Hot As Ice

by Merline Lovelace

  Feeling like a caged lion, Charlie turned his back on the window and eyed the tray sitting on the bed­side table with distaste. Hospital food hadn't im­proved much in the past forty-five years, but he...

  The whoosh of the outer airlock opening brought his head up with a snap. He waited with mounting impatience while a blast of decontaminating air pressure sanitized whoever had entered the airlock. When the inner door opened, he rapped a quick de­mand at the masked and gowned figure who entered.

  "How's Dr. Remington?"

  "I'm fine."

  With a quick tug, she yanked off her cloth mask and head covering. Her hair tumbled free of the chemically treated cap, bright and shining in the sunlight that streamed through the window.

  Charlie shot a quick glance at the clock. "What are you doing here? I thought we still had twelve hours of isolation to go?''

  "We do. But I just heard from Jack Carstairs. I thought you might want to hear his report first­hand."

  Her treated, long-sleeved gown swishing, she crossed the room and held up her wrist.

  "I'm with Major Stone, Renegade. Please repeat your last transmission."

  Static jumped through the air. A moment later, the ex-marine who'd hustled Diana out of the resort, made a succinct report.

  "Goode's dead."

  ''When and how?'' Charlie demanded.

  "We found him in his lab. It looked like he was trying to doctor the gunshot wound to his side when he suffered a stroke. That's the official cause of death, anyway."

  "Roger, Renegade," Diana said. "Thanks." She signed off a moment later, shaking her head. ''What a sad end to a scientist of his stature."

  Charlie couldn't summon the least sympathy for the man. "He was lucky he croaked before they let us out of here."

  And now that Goode was no longer part of the equation, he had more important matters on his mind. Threading his hands through Diana's hair, he tipped her face back.

  "Are you all right? Really?"

  "I'm all right, really." A smile lightened her eyes. "So are you. Your last three blood samples showed no trace of the toxin or the bacteria. You're clean, Charlie."

  The relief that washed through him at his reprieve didn't compare to the knifing joy at knowing she was safe. Charlie had experienced more than a few moments of sheer terror in his career, but nothing to what he'd suffered while huddled over Diana in those damned plastic bags.

  "We only decided to wait the additional twelve hours as a precautionary measure," she told him happily.

  His thumb played across her lower lip. "Those look to be a long twelve hours, blondie."

  The look she slanted him was pure sex. ' I figured I might keep you company for at least part of the time, Iceman."

  "Part of the time, hell."

  He scooped her up, chemically treated gown and all, and crossed the room in two swift strides.

  "The airlock doors have observation windows!" Diana reminded him, half laughing and half breath­less at the hunger that planed his face.

  "That must be why the room comes equipped with this curtain."

  Dumping her on the mattress, he reached for the accordion-pleated material. With a rattle of metal ball bearings, he yanked the hospital curtain along the curved rail attached to the ceiling. Seconds later, they were once more encased in a cocoon.

  "Good thinking," she said with husky approval, reaching up to welcome him into her arms.

  With a feeling that he'd been released from dark, frozen ice for a second time, Charlie joined her on the bed. A fumbling jab at the buttons on the control mechanism lowered its back to full horizontal.

  They rode it down together, mouths locked, bod­ies straining. By the time Diana lay stretched out under Charlie, the fear and desperate worry that had twisted her into tight knots these past thirty-six hours had disappeared. All that was left was his mouth, his hands, his rock hard body pressing hers into the tangled sheets.

  Minutes passed, maybe hours, before he went to work on the tabs and ties that held her protective gown. Diana did her best to assist him, wiggling to one side then the other to rid herself of the scratchy material and the hospital pajamas she wore under it. When he discovered that her ensemble didn't in­clude a stitch of underwear, the delight on his face was something she'd carry in her heart for the rest of her life.

  “Have I told you how beautiful you are?'' he got out on a growl, his hands skimming her from breast to hip.

  "Not that I recall."

  "You are," he pronounced between hungry nips, "the most gorgeous creature God ever put on this earth."

  He nibbled his way down her throat and back up again while Diana writhed with delicious pleasure,

  "You're...not...so bad...yourself," she gasped, running her hands over his sleek, muscled shoul­ders. "But aren't you forgetting something?"

  "Right."

  He brought his head up. Bracing himself on his elbows, he smiled down at her. "I love you, Diana. I didn't realize how much until we climbed into those garbage sacks. All I knew was that I didn't want to climb out and face this world—or any other!—without you."

  "Oh, Charlie, I love you, too! I think I fell in love with you the moment you opened your eyes and grabbed my shirttail. After I got over being scared out of my wits, of course."

  "Of course."

  She waited, her love swimming in her eyes, while the smile faded from his.

  "Do you need another reminder?" she hinted broadly.

  "I've had some time to think these past thirty-six hours, Diana."

  "Oh-oh. I don't like the sound of this."

  "I think we both have to face the fact that I might not ever fly again."

  "You might not ever fly air force jets again," she corrected gently.

  "That's all I know how to do. All I've ever done."

  "So you learn to fly something else. Or don't fly at all. There's a whole new world out there, Charlie, one you've barely begun to explore. We'll explore it together."

  "Are you sure?"

  "More sure than I've ever been of anything in my life."

  He swooped down, pressing her into the mattress, but Diana was discovering she was every bit as tra­ditional as any woman from the fifties. She wanted to hear the words.

  After a long, drugging kiss, she fought her way through the swirling pleasure and cleared her hoarse throat. "A-hem. You were going to ask me some­thing?"

  Grinning, he brushed her hair back from her face. "Will you marry me, Dr. Remington?"

  "Yes, Major, I will."

  Chapter 15

  A pall of muggy July heat hung over Washington D.C., steaming the air and bathing the vehicles that crawled along Massachusetts Avenue in an early af­ternoon haze. The driver of the tomato-red convert­ible with the block-long fins and miles of chrome trim didn't seem to mind the heat. After his years on ice, Charlie couldn't get too much sun.

  Nor, it had appeared for a while, could the media get too much of Major Charles Stone. Once the news of his astonishing ordeal in the ice broke, he'd been besieged by reporters and talk show hosts. Within days his face and name had become house­hold icons. Like Dolly, the first cloned sheep, he'd made scientific history.

  And like Dolly, his turn in the spotlight had lasted only until the next spectacular scientific break­through. A mere two weeks after the Iceman made headlines all over the world, Dr. Greg Wozniak had announced that he'd succeeded in thawing out an­other ice-age mouse. To Charlie's intense relief, a fifty-thousand year-old rodent riveted the world's at­tention far more than a broken-down pilot.

  With the media diverted to new prey, he and Di­ana did exactly what they wanted to do. After a hurried exchange of vows before a justice of the peace, they took off on a slow, meandering voyage of discovery across the United States. With the Hawk's top down and the wind in their hair, they used the Santa Monica Pier as a jumping-off point to retrace the old Route 66 and explore a world that held magic for both of them at every turn of the road.

  Now, one journ
ey was about to end and another begin. Charlie didn't know which unsettled him more—learning to fly a desk as the Smithsonian Na­tional Air and Space Museum's new technical ad­visor for mid-twentieth-century aeronautical vehi­cles or meeting Diana's mother and sisters. He had a feeling that the woman who'd been one of the first to burn her bra on the steps of the U.S. Capitol would knock him off his feet with almost the same ease as her daughter.

  Compared to that long-anticipated meeting, the stop-off at OMEGA headquarters for an equally long-delayed meeting with the director would be a piece of cake.

  "Turn here," Diana directed.

  Following her directions, he guided the Hawk down a quiet street lined with chestnut trees and grand old Federal-style town houses. Moments later, he pulled up in front of a three-story building with a discreet bronze plaque mounted beside the door.

  "Who's the special envoy?" Charlie asked Diana as they passed through the portal.

  "That's the public persona Lightning presents to the world. He's sort of the president's goodwill am­bassador to the rich and famous," she explained with a grin. "As if they need goodwill."

  After walking up the short flight of steps and passing through a high-ceilinged foyer crowned by a crystal chandelier, they were greeted by a trim, gray-haired matron.

  "Welcome home, Artemis!" Beaming, she hur­ried from behind her ornate, Queen Ann desk and included Charlie in her warm welcome. "I'm Eliz­abeth Wells, the special envoy's personal assistant. Please, come this way. He's waiting for you."

  "Nice lady," Charlie murmured as they followed their guide through a series of anterooms furnished with more exquisite antiques.

  "Just don't get crosswise of her," Diana warned.

  "She can put nine rounds dead center through a target in less than ten seconds."

  Charlie's brows soared, but he barely had time to revise his mental characterization of the grandmoth­erly woman before she threw open a set of tall dou­ble doors. He caught a glimpse of a towering, five-tiered wedding cake centered on a mahogany conference table, then the crowd inside gave a burst of applause.

  ''Congratulations!''

  "Way to go, Artemis!"

  Laughing, Diana pulled Charlie into the crowd, rattling off names as she went. He was introduced to a Cowboy, a Digger and a delicate, stunningly beautiful redhead with the incongruous code name of Saber. Renegade he already knew.

  "Artemis is a keeper, Iceman," the square-jawed ex-marine advised. "You'd better hang on to her."

  "I intend to."

  Lightning looked nothing like the mental image Charlie had constructed. From the remarks Diana had let drop, he'd expected a tense, driven operative with the eyes of a hunter. He'd pegged the eyes right, maybe, but not the man's lazy charm.

  "The president sends his congratulations," Nick Jensen told the newly weds with a smile. "He'll have more to say at the White House dinner he and the First Lady are hosting tomorrow night in the Iceman's honor, but for now please accept his best wishes along with mine."

  Charlie gripped the hand Lightning offered, won­dering what the heck Diana's veiled references to the man's ruthlessness were all about. He found out not ten minutes later.

  He and Diana were just in the process of cutting into the five-tiered masterpiece when Mackenzie Blair burst through the double doors.

  ''Hi, Artemis, Iceman. Good to see you two sans plastic trash sacks," the raven-haired director of communications tossed out with a grin.

  "Good to see you again, too," Charlie returned, his smile dazzling enough to make Mackenzie re­vise her initial impression of the rather formidable Iceman. ''We owe you one for getting that biohazard decon team there so quickly."

  "All in a day's work," she answered, blowing him and Diana a kiss as she threaded through the crowd. "Chief, we've just received a code level communication."

  Lightning skimmed the single sheet she handed him, his brows knitting. Without shedding any of his casual sophistication, he transformed to a man with a single purpose. Cool. Exact. In command. A man Charlie identified with instantly.

  "This one's for you, Renegade."

  "What's up?"

  "The State Department has just uncovered evidence of possible death threats against Elena Maria Alazar. I'm detailing you to act as her bodyguard. You leave for San Antonio tonight."

  "The hell you say!"

  "Comm will till you in on the details."

  Renegade uttered another, far more colorful oath, gave OMEGA's director a hard look and stomped out. Mackenzie snatched up a piece of cake and fol­lowed in his wake.

  "Who's Elena Maria Alazar?" Charlie asked when the dust had settled.

  "The niece of the president of Mexico," Diana replied, gathering up a good-sized chunk of the frothy confection. "And unless I'm not mistaken, the same woman who got Renegade kicked out of the marines a few years ago."

  "Oh-oh."

  "I wouldn't worry about Renegade right now if I were you," she advised.

  "No?" Charlie drawled, eyeing her. If he hadn't already lost his heart to his vibrant, brilliant scien­tist, the look of sparkling mischief on her face at that moment would have melted it on the spot.

  "No," she replied. Laughing up at him with the joy of a woman totally secure in the love of her man, she hefted a piece of wedding cake in one hand. "Right now, I'd say your biggest worry is that you're about to go into the ice again. Icing, that is."

  To the cheers of the assembled undercover op­eratives, she introduced Charlie to the modem tra­dition of feeding the groom a piece of wedding cake in the messiest manner possible.

  *****