Ice-Breaker

by Jenny Schwartz

  She ran her hands up the rigid muscles of Selwyn’s arms as he braced himself over her. He was beautiful, the shadows of rain-filtered light emphasising the masculine lines of his face and body. Over his shoulders and down his back she traced patterns, learning his body while they kissed and kissed.

  He tore his mouth from hers. ‘I want to suck your breasts.’

  The bluntness worked for her. Her thighs jerked, one leg bending up at the knee as her spine arched.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He rolled off her, piled pillows haphazardly behind him and pulled her towards him.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ She braced against his shoulders as he teased a nipple. ‘This would be better…’

  He stopped.

  ‘…if you were inside me.’

  He had the condom on in seconds.

  Too long. She forgot about foreplay. All she wanted was him, as hard and as fierce as possible. She flipped onto her back and the plain old missionary position was both challenge and invitation.

  One that he accepted.

  Nothing had ever felt so good.

  His eyes blazed with emotion that she was too far gone to read, but which riveted her attention. There was no looking away, no hiding. He watched her orgasm claim her, and then she watched and felt and held the power of his.

  She was falling without a safety net, crashing into him, trusting that he would catch her; trusting that he was in as deep as her.

  He smiled. ‘Now can I kiss your breasts?’

  ***

  The rain continued to fall outside. Selwyn lit the fire in the fireplace and they ordered room service. They’d made love twice, first with the urgency that had been building since Kiara disembarked from the icebreaker, and then slowly, with all the time in the world to learn what delighted the other, what made them shudder or go a little crazy.

  He cupped her knee as she lounged beside him on the rug. He drew a circle with his thumb and wasn’t surprised when she tugged his hair in lazy protest and approval. Knees were a thing with her, he’d discovered. He kissed the knobbly kneecap, then blew a raspberry on the soft skin of her inner thigh.

  Her laughter spilled around him, even more golden than the dancing firelight on her skin.

  ‘Time for bed,’ he said.

  ‘To sleep?’ She raised an eyebrow, mocking him.

  ‘Why would we waste time with sleep?’

  ***

  The phone call came at five am. Kiara surfaced to the buzzing sound and then to Selwyn’s low-voiced murmur.

  His voice sharpened. ‘Where?’ The satin quilt slid down his bare shoulder and his chest as he sat up.

  The answering female voice was loud enough and clear enough that Kiara heard every word. There’d been an earthquake in Armenia, magnitude seven, and hitting a populated region. Roads damaged, chaos and — ‘Your friend, Berkay, is in Dogubayazit, near Mt Ararat in Turkey. He says he can put a team together — three paramedics and two drivers, supplies in the back of the trucks — if you can guarantee funding.’

  ‘Do it,’ Selwyn said.

  Kiara rolled to her side, switching on the bedside lamp. The warm light revealed the tension in the set of his shoulders and the golden scruffiness of his fair hair and incipient beard. She put her hand on his back in a gesture of support and concern.

  He stood, moving away from her as he spoke into the phone. ‘How soon can you get me there?’

  Chapter 5

  Kiara was dressed when Selwyn got out of the shower.

  ‘You should have stayed in bed, slept.’

  She ignored his comment, standing instead in the doorway, leaning against it with her arms folded and watching him pack swiftly.

  He hadn’t bothered to shave, and he looked tough and competent, more like a soldier going to war than the executive director of a non-government organisation. ‘Berkay’s good. We met on a fashion shoot, an advertising campaign, but logistics are logistics. If he has a crew on the ground, we can respond fast. This is my chance to prove that Grey Knot can be an effective disaster-relief partner, and we’ll be there for the recovery, too.’

  Cold anger gripped her. She was back in childhood, her parents flying out, caring for the whole world, leaving her behind.

  Mentally, Selwyn was already gone.

  She recognised his preoccupation. He might be talking, but it wasn’t about communicating with her. He was thinking aloud. He zipped his bag closed and finally looked at her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  So at least he recognised her unhappiness. Her arms dropped.

  He walked up to her and hugged her. ‘I have to do this.’

  ‘Why?’ Her frustration burst out of her. ‘There’ll be enough agencies flying in, all crawling all over each other.’

  ‘Kiara!’

  She wrenched away from his hold.

  ‘I’m not leaving on a whim.’ A frown creased his forehead. He appeared baffled by her response. ‘It’s not a literal ego trip. This is important.’

  ‘It always is. Look.’ Her hands flew up and out, gesturing her rejection of the scene. ‘This won’t work. We won’t work.’

  ‘You’re over-reacting. My normal life isn’t like this. I’m an administrator, a spokesman. It’s just in this instance —’

  ‘You’ll miss your plane.’

  He glanced at his watch and swore. ‘We’ll talk when I get back. I’m not sure what communications will be like from Armenia.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ She met the grim determination in his eyes. ‘Seriously, don’t bother. I want a genuine guy, one who can share my life and career. Not one chasing photo opps in a crisis zone.’

  ‘I’m going there to help.’ Controlled anger vibrated in his voice, deepening it. ‘If you’d ever seen the elderly after a disaster, a grandmother walking empty broken streets in torn clothes, bleeding, her eyes blank, you wouldn’t dare dismiss what I’m building. Hell, you’re your parents’ daughter. You must have seen. You must care.’

  ‘Save it for the cameras.’ Her bitter words appalled even her. It was as if years of unspoken resentment for her parents’ work was pouring out.

  He gave her a scathing look of incredulity and crashed the hotel room door shut behind him.

  ***

  The taxi deposited Kiara outside the Sandy Bay cottage she shared with Naomi. In the grey gloom of dawn, a streetlight illuminated the dew on a red autumn rose. Petals cascaded to the ground as she brushed past it, through the low gate and up the creaking wooden steps to the front door.

  Naomi opened it, a hair brush in one hand, her bright purple hair curling wildly. ‘What the hell’s happened?’

  ‘He left me.’

  Naomi watched her warily. ‘Are you going to cry?’

  ‘No.’ Kiara dropped her bags and stormed through to the kitchen. ‘But I am going to drink any coffee you’ve made.’

  ‘I haven’t made any.’

  Kiara filled the coffeemaker and switched it on with angry, jerky movements.

  ‘I’ll get the mugs.’ Having coiled her hair in a quick, messy knot, Naomi nudged Kiara out of the way and away from the danger of breaking one of Naomi’s gorgeous market-found, hand-thrown pottery mugs. ‘Sit and talk.’

  Kiara sat and talked while they drank coffee and ate peanut butter toast.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ was Naomi’s conclusion.

  ‘What? Why? He left me!’

  ‘For an earthquake. For his job. Of all people, you should understand.’

  ‘Just because my parents —’

  Naomi waved her toast. ‘Not your parents. Your obsession with your work. You’ve never let a guy get between you and your research. You should understand where he’s coming from.’

  ‘Oh, I do. I’m a convenience he’d like to slot into any gaps in his real life.’

  ‘Drama queen.’ Naomi stood and rinsed their mugs and plates. ‘Flying down to Hobart, meeting you off the boat, arranging a luxury retreat — what part of that says you’re convenient?’

  Um, nothing. ‘You’re meant
to be on my side.’

  Naomi leant against the sink, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘What?’ Kiara demanded when the silence stretched out.

  ‘You really care about him.’

  Kiara glanced away. She stared at the clock with its picture of a cow jumping over the moon. ‘You’ll be late for work.’

  Naomi ignored the comment. ‘Kiara, you’re one of the people I love most in the world, so I’m going to cut the crap and be honest with you. You’re scared. I’m hyperactive when I’m scared.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘It’s like I dare life to do its worst.’

  ‘Nay-Nay.’

  ‘But you, you get defensive and you put up barricades so high, you kill any chance of a relationship. Selwyn means something to you. That’s why you’re so angry. You’re scared.’

  ‘You’re over-analysing this.’ But the fact Naomi was willing to talk about her own emotions, something she never did, rattled Kiara’s defences. ‘It’s over. Done.’ And it was. She was ashamed of what she’d said to Selwyn at the end, attacking his insecurities about his modelling past and his lack of qualifications, but it had kyboshed any chance he’d try to pursue a relationship.

  Her friend shook her head.

  ‘Go to work, Naomi. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You won’t. But since you won’t listen either, I’ll leave you to think about my words of wisdom.’

  Kiara snorted.

  Naomi paused in the doorway. She switched off the overhead light as daylight lit the cosy kitchen. ‘Don’t live with regrets. They’ll eat you alive.’ She vanished down the hallway and a few minutes later shouted ‘goodbye’ before heading out to work.

  Kiara slumped back in the kitchen chair. She couldn’t make herself regret her time with Selwyn. It had been too real, too brilliant, to wish it undone. But she refused to regret ending it.

  Naomi didn’t understand. It was Selwyn who had left. All Kiara had done was protect herself by ensuring he didn’t come back.

  She shivered and looked around, but the kitchen door was closed. There was no draught flowing through. The sensation of a cold wind was pure imagination. She rubbed her arms as she went to collect her bags from where she’d dropped them.

  Work was what she needed to concentrate on. She had to wrap up her research from her time on Macquarie Island and sort out her share of the stuff that had come back in containers from the research station.

  ***

  Walking through the Antarctic Institute with an armful of miscellaneous junk, Kiara kept her stride brisk and her eyes on the ground. She’d spent so much time here over the last three years, working on her thesis, helping with the job of dealing with the public, and simply enjoying hanging out with people who shared her passion for science.

  It was a time in her life that she’d never recapture. She hadn’t specialised in Antarctic science, but in crisis ecology which had a much broader field, and so she’d be way down the list for future research expeditions to the frozen continent. Unless she went as a tourist, Antarctica was closed to her.

  She’d become an outsider at the institute, where once she’d been at home. Her future was in Sydney, for now. There’d be family, school friends, new colleagues, and students.

  She resented them all, feeling almost feral with loss. She was mourning — far better to think she was mourning her old life and not her relationship with Selwyn. She missed him.

  Even a night at the pub didn’t help, although she laughed and talked, and even got up and danced on the dusty floor.

  Naomi watched her with eyes that saw through the performance, but she didn’t call her on it.

  Kiara started packing her gear, dismantling her life in the small cottage they shared. That was even harder. They’d been friends since boarding school, two girls who didn’t quite belong anywhere.

  Since Naomi was out at work and the neighbours were all students who ought to be at university, Kiara detoured from her search for the packing tape and turned the radio up louder. She sang along, drowning out her thoughts, only to grimace when the advertisements interrupted, and then, the news.

  ‘A second earthquake has ripped through south-eastern Armenia. Reports of hundreds of casualties are unconfirmed as the communications network is down.’

  The tape dropped from her hand and rolled across the lounge room. She watched it hit a skirting board and fall on its side. Her brain felt like that — derailed.

  The radio announcer continued discussing in solemn tones some sporting defeat.

  She couldn’t stand it. She switched off the inanity and stood in the silent emptiness of the cottage.

  Back on Macquarie Island, when she’d read the news headline Selwyn Powell Lives. Mountain Collapses in Guatemala, her heart had jolted. Now her heart was torn open, bleeding with every aching beat.

  ‘Oh God.’ She was such a coward and a liar. Despite her words, despite her loud defiance, she hadn’t meant to end things with Selwyn, not irrevocably. A small, unacknowledged part of her had hugged the thought that they’d both be in Sydney, that as horrible as she’d been, if she just untangled her complicated emotions of hope and fear and love, they’d have another chance.

  If the earthquake had stolen that from her…

  ‘I told you not to go.’ She screamed it at the radio, at the room, at the memory of her parents’ leaving again and again, and at Selwyn who couldn’t be dead.

  She reached for her phone even as she switched on the computer for more news. ‘Naomi, there’s been another earthquake in Armenia.’

  She had no memory of hanging up, her attention glued to the computer screen as she searched for more news, for details, for hope.

  Naomi walked in, talking on her phone. She broke off for a quick explanation. ‘I phoned Selwyn’s organisation, Grey Knot. They haven’t heard from him. But they’re looking.’

  Personal contacts. Naomi had the right idea. Immediately after a disaster informal channels were more effective than official ones. Kiara scrambled for her own phone and called her parents. They knew everyone.

  But no one knew anything.

  Twelve hours later, she still didn’t know if Selwyn was alive or dead, but she was now officially employed by Grey Knot, her visa fast-tracked as a result of that and a lot of string-pulling. She sat in Sydney airport feeling as if a giant were sitting on her chest. She’d catch a plane to Moscow via Singapore and from there her dad had found her a place on a rescue flight carrying a canine search team. She just had to get there on time. They wouldn’t wait for her.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, her eyes on the gate and her foot tapping. ‘Finally.’ She rose as the steward began the boarding call.

  The journey was a twenty-one hour nightmare of worry and exhaustion. She stumbled off it with grim determination to find the canine search team’s plane, and found herself met at the gate by the husband of one of its crew.

  He grabbed her bag with a single word: ‘Hurry.’

  The international rescue team was busy, but briskly welcoming. She did the best she could for them by staying out of the way. Only after they were all in the plane was there time for longer introductions.

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘I speak Kurdish. My parents spent two years in Turkey when I was ten years old. I can translate.’ The epicentre of the quake was in a Kurdish-speaking region of Armenia. Her Kurdish might be rusty, but it was there and hearing it again, it would come back. A gift for languages was one of the benefits of her unconventional upbringing — and it was what her dad had used to negotiate her place on the plane. Disaster response had no room for passengers.

  Once on the ground, she could start asking for news about Selwyn. People understood the need for information. In fact, information became a currency. She would help, and others would help her.

  She leaned back in her seat and while the plane’s engines droned, tried to find the sleep that would be in short supply once she arrived. But whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Selwyn’s angry, disbelieving ex
pression as he left her alone in the luxury hotel.

  Chapter 6

  Selwyn ached in every muscle. His eyes were red and irritated from dust and lack of sleep. His hands were raw in places from lifting debris and pulling people out of their collapsed homes. Like everyone, he flinched whenever one of the aftershocks rocked the ground. Screams of terror assaulted his ears and nerves.

  Sitting out in the open, in the hastily assembled tent city, an elderly woman comforted a sobbing child, her shaking hand smoothing over the little boy’s dirty hair. In a disaster, it was losing those you loved that destroyed you.

  Selwyn gulped the last of his bottled water and looked around restlessly. He was on an enforced time-out. He’d be no use to anyone if he didn’t get some sleep. But when he stopped working, he started thinking about Kiara and how he’d left her. The second earthquake, more devastating than the first, would have set in concrete her resistance to his disaster relief work, and to him.

  He couldn’t even be sure that the message he’d sent with a departing truck driver would reach her. The driver would do his best, but messages from healthy people to the wider world weren’t a priority.

  Kiara would be living with the echo of the last words she’d said to him, words that attacked his weakest points and re-opened scars that he’d shown only her.

  ‘Hell.’ He found himself pacing and stopped, suddenly enough that a child ran into the back of his legs. He turned and picked the girl up, swinging her in a circle that had her uncertainty turning to giggles while his shoulder muscles protested against the strain. He handed the girl to her mother and focused on finding the tent where he’d nab a bunk and try to force sleep.

  When he ducked into the tent, he found two other workers already asleep. He unlaced his boots and stretched out on a camp bed, pulling a blanket over himself. Exhaustion clobbered him. He fell into its darkness with one overwhelming desire: to explain to Kiara that he understood that her words and her resistance to his departure had sprung from panic, and that he was sorry for his own anger, but he didn’t regret it. He saw her strength, and he wanted her to see it, too. She had the courage to risk loving him and he needed that love. He needed her in his life.