Since We Fell_A Second Chance Romance Novel

by Ann Gimpel

  “Why? We’re fine here.”

  “Really? You’re good with a couch and not a bed?”

  “More than good. Home is where you are. And right now, it’s here. This is luxurious compared with how I live at dig sites.”

  The steady beat of his heart beneath her ear lulled her. “I wonder if we made a baby just now.”

  His hands, which had been rubbing her shoulders and back, stilled. “Would that be all right with you?”

  She leaned back and gazed at him, loving how the firelight illuminated his features. “More than all right. We’re not young anymore, and—”

  He smiled, and the fire reflected in his eyes looked like twin flames. “That was the right answer, but we’ll see if we can’t at least wait until your Egypt project is done.”

  A chuckle bubbled up, followed by another until she was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You’ve accomplished the impossible, Dr. McKinnon. For a while there, I forgot all about archaeology. All about Egypt. All about everything except you and me.”

  “That’s quite a compliment, Dr. Wray. Keep ’em coming.”

  Drowsy, happy, content, she let herself drift. When she opened her eyes, the pale light of morning surrounded them, but she lay still, wanting to make the precious moments of her and Brice alone and finally together once again stretch as long as she could. Once they went inside, she’d be surrounded by family. Not that she didn’t love and cherish them, but Brice was her everything.

  “Hi, sleepyhead,” he murmured.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  “Feel like a run?”

  “I’m out of shape, but I’d love to come along.”

  He brushed his lips over hers. “Come on, wench. Let’s get moving.”

  She trailed her fingers over his erect cock. “Are you sure?”

  “Mostly sure, but I’m weak where you’re concerned, so don’t tempt me. We’ll save him for later.”

  Delighted that all the laters in the world stretched before them, she got to her feet and began hunting down her clothes.

  You’ve reached the end of Since We Fell. I hope you enjoyed it. While I’m not exactly known for writing contemporary stories, you might enjoy Icy Passage. It’s an action-adventure romance with a few paranormal elements. A sample follows.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  Ann Gimpel is a USA Today bestselling author. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in several webzines and anthologies. Her longer books run the gamut from urban fantasy to paranormal romance. Once upon a time, she nurtured clients. Now she nurtures dark, gritty fantasy stories that push hard against reality. When she’s not writing, she’s in the backcountry getting down and dirty with her camera. She’s published over fifty books to date, with several more planned for 2018 and beyond. A husband, grown children, grandchildren, and wolf hybrids round out her family.

  Keep up with her at www.anngimpel.com or http://anngimpel.blogspot.com

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  Book Description: Icy Passage

  Fresh out of residency, Dr. Kayna Quan opts for a tour in Antarctica. Money is short, so she hires on as medical officer aboard a Russian research vessel headed for McMurdo Station. Primed for almost anything, she plays her paranormal ability close to the vest.

  Stationed on remote South Georgia Island for two years, Brynn McMichaels is eager for a change. When cultures of the single-celled organism, archaea, overgrow their bins in his lab and begin shifting into another form, he worries he’s losing his mind and talks with scientists at McMurdo, but they have problems of their own—bad ones. Brynn agrees to help. The weather’s too uncertain to send a plane, so he hitches a ride aboard Kayna’s ship and brings his mutant culture colonies along.

  Attraction sparks, urgent, hot and powerful, between Brynn and Kayna, but her disclosure about her magic is a tough nut to crack. It doesn’t help that her dead father is stalking her. Lethal cultures, bizarre illness, and McMurdo’s refusal to let them land force Brynn and Kayna into an uneasy alliance. Will their fragile bond be enough to thwart the powers trying to destroy Earth, and them along with it?

  Chapter One

  Micah Greenwich sucked air as he pushed up from his squat, a weight bar balanced across his shoulders. He did one more squat before a wave of dizziness threatened to bring him to his knees. Gasping, he shucked the bar onto pins protruding from the back of the squat rack and grabbed one of the metal stanchions for support. A headache pounded behind one eye, and he felt nauseous.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” he muttered, still clinging to the metal cage shoved in a back corner of the gym at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. No one was in the gym. Not at this hour. Granted, the perpetual night for part of the year, followed by perpetual day, yielded some odd circadian rhythms, but Micah rarely had competition for any of the gym machines or weight equipment late at night.

  He glanced at the weight plates balanced on the ends of the forty-five pound bar, thinking perhaps he’d misjudged and put too much weight on it, but that wasn’t the issue. He shrugged. Maybe he was getting sick. Something was going around. So far, he’d been lucky during his brief stint at the southern end of the Earth and had avoided the colds and flus McMurdo residents passed among themselves like candy.

  He wiped sweat from his face with a ratty towel and decided to call it a night—at least for working out. He still needed to stop by his lab. Because he was the newest and greenest microbiologist, he’d been assigned archaea, the most ancient single-celled life form on the planet. His cultures had taken a decidedly odd turn, though, a couple of weeks back—growing like mad and not looking like any prokaryote he’d ever seen. While he might have started with archaea, what was in his bins didn’t look much like them anymore.

  Another wave of nausea battered him, and he folded his arms around his midsection, wondering if he was going to vomit. Saliva flooded his mouth, but he choked it back. Even though he didn’t feel like doing anything beyond finding his bed, he left the gym and made his way three buildings over to his lab. McMurdo was a series of prefab buildings with interconnecting doors and insulated tunnel-walkways, so you didn’t have to go outside into the weather. Antarctica never got particularly warm, and nights were always bitter.

  He glanced out a window at an inky sky shot with stars, and a reluctant smile split his face. It might be minus something outside, but it was beautiful too. He’d always loved wild, remote places, and Antarctica was about as wild and remote as it got—shy of signing up to be an astronaut, which was a long-standing dream of his.

  Micah frowned, wondering if the astronaut gig was even possible. The United States had cut their funding for the space program rather dramatically. Besides, he needed more in the way of credentials to even be considered for something like that. With another swipe at his still sweaty face—the more he thought about it, the surer he was he was coming down with the flu—he pushed open the door to his lab and froze, not believing his eyes.

  “Britta?” he called. “Marguerite!”

  The women didn’t answer. They sprawled face down on the floor in front of his main workbench, clearly passed out. Wondering if they’d gotten into the high-grade, ethyl alcohol he used to preserve things, he called their names again, louder this time. The longer he looked at them, the weirder he felt. They were too still. Sudden fear gripped him, making the nausea worse.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Why me?” he muttered, and raced to the women. He bent, grabbed Britta’s shoulder, and shook her. When she didn’t respond, he flipped her over and stared at her cherry-red face.

  Fighting a deeply sinking feeling, he turned Marguerite over. She looked just like her friend and roommate. Micah squatted next to them and laid his fingers across their necks, searching for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  He placed his e
ar over their hearts, willing there to be something, anything, before he started CPR. Still nothing. He ground his teeth together, unnerved. How could there possibly be two dead women in his lab?

  Even though he was pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good, he tilted Marguerite’s head back and breathed into her mouth before doing chest compressions. When he looked over at Britta, he understood he had to have help and lurched to his feet. Snapping up the wall phone, he punched in the after hours code for the clinic. As soon as one of the nurses answered, he screeched, “Send help now. Third micro lab.”

  His headache worsened. So did his twisting, roiling guts, but he went back to the women. He didn’t need to be a doctor to recognize death. Despite the futility, he alternated CPR from one to the next. Five long minutes passed—but they felt like five years—before the door burst open.

  “Christ!” One of the docs—Stewart maybe, Micah was too rattled to take a good look—pulled him off Marguerite. A tall, broad-shouldered woman Micah didn’t recognize examined Britta.

  “Looks like carbon monoxide poisoning to me,” the female medic said flatly. “This one’s well past CPR.”

  Dr. Stewart rocked back on his heels. “Yeah, her too.” He trained his blue eyes on Micah. “What happened?”

  Micah shook his head. “Damned if I know. I just got here. I had dinner in the mess hall, worked out in the gym, and then I swung by here to check on my cultures.”

  The woman narrowed her eyes and half-crawled to where Micah sat on the floor. She folded her fingers over his wrist and took him in with practiced hazel eyes. Her reddish hair was short, almost in a butch cut. She pressed her lips into a harsh line, frowning.

  “I’m Ariana,” she said, letting go of his wrist. “One of the nurse practitioners. How have you been feeling?”

  “Bad,” he admitted. “Think I finally succumbed to the community disease everyone else has.”

  Dr. Stewart joined them and squatted next to Micah. He ran a hand down the side of Micah’s neck and listened to his chest with a stethoscope before exchanging a pointed glance with Ariana. “Where’s the CO meter in here?” he asked.

  Micah gestured behind him. “On that wall.” He twisted to look at it, but the indicator light was green—safe. Maybe it was defective. His scientifically trained mind arranged informational bits into an unpleasant pattern. “The women,” he said. “If I’d been firing on all cylinders, I’d have figured it out as soon as I looked at the color of their faces. They died from carbon monoxide poisoning, didn’t they?”

  “Probably,” Dr. Stewart said cautiously. “But it’s conjecture at this point.”

  “That cherry-red color is a dead giveaway,” Ariana said with conviction. “Nothing else will do that.”

  “We’ll wait for an autopsy before we make statements like that.” The doctor eyed his colleague coolly.

  “Yes, Doctor. Sir. King of all things medical.” She set her lips in a thin line, clearly biting back further sarcasm. “Meantime,” she ground out, “I’m pretty sure he—” she jabbed a finger at Micah “—has whatever killed these two.” She stood and punched numbers into the wall phone. “I’m calling security.”

  Dr. Stewart sifted his hands through his untidy, blond hair. “Tell them to alert maintenance. Until we figure out what killed these two, we’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  Micah straightened. “Wait a minute,” he sputtered. “The meter says it’s safe. For all we know, Britta and Marguerite got poisoned elsewhere and just happened to be in here cleaning when they collapsed.”

  Dr. Stewart got to his feet and hauled Micah upright. “For tonight, we’ll put you in the infirmary and run tests to check if your hemoglobin’s been compromised. I’ve got to alert the boss and talk with base security. We’ll to get to the bottom of this.”

  “But my lab—”

  Dr. Stewart made a chopping motion with one hand, and the rest of Micah’s protest died unspoken.

  Ariana hung up the phone and nodded at Dr. Stewart. “You take care of the boss. I’ll deal with security and maintenance. Need to get the gas sniffer in here to make sure there’s not a leak.”

  Micah tried to focus, but the room spun crazily. He really was wiped out. Much more tired than a thirty-year-old man had a right to feel.

  “Can you walk?” Dr. Stewart nudged him.

  Micah focused bleary eyes on the physician. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “How are you feeling?” Ariana asked the doctor.

  He shrugged. “Normal. But it takes time for exposure to take a toll. Micah probably lives in this lab, except when he’s asleep.”

  “Yeah, but,” Micah pointed out, “those women didn’t. They clean all the science labs. Maybe one of the other ones is the problem.”

  The doctor folded an arm around Micah’s waist supporting him, and led him out of the lab. “I’m on it. By the time you wake up, we’ll know more.”

  Micah staggered through the door, flanked by Dr. Stewart and Ariana. “What are you going to do about the women?” he asked.

  “You were there when I alerted base security. They’ll take care of them,” Ariana assured him. “For tonight, focus on getting well.”

  IT HADN’T BEEN JUST that night, though. Micah spent the next three days in the infirmary sucking bottled oxygen. When that didn’t clear his red blood cells fast enough, the doctors ordered chelation treatments. In the meantime, he had a chance to think, and he didn’t care for what he came up with. Besides, it was so fantastic, no one would believe him.

  Maintenance had given his lab, and the other three microbiology studios, a clean bill of health, which meant he could go back to work tomorrow. Even more disturbing, the entirety of the science wing where the dead women cleaned showed zip in the way of evidence of a gas leak. In the interest of thoroughness, maintenance had checked the female dorms too, and found exactly nothing. Autopsy was conclusive regarding cause of death, but no one could figure out how the women had been exposed to a big enough dose of carbon monoxide to kill them.

  The same was true for him—major exposure to something pigging up his hemoglobin, but without an identifiable source. Another few hours without medical intervention and he’d have been just as dead as Britta and Marguerite.

  Armed with that knowledge—and a phalanx of unanswered questions—Micah spent his downtime in the infirmary mapping out a series of tests to run on his strange archaea colonies. He had suspicions, but needed facts before he presented them to Jack DeVoe, the man in charge of McMurdo operations. If he went to him now, Jack, who had a Ph.D. in biochemistry, would laugh him right out of his office. And there would go Micah’s hopes of earning his chops, so he could go on to something more prestigious than working at McMurdo Station.

  Chapter Two

  Jack DeVoe sat behind his desk staring at his computer monitor. He snagged a bottle of whiskey from a drawer and belted back a slug, but it didn’t make the news any more palatable. Russia and the U.S. were at it again, arguing over Ukraine like a pack of feral dogs battling each other for a juicy bone. The U.S. threatened to send troops, and the Russian president was screaming threats over network news. Unfortunately, Jack was fluent in Russian, and the barrage of words sounded like much more than posturing.

  He’d been in Antarctica for years. Maybe now was a good time to go for early retirement—before World War III stranded him at this remote outpost. The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea, especially in light of the two dead women who’d shown up in the micro lab the other night. Despite him harassing maintenance until they ran the other way every time they saw him, they hadn’t come up with a goddamned thing.

  He straightened in his chair and rolled his shoulder blades to loosen the tension making his neck hurt. How in the fucking hell could two women die from carbon monoxide poisoning with no leaks? Not just two women, either. The young microbiologist would’ve been just as dead—but he got lucky. Jack ground his jaws until his teeth ached. He’d figure out what was killing his people. N
o matter what it took.

  Then he’d leave Antarctica.

  His phone buzzed, and he picked it up, growling, “What?”

  “Hey, boss. Micah here.” He hesitated. “Is this an okay time? You seem miffed about something.”

  Nothing much. The world’s imploding and a mystery gas leak is on the loose.

  “Nah, I’m fine, Greenwich. You still feeling all right? What do you need? It’s ten at night.”

  Micah cleared his throat. “Thanks for asking, but I made a good recovery.” He paused a beat. “I suppose in a backhanded way, I owe my life to Britta and Marguerite. If it weren’t for them, I’d be dead too.”

  “Get on with it.” Jack rolled his eyes. “You didn’t call to swap philosophies.”

  “Right, sir. Sorry. I know it’s been a while since you did much with your biochem background, but I’d appreciate it if you could stop by the lab.”

  “Now?” Jack straightened in his chair and screwed the top back on the liquor bottle. “Is the lab on fire or something?” He shoved too-long blond hair out of his face and listened intently.

  Micah laughed, but it sounded strained. “I’ve been running tests on my single-celled samples, but I keep coming up with odd results.” He hesitated. “The other problem is a critical mass issue. Something bizarre happens when the colonies reach a certain size.”

  Jack squeezed his eyes shut. “Bizarre, how? Did you run it past the other microbiologists?” When Micah didn’t answer, Jack prodded, “Well, did you?”

  “Yeah. They’re so freaked out by this, they don’t want anything to do with it. They’d rather chalk it up to me being nuts.”

  Jack clicked away from Yahoo! News. He couldn’t do a damned thing about bad decisions on either side of the political fence. Or dead staff, apparently. Focusing on the phone in his hand, he said, “I still don’t understand exactly why you need me,” and followed up with, “Can it wait until morning?”