Baby, It's Cold Outside (8 page)

He hooked the radio back on his belt just as a glad shout rang out from above their heads.

“Hey, sis! Up here!”

Mia tilted her head back and spotted her sister leaning over a railing two stories above.

“They’ve got showers,” Beth called down joyously. “Hot showers! Hurry up before the line gets too long.”

She swung toward Walker, who nodded. “Go ahead.”

When he accompanied the nod with a smile that crinkled the weathered skin at the corners of his eyes, Mia swallowed. Hard.

Oh, boy! Ohboyohboyohboy! Good thing she’d sworn off the male of the species. This particular speci
men packed more firepower into a grin than any other she’d come across in a long time. Including jerk-off Don Juan.

“You’d better grab a shower while you can,” he told her. “I have to get to the communications room to check on the ships diverting to Palmer to pick you all up.”

“Hang on a sec.”

That came from the heavy-set male descending the stairs directly ahead of them. A faded University of Wisconsin sweatshirt encased his bulky torso and a bushy brown beard covered his cheeks and chin.

“I need your name for our station log,” he told Mia, his pen poised over a clipboard.

“Mia Harrelson.”

He scribbled the information and nodded. “Harrelson. Got it.”

She started past him. Head cocked, he stopped her.

“You sure look familiar. Have we met? Maybe at a conference or something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not in the biospheric measurement field, are you?”

“Not even close. I edit middle school history and social sciences textbooks.”

“Hmm.” He leaned closer, scrutinizing her face. “I could swear we’ve bumped into each other somewhere. Did you go to UW?”

Dread settled like an icy lump in Mia’s stomach and chilled the insides barely thawed out by the hot chocolate. Praying her all-too-recent past hadn’t caught up with her, she shook her head.

“Nope. The University of Rhode Island. ’Scuse me.”

Walker added his voice to hers. “Stand aside, Allen. The lady needs out of those damp clothes.”

“Oh. Sure. Sorry.”

Mia brushed past him and hurried up the stairs. Just as she hit the second-floor landing she caught the tail end of a startled exclamation.

“Omigod! Brent, that’s her!”

“Her who?”

“Number 112!”

“N
O WAY
!”

Brent’s gaze flew to the woman on the second-floor landing. The dismayed glance she zinged over her shoulder confirmed her ID even before Allen did.

“It’s her,” the meteorologist insisted as the passenger disappeared around the corner. “Same green eyes. Same jet-black hair.”

He lowered his voice so it wouldn’t carry to the cruise passengers milling nearby and waggled his brows.

“Whatdaya wanna bet Ms. Harrelson’s got a sweet little dimple on her left butt cheek?”

That produced several immediate reactions in Brent. Not the least of which was the memory of Ms. Harrelson’s left butt cheek pressed against his thigh all the way up from the dock.

“Number 112,” Allen chortled gleefully. “Here at Palmer, of all places. Who wudda thunk it?”

Certainly not Brent.

He hadn’t followed Don Juan’s salacious blog all that closely. He didn’t have to. Allen and a couple of other guys at the station checked the Web site regularly for
updates. Their hooting and whooping when a new entry went online alerted anyone who might be interested to saunter by for a look.

Brent was no monk. He’d done his share of sauntering. But Don Juan’s gallery of good-time girls just didn’t do it for him.

Probably because his ex-fiancée fit right into that category. She’d explained all in her e-mail just weeks before Brent was due home after his first summer on the ice. She’d gotten bored sitting around waiting for him. So she’d gone out. Had a little fun. Met someone else. Several someones, he’d learned later.

Ironic really, since Linda was the one who’d pushed him to resign his air force commission and take a job with the civilian agency that managed all U.S. facilities in the Antarctic. Once he got some polar experience under his belt, she’d argued, he could work a management position with the company right there in Denver.

Thankfully, the thrill of living and working where few others had ever ventured and the close camaraderie of the scientists and support personnel on the ice helped ease the sting of Linda’s defection. So much so that Brent had come back for a second summer when offered the job as station manager.

A Colorado native, he’d grown up on skis and snowmobiles. After earning his USAF pilot’s wings, he’d breezed through the Arctic portion of SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—training conducted at Eielson AFB, Alaska. Designed to help downed aircrew members survive in an arctic environment, the course taught lifesaving techniques that included methods of
constructing thermal shelters and ways to build fires from unlikely materials.

But nothing in Colorado
or
Alaska could compare to Antarctica. Like so many others before him, Brent had fallen under the spell of the sometimes harsh, often unforgiving, but always fascinating White Continent. He also thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of his job.

As operations manager, he was responsible for the safety and welfare of every person at Palmer. That involved direct supervision of the support staff and close coordination with the senior scientist on station to ride herd on the other researchers. No easy task given the diversity of their research projects and often unique support requirements. The scientists kept Brent’s carpentry, power plant, materials, medical, communications, food service and boat dock personnel jumping.

Now he had a station full of stranded tourists to add to the mix…including Number 112.

Shoving the mental image of a seductive, nearly nude Mia Harrelson to the back of his mind, he told Allen, “I talked to Janie in GWR a few moments ago. She gave me her count.”

“Yeah, she contacted me, too. With her tally and mine, I make the total at two hundred eight passengers, thirty-five crew.”

That tracked with Brent’s mental count. He knew from monitoring the
Adventurer
’s distress calls that a Ukrainian resupply ship en route to Vernadsky Station had picked up the remaining passengers and crew.

Now all he had to do was engineer the return to civilization of those stranded at Palmer. Just their luck the
reinforced-hull scientific research vessel that supplied the station had already made its January run and was back at its home port in Argentina. They’d have to rely on the other ships in the area to pick them up. With that in mind, Brent mounted the stairs to the second floor and made for the communications room.

His comm tech sat surrounded by the racks of equipment that included both low and high frequency radios for short- and long-range communications, as well as a full spectrum of satellite voice and data uplinks. Hovering at his side was an anxious officer from the
Adventurer
. After introducing himself to the officer, Brent peered at the satellite monitor.

“What’s the latest, Jack?”

The thin, wiry comm tech tapped a yellow blip on the monitor. “This is the Chilean navy cruiser that was out on a training mission. They’ve diverted to Palmer and can take seventy souls on board.”

“ETA?”

“Three hours, twenty minutes.” He tapped a second yellow blip. “Next closest is the
Sea Lion
.”

Brent smothered a curse. Another cruise ship. Too big to dock at the station. They’d have to ferry the remaining passengers out to her.

“She was down peninsula at Trump Island. She’s coming about but her skipper radioed that he’s worried about the ice buildup.”

S
O WAS
B
RENT
.

He watched it carefully while he coordinated relief activities between the station’s two main buildings. As its
name implied, the BioLab housed biological laboratories on the first floor. The comm center, admin offices, storage areas, kitchen and dining room were on the second. The third provided coed living areas.

A wooden walkway connected the BioLab to the Garage/Warehouse/Recreation Building. The GWR contained the power plant, additional storage, the library, a workout room, a lounge and additional, open-bay berthing.

Both buildings were now full to overflowing with stranded tourists. They took turns using the station’s communications media to let folks at home know they were safe, then lined up for hot showers and wrapped themselves in blankets or borrowed gear while their wet clothes tumbled in the dryers. The doc kept a close eye on several individuals with known heart conditions, and the station’s two cooks were scrambling to prepare hot meals.

When Brent swung by the kitchen for an infusion of hot coffee before going back outside, he discovered Mia Harrelson and her sister had volunteered to bus tables between waves of hungry diners. Mia glanced over at his entrance and immediately colored up. Red staining her cheeks, she bent to attack a table with a damp cloth.

Well, Brent thought wryly, that reconfirmed her alter ego as Number 112. He found her reaction interesting, though. He would have thought a fun-loving party girl who let herself become the subject of those kind of photos would enjoy the notoriety they brought her.

While she blushed and swiped furiously, he introduced himself to her sister. “You must be Beth Harrelson. I’m Brent Walker, station manager here at Palmer.”

“Hi, Brent. Thanks for taking us in.”

She was shorter than her sister. Maybe five-four to Mia’s willowy five-six or-seven. Both women had shoulder-length black hair, but Beth’s was a wild mass of curls while Mia’s was smooth and slick from her shower. Almost begging for a man to run his fingers through it.

Well, hell! He was as bad as Allen. Slamming the door on that thought, Brent smiled at Beth.

“I see you’ve been introduced to gash.”

“Gash? I don’t…Oh, you mean cleanup duty. Yes, one of your people explained that you all take turns cleaning up the dining area and kitchen after meals. My sister and I figured that was the least we could do in exchange for your hospitality.”

“Do either of you need anything?” he asked.

“No, thanks. Everyone’s been terrific about raiding their closets and supply store. Haven’t they, Mia?”

Her sister had to raise her head and look at Brent then. “Uh-huh.”

Yep. No doubt about it. She was definitely 112.

And if the punch to Brent’s gut was any indication, it was a good thing she would be departing Palmer in a few hours.

O
R NOT
.

The situation looked decidedly grim when he bundled up and fought his way down to the boathouse. Neither he nor his boat manager liked the look of the ice piling up against the dock. Known as grease ice, the soupy layer could coagulate quickly to form a barrier impenetrable by anything other than ships with reinforced hulls.

Brent kept a wary eye on buildup until the Chilean navy cruiser arrived. He and his crew helped hustle the allotted seventy passengers aboard. They then held their collective breath until the
Sea Lion
radioed it was standing off shore and awaiting transfer of the rest.

Working with the crew of the
Adventurer
, they shepherded the next group of distinctly nervous passengers into a lifeboat. A second lifeboat followed shortly after the first, and both returned for another load. By then the ice had thickened so much the coxswains could barely bring their craft alongside the dock.

When the boats headed out to the
Sea Lion
again, Brent had to make a tough decision. Freezing temperatures. Knifing winds. Gray ice. Visibility down to less than a hundred feet. The lethal combination left him no choice.

Reluctantly, he radioed the
Sea Lion
and informed them he was halting transfer operations. The cruise ship captain agreed with the decision. He also indicated he would weigh anchor immediately to avoid becoming caught in the ice.

That left Brent with the unenviable task of breaking the news to the last seventeen passengers and three crew members still awaiting transfer. Trudging back up to the boathouse, he faced the group that had bundled up in anticipation of their imminent departure.

“Sorry, folks. We’ve had to discontinue transfer operations. You’ll have to wait out the storm here at Palmer.”

After a chorus of groans, one of the older passengers asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

“What’s your best guess at to how long the storm will last?”

“Our weather gurus think it might blow through tomorrow. But…”

If his time on the ice had taught Brent anything, it was that Antarctica was like no other place on earth.

“Polar storms are pretty unpredictable. Depending on the ice buildup, you could be here another day.” His glance skimmed the group, snagged on a pair of emerald eyes. “Or week.”

Mia swallowed another groan.

Great! Just great! She’d heard the bearded scientist blurt out her notorious alter ego. Caught the subsequent, speculative glances from a number of his coworkers. And now she was stuck here with this crew. Indefinitely.

So much for getting away while the buzz over her entry into Don Juan’s hall of infamy died down!

Dismayed, she trudged back up to the main building with Beth. As she shed her borrowed parka, dismay segued into indignation, and indignation into determination.

Enough was enough. She’d taken a ration of crap from her
own
coworkers. No reason she had to take it from the crew here, too. Jaw tight, she waylaid Walker in the first floor corridor of the BioLab.

“I need to speak to you. Privately.”

He hooked a brow at her tone but gestured to one of the labs leading off the main corridor.

Once inside Mia skimmed a glance over the impressive array of equipment. She edited primarily history and social studies textbooks, but she’d attended enough meetings with the science editors to know they would salivate at the sight of all these ultra-high-tech micro
scopes and fluoroscopes. She let her gaze roam the lab, collecting her thoughts before she turned to face Walker.

He’d leaned a hip against the lab counter. He still wore his watch cap. Only a few strands of dark blond hair showed beneath the rim.

“About your friend in the University of Wisconsin sweatshirt…” she began.

“Right. Dr. Allen Barclay. He probably knows more about electromagnetic phenomenon in the ionosphere than anyone else on earth.”

Unimpressed, Mia crossed her arms. “Apparently he also knows quite a bit about the contents of a Web site maintained by a total scuzz-bag who calls himself Don Juan.”

“Scuzz-bag?”

“I have other, more descriptive labels for the guy. I won’t bore you with them, but I
would
appreciate it if you would ask your people to refrain from mentioning him or the number 112 anywhere in my vicinity.”

Walker studied her for several moments. Mia refused to squirm but could guess what he was thinking. An exhibitionist who posed for pictures had no right to complain about being ogled. He didn’t say so, however, he merely dipped his head in a brief nod.

“I’ll put out the word.”

“Thanks. And just for the record,” she added, hating that she had to defend herself, “Scuzz-bag took those pictures without my knowledge or consent.”

Walker didn’t let her off the hook that easily. His tone cool, he laid the blame right where it belonged.

“That is you, though?”

“Yes.”

“In his hotel room?”

“Yes.”

“Wearing only a black lace thong?”

She ground her teeth. “It was red.”

The thoroughly disgusted reply lightened Walker’s expression. A smile crept into his eyes, along with a hint of sympathy.

“I’m guessing you’ll conduct a room-to-room search for recording devices the next time you accompany anyone to a hotel room.”

Mia’s shudder wasn’t exaggerated. Neither was her fervent vow.

“There won’t be a next time! Not for the next ten years or so, anyway. One complete and utter humiliation per decade is my limit.”

His smile eased into a wry grin. “I hear you. That’s pretty much how I felt when my fiancée dumped me a couple of weeks before our wedding.”

The confession cut through Mia’s antagonism and embarrassment. She felt herself relaxing for the first time since she’d heard his buddy utter her number.

“When did that happen?”