She wasn't even his type. That was the crazy thing. (Although talking about anyone being crazy when she was in the same galaxy was probably pushing it.)

Anyway, back to type. Everyone who knew him had firsthand experience of his type – blonde, buxom, bawdy ... all those wonderful ‘B’ words, and all of them tied down to the ‘F’ word. Everything she wasn’t.

It shouldn’t have gone like this, not after such an ordinary beginning. Girl in a box, a brother who caused more trouble than he ever healed, months of wondering when she was going to blow, Ariel ... now that should have worked if the Alliance had been trustworthy. Then finally being rid of them until the Captain brought them back from the Maidenhead ... at least he’d had an hour of freedom.

It had started out so small, too. Her wanting payment after he’d tried to sell her and that doctor brother of hers. The note left on his bed (indicating that she could get into his bunk with no trouble at all if he didn’t pay up), and after he’d pieced the words together (finger under the line, saying them out loud) he was almost impressed. It didn't say she would gut him and hang his body from the top of the cargo bay, but he knew what she meant. Then her eyes at dinner that night ... he knew she’d been the one let him back in, waited until he was dozing to open the inner airlock doors so he didn’t actually freeze to death.

Might have been easier if he had.

They all thought she was just a girl, someone to be protected, nurtured, saved ... he knew better. Wasn’t he the guns expert? He had enough of them hanging in his bunk, each and every one of them testimony to his superior knowledge. And he knew a weapon when he saw one.

So when he bought that crate of apples at their next stop he made sure to put the reddest, the most juicy of them all, under her pillow, nestling in that oversized nightgown she insisted on wearing.

He was fair sure the Preacher knew, about the apple, but he never said a word. Probably too worried about what the g