Giovanni laughed as Bruno turned red.

"I'm already spoken for," he muttered.

He had become engaged to Margarite just before the crew jumped to the International Space Station. He and Margarite had been together for three years. Both devout Catholics, they had pledged abstinence as teenagers until they were married.

Giovanni was also Catholic, at least by birth. Privately, he didn't have much use for the Church, although he went through the public motions of going to mass with his wife and family. He was basically agnostic, hedging his bets just in case there was something to all of the mumbo-jumbo coming from the Vatican.

Laurie was the wild one. In her official life she was a type A over-achiever, a take-charge person who drove herself and others mercilessly to get a job done. In her private life, she also lived hard, wearing out men left and right in the battle of the bed sheets and beating them at poker and drinking. Her father had been a Navy pilot back in the days when there was still a US Navy. She had gone US Air Force, then on to UNSA, the new international agency that subsumed all the agencies from individual countries but still took a secondary role to the commercial interests in space.

The problem was, she liked Bruno. She wanted to get into his pants, to possess him. It was well known on the space station. Even Bruno knew it.