hindrance. Robert knows he bumbles about. Instead of trying to become someone he’s not, he has used his natural personality traits to his advantage. I admire that.

I have gained a reputation with my mind, not my personality. I have had to pay others to act on my behalf in that regard.

So I do not know what to do when Azalea looks at me with both longing and derision. I am used to one or the other; but never both at once.