Baby, It's Cold Outside

by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace

  And left again. Just as Mia and her sister would leave once the weather cleared.

  Suppressing the insidious wish that the sleet and wind would hang around for a few more days, Brent dragged a down-filled vest off the back of his chair.

  “Let’s find you a parka and I’ll give you the three-dollar tour.”

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER a rosy-cheeked and windblown Mia reported for lunchtime kitchen duty. Patrick, the senior station cook, had put Beth and one of the other stranded passengers to work preparing ingredients for a shredded carrot salad.

  “Where did you disappear to?” Beth asked when Mia had grabbed a paring knife and joined them at the stainless steel counter.

  “Brent showed me around the station.”

  “He did, huh?” Her sister paused in the act of scraping her blade along a fat carrot. “And how is it you rate a private tour?”

  Mia didn’t have an answer for that. Or for the niggling little question about the real motive for her detour to his office this morning.

  Yes, she’d wanted to thank Brent. And yes, she’d intended to make her visit casual and quick. That didn’t explain why she’d jumped at the chance to spend several hours in his company.

  She and Beth would be out of here soon. Tomorrow, hopefully. Hadn’t she learned her lesson, for God’s sake? Spending a few hours or days with a man didn’t mean she could trust her judgment concerning him.

  So Walker had an easy air of competence and authority? So everyone here at this small, isolated community seemed to hold him in high regard? That didn’t mean squat when it came to the man-woman thing…as she knew all too well.

  “How did the blogging go?” she asked her sister in a deliberate change of subject. “Did Allen get you all set up and online?”

  “Yes, he did.” Enthusiasm and excitement leaped into Beth’s face. “I’ve already posted my first blog about the marine aquarium, complete with pictures. This afternoon he’s going to take me through the Terra Lab.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Beats me. Guess I’ll find out this afternoon. You know—” Beth gave her sister a speculative glance “—you ought to be taking notes and pictures, too. You’ve always talked about writing a children’s book. Palmer Station would make a great setting for one.”

  “I’m sure there are plenty of children’s books out there about Antarctica.”

  “So? Do another one.”

  Lips pursed, Mia considered the suggestion. She enjoyed her work as an editor but did harbor a not-so-secret urge to try her hand at writing.

  “This is the chance of a lifetime,” Beth insisted, wagging a half-scraped carrot. “I bet Jill and Brent and the others would be glad to let you interview them about their work.”

  Brent had given Mia a pretty good fix on the scope of his responsibilities this morning. But…

  She would need considerably more detail for a book.

  “You know,” she said slowly, “I might just take a few notes.”

  WORD THAT MIA WAS CONSIDERING writing a book about Palmer Station spread through the permanent residents with the same speed her alter ego had the day before. Both scientists and support personnel were more than willing to show her how they passed their time.

  As a result, Mia spent a mind-blowing hour with Doug Anderson, Jill’s husband and the senior scientist presently at Palmer. She left his lab with pages full of notes on equipment and experiments ranging from sampling the DNA of algae that lived in the frigid waters hundreds of feet under the ice to implanting microscopic transmitters in Adelaide penguin chicks to track their migration.

  When she exited the lab, Beth caught her and suggested she join the excursion to the Terra Lab. The bushy-bearded Allen Barclay seconded the invitation after offering a sincere apology.

  “I’m really sorry, Mia. I shouldn’t have blurted out that business about Don…Er…You know.”

  “Apology accepted.” More than ready to put that whole sorry business behind her, she gave the meteorologist a breezy smile. “Now where is this Terra Lab of yours?”

  “About fifty yards behind the BioLab.”

  “Behind, like in outside?”

  “Like in outside,” he confirmed.

  Despite being wrapped in a borrowed parka, Mia seriously questioned her need for this level of detail in her book as she and Beth and Allen trudged up to the building set atop a short rise behind the BioLab. They had to lean into the wind at almost a ninety-degree angle and slit their eyes against the wind-whipped sleet.

  And this was just January! The middle of their supposed summer! She couldn’t imagine what conditions must be like in winter.

  They made it to the lab with considerable slipping and sliding but no real mishaps. Tiki was already there and eager to give them a layman’s explanation of the research she was doing for the Global Seismographic Network’s long-term seismic survey.

  Allen took center stage next. He did his best to go easy on the technical jargon as he explained the various experiments in progress, but he lost Mia long before he did Beth. For a substitute teacher who worked primarily with grade-schoolers, she had sure developed a sudden interest in PhD-level meteorology. Or was her interest due to a certain PhD meteorologist? Mia hung back, observing the give-and-take between her sister and the pudgy scientist.

  Actually, now that she had time for a closer look, she realized most of his bulk came from his layers of clothing. His thick beard added to the illusion, as well. Beneath that hairy mask he wasn’t bad.

  “NOT BAD AT ALL,” BETH confirmed when the sisters returned to the BioLab.

  They’d detoured to their third-floor room to clean up and drag a comb through their hair before dinner. The fact that Allen had offered to wait for Beth outside the dining room hadn’t been lost on Mia.

  “So what’s the deal with the furry doc?” she teased. “Are you two working on more than a blog?”

  “Not yet. I’m thinking about it, though. He’s not as hunky as your station manager, but he’s really sweet under all that facial hair.”

  Startled, Mia halted her comb in mid-drag. “Brent isn’t ‘my’ station manager.”

  “If you say so.”

  “C’mon, Beth. You of all people know there’s no way I’m going to jump into another brief, mindless and potentially disastrous affair.”

  “Who says this one has to be disastrous?”

  “Get real, sis. We’re outta here as soon as the weather clears. Neither one of us should start something we can’t finish. Besides,” she added, attacking her hair again, “in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a distinct shortage of privacy here at the station.”

  “What I have noticed is that the Palmer crew is a pretty resourceful bunch. Where there’s a will, I suspect they could find a way.” Grinning, Beth stuffed her comb in the little cubbyhole beside the mirror. “Let’s go eat. Allen says they’re having some kind of ritual movie showing afterward.”

  “Uh-oh. Another ritual.”

  She told Beth about the ice plunge on the way to the dining room. Once there, Allen and Tiki filled them in on several other traditions during a luscious dinner of baked ziti, salad and homemade bread. One such tradition involved a green-ice sculpture competition on St. Patrick’s Day. Another required a hike to the top of the glacier behind the station before officially shedding fingee status.

  The sisters got to participate in another time-honored tradition when they made the dash to the GWR building for movie night. The lounge could barely accommodate everyone. Folks perched on bar stools, on scattered chairs, on top of the pool table, on the floor. Jill Anderson manned the tabletop popcorn machine at one end of the bar while her husband poured soft drinks and wine for their guests from bottles purchased at the station store for the occasion.

  “Beth! Mia! Over here.”

  Allen beckoned them over to a tiny wedge of floor space he’d saved. The sisters had just settled cross-legged when Brent made a late appearance.

  “Got room for me?”
r />   “Sure.” Beth sent Mia a smug, I-told-you-so look. “Scoot over, sis.”

  With everyone crammed in hip to hip and knee to knee, the small lounge heated up fast. And with Brent’s muscled thigh nudging hers, Mia heated up, as well. Calling herself ten kinds of an idiot, she forced her attention to the big-screen TV.

  “Brace yourself,” Brent warned, snitching from her bag of popcorn. “We show this same movie every January. Usually not until the last day of the month, but we moved it up on the schedule in honor of our unexpected guests.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She did, less than two minutes after the opening credits began to roll for The Thing. A science fiction horror flick starring Kurt Russell, the movie featured a shape-shifting alien that infiltrated an Antarctic scientific research station. Palmer’s regulars had memorized most of the dialogue. In thrilling, hyperdramatic voices, they chorused each line along with the actors.

  Privately Mia thought The Thing did a darn good job of depicting Antarctica’s hostile environment, but by the end of the movie she was laughing so hard her sides hurt. Some of the guests and a number of station residents lingered afterward for another glass of wine.

  Gradually, the lounge emptied except for the overflow crowd bunking down there. Beth and Allen departed together, Mia and Brent following a few moments later. Once outside, they discovered the wooden walkway connecting the buildings had acquired another slippery coat during the movie.

  “Careful,” Brent warned. “You’d better hang on to me.”

  She hooked her arm in his and kept her head down against the wind until they hit the BioLab’s double doors. When the door whooshed shut behind them, she shook off the sleet and smiled up at him.

  “Palmer Station is really taking me back to my childhood. First sleeping bags, à la Camp Winihaha. Now having someone walk me home from the movies. It’s junior high school all over again.”

  “Not quite,” he returned with a grin. “If this was junior high, I’d be all in a sweat trying to figure out how to wrangle a kiss on your front porch.”

  He said it lightly, making a joke out of it. Yet as soon as the words were out, his gaze dropped to her mouth and his eyes darkened to cobalt.

  All of a sudden Mia forgot how to breathe. “Do you…uh…want a kiss?”

  In answer, he pulled off his glove and ran his thumb along her lower lip. Once. Twice. His skin was warm on hers, his voice low and husky.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE KISS STARTED OFF LIGHT. Easy. Brent’s lips brushing hers. His fingers threading through her hair.

  Mia tried to ignore the slow sizzle his mouth generated. Sternly, she reminded herself why she was stuck down here at the bottom of the earth. And that she’d sworn to tread carefully where men were concerned. Very carefully.

  Yet his mouth felt so good on hers, darn it! So warm and sensual and right. That thought was front and center in her mind when Brent pulled back.

  “You okay with this?” he asked, searching her face.

  She was, she realized. The mere fact that he’d asked, that he understood her instinctive need for caution after the fiasco of Don Juan, bridged the gap.

  “Yes. You?”

  His grin slipped out, quick and sexy and all male.

  “Absolutely.”

  The kiss was deeper this time, greedier. Their mouths locked. Their tongues mated. Mia gave in to the need to slide her hands up and over his shoulders. He reciprocated by hooking an arm around her waist and tugging her against him.

  They had on too many layers for direct contact but she could feel his strength and heat. She reveled in both…and in the cleansing joy of just letting herself go again.

  When he raised his head once more, his breath came as fast and hard as hers. He stared down at her, so close she could see herself in his eyes.

  “Wow,” he said softly.

  She drew in a gulp of air. “Wow is right.”

  Brent leaned his free arm against the door, caging her in while he tried to decide what the heck to do next.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have many options. The station was bursting at the seams with almost double its maximum capacity. Privacy was nonexistent, except maybe in one of the labs or offices.

  As quickly as that thought surfaced, Brent squelched it. No way he was hustling Mia into a lab and backing her against a spectrophotometer or algae tank. That would put him in almost the same class as that jerk, Don Juan. Yet he wasn’t ready to say good-night. Or let her out of his arms.

  Inspiration hit a moment later. “You up for a late-night dip?”

  “In the icy sea? No way!”

  “Actually, I was thinking of the hot tub.”

  She blinked up at him. “Are you serious? You guys really have a hot tub?”

  “We do. It’s more of a necessity than a luxury. Divers use it to soak the chill out of their bones after going under the ice. We keep it bubbling 24/7 so the water doesn’t freeze.”

  “It’s outside?”

  “It is,” he admitted ruefully. “But sheltered from the wind.”

  She wavered a moment or two before shaking her head. “My bathing suit is still aboard the Adventurer II.”

  With noble restraint, Brent refrained from suggesting they go au naturel. “Not a problem. You have a T-shirt on under your sweats, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what most of us wear.”

  Mia had her doubts. Serious doubts. But, as advertised, the small hot tub tucked behind the BioLab building was protected from the worst of the weather. Still, she hung back while Brent slid off the cover and adjusted the water temperature.

  He made quick work of stripping down to a black T-shirt and a pair of thick, thigh-hugging trunks obviously designed for warmth. He stepped into the tub and quickly sank up to his neck.

  “Come on in,” he teased when she hesitated with her hand on her jacket zipper. “The water’s fine.”

  With great reluctance, she shed her outer layer. Her red sweats came off next, her borrowed boots last. The arctic night air raised instant goose bumps over every inch of her exposed flesh. Shivering, Mia almost jumped into the tub.

  “Ahhhhh.”

  Steam curled upward from the surface of the bubbling water. Encased in the warm fog, she felt her way along the built-in seat. Brent negated the need to find a perch by the simple expedient of tugging her onto his lap.

  “Now,” he murmured, threading a hand through her hair. “Where were we?”

  Mia’s internal temperature shot up to match the water’s. Brushing her lips against his, she punctuated her reply with kisses.

  “Right…about…here.”

  God, he tasted good! Felt good, too. Her eager hands explored the chest molded by his wet T-shirt while her mouth and tongue played with his. Brent reciprocated by sliding his free hand down her rib cage and over her hip.

  It couldn’t go beyond kissing. And touching. She knew that. Despite the late hour, someone else could hit on the same idea and mosey on out to the hot tub. Or Beth could come looking for them.

  Nor did Mia intend to take things beyond this slow, sensual exploration. If nothing else, Don Juan had taught her to look hard and long before baring herself. But man-oh-man, what Brent could do with his mouth and hands and tongue! The bubbling water and wet steam couldn’t compete with the heat searing Mia from the inside out.

  Wiggling around, she hooked a leg over his and straddled his thighs. They sat face-to-face, breath to breath, belly to belly.

  “We got the ends of your hair wet.” Smiling, he combed his fingers through the limp strands. “You have tiny icicles forming.”

  “Only on the outside.”

  Inside, she was having major hot flashes. Especially when he planed his hands down her hips and slid them under the hem of her wet T-shirt. She could feel the callouses on his palms against her slick skin. Feel, too, the sudden hardening under her thigh.

&nb
sp; She was playing with fire. Mia acknowledged the danger even as she locked her arms around his neck and brought her mouth down on his.

  The hard ridge jerked under her thigh. Brent gave a small grunt and moved his hands down to cup her bottom. He eased her over an inch or two. Positioning her. Stoking her. Exploring the small indentation in her left cheek.

  It was the damned dimple that brought her to her senses. With a ferocious effort of will, Mia wiggled back and put some distance between them.

  “We’d better stop,” she got out on a husky note. “I’m, uh, not certified for deep water dives.”

  The joke was corny but conveyed her message. Brent blew out a long breath.

  “Guess we’d better get you certified before we take to the water again,” he said ruefully.

  “Guess so. Ready to go back inside?”

  His mouth tipped into a wry grin. “Give me a minute.”

  THAT GRIN WAS THE FIRST THING Mia remembered when she woke the next morning. Beth and Tiki lay curled up in their sleeping bags on either side of her, Mary in the bed. To the rhythm of their soft, even breathing Mia replayed every moment of that steamy hot tub session in her mind.

  Her heart thumped as she remembered the crazy sensation of having her body engulfed in swirling heat while wind and sleet knifed through the frigid air.

  Speaking of which…

  Belatedly, Mia translated the soft hum of her roommates’ breathing into an absence of other sounds. Like a screeching wind and sleet dancing off the roof. She raised her head and saw the faint glimmer of hazy dawn outlined in the frost-rimmed window.

  “Oh, no!”

  The dismayed murmur slipped out, surprising her. She wanted to go home. She really did. Getting plucked from icy waters after being forced to abandon ship was not her idea of a fun vacation. And camping out on the floor of a crowded dorm room was okay for a night or two, but this sleeping bag didn’t compare to the bed in her nice, cozy Newport condo.