Baby, It's Cold Outside

by Jennifer Greene, Merline Lovelace

  “You need rest,” she said. “You were really beaten up, have to feel both physically and emotionally exhausted. You need some recoup time.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “So,” she murmured, “can you try another nap?”

  “Not in this life,” he said, scooping her around so they were face-to-face. The kiss began on her brow, moved to her cheek, then homed in on her mouth, on her senses…on her heart.

  All these years, she kept thinking, she’d never lost it. Now and then she’d lost her mind, her common sense, her keys. But she’d never lost her heart.

  Not like this.

  She’d never imagined love like this. A man like this. Not for her.

  But just like her, Rick had been pushed and prodded into recovering from a heart-shaking problem before he was ready. No one could force someone else to feel. Or to want to feel.

  She was going to have to leave him. And it already hurt.

  EMILIE WALKED INTO THE LAST room in the pediatrics ward. Outside, it was pouring rain, an April shower with lightning and thunder, unfortunately making the late afternoon gloomy and dark. She strode in with a smile, but the boy in the far bed tugged fast and fierce on her heart.

  Billy was eight, according to his chart. She’d read all the medical and physical facts about him, but the surprise was seeing the Irish-white skin, the shock of cowlicks, the lover-blue eyes.

  He wasn’t the boy from her old, sad nightmares, but he pushed all her loving buttons exactly the same way.

  “Go away,” he said, fear in his voice and his eyes rapidly filling up. “I want my mom.”

  “I’ll bet your mom just stepped out to use the restroom, Billy. I know she’s close by. My name is Dr. Emilie.”

  “I don’t want any more needles. I want to go home. I want my mom.”

  “Well, that’s amazing,” Emilie said gently, and perched closer. “Because I want exactly those things. I want your mom here for you. I want you to go home as fast as possible. And I want you not to need any more needles for a long, long time.”

  The tears stopped falling, but he gave a long shuddering breath, still looked at her suspiciously. “My leg hurts.”

  “I know it does. But we’re going to fix that.”

  “My dad said I can have anything I want when it’s all fixed. You know what I told him?”

  “What?”

  “I told him I wanted to go to Alaska. He was su’prised. He thought I’d say Disney World. But Alaska has bears and whales.”

  If there was a child in the universe made to give her more heart pangs, this one took the cake. “I’ve been to Alaska,” she told him. “And you’re darned right. Alaska is full of bears and whales. And eagles. And all kinds of other wonderful things.”

  “You went there?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you see a bear?”

  “I saw a great big giant brown bear. Way bigger than me.” Now that he wasn’t so fearful, she checked his pulse, the readings over his head, did her own cursory examination of his general state of health.

  “Were you scared?” Billy wanted to know.

  “I was petrified. I shot a gun at it.”

  “Wow. A big gun?”

  “Yup. A kind of rifle called a repeater.”

  “Did you kill the bear?”

  “No. To be honest, I never wanted to kill him, but I thought I might have to because he was a very mean bear, and he was close enough to really hurt me. So I shot. But because I’m a terrible, terrible shot, he just ran off. So nobody got hurt and everybody ended up happy.”

  “Tell me again how big he was.”

  Emilie suspected he’d try to distract her by retelling that story forever, but there was an operating room being prepared. “I will in just a minute. But as soon as your mom gets here, I’m going to take you for a ride. We’re both going to stay with you until you go to sleep.”

  “No. Wait.” Worry pinched his face again. “Are you my doctor now?”

  “I’m one of your doctors, Billy. But I have a really lucky doctor job.”

  “’Cause why? Why do you have a lucky job?”

  “Because it’s my job to make sure you don’t hurt. How could there possibly be a luckier job than that?” She’d already hooked the sedative into the IV. Billy’s mom showed up in the doorway, looking—naturally—exhausted. A nurse showed up to wheel him into the prep room with her, but Emilie motioned them back for a moment. “Are you looking at me, Mr. B?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So look in my eyes, and you’ll know I’m telling you the truth. We’re going for a ride. Then we’re going into a room with a lot of lights. The doctor will be there who’s going to fix your leg. But I’m going to be there, too. I’m going to give you some medicine so you’ll go to sleep, and I’ll stay with you the whole time you’re sleeping. And I can’t promise this, but I think there’s a good chance you might dream about whales and bears if you concentrate.”

  “I’m not going to sleep.” The IV was starting to kick in. His eyelids were starting to droop, his speech starting to slur.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m too old to take naps.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “And I want to hear about the bear again.”

  “The great big fuzzy brown bear?”

  “Yeah, that one…”

  Emilie winked at the tired mom, as they wheeled the youngster out of the room. She kept up with the story for as long as he stayed awake, although she changed some details to accommodate the circumstances. The bear turned out to be a good bear with soft fur and soft eyes, who was lost and scared. But then the bear’s mom showed up…

  She changed a few other parts of the story, too, to protect the innocent. She never mentioned the pirate of a man who’d stolen her heart—the way he felt, the way he’d made her feel. The way she’d cleaved to a stranger the way she’d never cleaved to anyone.

  She put Rick out of her mind, though. She had to. She went in, and did her job, and since Billy was her last patient for the day, she waited until he was out of surgery, and then sat with him and his mom in the recovery room.

  “You’re sure he’s all right?” Billy’s mom kept asking, even though the surgeon had reassured her right after the surgery.

  “He’s going to be just fine. He won’t be jumping out of trees for a while, but I’m sure he’ll think up other mischief to keep you busy.” When she glanced at that child again, his eyelids were starting to flutter open.

  “Hey,” he said groggily.

  “Hey right back.”

  “I’ve been dreaming. About the bear.”

  “Was it a good dream?”

  “It was a great dream. We were running in circles, around and around, until I got silly dizzy.” He added, “I’m still dizzy. But my leg doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “We gave you some strong medicine, short stuff. You won’t be dizzy once it wears off. And your leg won’t be perfect for a while, but it won’t ever hurt like it did before. And you’ll be going home pretty soon.”

  Ten minutes later, Emilie left them, yawning as she pulled off her cap and shook out her hair. It’d been a long day. A good one, but still, she’d been on her feet since before seven that morning. It was time to throw off her scrubs, climb into street clothes and curl up with a good book. Maybe pick up Chinese on the way to her apartment.

  As she walked down the corridor, she pulled out her cell phone. Naturally, it couldn’t be used in the hospital, but as expected, she found messages from her dad and oldest brother. There was a birthday coming up this weekend. Because she was the lone female in the family, she was expected to bring the cake—which, of course, she would.

  For the past few months, there hadn’t been a single day without voice mail from family. They were still unsure what they had with her. She’d come back to her work—which was what her family all wanted. But they still didn’t understand why she’d left at Christmas, or what was different about her since she’d returned
.

  She’d tried to tell them that she was fine. Because she was.

  She was changed, that was all. Forever. No way around it.

  She dropped the cell phone back in her pocket and rounded the corner—almost bumping into a tall, dark-haired man. She laughed, said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying a lick of attention….”

  And then frowned. The man was wearing an old leather aviator jacket over old jeans. His dark hair glistened with rain, and he had strong, square features, eyes bluer than the sky.

  The beard was gone. That was the thing. The scruffiness, the wild hair, the lost eyes had all disappeared.

  Damn, but he was handsome. Who knew?

  “Well, would you look at what the storm dragged in.” She tried to sound casually amazed—instead of stunned out of her tree.

  “You were supposed to call,” he said.

  “You didn’t ask me to call.” She was positive she’d have remembered if he had.

  “Yeah, well that was because it took months to get all my life-stuff taken care of. The whole time, I was hoping you were pining for me.”

  She parted her lips, but her heart had leaped so high in her throat that she had to swallow. And because she didn’t immediately respond, he jumped back in.

  “So this is what you’re wearing when you’re dressed to impress, huh?” He motioned to her wrinkled scrubs, the booties, the messed-up hair and soap-clean face.

  “Hey, if I’d known my best guy was going to show up, I’d have put on the hair cap, too. It really adds to a girl’s allure.”

  “You don’t need anything to add to your allure, Doc.”

  She couldn’t leave him hanging out alone there any longer. “I’m getting the impression that maybe, just maybe, you pined for me as much as I pined for you.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted.

  “So…do I get a hug or do we have to stand around in this hall talking nonsense forever?”

  And finally, there it was. Those long, strong arms. The familiar thump of his heart, the warmth of his body, the strength of him. The vulnerability.

  “It seems,” Rick mentioned, “that there’s a lot of infrastructure rebuilding going on in your city.”

  “Lots of needs. But no funds, the last I knew.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. But I asked. Sent in my credentials. And it seems that as long as I work harder than two men, and do brilliant work, I’ve got a job.”

  She reached up, to touch his cheek. “You actually moved for me?”

  He shifted on his feet—even though he never moved even an inch of distance. “I moved…because you were exasperating enough to get on my case about the hermit business. And then because your Boston has a ton of seriously interesting infrastructure problems.”

  She wasn’t fooled by those details. “You moved for me,” she repeated.

  “I couldn’t have,” he assured her. “That would have been stupid. I had no idea whether you’d even be willing to see me again. Or if you’d forgotten all about me. What we shared…you know darn well we could have blamed it on the blizzard.”

  “I never blamed it on the blizzard,” she whispered. “I blamed it on you. For forcing my eyes open. For forcing my heart open.”

  “I blame you for doing the same darn thing to me, Doc,” he murmured right back.

  And then she lifted up, making it easier to kiss him. Making it easy for him to kiss her right back.

  Tucked around each other, they headed out into the warm spring night.

  To my handsome, debonair hubby—

  we’ve crisscrossed the world together,

  each mile filled with the wonder of discovery.

  Here’s to many more such journeys!

  DEEP FREEZE

  Merline Lovelace

  Dear Reader,

  My husband and I were getting ready for a cruise to South America and Antarctica when I was offered a chance to write a novella set “somewhere cold.” Was that fate or what? I’d done so much research in preparation for our trip that I couldn’t wait to dive in to a tale set on the White Continent.

  My research came nowhere close to the awesome reality of Antarctica, however! I’ve traveled to many places over the years but that vast, stupendously beautiful, constantly changing continent blew me away. I saw penguins of all shapes and sizes, whales, seals and ice. Lots of ice. Small, drifting floes. Big, fat bergs. Glaciers thousands of feet high. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience-one I hope you’ll get a taste of in “Deep Freeze.”

  Check out pictures from our trip as well as information on other upcoming releases on my Web site at www.merlinelovelace.com.

  Merline Lovelace

  CHAPTER ONE

  “IT’LL BE FUN, MIA. A real adventure, Mia.”

  Shoulders hunched against a cold so vicious it bit into her bones, Mia Harrelson shot her sister an evil glare. Either Beth’s teeth were clattering too loudly to hear the snide comments or she chose to ignore them.

  That didn’t stop Mia. Now that they were safely inside the covered lifeboat and dry land was—hopefully!—only moments away, the nerve-grinding tension of the past six hours was slowly loosening its grip.

  “It’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere,” she said sarcastically, pressing closer to her shivering sister. “Much warmer than Rhode Island in January. All we’ll need to pack are bikinis for Rio. Shorts for Montevideo. A light jacket for Antarctica. Ha!”

  “Gimme a break.” Her nostrils pinched with cold, Beth dug her chin into the collar of her inflatable life vest. “You can’t hold me responsible for a freak storm.”

  The heck Mia couldn’t! Someone had to take the blame for this disaster, and her sister was the closet target—right after the idiot captain who’d run their cruise ship aground.

  In a more generous frame of mind, Mia might have accepted a little of the responsibility for their present predicament herself. Okay, most of it.

  After all, she was the dope who’d gone all gooey-eyed over a drop-dead gorgeous lawyer with a come-hither smile. She was the fool who’d tumbled into bed with him on their second date. She was the naive twit who’d never imagined someone so charming and urbane was into hidden cameras and kinky Web sites.

  And she was now out there for the whole world to see, wearing nothing but a red lace thong and star-shaped cutouts over her nipples.

  A groan worked its way through her numb lips. Among her friends and coworkers she was now and would probably forever be known as Number 112. The latest in a string of conquests by the man who labeled himself Don Juan. The same international Don Juan, Mia had discovered to her utter mortification, whose Web site got something like three thousand hits a day from those wanting to check the progress of his one-man campaign to seduce every gullible female who came into his orbit.

  Mia’s dismay had quickly morphed to anger, then to a furious determination to force the bastard to remove her picture from his rogue’s gallery. She should have known a lawyer would cover his ass. Not only did she not get the photo off his Web site, she was threatened with a lawsuit if she revealed Don Juan’s real identity. As he’d so callously explained, he hadn’t posted her name or any other identifying personal data. There were lots of women out there with coal-black hair, green eyes and a dimple in one rear cheek.

  Yeah, right! That stupid dimple had made her the recipient of so many sly winks and waggling brows at work that Mia had jumped at Beth’s travel suggestion. Why not take advantage of midwinter cruise sales to get out of town for a few weeks and let the sniggering die down?

  She’d driven in from snowy Newport, Rhode Island, and met Beth at the airport in Boston. Together they’d flown down to Rio to soak up the sun for three glorious days. Then, to Mia’s profound regret, they’d boarded the ultra-luxurious Adventurer II for a twelve-day cruise that included stops in Argentina, Uruguay, the Falkland Islands and Chile. And several days cruising the Antarctic Peninsula.

  Looking back, Mia was forced to admit their first day in Antarcti
ca hadn’t been so bad. Daytime temperatures had hovered around fifty degrees. She and Beth had dressed in light layers—cotton turtlenecks, wool sweaters, waterproof windbreakers—and hung over the rails with the other passengers to ooh and ahh at spouting whales and penguins cavorting on the ice floes that drifted by.

  This morning had started off sunny, too. Then a gray cloud rolled over the top of the glacier-skirted mountains off the port side of the ship. With it came plummeting temperatures and knifing winds. The next thing the more than three hundred passengers knew, visibility had dropped to near zero, the wind was screeching along the decks and the Adventurer was wallowing like a drunken sailor.

  Some extremely nauseous hours later, the ship hit a submerged ice shelf. Everyone was looking extremely scared and replaying Titanic’s last moments in their heads when an announcement came over the intercom instructing all personnel to dress in their warmest clothes and report to their muster stations.

  Now here they were, plowing through vicious seas while the storm still raged outside their covered lifeboat. Ice pellets pinged against the roof and windows. The wind howled like a mortally wounded dragon. Waves smashed against the hull. All that kept Mia from giving in to a healthy bout of hysteria was the fact that they were about to dock at a U.S. research station. Or so the white-lipped ship’s officer commanding the lifeboat had assured his moaning, miserable passengers just moments ago.

  When a sudden thump set the boat shuddering, terror speared through Mia’s heart. She reached over to clutch her sister’s hands but the elderly woman on Beth’s other side preempted her.

  “We hit a floe!” the woman cried, ashen-faced. “We’re going to drown!”