“What have you tried?”
“Investigators, contacting friends, family, acquaintances, staking out favorite places, sending frequent emails, sending regular paper mail to his flat in Lisbon, sending people by, paying off the doorman. You know, the usual. Everything I can legally do.”
She was dancing all around it, and he’d heard twice now that her father withdrew money from the bank before he left somewhere. She might be able to freeze that account, providing it was a family account, but she was smart; she’d have thought of that.
He gestured for her to come to him, and opened his arms. It took one second for her to catch on, and she stood and leaned against him, arms circling his waist as he brought his around her.
Freezing the account would find him, but it came with risk. The same kind of risk he took when he drew the final line in the sand for Charlie. Tough love...
He squeezed her tighter and tilted his head to nose her pink knit cap.
“Anything we’re missing?” she asked, turning her nose to his neck, and anything he might have thought to say would’ve been gone, anyway.
“Sounds like you’re doing what you can.”
“It helps, just talking about it.” She squeezed. “Feels better.”
It didn’t solve anything, talking...but he said what he was supposed to say. “Good.”
“Want to help some more?”
“Sure?”
“Stay with me tonight? I want to talk to you about something else with the vineyard. Something I’ve been mulling over.”
“Yeah...” He let go, kissed her cheek and stepped back. “Then I’d better go drag Gates out of the BAT for blood work.”
“I’ll get Angry Guy.”
“Does Angry Guy have a name?”
“Wilson, I think,” she answered, then picked up the supplies she’d already prepared to go do it. “Call when you get there.”
“Why? It’s not a drive across country.”
“So I don’t worry you’ve been lost in the snow.”
“Take security when you see Angry Guy, so I don’t worry about you being alone with someone prone to violence.”
* * *
Lia’s trip to see Wilson was much quicker than West’s haul up the steep snowy hillside, so she got back to the clinic about five minutes before he called, one word: her name through the radio.
“You made it, I see,” she answered. “Are your bits frozen off?”
“I need assistance,” his voice said, all playful teasing vanishing. “Gates has been stabbed. I need a stretcher, saline, emergency triage supplies and security.”
“Who stabbed him?” He’d just gotten into a fight with Angry Guy, how many enemies had he made?
“Don’t know,” came the quick answer, then, “Send security. Don’t you come, it’s not safe.”
Lia snorted, and immediately disregarded that order. She did get the supplies, and two from security to accompany her, but she wasn’t sitting out of this for any reason.
Twenty minutes later, with two helpers loaded with two separate emergency surgery bags, they made the mad scrambling climb to the telescope.
All the while, her mind wouldn’t stop spinning. What if the one who stabbed Nigel was still there? With West? Logically, she knew that Antarctica was a dangerous place, especially in the winter, but she didn’t expect to be worried about their survival on a day-to-day basis.
Her lungs on fire, she let the security go in first, with guns to make sure it was safe, but only seconds before she went running, calling for West with what was left of her lungs.
“Over here!” His answer came immediately, from the other side of the telescope rotunda, and as soon as she got close enough, he said, “I told you—”
“You knew it wouldn’t work,” she said, taking in the setup. Nigel had been helped onto a long table to lie on his back, but it was all but impossible to see any details of his wound until she broke out a flashlight.
“How is he?”
“In pain,” Nigel answered, breathless and struggling to keep from crying out.
“And awake,” she added. “Hi. We’re going to look after you. Just worry about breathing.” She smiled down at him, on the off chance that it might give a tiny bit of comfort, then asked West, “Angry Guy?”
“Yes. Wilson, he said. Because he was snoring every night, keeping him awake.”
Mark another one down for Polar T3. “I was just about to run those labs.”
“So they know where he’s at?”
“In his cabin, last I heard.”
While they worked, cutting away minimal clothing so his wound could be visualized, one security officer relegated to holding the light for them while the other called down to the station and within minutes announced, “Wilson’s in custody.”
She didn’t say anything else, just got Nigel’s arm wrapped in a tourniquet so she could get a line in and hang saline. The blood flow didn’t seem to be too much, but saline would help keep the volume up.
“Did you bring coagulants?”
“Yes.” She shifted the contents of the bag she’d brought to drag out needed supplies, along with additional gauze for packing the wound. “Pack it as hard as you must to slow bleeding so we can get him down the hill.”
“Did you bring a sled?” Nigel asked, making her smile this time. Joking. He never did that before. Maybe something to worry about, considering how uptight he had been about spending time in the telescope for his research.
“I always bring a sled with me, everywhere I go now.”
In about ten minutes, they had him stabilized and strapped to the stretcher, then out of the BAT and on the stairs back down.
Although she was the physician on duty for these situations, Nigel was West’s patient. They got him into Medical and she fell into step behind him, ready to assist as he had assisted her with Eileen’s fan-blade accident.
Unlike that night, they needed blood tonight. “I’ll get the files and get his match in.”
“Sedate first. It’ll slow his heart.”
“Slow my heart?”
“That’s good, Nigel,” Lia explained while digging the appropriate medication out of the cabinet and getting it loaded up to dispense into his IV. “It means you’re not pumping as much blood, and less of it is leaking out. You have any allergies I need to know about?”
“No...”
“Don’t worry, we’re going to take good care of you. Okay?”
He nodded, and she slipped the needle of the syringe into the port on the IV to put him to sleep. “See you in a minute, Space Man.”
Or a few hours, but sedation would make it only seem like a moment once he woke.
West cut off Nigel’s jacket and shirts, but got the rest of it off without destroying anything. Lia checked his file for blood information, the notes she’d made about who he cross-referenced with, and called two of the crew for impromptu donations.
“How bad is it?” she asked, rejoining him after making the calls and getting ready to help.
“Not enough blood on the outside, considering his pressure. It’s going somewhere.”
“We should get a CBC before getting started, if he’s more or less stable, and we’re waiting for his donors,” she suggested. West went with it, getting the blood kit he’d taken with him to the telescope to do a draw as she ducked back out to set up the donors with chairs and needles as soon as they arrived.
* * *
They alternated watching over the patient while the intervening tests were done and two donated pints of blood collected.
Once West was certain he wouldn’t immediately bleed out, they prepped him for surgery.
Both of them scrubbed in, and once they were certain his anesthesia had fully taken hold, West opened the wound further to see what damage had been done and repair it.
&
nbsp; “Spleen?” she asked, once he’d stopped cutting.
“Nicked it. I need more light.”
She tilted a ring light to the wound, then got a wand to suction out the blood pooling in the abdominal cavity.
“I think it’s stopped bleeding... Very small nick.”
Again he was struck by what could’ve happened with her there alone, without another doctor there. Over snoring.
“We need to do weekly thyroid checks, and maybe start a log where everyone marks down how much they’re sleeping per night. Before any of this gets further out of hand,” she grumbled, handing him whatever he needed before he needed it.
“You know, it’s not endemic. It’s this one fight that’s been repeating.”
“I heard tales of overwinter syndrome when I got here. I just thought it was exaggerated.”
Spacey was what he’d been seeing, but the mood swings? Part of him wanted to grab her and run to the nearest boat home—it was bad enough that the station was trying to kill them, now there were people getting in on the action.
His only comfort was that this time when the urge came to run, at least it was to run with someone, not away from them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IN THE WEEK that passed since Nigel had been stabbed, Lia had learned to treasure short moments where she and West could steal a kiss, or the half an hour window after someone had checked on their one inpatient, the stabbed astrophysicist. In those brief periods, they would sneak into her cabin and sit on the bed to watch the night sky for streaks of color, whatever shades they may be, and talk.
That was their time, between the chaos of two doctors monitoring one patient around the clock. Moments between when he left her bed, where he’d slept alone, and she crawled into the sheets that still smelled of him later.
But today Nigel had been discharged to sleep in his own cabin, and his now-contrite and formerly stabby neighbor, now on thyroid therapy, had been moved to a bunk in the security office until they could figure out what to do with him. Barring emergency, it was Lia and West’s first night together since the one where they’d nearly died in the lifeboat.
They’d had dinner, talked about work, then retired to her cabin to change into sleep clothes and curl up on the bed together, her back to his chest and his arms around her, bearded chin on her shoulder, watching the sky. It took a clear sky to see the aurora, and it was a little overcast, which led to other thoughts brewing.
It wasn’t long before West’s low voice rumbled in her ear. “We haven’ talked about whether we’re still in the ‘no good touching’ zone.”
She knew that timbre in his voice. Teasing, playful, definitely hoping to stir something up.
And she couldn’t resist him in this mood. She twisted to meet his gaze, adopting her best fake scowl. “Are you saying my touches have been bad?”
“Oh, no,” he denied quickly, pressing a quick little kiss to her mouth. “Your touches are always good. I imagine. I almost remember them.”
“We might need to check your thyroid levels,” she tsked, because she was nowhere near as good at the playful shenanigans as he was. “Because of forgetfulness. You got that, right? The forgetfulness part of low thyroid?”
When he laughed, she laughed with him.
“If you have to explain the joke...”
“Yeah, yeah,” she groaned, but shrugged. She had to play along. There was no choice to be had. It made her smile too much, even if it was quite literally the only dance she was good at—what came next, not this clumsy verbal tango he exceeded in. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Got me.”
Just hearing those two words made every cell in her body smile, but going gushy wasn’t how the game was played.
She lifted an eyebrow at him.
He lifted one in return.
Then both brows.
Then wiggled them and graced her with such a cheeky grin she had to laugh at the fool.
With her off her game, he turned her to face him just as he rolled to meet her. The bed wasn’t big, and rolling involved a bit of scooting and adjusting, but soon, he had one leg between her furry pink legs and his arms around her, their noses nearly touching as he stared down, looking happy, relaxed, charming as the devil.
Just looking, up close and personal, in a way that demanded attention and fully gave his own. He stole a little kiss, and then another. Almost chaste, were it not for the full-body contact happening.
“You could charm the starched white panties off a nun, you know that?”
“Never tried.” He shifted to one elbow so he could pull her hat off, then did his. “I think I like the new hair. It’s out of control. Feels right for Antarctica. Have you decided if you like it?”
“Oh, I hate it,” she admitted, then shrugged. “But I think I might like it in the future. When it’s a little longer and I don’t feel like I’m going to be accused of time-traveling from the 1980s. I’ve been fantasizing about having a ponytail on hot days, and not having to fix it every day.”
“It’s haircuts you’re fantasizing about?” He sounded so outraged she laughed again.
“In my defense, when you get a supershort pixie, you think it won’t need work to make it look right, but it’s tons. You have to blow it dry every single day.”
“Or wear a hat.”
“Or wear a hat!” she echoed with a grin she felt in her bones, then she slid her hands up his back, just to feel him, up and down the flexed muscles along his spine. “Which you removed.”
“I could help you out of those terribly sexy, fuzzy pajamas, too. I mean, if you wanted.”
She made like she was considering it, then shook her head. It only took a little pressure from her hands sliding to his chest for him to ease onto his back.
“You undressing me would not provide any surprises. Instead, you’ve been in Antarctica on the insane metabolism diet for months, grown this manly beard. I’m curious to see if you’ve sprouted impressive fur elsewhere. In the name of science, I must do research!”
This time it was him laughing. He splayed his hands, palms forward, to show them off. “You should probably look here for hair. I heard that sometimes it’s a problem when a lady puts her man in the ‘no good touching’ zone and he must ‘good touch’ himself.”
She laughed again. “Well, if you pass inspection, the ban might be lifted. But I’m going to have to get this shirt off you. And the pants. Everything must go. My medical integrity is on the line.”
“Can’t have that, can we?”
The way he watched her was some heady mix of desire, amusement and contentment, and made it impossible for her to go as slowly as she wanted.
She rid him of his top, and then froze as she saw her ring on the chain around his neck. He looked at her for a moment, and the chance this evening could turn upside down suddenly sat between them.
Not what she wanted. It wasn’t time to talk about the ring. And she could see the clasp. Gingerly, she pinched the little claw and removed the chain from his neck, placed it onto the bedside table and turned her attention to his drawers with the same kind of popping eyebrow wiggle he’d given her.
Just like that, the tension passed. She was free to go as slowly as she wanted, draw out the moments that somehow felt new. He helped wrestle his thermal layers off, then unzipped her ridiculous onesie to find three layers of thermals beneath.
“You’re like one of those Russian dolls.” He didn’t stop to count layers, just burrowed his fingers beneath all the waistbands he could find and, once he hit skin, pulled them off, knocking her socks off in the process.
“I’m built for a more temperate climate. You’re going to have to keep me warm.”
Stretching out beneath the blankets, he pulled her again half under him, and made his intentions clear with the kind of kiss that could turn her inside out. One kiss, and then another,
all thought of playing doctor gone in the moment. Kissing until breathless, just to stop again so he could look at her, at her hair, her face, into her eyes.
His arm supported her head, fingers twined with her hand curled there, and just looked. Nose to nose, his warm breath fanned her cheeks, eyes just locked to hers for long, intimate stretches of time. She couldn’t even say how long, just long enough that she had to know what was going on in his head. She wanted complete connection, not just hands, eyes and skin molding together.
“Are you telling yourself a story for the future?” she asked, because that’s what he did. He dreamed of the future, built castles in the air, and had invited her into them.
“No,” he said softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled. “I’m right here. With you. Right now. One hundred percent.”
She had to swallow a sudden thickness in her throat, his answer cutting through the need to name what she felt, to know if he felt it, too. He did.
It was different this time. They were different. All the times they’d touched and loved had been different. Had been less, somehow, even if she hadn’t known it in those moments.
Passionate, desperate, hungry, playful, flirty, but this...connection. And he wasn’t even inside her yet.
Hand free, she slid it down his chest, ruffling at the crisp male hair dusting his chest and belly, all pretext of a fur inspection gone as soon as she reached the hard length of him pressed at her belly, and she stroked her fingers over the wet head, making his breath stop, then stutter. One little touch and he let go of her hand so he could free his arm and slide over, center himself above her.
She pointed to the bedside table where she’d already made a small tear in the condom packet she’d placed there.
No words passed; he simply covered himself, gripped his erection to ease through her slick folds, then slowly slid inside her. Several months had passed since they’d last been together, but it had never been like this. They’d never had this searing connection that made him go so achingly slow, eyes still locked to hers. Still there, with her, one hundred percent.
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