by Robin Gianna
“Relax? She nearly died out there!”
“But she didn’t. Because you found her and saved her.”
“I can’t take credit. You’re the one who came to tell me she was missing. And someone else could easily have found them.” Though he was more grateful than he could possibly say that he’d been the lucky one. Finding her there, then seeing her open her eyes and manage a smile, to even recite one of her silly nursery rhymes while lost and nearly frozen, would always be the single most gratifying thing he’d ever experience.
“But they didn’t. You did. So now what?”
“What do you mean, now what?”
“Are you going to stop being an idiot, tell the woman you love her and do whatever you can to keep her?”
“I...don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jordan told me you broke it off with her, though didn’t say why. Look, I know you must have been through something terrible in the past, and I’m really sorry.” Bob stood and walked over to rest his hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “But you can’t let that pain rule your life.”
“I don’t let it rule my life. I just know that I don’t have what a woman like Jordan deserves. I can’t give her what she wants. That’s why I ended it. I’m not enough for her.”
“I guess you going into a snowstorm, finding her and saving her life doesn’t count as enough? Loving her isn’t enough?” He cocked his head. “Think about how ridiculous that sounds. Don’t throw away your chance to be happy with Jordan. That chance might never come again. I know she’s willing to take that chance, because she’s bold and brave. Are you? Or are you a coward, protecting yourself, while you claim to be protecting her instead?”
He stood stone-still, absorbing Bob’s words. Was he being a coward? Was what Bob had said a truth he hadn’t let himself face? Was it time for him to look the old Zeke in the eye, and become the man he wanted to be, instead of the man he believed himself to be?
“Zeke, you can come see Jordan now, if you like,” Tony said, coming into the room.
“Thanks.” He turned to Bob. “And thanks to you, too.”
“Anytime.” Bob smiled. “Now, go. You’ve got some making up to do.”
His heart bumped wildly in his chest as he stepped next to Jordan’s bed, pulling the privacy curtain around it. Her solemn eyes met his. When he saw the discoloration of her skin from being in the cold for so long, his teeth clenched and he reached to cup her cheek in his hand, unlocking his jaw so he could speak.
“You’ve had a rough time of it.”
“Are you talking about nearly freezing to death? Or being kicked out the door by the man I’m in love with?”
He had to smile, even as her words made his chest hurt. “Which was worse?”
“About even, I think.”
“What do you think about me making both of them right?”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I found you on the snow, so that one’s done. Now I need to tell you I’m sorry. Sorry I hurt you, sorry I’m an idiot and sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”
“What should you have realized sooner?”
“That I love you.” He sat on the side of the bed and reached for her hands. “That I was being selfish by breaking it off between us, convincing myself I was doing it to protect you. That having you in my life is the best thing that ever happened to me, and when I thought you might die out there on the ice, I knew a part of me would die with you. But you didn’t die. And I’m not going to let you go, ever again.”
“Oh, Zeke,” she whispered. “I love you, too. I never understood how you could possibly not believe in how strong and steady you are, because I know you’re the kind of man who’ll always be there in good times and bad. And I’ll be there for you in good times and bad. If you’ll let me be.”
His throat closed at her words, and he had to try twice to speak. “Thank you for believing in me, and helping me believe in myself. I didn’t want to let us start an affair because I was sure it wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“And now?”
“Now I hope our affair will happen on ice, snow, sand and surf. For the rest of our lives. If you’ll say yes.”
“Yes.”
She reached for him, her eyes brimming with tears. He felt his threaten to do the same, and since he wasn’t quite at the point where he’d want her to see that, he carefully pulled her into his arms and gently kissed her, but not for long because her poor lips were still bruised and tender from the frostbite she’d endured.
“I’ve been thinking about you wanting roots and that picket fence.” He held her hands and knew she was worth any change he had to make in his life for her to be happy. “I’m going to ask my university to put me on the teaching schedule year-round now. I can still do marine biology research in California, and for the climatology—”
“No.”
“No? What do you want, then? To move back to England? It might take some time for me to find a position there, but—”
“No, I want to find a job in Southern California where I can still travel with you to Antarctica, or wherever else your research takes you.”
He stared at her, stunned. “What about those roots you never had? I’m not sure a few months a year in San Diego would qualify, especially if we have that brood of kids that’s on your list of things you want in your life. And isn’t the Antarctic too scary for you now?”
“Pshaw!” She waved her hand dismissively and grinned. “A near attack by a leopard seal and getting lost in a snowstorm could never dim how it feels to kiss you under the southern lights. Being with you down here has made me see that roots and a picket fence are way overrated. I grew up a gypsy, and I’ve finally come to see that it’s in my blood, and how I want to live my life, after all. Including the brood of kids. If that’s okay with you?”
Her words made him feel so overwhelmed he couldn’t do anything but nod and hold her close against him for long minutes until he could trust himself to speak again.
“You know I have issues, right? I have panic attacks. Nightmares. But I know that I finally have to deal with all that, talk to a professional about it, because you’ve made me see I don’t have to live that way anymore. Don’t want to anymore. But do you want to wait to find out how I do before we decide on forever together? If so, I understand.”
“I want to help you in that journey, like you’ve helped me in mine. I want us to take the rest of our journeys together.”
Emotion welled in his chest. “I can’t think of anything better. With a close second being kissing you under the southern lights.”
“So when can we do that again?”
“Not until next winter. Unless you want to travel to the north pole for our next adventure together.”
“Maybe a wedding under the aurora borealis?”
“Now you’re talking.” He kissed her again, and knew he was the luckiest man on Earth at either pole. “It’s a date.”
* * *
Look out for the next story in the Doctors Under the Stars duet
Reunited in the Snow
by Amalie Berlin
And if you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Robin Gianna
The Family They’ve Longed For
Tempted by the Brooding Surgeon
The Spanish Duke’s Holiday Proposal
Baby Surprise for the Doctor Prince
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Reunited in the Snow by Amalie Berlin.
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Reunited in the Snow
by Amalie Berlin
CHAPTER ONE
DR. LIA MONTERROSA had not inherited the seafaring, adventurous spirit of her Portuguese ancestors. But she talked a good game.
None of her traveling companions appeared to be any more sprightly than she was after the long, arduous journey. Each lugged modest amounts of luggage down the pristine, shiny corridors of the brand-new Antarctic research station where they’d just arrived, no spring in any thick-booted step. All of them were carrying what would see them through the long months of a dark Antarctic winter.
She’d heard various reasons for coming—once-in-a-lifetime experience, work they wanted to do and could best accomplish locked up for eight solid months with fifty strangers. For her, that was the upside of her trip—being surrounded by people who didn’t know her, and therefore had no expectations about how she should behave. She didn’t have to be the strongest person on the planet, and she didn’t have to be the most docile, polite one, either.
But her ex-fiancé was who she’d come to find. To ask why he was her ex. What had happened during the four days she’d been gone, home in Portugal, that had made him decide he didn’t love her anymore, didn’t want to marry her? To ask why he’d been cold enough to also go missing while she was filing paperwork with the Polícia Judiciária to locate her missing father.
He hadn’t left a message. Hadn’t scribbled his farewell on a sticky note affixed to the bathroom mirror. He’d just stopped answering her calls, and three days before her wedding, when she’d had a moment free to go back to London and look for him, as well, she’d found his flat vacated, job vacated, mobile phone canceled. He’d left her with the beautiful ring they’d painstakingly designed together, and a hole in her chest so big a truck could pass through.
But she would see him today, the end of too many months of torture. If fate was with her, he’d provide answers. Closure, if that was a real thing that actually happened, and not just some psychobabble placebo. Closure, no closure—it didn’t really matter. The end was coming. The final end. The official end that had been denied her when she’d come home to find him gone.
Right on cue, her stomach plummeted—a sensation she should’ve become immune to by now, but which still had the ability to wrench away brief control of her extremities. Her booted foot scuffed the floor, but she didn’t fall—walking was a little easier to recover from than errant hand-twitches in surgery when a slight wrong move could end a life. Knowing what had ended them would help, even if it was just another case of her not being enough. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t fix whatever she’d done wrong if she didn’t know what it was.
“Dr. Monterrosa, you’re in Pod C,” her guide said, jerking her from her thousandth thought-spiral of this trip, and gesturing to a nondescript door with a circular window at head height—the kind peppering the station, and which reminded her of doors on boats.
The group all stopped long enough for the woman to add, “With you lot arriving at the end of summer, you’re getting stacked where there is an open cabin.”
And she was the only one in C, which would practically become a ghost town in little more than a week when she could probably have her pick of rooms. After Jordan and Zeke left. After West...
Lia opened her mouth to ask the number, but her fatigue was starting to show. The guide answered before she even formed the first sluggish word.
“Last door on the left, end of the hall.”
With a soft, tired grunt, Lia hoisted one of her two meager bags onto her shoulder and entered without another word. Through the door and into a much dimmer hallway, somewhere obviously designed for sleeping through the twenty-four-hour days of summer.
She had about three seconds to see it as the door swung closed and the bright light from the corridor dissipated, but all she really saw was beige. Walls. Low-static carpeting. White doors dotting both sides of the hall. Snow blind, she waited only long enough for general shapes to form in her vision, allowing her to navigate without bumping into walls or running over strangers in the hallway.
Dr. Weston MacIntyre would never know what had hit him. She had the upper hand, and she needed it. He’d expect her to come at him with guns blazing, and that method had its own appeal. It might help her hide the hole and all the raw-hamburger emotions lining the inside.
Jordan knew she was coming. Her best friend from medical school and almost maid of honor had been the one to call Lia the day West had shown up at Fletcher Station, the person she’d gone to for help shutting down a wedding when hope was finally lost, but she hadn’t even known if he was alive. She’d had months to prepare herself for this confrontation, to script every word and every motion in her head, compose the best emasculating zingers and lists of all the ways she would never, and had never, missed him. But with the starting gun ready to sound, the idea of actually saying any of those things left her cold. Colder than the balmy ten below that she’d walked through from the bus to the station. No one who went halfway around the world to find another person could honestly say she hadn’t missed him. Hadn’t worried. But it felt better to pretend. Lies could comfort.
She made a sharp right bend in the hallway and kept walking. Halfway to the end, her vision had cleared enough to see a tall, broad man with a black knit hat and an equally black beard standing outside the last two doors, keys in hand, staring in her direction.
In another couple of meters, her stomach did that dropping thing again and this time when her limb control faltered, the only thing that saved her from further humiliation was the meager stability offered by the suitcase rolling beside her.
West.
It was West.
Her polished, ever-immaculate fiancé. Former fiancé. But far scruffier.
Her whole world slowed down, and the remaining length of the hallway grew longer than the thousands of kilometers she’d traveled to reach this hallway with this man.
Instead of a tirade, her mind filled with all the times she’d walked toward him. Right back to that first time they’d met in a London hospital, when a newly minted general surgeon had required an assist and been told to pull one of the not-busy neurosurgical fellows. Her. And the way he’d watched her approaching after having her paged, down the hallway to where he loitered at the nurses’ station, his eyes broadcasting bold, open interest until he’d heard her name. How she’d pretended not to notice the looks, how she’d managed to ignore her own attraction for three whole days before she’d asked him out.
London Lia did those things. London Lia was fearless. At least on the outside. Because it was what everyone expected of her.
Lifting her chin, Lia held his gaze now, struggling to ignore the burst of other memories. All the church aisles they’d tried on looking for the perfect church for their wedding. When he’d looked at her with the promise of a long future dancing in his eyes, the future he delighted in pl
anning and dreaming into existence with her.
Time sped back up. Her heart squeezed hard once, then began stomping a chula around her sternum, fast enough she’d have been silencing alarms on her fitness monitor if the battery hadn’t died on the trip down. And her stomach, which had been lurching and freefalling for the duration of the trip, went hollow, and cold. Then the nausea hit.
He didn’t speak or look away, just stared. There was an intensity in his gaze, but nothing loving. She’d call it a glare were it not for the pallor she could see when she got closer.
Was this it? The burning in her eyes said so. All happening before she’d even dropped off her luggage?
She wasn’t ready.
What could she say? What had she even practiced? She was supposed to say something. She’d come all this way to say things. Learn things. Remove the weight of betrayal and loss that glittered on her left ring finger.
The ring that symbolized that future they’d planned weighted her finger and something like relief weighted her tongue. Relief. Regret. Betrayal.
If she’d slept at all on the way there, she would’ve been able to think. She’d be able to look away from his eyes, and her ears wouldn’t be ringing in a way that made her worry about a stroke. She’d hear something other than her own loud, labored breathing in the dead space in her chest.
The Lia he knew would say the words. Slap him, maybe. Shake answers out of him. Something. But whoever she was now didn’t have that in her.
As the seconds stretched out his shock turned to something else, something harder, and she gave up the mental scramble for words to wait him out, watching anger flare in his eyes, bitterness turn the mouth she’d lived to kiss into a slash amid the facial hair she’d never before seen him wear.
But he didn’t say anything, either. No words from either of them. The only acknowledgment that she had any more meaning to him than a stranger came in the form of gritted teeth.
As if he had any right to be angry with her. She hadn’t left him practically at the altar.